 Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday night. It's already 8 p.m. here in Puerto Rico. I hope everybody's having a fantastic week. This is our second show today. And we are going to talk politics, political labels. Left, right, is there such a thing as a hushu? Is that true in politics? So I know a lot of you probably already know what I think about this, but I figured there's enough new people that this is a good kind of introductory into my view of politics and how to look at the world, that we would cover this again. This is part of my recognition that repetition is good and one should repeat. So we're going to talk about what is the left, what is the right? Do those concepts mean anything? And you constantly hear about the hushu theory. The left and right, when taken to the extremes, are basically the same. We're going to critique that idea and maybe present what I believe is a more appropriate political spectrum, a more appropriate way of thinking about politics rather than this left-right hushu kind of theory. So yeah, that's what we're going to do today. You can of course help shape what we talk about by using Super Chat and asking questions. And of course this is a show supported by contributions from people like you. Let's see, what did I want to... Yeah, I wanted to mention a few things. I wanted to remind people that I am doing a public speaking seminar on Amsterdam on March 11th. Amsterdam March 11th, if anybody wants to join us. It's a small group, less than 10. I've five people so far registered, maybe six. I would love to get it a little higher and seven, eight I think would be ideal. 9.10 would be fine, not more than 10 though. So if you'd like to join us for that, it is a full day, Monday, March 11th in Amsterdam, right in the middle of town. It's $750. You can email me uron at uronbrookshow.com. Also, I've just been invited to give a talk on Israel at a foreign policy think tank in Westminster. Right across from the House of Parliament in London. And a bunch of hopefully, you know, there'd be some pretty influential people there. This is a think tank founded by Douglas Murray years ago. So probably 10 years ago. And so I will be doing that. I'll be doing that, I think. So what I wanted to ask is, are there any people interested in supporting that? You know, I need, need, you know, $4,000 to cover that talk. So are there people interested in seeing me give the talk in, if you are, please email me uron at uronbrookshow.com. Any amount, but make it in, you know, chunks of 500 if you are interested. And do it, if you're interested, do it this week because I have to make a decision about this talk pretty soon. I have to let them know. So I'm looking for $4,000, $500 units. Let me know if you're interested one way or the other. All right, let's see. All right, we should just start. Daniel says we need a Uronbrooks State of the Union address. Yeah, I usually do a State of the Union talk as one of the shows. Haven't done one. I did one last year, I think. Haven't done one in a while. You know, I should just do it once a year. When is the Biden State of the Union talk? It must be coming up soon. It's usually in February, late February. So maybe in the coming weeks we'll have the Biden one. Maybe I'll do one. I think in the past I've done it for members only. Another reason to become a member, you can hear my State of the Union talk. The State of the Union talk, I would give, if I were president, laying out what I believe the State of the Union is and what I believe needs to be done and what I will be asking Congress to do. So it will be my melee-inspired, but better than melee. Better than melee, more consistent than melee, more ambitious than melee, more thorough and systematic than melee and without melee's errors and mistakes. I will do that. So we'll do it. Maybe this year we won't do it as members only. We'll see. Maybe we'll just do it straight on one of the upcoming shows. So that would be fun. All right. So let me know if you want to be in the public speaking seminar. Let me know if you want to support my Israel talk in London, across the street from Parliament. And yeah, Iran at youronbookshow.com. Imagine Iran running for president. Imagine, I don't know, I can't sing. I would sing you John Lennon's Imagine. The likelihood of that happening is zero. But it would be fun. I was thinking, no, why would you wish that on me? That sounds horrible. I would enjoy it going from place to place, sometimes more than once a day, giving talks, giving inspiring pitches, trying to get people excited about America, trying to get people excited about capitalism, trying to get people excited about voting for capitalism in America. Wouldn't that be a blast? Wouldn't you guys enjoy watching it and wouldn't I enjoy doing it? It would be truly phenomenal. Maybe one day we can... You know, I've thought of why not run a presidential campaign like on the side, right? So go to other places, they're going to give speeches, try to track the audience, go on TV. Do it, pretend a virtual simulated presidential run. And that would be fun if somebody would finance it. I'm not going to finance it. That is super expensive. It's super difficult to do. But yeah, I would be the candidate for the American Capitalist Party. Of course, I'm ineligible to be president of the United States. You do realize that. I was not born in the United States and that makes me ineligible. So you're going to have to find somebody else to do that particular work for you. All right. So we live in a world where everything is categorized from a political perspective into left and right. And many people who maybe don't feel comfortable with the way, let's say the right has moved further out to, as they call the hushu theory, towards greater and greater maybe statism, view themselves somehow as center. And then you've got people on the left who don't associate themselves definitely necessarily with identity politics and with woke and of all that, who again identify themselves as kind of center, left, center, right. But the idea is of the hushu theory is if you take the ideas of the right and you take them to their extreme, you get some form of status fascism. And the idea is if you take the ideas of the left and you take them to the extreme, you get some form of communism egalitarianism. So the idea is, and this is the hushu theory, right, that the left and the right converge, converge, get very similar to one another when you take their ideas to the extreme. So let's think about that. What are the ideas typically associated with the right? Historically, right? And right or left are concepts that are really European concepts that they originated after the French Revolution by where people sat in the French Parliament. Really, the left and the right in Europe during the 19th century really forms of statism. There was left statism, right statism, and it was, you know, in what ways should the state impose itself on you by whom? Left and right really came to America in the early part of the 20th century, really in the 1920s and 30s. The concept of left and right was brought here by the communists, the left. Indeed, communists thought in terms of left socialist, right socialists. Those were the terms that they used, those were the ways that they thought about the political spectrum. And they brought that conception left and right, and it kind of got well-established in the United States. This idea of left and right basically associating the Republican Party with the right and the Democratic Party with the left. So let's take some basic, let's deal with Auschwitz theory first and then maybe let's think about the whole concept of left and right and where that makes any sense and how does it fit into any of this and should we still think in terms of left and right? Is there any use to think in terms of left and right? So right, for example, is typically associated in the minds of some, particularly if you go back a few decades, maybe with founding fathers, maybe with economic freedom, with the idea of freedom and liberty, maybe some with religion, but a big emphasis I think on the right, particularly if you go back to the Goldwater era but even Reagan, associated the right with limited government, economic liberty, founding principles. Now if you, and then the left, the left was thought of as socialist, as a state involvement in the economy, no real economic liberties, but you know, to some extent, some social freedoms, strong emphasis on the left in the past, on free speech, for example, free speech was a positive value for the left, you know, at least as they claimed. I mean, this is again, common perception, common view. If you take free markets to the extreme, to the end of the Auschwitz, does that lead you to fascism, statism, control, authoritarianism? No, extreme free markets lead you to more liberty, not statism. It doesn't lead you down that Auschwitz. If you take the idea of free speech and you take it and become a free speech absolutist, does that lead you down the Auschwitz? Does that take you towards authoritarianism? No. I mean, one could argue that certain ideas of left and right when taken to those extremes do lead into the Auschwitz, religion, certainly of the right wanting to control people's sex lives, certainly on the right, on the left, the socialism. If you take it to the extreme, that's communism, yeah, that's statism. If you take the religion and they're wanting to control people's sexual habits, the extreme, yeah, that's statism, that's part of the Auschwitz, but does not every part of what we consider part of the right, if taken to extreme leads to fascism, and not everything in what we used to consider parts of the left, take the extreme leads to communism. Now, it's true fascism and communism of every similar, but they are extremes of what? They're both extremes of something, but are they extremes of the good parts that belong to the right and the good parts that belong to the left? No. So the whole concept of left and right, I think the Auschwitz theory illustrates quite well, is that the whole concept of left and right is a package deal. There really is no such thing as left and right. And indeed, one of the things that categorizes left and right is just how fluid the ideas that people on the left and people on the right actually have held through history. They're very inconsistent, particularly when you think about the left and the right today. The left used to be a bastion of free speech. Today, it's some of the most strongest voices that anti free speech on the left. The right used to be a bastion of free markets. Today, some of the strongest voices against on the right are against free market. The left, the right used to be, at least for the most part, the right used to be opposed to authoritarian regimes in the world and viewed America in some important way as exceptional, as different. The right today admires dictators around the world and views America, particularly America today, as dramatically unexceptional. Left and right have become, and I think always were, completely fluid concepts. Today, and maybe always, but certainly today, we can see it today because I think social media gives us visibility to the way people think that we really never had before. Today, people associate themselves with the right and the left as tribes, not as ideas, not as ideology, not as a set of principles to guide their political agenda. Today, left and right are tribes and the ideas that people hold within these tribes depend on all kinds of factors that many of them independent of ideology and have much more to do with the dynamics within the tribe and dynamics between the two tribes, the conflict between the two tribes. Indeed, you see this, particularly with somebody like Trump, where the tribe, the right, will change its views on a particular issue as Trump changes its views on a particular issue. I mean, there being some polling studies done asking people on the right a question, and then they give an answer, and then they're told the Trump thinks the answer is a B, and then everybody switches to B. Because what's really important to them is the tribal affiliation, not any particular view or any particular idea. And in that sense, I think left and right are empty concepts. There's nothing there. There's nothing of interest. There's nothing, concepts are supposed to help us. Concepts are supposed to integrate around principles, around key ideas. But what are the key ideas? What unifies the right today? What would you say identifies the right in any particular formulation? And is that the same, or is that even similar to how you would have identified the right in 1964? Now, I'm sure there's certain things that are similar, and you can even show how certain ideas that the right had in 1964 led to where we are today. But in terms of a deep ideology, and in terms of the application of that ideology, it is very little that is similar between a Barry Goldwater and a Donald Trump. And yet both the figures of the right. There's a new book out. Maybe it's not so new, but there was a book out that I just discovered whether it's new or not. I do not know. I can click on it and find out and tell you whether it's new or not. But it's a book called, let me just first see if it's new or not. All right, it's old. It's a year old. It was published by Oxford University Press in January 2023. But it is a book called The Myth of the Left and Right. How the political spectrum misleads and harms America. And I think there's a lot of truth to the ideas presented in the book, at least as summarized by a variety of different articles that I've read about the book. The idea that left and right are these baskets of policies or political views that are completely flexible, that are completely move around, that are not static and are not unified by any ideological principle. It used to be. I talked about the right as protecting individual rights, protecting rights with regard to economic rights, generally fighting for those. But violating rights when it comes to our freedom of speech and women's rights and abortion and homosexuals, sexual behavior. And the left, so social kind of issues. And the left was good on the social issues or had a particular view on the social issues. But then rights violated when it comes to economics issues. Okay, I can kind of see a left and a right. I would still want to ask, where do I belong? Right, somebody who believes in liberty and individual rights, both in the social and on the economic issues, where does one belong if this is a spectrum? Where you get more and more freedom in economics, but more and more repression when it comes to as you go out to the extremes. I mean, none of these, it just doesn't fit. None of it integrates. And this is the thing about left and right. It doesn't integrate. There's no concept there. The left doesn't integrate into a concept. Okay, these are the ideas that make the left, that unify the left and make it understandable what the left is. Hear the ideas that make it, and we can see that you can move from moderate to more consistent to radical positions. Because the problems of both left and right is, they're a complete mishmash of ideas. There is no unifying factor. There's no integrating factor. It is a complete disintegration. By the way, Jonah Goldberg interviewed the author of this book recently, and he reviewed on his podcast, and he reviewed the book on one of his dispatch blog posts. And that's where I found, I discovered it. I never heard of the book. It turns out that the authors are both affiliated with a Miller Center or the Miller Center funded this book. The Jack Miller Center, Jack is a friend. I'm actually going to see Jack on Thursday. So Jack's a good guy, and the Jack Miller funded this book, the Jack Miller Center. They sound like, I mean, they're self-identified, the authors self-identify as classical liberals. And they say, where do we belong? If there's the spectrum, what's the spectrum of rights? Well, that doesn't fit because they each violate rights in different ways, and they respect rights in different ways. And those don't go together. And what they argue, and I think this is right, is what this causes is conceptual muddling and conceptual laziness, or political laziness, thinking laziness on the part of American political participants. Oh, I'm of the right because I agree with X. Oh, then I must agree with Y, Z, B, A, X, you know, all these other ideas. And as they shift, well, I'll shift my views as well, because now I'm of the right. And it creates a certain laziness. So what do I think of A and B and C and D? And is, in my own thought, is there a unifying principle? Is there something that puts it all together? Well, when I start breaking it down like that, I think for many people, if they start really breaking it down, really thinking about the issues, and really thinking about it from the perspective of principles, they suddenly discover, well, wait a minute. I don't agree with half the things that they believe. So if I'm not on the right, where am I? I'm not on the left because I disagree with them on pretty much everything. So where am I? Well, this is too hard. I'll just be on the right. The label itself, there is no concept there because it doesn't integrate anything unifying. There's no unifying principle. The concept itself is just useless. It actually, I think, distorts thinking. It actually represses ability to think clearly about the issues involved. And more importantly, the principles involved, the principles should guide your actions. Are the founding fathers left or right? Well, by some measures, you could argue that on certain issues, I don't know, you could categorize some of them as right. Others as left. But again, it's confusing because on other issues, they're very similar and they very much agree. Does that mean they're centrists? There's no, you draw a line, left, right. But what is the characteristic? What are we moving along? What is the line represent? What are we moving across? Because they're baskets of goods. There's baskets of opinions, not good. Baskets of opinions. Combinations of opinions across the line. But what is unifying them to create a line? Nothing. It's not liberty because both directions both enhance certain liberties and repress other liberties and to various degrees and depending on where you are. So, can for example write, Hamilton would be considered far right if not for his belief in a central bank. But no, it was because of his belief in a central bank that he was considered far right because far right was considered more statist. And Thomas Jefferson was considered far left. Less statist. Less government. In everything. Well, I guess except education. The one thing Jefferson was definitely flawed about. So it's not useful. What is useful is to think about, because there is a spectrum of ideas, it's to think about what is the fundamental foundational principle, principle in politics. What is fundamentally politics about? What are they about? What are we talking about when we're talking about different laws and we're talking about different political programs, different political controls or the dismantling of controls. What is the fundamental principle on which you could take any political issue and say this is somewhere along this. What is the unifying principle on which you can put all the issues in politics? And I think the fundamental principle is individual rights. Is a particular policy for individual rights or is a particular policy anti-individual rights? Is it for limited government that protects individual rights? Does it move in that direction? Or does it move us in the direction of statism, collectivism? That is a coherent political line. On the one side, you have at the extreme, at the very extreme, right? At the extreme of what people associate with the horseshoe, right? At the extreme, you have a limited government that only does one thing, protect individual rights that has a military, a police and a judiciary and nothing else. And is dedicated to the preservation and protection of individual rights to write the life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. That's it. Minimal government in terms of its, you know, minimal government in terms of its reach in terms of what it does and as big as it needs to be in order to do it well. And as you move away from that, government is more intrusive, does more, tells you more about how to live your life, tells you more about how to run your business, maybe on different dimensions, maybe in some areas, you know, some people might be for more economic liberty, but fewer social liberties. Okay, but it's all somewhere along the spectrum. We know what the extreme is. We know what the, what I would consider the ideal, but fine for other people to think about, oh, that's the radical, the radical extreme. And on the other side, you have a different radical extreme. The other side is some form of totalitarianism, a totalitarianism where the government is telling you everything about how you should live your life. It's guiding every decision, who you have sex with, who you marry, like Plato's Republic, right? You know, in every business decision, everything is guided by government. That's the other extreme. And on this other extreme, you can imagine that there are a lot of variations of it. You could imagine a communist variation. You can imagine a fascist variation. You can imagine Stalin and you can imagine Mao and you can imagine Popats, slightly different variation, and you can imagine Hitler, all of them on this extreme, far end of that other side. And now you've got a coherent line. And I can pretty much plot every politician along this line. It's not always easy because they might be further along in one dimension, further back in another dimension. But generally, they'll be somewhere, not at this extreme, maybe not at that extreme, somewhere in between. Some politicians are more inclined to freedom and some politicians are less inclined to freedom, and that's basically what individual rights means. The spectrum is a spectrum of freedom. Maximal freedom here, minimal, zero freedom here. Or another way to think about it is a political system dedicated to individualism, dedicated to the sovereignty of the individual over here. Over here, a political system dedicated to collectivism and the collective as the primary in every political, every issue. And that's the spectrum. And again, that gives, that's a coherent spectrum. It's drawn along an axis of a principle, an idea. And then you can take every other year out there that people hold, and you can plot it along this, and you can say, okay, if people hold this, this, this, this, this somewhere over here on this axis. And you could argue, you know, what do you call it? Classical liberals are not quite where I would be. They're not quite as radical maybe as I am, but they're close, they're not far. They're on this, generally on this axis. And then you've got, I don't know, Goldwater conservatives, pretty close to the classical liberals somewhere in the direction of individual rights. And then you've got, I don't know, modern right, Trumpists, which are going to be on the other side going towards the more authoritarian, the violation of rights in pretty much every dimension that you plot. Women's right to abortion, businesses right to determine where they set up their factory, you know, a bunch of different issues. You know, what should be produced in the United States versus what should not. On all of these, they would be towards a statism. They would be towards, and then if you take the modern Democratic Party, there would be, on my spectrum, they would be at the same place basically as Trump, just slight variations in terms of the particular issues and how they view them. But they would both be on the status side of the spectrum. And indeed there would be nobody representing the individualist, pro-individual rights, pro-liberty, pro-freedom side of the spectrum. Nobody there, completely empty. And there isn't anybody there today in our political world. So to properly think about politics is not to think about left and right and have this instinct, but it's left, therefore it must be bad and we have to kill it. Or it's the right and therefore it must be good, or the right must be left, bad or whatever. It's to think about, is this pro-individual rights or is this against them? Is this moving us towards more freedom or is it moving us towards more statism? Where are we? Where is this politician? Is this particular politician moving us towards freedom? Is he an incremental step towards freedom? Or is he an incremental step towards authoritarianism? I mean the sad thing is about American politics today is everybody is a step towards authoritarianism. There is nobody on the political spectrum today a step towards freedom and in that sense, in that sense, you know, I don't care if they're left or right. They're all bad. All of them. Every single one of them. And it's not by the standard of perfection. It's not even by the standard of the founding fathers. It's just by the standard of a simple principle. More or less freedom. Every single candidate running for president is probably, and certainly the two main candidates, are definitely moving us towards less freedom. And it doesn't matter if it's left or it's right. What matters is it's violating our rights. Now it might matter which one of the candidates, because which one of them leaves the most room for renewal of a political movement towards freedom, might be important. Which one of them is likely to institute an authoritarian regime that lasts longer might be very relevant. So it doesn't mean you're indifferent between the two, but it does mean that they're not that different in terms of freedom, not freedom. On the political spectrum, they're not that different. Freedom or slavery, individualism, collectivism, individual rights, statism, capitalism, statism. That is the spectrum. That is the spectrum. And left-right today have become just basically variations, variations on statism. You've got status of the left, status of the right. That's all you have today. You have nobody who breaks out of their mold to be going towards individualism, towards capitalism, towards liberty, towards even what we call classical liberalism. And that's really, you know, and it's getting, it gets worse every cycle, right? So with Ronald Reagan, you can say at least there were hints of a kind of a classical liberal agenda somewhere hidden there. They were mired by his appeal to religion, but it was there. Certainly with Barry Goldwater, you got a lot more than hints, but you got a definite classical liberal trend. And in that sense, again, dropped the whole idea of right, but, you know, he's in the direction of more liberty, of more freedom, of more individual rights. So what we need today is a rejection of left and right and a proposal of something new. What we need is the capitalist party. What we need is the individual rights party. What we need is an alternative to the existing model to recognize that at least in the United States, and to a large extent, I think this applies, I think it applies less to different pieces in Europe. I think that the left-right model, I mean, I don't know that, you know, how strong, I mean, the left in some ways is strong in Europe, right? And suddenly an economic left, kind of a Marxist left, a regulatory left, is strong in Europe. Regulations are big in Europe. Control is big in Europe. But that's not exclusive. The left in Europe anymore. Is Orban more for economic liberty or less for economic liberty than the social democrats who are left of Santa in Germany? Well, he's more control. The real challenge in Europe is, well, it's not a challenge. The reality in Europe is they don't seem to have, well, I hesitate to say this because it's probably not true. They don't seem to have the wacky left that we do. Well, maybe they do. They have it in the form of environmentalism. You know, that's where it manifests itself. In the US, it manifests itself in woke and identity politics. In England, it manifests itself in, you know, maybe the biggest issue for the left in the UK, the wacky left is transgender rights, the way they view transgender and how they politicize transgender. But they're much more traditional socialist rather than woke. And in mainland Europe, I don't think woke has much currency. I don't think identitarian politics of the left have much currency. It's much more traditional Marxism, traditional leftism, existentialism, soft egalitarianism, not the kind of egalitarianism that identitarianism requires. Maybe some of the Europeans will correct me. And the right in Europe is even more explicitly statist than it is in the United States. The United States, the right tends to give lip service to liberty and freedom, less so today than five years ago even. I mean, the rising stars on the right, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, right, those are the young, the young rising stars on the right. They don't give lip service to liberty and freedom. And they're the statists through and through. And indeed, they have much more in common economically with Elizabeth Warren than they do with a Barry Goldwater, or even with a Rand Paul from an economic perspective. So in Europe as well, you have a right that is statist moving towards fascism. So the model is Orban, who has basically dismantled the media and put it under the control of the government. He's basically dismantled an independent judiciary and put it under the boot of the government, where the government controls pretty much everything. And where the government is fairly in its economic policies, statist, that is its regulator, Tory and redistributionist, and very regulatory. It's very difficult to be an entrepreneur in Hungary. And Hungary's economy basically survives on subsidies it gets from the EU. That's the new right. And the talking point, the thing that seems to rally them is a rejection of freedom when it comes to immigration. But nobody wants to immigrate to Hungary. I mean, Orban built a wall to prevent Muslim migration, not to protect Hungary, because nobody wanted to stay in Hungary. There's no economic activity in Hungary. The welfare checks are too small in Hungary. Nobody wants to stay there. They were all going to Germany and Sweden. So what he really built a wall was to protect Germany and Sweden. But by building that wall, he gained creds as the anti-immigration guy, even though it had nothing to do with Hungary itself. It's so bizarre how people relate to politics anywhere, but in parts of Europe it's amazingly strange. In the United States, Donald Trump is a statist. Joe Biden is a statist. There might be small variations in how that state is a manifest. More associated with the kind of people they surround themselves with than with their own views. I don't think there's that much difference in their own views when it comes to, for example, economic policy between Trump and Biden. I think they both basically have the same kind of instincts. Trump generally surrounds himself with, at least in the first administration, with better people than less statist people than Biden. Not sure that will happen in the second administration. But again, what's the difference, the fundamental difference, the philosophical, political, fundamental difference between the two? There is none. What we need is something different. What we need in America is something new. It's something radical. It's something extreme. Radical and extreme for liberty, for freedom. What we need is capitalism, which would be an alternative to both left and right, and wouldn't be a center. That's the problem. If you have just one line left and right, where do the capitalists belong? They're in a third dimension. They don't belong in that line. But if you draw a line of individual rights pro-against, then you can put people along that line. Everybody fits. Everybody fits. Some are mixed, but they all fit. Unless we do that, this country is doomed to continue to drift towards greater and greater authoritarianism, greater and greater statism, greater and greater economic and cultural stagnation, greater and greater bitterness between the tribes, because all we have are tribes. Again, we don't have deep, fundamental, philosophical, political differences. We have tribalism. And they will kill each other, not over liberty and freedom, but over which one of the tribes gets to control our lives. Just like the communists and the Nazis killed each other and they consider themselves huge enemies, but in terms of policies, in terms of the things they actually did, about the same, about the same. Main difference is Nazis focused on your ethnic origins and the communists focused on your class, your economic class. Other than that, same thing. That's why people wonder how did Stalin and Hitler get along enough to launch World War II, because Stalin and Hitler were very much the same, very much the same. And this is why people who were rabid leftists, landed up supporting Hitler in Germany, and people who were rabid right wing, if you will, statists, landed up supporting the communists, because they all do the same thing. They all place the state above the individual and sacrifice the individual to the state in mass. There's no difference between the communists and the fascists. Not at any important point. It's more who the victims are, slight variation in who the victims are, so you better know whether you're in a socialist or fascist place, so you know whether you need to run away or not. But you should run either way, because if you're an independent thinker, they're both coming after you. So I agree with the myth of left and right. I think the whole conception of left and right puts our ability to think politically. It eliminates the need, well it doesn't eliminate the need, but it eliminates the will, the need in individuals to define political principles and deal with political principles and deal with specific political positions that they have based on those principles. It encourages people just to join tribal groups, and that's the state of American politics today. It's a state of tribalism, and it really is probably the ugliest it's ever been in American history. I think this is worse than before the Civil War, because at least the dispute during the Civil War was over something real. The dispute during the Civil War was over principle, and over a principle of individual rights. Today, they don't disagree about principles. They're going to kill each other. They're talking about a Civil War. They're going to kill each other. Over what? What exactly? What do they disagree about? Who should control us? Not over whether they should be controlled or not. And that's the real question, the fundamental political question, the foundational question in politics. Should we be controlled or not? As individuals, should the state control us? What comes first? What is the purpose of the state? What is the purpose of government? So, yeah, let's drop this left-right, or at least recognize that both left and right are just variations in collectivism. They're both variations on bad guys. And we do not belong to either one of those. We're not on that spectrum. We're neither left nor right. Let us jump into the super chat. Thank you guys for joining. So let me remind you of a few things. The show supported through contributions from listeners like you. You can support the show with super chat. You can support your show with just a sticker. Right now, there are 100 people watching. You can do a, like Stephen Harper just did a sticker for $5. All of you can do a sticker for $5. Indeed, if everybody does, we blow through our goal easily, and that'll be terrific. So consider giving support, a couple of lattes for the Iran book show for us to continue doing what we're doing. I want to remind you if you want to sign up for my public speaking seminars either in the United States in June in California or in Amsterdam for Europeans or Americans traveling there. In Amsterdam in March 11th, please just drop me an email Iran at Iranbrookshow.com and I will send you information about what to do next. If you'd like to help fund my talk in London on Israel to a farm policy think tank affiliated with Douglas Murray, I think there'll be some significant people there. And it'll be across the street from Parliament. Then please drop me an email Iran at Iranbrookshow.com. All right. All right. James asks, Canadians and Australians seem fine with authoritarianism. People getting arrested for speech. People's bank accounts being frozen for protests, for protesting. As much as we complain about America, we are light years ahead of other developed nations. I mean, I wish that were true, but I'm really not convinced that it is. America succumbed to lockdowns very quickly, very easily and for a long time. Now granted, the lockdowns were not as bad as the ones in Australia, but they were bad, just a matter of degree. And I don't know if anybody tested ones that was bad as Australia, California maybe, I don't know. So maybe a little bit, but they're pretty bad. Freezing bank accounts. I mean, the difference between Australia, Canada and America, the real difference, sadly, is not anymore so much in the attitude of people. The real difference is that America has a constitution and it has people dedicated to that constitution and to the will of law. So for example, when the FBI breaks into safe deposit boxes, takes everybody's cash and says, oh, we're confiscating it, we're taking it. America has a system by which lawyers can sue under the Fourth Amendment, retrieve that money back, get the government to pay it back and make sure the government doesn't do it again. I don't think Canadians and Australians have that because they don't have a constitution. They don't have a Fourth Amendment. And what that means is that even if the same people with the same ideas occupy the two different places, the outcomes are going to be different because the government can't get away with stuff in America. Not because the people are upset, but because we have a constitution and there's still enough people who respect that to try and enforce it. So that's where we're light years ahead. We're light years ahead because of the founding fathers. We're light years ahead because of the principles that guided the founding fathers because the founding fathers had an idea of what this country should be. And they put that idea into writing. And those ideas became the framework by which at least certain parts of the American government, particularly the judiciary, under certain judges and certain parts of only the document are respected and adhered to. And it is the foundation of our law and our legal system with all the problems with the way the courts have interpreted the constitution. It's better than countries that don't have one or that have weak ones or have ones that are much more statist like Canada and Australia. That's the fundamental difference. That's what keeps us going. So if you're going to thank anybody, I would thank the founding fathers, the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Institute for Justice, and maybe the courts for still respecting elements of the constitution. That's who I would thank. It's not something in the American spirit unfortunately, or if it is, it's dying. It's dying fast. It's sad. All right, Gian, is it Gian Nicolini? Thank you Gian. These are for stickers. Thank you, Ann. Ann's first super chat. It's great to have you here, Ann. Let's see who else. Stephen Hopper. Thank you, Stephen. And thank you, Shelly, for the $20. Really appreciate those all stickers. You too can do a sticker and help support the show today. All right. Or you can ask a question on any topic. It doesn't have to be on the topic we just talked about. I see that Abtin has a question about Michelangelo and Clark has a question about Seinfeld. So you can really ask me about anything if those things interest you. Hopper Campbell. Do Christian conservatives oppose the welfare state and emphasize work? Not because they respect individual rights, but because they think work is suffering, work is anti-happiness and joy. We all suffer at work as a duty. Well, I'm not sure I agree with your premise. I don't think Christian conservatives oppose the welfare state. There's no indication that they do. When Christian conservatives vote in Congress, they don't seem to vote against the welfare state. They might want the welfare state to be restructured and more efficient and really help only the poor, and they think that people take advantage of it or whatever, but are they really against the welfare state? Is there any Christian conservative out there who wants to do away with Medicare? Are there any Christian conservatives out there that really want to get rid of welfare? Really? Get rid of it? No. But Christian conservatives do emphasize work and do emphasize the importance of work and do emphasize the welfare reform towards work. They emphasize, for example, Republicans are big on making different benefits dependent on only for working families. And they view work as important. Part of this is a remnant of Christian conservatives in America are not as a particular form of Christianity. Christianity is a religion that has taken a wide array of perspectives, views and different issues over time. And definitely part of Christianity, part of American Christianity, there's a certain sense of self-reliance. There's a certain sense of the importance of work. It goes back to, I think, a perspective on the Protestant ethic, which I think is overstated. But a Protestant ethic emphasizes the importance of work, of toil. And part of it is that in order to earn your keep on this earth, you should suffer, you should work hard, you should do your thing. And there's definitely a perspective that they have, you're right, that work is anti-happiness and anti-joy. But there is also the perspective of you should take care of yourself. And this is the better element among Christian conservatives. This is why sometimes they can sound to certain issues pretty good. It's because they do have a certain respect for self-reliance. And then they believe you should sacrifice for your fellow man and you should help the poor. And that's why they're not completely against welfare, but they're very much pro-charity and they're pro-sacrifice for the poor. But there are better elements and the better elements and the better elements are associated with self-reliance. And there's a theme in Christianity about self-reliance. But there's also a strong current within Christianity that's communist. I mean the first communist settlements, the first communist attempts at communist states were Christian in the pre-10th century. And repeatedly, during different periods before the Reformation, the biggest killing of Christians against Christians was the Catholic Church wiping out different Christian communist communes, where Christians were trying to implement a certain type of communist, you know, no private property, everybody is poor, everybody helps everybody else, everything is communal or property is communal. I mean communism comes directly from Christianity. I don't know that there are examples of communism as in no private property, no pseudo-private property, no semblance of private property, everything communally owned. I don't know that in history, I should look this up because I mean they might be, that is not Christian. Although, you know, arguably you could interpret Plato certainly in certain parts of him to advocate for that. And again Christianity is very, very, very Platonist, very influenced by Plato. Liam says, did most Jews in Europe know fluent Hebrew before the Holocaust? Did they get all these German, Polish, Russian and Hungarian Jews to start speaking Hebrew in 1949 to coordinate a war of self-defense? No, none of them knew Hebrew. I mean some of them knew enough Hebrew that is they knew how to say the prayers in Hebrew. Most of them knew how to do that. They knew how to say the prayers in Hebrew. But none of them knew Hebrew or used Hebrew as a living language. As a language that you talk to anybody, you used Hebrew only for prayer. And most of them didn't know what the words meant. They could mouth them, they could repeat them, but they didn't know what they meant. You know, Jews came from, not from Europe, Jews came from the Middle East, from the Arab world. They didn't know Hebrew. They knew Arabic. Those who came from Morocco, Northern Africa, had a, they have a dialect of Spanish that they knew from, because they are, many of them, most of them, are remnants of the Inquisition. So they had a certain, just like Yiddish, is a language Jews spoke that was a remnant of, that is a dialect of German. The Jews in Morocco and in Tunisia and Nigeria, they had a language, Ladino, I think it's called, which is a type of kind of a dialect of Spanish. And then of course, Moroccan Jews knew French, Algerian Jews knew French. And the Jews from Europe knew their native languages, German, Hungarian, whatever it was, Polish, Russian. But that was it. Some of them knew Yiddish, but Eastern European Jews didn't know Yiddish. Russian Jews didn't know Yiddish. No, they all came with their languages, and they learned Hebrew. Also remember that Hebrew, as a language, as a language used to live by, right, in daily communication, is a completely and utterly modern phenomenon. It was basically invented, I think it's the 1920s, 1910s to 20s. Eliezer Ben-Yhuda is a guy who basically reinvented Hebrew. He took the ancient Hebrew text, ancient Hebrew language of the Bible, and he modernized it. And he brought in all kinds of other influences, and he created a modern language. And that is the language that when these Jews came to Israel, some of them came in 1948, some of them came before, some of them came after, they learned. Now, there were already Jews there who spoke maybe their ancestral language or the language of the place they came from, and they ultimately managed. They ultimately managed. And it's, it really is amazing how well they did in the War of Independence in 1948, given the lack of a common language. It's pretty amazing how well they did, given that many of these people had just lived through the Holocaust, with survivors of concentration camps. And the concentration camps for them didn't end in 1945, because when the Nazis were defeated, many of these Jews didn't have anywhere to go. So they had to stay in camps until 1948, where they could get on boats and come to Israel. Many of them tried to come to them boats to Israel in 1946 and 1947, and the British captured them and put them in a concentration camp or a camp in Cyprus. So these are people who had been imprisoned for a decade. And suddenly they were given a rifle and said, here we are. Now, part of their success is the motivation. They were highly motivated, but it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing that it is really pretty amazing that they succeeded as well as they did. They were physically weak, they were malnourished, and yet they fought. They fought because they knew this was the only place they could go to. America wouldn't take them. Like, the Jews have survived the Holocaust. They survived the concentration camps. The American soldiers liberated them in Dachau and in a bunch of other concentration camps, right? They liberated them. They let them out. And then the Americans wouldn't let them into America. They wanted to go to America. And the American Congress said, nope, can't come. Go back home. And they said, we have no home. The Poles won't let us back. The Russians won't let us back. And the communists now, there's nowhere for us to go. The Poles, they've taken our homes, they've taken our land, they've taken our property, they've taken our money, they've taken our paintings, they've taken all our stuff. Where are we supposed to go? The Brits didn't want them. The Americans didn't want them. Western European countries didn't want them. So they got on boats ultimately and they went and they fought. They fought in Israel because they knew there was nowhere else for them to go. And Jews in Israel today fight for Israel because they know there's nowhere else for them to go. If the Jews tomorrow decided to hand the land to the Palestinians and to leave, where do they go? America's borders are closed. Western Europe's borders are closed. Where do they go? So under those circumstances, you fight hard and you learn the language and you adopt the language and you embrace the language and you do what is necessary to survive. You do what is necessary to survive. And you do what is necessary to thrive. And that's Israel. That explains Israel. And if the Palestinians don't get that, if the Palestinians don't understand that, then they will suffer the consequences because the Jews in Israel are not going anywhere. They're not. At this point, you can play all the history games you want. You can rewrite history all you want. You can pretend that the Palestinians have been angels from the beginning of time and Zionism is to blame for everything. It doesn't matter even if that were true and it's not. Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. The Jews are just not going to leave. And even if they wanted to, there's no way for them to go, as I said. So the Palestinians are just going to have to face it. And many of them, because they won't face it, are going to have to die and are dying because they won't face it. And that's just tragic for the Arabs and the Palestinians. I think the Gulf States and the Saudis have realized this at least. They don't like the Jews there. They don't want the Jews there. They'd rather the Jews go home. But they've come to the realization that the Jews ain't leaving. And that's why they're willing to normalize a relationship. This is what Sadat learned in the 1970s. We're not going to beat them. They're not going anywhere. Might as well stop the fighting. And that's what the Palestinians still haven't figured out. All right. Matthew says, same question as Daniel. Which question by Daniel? Is there any prospect for a better, viable third party? I mean, right now there isn't. There clearly isn't. And the main reason for that is that there's no ideology. There's no vision. At best what you get is this political party called no labels, right? No labels. That's the best that they can do. We're not left. We're not right. We're not for individual rights. We're not against individual rights. We're not for socialism. We're not for capitalism. We're not for this. We're not for that. We're no labels. We stand for nothing. It's not a basis for political party. It's not inspiring for anybody. We're the centrists. We're the zeros. We're the nothing. Is a third party possible? Absolutely. I mean, America had a third party. It was called the Republican Party. And it replaced the Whigs. And it eviscerated the Whigs so that the Whigs disappeared. The Whigs don't exist anymore. And maybe it's true that the American system of government, the way it's structured, and the way the Electoral College works, and the way Congress works here, only can have two parties. That's fine. But that doesn't mean it has to be a Democratic and a Republican Party. You can start a rebirth of a weak party. You can replace one of the parties. And the closer the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the closer they get, the more similar they become in more and more and more of the issues. The more space there becomes to replace one of them. I think more likely it is to replace the Republican Party because I think that's where you get the most disaffected. That's where you get the most potential for movement away. You can take the best elements of the Republican Party, not take it to the extreme that I would want, but moved in that direction, abandon the Trumpist in that party, and create a third party for a while you will lose until one of those will die out and there'll just be two parties left. So yes, I think there is the prospect of a better third party, but not today. I just don't see it today. Let's take Daniel's question. Daniel also asked, do you see a third party gaining traction, a diselection, maybe Haley Romney or Romney Manchin, not holding my breath but it would be nice. Manchin today announced or yesterday announced that he's not running for president. He was floating with the idea, not doing it. I really don't think no labels is going to run anybody. I don't think they have the audacity to do it. RFK might run, and I forget the leftist on the left might run, but no, I don't see any kind of third party who could challenge. Is it possible that a Haley, somebody, or a Democrat or a Republican run this particular election? They could make a big difference. They could make a big difference because they would take votes and who knows from whom. In an actuary college you could win a few states. You could make noise. I just don't think the people involved are going to do it partially because I don't think there's enough energy because they don't stand for anything. They don't stand for anything. So I think we're going to have to wait for any kind of viable alternative political party. I do not think an alternative political party is possible, but not likely anytime soon. And look, not likely anytime soon primarily because the American people, they hate Trump and they hate Biden, but who do they like? Who do they want? They didn't like Romney. Romney ran once. He lost. He lost Obama. It was pretty bad. And he lost. Manchin, Manchin's not like. Nobody likes Manchin. And Manchin's not liked nationally. He might be liked in West Virginia and even there. The reason he's not running is because the Republicans are running a strong candidate against him. Who will beat him? And he knows it. So who do Americans want? You actually need a positive agenda that the American people support and the American people right now don't support any positive political agenda. They really, I mean, a significant number of people love Trump and a significant number of people are real leftists. Not a majority on either side, but a significant number. I mean, look at Trump. He's going to get, I don't know, 60% of the vote or 55% of the vote. Sorry, probably 60% of the vote in South Carolina. And he'll get 60% of the vote throughout, you know, 60% of Republicans want Trump. They've got an alternative. They've had an alternative all along. They've chosen Trump. And the Democrats are too cowardly to offer an alternative. And Biden would probably beat that alternative. So I just don't see, I don't see it. I don't see it this election cycle. I wish, I wish, I wish there's some dream team that could come about and just knock Biden and Trump off their porch. That would be amazing. But who? I don't think Romney could win and I don't think Manchin could win. And Hailey is being rejected by the Republican Party. So who is she going to get? Who's votes is she going to get? She'll get a minority of Republicans. She'll get some independents and she'll get any Democrats. I mean, when Democrats actually look at her policies, how many of them will vote for her? She's not a Democrat. So, yeah, we're screwed. We're basically screwed. All right guys, remember, we're not even halfway to our goal. So if you want to support the show and you're watching live, now is a great time to support the show. So, sticker would do it. You could do $5, $10, $20, $100, $500. And you can ask questions and that way you can keep me talking, right? I stop talking when the questions end. But it would be great if you kept supporting the show. To what do you attribute that the population seems to want to outsource the responsibility to think for themselves to a political leader? How do intellectuals factor into the blame? Well, everywhere the intellectuals ought to blame. We're talking about an educational system basically guided by intellectuals that has taught people not to think for themselves. Has crippled their reasoning capacity. Has made them into emoting blobs who can't think. So you have to blame the educational system through and through. And this starts at universities because they're the ones who train the teachers. And it goes all the way to the primary schools, the preschools, really. And then it's the intellectuals who reinforce the non-thinking. The statements without proof, the arbitrary, fear-mongering, emotion-driven intellectual commentary. The obvious contradictions that the intellectuals hold without any shame, embarrassment, conflict. So it's a horrible situation, but Americans can't think today. And that's why we have what we have. And it's the intellectuals, it's the philosophers, it's Kant, going back. It's the post-moderns. It's Dewey, Dewey, Dewey, Dewey, who shaped American education with this pragmatism and anti-education education policy. And so that's one aspect. I'd say the second part of this is religion. What does religion teach you? To follow orders. Not to think for yourself. To figure out what some ancient texts dictate you should do and do it. To follow a preacher's voice. It's not an accident that we've lived over the last 20, 30 years in an era of mega churches with charismatic preachers whose congregations just follow along and do and listen to what they want, you know, to what they tell them. And chant away mindlessly. Mindless. You know, I still remember that not that long ago the preacher came who had a whole campaign to raise money so he could have a second private jet. Because the private jet he had needed to stop to refuel if he was going to Europe. And he needed one that could do the whole trip all at once. And this is based on some biblical whatever. And people just did it. So you have an authoritarian mindset among the religionists. And you have an authoritarian mindset among anybody who went to public school or government schools or schools generally. We live in a society of sheep. A mindless sheep. Following instructions. Doing what they're told. So Trumpism doesn't surprise me. The cultishness of Trump doesn't surprise me. This is the state of American thinking. And you can see that even among people who claim to be objectivist or claim to be libertarians or claim to be conservatives or claim to be whatever. They can't think. And therefore they, when you can't think, the dominant emotion is fear. I've told you this over and over again. And when you have fear, when you have fear, then you gravitate towards a tribe. You gravitate towards a group. And that group tells you what to think. And that's left and right today. They're just tribes that are telling you how and what to think. How and what to think. And this is the left. And this is the right. Mike. Hi, Iran. Made a live show. Yes. And thank you for the support. $100. Really appreciate that. Another great interview with Jason Ryans a few days ago. I appreciate that. That was a good interview. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed that. We'll have Jason back on in the next few months and to talk more. By the way, remind me of Jason. If you want to hear more of Jason and Greg and Tara and Ben and I keep forgetting to mention this and Gina Gorlin. All those five four philosophers, one psychologist, all going to be lecturing at the INRAN conference, INRAN Institute conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March. Four philosophers, one psychologist, all great human beings. You know, you'll really enjoy being around them, interacting with them. I think you know Gina's amazing. She's been on the show several times. You know Jason. Greg has been on the show many times. Fantastic. He is a Ben and who am I missing? Ben. We've talked to Ben here. Everybody's been on the show, right? And Tara. Tara is going to be on the show soon. She's coming on the show soon. So yeah, I mean five of my most favorite people are going to be in Austin lecturing and it's going to be intimate. It's going to be smaller groups and it's, I think it's going to be exciting and fun and it's all centered around the theme of the conferences for the new intellectual, the essay for the new intellectual, studying it, diving deeply into understanding it and so on, right? Not Don Watkins. He won't be there. But Greg, see if I can recite the five names again. Greg, Jason, Ben, Tara and Gina. Gina Golan. That is quite a lineup. Please sign up. You can sign up at einran.org slash start here. Einran.org slash start here. Go sign up. There are many scholarships still available. Many, many scholarships still available. Apply for one. Spineman 3000. Talking politics from a philosophical perspective can be hard as people aren't familiar with the terms. Sometimes it seems it would take days for them to get what I'm asserting, what's your method of getting around this. Simplify the language. Talk about things they understand, concepts they understand, ideas they understand. Concrete examples they understand. And don't try to do everything. One step at a time. Don't feel like you have to give them the whole spiel, the whole McGill or the whole of Atlas Shrugged in one discussion. And give them some reading assignments. Try to get them to read the Found Head of Atlas Shrugged. I mean, Einran, let Einran do the heavy lifting. You intrigue them enough. That's all your job is. Intrigue them. And then send them to Einran to do the real heavy lifting, the real work. That's the main advice I have. If you think you're going to convince somebody to become a capitalist in a discussion, it's just not going to happen. But what you want to do is create enough cognitive dissonance, enough questioning, enough interest, spark enough interest. And then get them to read a book. All right, we have a few questions left. It's getting late, but I will go as long as the question is coming in. It would be great if we got some $20 questions. $450 questions would be perfect right now. Absolutely. All right, Willa, I'm usually reminded of the Hoshu theory when seeing how similar both far left and far right behave. More willing to sacrifice their ideals and engage in hypocrisy just opposed the other side. Yeah, but then not the other side is the point. They're both on the same side. They just don't quite know it. They're on the other side. This is the way to think about it. They're on the other side from a tribalistic perspective. But they're on the same side when it comes to individual rights, when it comes to freedom, when it comes to liberty. They're on the same side. And we who value individual rights need to stop thinking of them as different and recognize that they're the same. They're just two tribes fighting over the spoils. Fighting on who will control us. Fighting on who will take our stuff and how they will distribute them. They're minor differences on what they emphasize. But the differences, the similarities far exceed the differences. Both have abandoned the founding fathers. Both have abandoned individual rights. Both have abandoned economic liberty and social liberty. What's left? Well, who gets the sacrifice to whom? My tribe to you or your tribe to me, right? That's all it is. There's no differences fundamentally in political ideology. It's not. I saw Michelangelo's David a few months ago. So we're in victory yesterday. Stunning. With art like this, how does Europe go so wrong? Well, it was art made a long time ago. Wing Victor was made in Greece or Rome. Probably, I think Greece. Wing Victor was made a long, long time ago. That original in the Louvre is 2,000, approximately 2,000 years old. And Michelangelo's David is, what, 500 years old. So that is a gone Europe. That is not the Europe of today. And art contributes to shaping a culture. But ultimately, it has to have philosophical backing. And if it doesn't have the philosophical backing, then the culture will turn against the art. And that's what's happened, right? Yes, you have these pieces of art. But when people talk about art today in the West, they talk about the garbage that is modern museums. They talk about the garbage that is in front of corporate headquarters all over the place. They talk about the garbage that is in our streets. They don't talk about art. So without the philosophical foundation, a culture will turn on great art. The great art will stop inspiring because there'll be nothing to inspire. The art inspires because it connects to your values. But if you have no values, or if your values are antithesis of the art, the other problem is a lot of people do respond positively to Wayne Victory and David. But they don't know what they're responding to. They can't articulate it. And therefore it stays at a level of a sense and never rises to a level of cognition. And as such, never rises to a level of action. And they can adopt a politics that's completely antagonistic to the values of the art. The art they just experienced and loved. And they don't get it, the dissonance. They don't even feel the dissonance, even though it's right there in front of them. Richard, I think the authoritarianism offends the sense of life of many Americans, including immigrants, who came to the U.S. seeking freedom. How can we appeal to that sense of life to move from fear to liberty? Well, we need a presidential candidate who is positive, who projects, who is articulate, who is charismatic, and who is positive. We need a kind of a Ronald Reagan, but for this era, who can talk to people, who can talk to the immigrants, who can talk to the Americans who feel disenfranchised by both political parties, who can talk to what it is about the political parties that they feel disenfranchised by, and that is the lack of liberty and the lack of freedom and the lack of discussion of liberty and freedom. And I don't know how well a political candidate like that would do. You need, you know, you need, maybe you need a few election cycles before a candidate like that really clicks. But you need a start somewhere, and there's nobody. There's nobody. I mean, there was nobody positive on the stage. I mean, what's his name? The senator from South Carolina tried, tried to do it. But he was so weak. And it wasn't about freedom. It was about the other American dream is still alive, you know, soft, emotionalist nonsense that didn't resonate with anybody. You've got to really project a vision. You've got to project what America, Tim Scott, what America could be, what America has been and should be. You know, you've got to take elements, a better political party would take elements of Mark Andreessen's, what is it, manifesto, I can't remember, for progress. So it's not progress. He's got another term for it. You know, you've got to view it in terms of progress, of human progress, of economic progress, of dynamism of, and you've got to have a dynamic speaker, a dynamic person who can project that. I don't know anybody in politics today who has that attitude and has the dynamism to project that. I mean, it could be that it's too late because so many Americans want to play the victim card. So many Americans just want to, want to just, what do you call it, just wallow in their misery, wallow in their fear, wallow in the sense of doom. They love it. That is what gets them off. And they love politicians who feed that, feed the victimhood monster, feed the sense of doom and gloom. And Trump is perfect for that. And Biden, through his incompetence, is perfect for that. Andrew, why are many rational people, that is people who do think independently in their professions, generally uninterested in politics, it's like politics is left to idiotic tribalistic unchecked by rational people who opt out. I think the reason is our intellectuals, our intellectuals, it's exactly what I talked about. Intellectuals have made politics about a tribal game. And when an independent thinker for Silicon Valley looks at the left and the right in America and he goes, a pox in both their houses, it just, I hate them both, but there's no alternative. And it's not just there's no alternative that I can see. I can't think of an alternative and no intellectual is talking about an alternative. There's just nothing there. And I don't have the time to create a new political party. I don't have a time to get engaged. I don't have a time to philosophically think for myself and figure out what the alternative is. That's the job of the intellectuals. But there's just no intellectuals out there saying, there is a better way, or there are, but there are very few. And right now, their voices are not heard. To say, there is a better way, there is a better path. There are better ideas. I think people would respond, those people would respond to those if they found some intellectuals promoting it and a politician who could articulate. Clark, did you like the show Seinfeld? I never thought it was funny. Jerry Seinfeld just seemed like an arrogant prick and the man is worth billions bizarre. I did not like, you know, Seinfeld. Everybody else in my family did. My wife liked it. My son likes it. But I did not. I found the characters too neurotic. It just didn't seem funny to me. It seemed silly and just neurotic. And I never got into it and I never liked it. You know, Jerry got his billions by entertaining people and most people were entertained by it and a lot of really smart people were entertained by it. I don't begrudge Seinfeld the money he's made at all. Steven, thanks for another great show. I appreciate it. Thank you for the support, Steven. I really appreciate that. Last two questions, guys. Jim, did St. Augustine name his theory about war, just war theory? If not who named it, it is such and where the founder is familiar with it. You know, I don't know if he named it that. I think he did. I think it's, you know, I don't know that he named it, but he talked about just war. The idea of a just war probably has its roots in Greece, but this particular, you know, manifestation of it comes from Augustine. It was then elaborated on by Thomas Aquinas. So if you read about the history of just war theory, Augustine is kind of the founder, Aquinas elaborates on it. And then it kind of is integrated into European thought and the scholastics deal with it. And many of the, many of the pre-enlightenment and even enlightenment thinkers are dealing with it. But, you know, think about a lot of them are dealing with, you know, what happens if Prince A invades the land of Prince B? And this is in a context where there are no real good guys. Again, it's like the left and the right. There's no concept of individual rights. There's no good and bad. There's just Prince A invading Prince B. What do you do? And so they come up with all kind of rules to say, look, if Prince A invades Prince B, he shouldn't kill civilians. They should fight on the battlefield and they should do this and they shouldn't burn villages. And particularly after 30-year war, which is God. I mean, 30-year war is 30 years of October 7th almost every day. Rape, torture, pillage and murder on an unprecedented scale. Maybe on a percentage of the population basis the most brutal war in all of human history. Catholics killing Protestants, Protestants killing Catholics, Protestants killing each other, brutal. And out of that came a desire to resurrect the just war theory or to reapply it and rules emerged. Did the founders familiar with it? Probably in some form there was the ethics of war I think that the British followed. I mean, the chivalrous particular way in which they fought a war. And I'm sure the founding fathers were familiar with that. And again, all of this was secularized primarily in the 20th century but primarily in the post-World War II era, primarily by leftist philosophers. Michael Waltz is the most influential of them and he was the one who secularized it and brought it to West Point and he teaches at West Point. So he's the guy who did it. All right, I need to thank Dave Dean who gave $50. Thank you Dave. That's terrific in a sticker that helps a lot get us closer to a goal. Of course, we remember that Mike gave $100 but that was a question. And then who did a sticker? Yeah, Art Lens Design just did a sticker for $10. Thank you. Really appreciate that. All right, that is Jim. Let's see, Graham asks, Hey, Iran, thanks again for a great show. Appreciate it, Graham. Thanks for the support. All right, last questions, guys. If you want to throw in a few bucks to support the show in the Super Chat, now's the time to do it. Otherwise, this is probably the last question as somebody comes in with a question. What are some of the things that objectors can do to promote going beyond left and right? I have some private ideas to share or write you. Well, I think the main thing is speak. And don't do what Scott tells you to do. Don't form coalitions with bad guys. Don't affiliate yourself with the right. I don't think I have to worry about you affiliated yourself with the left. Don't affiliate with yourself with the right. Distinguish, differentiate. Think about and talk about fundamental political principles that you adhere to that differentiate you from both left and right. We need to start talking about individual rights again. We need to start talking about political principles of liberty and freedom again. Let other people form coalitions. We need to move the needle. And to move the needle, we need to be radical. And as radicals, we cannot be confused. We should never be confused with the scum that populates the right. Because then we won't move the needle. We'll just be lost in a sea of right-wing scum. We need to take a stand, a different stand an intellectual stand. And yes, when the first politician who's semi-good comes, yeah, we can support politicians in that sense. If they're good, they're decent. They don't have to be objectivists. But we're not right-wing. And we don't share anything with the modern right. We are not Trumpists. We don't share anything, anything with MAGA. We don't share anything with MAGA. We don't share anything with Woke. We don't share anything with the modern left and right. That's reality. That's not fiction. That's a fact. So you want to evade reality? You want to pretend you're something that you're not? Go ahead. Go ahead. Find the classical liberals. Sure, you can walk with classical liberals, but that's not right today. Classical liberals don't belong in the right. Read the book, The Myth of Left and Right. Classical liberals don't belong there. They know it's shocking and mind-boggling and infuriating and suicidal that some objectivists think they belong in the right today, given the right's view today. We're not, we're not of the right. We're better than that. And if we can't differentiate ourselves from the right, if we can't stand separate from the right, if we're so cowardly, and Scott has a coward, if we're so cowardly as we need to go and huddle with the scum, then we don't deserve to win. We need to forge our views as different, as stand alone. And then if people want to move in our direction, and if the classical liberals who are a fan of Iron Man do want to move in our direction, fantastic. That's great. We'll encourage them, and we'll help them move in our direction. But don't lower yourself to the lowest common political denominator that exists out there today. Don't lower yourself to supporting a political party and political candidates who oppose every fundamental, essential value from honesty and integrity and productiveness and rationality and pride that you claim to believe in. Don't support candidates. Don't pretend that they're your allies when they are unequivocal status and reject individual rights. I'd rather go with a small group to live on an island somewhere than support Trump. He's everything I hate about human beings. There is nothing about Trump, nothing. And this is, you can call it whatever you want. There's nothing about Trump that has even an iota, a fragment, a tiny bit of admirable. Nothing. He is a low human being. I can't support a human being that is so low. And on political issues, one by one is the opposite of me. How can I support that? I won't, can't. I'd rather stand alone. I'd rather lose. You know, give me liberty or give me death is not just a theoretical, abstract, irrelevant statement. It applies to life pretty much every day. And some of you choose death, and so be it. You will get it. Believe me, you will get it. Dave, another $50. Thank you. What's your most favorite visited geographic location? That is a super difficult question to answer because it really depends on what I'm there for, right? So in terms of geography, in terms of beautiful scenery, my favorite place so far that I visited was the South Island of New Zealand. South Island of New Zealand. It was just stunning. But there have been places in America, there have been places in China that are stunning scenery. But in terms of just in one place, just beauty after beauty after beauty, the South Island of New Zealand. In terms of the most beautiful city in the world, Rio de Janeiro, in terms of geography, the most beautiful city in the world, Rio de Janeiro. More beautiful than Cape Town, more beautiful than San Francisco, more beautiful than Sydney, Australia, more beautiful than Edinburgh, being to all those places. So yeah, it depends what you're there for, right? If you're there for the beaches, it's some differently than if you're there for arts and culture, then it's Paris, London, places like that. So, restaurant, San Sebastian, Spain. Thank you, Dave. Jim, Vietj and the conceptualists tried but didn't come close to solving the problem of universals. Besides objectivism, has any philosophy emerging today come close? I'm not an expert on the history of epistemology, but I don't think so. I have not seen anybody do it. And Ayn Rand solved it. Ayn Rand has it. It's done. And it would be great if people got the genius that is Ayn Rand and how much could be done and achieved today in the world. How much could be done and achieved today in the world if people embraced their epistemology and embraced their ethics. I mean, God, it would be what a world we would live in. What a world we would live in. Yeah, nobody would give a second look to Donald Trump, right? But it's, yeah, that achievement is maybe a greatest achievement. It's a problem that so many philosophers have tried to solve. Nobody has. And she did it. And she did it in an elegant way. And, yeah, I encourage everybody to read Introduction to Objectives to Epistemology. And I should read it again. And, yeah, these are the ideas that we need in the culture. And you're not going to get these ideas into the culture by pandering to Donald Trump or by pandering to the existing political tribalism. You're only going to get these philosophical ideas into the culture and therefore ultimately change the political culture by sticking to what is true, by living by principle, by advocating for principle, by standing for principle. Thank you, Jim. Stephen, last question. Do you ever watch Jeopardy? Would you ever go on? You'd probably clean up. No, no, I mean, I'm terrible at Jeopardy. I'm terrible at those things. It doesn't come to me. The word doesn't come to me. I'm also, I don't have that kind of memory. I don't have a memory for just random facts. I have a, my mind, the strength of my mind, I think, is my ability to integrate. My mind is integrated. So I get the ideas and the ideas that I get. I don't get them from somebody asking me a question. I get them by association from the things we're talking about, the things that I'm reading and the thing that's going on. So me just sitting there getting asked questions, I freeze. My mind doesn't work that way. It doesn't, you know, I need, if you ask me a question, I need to be able to talk about it. And as I'm talking, I'm integrating and thinking and coming to the conclusion. I don't have one word answers like that. It's just not, not my thing. Not my thing at all. All right, guys, it's late. I need to get a sleep. Thank you to all the super chatters. Really, really appreciate your support. Thank you for sticking this late with me. I will see you all, not tomorrow, probably, not on Thursday, maybe Friday, maybe Friday evening, but certainly on Saturday, maybe Friday. But anyway, I won't see you before then. Have a great rest of your week. I will be in Miami doing meetings and look forward to seeing you soon. Bye, everybody.