 Well, welcome to session six of the conservative intellectual tradition in America. I'm Mallory Factor. I'm going to be your guide through this course. Today we have a very exciting lecture on the emergence of libertarianism. Libertarianism and classical liberalism is really a subject that we have not even begun to deal with yet. And today is going to be the beginning of looking at the different forms of conservatism. Our speaker, however, has a very strong bent in this area. He's a political activist, and he's also the current president and executive director of the INRAN Institute, which is a non-profit organization in Irving, California, whose mission it is to promote INRAN's philosophy of objectivism. For seven years he was an award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, and in 1998 he co-founded a financial advisory firm, BH Equity Research, of which he's presently managing director and chairman. Born in Israel and a member of the Israel Intelligence Service, a former member that is, he's co-author of Neo-Conservatism, an obituary for an idea, and he's also a contributor to winning the unwinnable war, America's self-crippled response to Islamic totalitarianism. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce my friend, Dr. Yaron Brooke. Thank you, Mallory. This is a real pleasure, particularly given the lineup that you guys, I can't believe, how lucky you 12 are in terms of the lineup of speakers that you have in this class. So it is a real honor for me to be part of that lineup. And I think this topic is a really exciting topic right now. This question about the significance of libertarian ideas, even INRAN's ideas, in the conservative movement right now, I think, is an important issue and a very, very relevant issue. And I'll just give you a few concretes to kind of make this real. Obviously, the most striking example of libertarianism right now is, of course, the candidacy of Ron Paul. And Ron Paul is running as a libertarian conservative. And I think has really shaken things up a little bit and forced other candidates to deal with certain economic issues, certain issues about what is the role of government that conservatives are not always comfortable dealing with and don't always want to deal with, certainly not kind of deal with this more extreme position that Ron Paul has taken up, this more radical position. INRAN has played a significant role, I think, in the last year or so, no, actually last three years, within the conservative movement. And really, she's played a role not so much among the candidates or among the leadership of the conservative movement, but in the tea parties. And if you've been to tea party demonstrations, then you've seen signs which say things like, Atlas is shrugging. Well, where does that come from? It comes from Iron Man's Atlas Shrugged. Or signs that say, who is John Gault? Or if they were a little pretentious, they say, I am John Gault. A little pretentious, I think, but where does that come from? That's the opening line and a really theme throughout the novel, Iron Man's novel, Atlas Shrugged. And I think, again, Iron Man is challenging conservatism, is asking questions about conservatism that are crucial, particularly at this point in American history where we're faced with ever-growing government, ever-growing liabilities we can't pay for, and a real crisis in confidence in our system of government, in the way our government functions. And here are these challenges both from a Ron Paul type, he calls himself a conservative libertarian, and an Ein Rand who is different. We'll talk about it in what ways different, but quite radical, particularly for conservatives to, I think, grapple with. So I think it's really important to, when studying conservatism and studying conservatism in America, both in terms of understanding the history of kind of the impact of libertarian and randian ideas on the conservative movement, but also, and maybe more importantly, in projecting out into the future. Because it does look like these kind of ideas are bubbling up to the surface, and maybe are going to have more of an impact on American politics as we move into the future than they have had in the past. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to start by giving you a little bit of background on kind of the history of the libertarian and modern libertarian movement, where it came from, the impact I think it's already had on the conservative movement. You know, it's different factions, you will find that libertarianism, just like conservatism, just like a lot of the isms, have a variety of different factions, different approaches. Ron Paul comes from a particular school within, I'd say, the libertarian movement. There are other schools, there are other perspectives on some of the issues he addresses. So I'd like to cover that, and then I'd like to talk about iron man subjectivism, you know, what's unique about it, what's different about it than libertarianism. And then talk about the future, talk about how I think this plays out as we move into the future. To understand, I think both the growth of modern conservatism and the growth of modern libertarianism, I think you really have to go back to post-World War II America and understand kind of where we were at that point. 1944, 1945, the war's ending. We just defeated Hitler and the Japanese to, you know, fascist empires with ideas of world domination, but two ideologically heavily collectivistic regimes, right, regimes that emphasize collectivism. At the same time, the largest collectivistic ideology, a most dominant one of 1940s is what? It's communism as embedded in the Soviet Union and just a few years later in Mao's China. So communism is dominant, it's on the rise. Indeed, we hand over, for another lecture, we hand over the whole of Eastern Europe to communism at the end of World War II. And the world, as you follow in the late 40s and early 50s, slowly country after country is falling under the spell of communism. This is an ideology that really is enthralled people. At the same time in the United States itself, we are emerging from the Great Depression, an era where the collectivism, these ideas of state control, these ideas of sacrificing individual liberty for the sake of the state, for the sake of the economy, for the sake of the group. We have just gone through over a decade, 15 years, of significant increase in the size of government, the role of government, and this notion that it's okay to sacrifice the individual for the group. That it's okay to sacrifice some individuals for the economy or for reducing unemployment. And there's a debate in the 40s. Has it worked or hasn't it worked? To this day, I think we're having a debate, although I think outside one, it didn't work. But the debates, Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economics, I don't have a Nobel Prize, would disagree with me obviously. But this is a debate going on in the 40s. The fear is among those who admire individual liberty, who admire the founding fathers, who admire kind of pre-Great Depression, 19th century America. The fear is that collectivism is rising in America. It's not a fear, it's a reality. And that collectivism is dominating the rest of the world in the form of the worst form of collectivism imaginable to man, which is communism. So that's the context. All this is going on. In 1944, and there were a number of thinkers during the 30s and 40s that are talking about this and that are arguing against collectivism, arguing against communism. Ina Nrand is in the mix here. She writes a novel in 1930s called We the Living, which is close to already biographical. She came from the Soviet Union. She experienced communism. She writes a book about communism. And just to give you a sense, the book was a complete failure in terms of its sales because the intelligentsia in America in the 1930s were enamored by communism. They couldn't believe it was this bad. It only was in the 50s and the 60s when they realized what Stalin had done that the American left and the American intelligentsia realized that communism was really, really a bad thing. But in the 30s and 40s they were enamored by this. So there were a lot of voices, but a small book published in the UK and England in 1944 really seemed to resonate a lot with both conservatives and many who were worried about the rise of collectivism. And that is The Rotasurfdom by F.A. Hayek. Hayek is probably, if you look today, probably the most influential libertarian thinker of modern times. Certainly the most influential libertarian thinker on conservatism. They might have been more important libertarian thinkers called libertarianism. But in terms of the impact on conservatives, Hayek has probably had the most impact. And conservatives like him, and you'll see why they like him in a minute. Hayek was an Austrian, an economist, a brilliant economist, one of the really great economists of the 20th century, a free market economist, clearly an advocate for minimal government intervention. And he writes The Rotasurfdom. The Rotasurfdom is this book that describes basically a thesis as this. If you allow governments to grow, if you plant the seed of collectivism, what you get in the end is authoritarianism. He says Nazism doesn't come out of nowhere. Nazism is the consequence of the seed of collectivism that it took years and years and years to cultivate in Germany. And in the end, you get fascism. Communism didn't come out of nowhere. It's the seed of collectivism that slowly, government grows, slowly and plant itself. It changes people's attitudes about life, and you get communism. And he said, what's happening in the West in the 1940s, remember, I don't know if you won't remember, maybe you've studied history enough to know that Churchill won World War II for the UK. I mean, Churchill is a giant. But in the elections of 1946 or 1945, I think, Churchill is voted out of office. He just won the war. You'd think this guy would storm, you know, the elections would be easy. He loses, and he loses to the socialists. He loses to the British Labour Party, because the West is moving left so fast that even Churchill can't win an election. So Hayek is warning the British that this is what's going to happen. The book comes to America. It becomes a huge success here. It sells many, many copies, spurs a lot of thinkers to come out of the woodwork in support of these ideas. Now, Hayek at the same time as he clearly believes in free market is a strong free market advocate in certain areas, certainly from an economics perspective. He's, again, a brilliant economist. But he's also a compromiser a little bit, because Hayek also says, look, the state does have a role here in the facilitating competition and helping the markets along. You know, so he's not a purist when it comes to markets. He allows for significantly more government than many libertarians did at the time and will, you know, post-Hayek. This is why conservatives like him, because he's not a purist. And conservatives are not purists when it comes to free markets, right? I mean, conservatives do not believe in limited government, limiting it to, you know, setting up property rights and leaving the markets alone, right? Which is what, as we'll talk about what libertarians hope. Conservatives want to tinker, right? And you can see it in this presidential campaign. I mean, who are the conservatives? In terms of conservatives, he wants to tinker. He wants to give special privileges to manufacturers, because manufacturing is better than service. Why? Because Santorum decided, right? And we can have an argument whether that's true or not. But the point is, he, a poor politician, wants to dictate to the marketplace that manufacturing is better than this. Or, you know, Gingrich wants to give these tax favors and those that, each one of them wants to manipulate the market in a different way based on their agenda. And that's typical of conservatives. Conservatives are not hands-off, you know, completely hands-off, right? So Hayek kind of bridges. He's got a foot here and a foot there. He never considered himself a conservative. He actually wrote an whole essay on why I'm not a conservative, where he criticizes conservatives. And one of the biggest criticisms he has is the word, right? Where does the word conservative come from? It comes from the word conserve. Well, what exactly are we trying to conserve, right? Things suck. I don't know if I can say suck on video. But, you know, things are bad. What do we want to conserve about the things that exist today? What do we want to conserve about the things that exist in the last 50 years? 60 or 70 years. So he considered himself, as all libertarians consider themselves, I mean, it's kind of an interesting twist. Libertarians consider themselves liberals. But not modern liberals, liberals of the past, 19th century-like liberals. They consider themselves progressives because they're for progress. Not leftist progressives. Not progressives that need government in order to move things forward. But they want to leave the markets alone to progress. But they are revolutionaries. They're radicals. They're not conservatives in the sense of wanting to conserve. At least that's, you know, a high-ex-view. And if you read, there's a new website that the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank, has just started a few months ago called Libertarianism.org. If you go there and you trace the way they write, the way the libertarians write about their history, they trace their roots to every kind of free thinker. Liberal thinker. Liberal meant free thinker. You know, the liberals in America stole the word. They reversed its meaning. The pro-capitalists 100 years ago were all liberals. And, you know, modern liberals flipped the term. Invent calls it a stolen concept. They stole the concept from the whites and turned it into a leftist concept. So they traced themselves back to the Greeks and the Romans and Cicero and to the founding fathers and so on. So Hayek is a crucial figure. He ultimately comes and teaches at the University of Chicago. We'll talk about the University of Chicago in a minute because there's another branch kind of libertarianism that comes out of there. Another important figure that I just want to mention here because I think he represents, from my perspective at least, kind of the pure form of libertarianism and the more rational form of libertarianism is probably the greatest economist of the 20th century. And that is a guy named Ludwig von Mises, M-I-S-E-S. And von Mises is also Austrian and indeed the school of thought that combines von Mises and Hayek is called the Austrian School of Economics. In my view, the best school of economics out there. So they get it. Von Mises was actually Hayek's teacher. Hayek, when he came to study with von Mises, was actually a socialist and von Mises turned him into a capitalist. He flipped him. So von Mises is responsible for giving us the economist that is Hayek. Von Mises was again the great economist and a purist here. I mean von Mises believed that government has only one rule and that is in the economic sphere that is the protection of property rights. You set up the rules for property rights and then you go catch the crooks, right? Catch the fraudsters, catch the criminals. But other than that, no regulations, no incentives, no manipulation of the market, no all of these regulatory agencies that we have today, no government involvement in the economy. None. I mean it's hard to imagine. But no FDA, no SEC, no, you know, Department of Commerce. I don't know what they do. I guess they take COs around the world and show them off. No Department of Labor, no special rules for unions. Usually they conform but they get no government privileges. Nothing, no government involvement in the economy. Leave it alone, okay? And Mises, I think, you know, has a huge influence on kind of the libertarian movement, again, particularly among economists, and notice that the main libertarians, the most important libertarians are all economists. Libertarianism really comes out of, and this is kind of the utilitarian grounding, they come out of an economic understanding of the world, from an economic understanding of how markets work. And they say markets work, what do we need government for? We'll see that Iron Man approaches this differently. But their view is, you know, this is what happens in economics, right? If you leave people alone, all these good things happen. And if you look at history, when we leave markets alone, boom, standard of living goes up, boom, GDP goes up, quality of life goes up, you know, we get industrialization, we get technology, we get iPhones, we got iPads, we get good stuff, right? When you regulate, when you control, you get crises, you get poverty, you get decline, you get recessions, you get distortions in the marketplace. So, purely economic analysis. If we don't have an FDA, you know, private entities will come up to rate drugs or to test our food or to do that. We don't need the FDA because the economics will, the incentives of capitalism will drive private people to do that and we, you know, they'll be more trustworthy than the Bureau of Credit does them. And for every one of these questions you might have, they have a really neat, and I think true, economic solution to how this would work under free markets, how this would work under capital. So this is kind of the Van Meezer school. He's a purist when it comes to this. No government intervention. And probably, you know, within the libertarian movement, I would argue, probably Van Meezer is the most influential of the libertarian thinkers, the economists. He actually taught at NYU. And it's interesting that both Hayek, when he taught at Chicago, Hayek ultimately taught in London and just as an aside, was very influential in Margaret Thatcher. So he sat at a place called the Institute of Economic Affairs and Margaret Thatcher, who completely changed, you know, the British economy and the UK, completely revolutionized it towards more freedom. I mean, she'll go down as one of the great political, in my view, and I hope I'm not insulting anybody, she's bigger than Ronald Reagan. I mean, she had, and there's no question about this, she had a more profound impact on the UK than Ronald Reagan had on the US. Because the UK's was much worse shaped than we were in the late 1970s. So she's a, she literally studied with Hayek. She, you know, she was there at AEI and they would chat. He was probably in his 70s, 80s by that point. But so he had a profound impact on the politics of the UK, at least under Thatcher. Both Hayek and von Mises, when they got university positions in the US, they were funded with external grants. They couldn't get like ten-year, regular ten-year positions from the university because the universities, even then, were so dominated by collectivists, anti-free market, anti-capitalist forces that they had to get their own funding from foundations and from institutions to be able to get their positions. A third economist that I want to quickly deal with because he's so well-known and probably the most well-known libertarian is Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman from the University of Chicago, you know, started a school, really started before him by getting Frank Knight, but started a school called the University of Chicago School of Economics, he is considered a libertarian, considered himself a libertarian, I think was considered a libertarian while he was alive, was a big free market economist, made a lot of arguments for free markets. What's interesting about Milton Friedman, particularly as competitive on Mises, is Mises and the Austrians, this Austrian school of economics, very much worked outside of mainstream economics. They were the fringe guys. They never published in the big journals. They weren't considered mainstream. Milton Friedman used the tools of conventional mainstream economics to kind of advocate for free markets and as a consequence, I think became more well-known than they did, certainly within the field of economics, even his opponents have a high regard for him. He is a big advocate, again, of free markets. Markets work. Markets leaving individual alone is right. And it works. And again, this goes back to Adam Smith. Adam Smith writing in the Wealth of Nations, 1776, shows that when you leave individuals alone, the economy succeeds, the economy grows. Friedman is very successful at Chicago. You have today at universities all over America, many of his students, in terms of influence on the field of economics, much bigger than the others. Although Friedman like, I think, a little bit like Hayek compromises. So there's a big debate among libertarians about do we need a central bank or don't we need a central bank? You'll see again that I think Einemann approaches a question like that very differently. But Milton Friedman comes down, at least most of his life, on the side of yes we do. Although towards the end of his life, supposedly he changed his mind and said, we don't need a central bank. Hayek, again, depends on what you read. Sometimes he's for central bank, sometimes he's against. This was never for a central bank. Always for free banking, no central bank. And many of today's Austrian economists support that position of no need for a central bank today. So I think these are the three big economists who really shaped and had an influence on the world out there, certainly in terms of their economic teaching. So what unites them? What unites them is a respect for the marketplace. A respect for capitalism. A respect for how markets work. And the idea that if markets are left alone, they not only solve the problems, but they create wealth. They create enormous amounts of wealth. They allow the poor to rise up from poverty. They allow technological innovation. They allow creativity. So everything that we want, materially at least, they make possible. Much of what we want spiritually is made possible by the fact that we have wealth. So if you really enjoy listening to music, which is a spiritual activity, the world is much richer in terms of your opportunity to enjoy music when you're wealthy than when you have a society that's poor. It's a wealthy society created iPads that you can listen to music everywhere, where a band with no support and no money can go on the Internet and record its music and have it heard everywhere. The level of opportunity that exists in a field like music, like a non-material field, right, is huge because of technology, because of wealth. It didn't exist 200 years ago because the technology wasn't there. And why wasn't technology not there? Because the wealth wasn't there and the science wasn't there. All of these support one another. But again, from this perspective up, it works. I want to talk about one other kind of part of the libertarian movement, which I think is significant. And as you go out there and meet libertarians, you'll encounter these groups that don't want to be accused of not including one group. And that is the anarchists. These are the libertarians who believe that there should be no go. This is Hayek Friedman. All believe there should be government. We'll talk about what the government's role is. I mentioned it a little bit, but we'll talk a little bit more in a minute. But this school believes there should be no government. And again, not surprising, it's led, for the most part, by an economist. An economist by the name of Maui Rothbard, who I think at least at the end of his career was at the University of Las Vegas. And this is the idea that why stop at privatizing the post office and privatizing schools and let's privatize the police force and let's privatize the military. And let's have competing governments in a sense of competing police forces and so on. This view is very strongly held out there. There's a big faction today of the libertarian movement, if there is such a thing, of people who call themselves libertarians who believe in anarchy. A lot of the intellectuals today who call themselves libertarians are advocates for an anarchy. And it doesn't just manifest itself in no government, but a sudden hatred of government, a sudden resentment of government. So government is the biggest initiator for us, the biggest violator of our rights, and we hate it and we resent it. And you know, there's a certain element of truth there. The biggest violator, the biggest imposer force on your life today is government. We'll talk about that a little bit. What's interesting is that it also has an element of a real anti-U.S. government for whatever reason the anarchists tend to hate American government more than they hate any other government. Which, you know, I don't ask me to explain, you'd have to ask one of them to explain, but it really is in there. And you know, when I talk about Ron Paul, you know, there's a certain element of this in Ron Paul, which I think is interesting. He's influenced by this part of the libertarian side of it. This element of anarchists, anti-government, anti-U.S. government is, I think, definitely there. So what impact have these thinkers had on the American political scene? Not much. Not much. I mean, I think they've had an impact on people's ideas. They've had an impact on what people say, maybe even on what people think. But I'd say they've had almost no impact on what conservatives actually do in a sense of what they do when they get to power, when they get into a position of doing something. So many people in the Reagan administration, I think, would have considered themselves libertarian, economic libertarians in a sense of believing in a very, very minor role of government, but they didn't do much. The fact is the government under Reagan grew. It didn't shrink. Now, it grew at a slow rate. It was deregulated, but deregulated shouldn't have already started under Jimmy Carter. Indeed, you know, again, not popular among conservatives, but the fact is that much of the benefits that Reagan got were a result of deregulation that could under Jimmy Carter and actually under Ford. Ford is the one who really started it and then Carter... You know, it used to be that the government controlled the price of airplane tickets. Yep. And Jimmy Carter deregulated that. It used to be that the government controlled the tariff for trucking. How much trucks could charge businesses for trucking. Jimmy Carter deregulated that. Financial services were far more so. Broker fees used to be regulated. How much a bank could pay on your saving account used to be regulated, called Regulation Q. All of that was deregulating the 70s, right, under Joe Ford and Jimmy Carter, not under Reagan. So Reagan benefited from the fact that there was already some momentum towards deregulation. So with some deregulation, there was certainly cutting taxes, but there was no shrinkage of government. When Reagan came into office saying I was going to do away with the Department of Education, the Department of Education by the end of his second term was far bigger than it was when he started. So the language of kind of the libertarian pro-free markets was there. The actions, not so much, and when we talk about RAND, I'll try to explain why that is. You see it in the verbiage, even of the presidential candidates. Mitt Romney will say, you know, we need to shrink government dramatically, and I'm for individual rights, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in the next sentence, he's telling you which industries he's going to subsidize and which industries he's going to penalize and how he's going to increase, how he's going to go after Chinese and help the Americans and do all this and manipulate the economy. So it enters in certain areas, but it hasn't sunk in. So it seems like a lot of the candidates, the conservative candidates, need to talk to talk, but they don't actually walk the walk, unfortunately. And I won't even start with George Bush, because where do you end if you start there? And it's not Bush's fault, right? He had a House and a Senate. There were all Republicans. There were a lot of conservatives there. How many of you know, you've heard of Sabine's Oxley? I know you've got it. Sabine's Oxley, one of the biggest regulatory bills, maybe since the 1930s, was passed in 2002, probably cost the US economy somewhere in the range of, I mean, estimates of around one and a half trillion dollars shaved off from GDP. A horrific, horrific, stupid law, which has caught, you know how many crooks it's caught? Because this came after Enron and WorldCom and all the fraud that happened. You know how many crooks it's caught? Zero. But it may have happened anyway. The housing crisis and whatever Wall Street shenanigans happened anyway, did nothing. Anyway, you know how many conservatives voted against this in the Senate? None because the thing passed 97 to zero. Conservatives talk the talk. They don't walk the walk when it comes to economic liberty. At least that's the history. And that's why, no matter who's in Congress, no matter who's in the White House, government has grown since the teens. For 100 years, government has only grown. Government intervention and economy has only grown. Despite of that deregulation, there were other areas that were very quickly re-regulated and regulated anew and new taxes and new programs and more redistribution of wealth and more programs. We saw that definitely under Bush, one of the biggest regulators and biggest, you know, expanders of government programs since probably Lyndon B. Johnson. Okay, so let's sum up quickly here. Libertarians stand for economic freedom. They stand for individual freedom. So quickly on the social issues, Libertarians generally, the general principle is live and let live, you know. None of your business, I should be able to do whatever I want to do as long as I don't hurt you, as long as I don't violate your rights. It's not the goal of government to legislate morality. It's not the goal of government to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. This is why you will see that, you know, Libertarians will advocate for legalization of drugs, legalization of prostitution. They will tend to be pro-abortion and they will tend to be, you know, in these days pro-game average, right? So they will deviate from the conservative message on all of those and indeed from mainstream America quite a bit on many of those. But, you know, and you've seen it, Ron Paul has always pushed on the drugs issue. He says he'd legalized marijuana, but what he really, really believes is that all drugs should be legalized and I think you can make a really solid argument for that. It's interesting that they found of, William F. Buckley towards the end of his life believed in drug legalization, but not because of an individual freedoms issue. He believed in drug legalization from a utilitarian perspective. He believed it created too much crime and created too many people in jail and therefore just from an efficiency perspective it didn't make any sense. The Libertarians believe in it not just from an efficiency perspective but from an individual kind of liberty perspective. So their view is, again, that those drugs are very different and let's keep them to side. I think the mainstream libertarian position generally in politics is as long as you're not violating somebody else's rights you should be able to do pretty much anything you want to do. It's not the role of government to tell you what you can and cannot do. Live and let live. And that boils down to a principle which you could probably, you know, bring back to the formulation to Ayn Rand, maybe there were other thinkers that came up with similar formulations, but the principle of non-initiation of force. The idea that as long as you're not using force on somebody else you should be able to do whatever you want to do. That's the principle that Libertarians and in politics that objectivists, Ayn Rand, would hold, the non-initiation of force principle. And that the role of government, the role of government is to prevent the initiation of force and to retaliate when that force is initiated. So when somebody, you know, runs at me with a club to try to beat my head in, ideally the role of government is to step in, handcuff him and take him to jail before he gets to me. Now, and if he's already clubbed me then the idea is it shouldn't be my responsibility to chase after him. We want a specialized force, a police force to chase him, get him, put him in jail. That's the role of government. When, you know, and again, military, so three functions, military, police, judiciary. That's it. And really they're all involved in extracting force from society. Now why do Libertarians hold this as a first principle? Because they do. Because that's what they believe in. And we'll see that this is Rand's biggest objection here because she believes you need a philosophical foundation. You can't just start with politics. Politics is an outcome. It's the end game. It's not the beginning. It's not the be all and all. Libertarians believe in a big tent. They, as we said, include anarchists. They include some people who are willing to compromise on the role of government. But they also philosophically include utilitarians. They include Catholic priests. They include Kantians, you know, Kant's philosophy. They include, you know, what do you call it, natural rights. They include all kinds of philosophies. Libertarianism has nothing to say about how you come to the principle of non-initiation of force. It's just as long as you accept it, you're okay. So let me flip here. This is a good transition to Iron Rand because Iron Rand disagrees. Rand claims that the reason we can't hold on, we can't win the battle for limited government, for this capitalist economy. The reason we can't win it is because most people don't care about economics. Economics is not what life's about. It's not just about wealth. It's not just about how much GDP we can create or what kind of iPhone we can get. But it's much more, there are much more important values that there are much more important things involved here that people indeed don't vote their pocketbook. If they voted their pocketbook, we would have capitalism in America today because clearly capitalism is better for your pocketbook than his state intervention, statism. Economics have been done on that, right? We've got great economists, you know, by the way, Hayek and Friedman won Nobel Prizes. It's not just Krugman. Lots of economists have shown free markets work. The libertarians have done that, right? People don't vote their pocketbook. People want to believe that what they're doing is right. It's just. It's fair. It's good. People care about moral values. And ultimately what drives politics is not economics. It's morality. Even the challenge between individualism and collectivism, which is what seems to have spur the conservatives and the libertarians, but neither the conservatives in Rand's view, neither the conservatives nor the libertarians have defended individualism. Because the question is why? Why shouldn't we view people as groups? And indeed I would argue, Rand would argue, that most conservatives are collectivists. Again, I'll give you Rick Santorum. What is the unit? The unit of morality, the unit of politics, the unit of economics for Rick Santorum. The family, not the individual. He has a long speech in which, I think it's an interview, in which he says individual happiness is not the goal. This is where I think he departs dramatically from the founders. The family is the goal. The solidity of the family, however you want to define. That's collectivism. Whenever the unit of measurement is more than one person, is a group, it's collectivism. And of course that leads to policy, right? If the unit is the family, now it's not about individual freedom, it's about what's good for the family and if I can outlaw divorce, maybe that's good for the family, so I'll outlaw divorce. The standard becomes completely different. And this is the problem conservatives face, is they don't have a defense of individualism. But neither do the libertarians. Because neither conservatives nor libertarians want to challenge what's at the root of collectivism, according to Rand. And what's at the root of collectivism is the morality of altruism. Now, what is altruism? Again, everything I'm saying is according to Rand. Altruism is not being nice to other people. Being nice to other people is just being benevolent. Altruism is not helping other people necessarily. Altruism is the idea, the philosophy that says, the morality that says, that the well-being of other people is your primary moral responsibility. So when you think about the good, the good is what I can do for other people, not what I can do for myself. Altruism versus egoism or self-interest. So the unit is other people. Immediately that's non-individualistic. It's about others. It's not about self. It's not about pursuing your happiness, right? Remember the Declaration of Independence says, it doesn't say you have a right to be your brother's keeper, go and help your fellow man, be mother to race or no. It says pursue happiness. That's pretty selfish of the founders, right? And you have an inevitable right that cannot be taken away by anybody to pursue happiness. So at the root of collectivism, Rand tells us is altruism is this notion of sacrifice that virtue comes from sacrifice. And I like to tell the story of Bill Gates. Bill Gates made gazillions of dollars during the 1990s and 2000s with Microsoft. And what did we think of him morally while he was making all his money? No, we thought he was a great businessman. But what did we think he was, you know, mother to race or Bill Gates on the same axis? No, right? Mother to race is a saint. He's like, eh, he's a businessman. He's out to make money. Morally, we don't think much of him at all. Okay, so he retires and he sets up a foundation and he's giving it away. Ooh, now he's a good guy. Now he's moral because he's giving it away. And I could guarantee him sainthood. Now, I'm not a Catholic and I haven't talked to the Pope, I think this would work. He could get sainthood if he gave it all away and if he moved into like a hut to a tent or something. Right? And if he bled a little bit and showed some suffering, that would help too. It's true. Now my moral code, other people chose it. But this is true. So in this country, we don't admire ethically the creation of wealth. The creation of wealth, eh. But if we give it away, actually a year ago, about a year ago, I gave a talk here in Charleston, there was a luncheon event. They were sponsored by the Citadel Business School that honored local business leaders. And they got awards. And I can't tell you exactly what the sponsorship worked. But I was the keynote speaker. But everybody went up and introduced the businessman who were getting their awards. And it was fascinating because it fit right into my thesis. It was perfect. Two minutes describing their business achievements. The wealth they created, the employment they created, you know, the great standard of living they provided for their family and for themselves. And then they spent 15, 20 minutes describing their philanthropy and their community service. I mean that is just bizarre. It's bizarre. Now why is that? When Bill Gates made gazillions of dollars, how much did he help all of us? We all bought his products. Did he make us better? By huge amount. By amount, many, many multiples of how much money he made. He helped us. He helped poor people all over the world. The fact that Microsoft is standardized software all over on computers, made networking possible, ultimately makes the internet possible in the form that we have today. And ultimately has benefited people all across the world. Billions of people. Many, many folds over what he actually earned. I believe he helped many, many more people in a much more profound way than when he gives it away. I think there's no question. And I think there's no question that under Microsoft he helped many, many more people in a more profound way than Mother Teresa ever, ever did. But what's the difference? He earned a return on helping them. He made money in the process. He helped himself by helping other people. That is unacceptable. That's why when he stopped making money and he just gave it away, even though he's helping fewer people and not as well, he's a good guy. That's what altruism demands. It demands that you give without the expectation of getting. That's what sacrifice is, right? Sacrifice is giving and not getting. Sacrifice is lose-win. You lose, somebody else wins. At least on this earth as we understand it. That's what it means, right? Trade, which is what Bill Gates did, is what? When I trade something with you, I sell you a car and you pay me $20,000. Who lost? I won because the car was worth less than $20,000 to me, so I made a little bit of a profit, right? And you won because the car was worth more than $20,000. That's why you're willing to give up the $20,000. Win, win. All voluntary trades, the intention at least. Now they don't always work like that. You sometimes buy a lemon. All trades are intended to be win-wins. Win-win from our perspective in our culture, we lose, all right. If somebody lost, it must be good. I mean, that's bizarre. But that's what altruism demands. And then if it's okay to sacrifice, no, if it's the epitome of virtue to sacrifice, then how can we complain when our taxes go up? All government is trying to do is help somebody. They're trying to get us to give more so that somebody else is better off, supposedly, right? How can we complain when people are being regulated? What do we know about self-interest? The flip side of altruism is our perception of self-interest. What do we think of self-interested people? If I say that person's selfish, what do we think immediately, without even thinking? What comes to our mind? Bad. He's bad. If he's self-interested, he's bad. He's probably, why is he bad? Because he's probably lying, cheating, stealing, right? He's boony-made off. So what a businessman, what's capitalism about? What's business about? It's about making money and making great products. But the product you want to make. I love the iPhone example because, you know, Steve Jobs made a lot of money on these, right? Profit margin is about 60%. If you really cared about me and sell it cheaper, but he doesn't. He wants to make money. But he also, how many, you know, customer surveys did he did before he designed this? Zero. None. He created what he wanted to create, and he figured I'd like it. But he did what he wanted. Steve Jobs was a self-interested, called him selfish businessman. All businessmen are. That's why we're so embarrassed by them. That's why we only spent two minutes describing their business activities as selfish. We all know it. We know capitalism is about a bunch of people pursuing self-interest. Adam Smith understood that in 1776, the baker doesn't bake the bread to make you better off. He doesn't care about you. He makes the bread to make a living. And he gives you good customer service, not because he loves you, but because that's how he sells more bread. That's the reality. We all, in the business world, are after self-interest. And yet self-interest is lying, stealing, cheating. Who are not self-interested, right? Because they're for the common good, right? To monitor this, and to make sure I use, in the article I think you all read, I used elevator inspectors, right? Don't you feel a lot more comfortable going into elevators and seeing that little thing that a government inspector has said? Because we know, we know, that if the government didn't inspect elevators, elevator makers would make elevators that killed us. Because that's how businessmen make money, by killing their clients and customers. And it's insane. But if you don't spell it out, well, of course, elevators are selfish. They'll try to cut corners and make a quick buck. But making a quick buck is going to destroy them. That's not rational. That's not really self-interested. Okay, I need to speed up a little bit. So you can see how there's a conflict between capitalism and free markets and altruism. People vote their altruism. They don't vote their understanding of markets. They want to be good. They want to be good. And Obama understands this really, really well. Notice how he's phrasing this election. This is not election about the economy. Not from a GDP perspective. This is an election about fairness. About the kind of economy and the kind of world we want to live in in the future. He's about the vision thing. And he's got it. He's framing this as an election about morality. Not about economics, because he loses in economics. But he has a chance of winning in the morality. This is what Rand challenges. She says, yes, you economists, you're all right. The way you've described the economy, particularly von Mises, it works. That's right. And everybody who's willing to work is better off. But that's not the reason that capitalism is a good thing. That's not a reason to be an individualist and to advocate for freedom. The reason is that it's moral. But she can only say that because she rejects altruism. She can only say that because she's willing to challenge every secular philosopher of the last, you know, 1,000 years. More, 2,000 years. Since Aristotle. With a few exceptions here and there. Who basically said that your purpose in life is to sacrifice for others. She's willing to challenge what many consider the Judeo-Christian tradition of morality. Which is altruism. So she is an advocate for a different morality. She is an advocate for the morality of self-interest. She says the purpose in life, your purpose in life, each one of you, is to pursue your life. To make your life the best that it can be. To live the most flourishing, successful, happy life that you can. And by the way, and I can't prove it now but if you want, you can ask me in the Q&A. That doesn't involve lying-cheating-stealing because lying-cheating-stealing turned out to be incredibly self-destructive. It involves leading a rational long-term life of honesty and a sense of justice and integrity. And if, you know, if you capture, if you believe in a morality of self-interest. A morality that says, my life's the standard. I don't want to live for somebody else. I don't want to be a servant. I don't owe you anything unless we're trading. I don't owe my life to any group, to any other individual. I am here for me. And yes, I want to trade with you guys in all kinds of ways. Some of them are material, some of them are spiritual. But I don't want you to sacrifice for me. I don't want to give you to give me stuff I haven't earned. And I don't want to give you stuff you haven't earned. I want this to be win-wins. So that kind of morality, that kind of morality is the, she believed, is the only morality consistent with the founding of this country. Because it's the only morality consistent with the sentence and the declaration about being able to write to your life, each one of your life. And the founders were talking about individual lives. They weren't talking about the American life or the group's life or the people. They were talking about individuals. Your liberty. That's your ability to think what you want to think and do what you want to do and pursue your values that you choose. Not that somebody else chooses for you. Not that the group decides is in a common good. But what you decide is in your good. And of course in the most selfish political statement in human history. To pursue your own happiness. That's the essence of our morality is about pursuit of happiness. It's a system that says go pursue your happiness. Think about an individual that's only concerned about the pursuit of his own happiness and you know is consistent about that. What kind of government does he want? Does he want a government that sits on his shoulder like a paternalistic mother and he says don't do that, don't eat that. No, no, no, trans fats, that's not good for you. Don't go into that elevator don't go west, young man. Don't take risks. Don't don't invent an iPhone, invent this. What they call that. Camel is a horse created by a government committee. You know that you don't do you want to know somebody who wants to pursue their own life to pursue their own interests to pursue their own passions to pursue their own values to make of themselves the best that they can be and that person wants to be left alone. He doesn't want people telling him what to do and not just telling him government doesn't just tell, right government has a big gun government puts a gun at your back and says don't eat trans fats or you go to jail. No, they haven't got, well trans fats in New York I still think you can eat them here in Charleston but you probably can't smoke here even in private property where people might want you to smoke you still can't smoke you go to jail if I own a restaurant why should I not allow smoking you don't like smoking don't come it's very simple private property, right? I can smoke in my own house why can't I smoke in my own business same thing, private property if you don't like my business don't walk in I know my wife would never walk into a business where there was smoke she hates it, fine her rights and now business owners rights both are being protected the store owner doesn't have to let her in if he doesn't like her, she's smoking right? that's freedom freedom is the ability to do what you want to do with your stuff as long again as you're not hurting somebody so that so Rand views that as a core foundational idea the morality of self-interest for the establishment of limited government you're not going to get the limited government of the founders you're not going to be able to sustain that without a new morality, without the rejection of altruism and you cannot get the new morality without, and I don't have time to really get into this without something even more fundamental than that so Ayn Rand said she was an advocate for capitalism because she was an advocate of individualism she was an advocate of individualism because she was an advocate of self-interest and she was an advocate of self-interest because she was an advocate of reason so even when it comes to a more fundamental philosophical point she believes that unless unless we agree that reason is the standard for knowledge we'll never get the rest so the fundamental I think difference between you know the von Mises type libertarian and Rand is that the libertarian is willing to accept any philosophical foundation Rand accepts only a particular philosophical foundation and argues that without it you can't get what the libertarian wants to get which is that limited government leave you with this question you know which I think of what do you think the founders were were the founders conservatives if they were conservatives what were they trying to conserve were the founders libertarians I mean it didn't really exist as a thought but were they consistent with libertarians founders I mean they couldn't have been objectivists because there was no objectivism back then but what were they and how would they have defined themselves back then because everybody wants them right we all want the founders because in this country liberals want them the conservatives want them because we all have a healthy respect for them we all have this emotional tie to them but think about it you know they were revolutionaries they were radicals they were way out there if this is where the mainstream world was the founders were way way out there and this is I think the most important contribution this is what makes America special and what if we don't recapture we're lost everywhere in the world before the founding of this country your life as an individual your body as an individual your soul as an individual belong to someone else it belong to the tribe it belong to the king it belong to the pope it belong to some other group the world was a collectivistic world all of it there were no exceptions what's unique about this country is that for the first time it was founded on a truly radical revolutionary principle this is what the revolution is about is a rejection of that idea you do not belong to anybody but yourself this country was founded on the principle of self ownership that's what individual rights mean you own yourself and that is yes, there were thinkers that led up to that from John Locke and the Enlightenment thinkers but there was no political movement no political movement that articulated that except for the founders and that's what makes the American Revolution the greatest revolution by far there's no other revolution that comes close the fact that the Supreme Court judge of the United States I don't know if you heard this but she in an interview recently said that other countries shouldn't look to the United States Constitution as a model but they should look at South Africa and Canada I mean that's just absurd but this is the greatest country that ever was because ever in the history of mankind because of that founding principle because of that founding idea and that's the founding principle that we need to recapture whether you want to recapture it under conservatism or under something other label that's that notion that we own ourselves that our lives is ours to live as we please to pursue, founders put it, to pursue our own happiness then the future is ours if we lose it then the future is lost we will go down that road to Sufdom and the road that Atlas shrugged lays out the road to collectivistic destruction and on that gloomy note well we're back here with Dr. Yaron Brooke from the Ayn Rand Institute Dr. Brooke is willing and more than able to take any of your questions I just want to point out that next week we have the great distinction of being able to have General Ed Meese who's the architect of the Reagan Error so we look forward to having him but right now Dr. Yaron Brooke is going to talk about the definition yes sir Mr. Mellon our first speaker Alfred Gregory said that one of the basic tenants of conservatism was a belief in God and objectiveism would not wholeheartedly agree with that what replaces the belief in God in conservatism or in this political view well I mean I agree that it is a tenant of conservatism that's why I would argue that objectiveism is not conservatism as long as that is a tenant of conservatism what replaces a belief in God reason that is knowledge science so I'll give you my view of the belief in God take it for what it's worth I think as human beings we needed to believe in God God was an important way in which we understood reality so when the Egyptians lived in Egypt and the Nile rose and they didn't understand that so they said the river is a God and they didn't understand where the moon was from and the sun was from and they became gods and you see that all primitive societies basically created the same gods because they put the concept of God into those things they didn't understand and then there was this great innovation well let's have one category instead of having lots of these things some of which we now understand we've increased our knowledge in one pot in which we can and call it one God and that's the Jews if you will who come up with the idea of one God and that holds within it everything we don't understand and I think there's a lot of legitimacy to that because as a human race we're still cognitively we're still young we're still trying to deal with the world and try to understand it but I would argue that once we discover the scientific method once we see that everything that we thought was unexplainable is then explained and then yeah there are more things that are unexplainable but we now have the method to explain it i.e. reason the ability to comprehend reality to understand what's going on and to figure out cause and effect within it we know we can do that then I think the concept becomes meaningless the concept is not necessary anymore and the other aspect of faith that people latch onto is morality without God there is no morality is the idea I just don't see that I don't see the logic in that morality is a concept that existed well before there were gods in societies that didn't accept this particular God or that particular God that had many gods morality, people have disagreed about morality cause they've derived it differently from other different sources gods seem to disagree with morality you can't get to gods to agree on what morality is and I think Ein Rand again solves that by providing us a morality that is consistent with us as a biological entity with who we are, with our nature that is fundamentally as a living being we want to live and that's the beginning and once you understand that you want to live as a biological entity the goal is, okay what do you need to do in order to live but not just live but to thrive and that's morality, that's all morality needs to do is to answer that question, how do we as human beings thrive? yes Mr. Faust, good day Faust in history haven't we seen reason to try to be used to direct government before with the French Revolution and didn't we see that pretty much utterly fall apart, I mean just using reason by itself so one of the great tragedies of conservatism and by the way Hayek is probably the most incredibly responsible for this this is why at the end of the day I don't like Hayek, right is that we blame reason for these things when reason has nothing to do with them so we try to say reason leads to disaster human beings we have original sin we're fallible we don't really know anything we make mistakes, we don't get it we're kind of mediocre, we're not that good so what we need is freedom I mean that's just a bizarre argument in my view reason misapplied can cause real damage no question you can build an atomic bomb or you can build an atomic energy generator both the applications of reason and building an atomic bomb in a lot of context is a very good thing that ends the war in Japan very quickly I'm all for that but you can apply you can apply the products of reason in a bad way now to claim the French Revolution used reason is to reverse history French Revolution has nothing to do with reason the French Revolution has one big emotional orgy I mean it is I think about these guys too they're not applying reason force it's about it's about hatred I mean it's the opposite of the American Revolution to me the American Revolution is all about reason what does it say in the Jefferson Memorial I can't remember the exact quote but it says something I'm paraphrasing bring everything before reason even the existence of God right so everything before reason that is the essential if you look at Adams if you look at Madison if you look at Washington what they're all about it's no accident 1776 is the peak of the age called the age of reason in my view the French Revolution is the end of the age of reason it's the refutation of the age of reason now it's true that a dictator cannot reason an economy right and this is Hayek's critique he says economy so complex is the one human being but that's not the argument the argument is that because each one of us has reason that's different that's uniquely ours in terms of the values we pursue in terms of what we want to do in our lives the passions we have the professions we have the products we want to buy each one of us is going to behave in a way that a central manager can't predict of course he can't because we have free will and therefore an economy is going to have consequences that no one person can predict that's not a problem with reason that's just a fact of life it's pro individual reason you see I think we're all capable of being good capable of being just capable of using our reason to a fullest extent in pursuing our own lives and the only society that we could establish that allows for that is the society of freedom so I don't consider French Revolution I don't consider the communists as advocates for reason they claim to be but their philosophy is incredibly unreasonable see I believe the communism is a faith it's a faith that perplaces believe in God because they were atheist so they didn't believe in God with faith in the proletarian but it's still faith where did they get who decided what was true was it reason? no it was Stalin and where did Stalin get it whatever he felt like from his pure emotion I associate Nazism because they were secular with reason secularism doesn't equal reason I know a lot of secular people I know a lot of atheists the most unreasonable people I know in the world they're complete emotionalists women worshipers which I think the French Revolution was about they have nothing to do with reason they've replaced faith in God with faiths or with no faith but they're not using this they're using something else you talk about Adams to his officers in October of 1798 and I'm just going to quote a small piece of it avarice, ambition, revenge licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people yeah so I mean Adams is right fundamentally that is that I believe that in order to have good government you have to have a good populace you have to have a moral populace what Adams is doing is what everybody did back then almost everybody a few exceptions Voltaire being maybe one and that is the equated morality with religion they couldn't conceive a morality independent of religion so when he says morality what he means is religion he says morality in God he lumps them together because that's what everybody did even Jefferson who I think was the most secular of the founding fathers wouldn't give up on the morality of Christianity even though I think he gave up on a lot of Christianity but Jefferson had something called the Jeffersonian Bible where he took the New Testament and cut out the good parts and just created his own Bible which is just the stuff that he believed in and so he cut out anything mystical Jesus walking on water bread all the miracles he cut out and he kept the moral teaching so the morality because he believed that was the only way to get morality which is unfortunate, I think it's the beginning it's why ultimately the Constitution of America has been undercut so I agree completely with Adams and I take it one more step actually now that I think about it I would say that the reason that we have not lived up to the Constitution and the Declaration because we haven't we've abandoned them and we've abandoned them over the last 100 years in mass is because the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and the documents in human history they were established on a foundation of quicksand and the foundation of quicksand is the foundation of altruist morality which none of the founding fathers were willing to challenge they were willing to challenge everything in politics they were the radicals of their times when it came to politics but they were conventional when it came to morality what we need to do what I believe Ein Rand has done is taken those same political principles and put them on a solid foundation solid moral philosophical foundation so that when we go through the next revolution hopefully it won't be armed this time then we can sustain the Constitution in the Declaration forever because I think they're worthy of sustaining forever could that sell mask up Sir, you mentioned libertarians and that they believe they view capitalism that capitalism should be the prevailing order because it works they don't put it in moral terms that's right do you think would libertarians put it in moral terms would they be in a position to or would they say that goes to false some do and some don't so again libertarians it's a big tent and there were a lot of people there and some would claim it's natural rights theories what the founding fathers of morality natural rights is more about politics than it is about it's kind of a bridging concept between morality and politics they would try to use Kantian morality which I think is the exact opposite of capitalism but they would distort it in a way they would use utilitarianism probably the most popular most libertarians are utilitarians it works what's utilitarianism? it's a morality that says whatever works is good that's a slippery slope because you could come up with all kinds of scenarios where it works to penalize some people in order to benefit other people which is what the liberals do all the time liberals are also utilitarian but what libertarians are trying to do and this is a great debate between objectivists and libertarians they're trying to have capitalism without having to take a stand on morality I think they have to take a stand I think the only stand they can take is another morality that's consistent with capitalism I think it's the only morality morality of self-interest and we can argue about the details the particular virtues that's not the point the point is a morality of self-interest is the only way you can ground morally capitalism can you be can you be a religious person who has a deep belief in God and still an objectivist not consistently you can certainly accept a lot of objectivism while still believing in God people who sign their emails to me Christian objectivist and my view is that's good they've accepted some of them I wish they'd accept it all we believe as objectivists we believe in everything we believe in Jefferson's statement everything everything is reason the standard for everything is logic and rational thought and if we accept that if we accept that everything needs to be placed before reason and rationality then I think you can be an objectivist and we might disagree on this point to that point whether it fits or not but that is the key the key is consistency with regard to reason and I think only if you believe that can you then accept man is a rational being which we accept and therefore is capable of pursuing his own self-interest in a rational kind of way and therefore we can believe in capitalism so I think the sequence is reason self-interest capitalism now you talked about Jefferson and the Jeffersonian agrarians hated big government they were totally against big government but secondly they hated big industry people say that Iain Rand's philosophy of objectivism leads to techno-fascism that's bizarre I mean there's my only I mean because fascism fascism is the negation of individual will fascism is placing the dictators will however you want to call it the dictator be of course the owners and runners of the yeah but the only way the owners of the runners of corporations can be dictators if you give them guns to use them the anarchists might before that but I'm not so the only people with guns in an objectivist world is government and corporations can go big but so what so the question I used to get so she can't be a fascist because fascist again is the will of somebody with a gun over you if you work for a corporation and you don't like what they do what can you do go find another job go work for somebody else in a capitalist market place time and time again we've seen that plenty of jobs there's more jobs than people capitalism has a negative unemployment rate so in the 19th century when we came closest to capitalism in America millions of people emigrated into this country in spite of the fact that we were small population wise and they all found jobs how did that happen because capitalism has a negative unemployment rate when people are really free everybody wants to find a job can find a job including starting their own job starting their own business so I don't so I don't believe so you can't put fascism and iron man together now what about this notion that in a iron man world in a capitalism world what you get is big business massive monopolies who control everything again there's no evidence of this in history there's no evidence that this this would happen it is not so let's take we talked about this last night let's take the few examples in American history where industry has grown where companies are so biggest to dominate an industry the best example of that in American history and by the way where Jefferson was alive there were no big businesses he disliked banks he distrusted banks but there were no big businesses because it was basically an agrarian society the big businesses start around the 1830s 40s and really 1860s 1870s so in 1870s Standard Oil JD Rockefeller's business had 94% of the oil refining capacity in the United States you could quibble whether it was 90 or 94 you could ask if Folsom comes back you can ask him he's the expert so what right so if you stick in economics class they teach you the prices will go up and quality will go down fact is prices went down every single year and quality went up every single year every single year go look at the records why because Rockefeller understood two things one there's always competition even when you control 90% of the market there's competition there's a little guy who will take a chew away at you and get you and not only that there's competition you can't even imagine or can't even believe because who is Rockefeller's ultimate competitor I love this story because it's a twist you will never what was Rockefeller selling when he was refining oil anybody know Rockefeller saved the whales you know Rockefeller saved the whales not regulations not greens not green peace because Rockefeller sold kerosene and kerosene was used for lighting was used for lighting before kerosene whale oil the whaling industry was destroyed by Rockefeller don't let the greens get that one right who destroyed kerosene who was Rockefeller's ultimate competitor Thomas Edison by inventing electricity so he understood competition could run from anyways you better be good and you better be on your toes all the time Steve Jobs understands this Bill Gates understands this that's why when the justice department went after Bill Gates they went after him for offering us a product for free that was his sin he offered internet explorer for free that's why he was creating a monopoly he was undercutting his competition because Netscape was charging this is before your time and Netscape was charging for the internet for the what do you call it browser and Microsoft was on that's why the justice department went after screwed up antitrust now ok so Rockefeller go back to Rockefeller the second thing he understood was one is always competition second if you drive the price of oil really really low people will discover new uses for it and you'll expand your market beyond kerosene so why do you think we have an internal combustion engine that runs in gasoline because by the time the internal combustion engine was invented he could refine oil so cheaply that he could fuel the internal combustion engine and that's why they chose gasoline so that was his industry by the way by the time he was broken up I think it was in the 20s of the teens he only had about 20% of the market because competitors so there's no such thing competition is always if you lived in the 1990s that 15 years from now Apple would be bigger than Microsoft you would have institutionalized them I mean that was nuts I'm an Apple long time Apple user and I always considered Apple is going to be a small niche company it always was always will be and why did Apple become bigger than Microsoft because of iPods I mean this is the beauty of the marketplace you could never predict any of this stuff so big business is an interim step every small business want to be a big business big business if it doesn't stay toned and efficient and aggressive and competitive becomes small very quickly next question over here Mr. Lacey yes I thought it was interesting when you were talking about the history of human society essentially being a collectivist one I think we can look at anthropologically tribe, chiefdom, state, etc etc and then I also thought it was interesting to talk about the new morality being based on how do we survive and thrive and with those two things in mind I don't think the new morality even though it fits with capitalism I don't think it excludes collectivism because I feel one can join a society for the purpose of thriving for that security or you don't have to be looking out for everyone else but you might join that collectivist society to get your own needs provided by the state I don't think it's exclusive so I think we have to be careful in our definitions that doesn't mean being a member of something the fact that you all belong to Citadel or students at the Citadel that doesn't make you collectivists collectivism means placing of the group above yourself the group is more important than you in a sense the group owns you so think of the tribe nobody cared about Michael and the tribe you were cog in the machine the tribe of witch doctor needed you to die for the sake of the tribe so be it, then you were sacrificed for the sake of the tribe, you were nothing you were a cog think of the Nazis if the Nazis didn't care about Michael even if you were Aryan, they didn't care about you as long as you served the machine the Aryan nation ultimately Hitler you're okay, but if you didn't no problem and that's collectivism collectivism is the notion that you don't exist as an individual other than to serve the group individualism says you exist to serve you and as part of that you might choose to join a group because it serves your interest to serve a group join a group but not as a pawn not as a cog but as an equal member of a group in which you're pursuing your values while other pursue their values so I have a family, I don't believe that because I have a family I'm a collectivist I have a family because it's in my rational self-interest to have a family, I enjoy it it serves my values it's great, and we trade within the family all my relationship is fundamentally trade relationships I don't sacrifice for my kids I don't I think it's an insult to tell you kids you sacrifice for them because it means they're not that important so if I let's say Johnny, I sacrificed for you today I stayed with you instead of going to movies that means you're not that important to me so it's exact opposite, I say no I stay with you because you're more important to me than the movies that's not a sacrifice that's a trade, we do that every day we choose higher values instead of over lower values my children are way up there anything I do for them almost anything I do for them I'm happy to do because it's good for me so I don't believe in sacrifice in any aspect of life I don't believe in lose situations I only believe in win-win situations or win situations so I don't think individualism is against joining groups now it should be against joining certain types of groups joining groups where you give up your freedom and let me define freedom because definition is important freedom, from a political perspective freedom is a lack of coercion freedom is where nobody is cursing you society a contract is not giving up freedom it's choosing to restrict your behavior based on some prearranged arrangement that you can extract yourself from under certain circumstances and it expires in certain circumstances that's not giving up freedom but when you have a president who tells you that you have to give him tithing of 50% of your income that's an attack on your freedom because try not giving it to him and a big gun shows up and takes you to jail so coercion, force that's what freedom is the negation of freedom is the absence of coercion we are free when we have nobody forcing us to do things we don't want to do next question to the Thomas you said that an objective society only people with guns should be the government but what would be to stop the government from using that power? if I said that I didn't mean it I'd say the only people using the guns on other people should be the government unless it's a literal emergency of an act of suffering I have no problem people owning guns I don't think it's the most important thing I'm not a huge gun rights person but I'm full as long as it's a gun that is primarily self defense so I do think there's a limit I don't think you should be able to own a nuke bomb or a tank some libertarians do there's a wing of the libertarian party that says should own whatever if you should be able to buy a tank or nuke or whatever I don't believe that should only be allowed to own a defensive weapon the constitution is interesting because the constitution the second amendment is about owning a gun in order to rebel against the government but you couldn't do that today anyway because they have big weapons unfortunately that's the reality so I do think that to the extent that we want to protect individuals right to own a gun it should be on the basis of self defense on the basis of rebellion I think rebellion is a realistic option but so yes government's job is to monopolize the retaliatory use of force so you shouldn't chase the criminal who's just attacked you you shouldn't put your life in that that's the government's job now if they're attacking you you've got a gun pull it out and shoot them absolutely did you not have altruism in the system of individualism so like have a government that's focused on individualism but then have altruism at a personal level or through civil society so this is actually Hayek's argument Hayek advocated for this yes that somehow you could be altruistic in some aspects of your life and my argument is no you cannot and I don't see why you would be I think we strive towards consistency we cannot have a personal ethical belief that's inconsistent with a political belief I don't think that's an equilibrium I don't think that's sustainable ultimately the personal ethical belief will spill into politics and will infect it that's exactly what we saw in America in America we had a political system that was based on individualism based on leaving people alone based on individuals pursuing their own happiness but the ethical belief of the people particularly the new intellectuals who came into this country in the 20th century and brought progressivism and so on they undercut that by taking their personal ethical belief and spilling it over into government and I just don't see the need for it why should I sacrifice anywhere in my life again I don't sacrifice my kids I don't sacrifice my wife I love my wife why would I need to sacrifice for imagine coming to your wedding day and saying honey I don't love you I'm marrying you because I'm sacrificing for you I mean that's what it would really mean if you're marrying somebody you don't love if you marry somebody you love that's not a sacrifice there's no sacrifice there it's great it's pursuing your own self-interest in the most wonderful way you can so I just don't see I think it's hurtful and it's hurtful to think about altruism as good in any way because I think it's evil I think it's wrong I think placing the well-being of other people above your own life is bad not just neutral but bad I'd use the E word but it's politically incorrect I think it's evil I think you should like other people if they have value if they're good people but liking enjoying their friendship enjoying their love trading with them doing stuff with them being with them that's not sacrifice I mean we've got our terminology all confused in there I know but it's important to be clear to that steward would you say a good example of individualism in relation to a government would be John Locke's theory of social contract yeah but I don't believe in the contract part of it but I suddenly believe that you know suddenly John Locke is the greatest political thinker certainly in you know pre-20th century and I agree completely I mean the founders were Lockean right you find more quotes of Locke in the federalist papers in the founders discussion than anybody else including of the Bible I mean they are Lockeans first and foremost they are men of the enlightenment they read all this stuff and Locke's discovery of the idea of individual rights is one of the greatest discoveries in human history and makes individual freedom as a political concept possible without Locke we don't have America we don't have many of the freedoms we take for granted today Locke is certainly a giant in his political theory I think again he's conventional more conventional when it comes to morality and when it comes to his beliefs Cadet Mellon and then we'll go to Cadet Selmasque as mentioned we have two parties that seem like they're fighting both fighting for collectivism what's our end game well the end game is to take over one of the parties and change it that's the end game and I think we've got a better shot at the Republican party because I think there are some conservatives so there's a significant group of conservatives that are closer to my view of the world than there are any liberals who are close to my view of the world but I think that has to be the end game now I don't think you can get a my end game to my ideal society in my lifetime and maybe not in your lifetime but we can certainly take steps in that direction between the conservative movement towards a greater respect for individualism if we can move them away from the rick santorum type of conservatism to a conservatism of that respects free markets and respects the individual you know maybe it doesn't agree with everything I believe in maybe it still has somewhat of a role of government maybe it still wants to subsidize this or do that but a lot less than what's being done today and in the name of economic efficiency rather than the name of the family then you know these steps are slow steps I mean there are only two ways of doing this either we do it slowly or there's a revolution and I think we lose a revolution I mean we were outnumbered so I'd rather believe in small steps because I think we have a chance of winning on the other hand I'll give you this that if we don't move quickly then the country is lost because there is a tipping point I don't know if you've ever read a book called tipping point by anybody remember the name of the author Gladwell there's a book about there's a certain point in society where you can't change stuff in spite of free will and in spite of everything it's just too late I fear now some people would argue we've already flipped on the tipping point we've already reached it but I would argue we haven't yet and this is the tipping point in my view Americans are unique people in the world and you have to be a foreigner to appreciate but America is unique because of the founding the founding is a unique event in human history there is no other country that has a founding that is based on individualism so American people have a spirit it's not an idea, it's a spirit Iron Man called it a sense of life a feeling, an emotion that's about don't tread on me leave me alone I want my freedoms they don't know what it means they can't articulate it necessarily very well they can't explain how it translated into policy but they have this enough is enough, big government is now good the best example of that in recent times is the Tea Party I'm a huge fan of the Tea Party because of this, the Tea Party is an emotional response to big government it's an emotional cry of enough is enough we don't want this paternalistic government treading us on us anymore they don't have an agenda they want small government but they don't know how to get there they don't know what they want to shrink if you ask them on specific programs they all want to save Social Security and save this and save that so they don't actually have a program they don't actually have a philosophy to move them to where they need to be but they know this is wrong that's great, no other country has a Tea Party and they being harassed much more than the Americans so when we lose that spirit we lose the chance to change this country and that spirit is declining it's been declining for decades because of the erosion, because of public education because of the political culture it's just being eroded we need a latch onto that spirit of individualism we need to cultivate it we need to help it grow and that's the future I think that's more going to happen on the Republican kind of conservative side than it is on the liberal side I certainly hope so but I think your description of both of them in state intervention is true another question is how do we engage them so that we can start shifting in that's why I for example do talks like this to start moving the needle I don't pretend to convince all of you guys to become what I am but if I can move you on that needle towards greater individualism greater respect for free markets greater respect for the founding then I think we move the needle we move the conservative movement more freedom you talked about the conservative movement and Republican party being the best potential for some of the objectivism from the ideas of objectivists but a big part of the conservative movement and the Republican party consist of something called neoconservatism neoconservatism and neocons as they're called and these are people who want to take those ideals that you talked about and spread them to other societies how does that fit in with and we will get you Mr. Selmasque shortly it depends how long of an answer a gift to this could be a long answer you've written on this so the answer relates to the neoconfond policy which again I don't think is the main project of the neoconservatism I think they're much more interested in domestic policy so the idea is you went over that a little fast they're much more interested in domestic policy but let me talk about foreign policy and then we'll get to domestic policy what is the neoconfond policy and I think it was articulated during the bush administration as well as it's been articulated ever many of the people within the bush administration were neocons or the bush wasn't a neocon and I don't believe Runschfeld is a neocon but many of the people they were and it is this idea of being the policeman of the world bringing American ideals to the world bringing democracy a forward strategy for freedom was at one point Bush's definition of his foreign policy we go to Iraq we set up a bastion of freedom in Iraq the rest of the Middle East looks at Iraq and says cool we want some of that and they all turn democratic and there's so many confusions and problems with this that it's hard to know where to begin but let me start with the fact that America is the most important democracy maybe the most important point to make on which the neocons don't get democracy is a bad bad bad system of government now democracy I mean majority rule where you vote on everything the classic democracy was Athenian democracy and the founders by the way wrote extensively about this if you think I'm a cook for not liking democracy read Madison Madison hated democracy you could vote which weren't everybody but a lot of people landowners you had to be a landowner you can be a slave you can be a woman but all the men who are owners of property would get together and they would vote on anything so Socrates was a famous philosopher in Athens walked around the streets of Athens it was known for this and engaged young people in discussion and he would be provocative and he would ask difficult questions and he would challenge their beliefs particularly their beliefs about the gods right and the people of Athens were very concerned about this he was corrupting the youth so they got a meeting together and they voted I don't know what the vote was 51% of 49, 60 to 40, 90 to 10 it doesn't matter they voted and majority voted to have Socrates killed because he wasn't doing what they wanted he was corrupting the youth and they knew they couldn't like restrict him because he would never go for it so they gave him a cup of poison to drink and Plato his student Plato says to Socrates he says I got a tunnel we can escape at least this is one story and Socrates says no I believe in democracy too and he drinks the cup and dies that's democracy democracy there's no free speech there's no private property everything your neighbors can decide to turn your house into a table into a tennis court oh they can do that in America today that's called kilo we have become a democracy that's the case from Connecticut where they turned it at Walmart tennis court Walmart what's the difference the point is this country was not founded as democracy was founded as a federal constitutional government that protected individual rights above all so 99% of Americans could vote to silence Socrates and they can't because we have free speech that is his individual right to speak is more important than the votes of 350 million people think about that that is unbelievably undemocratic so this country is not a democracy so what happens when you bring democracy to the world they vote and guess what they're not like us they don't vote for free speech and private property they vote for the worst monsters possible because that's their culture unfortunately and it's just the way it is so when you give the votes to the Iraqis they vote for Sunnis and Shiites who hate each other's guts and who are dedicated both to Islam and Islam is in their constitution there's nothing about individual rights in their constitution there's no political freedom there's no economic freedom there's no freedom of speech you don't want to commit adultery God forbid in Iraq these days because you get stoned that's not or you give democracy to the Egyptians they vote in the Muslim Brotherhood who are the spiritual fountain have of al-Qaeda there's no difference between them al-Qaeda just chosen to take over the world with weapons in the Muslim Brotherhood are going to take over the world democratically one country at a time but they still want to impose sharia they still want to tell you how to dress and what to think and what to do and everything and it's not America it's not even spreading America and that was a neocon project but generally Ainu and did not believe and this sounds like Von Paul but it's not Von Paul did not believe in America being the policeman of the world not believe in having troops all over the world she didn't believe even during the Cold War in being a member of NATO she did not believe in in going out and finding war she was against the war in Vietnam she was against the war in Korea and she would have been against you know against bringing democracy to the world what was she for she was for an incredibly strong military that if attacked would destroy the enemy and come home so she was all four dropping and I'm one of the foremost advocates for the dropping of the bombs and he was she was Nagasaki one of the greatest moral acts in human history they were act of complete justice and libertarians hate me for this because many libertarians are pacifists and this is this is why Von Paul is different I believe Von Paul is a pacifist even though he won't say it he doesn't say it but many libertarians unfortunately are pacifists or many libertarians believe that 9-11 was caused by us so Von Paul has actually said this we were to blame and we should apologize for it I believe that after 9-11 he destroyed them and when I mean who did it I don't mean the particular individuals who did it I mean the entire infrastructure who did it including who gave them money who gives them spiritual support who pays for them who helps them and there are only two countries by the way who are responsible for this we put out a four page ad in the New York Times and Washington Post three weeks after 9-11 identifying the two countries Iran and Saudi Arabia there has been a quick operation kill as many al-Qaeda as possible and come home you know why are we building sewers and schools in Afghanistan I mean it's bizarre you know and go after Iran and Saudi Arabia of course our best friend right so we should have dealt with Saudi Arabia in whatever way was necessary but that's how you do it and that's Iron Man's foreign policy if somebody attacks you somebody threatens you you destroy them in such a way that they'll never do it again you teach them a lesson and you know our best friends today the Japanese and the Germans who we annihilated we annihilated them and they're our best friends because in order to if you look at human history peace has never been achieved through negotiation peace has been achieved with a stronger side good or bad has destroyed the weaker side I hope it's the good side that destroys the bad side but that's how peace is achieved and that's just the reality of it we're good and strong so you might as well domestic oh neocon domestic neocons are fundamentally platenists you know I know a bunch of neocons are going to jump up and accuse me of all kinds of things but neocons if you read them are fundamentally platenist they're fundamentally liberals it's no accident that original neocons Irving Kristol and a group around him were originally Trotskyites they were originally Commies and then they became liberals and then they became anti-communist liberals and then they became conservatives that's how the neocons came into being they were all liberals who came to conservatism and what they did is they kept the goal of liberalism that is more quality you know they helped the poor you know helped the poor all these things but they decided that the best way to get those ends were through conservative measures even using religion most of them are not religious but they want to use religion in order to achieve social goals and I think they want to use war in order to achieve social goals I think one of the reasons we want to be a policeman of the world is because we need a mission and there is a harmony of interests and they love World War II when we all went to war together and there was a sudden unison of you know there's sudden bipartisanship and touchy feely goodness in America during that period even though there was a horrible war going on so they want that and war is one way to achieve it another way is big social programs actually like big social programs they're not against any of the big social programs infrastructure programs and they want missions and they're very statist in that sense they're collectivists they're fundamental collectivists and they're not they don't believe in individual rights you won't find in their writings much talk about individual rights they are very much and the reason I think they're Platonist is they very much believe that they're smarter than the rest of us and that their job as leaders is to tell us how to live our life and to structure the economy in a way that provides us the right incentives to behave ourselves so they're very very statist more statist than regular conservatives so I think in that sense they're worse than regular conservatives I want to give one quick question that that will go to Mr. Selmask and we'll take one other question over here you've talked about religion being against first amendment type rights you've actually spoken about that could you kind of expound on that why you believe religion against that I don't think religion is so put it this way I think religion taken consistently practiced consistently where faith is dominant ultimately has to result in the infringement of rights including first amendment rights because look the beauty of reason is that we have a tool of debate we have a way in which I can reason with you that's what reason is about showing you facts about reality what's that oh yes okay I'll talk about that the whole idea of reason is we can reason one another we can disagree, we can argue but there's a mechanism by which I can convince you that I'm right, I can point this stuff to reality, the facts that's what rationality and reason is about faith reasons out, that's the definition of faith definition of faith is when there's we can't explain it rationally and then how are you going to convince me of its truth well you can't, reason won't do it what if it's important for you that I believe in what you believe I mean the first commandment is what 10 commandments, if you know it I shall have no God something like that right other than this God other than me the Jewish God says what if I choose another God what are you going to do about it well what did Moses do about it so Moses come down from Mount Sinai with the 10 commandments and I think this is actually with the laws now so the Jews already know the 10 commandments they know they're not allowed to worship any other God and he comes down with the laws and all these Jews are worshiping a golden calf so what does Moses do he says I'm going to go reason with him no he doesn't do that he takes up his sword together with his brother Aaron who is the high priest man of God, high priest and they take all their people and they go and they slaughter 30,000 people why because they broke the first commandment I mean that's an Old Testament don't have to believe me, go read it that's how you dealt with disagreements that's how the Old Testament deals with disagreements all the time now I know there's a New Testament but the Old Testament is brutal you don't disagree with the word of God otherwise you get hammered you get hammered there is no free speech I mean what do you think happens to Abraham when God comes to him and says go kill your eldest son what happens to Abraham if he says no he's not the father of Jewish people anymore he gets the only reason he's the father of Jewish people is he says yes, he passes the test he's willing to do anything that God tells him to now that's not an attitude that fosters free speech so free speech, freedom of conscience all this stuff are not creation of religion there was no free speech, there was no freedom of conscience under the catholic church in the middle ages that only comes about really as an institutionalized idea under the enlightenment when the discovery of reason with the raising of reason above if you will equal to or above religion it's again it's thinkers like Locke and the scientists Newton and Fowler even though they were all religious but they all had this great respect for reason that's when you get individualism free speech, freedom of conscience freedom of religion, those concepts don't exist before that there's no civilization with any of those freedoms the Greeks had a little bit of that socrates really pissed them off but no civilization up until the Enlightenment has any of those things we take them for granted, we can sit here and talk about conservatives and religion no other human society in human history had that until 1776 some English a little bit but even they obviously the Americans had a revolt against too much infringement on their rights so think about that I think one of the biggest problems of modern society is we don't know history we have no appreciation for the values that have been created over the last 250 years and where they come from what they are and why history before 1776 is really really bad life is awful do you know I'll end on this because I know what you're doing there was a graph that somebody has done that plots per capita wealth so the wealth of the average person across time so from 10,000 BC onward and they've done pretty good research and these are pretty good numbers what do you think the graph looks like anybody want to take a guess it is basically flat for 10,000 years it's almost it doesn't increase the average person did not live a much better life in 1776 than he did in the caves in the Stone Age slightly better but not by a huge amount they were still on the verge of starvation they were still relying on their own crops to live they were still subsistence farmers there were no vacations there were no restaurants it was rough rough rough life all the way to say using that day just because it means something for two reasons one it's the founding of this country and two who wrote a famous book in 1776 Adam Smith Waltham Nation 1776 so it's a meaningful day it takes off it goes like that that's industrial revolution that's capitalism nothing almost nothing like that and that is a history people need to understand people need to know and I think before 1776 doesn't matter we're going to take two more questions that's Elmasca and I'm going to try to keep you relatively short sir you mentioned Ludwig von Mises and I've seen on the Mises Institute website they have a number of readings from noted thinkers and authors and one of them was Clarence Darrow and they had a book from Clarence Darrow and he talked about a number of subjects a specific one I want to talk about is the death penalty and he saw it as you know it's pretty much state sanctioned murder and I think Rothbardians would kind of think about it in the same way what say you in the realm of objectivism well let me first say that I don't believe the von Mises Institute has anything to do with von Mises I think it's a travesty that they have their name I know this was on tape, good I want everybody to know this they should be called the Maori Rothbard Institute they're Rothbardians they're fundamentally they're anarchists and they hold some very bad views including this one which I think is murder is the initiation of force murder is me killing you when you have done nothing physically to me you're not trying to kill me if I kill you you're shooting at me that's not murder that's killing there's a difference between killing and murder and indeed the Ten Commandments were mistranslated for a long time the King James edition of the Bible has I shall not kill no in Hebrew it's I shall not murder and murder is a bad thing, killing is not necessarily it depends on why you're doing it so I don't think capital punishment per se is murder I think it's killing it's killing somebody who is lost all right to live so if you kill people if you take somebody else's life in a premeditated horrific way right you don't deserve to live in my view that's objectivism's here now there's a different question about whether we should have capital punishment because that's it now it becomes a technical question how do you deal with somebody who doesn't deserve to live I'm not objected to the death penalty she was against it but not for that reason she was against it because of the one in a thousand one in a hundred chance that you would kill an innocent person because death is the one thing that's irreversible you cannot reverse death somebody's in prison and you discover new evidence they could be released but if you kill them you discover new evidence it's gone so her commitment was to the innocent the guilty the guy who really really did it she would have no problem you know shooting him in the head you know or finding a way to execute him but because of that whatever slight probability that somebody is not guilty that you know you don't actually execute him so that that was a reasoning but so I don't agree with a lot of what they say on the von Mises Institute they represent to me that faction within the libertarian movements that the anarchist faction now they do have some great economists some of the best economists in America today write for them so I would read them for their economists but I wouldn't read them for political theory for anything else because I don't think the last question was over here one of you had your hand up I was just curious sir you were speaking a little bit earlier about property rights and such what are your views on eminent domain well I think it's inconsistent with property rights so I don't think it should exist and I don't think it should exist not only in the case where you're replacing a home for a shopping mall but also when you're placing a home for a highway you know and I don't want to sell then you can't build a highway that's just the reality so I don't believe in collectivism I think you need to be consistent so collectivists would say but that's not for the common good I don't believe in the common good I don't think there is such a thing the only good is individual good and people are better off when they write to respected even if the highway doesn't run through it everybody's better off when property rights are respected so they have to drive on a slow road but property rights are safe that's much more important than whether you're driving a slow road or a fast road in my view so you know objectivists are consistent individualists they're consistent defenders of rights and there's no common good the common welfare the general whatever none of that is valid what's valid is your right to your property your right to your speech you know if people say it's not good for young people to hear Socrates it doesn't matter it still has a right to speak it Doctor you're on Brooke what a pleasure I mean insightful get very controversial I hope you come back again be my pleasure thank you