 I believe it's impossible, by the way, to divorce it from a religious worldview, let's say, the Judeo-Christian worldview, for example, because that is where we find our meaning. I think what you just described is God's created order for things, for the individual, for the family, for society. I think we are made in the image of God. The founders of this country believe that. In fact, indeed, in our declaration, they proclaimed it to be a self-evident truth, something that you cannot not know. That wasn't what they said was a self-evident truth, not that. Anyway, yeah, I mean, God's order, everything around us, that's, you know, we're living in a world that is God's, that is ordained by God. It is the way it is and we need to function appropriately. And without religion, we cannot. That God is the one that created us and he gives us all the same rights. This is a congressman, by the way, Congressman Mike Johnson. God created us to serve. We find... That's perfect. God created us to serve. So here you also get the element of altruism. I want to say a positive word about Jordan Peterson, which I find interesting because I don't know how this exactly happened and what the intellectual move got him to where it is. But Jordan actually has a much better view of what self-interested is today than he did a few years ago. So if you remember a few years ago, I actually did a show on this, he talked, there is no self-interest, there's no such thing as self-interest with self, we have today, tomorrow. Self is a meaningless concept and he talked about, you know, so he dismissed self-interest completely. Now he has a much better view of self-interest. And that is the self-interest is something to be attained over time, that it's long term, say it incorporates this idea of the different selves and different time zones, I guess. And that what involves the rejection of self-interest is women worshipping. So women worshipping is anti-self-interest, but self-interest really is this projection of a lifetime and what your actions and what your ideas are going to do and what impact they have over a lifetime and not as a whim, not in the moment. And that's a significant improvement. But note that Congressman Johnston immediately goes to the idea of service and remember the reason to be free is to serve God. And this is of course the basis of altruism, not the altruism, the conventional altruism. Not the conventional altruism of, in a sense, the way we view it as a service to your neighbor, but the origins in a sense of altruism, which is the sacrifice of yourself to something other than you. And that is in Christianity fundamentally, it's not the poor, it's not the meek, it's fundamentally God. It's all about service to God. You don't matter. What matters is God and the service you provide to God, for God. And the only reason to be free is that you could serve God and God's purpose. And how do you know what God's purpose is? Somebody has it revealed and tells you or you get the revelation yourself. Find our greatest meaning. I mean, that the Bible is filled with this admonition that if you are to be great, you are to serve. And the greatest is the greatest servant. And so that's where you find your value. The greatest is to serve. The greatest is the greatest servant. This is how you find your value. You find your value for serving others, whether it's God or whether it's the others. This is altruism coded into Christianity and every aspect of Christianity. This is the foundation. At least these people get it. So we're not getting any mealy mouth, no, we're not really for altruism. Christianity is really about self-interest. No, this is what it's about. It's about serving the other. Let me just see how long we're going to take this. He intended the family to be, for obvious reasons, the first unit. How do we know that? How do we know that he intended the family to be the first unit? I mean, again, and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I am quibbling here because again, this is I'm an Old Testament guy, not a New Testament guy. And in the Old Testament, Abraham, the first monotheist supposedly, the first Jew, has three wives. I don't know if that's a family. And then Jacob, Jacob, Abraham's son, he blesses one of his sons and curses the other one. And the son who is blessed is the one who tricks the other one. Says trickery involved, right? I mean, there's nothing in the Old Testament. And God lets them all get away with this. And they're not penalized for it. You know, David sleeps with pretty much everybody, the northern area. There's no family in the Old Testament. You know, people accuse Iron Rand of not talking about family. But where's their family in the Old Testament? Solomon has 2,000 wives in concubines. Who knows how many children? I can't remember that passage in the Bible. But I remember the 2,000, because as a kid, I was very impressed, I have to say, very impressed by Solomon's ability to have 2,000 wives in concubines. And David's sleeping around. Indeed, it was part of Bible class to highlight all these kind of scenes in these kind of non-controversy. You know, where does this family even come from? I mean, Cain kills Abel, right? Doesn't Cain kill Abel, right? That's his brother. This is family stuff, beautiful family stuff. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Conservatives come up with this stuff. They decide a family is important, and then they go back to the Bible and find it there. Where is it? I mean, it's, yeah. Of community. And upon that, we build a healthy and vibrant society. You know, I listed human. Yeah, so it's all about community, service. Service is the essence. These are your conservatives. These are the Republicans you just elected to House Majority, Congress and Mike Johnson. Now, the left is awful and evil and bad. But this is the right, awful and evil and bad. Now, isn't this subjectivism? He just gave us a whole list. Did he provide a reason for it? Did he provide a basis for it? Did he provide a rational explanation for why it holds? Strikes me as subjective. All right. My favorite conservatives you might know today, I think the most dangerous conservative today is Josh Hawley. Partially because he's super bright, very articulate. He's got a bit of a baby face. I think that's going to prevent him from running for president anytime soon. He's going to have to, I don't know, maybe grow some white. Maybe he'll have to color his hair a little white or maybe do something else with regard to it. Or maybe get some lines or something. He just looks too baby-faced to be president. But anyway, maybe that's what we need after Geoiatric, guys. He is a real piece of work. He is, of course, a Yale graduate, Yale Law School graduate, most presidents in modern times have been Yale graduates. And interesting, so he's very articulate, very smart, obviously. I just want to do this on rights. And then we'll talk about the implications without showing you any more video because we're already an hour in. Right, when it comes to the subject of rights, I think the left and the right have a fundamentally different view about rights. The right says that what the Declaration of Independence says is true, that our rights come to us by virtue of the fact that we're made in the image of God. Our rights come to us because they're given by God. And our rights, by the way, point us toward our responsibilities. So, standing conservatives, right? So you get rights because of the creator, that one word in the Declaration of Independence, God's given to us by rights, he's given to us by virtue of the, we're created by God and all of that. Again, there's nothing in the Old Testament, nothing. Zero zilch in the Old Testament to suggest that individuals have rights. The slaves that the Jews had didn't have rights. The Jews in the Old Testament, God commands them to slaughter, don't have rights. They just defend God. The people who worship the golden calf didn't have rights. Rights do not come from the Old Testament, at least. Now, they are kind of rationalistically derived from certain passage in the Bible, but there's no evidence to them in the holy books. There's no evidence. There's no link as much as the Founders tried, as much as Locke tried. There's no link between those rights and God. Now, I know there's a huge natural law tradition in classical liberalism that tries to imbue rights into us, right? They're in there. God put them in there somewhere. Again, this is the intrinsicism. It's revealed knowledge that we have rights from God. Although I think Locke does, and the Founders do a much better job than just this garbage, just saying that, right? They just say it. They actually try to reason it through, and try to make, I mean, Locke talks much more about kind of a nature-based argument for rights, not just God gave it to them, imbued us with them. But this is, again, they can't conceive of anything else. Now, rights as a necessity for human survival, rights as derived from an understanding of what allows human beings to survive, the use of their mind, and therefore, they must be free, and rights as protecting freedom. None of that, none of that is there. And then, of course, then they come up with rights involved responsibilities. Where's that in the Declaration of Independence? Where is that? There's no subsection, like, and these rights imply these responsibilities. None of that is there. So if we're gonna use the document as kind of the evidence, then the responsibility part is not there. I mean, rights do imply responsibility, but in a much, much deeper sense than any of these people imply. That is, if you ever write the life of freedom to live your life based on your judgment in pursuit of your values, what is the responsibility? The responsibility is to choose to use your mind to the best of your ability, to choose your values, to use your judgment, to choose a path, to make decisions about action, to make decisions about what to pursue. But that's not the sense in which they mean responsibility. They mean responsibility to the state, to God, to others, to the poor, to someone. But it's you, that's the responsibility, that if you have a right to life, you now live it and living it takes work, thought, effort, focus, thinking. That sense, there's responsibility. We have rights that open up to us fields of action where we're supposed to serve. You know, we have the right to follow our conscience, for example. It's all about serving. Rights are there so we can go serve. Rights are there so we can go serve. You know, what is that really? Well, that says that we're obligated to follow the truth and that as we feel, as we understand the truth, you know. Like that, his first slip was right, how we feel. How's he different than the left? And then he realizes that feel is the wrong world. Feel puts him in the trap of subjectivism, how we understand. We have a responsibility to follow the truth, but where is that truth? That truth lies in religion in God. What was it Lincoln said? I mean, I will follow the right as God gives me to see the right. You know, that is, it is a right, but it is also responsibility. That's the rights view, our view, conservative view of responsibility, of rights rather. The left, the left's view is, well, actually rights are entitlements that come to you from the state. And so therefore the state needs to expand its power for you to have more rights. And the problem with that Jordan is, is that the real message to individuals is you're weak and in need of help from the state. You know, you're fundamentally weak. The state needs to help you by giving you all of these things, by taking care of you, by giving you these rights. The conservative message needs to be, you're not weak. You are strong, you have the capacity in yourself to do something, to change the world, to contribute to society, and let's get up and do it. Let's go do something together. Let's get up there and actually give ourselves to a cause greater than ourselves. I don't think Marx would have disagreed with any of that final statements. You are strong, you can change the world. Let's get together and all fight for a goal, for cause greater than ourselves. I mean, this is the modern right. The modern right is a religious right. Its entire ideology is rooted in religion. Even when they come up with policy, proclamations that seem moderately okay, or good even, intellectual foundation of everything that they stand for is religion. Is this epistemological view of intrinsic values, intrinsic knowledge? Morality for them is revelation. It is tradition and they have to evade huge quantities of information about the past, huge quantities of information about tradition, huge quantities of information about their own holy book in order to stand by this. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support, by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. 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