 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to the Iran Book Show on this Tuesday afternoon. I hope everybody is doing well. And today, we're going to try this new format. So this is going to be our first show of the new format. And we're going to be doing this for a while. So let's see how it works and ideas on improving it, making it better, smoothing it out, all of that. Happy to hear from you guys. But what we're going to do is the first hour is going to be the news roundup. I will take some questions that are particularly news related questions. Then the second hour will be a topic. Today, we're going to talk about what's his name? Dawkins. Dawkins views on being a cultural Christian. He calls himself a Christian. He's an atheist, but he's a cultural Christian. And so we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about that in the context. And then we'll talk about it. Ben Shapiro's comments on the fact that Dawkins views himself as a cultural Christian and Ben Shapiro wants him just to be a Christian. What is this cultural Christian stuff? OK. So we're going to talk about all that. There's a lot to talk about there, so we'll see how long that goes. And then I'll answer any questions you have on anything, including the questions I owe you from the last couple of shows. So I've got them all stacked up here. There's a bunch of them. So who knows how long we'll go today. We'll go until we get all the questions done. And we cover everything. We do have the new goal for these shows is $700 a show. Hopefully that is doable. It's a little bit more than the $6.50 for the long shows because this is going to be longer. So this is going to be a two to three hour show. And hopefully the $700 is doable, but that's how I'm pricing this. All right. Also a reminder to join the show, like the show, share the show, particularly let Twitter know that we're talking on whatever it is that we're talking about, let them know, and try to get people to come and listen or listen on Twitter. Many people, yeah, we've got quite a few people right now. Actually, more people, as many people listening on Twitter as are listening here on YouTube. So yeah, let people know that this is going on. It's happening. And they're invited to participate. All right. So let's start. Let's jump right in. And yeah, the first item on the news, it's going to be, I think for the next few days, is going to be just an update regarding the situation in Israel and Iran. We've got a number of different updates as they relate to this. But let's start with an update about the anticipated attack by Israel against Iran in retaliation for the attack of Iran against Israel, which was in retaliation for the attack Israel had against the Islamic Republican Revolutionary God, which was retaliation for Hezbollah shooting at Israel, which is retaliation for Israel. And on it goes. I mean, this is a state of world foreign policy. This is the state of foreign policy in Israel and in the United States. It's all kind of this ridiculous tit-for-tat. I see headlines like, what's the headline? Israel warns it has no choice but to respond, to attack from Iran. No choice. There's just no choice. It's been foisted on them. And then another one says, Israel's world cabinet is locked between restraint and revenge. What should they do? Should they revenge, revenge? Oh, that sounds cool. Or they should, they should restrain. I mean, this is all insanity. You would expect, at this point, in the maturity of the Iran-Israel conflict war, whatever you want to call it, to assume that maybe there's a strategy here. And maybe this is more than just tit-for-tat, but there's actually an end goal. What is the end goal? Does anybody have any strategic vision? I mean, the Iranians might have. They don't want a full-on confrontation with Israel, because I think they think that'll end badly. But they want to create as much havoc in Israel as possible. And they want to show that they're strong to their own people. And whatever, right? But what is Israel's strategy? What is the strategy? What does victory look like, attacking Iran and then having Iran attack Israel, or does victory look like? So the stories out of the most recent cabinet meeting, which just happened, I guess, about an hour ago, was the coming out of the meeting. A couple of the ministers were advocating for waiting, forming a regional alliance, and then going after Iran and not rushing this. Other ministers immediately wanted a big strike. Other ministers wanted immediately, but a small strike. And strategy, purpose, what are we going for? What is the aim? Where are we heading? Victory, what does it look like? Bottom line is that I think Netanyahu is Netanyahu. And I think ultimately, a majority have decided, I think we will see, a small strike quickly. So I expect that tonight, next few nights, it will happen, but it will not be anything major. Though the Iranians have said, no matter what it is, Israel attacks Iranian soil, we're going to unleash Armageddon on them. So this is not going to end with whatever Israel does. Maybe Iran is lying, which is also possible. But again, what's the purpose? What's the aim? What's the goal? I mean, an aim could, should be destroying Iran's capability to produce nuclear weapons in the short run. It's not going to help in the long run, in the short run. OK, that's a good goal. Then do whatever's necessary in order to achieve that. An aim could be completely destroy and disrupt Iran's capabilities of building drones and weapons systems, ballistic missiles. So whatever they have in stock is all they have, because the rest is just going to be destroyed and demolished. All right, that could be a goal. You know, a more ambitious goal, a more hairy, bigger, big, ambitious goal would be regime change in Iran. That is, hurt the regime so much, cripple it to such an extent that it encourages internal forces to rise up against the regime and replace it. A fourth, as part of, could be part of any one of these, right? A fourth aim could be completely destroy Iran's capability for exporting oil, since it depends on basically one facility where all the ships dock, they load up the oil and they ship it off, wouldn't be that hard to do. You could also attack the oil fields themselves and put them under fire. But then you'd be accused of the worst crime of all, worse than October 7th, I think, which is emitting sewer too into the atmosphere by burning all that oil and global warming and then Europe and America and everybody else would turn against you and you're finished. That's it, you're done. So Iranian oil, but it is interesting, it is interesting that Biden administration has basically made the decision that they are not going to then get imposed sanctions on Iran, additional sanctions. They can enforce sanctions that already exist on Iran. But the one sanction they do not plan to enforce, the one that they're not going to enforce at all is the sanction on oil. Why is that? Because imposing Israel hitting the oil fields or the United States really, really using up the, enforcing the sanction on oil would raise gasoline prices and it's an election year and we can't have that. Tell us the fact that we've got a mystical regime committed to destruction of the West, possibly building nuclear weapons. The hell with that, can't have oil prices go up, it might hurt our election chances. But also there is another factor and that is that the number one consumer of Iranian oil is China. And we don't want to piss off China. We just don't want to piss off China. I mean, relations are warming up a little bit. I mean, Jenna Yellen was over there and things seem to be warming up and we seem to have better cooperation with them. So God forbid we do not want to piss off the Chinese. So I can guarantee, I'm gonna have a tea here and we will see if I'm right or not. Israel will not target the oil facilities, oil wells, oil export facilities of the Iranians when it comes to oil. The Biden administration would flip out, the Chinese would flip out, and the Israeli government doesn't have that kind of coverage. Okay, so that's off the table. How about nuclear weapon production, I mean, but ultimately shouldn't it be all geared towards, ultimately, I don't know, I'm just making stuff up, right? Isn't the purpose of going award a win? And isn't winning ultimately only gonna be happen because regime change in Iran? Shouldn't ultimately, whatever Israel does, shouldn't it be at least oriented towards regime change? Wouldn't it be cool? Imagine, imagine if the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who can give a mean speech, he's excellent at giving great speeches. When a television tomorrow said, Iran is behind every single conflict we face in the Middle East. Iran funded Hamas. It funds Islamic jihad. Iran is funding an arming Hezbollah. The trouble the West is having with the Houthis is a consequence of Iran, Iran funding, Iran weapons. We have decided that our new strategy, which will be implemented in stages covertly and overtly, is dedicated to the destruction of the Iranian regime. And that means that the leadership of the Iranian regime is fair target. We intend to win this war. We intend to stop Iran from funding our enemies. We intend to destroy their capacity to attack Israel and to draw blood in Israel. We intend to take away future funding from Hamas and Hezbollah so that even if there is some leftover sympathy towards Hamas after we finish the job in Gaza, they will never have the funding in order to militarize themselves again. So we're putting you a notice. We're coming after the Iranian regime. And we will do this in all kinds of ways. So that's where we're heading. Imagine if a president of the United States said that. That's who should say it. Imagine if a prime minister in Israel said that. Now we're talking. Now you can pick targets. And now you would imagine what you would do in terms of motivation to the opposition parties inside Iran. Imagine what you would do to the people in Iran in terms of their willingness to go out into the streets and to try to topple this regime now that they know that at least Israel, maybe Israel and the United States, maybe Israel and the United States and Saudi Arabia if the Saudis are honest. And maybe the Jordanians can come in as well. And maybe the United Arab Emirates, ultimately all of them want that to happen. How about we drop this post-modern pseudo, I don't know, sophisticated, realist school of politics and stop saying things we don't believe, stop moderating everything, and just call it like it is. And just say what we mean and act on it. How about we do that? Because if we actually did that and if the United States joined, it would take two weeks, maybe less. This would not be hard. But we have no foreign policy strategy. That is true of Israel. That's why October 7th happened. It's definitely true of America. There is no foreign policy strategy. It's all this mushy pragmatism. It's all this mushy tit-for-tat BS. The Iran is an evil regime. Iran should be, as a regime, eliminated. The regime should be eliminated. And Iran should be held responsible for what its agents, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis are doing in the world, and should be punished for it. But that would be applying justice to politics. We can't do that. God forbid. No, principles. Oh my god, run for the hills. All right, so that is where we are with regard to Iran. We talked about Iran's sanctions. So I anticipate something, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Not exactly clear when, but soon. But nothing super exciting. It might cause the Iranians to overreact, which would then cause Israel to do something more exciting. But that's the story. It's a tit-for-tat. And this is a tit-for-tat that's very expensive. It's, what is it, 1,000 miles away? I don't know, hundreds of miles away. And how do you do it? How do you do it? And who's going to do it? All right, a few other things related to the war, but I thought were really interesting. Do you remember in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and his defense secretary proposed something that came to be known as Star Wars, a laser-guided anti-ballistic missile system that might have involved satellites in space, but also involved projectiles, missiles from the ground, shooting down ballistic missiles in the air as they were approaching. This was heavily debated. Some work was done on it, and then it was basically killed. Democrats called him crazy, but it's more than Democrats. Many scientists, including MIT scientists, including very credible scientists, said, look, it's just impossible. Just you can't do it. I mean, the idea is was, the idea isn't was, how do you shoot a bullet with a bullet? That's what we're talking about. How do you shoot a missile with a missile? Given the speed at which it's approaching, how do you shoot it down? And ballistic missiles, unlike drones, even unlike cruise missiles, travel at unbelievable speeds. And now we've got hypersonics, which travel at Mach 5. They go above the atmosphere, and they come back down, and they enter the atmosphere at unbelievable speeds. How do you do this? And for many years, people wrote about the impossibility and the wastefulness of investing in missile defense systems. Indeed, there's a really good article by Noah Smith. Noah Smith is kind of a left of center economist, public intellectual, unsubstack. And by Matt English, referring also to what Matt English has written, another left of center economist blogger, whatever. So writing about the fact that both Matt English and Noah Smith have written in the 2000s and the 20s about just the wastefulness of missile defense systems. This is Matt English's in 2006, writing about investing in missile defense system. He wrote, this is madness. We're spending billions of dollars to defend ourselves against ballistic missiles that don't exist. What's more, the defense system doesn't work and never has. At best, it occasionally sort of passes rigged tests. I'm a never say never kind of guy, but the odds of it ever working seem bad. The technical challenges are daunting. Building a missile that can reliably hit another missile is simply very difficult. Missiles are small, move very quickly, and are difficult to launch within the time frame necessary to intercept one that's already in the air. What's more, unlike, say, computers or telecommunications, the general field of aeronautic engineering hasn't seen any significant advances in decades. I mean, talk about eating your words. I mean, Gilles has admitted he was wrong. I respect that, and so on. So this was written in 2006. Iran doesn't have hypersonics. They have faster, but they don't have Mach 5 hypersonics. Probably only China has those. Even Russia's are not true hypersonics, not true Mach 5 ballistic missiles. But anyway, this was in 2006. And yet, today, Israel's arrow, the US THAAD, which includes the Patriot missiles, have basically proved all of that wrong. Yes, hypersonics, at least the slower hypersonics, the non-Mach 5 hypersonics, can be shot out of the air. The Patriot missiles have done that in Ukraine. Normal ballistic missiles can be shot out of the air. Israel did that with the arrow, and the United States, off of some of its destroyers, did it with their own systems. Indeed, Israel probably used the arrow 3, which is designed to knock Mach 5 hypersonics out of the air. And they used it here to destroy at least one ballistic missile before it even entered Earth's atmosphere. You saw some of the images. I don't know. I saw some videos of that imploding above the atmosphere, pretty dramatic stuff. So why was everybody wrong? What didn't they get? What are the advances that made this possible? And by the way, this is part of the argument against the US investing in Iron Dome. Iron Dome was supposed to be a failure. Again, there were scientists that said, it's a failure. It don't ever work. And Iron Dome is unbelievably effective, unbelievably so. And Iron Dome, in some respects, is harder than ballistic missiles because Iron Dome has to respond within milliseconds, because the rockets that are required, first of all, are tiny, very small. And second, they have very short trajectories. They don't stay up, and they have very long. Two things, two significant advances that happened to make anti-missile technology possible. One is a huge improvement in our ability to detect a launch. Israel can literally detect the launch of a rocket from a little rocket launcher as it happens within, again, milliseconds or seconds of it happening, and immediately launch a response. The same is true of ballistic missiles. We can now track with satellites and others and instantaneous communication. We can track launches, immediately know, and immediately know that it's happening. So that's one. We have more time, more time to respond. Second, probably more important, is just how better the software has become. And here, you need software to predict where the missile is going to be when the missile you're shooting hits it. In other words, you need to be able to anticipate the trajectory, taking into account wind speed, all the other factors, the environmental factors that are going on at the point. And the reality is, as we know, that software has improved dramatically, exponentially, over the last 20 years. So you've got now more time, and you've got software that can calculate the exact, with unbelievable precision, think about what it is to shoot a bullet with a bullet. That's what's required here. Software that can predict exact location of a missile in the air and hit it. So I thought that was fascinating. So those are the things that make this technology possible. And indeed, it's very clear right now that the United States is under-invested in missile defense systems. If Ronald Reagan had won the day, and if the billions had been spending the 80s on this program, we would now have far better, more advanced technology potentially, and we would have more of it. I mean, one of the real risks the United States faces are those anti-ship missiles, long-range missiles that the Chinese have. Well, it turns out that the anti-missile technology that Israel is using and that the United States just used can take down those missiles. And that makes a massive difference, massive difference. If you can now defend against this missile technology, take them down and then, in a sense, some sense level the playing field so that you can now attack by other means. So missile defense systems far more valuable than anybody anticipated, certainly in the 80s, but even in the 2000s, both Noah Smith and Matt and Galatius have done a mea culpa good for them for admitting it. The science and technology, really, technology is amazing. It really is cool. And yeah, all of that is outstanding. One more thing quickly, and I know I'm running late. One more thing quickly, in a sense, lessened from the Iranian attack. I think I did a show on this. And I think pretty much everybody talked about this. And that is whether the F-35 is a good plan or not. The reality is that for years, I remember doing a show on this myself, the F-35 was deemed too expensive, massive cost overruns. And the demands for the F-35 were that it does everything and therefore doesn't do anything particularly good. That was the complaint about it. And I think I did a whole show on that. What's fascinating and interesting is, again, is that we've all been proven wrong. The F-35 is an amazing airplane. It's stunning in its capabilities. Israel is using it extensively. Its ability to shoot down drones was unmatched. And its operational capacity, both in bombings in Syria and Lebanon, we haven't seen it in a dogfight in an air fight. But is there any plane in the world that could take out an F-35 in a dogfight in the air? No. Certainly not a Russian plane, but probably no plane. For many years, it was thought nobody's going to buy this plane. It's too expensive and who needs it. Now there are dozens or over a dozen countries that have contracts to buy it. It is the most desired airplane in the world right now for anybody who can afford it. It's a great stealth masterpiece that is a plane that can do all things. And that is pretty amazing. That is pretty stunning. And it's every day now in Gaza, in Syria, in Lebanon, and now shooting down drones with the Iranians, it is proving itself. And that is going to mean my estimate is that as the world looks at this, you will see a significant decline in orders from Russia for weapons and a significant increase in orders of weapons systems from the United States, particularly the more advanced ones. I did trash the F-35. I did a whole show trashing the F-35s. One of the things in life that you learn and that you guys should learn, too, wouldn't hurt you is to admit mistakes. I admit I was wrong about the F-35. Now the F-22 might be the F-35 in a dogfight. I'm not sure. The F-35, again, is a multi-purpose. The F-22 is more focused. They're both stealth. But the F-22 is just very expensive and not as useful as the F-35. The F-35 is more useful than the F-22. It can do more things. And it's supposed to be a plane that can go off of an aircraft carrier. I think it has vertical capabilities. It can also be used by the Air Force. It's one plane versus in the past. You'd have different planes for different branches of the US military. This is the plane for all the branches. The F-22, yes, is a superiority fighter. It's a fighter plane. F-35 is a really, really good fighter plane, probably the best fighter plane in the world other than the F-22. But it can also do a bunch of other things. Right? So well, you need somebody to provide dogfighting capabilities. And F-16s could do that. I don't think Israel, for example, has any F-22s. They use F-16s and F-15s and F-35s. All right. Yeah, I mean, if you want to invest in one plane, in one plane, it's the F-35. It has to be the F-35 because it can do so much. Indeed, US Air Force is basically shutting down its F-22 program because of that, because it doesn't really need it given the capabilities of the F-35. All right, we have a bunch to talk about still. OK, quickly. Yesterday and over the weekend, we got a bunch of Hamas demonstrations all over the United States, pro-Palestinian protesters. I just call them pro-Hamas. Pro-Hamas protesters, they disrupted the Brooklyn Bridge. They disrupted the Newbury Beacon Bridge, both in New York. They disrupted the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. They disrupted access to the O'Hare Airport in Chicago and to the airport in Seattle, the SeaTac Airport. I mean, this is disgraceful. I did see photos of some citizens taking the situation into their own hands and basically lifting, basically pushing these people out of the way so that the traffic could pass. If the police won't do it, then it's time for us civilians to go do it, get rid of these people, get them out of the way, stop disrupting our lives. This is a clear violation of individual rights. You do not have a right to protest in a way that disrupts other people's lives, that disrupts other people's ability to engage in their day-to-day activities. You do not have a right to block a bridge, to block a highway, to block an airport. It is despicable behavior. And these people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, whatever the law is about these things. And again, if the government is not going to do it, that is very dangerous. Because then you're asking for anarchy. At the end of the day, individuals are going to take matters into their own hands and do it. And that's not a good situation they'd be in. But it just shows the disregard and disrespect these people have for civilization and for other people's lives. And by the way, same criticism for BLM when that was going on, same criticism for any group that is doing this, and actively engaged in disrupting people's lives. It's one thing, I mean, I'm not big in demonstrations anywhere, but it's one thing to demonstrate with a license in a public space that is not in the street, that is not blocking. It's completely something else to block bridges on purpose, to block access to airports on purpose. You could be unbelievably disruptive. I mean, ambulances, people who need to get to import meetings, people who need to get, you know, it's just endless. There are possibilities in terms of how damaging this could indeed be. All right, one more example of Hamas people. And that is, this comes to you from Berkeley Law School. Berkeley Law School, there you go. Well, the dean of Berkeley Law School often invites students to come and dine at his home. And here the dean, Owen Chemerinsky, a well-known leftist, a law professor, but very well regarded and esteemed. He's the dean of the law school at Berkeley. Anyway, he invited students to come dinner. He does this, I guess, every semester. Invites a group of students to come. Anyway, one of the students decided to disrupt the event. She is obviously, or maybe not obviously, but war kafia is pro Hamas. Anyway, she refused to leave the Chemerinsky home. She wouldn't stop talking, wouldn't stop disrupting, and refused to leave the home. The Owen Chemerinsky's wife, who is also a law professor, tried to kind of guide her out, but she refused. You see them there, you know, the wife is just pleading with her, it's my house, what are you doing? You don't have a right to come into my house and disrupt my event in my house. And this girl says, you're silencing me. You're violating my First Amendment rights. God, she should be failed out of law school just for making that constitutional ignorant claim. Anyway, it almost gets the point where she and Owen Chemerinsky's wife, who's in her 60s, are wrestling over this, and she will not leave. This girl will not leave. So I don't know how they got her out of there, ultimately. But basically, she was accusing Chemerinsky and his wife of white supremacy and of being, you know, this is an ugly word, so I'm prepping you for it. If you have to close your ears, then so be it. You know, we won a clean show here on the Iran Book Show. She actually accused them of being Zionists. Oh my god. Oh my god. All right, let's see. Before we go on, I just want to thank a few stickers. Mark, thank you for the sticker. Sticker is one way you could support the show. Kim, thank you for the stickers. Steven Harper, thank you. Martin Anderson from Argentina. Thank you. Mary-Aline, thank you. So thank you all. Thank you, guys, for the stickers. Thanks for the support. Anybody watching right now, if you want to support the show, you want to support the new format, or you missed the old format, either way, step in. You can use either, you can ask a question by what do you call it, using a sticker, or by asking a question. Questions are great. Questions like you shape the show, which is kind of nice. Anonymous user put in $2. That's great for admitting that I was wrong about the F-35 that admission was worth $2 to me. How about that? I often admit when I'm wrong, I think I'm pretty good at that. You guys don't think that, because you think I'm wrong more often than I really am. But when I'm wrong, when I know that I'm wrong, because I can't admit the stuff I don't know, when I know that I'm wrong, I'm pretty good about admitting to it, and I know it comes at a shock to some of you. But I am fallible. That's hard to admit, right? Thank you, anonymous user. I appreciate it. All right, let's see. All right, let's quickly about Ukraine. And we've got some quick items, so these will be very fast. But today, there was a lot of news. And there's a lot of news, and the Israeli stuff just keeps happening, so Apollo Zeus unsubscribed, because he heard I was fallible. I mean, I don't believe him. I wouldn't listen regularly to somebody who was fallible. Let's see, Ukraine. So Ukraine is struggling on the battlefield. It has showed an ammunition. It has showed a weapon systems. The assumption was that there would be a steady flow for the United States. That flow is being held up now for half a year by Republicans in Congress. It's not even a majority of Republicans in Congress. A majority of Republicans would vote for aid for Ukraine. It's a small minority. They do not want to supply aid to Ukraine. And as a consequence, Ukraine does not have the capacity to fully arm itself. As a consequence, at huge cost to the Russians, they are chipping away in the east, in Donbass, at Ukrainian defenses and are making small but steady progress over there. And it's costing them unbelievable numbers of casualties, unbelievable numbers of tanks. But Russia has all these old tanks, mothballed. And they do have some capacity to produce weapon systems. They have a whole military-industrial complex. They can't really produce much advanced stuff. And therefore, it's basically not very useful, which is pretty stunning. And this is why nobody's going to buy Russian planes anymore in this conflict. But they are making small, slow, at massive expense to life progress. So the United States, there's a lot of pressure right now speak of the house, Mike Johnson, to allow for a vote on aid on Ukraine. The Senate had passed this $93 billion package that included aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, some money to build Gaza after it all ends and all kinds of other stuff. I'm sure all kinds of goodies for various senators. Anyway, Johnson is refusing to have one big bill. And of course, the Senate passed this months ago. And Johnson has refused to bring that bill to the floor, even though, again, that bill would probably pass. Now, some Democrats would vote against it, those who oppose aid to Israel. Some Republicans would vote against it, those who oppose aid to Ukraine. But a majority of the House would vote for it. It's pretty clear that that would happen. So Johnson has decided instead, he's under huge pressure to do this. And he has come out, he himself, Johnson, MAGA Johnson, has come out and said that he supports aid for Ukraine. And he actually went out of Mar-a-Lago on Friday and, you know, kissed the ring and cozyed up to Trump. And Trump expressed his support for Johnson. So maybe Trump supports aid for Ukraine. Who knew? Maybe if they give him the duet on Biden. All right, I don't know. So anyway, Johnson is going to, supposedly, we'll see what actually happens. It's all going to happen this week, Congress is going on vacation again next week. They have a lot of vacations. They don't work very hard. But anyway, they are going to have four bills. A bill for Ukraine, a bill for Israel, a bill for Taiwan. And then they're going to have a bill for something, regulations related that will make it possible to ban TikTok. Maybe give the president the authority to ban TikTok, something like that. Anyway, all of these bills out there, supposedly all four of them will go up for a vote. And we will see what comes of this. But you can expect that to happen any day now. The alternative is you'll capitulate and just put up the Senate bill. But that's hard to believe that he'll actually do that. I don't think it'll actually happen. But we will see. I mean, Jennifer says I want it to be on vacation. Yeah, I get that. I wish they were on vacation all the time. I wish they would never just don't come back. But then they have to do something like actually do something that's in America's self-interest, like provide aid to Ukraine. And they refuse. They put you around. They go on vacation. They pass all kinds of other stuff. But the one thing they're supposed to do, they don't do, protecting America's self-interest. All right, I've got three more. God, three more. It's good that this is going to be a long show today. We might be going until 5 o'clock. So it could be a three-hour show. Stay tuned. Hold on to the, we've got a lot to talk about still. Tesla has announced that it is cutting jobs. Over 10% of global jobs are going to be cut. Out of about, say, 150,000 employees. So we're talking about over 15,000 employees are going to be cut, including in China and in the United States, the two main markets of this. I mean, it's pretty obvious why. One is, at least in the United States, demand for electric cars is not rising anywhere near at the speed that Elon Musk or Biden would like. Americans are very hesitant about electric cars. They haven't bought into it. They're not super excited. And the reality is that in China and the rest of the world, Tesla is losing its market edge to Chinese companies. I've talked about this on other shows. The Chinese just have much significantly cheaper. And by some estimates, just as good a cause as Tesla's. And they're flooding the market with these cars. There are several Chinese electric car manufacturers. One of them is now bigger than Tesla in the sense that it's selling globally more cars than Tesla, including in China, which was Tesla's largest market. So competitive pressures, which are forcing Tesla to lower costs, which are now forcing them to fire people. And non-competitive questions, that is, the demand is just not there. The estimated demand is just not there. The cause is just not compelling enough yet for people to actually convert to electric. And as a consequence, Tesla, the most valuable auto company in the world, is cutting at least 10% of its global workforce very soon and trying to figure out how to continue to lower the costs and find ways to increase demand, create products that are more, I don't know, enticing, more exciting for people. All right, quickly, an update on, this is an interesting one, an update on cancer culture in the sense of Silicon Valley rethinking, maybe rethinking cancer culture. So last week, there was an essay in First Things, which is, I think, a Catholic publication. You remember Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich? So he was probably the first guy in Silicon Valley, first senior person to be canceled. I remember this. It's about a decade ago. And he was a CEO, and it was found. It was disclosed that he had donated a modest amount to a campaign against gay marriage. And he was fired. He was fired. And we all know that since then, political correctness, cancer culture, woke culture in Silicon Valley went out of control. It just went nuts. And this is not Palmer, but we'll get to Palmer in a minute, right? Anyway, the publication of this article about Brendan and everything has caused a chain of myocopas from tech people about all of the cancelling that has been done. That has been done. This again is Brendan Eich, who was the co-founder of Mozilla, the web browser. So Mark Adresin has come out and apologized for, quote, not doing more to support Brendan Eich. Former Oculus CTO, John Carmack, has expressed his regret for not publicly opposing Facebook's witch hunt and firing, or not firing, but forced resignation of Palmer Lucky, who was basically chased out of the company in 2016. So a bunch of these senior people in Silicon Valley are saying, we should have spoken up. We should have defended them. We should have done more. And this is great, because the reality is, and we, objectivists, I think have known this for a very long time, but the reality is that evil wins when the good is silent. Evil wins when good people don't stand up, don't speak up, don't make an issue of these things. And in particular here, in the particular industry, where it was happening, if people like Mark Adresin and people like the Oculus, who was, I guess, a co-founder of Palmer Lucky and others within the tech industry had spoken up against this at the time, then maybe this would have been able to have been limited and constrained instead of blowing up the way it did. And of course, what did this do for rank and file people in Silicon Valley? They basically, if they were conservative or they were not politically correct, they just stayed quiet. They lowered their head. Did they work and said nothing? If the leaders will not speak up, then you can't expect to rank a file to do so. Hopefully, now that the leadership is talking, now that they have, I guess, figured out that it's either safe to do so, or they have discovered their courage and refused to be cowards, then maybe, maybe, maybe this will allow the rank and file to speak up as well. And maybe, maybe, maybe we will start seeing a shift in the culture in Silicon Valley, not holding my breath yet, but maybe these are the first signs, as I mentioned about peak woke a while back. Maybe, maybe, maybe we have seen peak woke as a consequence. All right, final quick story. Georgia, not the state, the country, one of my favorites to visit. I love Georgia, and they like me. They always tune out when I come. Georgia government, which is very pro-Russia, very pro-Putin, and has a majority in the parliament in Georgia, is trying to pass a bill very reminiscent of bills that Putin has passed in Russia, a bill that would supposedly, its goal is to strain the influence of foreign actors on internal politics, basically require any kind of nonprofit, any kind of outside, any kind of group in Georgia to disclose all its foreign contributors, foreign donors, if they get 20% of their funding from a board, and not only do they have to disclose, but they have to register as foreign agents, register as agents of foreign influence. In other words, this is to undermine these groups. Now we know that pretty much in Europe, all free market, or call them freedom, generally, organizations get a lot of their money from the US. It's just a fact, it's philanthropists in the US, so they may be just source of funding for liberty-oriented organizations all over the world, everywhere in the world, this is true. And I can vouch for the fact that it's in Georgia, I know many of the people who work at some of these free market organizations, and they get their money from the US. And they would have to all register as foreign agents, and massive regulations around that, controls, restrictions on what they can do and what they can say. This is a bill to basically quash opposition, and particular quash advocacy for liberty and freedom. It's a bill to turn Georgia into a semi-authoritarian state like Russia used to be, Russia has graduated to fall on authoritarianism. And it's very, very disturbing. As I said, Georgia is a wonderful place with wonderful people, they have a real passion, many of them have a real passion for the ideas of liberty. There's a university called Free University, which is basically freedom university, and there are think tanks, there are many, many, many intellectuals and students, and students for liberty, a free market organization is probably bigger in Georgia than any place else, certainly per capita. And this would be tragic for them, students for liberty would have to register as a foreign agent. Again, the organizations that invite me to come and speak in Georgia would have to register as foreign agent. I think I'm on a board of advisors of one of these groups that would have to register as foreign agents. Awful. Anyway, 13 months ago this was proposed, demonstrations in the streets, and those demonstrations led to the government pulling the bill, they've not bought it back, they've not bought it back, and there's still demonstrations in the street, but this time they seem committed to passing it. Yesterday I saw videos, or this morning, I saw videos of fist fights in the parliament between those who are promoting the bill and those who are trying to stop it. So let's hope somehow some miracle happens, and the bill does not pass, or the bill is withdrawn, or something like that. But it is truly, truly sad. And that they have to go through this. All right, let's see. All right, I think that is it. That is it. All right, I guess there's a whole discussion on the chat about whether I hide information and because Ken, who's known to be super good at this stuff and very accurate, in fact checks me by going to his propaganda-based right-wing websites and he discovers that I don't have their talking points and that I admit some of the BS that they talk about. That is true. If your standard for truth is Newsmax, then yeah, yeah, truth is not, I don't come close. All right, let's do some super chats. I'm gonna focus on the super chats that relate to news items, and then the ones that relate to kind of more broader philosophical issues or more broader issues. I will, yeah, this is more book to arrangement syndrome. Nicely identified the apologizes. I will hold off for, you know, for later, but I will answer them today, including all your questions from Saturday and yesterday that Tara didn't get to. All of those questions I will address later today. We are going until five, so you're gonna have to be patient with me. Let me start with Ryan here, $60. Thank you, Ryan. Hi, Iran. It's coming to call Islamic Tartillitarianism a death cult. Well, this is true. It surprises no one. Isn't Western also a death cult that tolerates the murder of its own citizens? Call the West what it is and demand better thoughts. I don't think the West is a death cult in a sense that the West doesn't venerate death. It doesn't elevate death. It doesn't promote death. It's not a cult built around the concept of death. What the West is, is nothing. What the West today is, is nothing. It is committing suicide now because it wants to commit suicide. See, the Muslims, the Islamic Tartillitarianism want death. They cherish death. They love death. The West doesn't love death. The West is embracing death by default. The West is embracing death because of its weakness, because of its inability to embrace pro-life values. But I wouldn't call it a death cult in that sense. So what we need to call the West today is what it is. A mishmash of some enlightenment values that still drive primarily the economy and some of our politics respect for free speech and some other things. So a little bit of enlightenment. And then a bunch and then really bad horrible ideas that are borderline death cult, woke communism and stuff like that, that's all death cultish. And then this vague gray middle, which is basically pragmatic. It's all pragmatic. It's all short termism. It's all getting emotionalism and doing stuff that feels right in the moment. So once in a while being principled and then not. And this wishy-washy kind of attitude. And that of course generates the death ultimately but it's a slow death without the West even recognizing that that's what it's actually doing. That's what it's actually doing. All right. Paul says, oh for your excellent analysis of the attack on Israel. Thank you Paul, really appreciate it. Clark Young says Iran sent over these slow moving projectiles knowing full well they would be nullified by Israel's defense systems. Now they can claim a symbolic victory without doing enough damage to want any significant Israeli counter strike. No, no, no, no. I mean that is a lot of the mainstream media story about this, but that is BS. That is completely wrong. They sent well over a hundred drones. I don't think in the wildest imagination that they believe that Israel could shoot down every one of those drones. Certainly the Russians have been using that tactic of overwhelming number of drones in Ukraine and Ukraine has not been able to shoot them down. I don't think the Iranians expected Israel to shoot down every single one of those drones even before they reached. They also timed it so that the drones would read Israel at the same time as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. 130 ballistic missiles. 130 ballistic missiles. The ones that go in at the above the atmosphere and come back in, they had no clue that Israel could shoot down any of those. They thought they might be able to, but they didn't have certainty. I don't think Israel had certainty. The Arrow system has been tested in trials. It's never been tested with large quantities in real time and the cruise missiles, they sent many of those should have penetrated. Indeed, again, if you look at Russia while the Patriot systems that the Ukrainians have have shot down some of those, they don't shoot all of them down. They shoot many of them down. So, no, the Iranians, and I think this is an equivocal, there was a reason they shot so many of them, they thought they were gonna do real damage. They thought they were gonna spill some blood. They wouldn't have spent, what is it, 130 and 300 plus projectiles. 300 plus relatively, for Iran certainly, very advanced technology. Just to make a point, they thought they would actually hit and do something. Don't buy this, minimizing this attack. They didn't mean it. They knew it would be shot down. I mean, Ukraine can't shoot them down and I don't think they expected Israel to shoot down all of them. I don't think pretty much all of them. I think the few that landed were probably allowed to land because every one of those arrow missiles, I forget the cost, but they're so expensive, you don't wanna shoot them to pull down a ballistic missile that's gonna hit somewhere where it's not gonna kill anybody. Now, the ballistic missiles might not go all the way out of the atmosphere, but they go, I can't remember what that space between the top of the atmosphere is called, but anyway, they go very high, right? Yes, so, no, this was a real attack. The purpose of to inflict real damage and to also test the Israeli system and see how well it does. And Israel passed it with unbelievable flying colors. It's just truly spectacular what the Israelis, Americans and others did in shooting all those down. The stratosphere, the stratosphere, okay. Z400 Racer says $3 million per arrow three. Most of the missiles, I think, were arrow twos. I don't think they needed arrow threes that many, but maybe they were also arrow threes. Anyway, it's well over a million dollars for each one, so they were careful. All the munitions on the Israel side were probably close to a billion dollars. Now, here's one caveat. It could very well be, and some reports are indicating that, and Israel knows the exact number, but they just haven't disclosed this, that somewhere close to 50% of all the ballistic missiles that the Iranians launched either exploded on launch or fell in the desert in Iran or Iraq, so never made it anywhere close to Israel. So that is quite possible. All right, all right. Thank you, Clark. Let's see, Michael. Commentators are saying Israel shouldn't respond because no damage was done. That's like saying because I was wearing a bulletproof vest when you shot me, I have no right to come after you. Absolutely. I made this point several times on Twitter the other day. Absolutely. You know, I shot you and I missed, so don't call the police and don't come after me. I mean, it's nuts. It's insane. And the fact that people can't see that is exactly that short-term pragmatic, I mean, that was Biden's view, short-term pragmatic, stupid, unthinking, emotionalistic response. No, somebody shooting at you is a threat to you and therefore is using force against you and therefore it is your moral necessity to defend yourself. If your life means anything to you, you must defend yourself. And it is the essential purpose of government to defend its citizens from somebody shooting ballistic missiles at them. That's what government's a fault. All right. All right, Michael, I'm gonna wait with the epistemological question until later. Jennifer says, Spock on Star Trek said, I have found evil, usually triumphs, unless good is very, very careful. Do you think it's giving evil too much credit here? By the way, I'm crushed, you are not infallible. I know, I know, I am too. I'm even more crushed than you are. Yeah, I think he's giving evil too much credit. It's not even that good has to be careful. It's good just has to stand up. Good has to show up. And the one thing good can never do, and this is what people like Scott never get, is it cannot sanction the evil. It cannot give the evil, okay, well, we'll tolerate a little bit of evil here because, oh yeah, we're fighting a great evil. I mean, the FDR's sanction of USSR evil and the defeat of Nazis was horrible and generated tens of millions of people under communism for years as a consequence of that. So, no, all good has to do is show up and be willing to fight evil and to stand up to evil and challenge evil. People make alliances throughout history and history is spune with disasters, disasters. All right, Fender Hopper, ideas for these longest show make a pre-recorded video about your sponsors to play halfway through so you can take a quick break. BRB watch this in the meantime might inspire more sponsors. Yeah, not a bad idea. I'll think about that, but that's a pretty good idea, although I don't have that many sponsors, so it will be a pretty short break. Who wants a break? I love doing this. Enric Punditz declared protecting with missile defenses physically impossible while declaring that unreliable green tech will certainly take over. Yep, and that they models can predict the weather in 100 years. They can predict with accuracy, with great accuracy, exactly what the global temperatures are gonna be and seed levels are gonna be in 100 years because they have the tech, they know it. Pickaxing on Europa, Iran, but what about civil rights marches in the 1960s? I feel like peaceful protest is okay. I think protest cannot be perfect even if I disagree with pro-Hamas protesters. They are purposefully provocative. No, I don't think protests are okay. I don't think the civil rights protests were okay in the sense that they blocked everything. Now they were on the right side of history. The ideas were right, but you're right. The government can't discriminate. Once you allow one, you allow everybody. Reed Ein Rans commentary on Nazis marching through, was this Spoky in Illinois? An overview was you have to allow them to march because you've allowed everybody else to march, but should you allow everybody else to march? Should you allow traffic to be stalled and everything else to be stalled? Now, I think the civil rights movement was on the verge of basically civil unrest, civil disobedience, and they were clearly willing to spend the night in jail, and they did, many of them did. I don't think the pro-Hamas are. So go arrest them, go put them in jail. I think the level of commitment is very different, but in terms of a right, a legal right to disrupt other people's lives, you do not have that. You do not, Spoky, sorry, Spoky, and there you go, I made a mistake again. I mispronounced the town in Illinois, Spoky. You do not have, and there's a good video on the Ein Rans Institute website that Uncle Garret did about whether we have a right to protest in that kind of way, and I think the answer is no. Fendt Hopper, imagine being fallible. Fendt Hopper says he can't relate. Yeah, I know, it's tough. Clark says, are you in contact with a super chat people at YouTube? Can you tell them to stop censoring words or at least provide us with a list of words we're not allowed to use when asking questions? Just misspell it. Just misspell it. I am in touch, I'll ask them, but my guess is they'll say no, right? Because Ryan says, go, capitalism, go, liberty, support the show. Yes, please support the show. We're very ambitious with the show and we have to make those ambitions pay. Andrew says, it relates to my infallibility. An error of knowledge is not a moral failing, that's true. However, have you noticed that some have a skill of pretending to focus when not honestly trying to comprehend they cannot claim moral innocence? Yes, a lot of people, a lot of people do that, certainly on this chat, a lot of people do that. And that is, in objectivism, that is the origin of sin. The origin of sin is evading and that's what you just described as evasion. That is where sin comes from, not focusing, pretending and ignoring, evading, consciously knowing you should look and not looking, consciously knowing that you might be wrong and not actually doing the checking. Andrew, great point about the Israelis missing a goal. How can they decide what to do without knowing what they want to achieve? The government deliberation is confused, you blather due to lack of anchor of a goal. Yes, and it sounds like very contentious. They're yelling around the table, they're all pretty angry, they'll want their way, a lot of strong personalities and with all strong views. And again, do they even share an actual, what is the purpose? What are we here for? What are we trying to do? But yeah, very contentious meetings in the cabinet. There's real disagreement, even within the more narrow, what do you call it, war cabinet, which is much smaller, big differences between the different people in the cabinet. Flata Nik, you should try to get John Galt mortgage company as a sponsor. Also, some F-35s at an air show Saturday, they're very cool. Yes, they are, I should get the F-35s. Who manufactures the F-35? Maybe they'd be a sponsor. I'm willing to endorse F-35s for self-defense, not for aggression, just self-defense. All right, thank you everybody. That'll be our news roundup. We're gonna shift to a second part of the show in a second. I just wanna let you know about our sponsors. We've just got three, ExpressVPN is a sponsor. You can do expressvpn.com slash Iran. And what you get is an extra three months free when you sign up to ExpressVPN. So you sign up for ExpressVPN and they normally give you a three month free trial period. They'll give you an extra three months because you came from my link. So click on expressvpn.com slash Iran. ExpressVPN is probably the most used VPN out there because it's good, it'll shield and protect you, particularly when you're traveling, but even at home, particularly when you're doing financial transactions or watching porn. No, I didn't say that. I know you guys don't watch porn, but it all, you know, because the kind of the privacy feature of the browsers is not very private. So you wanna combine it with a VPN if you're gonna do it. It also allows you to watch Netflix while you're traveling in a country that might not have Netflix. All right, two of my big sponsors are one is the Iran Institute, which is inviting people to attend Ocon this year. It's in Anaheim. It's in June, middle of June. It is June 13th to 18th. You're gonna have some of the, you saw Tara Smith yesterday was here. She'll be there. You'll be able to say hello to her in person. You'll be able to ask a question. She's giving a talk. You'll be able to schmooze with Tara Smith. Very cool. Mary will be there. Uncle Gatti will be there. I will be there. Many, many people will be there. Maybe some surprises. There is a gala to honor Harry Binswanger, who is retiring from the board of directors of the Iran Institute. So there'll be a dinner to honor Harry. Harry Binswanger, of course, will be there. So you all should come as well. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be socially amazing. You're gonna meet a lot of new people. You're gonna meet a lot of old friends. And you're gonna learn a lot. There's a lot of great intellectual content. There was a Qat-Yaran. I don't know what that means. Sometimes the chat is just, I don't get it. All right, the other sponsor of the show is Alex Epstein. Alex is, of course, the author of Faustal Future and is the author of Energy Talking Points, Energy Talking Points, which features Alex AI. The Talking Points give you a concise, powerful and well-referenced argument on every imaginable energy, environmental, and climate issue. The AI actually is trained on all of Alex's content, on his book, and therefore his cutting-edge chat box that provides you with answers based on all of Alex's energy knowledge. It is used by CEOs of energy companies primarily and by members of Congress, maybe even by a governor or two, I don't know. And yeah, it can answer all your energy questions. You too can sign up for these, alexepstein.substack.com, alexepstein.substack.com. All right. I take money from conservatives anytime, absolutely. All right, let's see. So yeah, go to Alex's substack, sign up, register, and I think he'll be able to identify that you're coming from my show, but that would really be helpful so that he keeps renewing his sponsorship because the sponsorships, again, help together with the Super Chat and together with the Monty Contributions that you all could make on Patreon or on PayPal. They make this show possible. And again, thank you for all the supporters. And there was something I wanted to say and it slipped my mind. All right, let's talk about being a cultural Christian. A cultural Christian. This is gonna be fun. All right, so I've got a video. I've got a video for the being a cultural Christian. There's Ben Shapiro. I's closed, super focused on his laptop. So Richard Dawkins, and I'm gonna show the video of Richard Dawkins and then we'll talk about Ben's response. To it, but okay, we might as well just jump in. So we're gonna be talking about what it means to be a cultural Christian, whether it's a valid concept, whether it's a good concept, whether there's any good in Christianity more broadly, whether we're all religious and don't know it, like Jordan Peterson thinks, whether you can be moral and an atheist, whether you can have a system, morality is an atheist. I don't know if we'll get to all of that. We'll see, it depends on how fast we let, I mean, if we let Ben Shapiro talk it, it would go very fast, but how much I let Ben Shapiro actually talk, that will determine, and then I do have all of these questions that need to be answered as well. So we'll do that as well. Please continue to ask questions. We do have a target for these daily shows and there's no show tonight. There's no show any evening except Mondays and there's no show on Saturday. So we're condensing all the shows into shorter periods of time. And therefore those shows, I need you guys, I need your guy's support. Also, now that we're shifting to the cultural Christian and Ben Shapiro, you might wanna go on Twitter and let the world know that that's what we're talking about live right now. So if anybody who is interested in this topic can tune in now, not having worried about skipping the news update. All right, let us jump in, let's jump in and I'm just gonna press play. Let me know if the volume's not right or if there's some issue with this. Let me know. Well, I must say I was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead. I do think that we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so I love hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. It's true that statistically, the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I'm happy with that. But I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches. So I count myself a cultural Christian. I think it wouldn't matter if we, certainly if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful. All right, so this is in the context, I guess, of what was I gonna say? This is in the context of some place in London, I guess in the UK and London, where they embraced celebrating the Ramadan instead of celebrating Easter. In that context, this is why Dawkins makes this claim. Of course, Dawkins is famous for being one of the, what is it, three horsemen, four horsemen of the apocalypse, the new atheists. He is a evolutionary biologist. He is quite famous for the selfish gene, not selfish in the way we mean it. And it's created quite a bit of controversy within the field of biology about his views around biology. But I have no reason to doubt that he is a leading thinker in the field of evolution. And I don't think he's evolution of psychology and evolution of biology. And so he's saying, so he starts off and he ends really, really ends with saying, look, what I really would hate is if we replaced Christianity with another religion. And that, particularly if it's gonna be Islam, is absolutely true. That would be horrific. I mean, Islam in its current variation is just monstrous. Christianity, for the most part, isn't enuded, at least politically. Christianity at least has been subdued by the Enlightenment. It's been subdued by science. It's been subdued by liberty, by the ideas of freedom. Again, by the ideas of the Enlightenment. But, you know, but he's saying, so he's saying I wouldn't want to replace by with other religion. But then he's making a bigger point. He's saying, no, but there's something about a culture that I like. And that it's associated with Christianity. There's a Christian culture that I live in, a Christian ethos, ethos that we live with. And he mentions hymns and Christmas carols. I don't, yeah, okay. Hymns and Christmas carols are nice. He mentions cathedrals. They love cathedrals. God, God, I mean, I mean, people just love cathedrals. I'll talk about cathedrals in a minute. And old churches, and I think they're just wonderful. The cathedrals and the churches. And that's part of the vibe. It's part of the world in which they grew up and they like and they love and isn't this amazing. And I think it tells you something about the soul of a man when this is what's culturally important to them. Like hymns and Christmas carols, nice. Yeah, they're pleasant. They're nice enough. Versus, I don't know, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, even Mozart. And you know, symphonies, concertos. I mean, give me a break. If the choice was between those two, I'd give up the hymns and carols in an instant. So if we live in a more secular culture, if everybody becomes an atheist and pro-reason and still loves music, good music, but we give up hymns and Christmas carols. Would the world dramatically be a worse place? No, not really. Not really, maybe a better place. Maybe more energy would be devoted to actually producing great music. And the same goes with cathedrals and churches, yeah. Cathedrals, they're nice. I hate cathedrals, just so you know. Just you're out there. Cathedrals are these monstrosities that were built on the back of the equivalent of slave labor. These are buildings, magnificent. Magnificent that they could be built when they were built and magnificent. But they're ugly. The decorations are ugly. To the extent that they have sculpture, it's gargoyles and it's ugly. They are purposefully massive and high to make you feel small in the presence of God, right? Because the whole point is to glorify God. They're horrible buildings. I mean, I go into them because, wow, I mean, it's impressive. But it's not impressive as, whoa, they're so anti-man. They're so anti-this world. They're so anti-happiness and joy and celebration. If they have any decorations aside, it's Jesus on a cross sacrificing, bleeding, dying, painful death for my sins. How is this culturally superior? I mean, Ayn Rand had it right. Skyscrapers, skyscrapers. Not only because they shoot up into the sky and they have, but because they're used by man. They're used by man to live in. They're used by man to work in. They're used by man to be productive in. They're built for human beings at scale. A cathedral is built to make humans small. And that's the whole point about who go uses it. And yeah, I mean, you have to recognize who goes genius in using it that way. And in using the imagery, it's unbelievably powerful. But the whole point of a cathedral is to make you small. Make you small. And part of walking in to make you small is to make you feel reverence. That's the goal. And reverence in this case to that guy on a cross dying for you. To some God, non-existent God. That is the purpose. And if you look at a cathedral and just marvel at the ability in the 13th century to build something like this, you're missing the point. What didn't they build because they built this? They didn't build aqueducts. They didn't build places where people could live and work and improve. I mean, think about the gazillions, equivalent of gazillions of dollars that went into building cathedrals where nobody could afford to build cathedrals. Again, amazing in the intricacy. Amazing in the grandeur. Amazing. And yes, make you feel reverence when you walk into it. But at what cost? Churches, yeah. I mean, cute, quaint little churches in the little boroughs in London. Very nice. Yes, maybe we should keep a few just to entertain our eye. But Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, what does that mean? I mean, we can create amazing, magnificent modern architecture. We can create inspiring homes for people to live, inspiring skyscrapers for people to live in and office buildings. Beautiful factories even can be built today. We can fill our streets with magnificent sculpture. We saw that in 19th century. We saw it in Greece. The best part of our culture, from Beethoven's music to the scientific revolution, to our respect for science, which some of us still have, to our quality and standard of living, to the skyscrapers and automobiles. And I mean, you walk in London and you see these beautiful Aston Martins. I'll take an Aston Martin over a parish church any day. These are truly beautiful and truly inspiring. And all of that is not a product of Christianity. All of that is a product of the Enlightenment. It's a product of Greece. It's a product of the Pagans. We'll get to Pagans in a minute because Ben Shapiro will raise it. The good in the world today, this, which I for one prefer to any church, is a product of Aristotle and the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution and Steve Jobs. Wow, that's the culture I love. It's a product of Newton. Newton wasn't a pagan, but Newton used the method of a pagan. Newton, quaff physicist is Aristotelian. He's not Christian. Quaff physicist, he's rejecting Christianity. He's rejecting what's written in old books. He's rejecting prophecy. Newton, quaff scientist, is channeling Aristotle. He's channeling reason, reality orientation. He's challenging, channeling the scientific method, which the West learned from Aristotle. Falsely for a while because it was transmitted to them by Catholics who misunderstood and took Aristotle as dogma. There's nothing, nothing in Christianity leads to science. Indeed, Christianity rejects science. There's a wonderful book, encourage everybody to read, called The Closing of the Western Mind. And it's all about how open the Western Mind was, the knowledge, the science, the discovery, the evidence, the reality, the facts, under the Greeks and the Romans. And as Christianity gains in power, the mind closes. And you find this closing in Paul early on in the first writings of Christianity. It's all about faith and knowledge in this world. Knowledge in this world is junk, is, none of that has to do with science. Christianity is anti-science, and this is why, for a thousand years, for a thousand years, there was not a single astronomical observation made in the Western world. In the Muslims there was, because they were reading Aristotle. Maybe even in China there was, but they never went anywhere with it. But in the West, in the Christian West, science ended. You get achievements of the Greeks and achievements in the Renaissance. And a thousand years, a little over a thousand years of basically almost nothing. Whatever advances they are in medicine, science, are happening in the Muslim world, nothing in the Christian world. Because Christianity, qua Christianity, is anti-science. And it's anti-reason, it's anti-the mind. It's some conception of love, but love is self-sacrificial. Not love as a response to values, love is self-sacrificial. And this is, what is the Christian ethos? The Christian ethos is altruism. The Christian ethos is self-denial. The Christian ethos is original sin. The Christian ethos is love thy neighbor like yourself. I don't, to another cheek. They don't live up to that because Christians are unbelievably violent in history. So the Christian ethos is an ethos of self-denial, self-abugation. It's ethos that is counter to science. It's counter to what Dawkins is. The culture, the real culture, the vibe, the achievements, that Dawkins is actually observing in the life that he lives around him, are not the achievements of Christianity. These are achievements in spite of Christianity. These are the achievements of a secular world. He likes having a car to take in places. He loves living in an air-conditioning, maybe more heated home, heated by technology, heated by the Enlightenment. So the culture we live in, all the benefits, all the good that exists in the culture, is not a product of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a tradition that is anti-science. All you have to do is look at the ultra-orthodox Jews, you know, the ones that take their religion super seriously. How many of them are scientists? Zero. How many of the very religious Christians are scientists? I mean, the real orthodox ones, they're not. I mean, you have to be somewhat secular in order to be scientific. You have to not take religion too seriously in order to be a scientist. In other words, you have to be open to reality, to facts, to evidence, and that almost immediately eliminates science, it eliminates religion. So to extend your religious, you won't be a scientist. To extend your scientist, you won't be religious. Now, some people, like Newton, could hold both. But in his science, he was a scientist, he was a Aristotelian, in his religion, I mean, even there, Newton was pretty nuts when it came to his religion. So people can be compartmentalized as Newton was, but they need a compartment for reason. And it's a compartment for reason that allows them to achieve. It's a compartment for reason that allows for progress. It's a compartment for reason that has created the world around us. It's Aristotle's world, Aristotle's culture of what we have around us. Religious music can be nice, just like, because it appeals to certain universal values, just like reverence is not an emotion that is limited to religion. Just like you can have reverence for Hugo, whereas a Christian has reverence for God, Hugo being the author. But reverence doesn't come from religion, it comes from you and the values you admire and respect and look up to. And those values can be secular and are secular mostly in our world. All right, let's listen to what Ben has to say about this. Okay, but we have substituted an alternative religion, and that religion is paganism because the... So in Ben's world, you can't have reason, he'll talk about that in a minute, you can't have reason as the standard. It has to be some religions. If you give up on Christianity, you have to become a pagan. I'm not a pagan, you're a pagan, you guys pagans? I mean, I love Aristotle, but not, but even Aristotle was not really a pagan, right? He believed in a fine mover, but that was it. But all they can think of is in terms of faith, is in terms of belief, not in terms of fact, evidence, not in terms of reality, not in terms of science. The reality is that when you cut off a civilization from Mr. Judeo-Christian roots, what you end up with is a paganistic replacement for that religion. Humanism devolves into paganism pretty quickly. It doesn't have to. It doesn't have to. Yeah, I guess he's calling woke paganism, he's calling the left paganism. That's one version of what happens when you give up on Judeo-Christianity. And of course, you know, Ben wrote a book about the origins of Western civilization being Jerusalem and Athens. He overstates Jerusalem, he understates Athens. The source for everything good, not everything, almost everything good in Western civilization is Athens. At the end is Athens. Everything good attributed to Christianity, even there has its roots in Athens, has its roots in Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy is so far superior to anything that the Christians had, that the Christians basically adopted, mainly Plato early on and later Aristotle, and brought them into Christianity because they knew they were like, they won quicksand, they had nothing. There was no there, there, they needed philosophy, they needed justification for what they believed in. So they brought in the pagans, they brought in the Greeks in order to justify themselves. So it's, you know, they create these constant false dichotomies. You either Christian, Judeo-Christian, Ben has a strong vested interest in the Judeo part of it, even though Judeo-Christian doesn't even make sense because Judaism and Christianity are so different, so fundamentally different. I wish Ben would admit it, right? I mean, Judaism has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with Christianity in any of its interpretations. I mean, I wish somebody would point this out. There was no Judeo-Christian, anything. There's a Christian tradition which has dominated the West. And every achievement has been in spite of it. Because all of the central premises of humanism, things like reliance on human reason, make an argument for human reason. Make an argument for human reason. You cannot, from an evolutionarily biological perspective, make an argument for human reason as an independent force. You cannot, from an evolutionarily biological perspective. You can't. How is that? How can't you make an argument for human reason as a force? Human reason is the faculty that evolved in human beings in order to observe and integrate, understand reality. What the senses provide for us. The data that the senses provide for us. Evolution has evolved that. It is this magnificent, magnificent achievement, achievement in quotes, of evolution to create a brain, a mind that can actually write its own software, that can evolve knowledge itself, that the knowledge is not coded. This is purely a product of evolution. It's an evolutionary leap, but there are plenty of evolutionary leaps. We have an evolutionary leap from something that is not alive to something that is alive. We have an evolutionary leap from something that is alive but not conscious to something that is alive but is conscious. And then we have an evolutionary leap from something that is conscious, alive and conscious, but has no capacity to reason, no free will if you will, to some being, a new being, called man, that has the capacity to reason and has the capacity for free will. That is not, I just made the case. And indeed, every piece of new knowledge, every piece of real knowledge and every value we as human beings have sought, we have only achieved it through the use of reason, through the use of reason. So this idea that you cannot, what did Ben say? Let's see again what he said. Like reliance on human reason. Make an argument for human reason as an independent force. I just did. It's an independent force. It's a fact of reality. And since we know that we evolved, it's a fact of evolution. What argument beyond that can one make? It is the way in which we know reality. It is the way in which we discover truth. It is the way in which we adapt nature to fit our needs. It's the only way we can do it. Show me another way. So whether we have a detailed biological explanation for how it all works, well, of course we don't. We don't know a lot of things. You cannot from an evolutionarily biological perspective. You can't. You can say that human beings are capable of using their brains in order to adapt to their environment. Human beings don't adapt to their environment. There's another one of the common fallacies in the world out there. Human beings do not adapt to their environment. We don't change our genes in order to adapt to our environment. Human beings adapt the environment to fit our needs. And this is the ultimate argument against environmentalism. We must change the environment. The way in which we survive is by changing our environment. So we don't adapt to our environment. We adapt the environment to fit us. That reason is an evolutionary biological tool that allows us to do that. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. And pretty much a fact. And denying of that fact is kind of bizarre. So reason is not a faculty. It's not an attribute of the individual. It's not our means of survival. What are you saying here, Ben? See, this is why this is going to take hours. You cannot say that human beings are capable of searching for truth. There is no such thing as truth enough. Of course there is such thing as truth. Truth is concurrence with reality. Truth is right there in front of you. I'm holding a pen. That is true. And the only way to discover truth is through reason. God does not create truth. You see, this is Plato. This is the platonic nonsense which Christianity... I mean, Judaism doesn't have this. This is pure Christianity. Truth is somewhere else. Truth is the world of forms. Truth is the word of God. Truth is the logos. And then it's true. Can't use reason to discover. Can't use it. There is no reason. There is no weight to discover. Now, truth is, does it concur with reality? When I say, I'm holding an iPhone right now, am I saying the truth or not? I exist. Is that true or not? Well, I mean, we've got eyes. Everything ultimately is brought down to sensory data. That's how we discover the world. That's what we know what truth is. Only reason. Only with reason is there such thing as truth. I mean, this is such mystical... I mean, it really is. It's such platonic, mystical nonsense. Right? There were Jewish platonists. Absolutely. Christianity anchored Plato at the very center of itself. He also had an impact on Judaism. Later, somebody like Maimonides brought in Aristotle and I think reformed Judaism somewhat and made it more Aristotelian. And I think that's why Jews are more thisworldly and that's why modern Jews are more science-oriented and stuff like that. It's because of Maimonides' influence. Plato, this whole idea of the word the truth with big capital letters, that is all Plato. And that requires revelation. And revelation is not reason. Even though Plato called it reason, it's not reason. You cannot say that human beings are capable of searching for truth. There is no such thing as truth in evolutionary biology. There's just what's effective and what's not effective. But that is a false dichotomy between truth and effective. If it turns out that this fruit is poison, then it's not effective. But it's also truth about that's not a good fruit. Don't eat it. But that's exactly about truth. Evolutionary biology has to allow us to discover what reality is and the very fact that we can reshape reality. We can reshape nature. We can reshape our environment. Suggest that we discover truth all the time as biological entities. That's exactly what we do. It's not about whether it works or it doesn't work. You know, nonsensical pragmatic philosophy. Which, Ben, God, where are you getting this from? Everything is utilitarian in nature. You can't make the case for higher concepts like justice or freedom. Of course you can. Iron Man makes it all the time. All the time. And it's not a higher concept. It's a more abstract concept in that sense is higher. But it's not a higher concept in the sense of it comes from above. The definition of justice is given to us by God. Yeah, I can't derive it if it's given to us by God. But there is a definition of justice that's right from human experience on this earth. And that's what freedom is. Freedom is something we've had to learn. And in that sense, what works and what doesn't work is very relevant. In Iron Man's terminology, the moral is the practical. And the practical is the moral. If you think about the right time frame, if you think about the right scope, the moral is the practical and the practical is the moral. There is no conflict between the two. See, but in his world, because truth is revealed, it's not induced, then there's no relationship between truth and the real world. If you are operating from a non-God-based universe, you might be able to live that way individually. You can be like Richard Dawkins and be an atheist and be a cultural Christian. I am an atheist and I am not a cultural Christian. And I think many of you are too, atheists and not cultural Christians, even though you might like to listen to him once in a while and you might even like, I don't know, certain Christian-affiliated music. I wonder why this is not working. My super chat tracker has somehow stopped working. I'm not sure why. Sound good? Oh, I guess I have to press that. It's working again. Cool. Sorry about that. So there we go. That's better. So, yes, you don't have to be a cultural Christian if you're an atheist. You can be just an enjoyer of secular culture. I love secular culture. I don't like leftist culture, but I like secular culture. Not the same thing. But you cannot separate the church building that he is praising there off from what goes on inside the church. Yes. That's why I'm a little skeptical about churches, right? Unless there's a masterpiece by Corvaggio or by Michelangelo. And I get that they were also impacted by the church. I just wonder sometimes. They might go wondering, what would those guys be producing if there wasn't a church? God, what would have happened to Michelangelo? If he wasn't raped by guilt, if he didn't feel like he was, you know, this abandoning God, a disrespectful God, or that God was horrible, you know, that he was not living up to God's expectations or whatever. What would happen to Michelangelo if he hadn't felt guilty about the fact that he was probably gay? What could he have produced? What would he have produced? I mean, think about it. Michelangelo's David, Michelangelo's Pietà, maybe the two greatest sculptures in all of human history. And then after that, they never live up to that. They never live up to the idealism. They never live up to the beauty. They never live up to what is it? That secular nature of both of those, the Pietà, is the origin of it is of course Christianity. It's Mary holding the dead Jesus in arms, but it's completely secular sculpture. Michelangelo's David is the story of David, but who cares? It doesn't matter. It's a beautiful secular sculpture. Imagine, imagine if he had not been required to paint the stuff he didn't want to paint and it wasn't constantly required to build Muslims for dead popes and actually, and didn't have the burden of Christianity over him. Imagine if he had continued to sculpt David's and Pietà's. Yeah, we know he was full of guilt from his journals. It's not an educated guess, it's a reality. And we know what the guilt was, right? But yeah, you can pretend it wasn't, but the reality is that it's pretty clear what he was. But no matter what he was, he was riddled with guilt. You can see that in his journals. He was riddled with frustration. He was riddled with a fear of God. He was riddled by Christianity. It was a burden on his soul. Yeah, and I've looked at his sculptures and you can see in his sculptures, compare. If you have the guts to compare his first Pietà and then his second Pietà and then his final Pietà and you can see what religion and what the popes, politics have done to his soul. You don't have to read anything. It's in the marble. It's right there in the marble, right there in the marble. I've looked at some of the journals. I've not read all the journals. I've seen enough to be able to say confidently what I just said. And if you've read the journals and you disagree with me, show me where Michelangelo is excited about life, motivated by life, show me where Michelangelo is just happy about his Christian values. He's being oppressed by Christianity. Being oppressed by Christianity. You can see from the sketches, you can see exactly what the sculpture is going to be, particularly the way Michelangelo sculpted them. If you understand Michelangelo's sculpture, I think I do in ways that a lot of people don't. You can see the sculpture he is creating even in the sketch because all he does is window it down to what the final result is going to be. And if you think about his original Pietà and the kind of body Jesus has and the kind of power and strength and that relationship between Jesus and Mary and that original sculpture, and you look at the sculptures afterwards with Jesus' pathetic, drooping body and just the nature of the collapse. I mean, if you don't get that psychology, if you think about his dying slaves, if you think, I mean, again, the most magnificent sculptures ever made, you think about it dying slaves and you can't see the erosion in Michelangelo's soul when you see that God. Then I don't know what you're looking at. The church building is an outward manifestation of the soul that is the church. Yeah, it's a waste of real estate for the most part. The same thing is true of our civilization. Our civilization is built in a particular way, on particular frameworks and foundations. Yeah. The modern civilization we have today is a civilization built on the foundations, on the framework of a rejection of Christianity, a rejection of the ideas of Christianity which is the basis for the enlightenment. It's built on the notion that individuals have the capacity to reason, that they have the capacity to discover truth, all the things that you claim today, that sitting in your studio using YouTube and using cameras and using the latest, greatest technology all built on modern science which entailed the rejection of Christianity where they implicitly and in some cases explicitly think about Darwin. So, no, this is our modern culture, our modern civilization for good and for ill is based on the enlightenment. The ill is because people misunderstand the enlightenment and have distorted and perverted it and the good is that glimmer of continuation of the good within it. And when you destroy those foundations and frameworks, what you end up with is secularist pursuit of values that ends up undermining itself and eating itself. You end up with postmodernism. You don't have to end up with postmodernism. Not every secular idea ends up in postmodernism. Ain Rand certainly is not postmodernism. There are so many different strands of secular philosophy that are not postmodernism. Almost all of them bad, but postmodernism is not. It's not the logical conclusion of secularism. It's not the logical conclusion of the enlightenment. Ain Rand is the logical conclusion of the enlightenment. The reason that postmodernism is a natural outgrowth is because it is a natural decay. You go from a thriving civilization to an enlightenment civilization that was in fact rooted in Judeo-Christian values. This is one. A thriving civilization. A thriving civilization. I mean, until the enlightenment, sorry, until the Renaissance rediscovered Greece, Christian civilization is not thriving. It is a decayed civilization. It is a dark civilization. It is an anti-man civilization. It's only the discovery of Greek art and Greek philosophy that elevates Western civilization starting in the Renaissance. And it does so in spite of Christianity. It does so with Christianity fighting every achievement. I mean, just read the continuation, the part two of the closing of the Western mind, which is called the reopening of the Western mind. And that reopening of the Western mind doesn't come from religion. Religion is what closed the Western mind. The reopening of the Western mind comes from secular thinkers. It comes from science. It comes from discovery of the Greeks. It comes from thinkers. And yes, some of those thinkers are religious and compartmentalizing. It comes from Aquinas bringing Aristotle back in. But Aquinas' books are considered heresy not long after he dies. Now, nobody takes that too seriously because they're pushing civilization forward, but not Christian civilization. They're pushing Greek civilization forward and Christianity is desperately holding back unsuccessfully, unsuccessfully. Why, for example, when it comes to capitalism, Adam Smith wrote Theory of Moral Sentiments before he wrote Wealth of Nations. No, I mean, this is amazing to me. Note that Ben Shapiro thinks that the only place you can write a theorem of moral sentiment is from the perspective of religion. Maybe, I'm not saying this is what Adam Smith did, but you can write a book on virtues and claim that capitalism is based on morality without going to religion. Morality is not equal religion. You can have a secular morality. I hope that people in this chat agree with that, maybe. Theory of Moral Sentiment is an entire book about virtue and the necessity thereof. And then he wrote Wealth of Nations, which was predicated on the idea that when you have a civilization that does in fact promote virtue, capitalism can thrive. That's true. Only in a society that promotes virtue, capitalism can thrive. That's right. But does that mean Christian virtue? Oh, sorry. Judeo-Christian virtue? Or could it be a different set of virtues? Could it be a secular set of virtues? A secular set of virtues that is derived from God. What works? A secular set of virtues that is derived from biology, from evolution, that is appropriate for man's life and therefore appropriate on which to build an economic system, a political system, man needs freedom in order to survive as man, as a biological entity called man. That's why he needs freedom, that's why he needs capitalism. What does that have anything to do with religious virtues? Zilch, nada, nothing. Same thing is true of things like free speech. These all exist on deeper foundations. Those deeper foundations are real. Free speech exists on the deeper foundation of the importance of reason, the human life. Again, importance of reason, not importance of faith. Religious in nature. Trying to separate those off. Pretending that they are the natural state of the world is historically ignorant. History is in fact contingent. The Enlightenment rests on Christian bases. No, the Enlightenment rests on the Renaissance, which rests on, very explicitly, on Greece. On Greece. And indeed the rejection of the culture that was pre-enlightenment. Rejection of the Christian ideas. They were pre-Renaissance. And the discovery of humanism and the discovery of science and the attempts by the Christians to suppress new knowledge. And in spite of that, the great achievement of civilization, the great achievement of scientists and thinkers and philosophers was, was to reject the church in favor of new knowledge. And ultimately to reject Plato, including his Christianity, for Aristotle reason, science, and secularism. Pretending that it does not, means that you end up severing the two. And an Enlightenment severed from its Christian bases ends in terror. No, an Enlightenment severed from its Christian bases doesn't end in terror. It ends in the Declaration of Independence. It ends with the founding of the United States of America. It actually ends in gulags and death camps. The cost of living has already increased 17% this year. How, for example, freedom of speech you just take Ubermensch. This is the point that Nietzsche was making near the end of the 19th century. He was making the case that when you kill God, you don't in fact end up with a higher secular humanism. You end up with a pagan pursuit of power. That is what Nietzsche claimed, absolutely. But was Nietzsche right? I don't think so. And again, there is a philosophy that's an alternative to Christianity. There is a philosophy that's completely secular. There's based on reason that provides moral guidance. Provides moral guidance. And that is Objectivism. That is Iron Man's philosophy. No, I'm claiming the entire world depends on Greece. But I'm claiming that the Enlightenment is Aristotelian, not Christian. It is Christianity is predominantly Platonistic. And it's the rejection of Plato, but really the rejection of Christianity that has led us. And to the extent that secular culture embraces Plato, sticks with Plato, doesn't reject Plato with Christianity. To that extent, we get the perversion of secularism, communism, fascism, wokeism, all manifestations of Plato. They're all manifestations of Christianity in one way or another. Manifestations of Christian ethics, not Christianity, Christian ethics, and a rejection of reason, facts, reality and secularism. So the Enlightenment is not Christian. It's the negation of Christianity, the subjugation of Christianity, the marginalization of Christianity. That is the essential nature of the Enlightenment. It's why it's called Enlightenment. You're being enlightened by reason and placing faith in its place. And for many Enlightenment figures, that place was nowhere in the trash heap of history. And it's too bad they didn't go all the way. They should have. But, you know, this is why they needed an anti-complete the revolution. They only got it started. They didn't complete it. You'll end up with the pursuit of the Ubermensch because you have living a cold, meaningless universe in which will is the only thing that matters. Power is the only thing that matters. This is why the arguments that are currently made about how, for example, freedom of speech is just a guise for power. This is the argument the left makes against freedom of speech. Property rights are not about the natural outgrowth of human beings want to create and to cultivate. They are, in fact, in imposition by a powerful... No, because we create in the only way in which we can create in peace. The only way in which we can create in a way that secures ability to benefit from that creation is by recognizing property rights. Property rights are not imposed on us by God. They are not imposed on us by a mystical being. That would make property rights completely arbitrary and random. If you don't believe in God, there are no property rights. If your God is different than my God, there are no property rights. That's bizarre. Property rights are a requirement of human nature for human beings to survive. Here's one way you can think about the enlightenment. One way in which I think you can see the reflection of the changing values and how the enlightenment is severing human life from religion. If you think about the art of the Renaissance, it's mostly religious. It's beautifully done. There is a secularization already there. There is an Aristotelian basis for the art. But the themes are almost all religious. Once you get into the 18th century and even before that, if you're up in the Netherlands, Jesus' Mary and the rest of them disappear. Disappear. What the enlightenment is doing is marginalizing Christianity. It's not making Christianity a Aristotelian. It's marginalizing it. Christianity becomes a Aristotelian with Aquinas and becomes a Aristotelian in the beginning of the Renaissance. But once you get the enlightenment, the whole project is marginalizing faith, marginalizing Christianity and elevating reason. That's what differentiates the enlightenment from previous periods. Highly recommend reading the opening of the Western mind. So Christianity certainly has an Aristotelian bent to it post Aquinas. A false Aristotelian bent because they take Aristotle as dogma. They don't understand Aristotle. They don't understand the principle behind Aristotle. It's only in the enlightenment once you divorce Aristotle from Christianity. Once you dump Christianity in favor of Aristotle, can you really find the true Aristotle? Can you really find the scientific method? They're logic and true reason. But Christianity is the negation of reason. I mean, read Paul. Paul basically says it. And that is the very essence of Christianity and this is why Christianity abandoned science. And only after Christianity is marginalized and the Greeks have rediscovered in their full scope, not just Aristotle but the Stoics and the Pythagoreans and all the different Greeks only when all of that is discovered including all the Greek science and all the Greek art does the western world become more secular, more open, more science oriented. Christianity is a restraint on civilization. It is a restraint on the ability of civilization to advance and it's only as civilization is freed from Christianity the civilization advance again, science, art, culture. Culture, what we talked about, culture. Culture only advances once civilization, once Christianity is marginalized. All right. Let's let's I'm going to stop here. I mean, we could go on, he says Ben says a bunch of things that are wrong and continues on this long path but we're already we're about an hour in for this segment, so let's go to answering your super chat questions of which I have some from previous shows, so we will catch up on those as well. Let's see. Yeah, so just to summarize, let me get out of this whatever I want to go. To summarize I think this whole Christian a cultural Christian is pretty pathetic. It's a rejection of the true origins of the culture in which we live. Now, I understand that you don't want to replace it with cultural Islam. That would be horrific. That would be barbaric. But what you want is to move on from those little parish churches and the cathedrals keep a few to remind us of where we come from but build something new. Build something even more beautiful. Build something even more inspiring. Build something as human beings we can have reverence towards not something where the reverence is depending on faith and mumbo jumbo on the negation of reality evidence reason. To be a cultural secularist is not to be without reverence to be a cultural secularist is not to be without aesthetic appreciation. It's not to be without a recognition of beauty quite the contrary. It's an expansion of what is beautiful. It's a divorce of what is beautiful from what the religious authorities tell us is appropriate. It is an expansion of our horizons in terms of what is possible to mankind and its innovation of mankind of individual human beings to the role of hero to the position of something to be revered and admired and appreciated. It is Michelangelo's David. It's Christianity places man in the gutter and it is you know the view of man and Ein Rand view of man that elevates man above the gutter. It is the renaissance and the enlightenment that started that process. It is Ein Rand that completes it with a human oriented morality, a morality oriented towards human beings towards their thriving, their flourishing, their success, their happiness and that's what we should strive for. So I like certain things that came out of Christianity. That doesn't make me a cultural Christian. I reject the whole notion of it and I certainly am not dependent in any way anyway on a Christian ethos. I don't like Christian ethos, I think it's anti-man and therefore evil. I don't think morality depends on Christianity or Judaism or Islam or whatever mythology you want to create. It depends on identifying the true nature of man and the requirements for his survival. It's a scientific endeavor. Morality is a scientific endeavor. So, yeah it's sad to see and this is why I think that the new atheists failed ultimately. They failed because they could not offer an alternative to Christianity. They failed because they could not offer a moral alternative and ethics. They couldn't offer an aesthetic alternative. They couldn't offer a cultural alternative but that's what we need. We need a cultural alternative to the culture of Christianity which is not a healthy culture. Not a healthy culture at all. Alright, let's let's go to questions. I'll just remind you guys we do have a new target for these shows again because we're putting them all together instead of two shows where one is 250 and one is 650 which we usually make. If you add those up that would be 900. I'm saying for one show 700 for the whole show. So it's less than what we would have had if we had done two shows today and I'm hoping that we could make not every day but generally make the 700 target sometimes surpass it on particular days. If you want to show your appreciation for the show you should subscribe. If you're not subscribed yet please subscribe to the show. I'd appreciate that and I think you would get an announcement when I go live which will be quite often every day at least. I appreciate if you consider those of you who are listening live consider because this is supported by listeners like you if you consider supporting the show with a sticker or a super chat question and you can do $2, you can do $1.99 you can do $5, $10, $100, $20 whatever you want but just it is it is valuable just to show your appreciation value for value I appreciate that. Thank you to all the super chatters let's go back we've got a couple of $50 questions and then we'll go to the $20 James asked I was listening to your recent debate with a socialist and he seemed to be inferring that anything you own can be taken by others because everything in your possession and your resources that no one owns because no one owns nature because it wasn't you who didn't create it yes absolutely so this is the new well it's not that new but this is the leftist argument against property you know the thing about the recent debate even though he didn't actually say it is that the person I debating rejects the whole idea property because he sees the fundamental the fundamental property is land land is not something you create therefore land is not yours and there's a sense in which that's true that's why in the homestead act in the united states it wasn't about just having the land claiming title to it is about what you did with the land it's about improving the land John Locke talks about this it's about doing something with it making something of it the land in and of itself is not valuable it's what you can use the land for that gives it value and your property right is not in a sense to the land the property right rights are sanctions of action the property right is that you can do with it as you will but doing is significant and of course you know this is why if you indeed abandon land and you don't improve it and it's not being used for a long long long period of time you know people can't take it because there's provisions in the law that make that possible and I think they're legitimate that is just having title does not give you ownership you have to actually do something with it abandoned property is abandoned and therefore not yours anymore alright Shazbad if terror has seen the show and or I don't remember the shadowy rebel character luthan I'm not sure who you're talking about um yeah I can't remember if I ever watch Andor again we can discuss this question but I just don't remember the character well enough I did watch Andor she didn't alright let's see that doodle bunny if you kill a cockroach you're a hero if you kill a butterfly you are a villain Rurali has aesthetic standards I think that's right I mean one of the reasons killing a cockroach makes you heroes the cockroaches are dirty they like the garbage they spread diseases I think we've always known that there is a reason why aesthetically we don't like them it's because of that it's because of the fact that they're always in the garbage and they go towards filth a butterfly is beautiful it has that symmetry and it doesn't harm human beings it doesn't know it's not always the case I'm sure they are beautiful creatures that are harmful and in that case if you kill it then it's good and in neither case is this particularly a moral issue killing a cockroach does not exactly make you a hero and I hate cockroaches and if you kill a butterfly doesn't actually make you an evil person if you're torturing it on purpose that's a different question but just killing a butterfly doesn't make you a bad person so I'm not sure morality has really a big play in the whole issue of cockroaches and butterflies don't forget to ask questions we're still significantly short on our goal on where we need to be what happens if the what happens if the owner of private road is in a specific area refuse to let the police drive to the scene of a crime can the police force their way onto the roads without violating the rights of road owners yes I think absolutely there are certain rights that one has rights as to passage and certainly law enforcement in its in connection with its protection of individual rights within certain boundaries that would have to be defined by the legal system can use roads without in every case asking for permission there is an understanding that these roads can be used by the police and they don't have to ask permission every time and slow it down and we all have an interest in that so that murderers don't get away and that we can get to somebody who needs help physically rather than slowly so I think there is an understanding you know you could designate your road to it cannot be passable by police and they would have to find a way around it I guess you could do that you could say literally no trespasses but again you have to really think through you have to really think through the yeah the implications of that you have to think about the legal philosophy and how it relates to emergencies and how it relates to law enforcement I don't think there is a straight forward answer there it has to really be thought through Michael even people like Tucker Carlson and Candice Orn are trying to provoke American Christians to turn away from Israel will they succeed Tucker reminds me of a 1930s Nazi sympathizer radio preacher I think they are going to succeed somewhat they are really succeeding I'm already seeing much more anti-Israeli even anti-Semitic stuff online look at how popular they are you know their popularity is massive and so to the extent that they are popular to the extent that they have a following they are succeeding so yes now will they turn the entire conservative movement I don't think so but who knows who could have imagined Trump would do what he did to the whole conservative movement so I don't know whether they will or not I don't think they will but they are already having success don't underestimate the success they already have had 5000 Argentinian pesos is 5 bucks 76 pretty sad for Argentina Andrew there is an idea in philosophy that means can be chosen rationally but ends cannot Rand opposed that in holding that both means and ends can and should be chosen rationally that's right any thoughts on why some hold that dichotomy yes because what is the end what is the standard of an end and unfortunately I think Aristotle was getting there life but still didn't have enough understanding of life to fully grasp it and following Aristotle the world was dominated by Christianity Christianity was never going to get us there was never going to get to you know the end is rationally chosen is rationally chosen by the standard of life and the standard of life is the only standard one can have there is no other standard but life but this is where religion interferes with having a rational morality because religion insists that the standard is beyond the grasp of reason that the standard is mystical that the standard is revealed not reasoned and that is why Christianity is the biggest barrier to morality that there is it negates morality so you can only have a reasoned end if you accept reality as the final arbitra of a standard but if there is a god then he is the end and reality doesn't serve that purpose can serve that purpose and your life your life is not an end because your life isn't his service you see how he destroys morality Christianity completely destroys any conception of a proper morality and this is why the enlightenment is so struggling to get out of the clutches of Christianity and to the extent you know and they couldn't they didn't know how Einwand taught us how and to ignore Einwand and to ignore her massive achievement is just suicidal for the human race it's suicidal for individuals because they don't live their full life and it's suicidal for the human race alright let me thank Martin Anderson Kathleen thank you these all stickers let's see Jeremy Morton thank you for the sticker thank you guys and then there was a bunch of stickers that I thanked for so hopefully we can keep going because we're still off the mark by quite a bit we need a few $20 stickers $20 questions $50 questions to really get us to our target which is not that different than our usual target for a long show this is already two and a half hours long we're going into our sixth half hour soon Clark says I found when it comes to changing minds you can you have to factor time into the equation I've seen my share of planted seeds germinate people who rejected my argument out of hand repeated them back to me six months later absolutely absolutely agree completely James off topic but some thoughts I've been having my life got better when I realized I didn't have to be nice nice got me run over stressed out and disrespected I'm no longer nice I'm a good person there's a difference I agree you don't have to be nice be nice it's not necessarily a bad thing right but you don't have to be nice which you have to be a selfish which you have to be yourself interested which you have to be as focused on what is good for you you have to read listen to my you run rules for life again James James says I've never met anyone who thinks three years old are responsible for their behavior or the 30 year olds aren't at what point are people responsible for what they do and why it varies I don't think everybody's the same but generally I'd say somewhere in the late teens probably 18 on average but yeah somewhere in the late teens this is why some states have it at 16 some states even a little earlier than that I don't think it can be much earlier than that but somewhere around the late teens and it has to do with two things one is just the sheer development of the brain the sheer development of those parts of the brain that make abstract thought and make integrating your knowledge and integrating the facts of reality possible and second experience having enough experience under your belt so you can know something about reality learn something from reality right so that you have enough material for that brain to function on right if you put if you deprived a child of his sensory ability or limited dramatically until he was 16 and at 16 he wouldn't be responsible because even though he'd have the brain size he wouldn't have the content you have to have both so experience knowledge plus brain James Chi do you see Asia becoming more capitalist than the west do any country stand up besides Singapore are there any western countries that you see on the right path do you see any middle eastern countries that will change no no no no I don't I really don't see I thought Asia was on the right path but I think the great financial crisis really had this profound anti-capitalist impact on pretty much everywhere in the world Singapore is great but it's got its own problems and it has real outcry in Singapore for a welfare state and that is slowly increasing so you know and there's a lack of respect for property rights almost all the housing in Singapore is owned by the state there's a lack of free speech in Singapore so I wouldn't say Singapore is a model South Korea, Japan Taiwan is probably about as good as it gets in the world in which we live relatively economically free relatively politically free but I don't see a strong movement in Asia towards more freedom more of that and then in Europe no I don't see anybody on the horizon that is kind of moving towards freedom I see a lot of stagnation I see conservatives and left advocating for state intervention and state controls so I don't see freedom on the agenda anyway anyway in the world I mean Argentina Argentina I mean that's what's so refreshing about Millet freedoms on the agenda I might disagree with some of his ways in which he thinks about freedom but freedom is on the agenda so yeah I mean Michael asked does any concept in your mind have to be first be observed in reality things like infinity or branches of mathematics that are logically consistent but don't appear to have any practical application in the real world well then but if it's mathematics then it has to be ultimately reducible into that which is observable if mathematics is built on the layers of practical and some of those layers are based on observations and if they're not if they're surely abstract conceptions that have no relationship to reality then they're useless and you can see I don't know physics I'm not an expert but people say string theories like that it's completely divorced from anything in reality and it's just out there and it means nothing every piece of knowledge needs to be reducible to an observable fact in reality to an observable existent in reality encourage you to read introduction to objectives to epistemology and let it pick up chapter on epistemology or chapters on epistemology in opa so it doesn't necessarily have to start with observation but it has to be reducible to observation and all new knowledge ultimately starts with observation in a complex series of connections alright let's do the under $20 questions now right my dream candidate would be someone who has Javier Millet's domestic and economic policy and John Bolton's foreign policy sadly in 2024 we will get neither yeah that's not a bad candidate I would dump Millet's abortion and flirting with a draft and stuff like that but yes economics Millet's economics and Bolton's foreign policy and I'm not sure about domestic who you would go with but somebody who has pro-abortion Clark Young do we attract what we fear I don't think so suddenly if you fear dogs they sense it I don't think I don't think we attract what we fear no why did Scotland become woke you know I don't know it's an interesting historical question why Scotland became so leftist it became woke because it was super leftist and it's always been super leftist I mean it was socialist and Marxist but it never used to be right Scotland in 18th century in 18th century was of course the land of the Enlightenment it's the land of Smith it's the land of capitalism it had free banking much freer than the United States in the mid 19th century it somehow rejected all that and became Marxist and I don't know the history of Scotland when I left to know exactly when did that happen in the late 19th century only 20th century post World War I a lot of bad things happened post World War I I don't know but it was very very leftist leading up to woke and leftism evolved into wokeness and Scotland embraced it fully Michael says seems like Israel is only engaging in egoism with permission and even when they get permission it's not much egoism yeah there is no such thing as egoism with permission egoism with permission is not egoism right because if you value your own life and if you pursue your own life then that very idea of asking permission is anti your own life so you know Israel is not being egoistic period Michael Michael asked did you see Ben Shapiro's interview with Javier Millay I have not no Mark Thomas to Dr. Smith so this is from yesterday are there ways recommended spending more awareness of dim theory into the mainstream thoughts and dim and it's key relevance today I think the best way to spread dim is to spread the value of integration and the epistemology of integration remember that is what I is so it's not important to spread the dim theory what's important to spread is the value of integration the importance of integration and how to do integration again I refer you to introduction to objective epistemology to dim but also to to OPA and other talks that Lena Peacock has given on the importance and value of integration so integration is is it's the essence of the essence of this right integration is the essence of human epistemology it's the essence of reason acting to gain or keep proper principles that keep you acting to gain or keep proper principles that keep you to choose between other values that's how I think of it moral values are the key values they're the principles by which one chooses all other values they're the principles that guide your life they're the principles that allow you to choose being right and wrong good values or disvalues to make that separation alright we have time so if you guys want to ask questions I've got a few more questions here we've got about 25 minutes to make it a 3 hour show and so we have time for questions so please consider doing some super chat questions oh Sylvanos it just did one thank you Sylvanos really appreciate it a hundred dollars he says I saw a video covering the recent history of Yemen an Oman interesting surprise to see the proxy wars that have been consistently plaguing Yemen while Oman has flourished well relatively flourished under a monarchy can you use benevolent monarchies to transition to democracy in the Middle East yes I think so but you have to transition pretty quickly because there's no guarantee that a monarchy will be benevolent beyond the particular benevolent monarch that happens to be so that particular benevolent monarch has to be willing to transition to democracy and if he's not you're in trouble so it has to happen I think it has to happen fairly quickly for example you've got MBS who claims to be a benevolent monarch but MBS is not interested in transitioning to any kind of and you know I'm not for democracy I'm for a rights respecting constitutional government and I don't see MBS moving towards anything like that MBS loves his absolute power you know he's benevolent right now in the sense that he's super rich because he owns all the oil because there's no property rights with regard to oil in Saudi Arabia it's all owned in quotation marks by the monarchy MBS controls all that money that comes from the oil can invest in how he wants Saudi Arabia it can make it a beautiful place just like Dubai is a beautiful place because the royal family owns all the money and they invested in these beautiful buildings and that attracts people but it's not a free place I would never feel comfortable in a place like that never feel comfortable in a place like that I mean it's riddled with the I don't know the ominous presence of Islam everywhere the ominous presence of monarchy of royalty Dubai is not a monarchy but it's equivalent of kind of chic it's riddled with semi-slave labor in the background you know who are supposed immigrants but never get any rights that are building all this stuff it's just a deeply oppressive place really is a deeply oppressive place and yeah so I don't I don't I can see how having a benevolent monarchy and transitioning into a more free society can make some maybe work sometimes an occasion but I don't think it is the it can't it can't happen without the ideas of liberty it can't happen without a population that actually wants freedom, wants liberty it can happen you know even if even if the monarch wants it and most monarchs don't even Oman I don't think has transitioned to any kind of real free society even though it's much more stable and moderately more prosperous than than Yemen is riddled with civil war and just a horrible horrible place to be and Yemen's never been a great place to be I mean you know Yemen kicked out their Jews a long long time ago and Jews have been leaving there for a long time because it's never been a particularly good place to live Stephen Harper I read the battleship New Jersey shelled Hezbollah in the late 1980s after the terrorist attack and the enemy were virtually defeated but it was drawn because of complaints about collateral damage from the 16 inch guns I don't know what you read and where you read it but basically this is this is the terrorist attack and there was a Hezbollah then I mean it was basically Iran Hezbollah was an Iranian agent they hadn't really formed a structure yet it later became Hezbollah but these were just operatives that later organized around Hezbollah they blew up the U.S. embassy and then they blew up the Marine barracks it killed 444 Marines I think or 244 Marines something like that and that was in the barracks but they killed also quite a few people in the embassy and Ronald Reagan was president at the time and the battleship New Jersey shelled certain targets in Lebanon but mainly pretty distant targets in the Baka Valley and they launched a few missiles to the Baka Valley but yeah they were afraid of collateral damage and they didn't defeat anybody there was nobody to defeat Hezbollah was a small group they had a few bases if you wanted to defeat somebody you had to defeat Iran there was nobody to defeat Iran funded it supported it gave them the resources to do it approved of the targeting of the embassy in the Marine barracks so it was an Iranian operation and there was nobody to defeat in Lebanon so you went on the verge of defeating them you had to go to Iran to defeat them and Reagan didn't want to go to Iran so he lobbed a few missiles lobbed a few bombs and left it wasn't about almost defeating them there was nobody to defeat them alright WCZN says new format support thank you like the show don't waste time on the trolls thank you I held back a little bit today but yes like the show please like the show I see more people are joining now towards the end what's up with that we've been here for three hours and you're coming at the very end if you're new to the show please please please subscribe like the show please like the show oops we gotta echo that please subscribe so um but uh yes thank you Savanas for reminding everybody like the show we've only got 108 likes but there should be 200 likes so please like the show before you leave please subscribe cook but but but but but removing God from morality is relativism doesn't have to be can be but doesn't have to be um alright guys uh $420 questions $420 questions would be cool just so we can say that the first new format show made its target in terms of in terms of in terms of super chat that would be cool Michael says it might be better to do shows later in the evening when people are home from work and have time to engage with the content in super chat yeah but I get a lot of views on the new shows anyway this is the format for now if it doesn't work we'll revert back to it in the fall as I said but for now this is what we're gonna do primarily because in the summer I might be in Europe and in Europe in the summer if I you know the evening you know in the evening will be this time on the east coast and if I try to do 7pm on the east coast I'll be doing the show at 1am and I'm not willing to do the show at 1am so basically I'm getting you ready for European schedule which might happen in the summer I hope it happens in the summer that might be 2-3 months on the European time zone Apollo Zeus you constantly mention the statue of David as being sublime how do female sculpture measure up in terms of beauty versus male sculptures I mean they do not much in the Renaissance I'm trying to think of amazing female sculptures from the Renaissance and you just don't find them you find them in the 19th century in the 18th and 19th century secularization and because the female nude and sculpture should be nude because the female nude is sensual it's sexy a male nude is not necessarily a female nude is it is that's part of femininity is sex and it's so it that you don't see much of that in the Renaissance you see it in the 18th and 19th century you see some magnificent female nudes I don't have them right here and you're probably not familiar with them because people are not familiar with the 18th century sculpture but there are some beautiful ones but they're very different in terms of the values they project they have projections of femininity of sensuality of sexiness this magnificent beautiful sculptures that are unbelievably sexy and project that kind of femininity and sensuality just amazingly but again they're later one of these days maybe we can do a show on sculptures of women and I can show you some of them I can share screen and show you some of them on a show we can do that sometime if somebody wants to sponsor a female nude sculpture show we can do that hopefully YouTube won't object all right half sep thank you it's $20 really appreciated and a first super chat his first super chat really really appreciated thank you for being here his question is did you get the fact that Armenia is a democratic country did you forget that Armenia is trying to join the EU and democratic west did you forget that Israel aids dictatorship Azerbaijan against aid democracy no I know all that is all true and you know it is sad it is sad that again you know the grievances between Armenia and Azerbaijan are not ones that I am familiar with that is they're not ones that I've studied historically and to the extent that Armenia and in this case Armenia is relatively free it are the good guys Armenia is also lined itself with Russia that's not a good thing so it's a more complicated history and of course Israel is friendly with Azerbaijan mainly not because of sympathy with Azerbaijan Armenia is an act of self defense mainly because Azerbaijan is borders with Iran Israel needs needs an alliance gives it access to Iran you know it's not outrageous to believe that Israel might be launching special forces troops out of Azerbaijan into Iran it might be using Azerbaijan Azerbaijan for intelligence gathering against Iran so Israel is in a situation where its existence depends on access to and being able to spy on Iran and access to Iran and I think that's why they support Azerbaijan I don't I don't think they support Azerbaijan because they believe in Azerbaijan or agree with Azerbaijan or think Azerbaijan are the right guy have the right position in the vis-a-vis Armenia because existentially they think that they need to support Azerbaijan vis-a-vis the Iranians and you know Israel has supported freedom movements in that part of the world they've been very supportive of the Kurds for two reasons one because it gave them again intelligence gathering into Iraq the Kurds happen to be also more pro-freedom but I don't think that's why Israel did it I think Israel did it because gave them access to Iraq so Israel is in a position where it has to act to defend itself against overwhelming odds other people around it and Azerbaijan is a means it's not an end if Armenia provided them with that ability I believe they would support Armenia instead Israel has also supported all kinds of regimes in Africa that I wish they never had I really wish they never had so I don't support everybody who Israel supports I don't support Israel supporting everybody they support Turkey mistakes a lot of them and this could very well be one of them Armenia has a border with does Armenia have a border with Iran I can't picture it in my mind right now but I think it does and yeah I mean maybe it should be aligned with Armenia Armenia though it's been aligned with Russia weekly I mean Russia didn't do much for them so it does everybody yes so I think it's complicated right I mean geopolitics is complicated geopolitics is not unfortunately based on morality and who the good guys are and who the bad guys are I've never been to Armenia although they keep promising me I will go I've been to Azerbaijan once and it's definitely an authoritarian state and yeah I would rather have a free Armenia than an authoritarian Azerbaijan but it was also rather have a country that's not affiliated with Russia and Israel needs to know that they can use that country in order to actually gain intelligence the other thing Azerbaijan has is a common culture with Iran that is Azeris I think there's something like a third or 25% of the Iranian population are Azeris in terms of tribe and therefore Azerbaijan has a real network with Iran that is useful to Israel alright now I have to go fast because we got a bunch of questions alright Robert a new former celebrity super chat best wishes on the new format and shout outs to my fellow slavish YBS followers listen and obey troops absolutely no thinking required Andrew if our culture had a secular spirituality such as reverence for human productivity would Dawkins choose a Christian ethics anyway no I don't think he would is it the absence of a secular alternative or the soul of man that's a terminal yes but it's not absent right there is a secular culture Beethoven is secular Mozart is secular Tchaikovsky is secular really Michelangelo's David is secular and all 19th century artists are secular who go is secular you know and science is secular skyscrapers are secular all of this is there what's missing is the recognition of it as culture as elevated and as you said what's missing is a reverence for human productivity what's missing is a reverence for human reason what's missing is a reverence for science it's the reverence that's missing and the explicit nature of that reverence that's what's missing and if it existed then yes if it was then hopefully I mean it would require also an abandonment of Christian morality and that's what Dawkins is not willing to do and that's the big flaw in the you know new atheists is they were not able not willing to abandon Christian morality Richard I think Zimbabwe represents a great example of decolonization consequences after Rhodes Rhodesia fell what do you think yeah I mean the sad tragedy of it is that in most African countries when the colonialists left they were taken over by Marxists they were taken over by western ideas but the worst kind of western ideas and that's what happened in Zimbabwe it was taken over by a Marxist an African Marxist and he destroyed the country and it's decolonizing is not good enough itself if the alternative is worse than what the colonizers brought and Marxism is worse than what Rhodesia had a Marxist for Zimbabwe is worse than a colonial Rhodesia Martin my last day in Buenos Aires before returning to Europe the conference here was great and well organized by Iron Man Center Latin America really great talks and debates by you, Tals Fani, Augustina and Ben Baer from the Institute I agree cool to see Millay also in a live interview even though the content could have been more interesting from his end agree completely with everything you said Martin also says some more pesos because super chat prices here don't exactly keep up with inflation alright let's do get three last questions and we met our goal so thank you guys on the button $700 perfect but as this says I appreciate a well-built male but I find a female sculpture more cultivating that is fine we're all going to have our personal values our personal things that you know personal aesthetic preferences and that is amazing Simon in a free society with open borders if there were terrorists that came through what would the world of government be and what would the solution be I believe that the government should screen everybody coming in in a world where terrorists exist and try to identify terrorists before they come in and if they can't do that then catch them on the soil and imprison them do what they need to do so you can never have a full proof system even with walls and everything because people can use tunnels and all kinds of other ways but the government should do what it can within reason and within the definition the protection of individual rights to protect the citizens from terrorism but terrorism is not that big of an issue it's just not that many of them it's not that big of a threat Frank regarding motor rates WHO is doing the murders gangs oh who is doing the murders gangs I think most murders are domestic affairs I think most murders are family members and then second is gangs but I don't know I haven't seen a breakdown of that but that's my general understanding is most murders happen between family members remember family is the most important thing in the world don't forget that alright thank you guys we've finished the new format 3 hours is a long time to be with me I really really appreciate it it's interesting how we grew towards the end so we'll see what the patterns are as we get into this the nice thing about this is it's going to be predictable tomorrow will only be 2 hours won't be 3 hours because I have something at 4pm East Coast time but every show other than tomorrow at 6pm we'll have the option of going 3 so it'll be anyway between 2-3 hours that is the length of the show that I expect and you know I'm not I don't know that this system is creating that much more content in terms of hours maybe it is but not that much more it's just organized differently so no Saturday show, no evening shows except for the Monday and hey you guys are offered I hope we will see we'll see if we can grow the show as well talk to you tomorrow same time, same place, 2pm see you then, bye everybody