 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday afternoon. Not a typical time for the Iran Brookshow, but as I said, try to squeeze in some shows before I leave. Tonight, at 8.30 p.m., I'm giving a talk by Zoom in Japan, in Tokyo. So, to try to stoke up interest for my visit next week to Tokyo, next Saturday, next Friday, I'll be at the... No, wait a minute. Yeah, next Friday, I'll be at the University of Tokyo, participating, I think, in a panel and a panel discussion. And then on Saturday, I think all day, pretty much, we've got a whole series of events, you know, me talking about the state of the world, and is there any hope in how to think about it. Well, us are going to be going to some nice restaurants and eating great Japanese food. So, if you're in Japan, come on over. There's information to be had on, I think, on my website, you're on bookshow.com and on the Einred Institute website, Einred.org. I will also be doing a launch event for my new book that's coming out, not my new book, my old book, but that's coming out in Korean. It's going to be coming out in the Korean language. I think it was supposed to be coming out tomorrow, but I will be doing a launch event in Seoul, South Korea, a week from Monday. So, if you are in Korea, please come on over and join us. Again, information you can get on my website and on the Einred Institute website. And after that, I'll be participating at a big international conference in Seoul, South Korea, where I'm going to be talking about what Korea should do in order to extend its economic growth in order to continue what sometimes has been called the Asian miracle. And then from Korea, I fly to South America, by New York, which is a crazy trip, absolutely insane. But you cannot fly, I think I've told you this in the past, cannot fly directly from Korea to South America. Something about, I don't know, bacteria, farming, animals, I don't know. But no direct flights, none, zero from anywhere in Asia, East Asia at least, to anywhere in South America. I tried, I looked at every route, and I had a flight through New York, which is a major pain. You have to sleep at JFK during the day, and anyway, not your problem, my problem. So, I get to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I will be giving three talks, three talks in one day, two talks in one debate, or discussion in Sao Paulo, Brazil as part of the Iron Man Senate Latin America Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, later this month. So I encourage you, if you're Brazilian, to join us in Sao Paulo. I'm looking forward to meeting you and saying hi, and a lot of you I already know. So I encourage you to come to the conference, it's going to be a lot of fun. There's going to be a number of different speakers, but as I said, on the Friday, the 23rd, I think it is, I'll be giving three talks. So on egoism, on capitalism, and I think a debate with Libertarians about Libertarians, about the differences between Objectivism and Libertarians, something like that. So it should be a blast, it should be a lot of fun. Then I go to Curebita, Curebita, something like that. I'm pronouncing it horribly, and I'm speaking at a university there. It's about an hour flight south of Sao Paulo. From there, I take a flight to Porta Alegre, where I've got lots of friends. I've spoken many times, and I'll be speaking Porta Alegre. And then from there, I fly to Buenos Aires, where, again, the Iron Man Senate Latin America is putting on a two-day conference, and I'll be giving a couple of talks there. Then I fly home. I fly home for a little while before I go to Europe, and I'll see some of you in London, some of you in other places around Europe. So here's my ask. If any of you in Europe are interested in having me come and speak at a university, at a business, at a local club, group, whatever, it would be great if the expectation was to have 50 people. That would be kind of the condition. But anyway, in Europe, if there are open dates right now, a lot of my schedules fall, but there are a few open dates, so particularly a place like Germany, Sweden, Finland, I don't know, Norway, France, Italy, Spain. Spain, I think, I've already got an event, but France, Italy. If you've got a group that you can organize, if you can organize an event, if you know somebody who might be able to organize an event, Belgium, Netherlands, God. You know, mainly West in Europe, we'll do Eastern Europe in the spring. Let me know. Send me an email. You're on at youronbookshow.com and we'll schedule something, but do it soon because it's getting late to put anything of substance on. All right. I think that has run through the gamut of announcements. There is good news coming out of the Netherlands. It looks like the Dutch agriculture minister has resigned after all those farmers that the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture was going to put out a business in the name of climate change. They've been protesting. You remember, we talked about the cow farmers, the deri farmers, but this is, I think, more broader than that. The goal was to shut down 11,200 farms, and there had been amazing demonstrations about this, and he resigned. So maybe this means a change in policy in the Netherlands as a consequence of that. So that's the good news. I'm going to try, as just a general habit and kind of just whatever, I'm going to try to start off the Iran book show every time with some good news, with some good news, because hell, you're not going to get much good news in the body of the show, so it might as well get it at the beginning of the show. So just to show you that there are good things happening in the world and there was something else good that I was going to talk about, and I forgot what it was. So there you go. It's gone. It's disappeared. It's escaped from my consciousness. Let's see. Any other? Oh, yeah. We got a new member, Etan. I can't pronounce that. Thank you, Etan, for becoming a YBS fan. YouTube can become a fan by clicking the button below and joining the YouTube fandom. Mark Wickens here says, you know, he is a five-month-old fan and a supporter of the show for a long time. He says, what new Apple product did I order today? I haven't ordered anything. I haven't ordered anything. A combination of things. One is I'm happy with my watch and my phone, and I don't think there's enough new to get me excited about buying the latest. And second, I'm going to be traveling next two and a half months. It's too complicated. So when I get back, we consider also, I do expect at some point to buy a new Apple Mini, which is what I run this show on, and also a new, what do you call it, a new laptop, because the laptop I have, it's not good enough to really do the show on the road. I can squeeze by with good bandwidth, but I'd like to get something a little more robust, and the new air is significantly superior to this air that I have. So I think my next purchase is probably a new MacBook Air. That's my next purchase. And I am looking forward to seeing what they do with the Mac Mini and what new Mac Minis they propose. I might get one of those, although this one works great. So I really can't complain. So I might wait another year before I replace this one. This one's just, I mean, the show drops once in a while. We have audio problems and stuff like that, but all of that has to do with bandwidth. And the internet, it has nothing to do with the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini, I've got 64 gigabyte memory, which is key. I run all these different programs on the screens here. I'm running multiple things going on, and it works beautifully. So for now, I'm not going to play with that. But yeah, I think a new MacBook Air is in my future. Probably it'll be an M2. So I'll probably get an M2 with 32 gigabytes of RAM on the laptop. You can't get it with more than 32. So the food in Japan is phenomenal, Stephanie. Oh my God, Japan has some of the best restaurants in the world. We're going to some of the best restaurants in Japan. So at least one of them. So it's going to be phenomenal. It's going to be wonderful. All right. Remind everybody. Well, first, Jonathan, thank you for your support. Thank you for getting us rolling, as always. Just to remind everybody, Super Chat is how we fund this program, or one of the ways in which we fund the program. In particular, for those of you who are not monthly supporters, it's the way you fund this program. Monthly supporters funded through their monthly contributions. So thank you guys. We have a goal for every show, which is 650 dollars. Hopefully this is kind of off hours. I'm not sure who's here. We'll see if we can make that goal. At least we're going to strive to make that goal. And I will keep your breast. Also, it's a great way for you to determine the theme, the topics that I cover in the show, because all you have to do is ask me about them, and I answer. I answer almost everything. Really, I answer everything. So we will do that. All right. I think we should get on with it. I mean, let's talk about, oh, James, thank you. I really appreciate that. We'll get to the question in a minute, but thank you for the support. 100 bucks from James. That's fantastic. Let's just jump in with yesterday's news that the Queen Elizabeth II passed away. It was obvious early in the day, you know, I'm a news junkie. I listen to the news, not listen, read the news constantly during the day, whether on Google News, on all the different platforms that I use. And it was obvious early in the day that she was probably dying. Reports were that just all her children and grandchildren were flying to Scotland and to the castle in Scotland where she was. And doctors had said she was under observation. So it was obvious that something bad was happening. She passed away last, so yesterday. And of course, the flags in the UK are flying at half-mast. And we're going to have the next 10 days are going to involve these massive ceremonies of a state funeral. The British know how to put on a show. I mean, they know how to put on a show. So they will put on a world-class funeral for Queen Elizabeth. And then there's a coronation. They're going to coronate. We have a new king, King Charles III. I don't remember. King Charles was, I mean, there's a... Charles, I'm trying to think, something to do with the British history. I can't remember if it was Charles I or Charles II. The whole... God, if somebody remembers, which of the Charles' was part of the whole... Ian says they were both terrible. But that doesn't help me. But one of them was during the time kind of the religious conflicts, Catholic Protestant, was he a Catholic king and got kicked out? And then I can't remember. Anyway, yeah, okay. Charles I was beheaded by Cromwell. That's right. So Charles I was beheaded by Cromwell. And then you had the Cromwellian Revolution, the Civil War. And I don't know, I don't remember what Charles II was. So maybe somebody can enlighten us about Charles II. Charles II restored the throne after Cromwell was killed. And Charles II was like... was floating with Catholicism and with alliance with the French. And he got basically booted for William of Orange. And there was the whole transition to William and Mary who became king. Anyway, British history is amazing. It's just amazing. The kings and queens and what they did and who killed who killed all their relatives. And so, you know, you could say... I mean, so anyway, we've got... I'll say what I want to say about Queen Elizabeth the Numeric. So we're going to have a Charles III. Charles I and Charles II did not meet great fates. Charles I and Charles II... Oh, I'm getting confused between Charles and James. James was the one who got booted for William of Orange. So I apologize. Anyway, Charles I did not end well. Let's hope Charles III is not, you know, killed in a religious revolution in the UK. I think the odds of that are pretty slim. Although, we'll talk about Charles. Charles is a bad dude. So we'll talk about Charles in a minute and what he brings to the monarchy and why we should be... If you live in England, you should be a little worried about Charles and hope his reign is not too long. I don't know much about William who comes after him. So I don't know if he's bad, but Charles is pretty bad. All right, so let's talk about Queen Elizabeth. Let me first say, and those of you who've listened to you on Bookshow for a long time know this, I don't like monarchs. I don't like the idea of monarchy in the modern world. It's a leftover of feudalism. It is... I know that in England and in Denmark and another place that have it, it is purely so... But ceremonial of what? What does it represent? It represents the feudal past. It represents a past in which they had power over the people and where they... It was not a good time. It was not pleasant and there was no freedom. So I don't like monarchies. I don't like the idea that you're born into a job and that you respected and admired and loved and feared and whatever because you're born into a job. I mean that, again, strikes me as feudal in the days of the guilds where you were born to be a blacksmith and you were born to be this or born to be that. And it had nothing to do with merit or interest or passion or anything like that. You were born into it and in case of monarchy, it was just your duty. You had to be a king, whether you liked it or not. Now you could abdicate the uncle of Queen Elizabeth II abdicated because he fell in love with a woman who at the time she was a divorcee and therefore that was unacceptable and he abdicated in order to marry her. But Queen Elizabeth... So much of what I know about Queen Elizabeth other than kind of just reading the news and following the news regularly as many of us do comes from watching the series The Crown. And one of the things that's most striking about The Crown because I think this is very realistic and true is that very early on Queen Elizabeth... She was a young queen. She became queen at the age of 26. I think very similar to Queen Elizabeth I. It was also very young when she became queen. But Queen Elizabeth II very early realized that she basically had a choice. A choice between living her own life, pursuing her own happiness and her own values or, and in that case having to abdicate, or doing a duty. And in that case she would be queen. And the consequence of being queen, which she encounters at least in the TV series but I think again has to be true to reality and is true to reality. The consequence of that is over and over and over again during her reign there were circumstances in which her personal values came into conflict with her duty. And what makes I think the reason people revere Queen Elizabeth and love her so much is because she always placed duty above everything else. She followed the script. She was the opposite of self-interested. She served her country beautifully. She sacrificed whatever personal value she might have had in the name of that service. And she, you know, you could view this as to credit or not, she stuck to it until the age of 96. She didn't, she didn't retire. She committed herself to a particular duty 70 years ago when she was 26 and she stuck with it and fulfilled that duty all the way to the end. For her country came before everything else. Now she loved a man, she married the man she loved maybe but did she stay married to him because she loved him? Not clear. And when she married she was very young and very idealistic. So, you know, I stopped watching the series The Crown because I found it boring. I found it uninteresting. I stopped, once Churchill was not part of it, I stopped watching because he was interesting and a colorful character and she was not. And the whole point was that she was not. I mean, the interest was mainly, you know, what do you call it? It was interest in, you know, husband's affairs potentially and interest in, you know, certain political issues but she had no power. So it wasn't really any kind of significance, any kind of significance beyond that. Somebody asked what duty? A duty to do the things that are expected from a monarch for the sake of England, whatever that happened to be. It meant putting the interests of England, whatever that happens to be, at the forefront or of the empire, the British empire before that, at the forefront guided by the traditions and the expectations and the playbook that had been established for a monarch. And the one thing clearly to put aside was your own interest, your own belief, your own interest and beliefs, your own values, your personal values. A British monarch, contrary to the way a British monarch would have been a few hundred years ago, doesn't have a strategy, doesn't have an agenda, doesn't have a great goals to achieve other than the preservation of the status quo and the preservation, but more in symbolic terms, not in action, but the preservation in symbolic terms of the system, whatever it happens to be in this case, the constitutional kind of monarchy of England. That's it. From the series at least, and I think from some of what we know the pursuit of personal happiness was not a priority and indeed was not something that was pursued or achieved. It was all about serving the crown, whatever the hell that is. And this is why I don't like monarchies, because what value does it present? They're not elected, maybe that's a good thing, but they're not chosen by any kind of parameter of ability. What is their function? Well in a modern monarchy like England, there is none. There is no function. So they're symbolic, they're tourist attractions, they represent the continuity of the British system going back to, I don't know when, King Arthur or whatever. But you know, if you really study that British history, well, I mean, parts of it are worth continuing and parts of it are worth chunking and trashing in the history and most of the stuff that's worth trashing has to do with kings. I mean, in this sense, Queen Elizabeth is a positive. She didn't do anything bad. She didn't kill her nephews in the Tower of England. She didn't engage in wars. She didn't make any real important decisions because important decisions are out of her hands and in that sense, again, the whole position is futile and mute. What's the point? She has no significant anything to do that is of significance. So I'm not a fan of the monarchy. I'm not a fan of the British monarchy. I'm not a fan of the Queen. The Queen strikes me. Queen Elizabeth strikes me as a kind of a sad figure. And it's a shame because I'm a big fan of the United Kingdom. I'm a big fan of Great Britain. And I think it should scrap the monarchy. I think the monarchy should go trash heap of history. The United Kingdom is a modern country with modern values, modern liberties, modern freedoms, and we should trash it. And the King has no power. The Queen has no power, so it's not a bigger loss. They are one of the richest families in the world, so something would have to be done about that. Now, on top of that, one of Queen Elizabeth's great virtues, I think, was that she took no real positions in politics. She took no great positions in terms of the cultural debates. Unfortunately, Charles, as Prince of Wales, has taken positions. He's a real leftist, particularly when he comes to climate change. He is a big advocate of the Great Reset from the World Economic Forum. So Charles has an agenda. Whether he will allow that agenda to sneak into his reign as king, I don't know. I don't know. But it certainly gives, I don't know, some moral authority in Great Britain to the whole climate change hysteria and to the Great Reset to have the king of the realm be an advocate for it. So that's kind of bad. So it's nothing against Queen Elizabeth, nothing particularly for Queen Elizabeth. She lived a long life. I wish she had lived a happier life, a more fulfilling life. I suspect that it was a life of a lot of angst and frustration and inhibition and restraints and a life that really lacked passion. But it is a good time to reflect on something. And it's something I'm reflecting a lot on these days, have been reflecting and expect to be reflecting on quite a bit as we move into the future because I think it's an important reflection. The life of Queen Elizabeth, or put it this way, the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 70 years represents a really important period in human history. And I think her death is an interesting time to reflect on the last 70 years. Not from the perspective of her reign because the reality is the fact is, in spite of some Brits complaining about this or rejecting this, the fact is that she had very little, if any, impact on the course the last 70 years have taken. But the last 70 years are super interesting and her reign is in some way representative of those. So I thought that her death is a good time to reflect on the last 70 years, on the period from 1952 to 19, sorry, to 2022. The period in which Queen Elizabeth was Queen of England. Oh, Queen of the British Empire. It is a period indeed in which the British Empire kind of disappeared. But that's not the main characteristic of the last 70 years. The overwhelmingly main characteristic of the last 70 years is that they have been probably the most peaceful and most prosperous period, most prosperous and peaceful 70 years in all of human history. It really doesn't come close. The only period similar to the last 70 years is the period following the Napoleonic Wars. So the period of the mid to late 19th century kind of leading up to World War I. And in some respects that period was better, but suddenly with respect to global prosperity. Suddenly from the perspective of global wars and the perspective of violence broadly in society, the perspective of number of people just dying, but from the perspective of global prosperity, there has never been a period to match the last 70 years. Indeed, even in terms of life expectancy, the last 70 years have seen astounding progress to where we are today. Now, it's easy to complain about the last 70 years. And suddenly if you lived in parts of the world, like in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, it was horrible, much of it was horrible, but of course that ended. That ended, was it now, 30 years ago. It's about halfway through the 70-year period that ended. And even in those regions, we have seen unbelievable prosperity. But even in places like Africa, Asia, certainly Asia, think about Asia in 1952. Asia of the Korean War, South Korea is poorer than North Korea is today. Back then, Taiwan is devastated and poor. China is miserable and poor. I mean, poor is an understatement. All of Southeast Asia is completely poor. There's massive populations. All have nothing. Africa is Africa. But Europe, 1952, is just starting to barely claw itself out of the misery and destruction and devastation of World War II. Western Europe, Western Europe is poor. The United States, which had won the war as the only country in the world, really left intact. South America is as well, but they're about to go through a period of dictators and stagnation. But the United States is intact. The only country in the world really of significance intact. And it is about to experience a massive economic boom that lasts for 70 years. And yes, America engages in a war in Korea and a war in Vietnam. But these are minor wars as compared to the world wars or to the wars in history. And all of those wars for America are far away. The 1970s, the 1952 to today, maybe we shouldn't say today until 2019 maybe, an era where the United States provides a beacon for the rest of the world. A model for the rest of the world. The rest of the world, the world that is relatively free at least. But I would include post Mao China in this. And I would include post fall of the Berlin Wall for Eastern Europe and Russia in this. America is a model to be emulated. The model of setting up relatively free markets. A model of setting up a civilized society. And the United States does more than that. Whether you like it or not, the United States in a sense provides a security guarantee on a global scale. It provides a nuclear umbrella to Europe. It provides a presence in the Pacific Ocean. And what the security guarantee really provides for is more than anything else trade. So what you see during the 70 year era is what has come right now to be viewed negatively. One of the greatest phenomena in all of human history. One of the greatest periods in all of human history. You get to see globalization. You get to see division of labor on a scale never imagined. Not even by Adam Smith. You get to see the integration of the world economy. Pretty much heavy continent. Exception of Antarctica. Billions of people. And what you get is an unbelievable growth in material well-being. More so in developing countries, but even in developed countries from 1952 until 2022. We have seen an unbelievable growth in material well-being. And now, Glenn, growth was great in the 19th century on a relative basis. GDP growth per capita was much greater in the West. Technological growth I think was more substantial in the late 19th century. But what you get here is a global phenomenon. You don't just get growth in the West. You don't just get an increase in standard of living quality of life and length of life. Not just in the West, but you get it again for the first time in human history on a global scale. A little bit of that was done by the British Empire in the 19th century. But as the British Empire fades into history during these 70 years and really disappears, what rises to replace it is not an empire. What rises to replace it is a model, an American model, both in terms of a basic political slash economic system and a security guarantee to preserve trade between nations and an emphasis politically and intellectually on free trade. And look, again, the last 70 years have been the 70 years that have brought more prosperity to the world than any 70 years in all of human history. And overall, in terms of freedom, more people are being liberated from authoritarianism over the last 70 years than any other period in human history. Or at least the level of freedom in the world has increased significantly over the last 70 years. Now, again, this might be changing and this is a good point to reflect backwards. The only other comparable area is the 19th century again, post-Napoleon when many people gained their freedoms, but not on the scale of the last 70 years. Now, it's true that while all this is going, our intellectuals rot and the philosophers provide horrible ideas and our culture descends into muck, represented by, I don't know, Andy Warhol and rap music, music in quotes, and the Khadrashians and a million other examples you could use to show that culturally and artistically and culturally and the world is in descent during these 70 years. But in an interesting phenomena, what remains of the spirit of the 19th century what remains of the Enlightenment is still manifest some extent politically and certainly economically. And what you get is people striving for more. More is represented by a better life, working hard insisting on at least some level of economic freedom and growth and growing. And again, in the rest of the world becoming more and more and more free which ultimately leads to people becoming more and more and more rich in addition. Now, this conflict between a culture that's descending and economies and everything else that's on the rise, economies that are on the rise and a developing world that becomes freer while the developed world while this model, which is America, is descending, is not sustainable because if the model is descending, the rest of the world at some point is going to look at America and has already looked at America and said wait a minute, we don't want to be that. We don't want to have the problems that American modern society has. So we're ejecting the model. And in my view, this explains the last decades retreat from liberty and places like China and other places in Eastern Europe and in places like other parts of Asia. Where they look at Americans and say, uh-uh. And unfortunately they throw out the baby with the bathwater. They throw out the good with the bad. They reject a freedom and capitalism and political system with the fact that our culture sucks and our philosophy and ideas that are coming out of us suck. And then that we have these awful economic crises. They don't identify the cause. They blame it on freedom and capitalism. And they turn their backs to freedom and capitalism. That's happening all over the world. And we're seeing the next 70 years. Don't look as good as the previous 70 years. The reign of Elizabeth II might come down as, from a material perspective, the best we've ever and ever will, not ever will, but at least in the foreseeable future will have ever. So it's a time to reflect on a success. As America, the country that caused the success, the world is an amazing place to live right now. The world is richer and freer than it ever has been in human history because of the United States of America. Because of its willingness to protect the trade routes. Because of its openness to trade. Because of its willingness to export its ideas. Because of its insistence on, God forbid, American exceptionalism. That's what made the world a better place. And again, we come down to why I hate Trump so much. This is why I hate Trump so much. Because that America is dead. Now, you can't completely blame Trump for it, but Trump is the one who put the nails in the coffin. I don't know if the final nails, but it certainly feels that way. After a long descent and a lot of people questioning and undermining America's commitment to trade and preserving the trade routes, Trump killed it. He killed it. Yeah, you nominated him to make sure America died. That's why you nominated him. And that's how he governed. And he's achieved it by killing the one alternative to the left that existed, the Republican Party, by killing the Republican Party. America, the America that brought the world the greatest prosperity ever, the America that brought the world the greatest freedom ever is no longer. It's no longer an advocate of freedom. National conservatism is not freedom. It's no longer an advocate of trade. National conservatism is not trade. The left is anti-trade. The right is anti-trade, both anti-freedom. They're no longer willing to protect the trade routes. Trade routes of the world, they want to retreat. A weak America, an uncommitted America, to freedom, to trade, to the ideas of getting rich. The ideas that make possible getting rich. Now, again, it's inevitable that America would take this path given its intellectuals, given the left's complete obliteration of values in this country and the fact that the right has nothing to offer an alternative. Nothing to offer an alternative. It is not an accident that 2022 will go down as a year where we see that I think the material manifestation of this turn away from trade and liberty and freedom and an American model and we see it in the war in Ukraine. That was the other good news I was going to tell you about the war in Ukraine. I'll tell you about that tomorrow. We'll do a show. We'll talk about Ukraine as part of the show tomorrow. But there's good news out of Ukraine. If like me, you're on the Ukraine side. China's behavior, China's collapse into greater and greater authoritarianism. All of this, all of this, represents the end of an era. Now, arguably that era ended with 9-11 or the great financial crisis or COVID. Any one of those is certainly represents, in a sense, the beginning of the end. But I think it is the end now. It is the end now. Stephanie, I never said it was all Trump's fault. I said Trump put the fine on nails in the coffin. I didn't say it was his fault. And all Trump is, is a reflection of the people who put him there and of the people who love him. So I don't blame necessarily Trump. This is where we are, where Trump is. But Trump represents it all. Trump represents it all. Trump is the culmination of a long series of events that have brought about the decline of America and decline of the Western world. And his views, his point of view, particularly on these issues of the world of America and the world and in terms of trade, a massively representative, massive representative of the end of a magnificent era. End of magnificent era. I don't, I mean, we are talking to millions who voted for Trump and at least a minority of them who have realized that Trump was a disaster. If you voted for Trump and realized that Trump was a disaster, then I have something to talk to you about. It's hard to talk to people who, given the reality there's Trump and everything that he did, it's hard to try to bring into the fold those people who are still committed to Trump given his flaws. And the obvious nature of his flaws and the fact that they don't want to recognize them. But anyway, I'm not here to talk about Trump. Whatever the cause, and the cause is obviously ideological, the cause is obviously all the philosophies that have impacted the world and particularly on the left. The cause is ultimately the postmodernism and the subjectivism that is spread in this country, the new left from the 60s on, the remnants of Marxism and the impotence of the right. The right is less destructive than it is destructive in its impotence. I think the right is going to be more destructive in the future than it has been in the past. At this point because nobody opposed intellectually the left and what's happened intellectually, the left and what's happened is that the right now has embraced the statism of the left, has embraced the subjectivism of the left, embraced the mysticism of the left. And that's what makes the right moving forward. Super dangerous. Well, I don't think I think now it's not the right metuism that makes the more lethal. I think it's now the right's, well, different point. It's now the right's metuism not on any particular policy ideas. They reject all the left policies. It's now the metuism about philosophical ideas that is going to kill us because it's now the right's metuism about metaphysics and epistemology that is going to kill us. It's the embrace of mysticism of some form. It's the embrace of statism in the form of national conservatism in the form of religious conservatism in the form of religious nationalism. I don't know if you heard Margueritella Green advocate for a Christian nation or argue that America is a Christian nation. That will put the final stake in America's heart. But it's the left that got us here. There's no question about that. No question about that. Trump is just a transitionary figure. But it's important to point out, point him out as the transitionary figure and why he is ushering in this new right, this new right that is so, so dangerous. All right, so Queen Elizabeth reigned over this amazing progress, primarily as a consequence of trade and liberalized trade and globalization and increase at least in economic freedom around the world, but not just in economic freedom in many respects and personal freedoms around the world. The freedom index, however you want to measure it for 1952 to 2022 has increased dramatically. But Queen Elizabeth had little to do with all of this. The best you can say is she didn't interfere. The best you can say is she helped to some extent smooth out the disappearance of the British Empire. I mean, I think the best thing that the UK could do right now is use this opportunity to dissolve the monarchy, use her death to end this institution. It's unnecessary, it's expensive. It's absurd that Britain is going to spend gazillions of dollars on a funeral and on a coronation when they're on the brink of a recession and where most Brits face ever-raising costs and ever-raising inflation. But that's the monarchy. But it is important to contemplate and to think about the last 70 years and what it means and think about what we're giving up because by embracing the new Republicans and by embracing Trump and by embracing the new right, we're basically giving up on what made the last 70 years so materially beneficial. It's just worthwhile pointing that out. And what's it giving up on the image and the idea of American exceptionalism? We're giving up on the idea of America as a model. The one thing that unites Obama and Trump and I think represents a real shift among American presidents is that both Obama and Trump and Biden, I think by extension, all don't believe in American exceptionalism. They all believe America is just another country. They happen to love it in Trump's case, make America great again, but all within the context of because I was born in America, not because we're exceptional, not because there's anything special about a system of government or the ideas that got us founded. And many, many times when these presidents have manifest that attitude of, just another country. And if we think we're just another country, then the rest of the world thinks we're just another country. And therefore that model disappears. And when the model of America disappears, and I'll end on this pessimistic note, when the model of America disappears, when the model of American freedom, of American system of government, but also the model of individualism and ultimately, but also the model of protecting trade and protecting trade routes and allowing for globalization, when the model disappears, what you get is wars. And what you will get is wars. What you'll get is regional powers becoming aggressive. Trade still is, I think, one of the best ways to ensure relative peace, although it's not flawless, right? You could still get wars in spite of it. But the one Russia right now is reflective of a beginning of a new era in which I think war will become more prevalent, not less prevalent. A major war in the next 50 years would not surprise me. It's not going to be good. It's when moving into a period in history that is not going to be good and it's our failure. It's the failure of America because we were the people that everybody looked up to and we have failed in our task. We have failed in our task. And again, I'll just say this because some of you need to hear it, supporting another loser president, supporting another loser president just makes you continue to be responsible for that. And there's a difference, by the way, between voting for president and supporting a president. You can vote. I voted for lots of presidents who I did not support because there are many of you who support, not just voted for Trump, but support Trump. And to the extent that you support Trump, you undermine America, I think. I have no problem with you voting for him. There's a big difference between the two. All right, super chat. We got some money without question from... Ooh, where did I miss it? I missed it some way. That's that. Oh, Glenn, Glenn, thank you, 50 bucks. Thank you, really appreciate that. That helps us a lot. We're two-thirds, more than two-thirds to our goal, so we only have $200. Well, after Daniel just did what he did, we have less than $200. We're just over $200 to achieve... Well, no, Daniel didn't do anything. All right, I'm confused. Forget what I said, but we are $210 away from our goal. Hopefully, we can achieve it. We've had some very generous contributions today. Thank you, guys. All right, let's see. See any questions related directly to... All right, Katherine Dawson asked, what effect might the new royalty have on politics in the UK? Hard to tell how... It really depends on how restrained Charles is, but if Charles takes on a more activist role, he will legitimize certain views of the left in ways that are just not going to be helpful. So even if the government is opposed to what he is saying and they can be, he has no power, then I just think that it'll change the mood. It'll change the attitude. It might shift public opinion, just because it gives it a certain moral authority. So what we... The American philosopher says in the chat, you aren't should be appointed king of the UK. Shoot me first, please. There's no way, no way. That's the most awful job in the world. You have no power, and you have to give up your life for it. So let's hope that Charles follows the example of his mother, stays out of politically contentious issues. You know, he'll give charity and stuff, and he really does maybe to the political issues he cares about, but as a voice stays out of it, stays out of it. But if he does, then no, no will impact. Alexis asks, what are any of you the three best prime ministers under QE2's rule and three worst? God, I wish I knew the names of the British prime ministers, so I could give you, I could give you the list, God. I mean, I think the best prime minister in the post-war era, so in Queen Elizabeth's era in Great Britain was Margaret Thatcher. So I would put her number one, I would put her above Churchill, because Churchill in the post-war was weak. It's why he lost elections, he was indecisive. He did not stand firm on the principles of free markets, did not stand firm on the principles of liberty, and basically let the UK get away from him and hand it over to the leftists. So Churchill was, if you had to list the greatest prime ministers in English history, then Churchill would certainly make the top three, primarily because of his performance during World War II. But post-World War II, I don't think he was particularly good. Certainly Margaret Thatcher, maybe Major and Cameron, I don't know, even though Cameron is from the left, Blair, maybe? Blair was from the left, not Cameron. So Major and Blair, because they basically governed from the right. You know, it's hard to tell, because they were all so mediocre. But I'd say the worst, the British prime ministers probably in the 60s and 70s, both conservative and Labour, who basically devastated the British economy and brought it to the brink, and of course the good thing about that is they made it possible for Margaret Thatcher to win. May wasn't as bad as Wilson or Heath or many of the ones in the 60s and 70s. You could also argue that the Labour government's post-World War II, who basically socialized so much of the English economy, Attlee, that's right, Attlee in the post-World War II, I think that's the real source of the NHS, and much of socialism within the British economy is Attlee. So I would say Attlee and then whatever, whether it was Heath or Wilson, the prime ministers in the late 60s, early 70s, who completely helped devastate the British economy. But the consequence, the devastation really is a consequence of a lot of what Attlee did, the establishment of the British welfare state. All of that happened early on and was truly horrible. So that's my best. Maybe if I had a list of all the prime ministers with dates, I could give a better answer and it would be good. If you had a list of dates, prime ministers, major legislation, major, quote, achievements, then I think you, that would give it. I think Attlee did serve under Elizabeth, I think in the 50s. He was prime minister I think in the 1950s. Heath was definitely terrible. So yeah, I mean the labor, the labor prime ministers that served early and set the stage for the 60s and 70s, the devastation of the British economy. Just like in the United States, if you had to pick the worst post-World War II presidents, I mean, so you take out FDRs because he's pre, so worst post would have to be Johnson, probably the worst. Nixon, probably really up there, maybe second worst. So it would have to be Johnson and Nixon for creating the welfare state and the regulatory state. Nixon really created the regulatory state. Just think about the EPA, which was a Nixon creation. And then fast forward to Obama-Trump. I'd say those are the four worst presidents of the post-World War II era. Eisenhower is a nothing. Jimmy Carter is a nothing with a lot of positives, deregulation primarily. Reagan is more positive. Bush, senior, awful basically is a zero. Bill Clinton in the great scheme of things, probably a positive. Bush, probably a significant negative. But Obama and Trump being worse than Bush, which is really hard to achieve. Well, Eisenhower was the first GOP president after the New Deal. He's the first, so, and they've all let it stand. Every single American, every single Republican president post the New Deal has let the New Deal stand. College was pre-World War II. We're talking about post-World War II. All right. Thanks, Alexis. Good question. Adam says for 100 bucks. Thank you, Adam. Thank you for calling up. Monarchy is being pro-individual makes it difficult to watch the pomp and circumstances. But worse is the call to self-sacrifice to the crown. Yes, and the call for the crown to sacrifice itself to the British people. It's sacrifice everywhere. And so it's all the orgy of sacrifice and orgy of altruism. There's nothing about the pomp and circumstance. There's nothing about monarchies that I like. There's not any aspect of it that I like. And, you know, I'm not sure what Iron Man's view of it was, but I think she had a more positive view than I do. All right. Theemaster says if King Charles decided to only sign laws supporting the left, there would be anything the right could do. He can't do that. The king has no power. It is truly purely ceremonial. The only power he has is of the bully pulpit or the maw power, or he could theoretically decide not to appoint a particular person as prime minister. But not clear what would happen. There would be a constitutional crisis if he decided that. There's nothing he can do about particular laws. Really nothing. So really not something to worry about. Jennifer says, do you think Elizabeth should get any credit for staying to help fight the Nazis instead of being whisked away into hiding? I mean, she was young. She was a teenager or early 20s, right? So in 1940, she would be what? 1946, she was 20s, so she was 14 in 1940. So yes, I think she should get credit. I mean, she was brave. In 1940, her uncle abdicated a few years earlier. She was not, at some point there, she was not expecting to be. The queen, because the path lay through her uncle and through his heirs. But because he abdicated, suddenly she was thrust into it. But yeah, I mean, she was young and I think she does. She showed a lot of courage during World War II. And generally, just as from her personal character, she showed courage. She showed more fortitude. She showed more fortitude in the cause of an altruism, a kind of altruism that primarily destroyed her life. It wasn't so much as he was asking for other's sacrifice. She's a sad character more than anything else. But she definitely deserves credit for certain aspects of her life. All right, let's go with James. Thank you. $100, really appreciate the support, James. He says, in a truly free society, once the government gets its initial large sum of voluntary contributions, say tens of billions of dollars, couldn't it just invest that in the stock market and live on the interest so no one would have to donate again for necessary government services? Well, it would have to be a lot more than tens of billions because just to run the US military is hundreds of billions of dollars. So it would have to be a large sum. And theoretically, you could have the citizen gather and give the government this large sum that they could invest and reap off. But you would not want to because one of the ways in a voluntary taxation system, one of the ways in which you can express your unhappiness with the government is to stop giving the money. And I think it's a very, very powerful way. Imagine if the government wants to go to war with country X or Y to bring democracy to the Middle East. And you go, whoa, I don't want to support that war. That's a stupid war. I disagree. And it could be legitimate disagreement within the population about something like this. It could be not a stupid war like being democracy to the Middle East, but it could be some other war where you might believe that there are other ways to deal with it other than war. So then you stop writing checks or you reduce the amount of money you write to the government. And the government then again gets a market signal. Hey, we can't afford this war. Or if some people really want to go to war, then they'll have to pony up the money. But remember with 350 million people, you need a lot of support to raise the kind of money you need in the US military to go to war. So I don't want them to live off the interest. I want them to have to keep coming back to me and saying, here's our budget. Here's what we need. Here's why we need it. You know, please support us. And I go, I think you're screwing up. Here's what you're screwing up with. Here's how you screwing up. So voting is one way where I can express that. And my checkbook is another way I couldn't express that. And in a sense, the checkbook might be even more powerful than voting. So that's the reason I want them to keep coming back and asking for money every single year. They have to sell me on their programs. Sell me on the fact that they're not infringing on my liberty. Michael says, really chipping away here at our goal. When I speak with Christian conservators, they think radical individualism leads to hedonism and nihilism, as though the individual would drift towards depravity without spiritual authoritarianism. Yes. And that is a real issue that has to be addressed if we are going to convince people of our views. And you see this explicitly in the writing of the National Conservatives and in the Tradcons, the traditionalist conservatives, the Catholics, primarily Catholics, they all write the same thing. They basically said, Jeffersonian individualism, the idea of bringing everything before reason, the idea of individual rights and individualism lead inevitably to hedonism and nihilism. They reject the Enlightenment. They reject Jefferson. They reject much. They reject the Declaration of Independence because of its emphasis on rights. They reject the whole spirit of individualism. Now, I think they reject it for deeper reasons, but one of the rationalizations they make is that they hold that these lead inevitably to nihilism and hedonism. They cannot conceive, or it's not true, because they're evading. They're evading any conception of rational values, rational individualism, rational pursuit of one's own life, reality-based values. They reject all that. They say, see, Jefferson? The New Left. They connected. There were Enlightenment, the New Left. And that's what the Christian conservatives believe, and we have to convince them. We have to convince as many Americans as we can, as many people in the world as we can, that you can be secular and have real values. This is the Dennis Prager problem. You cannot have morality without God. And we have to show them that you can. Real campaign to show them that you can. Real emphasis to show them that you can. Friend of Aristotle, thank you. Really appreciate that. He says, thanks to the point about taxes, and he puts $100 with that. Really appreciate the support. All right, only $15 away from our goal today. That was great. So that's thanks, Michael. And we'll be talking a lot more about that. Because as part of my attempt to address and to confront the right national conservatives and others, I will be dealing with that. Interesting, just a piece of good news. We like to sprinkle in good news. I've been approached now by two, I'd say significant publications. One on the, I'd say, center-left, and one on the center-left. And one, I don't know how to categorize them, but significant. Asking me to write a lengthy piece addressing the national conservatives. Sadly, it took me a few hours to answer the outfit from the center-left. Not Atlantic, but I'm not going to say who it is. And in the meantime, somebody else answered that they would write the piece. But it was very friendly, and they wanted me to write for them on issues relating, I think, to politics and relating to political philosophy. They wanted me to write a piece about the Santas, and I actually turned them down because I don't want to get into writing about specific political figures. But they want me to write about political philosophy. So I'm excited, very excited about that one. The second piece, we're writing. I've got Elan Juno co-authoring this piece with me, and it'll be a piece on nationalism. Nationalism, and it will be, as we get closer to publication, I'll let you know who it is, but it is a great, it's going to be great, and it's a lengthy piece, three to four thousand words, on nationalism, critiquing nationalism, and they're getting, they're getting Yom Khazoni, the guy debated, to write the pro-nationalism piece. So there are going to be two significant, you know, length and depth pieces on nationalism in the magazine. So we've got about six weeks to write it. So I'll let you know come late October, which publication it is, you guys can go read it. But I'm excited that people are starting to turn to me to do these kind of things. There's also the possibility, just so you know, of me debating an alco-capitalism on a big stage with somebody who I actually like and respect, who's going to defend an alco-capitalism, or at least defend aspects of it. So that is another thing to look forward to, those of you who have for years been asking me to defend, to debate an alco-capitalism. We will be doing that. It is not Mike and my Alice. So, but I'll get you more information about that as soon as, it's kind of made public, and it's not Dave Smith. People like, like I said, no, I, I, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. And it's not Tom Woods. I would not debate Tom Woods, and I don't think he would debate me. But I will let you know. Don't just list me a bunch of names now and try to get me to say who it is. I'll tell you when the time is right. All right. Thomas Schubart. Many paleo-conservatives such as Buchanan, vilified Churchill, as an unprincipled racist, warmonger, who manipulated the world, especially the U.S. into World War I and World War II, what is your assessment of him mixed? Well, I mean, suddenly, I have a mixed assessment of Churchill on the basis of the fact that he was a, he ultimately was a mixed economy, economically he was mixed. That is, and his post-World War II performance was, was pretty bad. But it was, but given his performance in World War II, I mean, you can't criticize him. And I know, I know that the paleo-conservatives hate him, but so I, I'm far less mixed about him. I think he was brilliant. I think there was no way for the U.K. to avoid World War II. World War I is a different story. World War I is a disaster and stupid war and stupid for the British to get involved. It was, it was horrible and it is sad. It's a sad war. I don't know if you can blame Churchill for World War I. Suddenly, Churchill was far more militaristic than he should have been, but he was absolutely right about World War II. He was courageous, heroic, brilliant in, as the role of Prime Minister in World War II, and that, just that, eviscerates, in my view, any other issues than might have been with him. Robert, Robert Nassir says, I know and pointed out three bad premises from which conservatives derived their Americanism. The last and worst was the argument for depravity. Yes, I actually wrote a whole essay about the argument for depravity and conservatives and why conservatives continue to be as bad as they are because of this issue of depravity. It was published in objective standard years. Well, maybe it wasn't published in objective standard. It was published somewhere. I can't remember where. It's online. You can find it. Conservatism, something by Iran Book. And I think Alex Epstein was my co-author on that one. And basically it makes the argument that, yes, the problem is conservatives cannot defend capitalism because conservatives' defense of capitalism and freedom rests on their view of original sin, their view of the basic depravity of man and therefore that man cannot attain, cannot achieve greatness on this earth and therefore capitalism is at least objectionable system because it leaves people to... It doesn't centralize power in the hands of people who are going to be depraved anyway. All right, Shahzad, chess and baseball incorporate the term sacrifice. If it were up to you, would you rename the term in both cases and play teams gain more than it loses? Yes, I would definitely rename the term. You've got to find the term. In finance we call it investment where you spend some money short-term in order to gain more in the future. So you've got to find a term that reflects the idea of giving up the ball now in order to win or taking the out in order to win like in baseball, sacrifice, fly or sometimes just knowing that you're going to get out in a first a ground ball that gets you out but at least scores the run. So there are a lot of different ways in which you can quote sacrifice in baseball. But yes, sport and chess you sacrifice your naïve in order to whatever. But yes, giving up something of lesser value to gain something of more value is not a sacrifice. We need a term for that. Again, in finance it's investment. It's not as easily rolls off the tongue to use an investment in sports or in chess. Bree says the TV economists say the neutral rate is two and a half percent to three percent and will end inflation. Is this some new economic theory or are they just inexperienced? Three percent seems to be expensive with eight percent, expansive with eight percent inflation, eight and a half percent inflation. This is a, it's a complicated, it's a complicated question. It's not, it's not clear. So they are, I was just reading about this. There is a theory that says that you have to raise that the Fed reserve has to raise inflation, has to raise interest rate, sorry, above the rate of inflation, in order to crush inflation, which is what Paul Volcker did in 1981-82 and crushed inflation ultimately and drove the U.S. into a very deep recession. Short-lived, but a very deep recession. But it's not clear that that is necessary if one believes that the monetary shock that created monetary, monetary and supply-side shock that created the inflation was a one-time event. So if, for example, you flood the economy with five trillion dollars, which is what we did during the financial crisis, during the COVID crisis, and then you restrain production and destroy supply chains, which is what we did during the COVID crisis, then you can expect inflation. But why should that inflation persist if you're not constantly injecting new five trillion dollars into the economy? So the idea there is that once the five trillion gets priced, if you will, all the prices rise to reflected, and supply recovers from the shock that inflation and, by raising interest rates at least somewhat, you are straining borrowers, borrowing, and you can see that, for example, in the mortgage market, where interest rates are up to 6%, which is low from an historical perspective but high from a recent history perspective and as a consequence, people are not borrowing, that people are not borrowing, businesses are not borrowing because interest rates are higher, not high but higher, restrains economic activity, restrains new expenditures, restrains demand, that ultimately inflation will drift down if there's no new monetary shock. Now, the Biden administration is really trying to provide us with another monetary shock. With the chip and the infrastructure and the student loans, they are trying to create more money to flood the market in and I think they're exacerbating the inflationary pressures that exist. But if that's it, particularly if the Republicans take the house and you get no more massive spending, you just get the regular spending, whatever you do with it, but regular, then even with the Fed not raising interest rates to 8.5%, but even if the rates to 3.5%, 4%, something like that, I don't think 2.5, 3 is going to be enough, but to 3, 4%, then that is enough of a constraint in economic activity, together with the fact that all this money slushing around is raising the price level but limiting it because we only put 5 trillion in. That should drive down inflation to, I don't know, the argument is to 4%, 3%, maybe ultimately to 2%, that it won't sustain at 8.5%, 9%. Now, we will see. It's a grand experiment being run right now. The Fed is showing no indication that it's going to drive interest rates up to 8.5%, although it is, Powell did say on Friday, as I said repeatedly, that they will do whatever it takes to reduce inflation. So we'll see what whatever it takes is. But it's not completely insane to think that inflation is going to peter out as prices fully reflect the 5 trillion and supply chains get reinstated and production comes back online. And the Fed is restraining new money creation by restricting its balance sheet, raising interest rates which restricts borrowing and all of that. So the combination of those things could do it. So it's hard to tell what the neutral rate is. I doubt it's 2.5% to 3%. It's probably higher than that and the Fed has already indicated that they're raising it above that. Right now, Fed funds rate around there going up to over 3% by the end of the year, clearly over 3% by the end of the year, maybe close to 4% by the end of the year. And so that'll be... We'll see if that has the desired effect of ending inflation, or at least lowering inflation. Alright, now we have a bunch of 5 and 10 dollar questions. We're still about 11 dollars short on our super chair. Jump in if you want to get us over that number. Harper Campbell says, why is the left childish promotion of transgenderism and neutering police departments going to necessarily usher in a Christian nationalist dictatorship wouldn't reasonable adults win out in the end? What is reasonable adults? Who are they? Where are they? The problem with reasonable adults is adults today don't really believe in anything. So every time you defeat woke and you defeat the Christian nationalists, what you get stuck with is blah, nothing. And that middle of the road, nothing in this has to go some way. It's just not integrative, it's not exciting, it's not interesting, it doesn't provide answers to people who feel angst. Maybe most of people who are reasonable feel angst. What they know almost for certain is that the current system is not working. And the only alternatives right now presented to them are woke and some kind of nationalism. Now so far, the reasonable adults are winning, Trump lost. Biden is unpopular. So the reasonable adults don't buy woke, don't buy Trump and are not excited about religious nationalism and not excited about crazy leftists. So Biden is the candidate of reasonable adults. Not great, but better than alternative is kind of the view. Do less damage. And now he's not popular because he's doing damage. So the question is long term as the middle crumbles, as the angst in the middle continues, but they find no outlet to it. Who is more appealing to them? Who has an absolute unquestioning solution to the problem? Is it the old cleft or the Christian right? I think it'll be the Christian right. And I think it has to gravitate to one of those because the middle is crumbling. The middle is Biden and Biden is nothing. It's zero, it's emptiness, and ultimately even Biden can't hold the middle. He's crumbling to the left. So the middle is going to have to choose and the middle I think will choose the right, not the left. Alexis, thank you. Alexis got us over the 650. Let the honor be mine. Thank you, Alexis. Have you watched the King's Speech? And if yes, any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed the King's Speech. I think it was a well done movie about Queen Elizabeth's father who became king as a surprise because his brother abdicated. He had a speech impediment which was not very conducive to being king who gave speeches on occasion, particularly ceremonial occasions. And in particular was an impediment of World War II, which he became king and just walled into World War II, where he had to, you know, moral backbone, moral authority, kind of strengthened the British people in a time of great need, great struggle. And he rose to occasion and he worked on a speech and the film deals with how he tried to deal with the speech impediment and how he tried to be a good speaker. And remember, this is in contrast to Churchill who was a brilliant genius speaker. He struggled, but overcame it. So it is actually a beautiful story, inspiring story, and one I wasn't really familiar with. So I definitely would recommend the King's Speech in terms of a movie that you'll both learn something about History Farm and I think very enjoyable. Very well acted, too. Roland says, enjoy Japan. I envy you for those meals you're going to have. You don't envy me. Envy is a really, really bad word. You are jealous. You're jealous of me. Envy, you don't envy Roland. Michael says, do you think serial killers can handle the idea that they're actually evil? Or does the concept of good and evil not even register in their minds or whereas no need to evade it? No, I think they thoroughly evade it. I don't know. I've seen a few of these TV series where the FBI interviews the serial killers all based on true stories. There's a show now on Apple TV that is similar to that. And it's interesting the personalities that these people have. It's as if... I mean, the one guy in the Apple TV it's as if the motor's in a dream world and once in a while he glimpses that he actually did it and he's horrified by it. But then it drifts back into a dream world and he can't hold the fact that he did this thing for very long. It doesn't stay in his consciousness for very long. He has to throw it back into some kind of dream unreality for him. Yeah, mind hunters, I watched... I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched a few episodes. It was really interesting. So I think that's the case. I'm a psychologist of psychopaths, but I think that's what it is. Francis says, I actually despise the idea of the monarchy, but I admired Queen Elizabeth's grace, dignity and devotion to her country. The ghouls reveling in her death are sickening. Yes, I mean, no reason to revel in her death. Michael asked, do you and other objectivist intellectuals expect the movement to have a lot more impact a lot faster? Do you expect to be the Milton Friedman of objectivism? I don't know what that means, but no, I've never expected it to be fast. I mean, there were moments where I thought, oh, maybe this all happened faster than I thought, but those moments disappear very quickly. I've always thought this is going to be decades and decades and decades of work, and I think everybody has. I think I don't as don't. Our supporters don't. Our supporters support things that this can happen much faster, but when you're underground actually doing the work, you realize how many decades it's going to have to be. Did I expect to be the Milton Friedman of objectivism? I expect to be the Milton Friedman of the world, not of objectivism. I don't know what that means. Does that mean I'm the economist within objectivism, or does it mean that I bring objectivism to the world like Milton Friedman brought free market economics to the world? I prefer the second, and I haven't, I haven't come close to reaching the status of Milton Friedman, but that certainly would be my goal, questionable whether I can achieve it, but certainly my goal. What do you think of one of Liz Truss's first acts being the massive energy bailout? Very disappointing. Yeah, crushing, crushingly disappointing, horrible, stupid economics, stupid, stupid and every fun except politically. She's buying votes. There's an election in a couple of years and she's trying to guarantee that she doesn't look, lose her working class voters, but from an economic perspective, just pure stupidity. You know, once you cap electricity, you get more uses of it. This is going to be a real pit for the government in terms of money. It's just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. On the good side, Daniel says, Kim Badenach was appointed Secretary of Trade your other piece of good news. That was my piece of good news yesterday. I actually talked about it yesterday. Yesterday? Whenever did my last show? Wednesday? Yes. Kemi and I actually DM'd one another. I congratulated her and she sent me a thank you about the news that she was Secretary of Trade. So I'm excited about that. As you know, I'm a huge, huge, huge free trader. The United Kingdom's best trade policy would be to lower tariffs to zero unilaterally. I'm not sure that would win you a lot of votes, though. Gail asks, does the institution of the monarchy have the effect on people self-esteem? Do they mistakenly hold on to a false sense of security by perpetuating a monarch ruler? Maybe. Maybe. It's hard to tell. But yeah, I mean, you could probably for some people have that effect and add that to the long list of negatives of the monarchy. Emmanuel says, with all due respect to the late Queen Elizabeth, isn't the monarchy effectively parasites? Why are they held in such high regard in the UK? Well, they held in high regard in the UK because they symbolically represent the UK. They're viewed as a symbol of what the UK represents, the dignity, the history. The UK has history. History is very important to British. I think as Britain becomes more less British in the conventional sense and more multi-ethnic, that'll go away. A lot of that will go away. But it's questionable whether they're parasitic. They may have a lot of money today, but whether they are net, you know, the huge tourist attraction, you'd probably make good living as a king or queen just off of the tourist revenue. But yeah, I mean, from every perspective, monarchy is just wrong and bad and it's not good for a country to have this, again, unchosen, unqualified person at the top there. Daniel says, I highly recommend the show 1883 on Paramount. Very romantic. Haven't seen it yet, but I've heard good things about it, so I will at some point watch it. Michael, societies with low self-esteem are proud of monarchs and not being allowed to own guns. Most Brits I speak with make fun of us for having a Second Amendment and no culture. But I don't find Brits having low self-esteem. I think Brits have relatively high self-esteem of all the countries in the world out there. I think the Brits are the closest to Americans, but also I like Britain and I like the Brits and I think they have a real, you know, they have a real attitude and they have, I don't view them, you know, so they don't own guns. I mean, again, the conservative party is much better than our Republicans and crime rates in London are much lower than crime rates in the United States including in cities like Houston where people are allowed to have guns. So guns don't reduce crime rates in and of themselves, something else is going on. So I don't know that the Brits are, I don't think Brits are that bad. Emmanuel says that I called monarchs parasites in a past show. I know, but I'm trying to be nice. He just died. Yeah, I mean, they don't do anything productive. I mean, entertainment, there's some entertainment value. Again, tourist value. Colt says, speaking of the EPA, does it have any justification? What should the government's role in protecting the environment that is to say the environment of one's property? I don't really know what to think. I mean, the government has no role in protecting the environment because the environment is a useless, meaningless concept. The government has a role in protecting you from other people inflicting damage on you. If somebody is clearly polluting your property, destroying it, I don't know, they throw their garbage in your backyard or they dump their chemicals in your river or they spew stuff into the air that clearly makes you sick, then the government has the job of stomping them and potentially penalizing them if they're doing it on purpose. The job of the government is to protect you, protect your rights, not to protect your feelings, not to protect your subjective emotions, but to protect you from objectively-demonstratable harm. You don't need an EPA for that. Anonymous user, thank you. Really appreciate it. Waldron, last question. Do today's intellectuals see objectivism as a cult? I don't think so. That's not what I usually get. There have been periods I've encountered people who say, oh, it's just a cult, but not many. It's not a common view. I think they view it as unserious. They view it as wrong. They view it as, in some cases, despicable. But I don't hear much about it being a cult. It's been a while. There used to be a period where it was much more popular to call it a cult, but not anymore. Yeah, Michael Schumer called it a cult. Funny because we're quite friendly to both Michael Schumer, but Michael Schumer called it a cult. But I think I don't think it caught on really. All right, everybody, have a great weekend. Today's kind of funny because it's Friday afternoon. We got good attendance. Maybe this time of day actually works with you guys. Maybe you're listening to the show while you're working. We did great on the super chat, so that's good. And so thank you. Thank you to all the superchatters that made this possible. Thank you for all the participants. The chatters on the chat. Thank you for all of you who support the show on a regular basis. We will be doing a show tomorrow, most likely at 3 p.m. East Coast time, so the same time as today, and then a show on Sunday. So, you know, hopefully you'll join me tomorrow. I'm not sure what the topic will be. One of those shows will be Your Honor's Rules for Living. It will be a new Your Honor's Rules for Living show. We'll see what the topic for that will be. I'll have to decide it over the next 24 hours, I guess. And we just got a quick question from Mr. Muffin. What do you think of the new conservative running to Canada to battle Trudeau, Pierre-Polliver, I don't know. But anybody battling Trudeau pretty much, you know, Trudeau is so evil. But I'll check him out. I'm not familiar with him, so I have no real comment. All right, guys, thank you. See you tomorrow. Don't forget to support the show. Oh, don't forget to like the show before you leave. Helps with the algorithms. Really, really good. Bye.