 Welcome to Iran Book Show. This is the Living Objectivism version of the show. And we've got an interesting program today. We're going to talk about a bunch of different things. I want to do some cleanup and catch up and cover a bunch of different topics that I've covered in the past that maybe weren't completely complete. We'll cover some topics that I've promised to cover that I don't have a lot to say about, but that I'll say a few things that might be of interest, might not. We'll see. Quickly, I want to talk a little bit about Houston, just one aspect of it. I spent Sunday show primarily talking about that. I'm going to talk about IQ and then I want to say something about evolutionary psychology. I'm not going to say a lot about evolutionary psychology to my relief and to your relief, hopefully. And then finally, I want to talk about is it appropriate for objectivists to protest or even broader than that is protesting, period, like the protest in Charlottesville. Is that appropriate? Is that protected under the First Amendment? Is it speech? And should people be allowed to protest in the street like we saw in Charlottesville, like we saw in Berkeley, like we're seeing all over the place? So let's start. I just want to say something about the the floods in Houston. And I just want to make this observation, which I think is being made a little bit, but I think should be made a big deal, should be made of this. And that is the extent to which you are seeing private citizens, individuals, getting in their boats, getting in their big Texas trucks with those massive wheels that you can drive through rivers of water and going and helping people, right? And going and getting people out of their homes, getting people off of roofs, getting people, getting people to safety and the extent to which this volunteer Texas army, I hate to call them army because there's nothing, there's no violence here, but this Texas you know, individuals who are going out there and actually, you know, saving people, saving people's lives and saving and helping people out. And it's really amazing and not surprising. It's very Texan and what we'd expect it to Texas, but it's very American, one would expect it from Americans. And it has to do with the benevolence of free people and the fact that free people are incredibly benevolent and free people are happy to help. So just the benevolence of, the benevolence of people in Houston, the fact that they were, you know, from their own initiative and at some point, I think a judge actually called people out and encouraged people to do it, but I think this started from people's own initiatives. They saw the floodwaters, they brought out their boats, people actually hooked their boats up to pick up trucks and drag them over to where the problems were and to help people. So, you know, really heartening, really exciting to see people, you know, in an emergency situation like that, helping people around them. And you know, they say we are cold-hearted, heartless, mean, nasty objectivists, but I consider this a beautiful thing. And I think it's worth commenting on. And it also shows that you don't need government for everything. Now it is the job of government to help here, but you don't need government for everything. Certainly, your neighbor can be of help. And my guess is, neighbors are going to do more help here than the National Guard and the military and the police. And generally, you know, what is going on in Houston while horrific, people are manning up and they are stepping forward and taking up the challenge and doing what it takes to help other Houstonians or other Texans. Again, very Texan and very appropriate for them to be doing this. And it's going to be interesting to see how much, if anything, the media talks about this or to what extent the media just ignores this phenomena or this fact. In the meantime, the media is busy criticizing the authorities there for not having enough food or not having this or that. But that's what the media does. It's good at criticizing what's amazing, what's truly amazing. And I talked about this on my Sunday show, is here was a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall with full force, 130-mile-an-hour winds, massive surge, just quantities of rain of biblical proportion, Noah's Ark proportion. If you want to know more about my reference to Noah and his relationship to climate change and to Noah's Ark climate change and the rain, you'll have to listen to Sunday show. It's on blog talk and it's on YouTube. You can listen to it. And all this rain and the fact is very few people have died. I mean, we'll see what the ultimate numbers are. But I mentioned in the Sunday show that in the 1900 hurricane in Galveston, 10,000 people died. And this is a point Alex Epstein makes in his book and when he speaks is about how much safer we are from climate today, how much safer we are from climate. Okay, so, you know, Houston, it pretty amazing, people's response, pretty unbelievably devastating, shows you the power of nature and how far mankind has come in protecting ourselves against nature, protecting ourselves from nature and making it possible for us to live a good life in spite of, in spite of the the hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and, you know, 120 degree heats and minus 30 winter factor in Chicago and a cold winter day. Any human beings thrive and we survive and we do well and all is good. So all right, so that's really what I wanted to add about Houston as I was driving here today. I heard a bunch of stuff on the radio about it. And I thought that was one piece I didn't really talk about when on my show on my show on Sunday. Now, you know, we got one question on Houston. What do you think the government should do in a situation like this? You know, I think the only thing the government should really do is, you know, the main thing the government should do is protect property from things like riots and things like that because when these kind of things people tend to lash out. The other thing is to the extent that they have the equipment, the Navy, the Coast Guard, not the Navy, the Coast Guard, the police should search and rescue. I mean, they should be involved in rescuing people and they should also be involved in shutting down streets that are not passable and and warning people about where they can and cannot. They they they should and they did tell people in advance that people should should, you know, leave should leave in advance. So I think the fact that mandatory evacuations and I don't think evacuations should be enforced at the point of a gun. But I do think that if you do not actually if you do not actually leave when there's a mandatory evacuation announced, then don't expect to be saved. Don't expect the police to come after you. Don't expect the Coast Guard to come to you. You placed yourself in risk. You did not follow instructions. You are the last person we will save. So that that's my view of kind of the world of the police. He says, Can you clarify the dividing line between legitimate government action and emergency and non legitimate? Are you advocating solely for expanded protection of rights or also for use of forces for things like rescue? I mean, I'm for uses of police not use of force. I don't believe in cursing anybody to be rescued. But you know, yeah, but but yes, I think it is the job of it is the responsibility of government to help do search and rescue operations and in an emergency is a crisis. And I think government does take on additional responsibilities in times of crisis. So it's there to protect your physical life. And, you know, again, it's primary responsibility is to protect property and lives. So it should not neglect its policing function. But, you know, the police are there. They have the equipment, they have the facilities to not engage in that equipment or facility to save people. I don't see why this is a somehow a Yes, the function of government is to protect individual rights. But in emergencies, the function of government expands to things like search and rescue nature does not violate rights. So you're not saving people from a rights violation. You're saving people because they're in trouble. I think it's completely legitimate to use a helicopter a government helicopter to save somebody from, I don't know, somebody is stuck on a cliff somewhere. Now I think that person should be billed and should have to pay for it if it was their fault. But here there's no fault. So it's a no fault. So yeah, absolutely. I think government government should be used for this. And I don't see any problem raising money for it. You could raise money for it voluntarily, but the government has the equipment, the resources, the ability, the capabilities to do all these things. It's absolutely legitimate. Just like just like now, you know, firefighting should not be a government function. Firefighting is a should be, you know, privatized and voluntary volunteer firefighting organizations like at some places. However, there are circumstances where fires become really, really dangerous where absolutely police should be involved in search and rescue closing off roads, warning people against going into certain neighborhoods, telling people to evacuate. And by the way, telling people not to evacuate is very useful. That is, if the mayor of Houston had said, everybody evacuated, it would have been a disaster. It would have been a disaster. He said, don't evacuate. Now you can do what you want. Right. You can still leave. He's not forcing you not to evacuate. But again, if you get stuck on those roads, when he told you not to evacuate, then don't necessarily expect people to come and save you. Emergencies, there are different conditions on the emergencies. And you have to recognize that just like in morality, you know, the way you treat people, the way you behave, the way you relate is different when you're in a lifeboat than when you're not. And there's a lot more that the government can do in emergencies like this than it would do on a day to day basis. Okay, what do you expect the benevolence duty balance behind the motive of the volunteer efforts? I mean, I think it's mostly benevolence. I think it's mostly benevolence. I mean, I've watched the people doing it. It doesn't look like, you know, they're not risking their lives. It's not it's not it's not like they've got any work to go to. Most most of places are shut down. And it's, you know, it's, I think I can't evaluate, but I think it's benevolence. I also think somebody asked, to what extent is this religion? I don't think it's religion. I think it's an American spirit. It's an American sense of life. I think in the old days, when your your neighbor's house burned down, and all the neighbors got together and went over and built, you know, helped rebuild the house, that was just benevolence. That wasn't some sense of altruistic duty. Although, I'm sure some people are motivated by that. And it does affect some things. And it's very difficult to separate it all out. But part of it is to a question yourself, ask yourself, would you, if you had a boat, take the boat out and help people in an emergency and rescue them? I would. And I'm not an altruist and I'm not religious. Think about people you know. And I think the answer is, particularly in Texas, I think there's a lot of benevolence. There's a lot of Christianity as well. So there's a lot of altruism. But I think generally, this is benevolence. And I think benevolence is a feature of America. Now, yeah, to some extent, it's hard to separate it out from that sense of duty. But I also think when you meet people and they're generally positive and happy and friendly, I don't get a sense of Texas friendliness is because they were commanded to be friendly by by the, you know, the New Testament or something. So I really don't get the sense that that is the issue. So I could be wrong. I do recognize that it is that it is definitely an issue. So and it could be that I'm just I'm just being a little bit more too benevolent towards people who are benevolent. All right, you're on. I would like to hear your thoughts in regard to police not allowing residents back to their properties after the immediate day just passed and how it plays into people's resistance to evacuate. Again, I think this depends on the context, right? I understand police not wanting people back because if they get into trouble, the policing and afterwards their lives to go save them. So if there's a clear understanding, you can go back, but we are not coming for you. You can't sue us afterwards. You can't come after us afterwards. We are not if that was the standard. If that was what was acceptable and accepted, then I would then I would say you when people want to go back to their homes, you tell them, look, you can go back, but we ain't saving you. We'll give you the thumbs up for when it's okay and safe to go back. Then I think it's okay. I think if it's impossible to evacuate, then the police and Coast Guard, I mean, risk their lives is the question to what extent should they risk their lives? You know, to some extent, I mean, there's always some risk. I don't think I don't think that we need any suicide missions to save people, even if they couldn't evacuate, even if there was no evacuation notice, it's not their job to do it, but up to a reasonable level of risk, they should do it. And to some extent, they get to decide, right? They are professionals. I trust their judgment. They get to decide to what extent they want to take on risk in order to go in and assist people and save people's lives. I don't think that's a really big deal. You know, again, I think the biggest issue for the police, not so much in Houston because of the flooding, but in places where there's earthquakes, or there are places where there's, you know, maybe post hurricane, like there was in Katrina, where there's looting. I mean, the police should really be in the lookout. Once they've saved people and everything, the next assignment should be to prevent looting. Look, let me just say this. You got to not take objectivism rationalistically as abstract ideas. It is not the case that when we say the only role of government is to protect individual rights, and then a massive emergency happens, a massive hurricane, and there's flooding, and then you say, well, it's not protecting individual rights to go on and save people. I mean, that's taking it completely out of context of an emergency, of the facts on the ground and the fact that the police have the equipment, have the ability, have the training. If they were individual citizens, they would do it anyway. And yeah, they're spending government money, government money that could be easily raised voluntarily after the fact through charitable contributions because everybody wants to help out a devastated area like Houston and so on. Okay, somebody made the point about allowing people back onto their properties is that part of the reasons police don't do it is to protect those properties from looting, and that's true, and it's a good point.