 All right, welcome everybody to the Run Book Show. We're going to go without the music today for some reason that file has vanished from my computer. All right, I hope everybody's having a great weekend. It's already the end of that weekend, but I hope everybody's doing well and looking forward to a fantastic week ahead. As you see, I'm back from another quick trip. I'm back at home. I think I'm mainly almost exclusively going to be home for the rest of the year. I think I've got one short trip we'll see, but it looks like I'll be mostly here, which is nice because technically it's easier and in many other respects, it is easier. So yes, we're going to continue shows from here. Let's see, tomorrow we'll have our usual news roundup. On Tuesday, we'll have a news roundup and we'll have a regular evening show. In the evening, same will be true for the rest of the week. So we should be back on schedule this week. Back on schedule this week. All right, let me do that later. Remind you, Super Chat, you can ask questions about anything. Jump in. If you're so inclined, go to Twitter and let people know that we're on live right now, that we're talking about Ian Hissier-Lee. I think that'll be good. And yeah, let's see if we can get some good numbers in terms of views tonight. All right, so those of you who've been following for a long time, probably know this already, but it's worth repeating this and clarifying this. Ian Hissier-Lee, in my view, is one of the real heroes of the post-9-11, really the last 20 years. She is unbelievably brave. She has a phenomenal life story. I'll highlight that a little bit in a minute. She has stood up against Islamism in the face of death threats, in the face of people she knew well being moated, and she stood up against them and challenged them. She is a keen observer of the Islamic world, but more importantly, a real valuer when it comes to Western civilization. Just, what was it, a week ago, two weeks ago when I was at the Jordan Peterson Conference, I mentioned that I thought she gave, she was one of the best people up on stage. She gets the West and she is unequivocally a great hero, a hero because she has the right ideas for the most part. We'll get to where she doesn't, but she has the right ideas for the most part. She articulates them, she speaks them. She's incredibly articulate and intelligent, and she does so in the face of real obstacles, threats to her life. And she has achieved what she has achieved in spite of the fact that this is a woman who grew up under an Islamist regime with an Islamist family being taught at a Muslim brotherhood school, taught is the wrong term. I mean, brainwashed in a Islamic Muslim brotherhood schools, brainwashed to hate life, brainwashed to hate Jews, brainwashed to hate, to sacrifice all for Allah, to live by religious dogma exclusively. So, here's a woman that has stood up to religion, it managed as a teenager to escape. Somehow, establish herself in the West, became a known atheist, and a known opponent of radical Islam. She was a member of the parliament in the Netherlands as a young woman, just a few years away from being a refugee. And just a few years away from being an Islamist in the post-911 period, she saw her friend and a collaborator, Van Gogh, the film producer, the film director, murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. And when the state of the Netherlands wouldn't grant a security, wouldn't provide for a security, she fled the Netherlands. I remember that, I remember already admiring her back when she was in the Netherlands and then she, you know, seeing her manage to escape to the United States or get to the United States and be embraced by a community of intellectuals in the United States and find a home here. And again, she continued in the United States to be a clear, passionate advocate, not only for the evils of Islam and Islamism, but also for the values, at least some of the values, primarily the value of free speech in the West. And she was unbending, she was unbending. And, you know, I was a fan. And I met her once, we talked, I can't remember when this was, it was, I think it was in a Montpelerin Society meeting years ago, and here's really has Red Ein Rand. She told me at the time she had Red Ein Rand. But she was not attracted to the ideas of Ein Rand. She was attracted to the ideas of David Hume, of kind of the Scottish Enlightenment. She was attracted to the ideas of which were Russell. And what attracted in particular to David Hume was skepticism. What Ein Hürselie embraced was, in spite of her principal defense of Western moral values, what ultimately stuck with her, what ultimately she embraced as a guiding philosophy in this new secular world that she adopted, was skepticism. And you can understand it to some extent. I mean, what appealed to her about, I think the writings of the new atheists, was the skepticism of religion. And she embraced that skepticism of religion and she associated anything absolutist, an absolutist view of the world, absolutist moral code, an absolutist view as religious. So while she was an absolutist on certain issues, it only went so deep. In spite of that, at this latest conference, she was on a panel and she talked about the difference between the West and the rest of the world, the West is focused on life. She was incredibly, incredibly dignified, and incredibly brave, and incredibly sharp, and true, in a way that people like Jordan Peterson and others just aren't, they're wishy-washy, ambiguous, mumbo jumbo kind of stuff. She is clear. She also, I think, important to understand what is going on. She also married Neil Ferguson, the British scholar, the historian, conservative. So I have to admit that when yesterday she posted, she posted on Twitter, that's why I saw it anyway, X. She posted an essay, basically declaring herself no longer an atheist, basically declaring that she had now embraced Christianity. To me, this was a major blow. It was unbelievably sad, unbelievably disappointing, but also, I think, a further indication of the fact that the secular world is failing, it is failing all around us. Maybe one more step towards Lena Peekoff's predictions in DIMM. But personally, it's just a failure, failure of all of us who advocate for secular values. Now, I don't really think that because I'm not sure you could have actually gone to her, but the point is, it's a failure. And more than that, it is sad. It is truly sad that a person who came so far is willing to go backwards. Well, of course not to where she came from, thank God, but backward still to fundamentally a rejection of reason in the name of faith. So I wanna go over what she says her reasons are because I think these need to be taken seriously. I think she is one in a long line of intellectuals and commentators out there that are following this path. We all know what happened to Dave Rubin. And look, I like Dave Rubin really friendly and everything, but Ayan is just, Ayan Hercie-Ali is, she is a major figure and she's a major figure as an intellectual, she's a real thinker and a real intellectual force out there. Dave is great, but it's just not the same. Dave, I'd say, I'm not surprised. Ayan Hercie-Ali, I am surprised. But it's more than just even them. I mean, you saw, we did a show here a few weeks ago on Kissin, the guy from Trigonometry who published the essay about the problems with atheists and he suggested that he was turning towards religion, even though not Christianity in any sense or not anything more substantial than that. So I think this is a real trend. It's a trend that in many respects, you can see Jordan Peterson ushering, Jordan Peterson creating the culture for, the arguments for, and you can see here Jordan Peterson's influence on the culture more broadly. So I wanna go through her arguments and discuss them and see whether they make any sense or not. I'm gonna be back in one second. So I've got a essay in front of me. I've taken out a few paragraphs that I'm gonna read you. We're gonna discuss them as we go along. But we can see, we can discuss and debate the impact that they have had. This is in her words. So I wanna cover this. I wanna go over this and then kind of comment on it as we go along. So rather than watch a video, I'm just gonna read you a segment from the essay. She published this essay on Unheard. You can find it on Twitter. You can find it in a lot of different places. All right, she writes, so first she writes about her upbringing in Islam and the challenges we face from Islam. But broader than the challenges we face through Islam, she talks about the challenges, the West faces from Russia, the challenges the West faces from China. I mean, here is a woman who understands that there is evil in the world. There are bad guys in the world that these people want us, if you will, dead, or they want us subjugated, whether it is the kind of fascism of Putin or whether it is the fascism of Xi, or whether it is the Islamo-fascism of Hamas, Kuzmala, Iran, and the rest of them, the theocratic fascism of all of them. She understands that there is an enemy here. She understands the values that at stake because she has been on that side. And again, she is intelligent. And she's saying that the challenge right now in many respects is unprecedented. And I think she's right. Not only are we seeing what's going on in Israel, Hamas, and you're seeing this on university campuses, what you're seeing in university campuses, I don't know how many of you are following this, but it truly is unbelievably horrific and it doesn't seem to stop and they just seem to be getting bolder and bolder. 300,000 people marched yesterday in London in support of Hamas. They won't say it that way, but that's what it means. The anti-Semitism is overt. It's no longer being hidden. This is true throughout the West, throughout much of Western Europe, but particularly in the United States and in the UK. At the same time, we've got Putin on the rise or at least trying to assert himself in Ukraine, engaged in horrific actions in Ukraine and where the 300,000 people in support of the Ukrainian babies that were killed, where the 300,000 in the streets in support of Ukrainian sovereignty, none of that, right? So Putin gets a free ride to a logic stand. The West is very tentative in its support. It talks a big game, but doesn't act. And indeed, Putin has no support for many of people in history I think associated with on the right, has no support for people on the far left. I mean, Ukraine doesn't. Putin has their support. And then, of course, the one place that everybody agrees is the enemy and everybody seems to hate uniformly, which is China. And yeah, the West faces the biggest set of challenges to its existence, certainly since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but arguably since World War II, since the rise of Nazism and the rise of communism that period in the 20th century, where it looked like collectivism was going to win and overwhelm the rest of the West. We now face challenges equal to that. And they're multiple, just like they were back then. And the question is, how do we survive these challenges? And for Ryan Hersey Ali, this is a big issue. She understands, she understands what the West's failure would mean for all of us, for all of us. And again, you can see that in October 7th in Israel. That's what the failure means. It means the barbarians control everything. It means the barbarians rape and pillage and destroy civilization. So here's what she writes, quote, we endeavor to fend off these threats with modern secular tools, military, economic, diplomatic, and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease, or surveil. And yet with every round of conflict, we find ourselves losing ground. We're either running out of money with our national debt in the tens of trillions of dollars, or we are losing our lead in technological race with China. But we can't fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question, what is it that unites us? Now, I agree with all of that. She's absolutely right. Our defense, our defense of Western civilization is being weak, pathetic, appeasing, so far. We have compromised, we have sold out, we have bended the knee, we have given in. We have appeased over and over and over and over again. Yes, we have a big military we cannot use. And yes, economies aren't tatters, not that anybody else's is better, but economies aren't tatters because we must appease every pressure group that exists out there. And I agree that to win, we must know what we are fighting for. To win, we have to have values. We have to know the value of what we're defending. And for that, there has to be meaning to the we. Who is we? What is Western civilization? What are we defending? What are we fighting for? We know who we're fighting. And yes, to some extent, we're fighting against barbarism, murder, rape, pillage. But what is the positive that unites us? What makes us all part of the same team? And what are the values, the positive values, not the negative values we're trying to avoid, but the positive values we're trying to achieve? And I agree completely that we have no such values, explicitly articulated by the leadership of our culture. And this is where people like the new atheists, but also like people like Jordan Peterson and other intellectuals left and right have failed us. Failed us completely, thoroughly, deeply. What unites us, we have no clue. Skepticism, skepticism. And by the way, what is the big difference between skepticism and relativism and moral subjectivism and ultimately woke in all its nonsense? Not much, not much separates those concepts. She writes, the response that God is dead seems insufficient in terms of what unites us. Absolutely, God is dead is empty. God is dead has no positive content, but it's upon us to provide that positive content. So she continues. So too does the attempt to find solace in quote the rule-based liberal international order. The only credible answer I believe lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And this is the great frustration. This is a complete misreading of our history. Is it a complete misunderstanding of the role of ideas in our history? It is a failure, a failure, an intellectual failure, a moral failure. It is a failure to understand Western civilization and what it represents. It is a failure to see who your allies are, what we are fighting for and what is truly, who is truly the enemy. It's a tragic failure. It's a failure I see everywhere, every place I go. I discuss my talk at the University of Utah on how offended they were at the very thought of Western civilization. Nevermind my interpretation of what it actually was. So it's true that the West has no answer to what it is that unites us. It is true that God is dead and the rule-based liberal international order are not good things to be fighting for. They're not concrete. They're not ideals. They're not inspired. They do not move people. They have intellectual vacuous. They mean nothing, mean nothing. They have no positive content. But what we need is a real understanding of Western civilization. What we need is a positive philosophy. What we need are positive values. Not the old, trodden, irrational, undermining and undercutting values of a Judeo-Christian tradition that didn't lead to Western civilization. But Western civilization evolved from a rejection of those values, at least the rejection of significant number of those values. Not enough of them, and that's our problem. That's our problem. Indeed, one of the reasons maybe that our military economic diplomatic is all geared towards appeasing and is all focused on weakness. Maybe, maybe, maybe the reason for that is the Judeo-Christian, primarily Christian, view of morality, of altruism, of sacrifice, of suffering, which sadly, so many of our secular friends have embraced. She goes on, quote, that legacy consists of an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom, and dignity. Really? Really? The church was designed to safeguard human life, freedom, and dignity? Tell that to Galileo? Tell that to the Christian sects that were slaughtered? Tell that to other people who died in the 30-year war between Catholics and Protestants? Dignity, there is dignity in bowing in front of the altar and placing the body of Christ in your mouth? There is freedom? Freedom? Where is there freedom in the Judeo-Christian tradition? What kind of freedom are we talking about? Political freedom? No, not until the Enlightenment. Economic freedom? Nope. Tell that to the users who were slaughtered because they dare charred interest on money. What kind of freedom? Religious freedom? Whoa. What about all the pagans that were put to the sword because they refused to convert to Christianity? I mean, history, 101, simple. For 1,500 years, Christianity was a brutal, oppressive, anti-human religion dedicated to death and destruction. It was the Islamists today. Talked about the massacre in Verden, which is one famous example with tens of thousands of pagans were slaughtered. But that's just one example. Read the history of Christianity, what was done in Eastern Europe, in Northern Europe, in Scandinavia, all over the world. Northern Africa, what was done not just to pagans, what was done to Christians who didn't quite agree on your particular version of Christianity? Freedom? Now, it is true that Christianity has been watered down. That Christianity has been secularized. That Christianity now claims to uphold, claims to uphold human life, freedom, and dignity. But even then, look at the integralists, the national conservatives. Are they advocating for freedom, dignity? Whose dignity? Human life, some, but not all. And how was Christianity watered down? What was it watered down with? It didn't evolve. Christianity didn't evolve. It was watered down. It was watered down with reason. It was watered down with a respect for individual rights. It was watered down with enlightenment values and enlightenment thinking. It was watered down by the age of reason and the age of science. It was watered down by science. There's only so many times you can claim that the sun goes around the earth. At some point, you can't do that anymore. At some point, you have to acknowledge that the Bible is wrong because reality just is what it is. They didn't do that willingly, kicking and screaming and objecting and slaughtering and killing and silencing all the way. The legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition is not safeguarding human life. It is not freedom and it is not dignity. There is no omnicreated equal in Judaism. There is no freedom in Christianity. There is no individual dignity in Christianity. There's subservience. There is the bend to God. There is your commitment to sacrifice for the other, God, the group, whomever. That is not dignity. She writes, designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity, from the nation's state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health and learning. Really, I mean, the nation's state arose out of maybe the most secular, among the most secular periods in human history, the founding of America and therefore, and later the nationalist movements of Europe were not exactly driven and motivated by Christianity, even if they were Christian. The rule of law, Christianity, like all religions, is authoritarian. It is not the rule of law as we understand it as the protection of individual rights. There are no individual rights, political rights in Christianity. At least if they are, then for 1500 years, they ignored them completely. And the institutions of science, health and learning, this is the legacy of Christianity. There was no learning in Greece. There was no learning in Rome, but Greece is the prime example. We needed Christianity to do this. And institutions of science, Christianity did everything it could to subvert and undermine and undercut the institutions of science. Science became science, and the institutions of science became important. In spite of, not because of. Now, she writes, as Tom Wood has shown in his marvelous book, Dominion, a book I just bought and downloaded, so I want to read this book. All sorts of apparently secular freedoms, she says of the market, really, of conscience and of the press, find their roots in Christianity, the press. I mean, what was the extent of you, if you read about this, all the way to the 19th century, early part of the 19th century was the church trying to suppress, for example, the writings of Spinoza, to exclude them, to ban them and to persecute those who actually printed them and read them. Luckily, in Amsterdam, there was very little religion in that sense in the Netherlands, and they were the ones printing Spinoza and others like crazy. Where is this roots of a marketplace in Christianity? I mean, Islam has a more favorable view, Islam has a more favorable view of markets than Christianity does. Rich man to go, it's harder for the rich man to go to heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle, just one of a gazillion examples within the New Testament that do not in any way support the idea that Christianity allowed markets to evolve. See, she says, and so I came to realize that Russell, this is bird ride Russell, and my atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees. The wood is the civilization built in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is the story of the West, woods and all. Russell's critique of those contradictions in Christian doctrine is serious, but it is also too narrow in scope. She fails to differentiate here between what evolved in the Enlightenment, the marginalization of Christianity, the watering down of Christianity, the great contributions of Spinoza on, the philosophers of that period, thinkers of that period. She fails to see how even during the Renaissance, there was a systematic reappraisal of religion, a challenging of religious dogma, a watering down of religious ideas, and an embrace of secular principles. Instead, it's just one progression. Christianity, this is just a logical consequence of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is not. It's the rejection of that progression. It is a revolution in thinking which the Enlightenment represents. So can we confront Islam? Can we confront Russia? Can we confront China? And if so, how? What unites us? Well, I've talked about this many times. What unites us is not atheism. What unites us is not some liberal order. What unites us should unite us, not does unite us, but should unite us, are three ideas that came out of the Enlightenment, three ideas that are essentially all Western civilization, three ideas that are necessary, necessary, maybe even sufficient to fight Islamism, to fight Putin mystical Christianity, to fight China, and to fight our mystics at home, our Christians at home. Reason, individualism, and political liberty in that order, because reason, everything flows from it. Reason, individualism, political liberty, those are the ideas that should unite us in the great civilizational struggle that we are facing. And to the extent that we reject them, as sadly, I and Hirsi Ali just did, to the extent that the West says, no, no, no, my faith is better than your faith. How do I know free speech is good? Well, because it's a tradition. It comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition. That's what makes it good. And the Judeo-Christian tradition is good. She continues to say, to me, this freedom of conscious and speech has passed the greatest benefit of Western civilization. There's a lot of truth to that. Greatest benefit, not the source, the benefit. It has not come naturally to man, it does not. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. I wanna scream, I wanna yell. Out of frustration. It was these debates that advanced science and reason diminished cruelty, suppressed superstition, and built institutions to order and protect life, while guaranteeing freedom to as many people as possible. Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage. It became increasingly clear that Christ's teaching implied not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics, it also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer. No, Christianity did not grow its dogmatic stage. Kicking and screaming and fighting all the way, Christianity was watered down by secular forces. It was watered down by science. It was watered down by philosophy, by ideas, by philosophers, philosophers who were flawed, significantly flawed, but good enough to show us the weaknesses and the inconsistencies and the challenges that Christianity presented. And those philosophers didn't come out of Christianity. Yes, they studied Christianity as everybody did, they were Christians as everybody was, but the whole point is they were challenging Christianity. It is so frustrating. It is not out of Jewish and Christian communities. Jews had very little to say about this kind of stuff, for example. And it wasn't Christian communities, it was communities of oppressed intellectuals who were at the fringes, who were not embraced by Christian communities. Take Spinoza, who were shunned by his own Jewish community. It was not embraced by Christianity, but was embraced by a modern secular group of intellectuals in Northern Europe. And Christ's teaching? Who gets to decide what Christ's teaching actually imply? Who gets to decide which one of these, what he says, what it means, how it means? Does Ein Hersey Alli get to interpret it? The modern Christian zu did. Which sect of Protestantism actually reflects this? Did the Catholic Church reflect it? Maybe, maybe sixth century Christianity was the right Christianity according to Christ. How do we know by what standard do we measure? How does she evaluate Western civilization as having any benefit? What makes freedom of conscious and speech important and crucial and so good, the greatest benefit of Western civilization? What makes it so? By the standard of Christianity, by the standard of God, by the standard of mystical revelation, by the standard of whom we will not win. We will not win against woke. We will not win against Putin, Okshi or Islam by joining them in rejecting reason and embracing faith. We will not win by if we don't understand our history. If we don't understand our intellectual roots and we don't understand all of ideas in history. We will not win by shouting from the top of the mountain that our dogma is better than your dogma. This is a battle of ideas. Everybody we're opposed to supposedly that all the enemies we share with Ein Hersey Alli are all mystics. By joining them in becoming mystics, we do not win, we lose. And even if we win the specific exchange we lose in the long run because we become like them. I mean, the great failing of Christianity but even greater the great failing of secular philosophy, the great failure of Butcher and Russell, the great failure of Nietzsche, the great failure of the new atheists is that they will not challenge Christian morality. They will not advocate for reason and individualism, maybe political freedom, but certainly not reason and individualism. That they will not advocate a reason-based philosophy and a reason-based morality. They will not stand for something really new and radical. That is right there in the Enlightenment if only they were willing to look and see, if only they were willing to let go of their Judeo-Christian traditional values. So this is, you know, she has fallen into the trap. You cannot fight the enemy without values. The only source of values is religion and therefore we need religion in order to fight the enemy. This same trap Scott falls into, I guess. But this is all nonsense. And again, by doing so, you become the enemy. You become him. Now, there's no question, there's some really good Christians. I'm sure Ein Heerseli will be one of the good ones. Her husband, now, now focusing for the most part, is one of the good ones. There are a number of others, but there are also some really, really bad ones. And you know who the really, really bad ones are? They're the ones who are more consistent. They're the ones who take the Christianity more seriously. They're the ones who embrace the Christianity and really are going to fight for it. Who is going to win the battle for Christianity? Not the battle for Western civilization, but the battle for Christianity. Is it gonna be the watered down version or the principled version? I fear it is the principled one that wins in the end. So there's one reason Ein Heerseli, Ali, has turned Christian and has rejected atheism. Of course, atheism just to, I mean, I think this is obvious to this group, atheism is nothing. Atheism is an negation. It is not a positive ideology. It doesn't stand for anything. It doesn't propose anything. It just says God as that concept that's conveyed by religion is meaningless. There's no there there. It rejects faith. But it doesn't even elevate reason. You've got lots of people out there who call themselves atheists and who are believers in, I don't know, Mother Earth or the original sin of man or a million other mystical ideas. Western civilization is not atheism. It is not skepticism. Western civilization is not a rules-based liberal international order. It is not God is dead. Western civilization is reason, individualism, political freedom and everything that that implies. That is worth fighting for. That we can defeat anybody on. But that's hard. That's hard to explain to people. And when you're surrounded by intellectuals as we are today who are all kind of religious, who kind of advocate for individualism like Jordan Peterson says, oh, he's free individualism and then a lot of his prescriptions are collectivist. He's for a reason, but then his mumbo jumbo is completely mystical. He's for political freedom unless you disagree with him and then maybe the state should regulate you. To be a true advocate of reason, individualism and political freedom, political liberty is a lonely job. It's a lonely job. I know, because I'm one of the few who do it and God is it lonely. The second reason she gives, so I've already gone 50 minutes but this is gonna be a long show today. Bear with me, we have 212 people watching. Let me just say, please, if you're watching and if you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing. Agree or disagree with me, I am gonna challenge your beliefs and shake things up and cause some cognitive dissonance and get you thinking. So please, if you're not a subscriber already, please subscribe. Also, like the show before you leave, if you can. We got 99 likes, that should be well over 200. So please like the show. It helps with the algorithms. All this stuff helps with the algorithms. So she writes, yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realization that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without spiritual solace undurable. Indeed, very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question. What is the meaning and purpose of life? Here you get to the heart of it and really this is the source of the other. The lack of personal values, a need for purpose and meaning and being educated by Muslims in her past, by the Jordan Peterson's of the world today. The purpose and meaning can only be found outside of you. The purpose and meaning must be something elevated above you, more important than you. Every politician left and right cites this. Every intellectual out there explains this. Purpose and meaning are external. They're out there that can be found by searching. And atheists and non-antheists all agree on this. I mean, where does Sam Harris find purpose and meaning? I saw an interview he just did with Trigonometry. I saw a section of it, him and Eric Weinstein. And he says, yeah, it's really sad that people can't find purpose and meaning where it really is. Where is purpose and meaning according to Sam Harris? In a psychedelic experience. I mean, he says if only one psychedelics become more common, one psychedelics becomes more acceptable, then people will discover a purpose and meaning in them. In a state of consciousness elicited by drugs. A state of consciousness detached from actual reality in a state of consciousness where one is not in control of one's own mind. That's where you will find purpose. That's where you will find meaning. This is Sam Harris. This is the advocate for reason. This is the secularist. This is the atheist. And I like Sam Harris. I like a lot of his stuff. But that is insanity. So if purpose and meaning have to be found in a mystical experience, now I don't need to take drugs. I can just believe in God and meditate to God. Yeah, I think, just as an aside, I think Sam Harris is one of the best cultural commentators out there by far. By far, very few better than him. His analysis of so many issues. Yes, I know he denies free will. They all deny free will. Who exactly upholds free will? Stephen Pinkett denies free will in some respect. He also is defending free will right now. They all deny it in some sense. And yet, he is still the best commentator among the best commentators on current events. He was excellent on Trump. He's been excellent on woke. He's been excellent on free speech. He's been excellent on, I don't know, even on gun laws. He's really, really good. But his advocacy for psychedelics as the source of meaning and purpose of life is nuts. Nuts. Yes, David Deutsch promotes free will. One of the few intellectuals out there who does that. Good for him. I'm a big, I'm a fan, right? Up to a point. Sam is terrible on a number of things. Yes, I know, but he's great when he's great. And if you can't see that, I can't help you. So the idea here is that meaning and purpose have to be outside. And meaning and purpose are the exclusive realm of religion and psychedelics, I guess. But what about the idea, the meaning and purpose are in our lives, or choices we make, or we decide how we decide to shape our life, our material life, and our spiritual life? What about the purpose of living a good life, living a moral life, elevating your life to the best you can be, to living the best that you can be, to being a moral person, morality, as I ran conceives it, not as these Christians conceive of it. Shouldn't that be the purpose of life, living? Being the best at living, you can be. Why does the purpose of life entail something outside of you and therefore always entails sacrifice of your own values, sacrifice of who you are, sacrifice of your independence, sacrifice of your own mind? She goes on to write, Russell and other activist atheists believe that with the rejection of God, we would enter an age of reason and intelligent humanism. We should, but Russell, of course, is an enemy of reason, properly understood. But the God whole, the void left by the retreat of the church has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma, all true. Does that mean it cannot be filled by reason and rationality? It cannot be filled by rational values and the pursuit of rational values and irrational life. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being in action, mostly by engaging virtue signaling theater on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.C. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy. Quote, when men choose not to believe in God, they do not therefore believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. But that is such a narrow view of the world. Is everybody doing that? Is everybody who is a secularist engaged in virtue signaling theater? Is everybody joining modern cults? It's true, many people are. It's true, it is a real problem. But is the solution at an ancient cult instead of a modern cult? And isn't part of the reason that there's virtue signaling on behalf of a victimized minority and doomed planet, isn't that partially because of the altruism that Christianity teaches us? The original sin that Christianity teaches us? Do we have to believe in nothing? Or can we believe in rational values? In this nihilistic vacuum, she continues, the challenge before us becomes civilizational. We can't withstand China, Russia, and Iran, she goes back to this. If we can't explain to our population why it matters that we do, yes, I agree with that. We can't fight woke ideology, if we can't defend the civilization that it is trying to destroy. Yes, what is that civilization? I in her CLE, you have to think about what that civilization really is. It's not the Judeo-Christian tradition. And we count Kant's Islamism with purely secular tools. Yes, we can. And how? It's the only way to count to it. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok. True. But why are videos on TikTok the symbol of a secular country? They're not. The symbol of hedonism and nihilism, the symbols of emptiness. And most of the people on TikTok would probably say they believe in God and probably say they were part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, most woke people, here's something I would guarantee you, most woke people are religious or at least believe in God and think of themselves as part of that Judeo-Christian tradition. It's only through reason. It's only through rational values. It's only through valuing your own life and understanding what value your own life requires, demands of you. That you can actually A, live a happy life and B, challenge all the enemies that we face. She says, the lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, absolutely. Embedded in the foundational text of Islam to attract, engage and mobilize Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilization will continue. And fortunately, there's no need to look for some new age concoction and medication and mindfulness. That's, I think that's an attack on Sam Harris. Christianity has it all. Yeah, except liberty, except freedom, except dignity, except truth. By the way, no way in the entire essay does she claim Christianity is true. No way in the entire essay does she say she's come to the conclusion that God is real. She can't find purpose. So she needs somebody to give her purpose. She can't fight Islam. So she's looking for another tribe to join to be able to fight Islam. And I'm being ungenerous here on purpose. I really do respect Ayn Hosea Ali. So this is, this is why it's so shocking and upsetting. So she says that is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapped atheist. Of course, I will have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church every, each Sunday, but I have recognized in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief have to offer. They have a guys, this is what the world is coming to. And this is what you should fear. You should really, really fear. And I really do take this as a, as a challenge as a sign of our failure. Our failure as objectivist, our failure as people within a secular community, I guess. A failure of people trying to, a failure of Western civilization to define itself, to defend itself, a failure of historians to articulate the actual history. It's a failure of, it's our failure. Of presenting the world with an alternative to Christianity and to Islam. So, you know, somebody's, I guess Scott as usual is accusing me of being anti-Christian, absolutely I'm anti-Christian. Without any doubt, I'm anti-Judaism too. I'm certainly anti-Islam, but I'm definitely anti-Christian. I know what Christianity means. I know it's destructive nature. It's her failure to some extent, but no, it's the fact that when she came to the West as a very young woman who had rejected Islam and embraced secularism, the intellectuals that surrounded her, the intellectuals that were meaningful were either the new atheists who exude skepticism and lack of an alternative to Christianity and embrace of Christian morality, or religious conservatives of varying types that we who are neither new atheists nor Christian conservatives do not have the presence, the gravitas, you know, is sad and it's a failure. Scott says, this is great, this perfect Scott comment. Many people take being a Christian to mean morality, just being a good person, but being a Christian, if you take your morality seriously, is according to objectivism, being not a good person, being a bad person. I mean, this is the fundamental thing Scott doesn't wanna grasp while still claiming to be an objectivist, that Christian morality is evil. Christian morality is evil. Anti-life, anti-success, anti-pride, anti-achievement. Now again, in its moral formulations, it's been watered down to be everything for everybody, but that's essentially what it is. All right, I will take your questions. Oh, let me just say this, yeah, Don Watkins, I meant to say this earlier, I don't know what happened. Oh, and I didn't mean to close that window. All right, Don has published an article about this. Generally, I highly, highly recommend Don Watkins' substack. It's called Earthly Idealism. Earthly Idealism, that's a perfect title because it's exactly what we're missing here. A secular, earthly, science-based, reason-based idealism. So I highly recommend his substack. He just published today, it's called Iron Hersey's, Iron Hersey, Ali's shameful conversion to Christianity, subtitle, Jordan Peterson Claims Another Sculpt. So it's very good, but generally his writing is excellent. He's my co-author, after all. But it really is excellent. You should sign up to his substack, just go to earthlyidealism.com. Earthly Idealism, one word, earthlyidealism.com, and sign up for Don Watkins' substack. It really is good, and I think you get something at least once a week, and it's mostly focused on how do we inspire people around irrational morality? How do we inspire people around rational values? How do we inspire people to live a rational life? Which is exactly I think the kind of content we need right now. All right, we have 220 people watching. Those of you getting some value out of this, please consider making an attribution to support the show. This is how I live, so you can use the super chat to ask a question, or you can just use a sticker to just provide some support. It doesn't have to be a lot. $2, $5, $10, $100, I think the max is 500. Please do so just to show value for value. Value for value. All right, let's see. Oh, let me also say that this show is sponsored by the Inran Institute. The Inran Institute right now. Go to inran.org slash start here for the latest kind of programs, for the latest initiatives that the Inran Institute is engaged in, and yeah, sorry, you want to say it, right? All right, let's jump in. And the latest is, let's get young people in some of Inran's books. Inran's going to have a free online event called Give an American Classic, which is around the fountainhead, and you can register for that on inran.org. It's going to be on Tuesday, November 28th, at 2 p.m. Eastern time. It should be a lot of fun. It should be interesting. It should be exciting. Please join us on this. All right, let's see, do I have $150 question. All right, Harper says, the left is so monstrous, they were attempting to make Israel out to be just evil as Hamas. Obama's saying we are all responsible for October 7th, i.e. Hamas is not responsible or more relativistic cycle of violence. Is this Hegel's dialectic? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure some of it is inspired by Hegel's dialectics. Certainly, it's inspired by that whole notion, by the whole notion of the whole notion of Kantian philosophy of a separation of reason from reality, of an undermining of reason, which Hegel did better than anybody else. No, I mean, yeah, I mean, this is Christian rejection of self-interest. This is Christian elevation of the victim above all else, at least Christian theology, if not Christian practice. And this is kind of intersectionality on steroids. And of course, for Obama, it's moral equivalence. It's not seeing ideas as driving everything, it's refusing to acknowledge there's good and there is evil. It's a rejection of the value of Western civilization or what it represents and what it is. It is a real monstrosity. And of course, underneath it all is, or above it all or underneath it all, is real anti-Semitism, which it's becoming more and more evident is a real thing in the 21st century, as potent as it has been at any point in human history, as evil and disgusting as it has been at any point in history. But it's real, it's out there. It's not just Muslims, it's people out there and a hatred of Jews that leads one to base anybody who's willing to stand up to those Jews. That means anybody. So it's, you know, this is what we're seeing right now in terms of the left and the libertarian, by the way, to attempt to make Israel out to be the evil one, is just the obvious outcome of their ideas, the obvious outcome of their philosophy. And it's just much bigger, much more insidious than I think many of us thought it was, particularly this kind of angle of anti-Semitism that is added on to the mix of intersectionality and everything else. All right, please feel free to ask questions, support the show through a super chat, through a sticker. We're still short of our goal and we've got a lot of people watching. So hopefully just a little bit of money from everybody who's watching would get us way beyond the goal. Value for value. All right, that's my last appeal. There's nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to do and no one to live for. This is being true in every place for all time. Our young man are drowning in idleness, purposefulness, and we're paying for it. That is just not true. Now, I agree completely. There's nothing worse than drowning in idleness and purposefulness, but the idea that you have to have somebody to live for is downright despicable. I don't live for anybody, I live for myself. So the idea that purposefulness means others, means living for others, meaning focusing on others is wrong and it is exactly what leads us to all the problems we have in the world today. Because one of the reasons people become idle and purposeless is they believe in this. They think that they have to live for others, but they don't want to. They really don't want to because living for others is self-destructive. They don't wanna be altruists, but they're told that altruism is the only alternative, the only morality, the only way to find purpose. Instead, we should be teaching people to find purpose in themselves, in their own productive activities. To be idle is to negate purpose, to be idle is to negate life, to be idle is to negate reason, to negate your life. That's your purpose, your life. The moral perfection you can achieve, the happiness you can attain, the great values you can build, create, make. So yes, there's nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to do, but there's also nothing more dangerous than like Hamas, young man, who have something to do and they have someone to live for, Allah, and they live for that Allah and they're willing to kill you for that Allah. So the fact that people are not idle and they have somebody else to live for makes them super dangerous, super dangerous. Live for yourself, live for your own rational long-term happiness. Then I'll trust you, that'll give you purpose. Don't, you know, what we don't need in the world is more altruism. What did Iron Man say? The world is dying from an orgy of altruism. That's the problem. Mark Hendrick, 50 bucks, thank you. Mark Austin just did his first super chat. Thank you, first super on our live streams. Thank you, Austin. The lucky day, thank you. Let's see, David, thank you. Mathias, thank you. Darlene, thank you. These are all people who did stickers and somebody did $100 earlier. Where is he? Was it Wes? Let's see, I think it was Wes. Yes, Wes Stewart did $100. Thank you, Wes. And I know there were others. Thank you for all the people who did stickers, have done stickers. You can also ask questions. Don't ask questions in the chat. I don't have time to read questions in the chat. You wanna ask a question, use the super chat. You can do it for $2. Frank just did a super chat for $2. You can do it for $2. You don't even have to do it for huge amounts of money. And I will answer every single question as long as it takes us, you know, tonight. So I'm here to answer all the questions for as long as it takes, and it might take a walk as we have a lot of questions. This might be your long dreamed up three hour show tonight. Clark says, off topic, but I'm one of five kids and none of us are very close with one another. Am I wrong to feel bad for my parents? What's the point in investing in so many kids if they're not going to be close with each other? I don't know. I don't think the purpose of having a lot of kids is for them to be close with each other. I mean, you hope that they're close with you as a parent. And, you know, I think it's even better if they're close to each other and to you and that you have kind of a fun, exciting family life. But that's not necessary. It's not, you know, I don't know how your parents feel. So I don't know whether they're disappointed and I don't know what all your kids' relationship are with the parent. But, you know, don't, it's not the purpose of having a lot of kids for them to get along with each other. Purpose of having a lot of kids, hopefully, is, you know, the fun of having a lot of kids and the relationship you as a parent have with them. All right, Troy just came in second time this month with 500 Australian dollars. Thank you, Troy. Wow, I mean, that is fantastic. Troy, one of my best and most consistent supporters on this show, because he also does a monthly contribution by PayPal in addition to the 500 Australian dollars he comes in with in this month twice. So thank you, Troy. Really, really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed the show or enjoying the show. So I wouldn't worry about your parents. First of all, it's their problem, not yours. It is what it is, right? I assume there's good reason why you don't all get together. Why you don't all get along. All right, Marek says, hey, Iran, thanks for helping me understand what's happening in the world. Have your views on the benefits of immigration being altered in any way by these recent pro-Hamas marches? No, no. Look, I've said over the years many times that what the West needs to do is declare war on Islamic totalitarian and restrict Muslim immigration. Maybe even eliminated completely. I said this. I said this in my debate with Leonard Peacock. I've said this since then. I don't think that is a viable strategy without declaring a war. I also have said over and over and over again, and I still say it, that even with this immigration, there is absolutely no deterministic necessary outcome by which they have to turn all into Hamas sympathizers. I view the fact that they are Hamas sympathizers as evidence of the weakness of the West, of the fact that we, to quote Ayan Hoseali, we don't know what we stand for. We are not willing to agitate for what we stand for, to educate what we stand for, to convince people of what we stand for. So it's the fact that we will not fight for values that makes it possible for these immigrants not to assimilate and therefore become our enemies. But I have no question in my mind that if even at this late date, after decades of appeasing Islam and appeasing Muslims all over the world and appeasing the worst Muslims in the world, the Islamists, appeasing the Taliban, those of you who are Trump fans, remember that it was Trump that invited the Taliban to Camp David to negotiate peace. It was Trump that signed a peace deal with them, appeasing the worst Muslims in the world. Even after all of that, 20 years of appeasement of Islam. So why wouldn't they march in the streets? We're not an alternative to Islam. We just want to grovel before Islam. Instead that we had stood up to Islam. We crushed our enemies. But imagine today, if the Western world had come together and actually believed what they said, which was they fully support Israel's right to self-defense and Israel should do whatever needs to be done in order to destroy Hamas. And then Israel immediately engaged in destructive activities. And with more certainty and no wavering, the entire Western world backed Israel. Israel's demolition of mosques, blowing up of hospitals, doing whatever was necessary to destroy Hamas as quickly and as effectively as possible. Imagine if the West had rallied around that and said, don't mess with us, because we're serious about this. We will not tolerate. We will not tolerate violence. We will not tolerate Islamic violence. In our streets or anyway, imagine if that had been the response of the West. Do you think 300,000 people would be marching right now? Imagine if Harvard University had treated the Muslims who signed all those petitions saying it was Israel's folk, if they treated them the same way they treat the KKK, if they treated them the same way they treat racists in America. Would that be continuing right now? No. So I blame the entire Pro Hamas marches on the West's weakness, on the West's appeasement. Now, of course, it's their fault too, for being in the West and not realizing the values of the West. But hey, Westerners don't even appreciate the values of the West. So why would we expect it of Muslims? Thanks, Mavik. Dave said, could Jeanne Epstein host a debate between you and Norman Ficklestein? I don't know. I don't know. I haven't looked into it yet. Dave, I've been busy. I apologize. I have to decide if I want to debate Norman Ficklestein. I mean, there's real issues there whether I want to debate him. And then what forum and how we do it and who pays me and all of that, still to be determined, right? So one step at a time, I'll get to it hopefully this week. As it is right now, I'm debating Dennis Kucinich, the leftist, on whether the United States should attack Iran or not. I guess I'm zero hedge. All right, Daniel says, Dr. Binswanger gave this formulation a few weeks ago, quote, the purpose of skepticism is to enable dogma to not have to justify itself in reason. That's pretty good. And to quote Dr. Piekhoff, quote, reason is never silent. It always has something to say. Yes, it has an opinion and it has a judgment. And yeah, there's always behind the skepticism or some dogma they're trying to push, right? But they don't want to use reason or they can't use reason. As I said before, for those of you asking or Edwards asking, I will not debate Dave Smith. I will not debate anybody associated with that anarcho-capitalist wing of the libertarian movement. I will not debate anybody with affiliation with the Mises Institute. I will not debate anybody affiliated with anti-war.org. I will not generally debate a anarchist on farm policy. I mean, that's just stupid. There is no farm policy for an anarchist. They can't even think in those kinds of circumstances. I won't debate any of those people ever. So you don't have to ask me, will you debate this person when we debate? I never said this like for decades. I will not debate people from the Murray Rothbard Institute. Thank you, Akira. I will not debate people from the so-called Mises Institute or anybody affiliated with Mrs. Caucus, any of those people. Liam says, did you get a chance to review the third GOP debate? It's nice to see Vivek quoting Alex Epstein verbatim all the time. He's used some of Alex's talking points in every single debate so far and during his campaign speeches. Well, I see why you like that Vivek is quoting Alex. I actually don't. And my guess is, and I'm just guessing because I don't know, I haven't talked about this, is that Alex cringes a little bit. Vivek is so unhinged. He is so, you know, he's so disrespectful and you know, he's like a young, vivacious, ugly Trump. That having these gems, these beautiful phrases, this amazing content that Alex has produced, put into the mouth of a ugly person like Vivek, ugly spiritually not, and the way he behaves is not particularly good for the cause. I would much rather, and I think you might see this at some point, have DeSantis or certainly Haley use those talking points. But with Vivek, it just gets lumped on with, well, he's crazy, he's kind of nuts. He says, this is why every time he says something good, I like, ugh, this is the guy who wants to build a wall on the border with Canada. I mean, how can he take anything he says seriously? So why would you take what he says, that's Alex's seriously, right? So now Alex is advising Vivek, he's advising anybody who'll pay him basically. He's advising, I think DeSantis, he's, I think being approached by Haley's campaign. He is involved in, you know, pretty much by Republican senators, Republican House, he's very embedded, and he's gonna get these ideas into those circles. It would be better if the spokesman at these debates for these ideas was somebody more respectable than Vivek. Adam, Putin celebrated October 7th program with top leaders of Hamas, also considering himself a defender of the Judeo-Christian tradition against the neoliberal globalism of Europe. Trump is Putin's sock puppet, please comment. I don't know if Trump is Putin's sock puppet. He's certainly, I think, a weakling when compared to Trump. I, when compared to Putin, I think Putin is a much better thinker, much stronger, much more has an agenda. I mean, Trump fades when it comes, as compared to Putin, and cannot stand up to him. I don't believe, but his sock puppet is a little strong. I don't know if he's a sock puppet. He might be, but I don't know. What is scary is that Putin represents the same he says. He represents all the same things that Aya and Haley claims. She claims that the Judeo-Christian tradition represents, you know, freedom of thought and freedom of speech, not in Putin's Russia. In Putin's Russia, the Judeo-Christian tradition represents a much narrower view of freedom, unfreedom, it represents unfreedom. So that's what scares me. I mean, we've seen Jordan Peterson's embrace of Putin intellectually as a defend of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Is this a Judeo-Christian tradition that Aya and Haley now is dedicating herself? Is this a Judeo-Christian tradition that she wants to unite the West around? I know, I don't think so. I mean, she's better than that. But how does she differentiate? And how does she know that her interpretation of Jesus is right and that Putin's interpretation of Jesus is wrong? And is she now joining the attack on neoliberalism, neoliberal globalism again with Putin, and Jordan Peterson? So no. But I certainly think Trump is a coward and is coward by Putin. You saw that in the meeting they had. Trump has, you know, Putin bullies Trump in my view. Andrew says, what do you think of the role collectivism played in Aley's becoming Christian? Do you think absent philosophical individualism, one feels one needs a hood? You know, I don't know. She does not strike me as a collectivist. She does not strike me as needing a hood. She needs intellectual camaraderie. There's no question, we all do. But I know, I don't think so. She's not, I don't think so. I think it's what she says it is. I think she doesn't understand where values come from. I think she can't accept egoism. She read Ein Rand and rejected Ein Rand. She can't accept the is-ought that you can derive an art from reality. And she doesn't know what that art would be if you could. And the people she's surrounded herself, the secular people, like Sam Harrison, like the other new atheists, don't have what she's looking for, which is a set of values, a purpose and a meaning that can inspire her and the rest of the world. And she realizes that you have to inspire millions of people and maybe you can't inspire millions of people. I mean, we know you can't inspire millions of people without an ideal, without idealism. And she can't comprehend an idealism that is not religious. On the Leroy, how is a common man able to learn and integrate objective values? How is the common man able to learn and integrate objective values? Religion puts faith over reason, but couldn't a similar format of community centers instructing objectiveism and reason be a means of spreading these values? Yeah, I think ultimately they would be. You have to have a critical mass. I mean, we have reading groups, they are community groups, they're places all over the world where people get together and study in random. I think ultimately that might get systematized into some kind of community centers where that happens, absolutely. But ultimately it goes into the schools. But you need critical mass to do that. You need to be a lot bigger than we are today. Today we appeal to some people, we need to get as many of those as possible, they go out into their communities and create entities, organizations, circumstances by which they can communicate to other people, these ideas. Whoops. Ian says, Don Watkins has also been great on this and publishing great stuff lately. I agree completely. We need more books like Don's Upcoming Effective Egoism and I hope it gets a major push when it comes out. Me too. Yeah, I mean, as I said, I think his blog is a sub stack. It's excellent, support it, subscribe to it, subscribe with money. Yeah, reward him for the good work that he's doing. And we need a lot more of that. We need 1,000 people doing the kind of work that Don and Alex and I am doing. We need a lot of people like that. And if we have that critical mass, we will win. There's no question we will win. Andy, do you think there's something about prior religious people that draws them back? I know Rand always thought religion was BS in the beginning and I always felt the same. I couldn't be religious even if I tried. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly my case. I mean, I became a pretty explicit atheist at age seven or something like that, very, very young. And six or seven. And I couldn't imagine. I mean, to me, it's just a completely foreign. It's unthinkable. I think if you're religious, you know, there is a, what do you call it? Yeah, there's maybe an opening for that for it. But I think it's much more significant the people around, you know, I think the fact that she has a husband who's religious, again, more culturally religious than dogmatically religious, but, you know, a traditionalist, a conservative, the fact that those are the circles she is in, those are the circles she lives in, those are the friends she has, those are the people she respects and admires. I think that's a big part of it. I think that's a big part of it. The people around you, you know, where you belong, they chip away at it, but yes. So the fact that she was religious probably has something to do with it. But I think it's more where she finds herself in life right now and who she finds herself with surrounded by right now. God, psychospeak, you're an obsessed lunatic. I mean, who cares? Just shut up. Right, I mean, he writes the same thing over and over and over again. He's been doing it for years. So he has one issue. He doesn't care about anything else. It seems is single-minded stupidity. All right, hack to reason eight, 86. Hello, Iran, why wouldn't you debate Dave Smith? You debated Michael Malis, which was awesome, which made me a bigger fan of you. You know, Michael and Dave are good friends. Why debate with Michael Malis and not Dave? Well, because Dave is much more explicitly, I think, nihilistic than Michael Malis. I don't think I'd debate Michael Malis on foreign policy. I wouldn't. There'd be no point, although I think Malis would be better than Dave. Dave is also leading the libertarian party, the libertarian caucus. He's directly affiliated with these people with kind of the anti-war.org and the, and they're just beneath contempt. They just are. I have no zero value of respect for them. You know, I've met Dave Smith. He's a nice guy, we chatted a little bit, but given his response to this issue, I'm not debating this issue with somebody who pretends to be, quote, on my side, on the side of liberty and freedom. I might debate somebody on an alcohol capitalism, and I did. I debated Michael Malis. But when I was approached by the Soho Forum to debate an alcohol capitalism, I said, there's almost nobody I'm willing to debate this with, and I'm not willing to debate it with anybody from the Mises Institute. I find them too despicable. And too irrational. And again, foreign policy is just, there's nothing to debate. The very foundational principles opposed to my very foundational principles about the role of government, about the role of the state. Foreign policy is the derivative from that. If you disagree on the basic fundamental principles, there's no point in debating these other things. So I was willing to debate Brian Kaplan on alcohol capitalism, because I think Brian is incredibly reasonable. He's not a complete nutty flake like these people are. These people are flakes. And there's no point in debating this. There's nobody to be won over. If you think that what's in Scott Horton and Dave Smith's position on, let's say, Hamas is the right position, God, I don't know that there's any hope for you. I'll tell you, talk about it, so you're obviously obsessed. Michael says, set a goal so big that you can't achieve it until you grow into the person who can. Yeah, that's good. I like that. Suddenly with regard to moral values, that's true. Michael also says, accuse your enemies of what you are doing as you are doing it to create confusion. Yeah, confusion is the hallmark of nihilists and whether it's Islamic nihilists or communist nihilists. Daniel says, when arguing with a pro-Palestinian, isn't more effective to take an epistemic route to go straight after their belief in narratives, try to help them understand the individual nature of reason and what objectivity is? Well, I mean, it really depends on the person. Could they even go there? Is there any ability to go there? I mean, there's very little value in going after, in debating a pro-Palestinian, particularly in the context right now, because there's no, they make up facts, they make up reality, they make up stories. You know, right now, I don't know if you heard, but this hospital complex, the claiming they don't have power, they don't have energy, they can't run the generators, Hamas has tons of fuel. Why doesn't it provide fuel for the generators to run the hospital? I mean, I think confronting people with contradictions like that, Israel's tried to provide the fuel to the hospital and Hamas has told them they can't accept it. Israel is doing more to save civilians, Palestinian civilians right now than Hamas has ever done, ever done. If they can't understand it at that level, then they're not gonna, you know, the idea of dealing with epistemic issues, yeah, I mean, ideally that's what you would wanna do. But how do you even get there? Can they even think in those terms? Can you get them to think in those terms? That's a massive challenge. When they can't even accept the contradictions that are right there in front of their face. All right, let's see, we got Liam. Don't forget, by the way, to like the show. It doesn't cost you anything, just press that like button. It just really helps with the algorithm. We've got, again, 200 people still watching, and we've probably had, I don't know, 800 people going and out of the show while we're doing it, and we'll have by the time we end. The 166 likes, we should have way over 200 likes. Please consider liking. Again, it doesn't cost you anything. Just press that like, it helps out good. Now, if you don't like the show, don't press the like button. Only do it if you actually like the show. All right, Liam says, first, love yourself, then others will follow. Hopefully, yeah, absolutely love yourself. Well, earn your own love. Enric says, Islamic nations won't progress without alternatives. Should there be media like Radio Few Europe for Arab nations promoting Western individual rights can objectivism as a presence there? Yes, there should be a radio like that, but of course they are radios like that. They have the internet, they have access to the oil information in the world. Why would they listen to radio, that radio versus everything else? They have access to alternatives. The problem is that there's no defense of individual rights, coherent, forceful defense of individual rights. Can objectivism have a presence there? Sure, but there are a million battles to be fought. How do we prioritize that over everything else? Particularly, I mean, I know that there are some people in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf States, in Tunisia, in other parts of Northern Africa, Muslims who listen to Iran Book Show. They listen to the idea of Western individual rights. How does that grow beyond a few individuals? I don't know the answer to that and is that the best research of resources right now in the markets of the Arab world? Don't we have to convince the Americans and the West first of these ideas before we go spreading them to places that are unlikely to adopt them? Tony, I think Iran proves more than anything that philosophy is immensely undervalued in society. People feel the void in their hearts with religion because they do not have philosophy. Absolutely. And remember, religion, Iran called religion a primitive form of philosophy. So that is, you know, they're taking on a primitive form of philosophy instead of a exciting, interesting form of philosophy, instead of real philosophy to challenge themselves. But it's under-appreciated, and partially it's under-appreciated because so much of it's so bad. Right, if philosophy for you is German philosophy, post, it can't, and what follows, then yeah, it's pretty horrible. And people who is then philosophy and they reject philosophy and they'd rather do something simple like religion. That's the challenge we have. Philosophy is hard and most of it is crappy. Michael says, why have been Shapiro and Daily Why are so successful? Same with PragerU. People don't want this leftist crap. There's clearly a strong market for alternatives. There's a strong market for an alternative that doesn't ask them to give up on their altruism or that doesn't ask them to give up on their religion. So they're absolutely a market for an alternative to the left. There always has been. The right has always been strong in that sense. There's always been. It was Rush Limbaugh. Before they rushed Limbaugh, it was Buckley. There were other commentators. The right has always had a following. The right has never been short of a following because the right gives a significant number of people exactly what they want. A good dose of religion with pseudo patriotism and pseudo defensive markets. But they're pseudo. They're not that good. And much of PragerU is crap. And much of what Ben Shapiro says is wrong. And Candace Owen is downright horrible. I mean, she keeps deteriorating. She keeps getting worse. I can't even imagine listening to Candace Owen on a regular basis. It's enough to fuel the little bits I hear from her. She's awful. She is the devil. And by the way, watch your Ankhama on Hamas and Israel. She's terrible. Michael says, should crowds chanting get the phara be dispersed or arrested? Is this free speech or call for violence? I think it's borderline enough that they should be dispersed. Maybe not arrested, but dispersed. And look, I don't know if you saw videos of people smashing the door's entrance into Grand Central Station, police cowering and hiding. I mean, this was true when the BLM marched and when they descended into riots and the police just gave in. And it's true now, our police need to be a lot, a lot more forceful. And they need to shut these people down. If they're inciting violence, they need to be shut down. And much of these are inciting violence. It's one thing for the Nazis to march through Skokie. It's another thing for the Nazis to march through Skokie advocating for killing the Jews of Skokie. Liam says, do you see Israel using its nuclear arsenal at some point? Is there a greater than 50% chance Iran uses nuclear weapons in Israel? No, I don't think there's a greater than 50% chance. Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, so it's not clear they'll develop them. It's not clear they can. And even if they develop them, I think probably they use them as well under 10%, maybe even under 1%, still too high in my view. And I don't think Israel will ever use its nuclear arsenal. James calling self-defense genocide or apartheid really demonstrates the common state of reason in Western culture. Yeah, lack of, absolutely, absolutely. And they don't even know what these words mean. Michael says, were the Nazis more evil than the fascist Japanese Empire? Not necessarily. I mean, what the Japanese did to the Chinese, what they did to prisoners of war, what they did to many people in Asia is almost as horrific as what the Nazis did. The Nazis were unique in they industrialized death. They industrialized the killing of civilians in a way that no regime has ever done before. The Soviets in some ways are worse, but even the Soviets didn't industrialize it. So I do think the Nazis were the worst in that sense. That does not diminish the evil of the Soviets or of Mao Tse-chung or of the Popat or of the Japanese Empire. In some ways, Popat is the worst of all of them, just because he's so committed to egalitarianism. And in many ways, he's the most intellectual of all of them, almost committed to an ideology than most of them. But the Nazis industrialized the murder of civilians, which never had been done before, has a particular ugliness to it. It's completely gratuitous. There's no purpose being served. Tony, also all, I published a statement I made to my school, UNT Dallas College of Law condemning them for not condemning anti-Semitism at my school, and everywhere, Anthony Reems on LinkedIn. Thank you, Tony. I really, really appreciate you doing that. I mean, it's gonna take the good to stand up against evil if we're gonna push it back on this. More people need to do what you did. More people need to stand up against these universities, against these schools, against these bastards. More people need to go out into the streets and challenge these fascists, these Islamist fascists. Sitting on the sideline, I said this after 9-11, sitting on the sideline is no longer an alternative. It's no longer an option. If you, you know, it's, what is it? Get on, get busy living or get busy dying. Get busy fighting. Get busy fighting for your life, which means get busy fighting these bastards. Michael says, Michael Carlson right that most Americans are not too bright. Well, he should know. No, I don't think that's true. And I don't know what not too bright is compared to what, compared to whom. What does it actually mean? I don't know. Michael, given who Israel is surrounded by and its lack of willingness to engage in real self-defense, is it safer for Jews in the desperate than in Israel? Well, it's not clear, right? If anti-Semitism is really rising in the diaspora, then nobody is gonna protect Jews in diaspora. Who's gonna protect them? You know, look at what's happening in London. The British police will not defend Jews. Jews are being attacked. They're clearly inciting for violence against Jews all over. There were attacks on Jews leaving synagogue on Saturday and the police did an okay job. It's not clear that they're gonna stick with it. Jewish schools are not allowed to hire armed guards to protect the schools because you're not allowed to own weapons in England. No, I mean, it's not clear at all. At least Israel. Look, Israel is going into the Gaza. It is doing a lot. It is killing thousands of Hamas terrorists. And it seems like it is committed to dismantling this thing. It does really look like they are going. I mean, look what's happening with this hospital. In the past, Israel would have already called the ceasefire and negotiated some deal to do this school. The thing is, this time, Beebe, who is a power luster, recognizes that this time, if he compromises, he loses all political power. If he has any chance of regaining political power when this is lost, right now, he's unbelievably unpopular in Israel. It's like 75% dislike him, disapproval rating. His only chance of achieving political positive cred is to be tough. Not because he believes it. He doesn't believe in anything. He doesn't believe it's the right thing to do. He never has. He's had dozens of opportunities to prove himself and he hasn't. He should have never been prime minister. He should have been voted out years ago. And I hope, I really, really hope that he does not gain any credibility from this because this is his fault. If not for him, this wouldn't have happened because he's the one who appeased, caved, you know, negotiated in the past, right? So right now, no, Beebe's a power luster. He is doing what he's doing because he believes that it is the only way for him to sustain political power. And Israel seems to be doing much more than it has in the past. I mean, in the past, this hospital situation would have been dealt with by complete appeasement. As it is, there's appeasement going on, but it's not on the scale of what they would have done in the past. So it really does look like Israel's defending itself, not the way I would, but better than any other Western government. Jemi says, is it wrong to say that Judeo-Christian society in the West is the only society that allowed the ideas of the Enlightenment to foster? No, it's, yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which that's true. They allowed the introduction of Aristotle in, but that's not because of Jewish, it's not a Judeo-Christian society or tradition. It's because Aquinas brought them in and he was the genius of the time and they tolerated it. And then they embraced elements of it, not knowing where it would lead. And then when the Renaissance happened, they kind of tried to embrace it and use it for the sake of Christianity, but at every point along the road, they have tried to subvert the advancement. At every point along the road, they have tried to stop it from happening. I mean, the ideas of the Enlightenment fostered, you know, I mean, there's no other place where those ideas were even suggested or tried. I mean, a little bit in Islam in the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries, but it was just the beginning and it was not allowed to completely flourish because the fundamentalists clamped down on it. I mean, the good thing is that Christianity saw so many internal conflicts and so much disagreement and so much internal fighting that there was never one fundamentalist branch that could clamp down on it. They tried the counter-reformation, the inquisition. I mean, remember the inquisition? This is the Judeo-Christian tradition. The inquisition is part of that tradition. You know, you'd think that any right-suspecting person who wants to rally everybody about positive values of liberty and freedom and free speech would run away from any ideology that embraced an inquisition, not just the Spanish inquisition, the inquisition. And you think Calvin was tolerant of dissenters? Or Luther was tolerant of dissenters? Have you read how the Protestants slaughtered and killed each other? That is, so maybe it's the fragmentation of Christianity that allowed the enlightenment and the renaissance and the enlightenment to bubble through the cracks. But that's because it was fragmented, not that as a society it allowed. And also this whole Judeo-Christian thing is also a scam. There is no Judeo-Christian anything. There's never been a Judeo-Christian society. Christians hated Jews, oppressed Jews, murdered Jews, pogrom Jews. There was no Judeo-Christian society until the 20th century, and even then, look what happened to the Judeo-Christian society in Germany. There was a Christian society, a Christian, don't either give Jews credit or taint them with the association, because it wasn't there. There was one society ruled by Christianity and the Jews were oppressed and discriminated against because they weren't part of the Christian society. And there's no such thing as Judeo-Christian values. Judaism has a very different set of values than Christianity. I think healthier, actually, if you're going to adopt a religion, it's a much healthier religion than Christianity. But you tell Joam Chazzoni that he is part of a Judeo-Christian, he's not, he's Jewish. And he thinks the Christians are nuts and wrong. He'll take them over a lot of the alternatives instead of secularists or instead of Muslims. But he knows what will happen when the Christians win. There'll be no room for Jews. We do not live in a Judeo-Christian world. We live in a Christian world. And they don't know their Old Testament. They have no clue what the Old Testament even says. They don't study it. Henry says, great show, thank you, thank you. Henry really appreciate the support. Dennis says, whoa, still lots of questions. Okay, do you see a connection between the evil group conditioning that Einran described in the Campuchikos and a conservative atheist giving into the religion of her conservative environment? I don't think it's that intense. I think it's a wanting to belong. I think it's a real, because she adopted skepticism with regard to her secularism, she really is searching for values. And the values she finds, partially because of the people she's around, tend to be aligned with Christianity. So why not just embrace the source? So no, I don't think it's the Campuchikos, unless I'm missing something. I don't think that's right. All right, Daniel says 1277, Paris. Bishop Tempier published a list of 219 texts that the Christian church considered forbidden ideas. This index included everonez. Is this the Jewish Christian freedom she refers to? Well, it evolved from that. It understood that that was bad. No, individuals understood that that was bad. Individuals who rejected Christianity's dominance over human life, even if they were personally still Christian. And we don't know how many people were really Christian and how many were not. Because atheism was a, you would go to jail for atheism. You would be killed for atheism. So we don't know how many of the great thinkers were actually atheists. Michael says, Netanyahu in a recent speech claimed the forces of evil always put one to poor man back to the dark ages. That's at least one thing he's about right. He gives a great speech. He says wonderful things. He says correct things. Don't judge a man just by his speech, but also what he does. And by that standard, he's terrible, terrible, terrible. A lot of stuff is coming out now on how he has supported Hamas's domination of Gaza for a long time, has promoted Hamas vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority, wanted to create that split. Netanyahu is not a hero. He's not somebody to be emulated. He's not something to be respected. He gives a great speech, respect his speeches if you want, but disassociate them from the man. He doesn't deserve the speeches he gives. Robert says, when I was young, I knew someone who changed her religion from marriage. I was baffled. How can truth, as you know it, be changed out of expediency? Well, I mean, they don't take anything seriously. They don't take truth seriously. Notice, Ayan Hirsi Ali, no way in what she wrote did she talk about truth. It's not the issue. It's utility, in a sense. WC Zien, Peterson's most insidious idea, quote, you can't know if reality can be known. So you have to take it on faith, yes. Objectivity is downstream from theology, yes. And that's exactly, it's exactly Kant, right? Peterson is Kantian in that sense. You can't know. So you might as well have faith. Donna, there are a lot of Jews in the world. There are not a lot of Jews in the world. I don't understand why they are hated, why they don't bother anybody. Well, they're successful. That bothers people. They're successful, and they're different. They have a different culture. They look a little different sometimes, but mainly they're successful. And there's not a lot of them, and they're super successful for how few they are. And if you live in it, if you believe in a zero-sum world, if you believe they're exploiting you because of the zero-sum world, then their success is your failure. And again, and they're successful, so they must be oppressing everybody. That is the logic of the victimhood under woke or under intersectionality. Frank says, what is Lena Kant's antitrust plan against Mike Amazon? Well, she wants to pick it up. She wants to dissolve Amazon. She wants to separate Amazon selling from the marketplace that Amazon has. She wants to separate Amazon from the delivery of goods. She wants to destroy Amazon. She always has wanted to destroy Amazon since she was an undergraduate. D. Daniels, his first super chat on a live stream. Thank you, Daniels. $20, really, really appreciate that. Thank you. Willa Gray, one example of Western civilization advancing in spite of Christian values is how much of the wealth and prosperity we enjoy now that was from the eroding of the church's principles on usury, absolutely. That's a good example. And that wasn't from within the church. It wasn't the logic of Christianity that was fighting against that logic. That was rejecting the logic of Christianity for an economic philosophical perspective in the world. Can you get Doug McGuff on the show? Possibly. Hugh says, as an ex-Christian raised in it, religion is a powerful pull emotionally and due to early ingrained habits of thought. I agree with that. But you are right that the people around you are greater influence. Thank you, Hugh. I agree with you. Ryan says, when does this irrationality lead to collapsing buildings and airplanes falling out of the sky? My math professor recently told us that we were his worst class in 25 years of teaching. I don't know. I really don't know. It, to some extent, surprises me we're still holding together so well, right? But at some point it does. And remember, people are super compartmentalized. They can do math in one side and they can support Hamas on the other side of the brain. So hard to tell when it all collapses. Hopefully not soon. All right, three last questions. We're almost done and hey, I answered the questions quickly so we're only at two hours and two minutes. All right, Apollos just says Larry Bird or Michael Jordan. Well, it hurts me to say but I do believe Michael Jordan was the better player. Although I enjoy watching Larry Bird more. Larry was just, he had so many different things he was good at and he was more obviously smart, right? Jordan was a genius in basketball. But Larry Bird, because he's not that athletic, his smarts come across. His smarts come across. And I like that. I like people who use their might. I like people that is a reflection of. But yeah, two of the top five players of all time, probably and Michael Jordan's probably the better player. Eyal, what do you think is the future of Israeli political landscape? I don't know. It's very hard to evaluate. I mean, I think hope that this is it for Netanyahu. The Likudu will have to find a new leader. The Likudu itself might be decimated. So there might be another center-right party that comes to replace it. Maybe of a lot of the people who for many years argued against Netanyahu and argued that he was a disaster and argued that he was causing a lot of damage to Israel. Maybe that includes Bennett and, but you've also got, what's his name? This is truly stunning. I don't know if you've read this, but there was a memo that, what's his name? Liberwitz, who runs his own political party and has refused to form a government with Netanyahu over the last few election cycles. He was Defense Secretary, 2016 maybe, 17, and he wrote this memo after Netanyahu had failed to do what was necessary with Hamas and Gaza when there were rockets launched and everything. And he wrote a memo basically saying, if this continues, this is what's gonna happen, describing October 7th, almost to the tee. And he did it based on intelligence sources at the time and what Hamas was thinking and what they were going to work on and how they could overcome Israel's advantages and why Israel's weakness would lead to all this. He really did prophesize this. And he's a political leader. So I don't think he is gonna be a prime minister because Lieberman's, thank you Lieberman. But he was Defense Minister, but he might be somebody in a future coalition that has a lot of say. I think the religious crazy right might lose some of its power. And I think kind of a centrist right center, center left coalition will form. But we'll see, right? We'll see. It's so hard to tell in Israel. And it could be some new guy coming out of nowhere. And it also depends what happens over the next few weeks in Gaza, next few years in Gaza. But I mean, Bennett is impressed. I'm sure he'll disappoint, but so far he's impressed. Hector says, holy crap, I am really announced that Christianity, Hitchens is rolling in his grave, yeah. Yeah, but Hitchens, it's his fault. It's Hitchens' fault. Hitchens and Dawkins and Havas, what did they offer in terms of positive values? What did they offer in terms of an alternative morality, an alternative meaning and purpose for life to Christianity? Nothing, a secularist Christian moral code. And we get the consequences of that. All right, guys, thank you for all the support. Troy, thank you for stepping in, really appreciate it. Thank you for everybody else. Got a lot of good questions. And the super chat, a very profitable super chat today. I really, really appreciate that. I would be back tomorrow morning or early afternoon with a news show. And yeah, don't forget to like the show before you leave. Ooh, we can make it above 200 with 196. Some of you have not liked the show yet. Please press the like and get us over 200. If you wanna support the show on a monthly basis, that would be fantastic. I've noticed a few of you adding yourself to Patreon or to our PayPal, so do it on Patreon. Just search your Unbook Show on Patreon on Subscribestar or on your UnbookShow.com slash support, that would be PayPal. It would be amazing if we could use the popularity of the show right now to also increase the monthly regular support that the show receives from you guys. Again, viewed as a value for value, a subscription to Netflix, a subscription to a service. I do eight shows a week. That is a lot. Even if you don't listen to all of them, you're listening to some of them. They present some kind of value to you. Show that value of value through one of those platforms and make a contribution. All right guys, I will see you all tomorrow. Have a great beginning of a week. Bye everybody.