 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody, walk up to the Iran Brook Show on this Sunday evening. Not a usual time for show, but I forget I didn't do any shows on the road this cycle. Like the whole month, every time I was on the road, I did no shows. So not good. Just busy, busy while I'm traveling. So I've had to do one today to make up for that. I'll probably also try to make up for it during the week. So we might do two shows Monday, two shows Tuesday, two shows Wednesday. I can't do anything Thursday and Friday. So that is, I think, the plan. I might change my mind tomorrow, but at least for now, that is the plan. All right, two topics for today. We're going to review the talk I gave in Texas, any comments you guys might have, any fallout from that, this discussion of debates, and stuff like that. So we'll do kind of an update on all that. We'll do that first. And then we will talk about the border situation in Texas. And specifically, the border situation will broadly, but really the standoff between the state of Texas and the federal government, in particular, given decisions by the Supreme Court. So we live in interesting times. There is stuff going on everywhere. But the Texas stuff is interesting. I was just in Texas, and everybody's talking about it. All right, I hope everybody had a chance to watch my talk on Israel from the University of University of Texas in Austin that we did on Friday night. We had a packed house. I think there were 160 seats. I think they were all filled, basically. And there were some people standing up in the back. So it was completely packed. And it was an interesting mixture, I think, of some local objectivists. A lot of pro-Israel kids from campus, although not as many as I thought. I thought there'd be more pro-Israel kids from campus. I thought there'd be more coming to it. Some adults, pro-Israeli adults, entrepreneurs, some Israelis, some non-Israelis from the Austin area. And then some anti-Israel, both students and non-students, but primarily students who were there as well. They had originally said that they were going to demonstrate outside, and they were rallying to do a big demonstration outside. I just don't think enough people showed up to demonstrate. So a number of them did come in and sit there, which I was happy about. They listened to the entire talk with a few disruptions here and there, but they yelled and walked out, which I think is completely appropriate. I've no problem with that. You can even boo if you want. Walk out, express without really disrupting the event itself. I think that's completely OK in a talk. So that didn't disturb me too much. And then the other ones stayed around and asked questions. And for the most part, with one or two exceptions, for the most part, that went pretty smoothly. They asked a question. They made a comment. They sat down. They heard my answer, and they sat down. So even though there were plenty of opportunities to disrupt, and there were opportunities to disrupt significantly, and it wasn't too bad. And part of the reason it wasn't too bad, and here I have to give kudos to everybody who organized this event. I mean, this event, like any event that's going to be confrontational and difficult, it was difficult to organize. It took people, the Objectivist Club at the University of Texas in Austin. It's one of the few, maybe the only, Objectivist Club at a university we have today, did a great job having tables outside. And you know that? That can be a little scary, tables with a big poster about the Israel War, and they stood their ground, and they handed out, they talked to people, and some people came and thanked them for doing the event. Some people condemned them, but they did it every day and did a lot of publicity for this, which is fantastic. The organizers, the Salem Center, was 100% behind the event and supported it, and helped promote it, and helped organize all the different, again, all the different aspects of it, dealing with the administration, with students, with everything. And then finally, the administration of the university itself, which was committed to letting me speak, committed not to allow disruptions, committed to dealing with the disruptions when they happened. I think you saw the number of police who were there. There was also at least one civilian dressed guy who was always kind of not far from where I was, just in case something would happen. So there was immense, there was really immense amounts of security. And UT basically said, we are going to let you speak. We will not let them interrupt. And that was pretty cool. Not every university has that approach. Not every university has that attitude. So great for UT for doing that. And yeah, anyway. And I think as a consequence, overall, in spite of what you saw in the video, it all went pretty smoothly. And I was super happy with the event. I wish 300 people had shown up, and 140 had needed to be turned away. But I think everybody did everything they could. And I know a lot of objectivists in Austin didn't come. Maybe the live streaming made it easier not to come. Maybe it's just not a topic of interest to a lot of people. But it would have been great to have people turned away just in terms of showing the interest in the ideas. I'm not going to judge my talk itself, but you can judge it. I thought the talk itself went really well. And the response was very positive. It's been a long time since I've gotten a standing ovation at a talk. And I don't know if that appears in the video. But basically, three quarters, the 80% of the audience stood at the end of the talk and applauded. So that was nice and a real good positive affirmation for what I had said and for the spirit and the content of what was said. What else I want to say about the talk itself? I mean, nothing much. I mean, I have to say, I was surprised by the mediocre level of the antagonistic questions. I mean, I would have asked myself much tougher questions. I expected somebody to raise history. No historical questions. Nothing suggesting, well, maybe Hezbollah had a reason to do it. Hezbollah. Maybe Hamas had a reason to do what they did. What about all the stuff the Jews have done all through history? What about the Nakba? What about this? What about that? It didn't get that. Very surprised, right? That's what you think that the questions will be focused on. You know, most of it was focused on genocide. And I mean, it's stupid stuff because it's clearly, what Israel is doing is clearly not genocide by any definition of the term. And they're just trying to twist things around to try to get their position. But their best arguments are historical arguments. They're wrong. They're bad in the end. But those are the best. Post-October 7th, there's nothing positive they can say. There's no element. I mean, they can talk a little bit about proportionality. But that's it. So yeah, I was disappointed. I thought there would be more challenges about the legitimacy of the state of Israel, the kind of challenges that you might even see here in the chat around Israel being a Jewish state. Things like that, things like that. So yes, I was surprised. I didn't get any of that. Oh, I think one of the reasons maybe they didn't have a demonstration and maybe not more antagonists showed up, including potentially faculty, is there was a pro Hamas event that night off campus. They didn't want to do it on campus because they claimed the university would not let them do it, which is not true. The university was willing to protect them as well. And they write the free speech. But so they did it off campus. And so I think everybody was there instead, instead. So that's what else do you want to know about Texas? Oh, I like Claude. Claude, I watched your UT Austin talk earlier today. And I wonder how you manage to maintain composure and patience, dealing with several distractions throughout. Thank you for all that you do. I don't know. I just do. I don't get frazzled. I never have. What are they going to do? I mean, it was clear we weren't going to get. It wasn't going to be violence. So why get frazzled? What is it to be frazzled about? Indeed, I think you lose if you get frazzled. I think the motto here is to stay calm, collect, and to have good, solid, quick, passionate answers to the questions that they ask. So generally, I just don't get frazzled if you have ever seen the video of Antifa attacking me at King's College in London. It's on my channel. You can look it up. Antifa attacking. They come on stage. They grab the microphones. They do all that. Thinking back at it and reading and looking back at it, I'm not frazzled. I'm kind of pretty calm and pretty, I mean, heckled in my talks for the last 20-something years. Heckling doesn't bother me. As long as I can maintain my train of thought, and I'm pretty good at that, you guys hackle me more on the chat than those hacklers there. So I don't know. I've never gotten frazzled. I've never gotten angry. I just deal with it. This is my job up there. I mean, this is the other way to think about it. My job up there on stage is to perform. It's an actor. In a sense, you're putting on an educational show. You're presenting material, and you're responding to stuff. And you're not there to get angry, and to get upset, and any of that. You control all that. So I consider myself good at what I do. And a lot of the reasons I'm good at what I do is because I don't get frazzled. I don't get upset, at least in a way that it's showing. And the questions are questions, and you answer them. Let's see. Oh, yeah. So a few things have come out of the talk. A few things kind of as consequence of the talk. Lex Friedman was at the talk. I didn't see him. But people saw him. And somebody I know talked to him. So he was at the talk. He was sitting in the back. A number of people actually told me they saw him. And then so he was there. And then I think it was this morning, or yesterday, just a day after the talk, he basically went online and said that he wants to host a debate on the issue, a four, five-hour debate, he says. And he made a list of the people who could vote on to represent the Palestinian site, a list of people who could vote on to represent the Israeli site. He didn't commit to abiding by who got the most votes. He didn't commit to any kind of specific methodology for at least as far as I could see in the document. So correct me if I'm wrong. But he didn't encourage people to vote and to comment on why they are voting the way they are. The list of pro-Israelis is mostly impressive. I'd say you've got Douglas Murray, who's excellent on Israel. You have Ben Shapiro, who's excellent on Israel. You've got a couple of Israelis that are very, very good. And then you've got Destiny. Destiny is the only one who I don't get. Destiny is probably a moderate, liberal pro-Israel. But Destiny, if you know anything about Destiny, unprincipled, not that interesting. And I don't think he would do a good job in a debate. I don't know how much of the history he knows. But I don't think he has. I don't know how interesting his views are on Israel. So that's the one that is most surprising to me and the one that I would least want of all of them. Destiny is the one I would least want representing the Israeli site. There is a bunch of others. Everybody else on the list would probably do a really good job. One of them I don't think I know. But everybody else I think is really good. And I know. And I'm on that list. So I'm on the list. The challenge is, oh, Alan Dushiewicz is also on the list. Of course, the challenge is that everybody, there's a number of people on that list much, much, much better known than I am. So Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray, Alan Dushiewicz, Destiny, people with massive audiences. And if they want to debate, they could certainly get more people to vote for them, although how motivated they are to vote I don't know. You guys are a relatively small group in that context. But you're a highly, I think, right? I know you guys. You're a highly motivated group and likely to actually participate in the vote. So let me encourage you to go and vote. But don't just vote for me right in nice reason on the bottom. Give Lex a reason. I think Lex, I think we'll look at those. Because I don't think he's just going to look at the numbers. I think he's also going to look at what people said about the person. So if you'd like to see a debate between me and a pro-Palestinian, then I'll put it up there. I have to say, though, that I am torn. It's not obvious to me that I will do the debate. I'm a little torn. I'd like Lex to ask. But it really depends on who the other side is. I mean, I've said I don't want to debate Finkelstein or whatever his name is, who's on Lex's list. Ilan Poppin, something, whatever his name. It's also on that list, terrible, terrible, terrible. It's at least one of the Arab names there who I know is like a horrible Hamas apologist. There's a limit, right? There's a limit to who you will debate on something like this. Would I debate an October 7th apologist? Would I debate somebody who has, you know, hard to tell? Here's the point. The point is not you are trying to convince the person you're debating. The point is not even trying to convince Lex. The point is to convince Lex's audience. And to go over the historical stuff, to go over the details, to go over the principles, and try to convince the audience. But there is a challenge of going up against people who are so evil. So I'm going to have to research whoever, if I get chosen, which I don't think I will, I'll research the people who are going to be on the other side. I guess J-Dog has a super chat on this. He said, Lex Friedman is planning an Israel Palestine podcast. Go vote for Iran to get on the pod. People can't share the link here due to YouTube restrictions. I shared the link at the top of the top here. I can share the link again. I don't know why it lets me share the link, but it won't let J-Dog. Maybe you can't share a link in a super chat. But here's the link. So whoops. Oh, yes, there it is. There's the link. So you have the link. Please go vote. I'd rather you vote and we deal with the question of whether I should debate the person or not than not to be in the running. I don't know who I prefer to debate. I mean, I'm trying to imagine who a reasonable debate partner would be, who would be reasonable to debate, somebody who I think it would have to be somebody who condemned October 7th, but said, look, you've got to understand the position of the Palestinians and how horrific it is. And Israel has been the villain throughout the last 70 years. And October 7th was this venting of frustration. It's unjustified. It's not right. I condemn it. But I think that that is. But somebody who said, look, yeah, October 7th, absolutely legitimate thing to do. That is difficult to agree to. This is an interesting one. J-Doc says, did you see that Safedin Amos offered to you for also to do a debate? Breed love as moderate audiences could be huge, kind of like a backup plan in case you don't get invited to Lex. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about it. I'm torn again, because the reality is I do not want to debate anarchists on issues of foreign policy. Safedin Amos is an anarchist. I haven't watched his discussion with Robert Breedlove. I intend to do that tomorrow. And based on what I think of that discussion, I'll decide whether I'm willing to debate him or not. But again, if he's so wacky out there as to defend Hamas, and if he comes at all this from kind of one of these libertarian perspectives, then, sorry, anarchist perspectives, then I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, I haven't answered that challenge to debate, because I still have to do a little bit of research before I make a decision about it. Let's see. All right, let me just see. Richard said, amazing talk in Texas. Sorry to change the subject. Oh, you're changing the subject. So I'm going to answer your question later then. To tend to think, OK, we'll get that later. If we want to do the face value, OK, we'll do that later. All right, so OK, let's move on. And then we'll come back to all these super chats. And let's move to the Texas border story, because that's a big story, too. And there's no point in basically just, yeah. I mean, I'll keep you updated on the debate front. And I'm sure we'll keep talking about the Israel issue and anything else that comes up with regard to the Middle East. There's a lot going on in the Middle East, as you probably know. Three American soldiers died in Jordan yesterday. Died yesterday. They announced it today. And as usual, Biden has wagged his finger at them. So it's going to be interesting to see what America does. But that's for the news show. So we'll be talking about that. I'll be talking about that tomorrow, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, early afternoon. So tune in for that. We'll be talking about, definitely, talk about the attack on the Americans. I want to talk also about, but they shouldn't be there. So they deserve it. We'll talk about that as well. All right. So oh, so let's go to Texas. I just want to remind you all, these shows are supported by contributions from people like you. These shows could not exist without your support. So please consider supporting the show. If you're live, you can do it in super chat. If you're not live, you can do it via Patreon or you can do it on youronbookshow.com slash membership. Membership. I will, one of the three shows during the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, if I do three shows, one of those will be a positive show. So I will stick to my promise of doing one positive show a week, which I've tried to do so far. Or at least, since I made the promise, not every time. All right. If we're going to make the target at least on super chat, please consider, some of you consider doing 20 plus dollar questions. Otherwise, we'll get like 50 small denomination questions and not get to our targets. So I think you all know that there is a crisis at the border. We've seen record levels of people crossing the border into the United States from Mexico. Most of those people coming from Central America and from parts of South America, places like Venezuela, but also people coming to Central America and then hiking up from places like China and who are trying to enter the southern border through their sum. Sneaking in, many of those get caught, many do not. Some are basically giving themselves in and immediately applying for asylum. But you have the largest numbers ever of people crossing the border into the United States through the southern border, not without visas. So illegally, right? Illegally. Really. So destiny versus Finkelstein is what Lex has gone with. That's super disappointing in the sense that, again, I think destiny is the weakest. The weakest of all the people Lex listed there on the pro-Israel side. And Finkelstein is the nastiest, most evil of them on the pro-Palestinian side. Primarily because Finkelstein wears his Jewishness on his sleeve, his parents are holocaust survivors and uses that constantly. And destiny just won't know how to deal with that. I don't think we'll be able to deal with that. Plus the other aspect of this is Finkelstein is a historian and not a good historian, a fake, I mean, lying, deceiving historian. But he is an historian. He'll have citations. He'll have books. He'll have facts. He'll have all kinds of stuff like that. And what is destiny? Destiny's in this context is nothing. I don't know how anybody, I don't think it's sad. I mean, I have to say, if he had chosen pretty much anybody else to represent Israel, I would have been pretty happy. That is the worst. That is the worst. So Lex, if you're listening, I'm disappointed. Not disappointed you didn't choose me. I'm disappointed about that as well, but I get that. And disappointed you didn't choose, like, God, Douglas Murray would have been amazing. Ben Shapiro would have been amazing. The Israeli woman who you had on the list would have been amazing. Destiny? All right. Yeah, I mean, this is going to be horrible and sad. All right, so now I'll have to make up my mind about the debate with the libertarian. All right, let's see. All right, so let's get back to the border. So we've had record numbers of crossing over the border, record numbers of people detained, stopped, record numbers of people being sent back across the border to where they came from, but also record numbers of people staying. And by assumption, by extrapolation, record numbers of people getting in without being detected. That is a sneaking around, sneaking around the things. So this is the situation. It is interesting. I just think that it's interesting to look at the data of the past. I looked a little bit at the history of illegal immigration, the numbers, the number of apprehensions at the border, the number of people being returned back. If you look, and of course, the perception is, the strong perception is that pretty much everybody has, is that Donald Trump was very, very, very tough on the border. And during the Trump years, very few people crossed in from the southern border. And that was because Trump was so tough. And the reality does not actually confirm that. That is, fewer people crossed during the Trump era than did during Biden. No question. I mean, Biden never, by historical levels. They've never crossed in these numbers. So it's clear that under Biden, more people are crossing than under Trump. But people across the border were apprehended at about the same rate under Trump as under Obama. Trump was not tougher than Obama. Under Obama, more people were deported. More people were sent back across the border than under Trump, significantly more. More illegal immigrants were apprehended after they snuck across the border. That is after they had settled in the United States and sent back than under Trump. You can check out those numbers. What's also interesting is that if you look at the number of people expelled versus the percentage of the people expelled versus the percentage of the people released, released means into the country. That they have to show up at a hearing or they have to show up at a hearing to determine where they get asylum on order, things like that. But they were leased into America. Then the percentage people released was higher under Trump than it is under Biden. So under Trump, 52.2% of those apprehended were released. Under Biden, 48.6% are released, 50.9% are either expelled or repatriated. And under Trump, less than 50% were expelled and repatriated. So one could argue that the Biden administration has been tougher in terms of the number of people being sent back, the number of people being expelled and repatriated. But that toughness has not changed the fact that there are record numbers. So if you look at total encounters in, I guess, 24 months, the last 24 months of Trump's tenure, right? This is 2019 and 2020. There were 1.365 million encounters. Same two years, January 21 to March 2023. So 26.3 months, a little longer of a period. 5 million. So four times the number almost. Almost four times the number. Astounding number. But again, percentage-wise, the Biden administration is sending more people home than the Trump administration did as a percentage percentage. So again, the absolute numbers, Biden's absolute numbers are staggering, but there you have it. So the question, I mean, the number of questions here. One is, why are the numbers so high? Why are there so many people coming into the United States right now from Latin America and the rest of the world, but through our southern border? And I think the data is pretty clear that the reason is, Title 42 was only during 2020. And even with Title 42, he didn't expel as many people as Biden did in terms of their percentages again. So why are so many people coming? Why are so many people coming? And I think the reason so many people are coming is because, and I know you guys hate to hear this, because the economy in the United States is doing relatively well for low-skilled laborers. The fact is that there are massive opportunities in the United States right now for work. There are millions and millions and millions of jobs left unfilled. And they pay much, much better than work south of the border, particularly not so much in Mexico, not that many Mexicans are crossing the border. But in terms of people from these other countries, there are just a lot of jobs. Unemployment in the United States is very low, historical low. Labor participation rate has reached the point where everybody who wants a job is finding a job. And there's still a massive gap of jobs that are unfilled. And the wood is in South America that they're jobs, and people can make a living. And this is a great way to make money. The reality is also that real wages of manual labor, they obviously took a hit, but they are rising again. And they are rising significantly. They're rising faster than inflation right now. And again, these are the kind of jobs that these immigrants are coming in to get. So their wages are rising. That's a good sign. There are, I think the last time we looked at somewhere between 7 and 8 million unfilled jobs in the US, a lot of those are either unskilled or skilled blue collar jobs that Americans do not either have the skills to do or not interested in doing. The reason Americans may be underemployed is because that's what they want. There is absolutely no shortage of jobs in the United States right now for almost any skill set that you might or might not have. And there is a massive shortage in particular skill sets, for example, massive shortage in construction. Massive. One of the reasons we haven't built homes in the last 15 years is because net illegal immigration in the United States from 2009 until somewhere in the Trump administration, somewhere probably post-Trump, so somewhere probably January 2021, was negative. That is illegal immigrants left the United States at a faster rate than they came because post-financial crisis, they weren't that many jobs. Now they are. So that's one reason. One reason is this economy is absorbing these people with jobs, they're hiring them, they're paying their way and there's a massive need. And they know it. Second, second is the fact that in these countries, more of these countries have become more and more desperate post-COVID. That is, things got really, really bad in much of Latin America during COVID, whether it's Guatemala, whether it's, what do you call it? Not Guatemala, but Nicaragua. Nicaragua has become more and more authoritarian, dramatically more authoritarian than it was pre-COVID under Ortega. And as a consequence, Nicaraguans are leaving. El Salvador, on the other hand, has become safer. And El Salvadorians are staying. Venezuela has gotten worse. Ecuador has gotten a lot worse. So millions of people from these countries are seeing the conditions in this country become worse and worse, less and less freedom, more and more repression and oppression. And they're just, and there's jobs, and they're getting up and leaving. And then on top of that, we've talked about this a little bit on the show in the past, you've got a middle class in China, a lower middle class, a mid-middle class, that is fed up with the Chinese authorities. They're fed up with the lack of freedom. They're fed up with an economy that seems to be going nowhere, where many of these people have lost a lot of money on real estate. And they have packed up their bags and left. And they, at record numbers, are coming in to the United States, trying to smuggle themselves into the United States. Again, all these immigrants have network in the United States of friends and families that are here already and could provide for them a base of support and help getting jobs. The Chinese have that, the Latin Americans certainly have it, and so on. So those are the reasons why they're coming. All right, so that's the situation as it was, right? Many of these crossings over the border have been happening. And of course, we're talking about huge numbers, right? Millions of people coming across the border over a million a year. And that's the one I've handed to them, maybe two million a year, two million a year. And then nobody's prepared for this. Nobody knows what to do with them. You're supposed to do something with them. There is, because they're all illegal, there is no way, in a sense, to possess them or to screen them or to just allow them in one way or another, right? There's just no way to actually do that, right? So it's two million a year, so two million a year. Because they're all illegal. They're all just crossing over. The border patrol is not enough staff, given these numbers. In addition to that, the courts, which are supposed to decide on asylum, for example, have no capacity, have no ability to deal with this. There is a multi-year backlog. I think it's a backlog with 3.3 million asylum cases that haven't been dealt with yet. So the legal system is not set up. Resources have not been deployed to deal with this massive influx. And the reality is that, well, we'll get to that, that the politics of today provide no incentives really to deal with this situation. Particularly not of Republicans. Anyways, these people are coming across. The border patrol returns about just over 50% of them to where they came. But 50% get to stay. So if you've got 6 million coming across, 3 million of them, well, actually, it turns out to be 2.44 million of them. Maybe more to date. So it's probably 3 million of them to date being allowed to stay in the United States. Of course, at least for a while, they cannot work. They're waiting to be processed. They're waiting to find out if they get asylum. They're waiting to get their work permit if they were ever going to get work permit. Many of them, even if they don't get asylum, won't go back. Many of them are going to stay here. And they're going to stay here in what you call the underground economy, the black economy, as quote, illegals who struggle to find work and cannot advance. They'll have kids. Their kids become American citizens. So they at least benefit from that. And that's another reason they want to stay and they want to be here for as long as they can, even if with the threat of being deported, is if they have kids here, their kids get American citizenship. And a lot of this they do for their children, for their kids. Anyway, we don't have a lot of time. All right. A lot of these immigrants are coming through Texas. Texas has the longest border, I think that's true. Texas has the longest, yeah, by far, the longest border with Mexico. They have a number of places that are known to be crossings. And so Texas has decided, Texas, of course, is a Republican state. I'd say Republicans realize that illegal immigration is probably the strongest electoral issue. Strongest electoral issue is illegal immigration. A vast majority of Americans don't want illegal immigration. A vast majority of Americans, and I think a significant majority of Americans today, against immigration, one of its restrictions on immigration broadly, but certainly something like 70% of Americans, the number one concern that they have right now is not the economy, it's not jobs, it's not wages, it's not even inflation, it's illegal immigration. A lot of that, I think, is the hysteria that right-wing media, right-wing governors, right-wing everybody have made out of the issue. They've turned it into an issue that Americans are afraid of, that Americans are worried of. I don't think Americans care that much. Most Americans are not touched by immigration one way or the other. But they care. And Republicans know this is the one electoral issue, particularly if the economy does well this year, if the economy does well this year, then Republicans are in trouble, right? The economy might not do well, we could still fall off a cliff, we could still have a recession, but if the economy does well this year, Republicans are in trouble, and the one issue they really have, they really, Americans get upset at and they have, Americans perceive them to have the right solution, is immigration. Of course, they've got this issue of abortion that goes against them, they need something. They need something to offset the huge deficit they have when it comes to abortion. So Republicans are making a big deal out of the illegal immigration, and they will continue to make a big deal out of this until November. And we'll get to that in a second, and we'll be talking about it more on the news roundup shows as we go through the week. Anyway, Texas decided to make a big deal out of this. They brought out the Texas National Guard. They started placing about 70,000 roles of Constantino wire on the border near Eagle Pass. Eagle Pass is one of the places where immigrants tend to cross. This is by October 2020, this October of last year. So by then they had put down 70,000, but they'd be doing it for quite a while. If you remember, they put some floating things in the Rio Grande where immigrants were trying to swim across that would cause you to bleed. And anyway, they're trying to create a border that would make it very difficult for these people to cross into the United States. In September 2023, the border patrol, which is basically responsible for the border, not Texas. The border is federal, the border is not a state issue. The Constitution is pretty clear that the borders of the United States are the responsibility of the federal government, not state government. And that's a big issue, and it's gonna be a big issue in the months to come. In September, the border patrol started to cut the Constantina wire placed by the Texas National Guard at Eagle Pass, right? On October 24th, we're gonna go through a bunch of dates and lawsuits. Sorry, but this is just to bring you up to speed, right? October 24th, state of Texas sued in federal court to make the border patrol stop cutting the wire. Three days later, Texas Attorney General Kent Paxton filed an emergency motion. So there's this lawsuit at federal court about whether the border patrol can continue to cut the wire laid down by the Texas National Guard. But that lawsuit will be dealt with in a trial and all that, but that can take months. We know how long trials take, right? So in the meantime, Kent Paxton, one has to assume corrupt Attorney General Kent Paxton of Texas, who was impeached, but then in a stunning vote in the Texas Senate, who was ruled not guilty. Anyway, he filed an emergency motion for temporary restraining order to halt the border patrol from moving the Constantina wire, right? So he went to the appellate court. The court granted a temporary restraining order on October 30th to halt border patrol for further removing Constantina wire. I remember these are all temporary until there's a trial and there's a decision. The federal district court ruled against Texas' request for temporary injunction pending trial on November 29th. Texas appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit the next day. The court granted an emergency stay on the district court's order. And the court enjoined border patrol on December 19th from further destruction of the Constantina wire, except in cases of medical emergency. Part of this is I'm getting from Alex no stay, no stay from the Cato Institute who's excellent at immigration, the best spokesman out there on these issues of immigration. Anyway, so the fifth told basically said to the feds, you can't cut the wire anymore as a temporary injunction. You can't cut the wire until the court hearing. Then the U.S. as well as the general filed an application to vacate the injunction pending appeal with the Supreme Court, all right. So now everything, you know, so everybody's filing this, everybody, so far the federal government is not allowed to cut the barbed wire that the National Guard has set in place. But then on January 10th, things escalate. The state of Texas seizes Shelby Park, which is owned by the city of Eagle Pass. So this is the federal government, the state of Texas. Sorry, seizing something owned by the city. And it abuts the Rio Grande, so it abuts the border. It's right on the border, the border which is in control of the federal government. And the Texas National Guard then built a fence around the park and it denies border patrol access to the park facilities, including the boat ramp. There's a boat ramp in the park and the federal agents, the border patrol uses that boat to go up and down the Rio Grande River, stopping immigrants, but also when they're drowning or when something horrible happens, helping them out, right? Anyway, the, you know, this is all, this is all justified by Governor Abbott, the seizing of this property, the closing down of the boat ramp, the Constantino wire everybody, because it is to stop the high levels of illegal immigration and President Biden's reckless open borders policies. Of course they're not open borders policies at all, I wish they're not open borders, they're actually returning over 50% of all people who come across the border at a higher percentage rate again than Donald Trump did. All right, so they file with the Supreme Court to make a decision over this. And the Biden administration is arguing that the state sees of the park and the construction fencing prevents border patrol from accessing part of the river and denies them access to Shelby boat ramp, which means they can't access the border, they can't access the border in that section. In the meantime, to make this drama even more intense, a Mexican woman and two children drown in the river just by Shelby Park and the border patrol can't get to them. Now all of these facts are disputed, they go back and forth who used to blame the state of Texas is blaming the border patrol, the border patrol is blaming the state of Texas, this is a big mess. Anyway, all of this is before the Supreme Court, on January 22nd, the Supreme Court vacated the first circuits ruling that barred border patrol from removing wire and granted them access to all areas of the border. So the Supreme Court comes down and says, until there's a trial, right, this is not a definitive statement, this is not the definitive ruling, all it says is until there's a trial, the border patrol can cut the wires above wires and it has to have access to Shelby Park and everything else. Now, the tradition in America, the constitutional tradition in America is that when a Supreme Court rules, people accept it, right? There's still gonna be a trial, it's still gonna be argued in front of the Supreme Court sometime in the future. But at least for now, given that they vacated the first circuits ruling, the Supreme Court ruling that should be the law of the land. The next day after the ruling of the Supreme Court, the Department of Homeland Security asked for border patrol to be allowed access to Shelby Park by January 26th, two days ago. And on that day, Texas denied the border patrols request to access the river through the ramp, through the boat ramp. In other words, I mean, to be very clear here, and this is the issue here. It's not about immigration anymore. It's not an immigration issue. In other words, the state of Texas is refusing to abide by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Texas is refusing to accept the Supreme Court's authority in this case. Governor Abbott has basically declared that given, he's basically claiming that article one, section 10, clause three of the Constitution, which reads, no state shall without consent of Congress lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter any agreement of compact with another state or with a foreign power or engaging war unless actually invaded or is in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. What Abbott of Texas is saying is we've been invaded and we, Texas, have to go to war and the federal government is not protecting us from this invasion and therefore we have to go to war. So he's claiming that this article gives Texas the power to declare that legal immigrants are invading and therefore Texas can wage a war against them. It really is stunning, stunning that one, they're rejecting a verdict by the Supreme Court and this is conservatives, these are the Republicans, these are the believers in the Constitution and the rule of law and then claiming that the United States is being invaded, invaded. Now that's insane. It's certainly not founder's intent. The founder certainly didn't mean this as an invasion. Invasion is quite clear what that means. I mean, Madison talks about it. In Federalist 43, I think it is, one of the Federalist papers. And what this clearly means, invasion, is foreign troops coming across the border and the federal government refusing to protect you. I mean, in 1814, the United States was invaded by Britain. Yeah, it's Federalist 43, right? So invasion, now what's amazing is 23 states have sided with Abbott, basically all the red states have sided with Abbott in declaring immigration and invasion and the feds as a dereliction in duty. I mean, this will go to the Supreme Court. This will be obitrated. I mean, this could become, this could very well be, they could be shots fired here. They could be real confrontations between the feds and the Texas National Guard. I mean, Biden has the authority to nationalize the Texas National Guard. He could declare the Texas National Guard part of the fed, part of the federal government. He has that authority. He hasn't used it. I mean, this generally is huge in terms of its implication, in terms of the rule of law, in terms of quote, originalism. Now, I think if it goes to the Supreme Court, I think the court rules for the Biden administration and against Texas, I think it rules so overwhelmingly. Maybe Thomas will, you know, votes for Texas, but I can't imagine any of the other, any of the other justices voting against it. It's truly stunning. But if you add to that, that this is all, nobody really cares, right? This is not about the challenges of immigration. This is not about not wanting immigrants or wanting immigrants. This is not about national security threats. This is 100% politics. And really, we can see that it's 100% politics in that the Biden administration and Senate Republicans are negotiating a bill that would basically restrict the number of illegal immigrants coming into this country for asylum seekers and staying in the country to a relatively, to this very small number, 5,000 a day max, with all kind of freezes if it goes over that, and all kinds of limitations. So the number total is gonna be dramatically restricted as compared to the numbers coming in today. And the Republicans want nothing, and Trump is basically lobbying heavily that Republicans not approve this and indeed in the state of Oklahoma, who Senator James Langford is one of the Republicans negotiating with the Biden administration and coming up with a deal. The deal was also a proof of funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. But the immigration deal, Langford, who is a huge against illegal immigration, is negotiating with the Biden administration. And as a consequence of negotiating, the Oklahoma Republican Party has passed a censure resolution condemning him for the crime of ignoring Trump's orders and working with the Democrats. I mean, the Republican Party today is a cult, with a cult leader called Donald Trump. And if you don't do exactly what Donald Trump tells you, the other members of the cult who have come in line, just, you know, is gonna censure you. Here's people trying to actually solve problems. Trump is uninterested. Trump knows, knows that he needs immigration in order to win. Without two million people crossing the border, he can't win, he can't win. And of course the consequence, and therefore he wants this issue to be alive, to be ongoing. And the consequence of that is going to be no solution, no aid to Ukraine. And the border being a mess, when they're actually trying to actually, this bill increases legal immigration, it does some decent things, you know? Brings order, and by the way it increases the budget for things like courts for the asylum, increases the number of border patrols, all of that. It's doing the things Republicans say they wanna do. Indeed, if this was a deal, if the president was a Republican, and this was a deal being presented, they would take it like that. But all of this from Texas, all of this from Trump, is all politics. It has nothing to do with the actual interest of the American people, it has nothing to do with what will actually solve a problem. It has nothing to do with what will actually solve a problem to the extent that it is a problem. Of course, at the end of the day, the only way to solve this so-called problem is to increase dramatically legal immigration, particularly for low-skill jobs, to increase those numbers significantly, and if those numbers were increased significantly, then of course the illegal immigration problem would just go away. Just go away. All right, so this is, oh, one more point I wanna make about the Republicans. I mean, it truly is stunning, right? A state governor does not like decisions made in Washington, D.C. Decisions that are within the scope of the federal government, clearly and equivocally. You know, sadly, there's nothing that governor can do. You can try suing court, which is what's happening, but the Supreme Court has rule against you. To ignore the Supreme Court and continue this, I think it's just horrific, and it's horrific, what do you call it, precedent for what might happen moving forward, moving forward on other issues. I mean, you don't like what's happening in Washington? Fine. You know, there's an election. Get your guy elected to replace, to replace the person involved, all right? I just looked at Lex's tweets. Two things interesting about it. One, 35,000 people voted. If every single person, if every single person who subscribed to my channel had voted, maybe I would have won, but there's no way I can compete, right? I mean, destiny is gazillion times bigger than so are the others, so much bigger than I am. And the other thing is he wants to do two on two, so he might pick another person, so it'll be interesting to see what actually helped actually this is resolved in the end. All right, let's see. I mean, I know, and we all know that the leftists had no regard for the will of law for a very long time. Now the Republicans don't have any regard for the will of law either. We've had leftist scholars for a long time say, who cares about the Constitution? Forget about the Supreme Court. The government should ignore the Supreme Court. Now we have Republican governors saying, we don't care about the Supreme Court. We don't care about the Constitution. I think there's a difference between ignoring the Constitution and misinterpreting the Constitution. It's true that for 120 years, the Constitution has been misinterpreted by both left and right, and they continue to misinterpret it in my view. Again, in my view, nobody in that Supreme Court really understands the Constitution, but that's a different issue. It's one thing to misinterpret it, another thing to ignore it. And I think we're moving into an era of ignoring it from both sides, and what that means is we're moving into an era of pure democracy. We're moving into an era that is pure, pure politics, pure power play, and Americans are the losers when that happens, big time are the losers. All right, much more on the issues of the border as we move through this crisis. And the crisis here is federal state crisis less. The fact that two million people are crossing the border concerns me less and troubles me less than the constitutional crisis. But the immigrants, the solution to the two million people crossing the border, again, one million of them are returned, but the one million who stay is to give them work permits and encourage them to become citizens. All right, or not encourage them to become citizens. It carries them to stay and get a job. Richard Moncada, amazing talk in Texas. Sorry to change the subject. I call Trump a psycho wannabe dictator. I think that's pretty accurate. A friend objected and said he wasn't much different from other Republicans or Democrats except he is an outsider thought. No, no, he's definitely different. And everybody can see he's different. His positions on the issues are not that different. If you look at issue by issue, he's not particularly conservative. He's certainly not free market. He's kind of a very much a middle of the roader when it comes to actual issues. So I wouldn't call him a crazy far right person because I don't think he is. I think on the issues he's generally pretty moderate except on things like immigration. But on everything else, he's pretty moderate. He's pretty leftist on a bunch of them. Like his attitude towards Putin and Xi and the Buddha dictator of North Korea. All of those, you know, yes, he's more friendly towards than anybody else. But again, that's not more conservative or anything like that. But in a sense of what you say a psycho, I think he's a psycho. I think he's much more of a psycho than anybody on the left or on the right. Anybody, I think he's unhinged. I don't think he's, I think he's an idiot. I mean, I really think he's an idiot. A moron maybe is the right thing. I don't think the guy's smart at all. Want to be dictator, he's definitely a want to be dictator, I'm not sure. I don't think any of the other people running for the presidency want to be dictators. I don't think anybody in the primary and the Republican side or the Democratic side want to be dictators. I think he is. I think he envies dictators. He's jealous of dictators. He wants to be a dictator. I think he realizes he won't be one because of the American constitutional framing. But look, you know, given what Texas is saying now, if they're going to interpret the constitution independent of the Supreme court, then maybe he could become a dictator. With the support of enough of Republican states who don't care about the Supreme court, don't care about this, who knows, right? But yeah, and the thing about him that differentiates him from everybody else is that all politicians lie. But all politicians lie and pretend that, or have some recognition that there is such thing as truth. And they're a little, they try to hide the lie. They're a little embarrassed about the lie. Donald Trump doesn't acknowledge, I mean, he's a pragmatist, he's a real pragmatist. The most pragmatic pragmatist I've ever seen. Lying is just one tool in the arsenal. He'll lie whenever he needs to. He doesn't care. He doesn't acknowledge that there's necessarily truth that we should abide by. He's lying, if it works, it's cool. If it doesn't work, yeah, we'll try something different. So with him, the lying is a conscious, acknowledged, he doesn't try to cover it up in any kind of sense. Completely brazen, completely, yeah, so that's unique. So I don't think he's as smart as other politicians. I think he's much more of a pragmatist than anybody I know, that any other politician ever. He's much more of a pragmatist than a Clinton. And much worse than Bill Clinton in terms of the way he uses lying. Clinton was a liar, but Clinton was a conventional liar. This guy is a liar as a completely conscious tool in an arsenal and believes it's completely legit and no problem, no issue. He's worse than Nixon, much worse than Nixon, much worse than Nixon. Nixon was a pragmatist. Trump is much more than that, right? And you know, I think you always say, guys, he's a psycho, and he's a psycho. He's not completely there. He can't hold the thought. He rarely completes a sentence. And he, you know, this is who he is. So I think you're absolutely right. Again, on the issues that people are worse than him because they're more thoughtful. So people on the right who are worse than him because the problem with him, because he has no ideas, he doesn't really hold anything. He is easily manipulated, certainly in certain directions by his audience, the people he's speaking to, the people who vote for him, and by, I think, powerful intellectual forces within the Republican Party and his second term is gonna be very dangerous because the Heritage Foundation is lining up all the people who will serve in the Trump administration in a second term. And I do not believe that these are good people. I do not believe these are people who wanna manipulate and use government. They're not small government people. These are people who wanna use and manipulate big government in order to achieve their policy goals, many of which involve industrial planning and government involvement in all the aspects. The good people at Heritage have all left as a consequence. And now Heritage basically has declared itself basically an arm of the future Trump administration. All right, I forgot this. Wes had $100, thank you, Wes. Wes says, thanks for all you do. I haven't watched your Israel talk yet, but I am looking forward to it. I hope you enjoy it, Wes. I think you will. John, for $250, please review the official music, Video Hook by Blues Traveler. It's a cool song about degrading culture that abandons principles for superficiality. Hadn't heard it since I was a kid and had never really listened to it before. By the way, your talk in Texas was amazing. It got scary. Thanks, John. I have to say, I didn't feel fear. Fear, I wasn't scared at any point during that. So maybe it was all the police around me or what, but it might have looked scary on video, but I don't think in person it was that scary. It was tense. It was a real tension. Everybody was on the edge of their seats, given what I was saying, I think. Clark says, we're so advanced, we tend to think we can extend the rules of civilization to warfare. That's what these discontents upper middle class college kids can process. So they assume it's an intentional genocide. That's part of it, yes. War is uncivilized, always. War is barbaric, always. War is the negation of civilization because civilization is the absence of force. That's what defines civilization. War is the introduction and the embrace of violence and force. And as such, war is always uncivilized in that sense and barbaric. And you have to embrace it and try to civilize war is a contradiction in terms and therefore a recipe for losing. And the United States has lost every war it's fought. Israel will lose every war. It fights on the basis of trying to civilize a war. Andrew says, if one took PBS, BBC and CNN or CNN at face value, one might think the IDF was a war crimes machine, makes me more empathetic to wayward minds emotionally about alleged abuse of the Palestinians or do you think they're evasive? I mean, I think they look again, I think the previous comment was right. They view war in the context of civilization. They have these categories of civilian combatants and they're clean and they don't question them and there's evasion going on there. But at the end of the day, they are emotionalists who are trying to impose these rules. They also think, believe that Israel has been the villain in the Middle East for a long time and therefore in a sense had it coming. So when they see Israel, and then of course, there's a huge tradition in the West in just war theory about proportionality. If I shoot you with a gun, you're not supposed to shoot me back with a cannon. You're supposed to shoot back with a gun as well. I mean, it goes back if you remember, I complained about this with regard to Westerns. It goes back to the Western where the good guy will never shoot the bad guy in the back. And I always thought, why? He's a bad guy. He needs to die. Why are you giving him a level playing field? Why are you giving him an opportunity to beat you? But that's Christian altruism. That's proportionality and it all comes into just war theory. Just war theory was first articulated by Augustine, one of probably the worst, certainly of the prominent ones, the worst of all the Christians, Christian theologians, ever to live. So it's a rotten regime through and through. And I think it's everywhere in the culture. Everybody has it to some extent. And so I'm not surprised about PBS, BBC and CNN. BBC in particular has always held an antagonistic view towards Israel. And this is just reinforcing the bias that they've always had. Charles Brown says that both sides in a war play to the same God for assistance. Does the God know which side to support? Yeah, I mean, it supports the guys who are praying the hardest, it supports the ones that are more virtuous, the ones that have followed his commandments in a more stringent way. Yeah, I mean, well, it also depends. Are we talking about the Jewish God, the Christian God or the Muslim God? Because they might have different answers. I mean, the Christian God might turn the other cheek and actually support the group that was weaker. The Muslim God wouldn't and the Old Testament God wouldn't. I mean, the Christians are the aberration if you look at that tradition. Charlie, in your opinion, why do you think medieval fantasy like Narnia and Lord of the Rings have such an enduring effect on the culture? Oh, because, yeah, I mean, because they have powerful imagery of good versus evil. They play into a repeated story in human history of good versus evil and because they have Christian undertones, they're playing into a culture where these messages, where these undertones, where these framings are already in the culture. So it just plays to Christianity, it plays to the good and you can find in both Lord of the Rings and Narnia the elements, the Christian elements that play off, the mythos that playing off of that mythology. So it's not that new in spite of the fact that it's been fantasy or medieval, it's playing off of themes that like sacrifice that run right and like this idea of a battle between good and evil, the devil and God that run through a Christian mythology. Shazbad is in your travels. Have you ever come across the dish chicken fricasse? It was my favorite dish as a child but I never see on menus anymore. I, about once a week, almost once a week, I eat a lamb fricasse. It's really good, really, really good. Here it's a Puerto Rican dish here but I haven't seen the chicken fricasse but the lamb fricasse at Cocina El Fondo. Cocina El Fondo is fantastic. Really, really good if you're ever in Puerto Rico. Highly recommended. Levan, thank you for the UT talk. I arrived late with a friend and was turned away at the door. I started and saw some of the angry students outside. Sorry you missed it, Levan, it would have nice to have you been there, I'm not sure why they turned you away. I guess it was crowded inside, I guess they won't see it so I appreciate you making the effort. Jennifer says, thank you again for visiting Michigan. I thought everything went really well. Yeah, I didn't talk about Michigan because the Texas talk has kind of dominated the discussions but three really good talks in Michigan. Thank you, Jennifer, for organizing them. I wanted the University of Michigan for the local conservative group. They are the young Americans for freedom on the morality of capitalism. It was an interesting discussion. A small group of about 30 people, some of them objectivists but the rest kind of conservatives. And at some point during the Q and A, they realized that I was arguing that the Christian morality and capitalism were incompatible, incompatible. And they almost freaked out. I mean, there was a real freaking out in the room over the idea that a Christian morality might be wrong and might need to be replaced. We might need something better. And so that was entertaining, that was fun. There's also an effective altruist in the audience who asked some good questions. And then let's see, next day we were at the Henry Ford Academy, which is a charter school right in Dearborn, right at the Henry Ford Museum, right within the Ford Motors campus, I guess. And that was a lot of fun. The museum is amazing. I can't wait to go back someday and really spend some time there because the exhibits are fabulous. I did a quick tour and it was pretty stunning what they have there. And the kids, these were high school kids. They were like 50 some, 50, 55 kids, a few teachers, the headmistress of the school, maybe a couple of administrators who were all there. I did a talk on finance. It seemed to go really well. The kids really seemed to enjoy it. A lot of back and forth, a lot of questions. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And different questions. Like you get very different questions from 16, 17 year olds than what you do from college kids. Like the 16 year olds will ask you, hey, are you rich? College kids don't ask you, are you rich? So it was a lot of fun. It was all fun. There's one objectivist who teaches at the school, was there an objectivist in the marketing department at the school, but at the Henry Ford Academy, which is a charter school. It sounds like a fabulous place and the kids were pretty cool. And then that evening, I went up to Northwood University. Northwood University is a, I don't know, it's a business, primarily a business school, but they have courses, they have degrees and like sports management and car dealership management. So you can specialize in particular application of your business degree. You had a good audience, about 60 people, I think. Mostly students, almost all students. A few faculty members, it was put on by a professor, an economics professor there. Lots of great questions, lots of good interaction. And the two evening talks at the university is one, the morality of capitalism. So good stuff. Then Northwood, we do have video, we will be putting it up at some point. So I have video and good audio and everything and we will put it up at some point. So anyway, all right, let's jump in here because God, we have a lot of questions and we're ready at an hour and a half. The show's gonna be way over two hours because there's a lot of questions. All right, let's see what I wanna do. I wanna remind everybody, no, let's just run with the questions. All right, Michael says, what techniques do evil people use to prevent themselves from facing their own evil? How come they never become self aware? It's mostly rationalizations. Explanation and explanation, I did, I hold this view, the experts hold this view. The plenty of philosophers said, reality is not meaningful, you create your own reality. They make all these connections in abstract terms that justify in their own minds, not needing to look, not needing to be self aware. It's not even self aware, not needing to look out at reality. That's really what they're missing is reality. They stay in their own heads and they justify it by what we call rationalization. Not rational thought, but something that looks like rationality, but is manipulative and selective and geared toward getting the result that you want. Joao from Brazil, what do you think of David Deutsch? I think your philosophy and his have things in common, both great, sorry for being off topic, I really appreciate your show. No, it's fine, the Q and A is always kind of off topic. Look, David, I admire David a lot. I mean, I respect him a lot. He's obviously very smart. He's an interesting guy. I think some of his stuff is fantastic. By the way, David Deutsch on Twitter retweeted the video of my presentation and said it was complimented me on it. So he's definitely on my side when it comes to Israel. He's also, I think, on my side when it comes to progress and capitalism. And I mean, even kind of not directly, I'd say, but in ethics, there's some similarity, there's some overlap. It's certainly not a bleeding heart altruist. There's certainly a sense of self-interest, although it's not quite objectiveist. So I think there's a lot. Some of his chapters in his book, the one with infinity in the title, are just off the charts brilliant. I mean, I love them and some of them would just, it just didn't make any sense to me. It just was completely detached from reality. So the problem with Deutsch and Papa is their epistemology. That's really where the root problem is and their epistemology, I think is awful and terrible and leads us down a really, really bad, bad track. So I think their metaphysics and epistemology, well, the metaphysics Deutsch seems better, but their epistemology is where the problem is, right? And that's where the challenge is. But generally, I would say that I'm more positive than negative on Deutsch and I admire a lot of what he does and a lot of what he says. And yeah, I mean, I wish there were more Deutschs and fewer, I don't know, anarchists on the one side and socialists on the other. One of them is Brett Hall, Brett Hall, who is a student of Deutsch. I think that that's the right way to put it. Who has his own podcast, gave me a shout out. Well, thank you. I'm not sure what he gave me a shout out about. What he gave me a shout out about, the talk, the Israel. But anyway, I mean, put something in the vestment. Yeah, I'm missing something. But yeah, so generally positive view on Deutsch but realized that we have deep, big differences. Yeah, I'm not surprised Brett did a good show on October 7th. Again, I think Brett is very good on a lot of issues he follows my show. And I think he's very good on a lot of things. So Brett is again, a student of Deutsch. Clark, a cat runs around in the middle of the night because it feels like it. It is uninhibited by any need for abstract justification. It is only once a creature can reason that it feels any need to justify following its feelings. Rationalization is the abuse of our capacity for abstraction and attempt to turn it against itself and therefore nullify its demands, allowing the rationalizer to behave like the animal he dreams of being. Yeah, I mean, I like that. I think that's right. I mean, we have to think about what causes emotions in cats and what does it mean to say the cat feels like it. But yes, it's not that it doesn't have a need for abstract justification. Since it has no abstract life, it cannot have an abstract justification. That is, abstract justifications are not within its metaphysical ability. It's not within its competence. It's not without anything, right? So what you're saying raises a lot of issues about the cat, but it's certainly true that rationalization is an abuse of our capacity for abstraction. It's certainly true. It's an attempt to turn it against itself and it nullifies its demands, demand of connected to reality primarily and it allows the rationalizer to behave based on his emotions, behave like an animal and pretend to himself that he's human. That's the power of rationalization. By the way, I asked you guys last time if you saw any difference in the framing of the show and I was curious if anybody has seen a difference. I didn't notice any questions, any answers to my question last time. So I'm curious if anybody sees any difference between the way the show looks now and the way it looked a week ago. Well, maybe two weeks, yeah, a week ago. No, lighting is the same. Friend opposite, I mean, listening to America's Revolutionary Mind by C. Bradley Thompson, the American general understanding of Locke was very high. We need to bring that back, but with Rand instead, can you tell me about it, about the author? Can you tell me about the author? The author is Bradley Thompson. Brad is a good friend, he's a long-time objectivist. He teaches at Clemson University. I've had him on the show a couple of times, two, three times to talk about different issues. Tried to get him on the show more recently. He seems to be really busy and what else? And what else? I'm sure we'll have him on the show again at some point. Oh, he's a political scientist who writes a lot about America, Americanism, America's founding. He wrote a book on John Adams and is kind of an expert on the founding. And yeah, I've been to Clemson many, many, many times. I helped him get that job in Clemson and was on his board of directors for many years, not anymore, but was. And yeah, so you'll see him on the show at some point. Hear him. Fighting or having to fight with someone in any way, shape or form sucks. Good intentions are often futile and coalitions of the willing are a charade. Yeah, I mean, I think fighting sucks, violence sucks generally. And as a consequence, a lot of his done during the fighting sucks. And it's very difficult to run a war and manage a war and do it properly or do it well. It's just not a good activity. Not a good activity. All right, keep comments and carry on. How do you feel about Mon-Drogon Coop? Oh, the Mon-Drogon Coop in Spain. I think for some businesses, in some circumstances, you can have a kind of worker's ownership if this business is simple. And you can probably make it run. Spain is not exactly the most capitalist place. I don't know how much real competition they have. Also, I'd say that if you actually look at their business practices, they actually run it, not like a co-op, sorry, not co-op, not like a co-op, but they actually run it like a business. The lowest employee does not become CEO for a day. They don't vote on who the CEO is gonna be. So, and they have a lot of subsidiaries. Over the years they've created subsidiaries that are pure profits seeking run like businesses and not like co-ops. So it's not the real thing in terms of what the proponents are trying to argue, but yeah, you could imagine in some circumstances, some small limited capacities that co-ops could work. I'm not against co-ops and principle. I just don't wanna force all businesses to be co-ops. Okay, you guys are watching football. That's what's going on. All right, you're watching The Lions and The 49ers. I haven't watched a single football game this year. It's probably the least football games I've watched ever in any season, no football games this year. I'm turned off in football because of the violence and the fact that they clearly unequivocally suffer real harm particularly to the brain and the league does not do everything in its power to protect the players. And so that makes it difficult for me to watch. Michael says, is me lay being too aggressive in his deregulation bills? Is that why they're not getting passed? I also heard him quoting Alex Epstein. Did he quote him or just say something that sounded like Alex? I don't think he's too aggressive. He can't be too aggressive. You've gotta be super aggressive and then when the opposition hits, maybe you compromise on it. But if you start with a compromise, they're still gonna resist and then you'll have to compromise even more. So the best way to deal with situations like this is to go all out and then go for 100 and compromise down to 80 instead of going for 80 and then landing up with 60 or less. Jacob, if you could only attack one, would it be anti-Semitism or just war theory? I think just war theory has a larger societal impact. Probably just war theory, not because it's impact societally because then you're talking about altruism which is much broader than just war theory but because it prevents America from winning wars. It prevents Israel from winning wars. I think that anti-Semitism is still relatively marginal. It could grow. Not winning wars has real consequences, real consequences. And real consequences to our lives, to our security and to the lives of the soldiers fighting who are killed because of this. So if I had to fight for one, I would fight just war theory. Hopper Campbell, why does Jew hatred become genocide? It doesn't always, but because hatred, generally hatred, deep emotional, irrational hatred often leads to violence and a manifestation of violence against a people that you hate for being a people is going to lead to genocide. I mean, or slavery or something that inflicts all the people of that, all the individuals of that people because the hatred is across the entire people. So you can inflict violence against them otherwise if it's just irrational hatred often leads to violence, that's why. Clark, are there intellectual and physical systems in our world that protect evil? Yeah. I mean, the main thing that protects evil is the sanction of the good. The good not calling evil evil, the good cooperating with evil, the good dealing with evil, all of those things are basically protecting evil. They're making evil possible, all of it. Jacob says, remind everybody to vote for you on Lexus Israel, too late, too late. It looks like the votes are in. Liam, the leftists on college campuses show that the savages are not all in Palestine. No, they're not. The savages all over the world and there are plenty of them in the United States. James Taylor, maybe the leftist brat who got into a shoving match with the police at your talk should ask Hamas if he has a right not to be touched. Yeah. I pointed that out with a quiz for Palestine, but yes, I mean, they have no conception of what it means not to have rights and what it would mean to live under an authoritarian regime. Maybe in their lifetime, they'll get to actually experience it here in the United States, sadly. Michael says, one of your best talks on Israel yet, would you consider going on a speaking tour at university to university giving talk defending Israel would be incredible exposure to grow the audience? Yes, I would love to do that. Two aspects to that. Thanks for asking this question, Michael, because I wanted to talk about this. If you want to invite me to come and speak on your campus, let me know, even if you have no money, but if you have the organizational ability, that is you have a club on campus or you're a faculty member on campus and you can organize a room and organize security and organize everything and do the marketing, I will come and my goal then will be to raise money so that I can do a tour of campuses. That's what I want to do. And I'll be raising money for that. I hope to raise $50,000 to $100,000 to be able to do a tour like that and hit a bunch of campuses. But to do that, I need two things. I need money, so if anybody's interested, but it has to be significant checks, right? So if anybody's interested in writing something like a $5,000 check for me to go to a campus to give this talk, then please think about that and let me know, you're on at your own bookshow.com. And if you're a faculty member or a student and know how to organize an event like this on campus, please let me know, I would love to do it and hopefully I will find the funding. So, you know, let's do it, right? Let's do it. And yeah, I mean, it would be fantastic. You know, I was texting today with a major donor to University of Pennsylvania and I said, can you arrange for me to do this talk at the University of Pennsylvania? And he's going to check, you know. I don't know if he has it, but that's great because then he could probably fund it as well. So if you guys know of anybody who are interested, if you're a alum, if you have money and are willing to put it towards that, please go for it and please let me know. You're on at your own bookshow.com. Hop a Campbell. When people say to be the bigger person, it sounds too much like accept the disrespect for me. Yes. Yeah, I don't think you should accept it, but also I don't think, again, you shouldn't be judge justice, right? It should always be justice, but it doesn't mean somebody disrespects you, you lose it, don't lose it. Did you see the new Shawarma restaurant that opened up in Amman, Jordan? It's called October 7th. Yeah, I was going to talk about it in my new show. Nothing should shock me anymore, but that is so vile. Imagine October 7th being the biggest achievement. Yep. This is in Amman and Jordan, Capitol of Jordan. There's a restaurant called October 7th. Yeah, I mean, one of the challenges, yeah. Anyway, so it's, if you have ideas. James Taylor says, the party is going ho for fascism. He's going ho for fascism. Leonard Pickup is right, although him supporting Trump seems to go against his prediction of dim. Well, it depends on how you see the evolution actually happening. It doesn't have to be, and certainly you can justify it. It depends on your assessment of Trump, and it depends on how you see dim coming to be from where, you know, Leonard in dim says that the worst way to bring about the fascism is the left will go so far as this will be a response to the left. So the more we vote for the left, the further the left they go, the crazier they get. And then the backlash comes from the right to establish the fascist dictatorship. Maybe you could imagine Trump is holding that back. I don't think that's right, but again, you could make an argument. I don't think it's as straightforward as you presented. Michael says, does life begin at the end of your comfort zone? No, you don't seem to be get flustered by hostile audiences or threatening students. How do you keep your cool? I don't know, I just do, but life does not begin at the end of your comfort zone. Life is everywhere, even when you're comfortable. Even when you're comfortable, you gotta make something of your life, but it's still there. But how do I keep my cool? I know my purpose. And my purpose is not to get near to fight. My purpose is not to get emotional. My purpose is not to go to their level. My purpose is to convince, to argue, to debate, to make a rational argument. So for that, you need to keep your cool. I don't know how I do it. I just do it, always have done it. I know there've been a bunch of stickers that I haven't thanked you for, so I apologize for that. It's kind of streamed down and this has been long. And send me, just did $10. Thank you and send me, and as I apologize for all the ones that I didn't. All right, let's see. James, I was surprised to hear how egregious you thought Claudine Gay's plagiarism was. If in most, if not all the cases I read, she still cited the source, just not properly, no quotation marks, et cetera. Can you explain your thoughts? I thought there were whole paragraphs where she did not cite. I mean, if she still cited and all that was missing was the quotation mark, then it's not a big issue. That was what happened with Ackman's wife. She cited them all, but didn't put quotation marks. I do not think that is the case with Claudine Gay. I mean, I'm willing, if you've got a story that claims that, I'm willing to look at it and change my mind about it, but it certainly seems to me that that is absolutely the case that she was cited, did not cite the sources. The quotation mark was as Ackman's wife. But again, if I'm wrong, I'll look at it, but that's how I read the evidence. And it was half of her published works had paragraphs, extensive paragraphs that did this. She even copy pasted a whole section. What was it in acknowledgments for somebody else? Now, I wouldn't get excited about that because it's not significant intellectually, but it just gives you a certain attitude. Just copy paste from somebody else's acknowledgement into your paper is kind of weird. So that was my understanding. Hopper Campbell, do many conservatives in religious business can rewrite Christianity to justify an egoistic life? No, they don't justify an egoistic life. They reject an egoistic life. That's why they feel guilty for living the aspects of egoism that they live. Some of it is a justification. Some of it they rationalize using various forms of Christianity or various interpretations of Christianity. Christianity is amazing because it has everything in it. As somebody has said everything about everything in Christianity, so you can justify almost any behavior based on Christianity. But they still feel guilty for whatever egoism they exhibit. But mostly they don't systematically live egoistic lives. They live half-baked, somewhat self-interested, sometimes lives, mainly business life. And then they felt guilty about it. But yes, Christianity is also manipulated as well. All right, Clark says, what did I mean when she said it was the greatest sensation of existence not to trust but to know? Well, I think it's the difference between kind of having a certain level of confidence in something and then just knowing something with a complete and absolute certainty. And that difference is, which is trying to explain there is how magnificent that feels. Again, it's a literary example. I don't remember exactly where that's from, but it's from one of the novels. It's from Angela Shrug, I think, but it's that sense that there's no question. It's not a probabilistic thing. This is complete, 100% certainty without any doubt and having that feeling, the exhilaration of having that. Frank says, we read Rand's metaphysics on the man made. Is the left's humanitarianism and postmodernism and the right's nationalism the attempt to make political a return to nature, i.e. the lenses of gender race patriotism? I mean, I think it is, if I understand the question. I think the lenses of gender race patriotism are attempts to make basically everything, everything political, to make things that are natural, to make things that are metaphysical and epistemological political. It's an attempt to make all of life about politics, about power, force, about the kind of decision-making of other people. That is all, and it's applying that to every aspect of life, everything in life. What gender you are now becomes a political game. It loses a metaphysical sense and I think the left very much wants everything to be political. And I think to some extent, the right does too. That's a game they know how to play. It's a game of power rather than a game, rather than an intellectual pursuit. Thank you, Frank, $50, really appreciate it. Daniel, I find it difficult to isolate courage and confidence in certain social contexts. Wear a degree of both at work, public speaking and introducing myself to a romantic interest, thoughts and introspection and introspecting on this. I mean, look, one of the ways one gains courage and one gains the confidence is through experience. And it's very difficult when you're young to engage in a new activity, public speaking for example, particularly in a culture which emphasizes that you should care about what other people think of you, where people judge you often on very superficial aspects, things. It's very difficult to just be immediately outgoing and immediately confident and immediately able to deal with an audience in a social context. You've got to practice it. And you've got to think about it. You've got to think about why you're nervous, what it is, how bad could it be, how big of a fool could you make of yourself? And if you made yourself the biggest fool possible, what would actually be the consequences? In reality, in fact, not that big, so who cares? You've got to think it through, play it out, play the scenarios out in your head. The same with the romantic interest. You want to date a girl, you go ask her, she says no. The world doesn't end. It doesn't mean you'll never find somebody else to date. It doesn't mean she hates your guts, doesn't even mean your chances with her are over. It just means she said no. And so you've got to think out the scenario, think about why do I feel this way? Why do I feel so bad? Why am I so afraid? Why am I afraid of the no? What is the no? The no is not some metaphysical force that's going to crush you. It's okay, she doesn't want to trade, she doesn't want to engage, so what? It's not a reflection on me, it's a reflection on her. And not necessarily a bad one, just a reflection on her. She said no, I can't have to keep trying. So, yeah, I mean, the whole idea is to put the worst case scenario into perspective. And once I think you retrospect about what would the worst case scenario feel like, then I think you'll discover that, oh, well, it's not that bad. And then, look, it's not gonna go away all day, then you have to practice, then you have to practice and just do it, right? So take the Goggins thing. The first few times, you just might have to just do it, right? Force yourself to do it. But the more you think about it, the more you practice, the more you think about the scenarios, the easier it will become. Whoops. CNCN says, wait, I may have misread. It's a 2v2 now. Oh, we're back to that. All right, I got that. All right, Liam says, if you tell a big enough, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. That's Goebbels. Is this why people keep claiming there's an invasion on the Southern border? Yes, yes. And the left has mastered it. This is why they keep claiming that people's incomes were flat down from 1970s through the 2000s. This is why the right now keeps saying the economy's in shambles. Just repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. In fact, don't never stop mattering. Actual facts, actual reality stop mattering. Yes, and the border stuff, the invasion stuff, that's a perfect illustration of that. The left and right are masters of doing it, particularly the left. James says, I've heard objective as philosophers imply that mental illness can be cured largely by philosophy, but from my experience, I tend to think it's irreversible thoughts. I certainly don't think it's irreversible. I think some issues can be cured with philosophy, some. I think most cannot. I think some can be cured with drugs and some can be cured with therapy. So I don't think philosophers qualified to talk about all mental illness. Suddenly, I think that if we had the right philosophy, if we lived in a good world, if we lived in an objectivist type world, there'd be less mental illness, a lot less mental illness. But there still would be and people would still need some medications and there'd still be all kinds of other treatments for mental illness. So I don't think it's just philosophy. Oh, the 49ers have come back to tie the game. And I'm a 49ers fan. I shouldn't be watching this game. I mean, I was a 49ers fan. I haven't watched football as I said earlier in a long time. Why do you think ARI, this is Hopper Campbell, why do you think ARI has so many more subscribers than your show, given how dry and academic so many of their videos are? Because they're less engaged in politics and offend fewer people. I mean, I think that's one second. They have a much better distribution because they have Ayn Rand in the title and everybody interested in that even goes to them and third, they have a lot of really damn good videos. So yeah, I mean, I think that those are the reasons. If you have other explanations, go ahead. But I think the main reason is Ayn Rand in the name in the title and everything else Ayn Rand Institute does and the relationship Ayn Rand Institute has with so many people. And then the fact that they, not every second video they attack Trump. Clark, if Iran gets an atomic super chat, won't let me say bomb, are they more likely to use it on Israel, Europe or USA first? I think it's unlikely that they use it. I don't think Iran will use an atomic bomb, but I think having it gives them immunity from attack. Having it prevents other countries from attacking them and if other countries do attack, then they will use it. And then who they use it on first will depend on who attacking them, but it's most likely Israel. Liam, I think Trump derangement syndrome is defending Trump no matter what obnoxious tyrannical thing he does. Yes, but then we should call it, I used to call it Trump mindlessness syndrome or Trump something syndrome, but we can't use the same word. James, judging by the angry leftist in the audience, it seems there is minimal value in anger. Mostly he just corrodes the person carrying it from the inside. Yeah, although there is justice in it, there is use in it in the sense of justice. If somebody does something wrong to you, you should feel angry. It's a defense mechanism and you should feel it. Just you don't have to act on it. You don't have to go crazy from it, but you should feel it. Frank, Palestinians keep crying genocide because they say women plus children are being killed. Children, a future of a people, women give birth. Am I right? No, Palestinians keep crying genocide because they're lying. Very few women and children out of the entire population have died, so it's just a lie. They're using the term in order to try to inhibit Israel from doing what is necessary to win the war. Would be a Dr. Pepper, I hate both of them, James is asking. I hate would be a, and I hate Dr. Pepper. I hate them. I won't even sip, won't even take a sip. Can't stand it. And indeed, I do not know anybody who is not born in the United States who likes, would be a Dr. Pepper, particularly would be a. It's an American thing you have to be born here in order to get it, to get it. Proper, if Texas starts a bloody civil war, you're only kidding, they won't have to worry about barbed wire on the border because nobody will want to come here. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty insane. I don't think they'll be a civil war, but this is pretty nutty. And I don't know what the end game is, and I don't know what Texas thinks they end game is. I don't know what they're playing in, other than politics, politics, politics, politics, politics. Spyman 3000, Yuan, I was gutted to be out of town when you were in Michigan. How did it go? I said it went well. I talked about that earlier. Will you be coming back? Yes, sure will. Jennifer seems to have organized every year or two, eight, two or three in Michigan. So look for one next year or the year after that. Also, how much do movie reviews cost? $500 for movie review, $500. 500. Apollo Zeus, have you listened to the best of Richard Haley's CD? I wish it existed. Your thoughts, just throwing your money for your efforts. Appreciate it, Apollo. Andrew, how do you think it is that Trump's great skill is manipulating people? Yet, as you pointed out, he's able to easily be easily manipulated. Well, he lets himself be manipulated because he has no ideas. So he lets himself, he tests all these other people's ideas and then he thinks about how this would play with the audience. One of the reasons Trump is such a good manipulator is because he's very attuned to his audience, very, very, very attuned to his audience. So he will try different slogans with them and figure out which one they respond best to and then use those, right? He doesn't, he's very good at figuring out what people are pissed off at, what really upset people, what people want answers to. He's very good at understanding his voters. And if you're proposing something that he thinks will go with his voters, voters, he'll go with it. So I don't know that it's how much it's him being manipulated as him, because he's kind of an empty vessel, he could go in a variety of different directions. He's not committed to anything. He's not principled in any way. I mean, Trump is a, he hates America. What he cares about is Trump, but he really despises America. And he doesn't, and the real issue is he has no concept of what America is. He has no understanding of what America is. And therefore he has no North Star. He has nothing guiding himself. So people coming in can easily divert his attention in a direction they want, as long as he believes it's consistent with that other side, right? It's consistent with what his audience wants, what his voters want, what the, you know. He wants to be loved by certain people. Robert says, friends in the chat, do not let the purveyors of doom tell you how much you should be fighting. Yes, we fight, but we do not engage in self-sacrifice. Thank you, Robert. Absolutely, no self-sacrifice. And finally, Weston. Other times, where achieving victory and our self-defense would justify barbarity like we saw on October 7th. Well, is there a difference in kind between that and Hiroshima and Dresden? I do think there's a difference in kind because it was pointless. It did not, there was no victory intended. There was no chance of victory. There was no chance. Hiroshima Nagasaki rationally thought out as past the victory, as bringing about Japanese surrender. I also think that one of the differences of October 7th, they relished it. They enjoyed it. They thrived off of it. Not the fact that this would lead to victory, but the very fact that they were spilling blood. They loved the spilling of blood. I don't think the people who dropped Hiroshima Nagasaki bombs anywhere in Hiroshima Nagasaki. I don't think the people who dropped those bombs relished it. They were proud of it and they should have been because it ended the war. But they didn't like enjoy the fact that so many thousands of people. That's a big difference, a big difference. But no, I don't think raping, torturing, is, I can't think of a place and a time in that kind of way would be justified in order to win a war. I can think about maybe the need to torture in order to get information for intelligence. But to torture just to scare the bejesus out of the other side of torture, just because you're enjoying the torture and you hate that other side, those are barbaric animalistic things to do. By the way, you should all read my essay on just war theory. You can just put your on broke just war theory in Google and the essays available for free. Everybody should read that essay. It's the most, I think the most important thing I've ever written in terms of writing and I wrote it with Alex Epstein and it would be great if everybody read it. Everybody really should read it. It's an important essay, particularly a time of war. Ryan, great talk from Texas. Thank you, Ryan, really, really appreciate that. Ooh, we're just $22 away from a thousand bucks. 22 bucks, all right. All right, everybody, tomorrow there'll be a news roundup. I think it'll be a 1 p.m. Eastern time. 1 p.m. Eastern time news roundup. Yeah, the essay is just war theory versus American self-defense. You can put your on broke next to that and you'll get it from Google very quickly. I think they're two different versions but I think they're the same, right? So thank you if you want to support the show monthly. You can do so on Patreon, you're on bookshow.com slash membership, not support. And of course, if you would like me to do a tour and you have an idea of where I could come for the tour, please let me know. Please send me an email. You're on at your on bookshow.com. You can do that if you're a student or a faculty member or if you have money and would like to invest in a fund that would allow me to do these talks all over the country. All right, Stephen, thank you. We now only $20 short of $1,000. Anyway, I will see you in the morning, not in the morning, early afternoon. See you tomorrow at 1 p.m. Eastern time for a news roundup. Bye, everybody.