 Good evening. Welcome to our, I guess, second time hosting Iran-Brook. He flew in from Singapore and he was kind enough to stop by Seoul, Korea and give us a presentation. Thank you. My name is Jeremy Kitter. I'm the organizer of Objectivist and Fans of Imran. We study Objectivism, the philosophy of Imran in Seoul, Korea. We meet about once a month and we go through Imran's books and have discussion and I invite you all to come. I'd like to thank YPV Malkin partners who graciously allowed us the use of their seminar room and they're one of the leading law or intellectual property law firms in Seoul, Korea. So thank you. And Dr. Brooke, whom most of you know, is the chairman of the board of the Imran Institute and who has published books, Equals of Fair, Free Market Revolution, The Moral Case for Finance, and tonight he's going to be talking to us about the moral case, the morality of capitalism. So give him a warm welcome. Dr. Yoran Brooke. Thank you. Thanks Jeremy. Thanks for organizing tonight's event and for organizing the rest of the days of the schedule. And you know, I've had a really productive and busy time here in South Korea, so that's been great. And generally, in Asia, this is country number four, one more to go, and then I head home. Getting to Puerto Rico is hard. So morality of capitalism, we should talk about what morality is. You know, why demoralize? What's morality all about? What's this? How can we even talk about morality of a socioeconomic political system? What is that about? So what's morality? What do we mean when we talk about ethics or morality? What is it? A way of guiding your actions. What's that? Humanity. Humanity. Humanity is morality. Humanity is just being human, right? Morality is a way of guiding our actions. Morality is a set of principles to guide our choices. Our important choices, you know, not what church we're in today, but what to do with your life, kind of the important choices they're going to shape your life. It's principles to guide you, to figure out what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. What to do, what to avoid in life, in living life. Every morality, every morality, no matter what its content is, is aimed at giving you guidance on how to live your life. How to live your life. And projectivism, the standard for that guidance, is your life. That is, projectivism, what is good, is that which enhances your life. And what is evil, is that which harms, hurts, destroys your life. Or more generally, human life. The good is what is in principle good for human beings. Evil, bad, is what is in principle bad for human beings. That, that's morality, and that's the application, if you will, morality in objectivism. Because you have to ask, good for whom? In objectivism, that's as good for you as a human being. Other system of ethics might say, good for whom, good for other people. Good for whom, good for God. But objectivism, it's good for you as a human being. So what is good for a human being? If we want to live good lives. If we want to survive as human beings. If you want to be able to stay alive. What is good? What is the mechanism by which human beings stay alive? Survive. What do we have to do to survive? Like, other animals, they have a program. Right? They know how to survive. Know is, you know, knowing quotes. But they, you know, a plant knows how to survive. What does it have to do to survive? What do they need to survive plants? Sunlight. So if you look them in the shade, they go looking for the light. Right? If they need water, so if you put them in dry soil, they send their roots out looking for the water. Right? And you can say that the water and the sunlight for the plant are values. The things that they act to gain or keep for the purpose of what? What are they, what's the purpose of their seeking the sunlight, seeking the water, their own life? An animal, a cheetah, a dog, they, they know the programmed into their DNA in a sense is what they need in order to survive what they need in order to live. It's determined, if you and the focus, the goal is survival. They don't have the pre-program to survive. They don't have the choice not to survive. Right? They do the things that they, that their DNA tells them will lead to survival. They, you know, they can be wrong. Right? They can be eaten by a predator. They can be run over by a car. But their purpose is life. Or for human beings, we are different. Why are we different? Because we get to choose. We can actually choose not to live. We can choose not to survive. I hear suicide rates in Korea are fairly high, unfortunately. Some kids choose not to live. That's a choice. It's a sad choice, but it's a choice. But once we choose to live, we don't have it programmed in us. What will lead to survival? What will lead to death? You can't just put a kid in the middle of the, you know, neighborhood and they'll know where to find food and they'll know how to cross the street and they'll know they don't. They don't have the instincts. We don't have a programmed in our DNA. What do we have to do in order to figure out what to do to survive? What do we have to do to think? We need to use our minds, use our senses to understand the world, integrate the information of our senses and think, conceptualize, form concepts. Think about stuff. Use logic. Figure out what's true and what's not. What will lead to survival? What will lead to death? What's good for us? What's bad for us? What food is healthy? What food is poisoned? None of that is instinctual. We're attracted to lots of things that will kill us. Just shiny pretty things. So human beings have to think in order to figure out how to survive, how to live, how to thrive. They can't and they don't do it automatically. So for Objectivism, find your aim. The number one value, the number one thing that you want to attain, that you want to have, that you want to achieve in life, is reason. Is that capacity, the capacity of reason, the ability to reason. You want to embrace that, use it and make every decision based on it. Reason is our means, human beings means of survival. If we want to survive, if we want to live, we need to think. There's no alternative. So for Rand, reason is our cardinal value, one of three cardinal values. I mean, even the basic stuff, right, I mean, we don't have, we don't have the gene that tells us how to hunt. If I stick somebody random person in the middle of the Amazon, they don't know how to survive. They don't have to figure it out. How do we primitive man survive as hunters? I mean, what did they have to do to hunt? They have to figure stuff out, right? They have to build traps. They'd have to organize in groups and hunters a group which meant communication and strategy and a plan. They'd have to build weapons, bows and arrows, spears, knives. We have no claws, no fangs, we're weak, we're slow. We're not an animal built to physically survive in nature. You go up against a sabre-tooth tiger, a sabre-tooth tiger's going to win every time. And yet, you all sit here comfortable in your chairs in this air-condition building, although the air-condition is not too strong. And a sabre-tooth tiger, where's he? In a museum somewhere, stuffed. Right? Why? Because we are smarted, sabre-tooth tiger. We didn't un-muscle him. We are smarted. What makes us human are not thumbs, some professors might teach. It's nothing to do with our physical ability. It's our ability to think. It's our ability to be rational. It's our ability to reason, plan, strategize, figure out ways in order to beat the sabre-tooth tiger. In order to hunt the food that we need, in order to grow the crops that we need in order to survive as humans. So we need reason is our primary value. And we need to have a goal in life. We need to focus our reason towards something. We need to act out there in reality for a purpose. So human beings, in order to thrive, in order to succeed in life, in order to survive, they need to have a purpose. You know, a purpose can be in, you know, in our most primitive state, the purpose is to survive. It's to live. It's to catch animals in the hunt. It's to grow the, you know, the crops that we need in order to eat. And in more advanced societies, the purpose for most of us is the equivalent of hunting. And follow me, which is what? What's equivalent to that today? What's equivalent to hunting? Growing food, buying food. Well, buying is the outcome. What's your equivalent hunting? You and your life, what's equivalent hunting? Working, production, producing, making stuff, working, having a career, right? We don't have to go hunt, right? The buying is more like they're actually eating, you know, they're cooking and eating, right? So now we just buy it. But the hunting, the being a farmer, the equivalent of that is the working. It's the producing. It's the going out there, having a career, doing stuff that produces the wealth that makes it possible to put food on the table, right? Roof of Allah has and fly on vacations all over the world and do whatever we want to do, right? And the hunters couldn't even imagine doing. It's because we're much better at producing than they are. They were very limited in what they could produce. So the equivalent of hunting today is us having a career, having a purpose now is not just to survive. Our purpose now is not just to get the food to make it possible for us to live another day. Our purpose now is to live the best life we can live, the happiest life we can live, to live well. And that requires focus. That requires focus on a career, focus on work, focus on production, focus on producing stuff that we can then trade with others and have the resources to be able to do the things that we want to do in life. And at the end of the day, we want to be able to be happy in life, right? The ultimate purpose of all of this, the ultimate goal of everything is your happiness. It's not just survival, material survival. It's not just survival, having enough to eat. It's survival as a human being, as a fully rational human being with all our capacities and ability to enjoy life, which is happiness. Happiness is a state of joy. It's not momentary thing. It's not something that comes and goes, or you can be sad because something bad has happened, but you can be fundamentally happy in life because your general view of life, your general emotion in life is joy, is positive. And how do we, where do we get that happiness from? Where does that joy come from? What comes from achieving our values, comes from achieving rational values that are pro-life, that enhance our life, that make our life better. And it comes from a sense of belonging in this world. Call that sense self-esteem. Self-esteem is the idea. Kind of, it's a sense that, yeah, I belong in this earth. I can do stuff here. I can achieve. I'm confident in this world. I know that if I set my mind to a goal, I can achieve that goal. And that's that confidence, that sense of belonging, that sense of achievement is self-esteem. And self-esteem, purpose and reason are fine-randed to three cardinal values in morality. So morality is about reason, purpose, self-esteem. And all the principles in morality, they tell you what you should do, how to act, are all aimed at achieving reason, purpose, and self-esteem. So Rand presents us with seven virtues that correspond to the reason, purpose, and self-esteem that help us attain those values through action, through the things that we do in our life. Now, what does this all have to do with capitalism? What's capitalism? Free market, free of what? Corrosion, free of coercion, free of force, free of authority, free of people telling you what to do and taking your stuff and forcing you to do stuff you don't want to do. Capitalism is a system of freedom. It's a system where you're left alone to pursue your rational values. Now, why is capitalism essentially a moral system? Indeed, why is capitalism the only moral system that exists? Because if morality is about reason, purpose, self-esteem, then what kind of life does reason, purpose, self-esteem require? What kind of environment will we get into a social context when we're with other people? What's required in order for me to achieve reason for purpose, self-esteem? What must I be? What would my condition be in a sense? Yeah, free to act. So free to think and free to act based on those thoughts. Free to use my judgment to determine my actions. Free to pursue my purpose as I see it based on my choices. Free to live a rational life. So in order to be moral, in order to live, we must be able to act. And we must be able to act on our own judgment. Remember, morality is not about following orders. Morality is not about following commandments. Morality is not about doing what other people tell you to do. Morality is about pursuing your reason to achieve your purpose and your happiness, which requires you to act in the world. And what is the enemy? What is the thing that could stop you from acting? Indeed, it could stop you from thinking. Well, it's coercion. It's force. It's somebody's authority. Somebody puts a gun to your head and says, follow my orders or else I shoot. What option do you have? Your thinking is irrelevant. It doesn't matter anymore what you think. It doesn't matter what your purpose is. It doesn't matter what your goals are. You can't have any self-esteem. All you have is, yes, so, or you're dead. So, coercion in any form is the enemy of morality. It's the enemy of your ability to make choices with regard to your own life, with regard to your own purpose in your own life, with regard to your own happiness. I mean, think about all the ways in which government today uses its course of power to constrain, to constrain the options that you have, to constrain the actions that you take, to constrain the thinking that you do. I mean, the taxes that you pay, constrain the amount of wealth that you have and therefore the kind of actions that you can take and therefore the kind of things that you can do in pursuit of your own happiness, in pursuit of your own values. Think about the way government regulates. It tells you, no, no, these things we don't approve of. This is how you do, I don't know, pharmaceutical research. You do it this way. I don't know, I've got an idea of how to do it this way. No? So, thinking with regard to this new approach is gone. It's irrelevant. You can't do it. You can't pursue what you think is your purpose and only you can judge what your purpose is. Or can you, you just, now you might be wrong. They might turn out to be right, but unless you try it, or unless you try to bring it into existence, how do you know? Every aspect of government coercion is a way that restricts individual action. It's a way that restricts individual choices and a way that restricts individual thinking. And in that sense, it restricts our ability to actually pursue our purpose, to actually pursue our happiness, and therefore to actually pursue a moral life, to pursue the best life that we can for ourselves. So morality necessitates freedom to live a moral life. One wants to be free to make the choices, to make the decisions, to take the actions that one's own judgment determines are good for oneself. And one of the primary virtues in objectivism is independence. You have to choose the values for yourself. Nobody can choose them for you. Nobody can decide what's good or bad for you. I can advise you. Somebody can tell you, oh look, you might be making a mistake, but at the end of the day, your choices are yours. You have to stand by it. You will suffer the consequences or the rewards of your decisions, your actions, your choices. So you want a political sister. You want an environment, a social environment that leaves you free to do exactly that. Leads you free to live your life as you see fit by your standards based on your judgment as an individual. So coercion is the enemy of a good life. Coercion is the enemy of the pursuit of happiness. Coercion and force are the enemies of life, the enemies of life. And therefore to the extent that we have a political sister that coerces us, to that extent it's immoral, to that extent it's anti-life, to that extent it's anti-pissue of happiness. And the only moral system, the only economic system, social system that actually leaves us free, leaves us alone to pursue our values, to pursue our choices, to act in ways that we judge to be right for us is capitalism. Capitalism therefore is the only moral system. It's the only system that leaves the individual free to live their lives, leaves the individual free to pursue their own judgment and therefore their own happiness ultimately. And even a little bit of coercion is a strain on your choices, a strain on your action and therefore it's immoral and therefore must be avoided in a political system. We, in politics, we define this freedom of action, this idea that you should act free of coercion. You should act based on your own judgment in pursuit of your own values without coercion and force and judgment and authority. That's what individual rights are. The concept of individual rights is basically a moral concept that says that in pursuit of your life, in pursuit of your values, in pursuit of your thinking, of your reason, you must be left free. You must be left free to act on that reason, on that judgment. So it's kind of a moral principle that is the bridge between morality and politics. It is, so capitalism as a shortcut basically is the system that protects individual rights, where the government protects individual rights and does nothing else. And those individual rights are the freedoms, the freedoms that goes, the freedom from force. So we all know, or should know, that capitalism works, capitalism is efficient, that capitalism produces wealth, that anyway we allow people to be free, they produce, they create, they generate wealth. But the world doesn't understand if the capitalism is small and the reason it doesn't understand. It's not because, it's not because, you know, they don't understand capitalism or they don't understand how it works, they don't understand economics or the reason they don't get it is because they don't get morality. Most of the world believes that morality is about other people. Morality is about sacrifice. Morality is about living your life for the sake of others. The whole, the whole way in which morality is taught and thought about is about the other. And the dominant morality is called altruism, altru meaning other, otherism. Your purpose in life is to serve other people. Your purpose in life is to sacrifice other people. That morality is incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism is about you being free to make choices for yourself. Altruism, if it's all about other people, then why do I need to be free? If morality is about all about other people, then it's okay to force me to help them. It's okay to control my actions, to, to, to enhance my altruism, my sacrifice, my duty to other people. You cannot build, you cannot defend capitalism on the basis of morality of altruism. And that's the big failure of the 20th century and the early 21st century is that our economists, our thinkers, the people who really advocated for capitalism were all ultimately grounded in a morality, tried to ground it in a morality of altruism. And it failed. It doesn't work. It's inconsistent. The two don't match. And the only thinker who saw that capitalism needed a new moral code, not that that's why she developed it, but needed a new moral code is Ayn Rand. Now, of course, Ayn Rand didn't do it in that order. She didn't start with the love of capitalism and then develop a morality. What did she do? Why did she develop a new morality? What's that? She hated communism. Yeah, she hated communism, but that's not why she developed our new morality and new moral code. It's not what caused it to think about a new moral code. Why did she think of it? Why did she come up with a new moral code? What was the motivation? I mean, she hated moral, she hated capitalism, she loved capitalism, all of that is true. But what was the driving force of her to really, as a philosopher, think about what is morality and what's right about morality and what's right in morality and what's good and what's evil and philosophically to struggle with coming up with truth with regard to morality? She wanted to come up with an ideal man. Yeah, it's what motivated her is her love of human beings, of individual human beings. And she wanted to understand what an ideal human being would be like. What is the ideal? Because she's a novelist, right? She was written novels. And in the novel she wanted to portray great human beings, an ideal of what a perfect human being would be like. And she went and she read the philosophers and all the philosophers say is, oh man is low, man is defeated, man is a wimp, man needs to live for the people and grovel and is a servant. And she said, that's not an ideal human being. She loved the business man, she loved the adventurers, she loved the individuals who went out and did something with their lives and lived big lives. And she needed, she needed an explanation for that. What does it take to be a great individual human being? And how do I portray such a human being? What characteristics you are giving to be an ideal? And that's how she basically developed the morality with that notion or motivated by that notion of the grandeur of mankind, the potential to be great. She saw that, you know, the wonderful things post 19th century, post industrial evolution, the mankind that produced that it created. She asked herself, what kind of individual human being makes this possible? What kind of human being produces the great art, the great music, the great sculpture, the great painting, but the great industries, the great technology that we produced during that 19th century, early 20th century, that saw humanity rise from poverty for the first time in human history, rise to new heights. Because Aristotle recognizes the idea that morality, that ethics, it's not about suffering, it's not about other people, it's not about living for other people, it's not about other people, it's about you. From Aristotle, morality is about figuring out how to live the best life you could live, how to achieve eudaumonia, how to achieve happiness, success, flourishing, to be the best human being you could be. And she basically is continuing that project. She's refining and I think dramatically improving Aristotle's project in identifying the values and virtues that lead to a successful life. But her goal is a successful life. Her goal is to be the best human being. She can be and to portray in her novels the best human beings possible, the ideal, the perfect. And then inspire us, inspire us to live up to that idea, to be the best that we can be. So her motivation is individualistic. She said in one of her essays, she says, I'm for capitalism because I'm for rational self-interest, which is what she calls her morality, right? She's for egoism. But I'm for egoism because I recognize the importance of reason. The reason is our only means of knowledge. She said, oh, rest of this idea that we must use our mind to survive. And we must survive. Survival is a necessity, right? That's life. Life is survival. And then we must use our reason in order to survive. Capitalism is the only system that makes that possible, that leaves us free to do exactly that. All right, I'll take questions. Yeah, it's probably just to the camera. Yeah, I have a question about reason, purpose, and self-esteem values. I can visualize why purpose might be a value because you're achieving certain things that you've chosen to achieve. I can see how self-esteem is a value because you'll do things to kind of raise yourself up. Reason, I seem to have conceptualized in my mind it's just this faculty in your head and not this and something you already have, therefore it seems kind of odd for me. Is it the learning? Is it the planning? Is it what is it? What is pursuing reason as a value visually speaking? It's using it. So you have the faculty. Yeah. Everybody has a faculty. But just from observation, you could tell that many people don't use it. It's the engaging it. It's taking it seriously. It's not saying I'll think when I'm at work but I won't think when I'm at home or I won't use it because it's uncomfortable if I think about the stuff over there. The stuff over there is going to make me feel bad if I think about it. So I'm just going to ignore it. It's avoiding that evasion. In other words, it's taking, you've got a faculty but the faculty is in a sense, it's just there. Right? And part of it in a sense is automatic. We see stuff that's part of reason. We use our senses but to actually fully utilize it requires real effort. Thinking requires you to focus. It requires you to engage. It requires you to, and that's why the virtue is rationality. And what rationality means is do it. Do the actions that involve logically thinking, observing reality, collecting the facts, you know, not going by your emotions, really digging in and figuring out what's true and what's not. So it's the action that leads to this idea of taking your reasons seriously which means acting, which means, you know, engaging it. Right? So think of all the people who have reasons don't use it. And for them it's not a value because they're not using it. They're not pursuing it. They're not using it in every part of their life. They're not taking it seriously. So it's not a value. And questions, you can ask questions about anything else. So how do you think we get around this kind of, it's kind of related to an anti-rational thing. And I guess it's related to tribalism because so in 2016 obviously we have the US election and everyone loves to see kind of, you know, lip-tards lose the election and so on. And so, you know, even though I know Trump is a bad guy, I know he's anti-rational. I know his policy is a bad, but his victory makes me feel successful because we've beaten the liberals. Like how do we get past that? How do we... First of all, it's hard, right? Because I mean, I feel like I'm at least like somewhat enlightened and I read, I'm Rand, I understand our philosophy, but still I have that tribal mentality of like, I'm happy Trump won. Yeah, I'd say two days. One, don't call it liberals. Liberal is way too good of a word for them. Like, liberal means pro-liberty, liberal historically meant pro-liberty. So liberals in every tradition, except the American tradition, means good guys. And now we have to call, you know, people call themselves classical liberals to differentiate because we, so I wouldn't call them liberals. They're leftist, they're progressive. They're even progressive, I hate because progressive means you're pro-progress and they're not pro-progress, they're anti-progress. So I would just call them lefties, you know, leftists. I mean, I was very mixed during the election, right? Because I, on the one hand, I was happy Hillary lost. But I was sad Trump won. So I was torn. On the one hand, I was watching CNN during the election night and watching them all cry and go, yes, I'm so happy to cry. And then I was watching Fox and watching them all run and being sad that they were all right. So I was completely torn apart during the election. But what you really, you know, tribalism has a real hook into us. It's really hard to abandon because we're raised very much on this idea. And tribalism is also the lazy solution, right? It's, when you don't think for yourself, it's easy to let the group do the thinking for you. Of course, the group has to have a leader to do the thinking for you. It's easy to associate yourself with a group. And then whatever the group, you feel comfortable in the group, it's, you know, it's like having a group of friends over, you know, you don't have to think too much for yourself, just follow them. And so tribalism is appealing if you're lazy. I'm not causing you to be lazy, but if you're lazy, if you're intellectually lazy, right, it's very appealing because you don't have to think through all the problems. So look, a lot of the issues are complex. They're not simple, particularly in the world in which we live, right? If we lived in a purely capitalist society, life would be a lot easier. Decisions would be a lot easier. But when we lived in this mixed world with people with mixed motivations and mixed moral characters and mixture of good positions and bad positions, it's hard to subtly think through every issue out there. And I think it's much easier in a sense, okay, I'm just, you know, whatever, I'm just on the right. I just hate those guys. So whatever is the opposite of those guys, I'm four. Well, but it doesn't work that way, because the world doesn't divide itself into what they believe in the opposite of it. And then I mean, it usually is a third alternative to the two that it presented. So tribalism is appealing. And of course, there are kinds of tribalism, the most primitive form of tribalism, which unfortunately, we're seeing rise up in the world right now is ethnic tribalism, racism of different formats. So I'm going to, I'm going to associate with people who look like me. I'm going to associate with people who have the same color skin as me, or from the same tribe, real tribe. That's why it's called tribalism, right? Because the real tribe. And you see that, you see that particularly in Europe these days, but you're even seeing it in the United States now unfortunately. You know, we only associate with people who look like us. And it's easy that way, because people who look like us, yeah, they must think like us and they must know and we can trust them. And, you know, we don't have to, we don't have to be shocked by things that are different and unusual and strange. So everything's comfortable. It's very emotionally pleasing. Well, it isn't, but for them it is. Again, if you're intellectual lazy, it's very emotionally pleasing. To me, it's emotionally horrific. But there are other kinds of tribes. So what tribe is political party? I'm just, I hate the left, I'm on the right, and therefore if the left does, I'm opposed to it. Or other forms of tribalism, we're American. We're American. Therefore, the Chinese, they look different from us. They put tariffs on us that much first, so we hood down. So anything that hoods down, that's good. I'm for that. So that's a tribe. That's a tribalistic attitude, tribalistic mentality. America, anything that's so-called American is good, anything that's outside of America is bad. I only drive American cars, buy American, right? And that tribalism, I have to say, is the saddest of all tribals. Because America is the first country, and really the only country in human history, to be founded on the opposite idea. America is founded on the idea that you're an individual. And you should live for yourself in your own pursuit of happiness. And it's not what America wants, it's what you want to manage. And America is there just to protect you and to make your freedom. And if you want to buy stuff from China or Korea or Japan or Germany or whatever, that's your business. Nobody should tell you what you can and cannot do, what to buy or what not to buy. And that made in America means nothing. The only important thing is what you want, what is consistent with your values. And there's no such thing if you're an individualist. There's no such thing as an American job. There's no such thing as a Korean job. There's just a job for an individual. And if somebody else competes them away, then you don't have the job anymore. And it doesn't matter if the person competing you away lives 5,000 miles away on a different continent or lives next door to you. It's competition. And it's your job to get better. It's your job to do a better job. It doesn't even matter if that guy competing with you 5,000 miles away is getting a subsidy. You might not like it. That's your responsibility is your life and to do the best that you can with your life, not as an American but as an individual. And America is a great country because, what's a great country? Is a great country because it protects those rights. It protects your ability to live as an individual. But not because it makes good cause, not because it's farmers are good. Who cares? You buy the best food, the most delicious food, the best cars, the cheapest cars. What is considered your value? So we've seen the shift to tribalism and it's very sad, particularly in America because in the rest of the world to some extent it's always been tribal. It's never had this shift. And it's going to be hard to combat because individualism requires effort. Individualism requires work. It requires you to judge. It requires you to value. It requires you to pursue your values as an individual. Not to accept what the group says, not to accept what your neighbor says, not to accept what people look like you say. But to make decisions for yourself, to use your reason, to make decisions and then act on those decisions in pursuit of what you think is right for you, what's good for you. It means engaging that reason. It means really being rational and consistently rational. And that's work. And that requires effort. And too many people today are either lazy or being taught not to use their mind or at the best just not taught how to use their mind. So many young people in America, the educational system in America such that students have taught much more about emotions than they are about thinking. Thinking skills, critical thinking skills are not developed. That's why you get students not wanting safe spaces because somebody might say something that'll offend them. But if you're a thinker, if you're a critical thinker, if somebody says something false to you, then you say, oh, that's false. It doesn't offend you. Somebody says something that is negative towards you. You get, well, that's stupid. So what? But that's a thinking approach. Right? But if you're emoting, somebody says something that'll offend you. Oh, I feel bad. That's wrong because I feel bad. My feelings are the standard. My emotions are the standard of what's good and what's bad, what's right and what's wrong. And if, in my view, if you undercut reason, tribalism will always follow. Tribalism is what you get when you undercut people's capacity to think critically for themselves. They're looking for comfort. They're looking for somebody to tell them what to do. And usually that's the group or that's the leader who's going to tell them what to do. So the world's moving towards tribalism, which means the world is moving towards authoritarianism, which is where, what we're seeing in Europe and in the United States and in China and I think elsewhere. So I'm a bit new to Rand, so this might sound like a stupid question, but... No stupid questions. Lots of stupid answers. I read on an article that Rand calls the romantic relationship between man and woman. From a woman's point of view, it should be a romantic surrender. It was quoted like that. And I felt a bit like the word surrender would be a bit synonymous with sacrifice. And I read a bit more and she said it's a surrender, but not so brutal one. Not a what? Brutal one. And obviously I was a bit confused about that, so I was wondering if you could explain it a bit more. Thank you. That's one of the toughest questions I've ever got. Because Rand had a whole theory of femininity, masculinity, and sex and relationships between men and women. And I'd say most of that is more the realm of psychology than it is the realm of philosophy. And my understanding of philosophy is okay, but my understanding of psychology is not great. She viewed the essence of femininity. Not that a woman was all of this, but in that aspect of any human being that you were feminine. She viewed femininity as what she called hero worship, looking up to a hero. And that hero was a man, the man who went up to home, the man who goes out to do what he does. And that's what it meant to be female, to have that attitude towards the male, the masculine. And that not in, and if you eat on novels, you see this, not in kind of, the surrender is not in, you know, we're having an argument, so I'm a female, so I surrender to you, whatever you say, that's right, right. It's really in sex. So she viewed, she viewed sex as this incredibly important fundamental, fundamentally important to human nature and fundamentally to the human experience. And she said that the essential characteristic of femininity in sex is the surrender, the being penetrated. Now again, you can accept that or not, right? It's more psychological than anything else, but it's a woman is to the extent, to the extent that the feminine part of her is to kind of worship, to worship the masculine, and to surrender in sex to him. And what masculine means, for Ryan, is masculinity is about controlling nature. It's about an orientation to reality, it's about changing nature. If the woman is oriented towards the man, the man is oriented towards reality, towards nature, towards the challenges of survival. And in that sense, men are stronger and they protect women, right? So there's that, that kind of relationship or past being historically that kind of relationship. You know, who, who, have you read any of Grant's novels? Partially. Which one? Out of the Shrug. Out of the Shrug. So in Out of the Shrug, even the part that you, the small part that you read or whatever part you read, I mean, here is a woman, a woman, and this is a book that was written in 1957, this is a woman who runs a railroad. She's smarter than anybody else in the book except maybe one guy, right? She's the smartest person in the whole book. She is the most passionate person in the whole book. She, nobody could run a railroad better than she can. She's the more competent person in the book, right? But she's looking in the novel. In a sense, she's looking for a man she could look up to. She's looking for somebody she can really admire. And that's her orientation for feminine side, right? For sex, for romantic relationships. And yeah, I mean, and that surrenders that, you know, the masculine dominating in a sense, the feminine, in the sexual act. Not in business. In business, she dominated everybody, right? She was strong and she was powerful. But in the relationship, in that romantic relationship, manifested sex, she was looking to surrender. And that would be, that would be kind of the, I think, the psychological interpretation. And there's a, there's a beautiful painting that actually, by painting by the name of Cappelletti, that hung in Iron Man's living room. And it's above the fireplace or whatever. And it's a painting that divides people very strongly. Oh, it's very powerful because it projects this. And I find the painting, the painting really projects this vision of femininity. Because it's a beautiful woman, powerful woman, penetrating eyes, eyes remind me of Iron Man's eyes, these strong eyes. But she's on her knees, her hands, she's naked. She's on her knees, her hands are behind her back and she's looking up. And she's got that sense of power, strength, dominance, and surrender at the same time. And I think that was the ideal woman for Iron Man, that vision of what a woman could be. But that's, again, more psychology than philosophy. Isn't surrendering itself to like an act of power almost, right? Like the act of surrender is like a will. It's a willful action. Sure. It's a willful action. It's a willful action over yourself. You have to be willing. And you're not going to surrender to anybody. You don't need to surrender to that which you admire and that which you love and that which you want to surrender to. You've chosen to surrender too. So, you know, I personally think it makes sense. And my experience with men and females, it makes sense. But I understand that, you know, I know particularly in the world in which we live, people find that. I think it's, I think one of the important observations is, and philosophically, and I think just empirically, is men and women are different. They're not the same. It's not one is smarter than the other. It's certainly men are stronger than women. But psychologically, there's something different there. And defining what that is, I think that's what, that's what Rand is doing. And you know the Me Too movement in the US? I mean, I find the Me Too movement very interesting, right? I mean, I'm horrified by the stories that they tell and how men treat women. It's just disgusting and awful. But, you know, you know, one of the, you know, during Kavanaugh's hearings, there was this thing about this guy jumped on the girl and he like lay on top of her and, you know, this traumatized her, she says for life, right? Well, guys jump on one another all the time, right? And it, and that's not as threatening as when a guy jumps on a girl. When a guy jumps on a girl, that is not acceptable. And that is very threatening. And it should be very threatening. So, there's something about the fact that men generally are stronger than women that has psychological effects, rational psychological effects on their relationship. It's the best I can do with it. There's not a psychological effect. Bro, I feel like, I feel like, like, there's a, there's a clear answer in my mind that there's a, there's a talking about the idea of surrender and masculinity, infinity, femininity, and men and women are not the same. The biological basis for that, especially in the context of family, where a woman is surrendering, or at least putting a great deal of trust, in a man when they choose to start a family, for example, a woman is making herself incredibly vulnerable and saying, Hey, I trust you. Yes, I think there's a, I think that's right. I think there's a sort of vulnerability there. And you're going to stick around. You can take care of this child. But of course, women can take care of themselves, particularly in a modern context. And this is, this is the challenge. Like 500 years ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation because it's obvious, right? But in a modern context in which most values of most wealth creation and most jobs and most careers affect the mind, where there's no, where there's no difference between men and women, you can see why people object to the idea of differences, right? So women today can have a baby and feed it and clothe it and take care of it and live with it, buy yourself without a man and do fine. I have no, I don't think there's any question about that because our world is different today because I will realize less on muscle, less on strength and more on the mind. But there is, there are biological differences that I don't want to spend a whole time talking about filming in your masculinity. But the biological differences, I think, oh, what matter? The woman has to carry the child. And, you know, the fact of the differences biologically manifests itself in differences psychologically. But I'm not a psychologist to tell you exactly what those differences are. Pretty new to attractivism, too. But my memory serves right. Rand didn't identify himself as a libertarian. But from what I've heard today, feed-a-means-in, feed-from-portion, feed-to-choose sounds a lot similar to the moral principle of libertarianism and animal capitalism. Yeah. Are there any major differences or differences? Well, what is libertarianism? Right? Because libertarianism is a very loose term. And it covers people who, I mean, that is the famous story of, you know, you know the Montpalavent Society? The Montpalavent Society is a society of classical liberals, libertarians, Hayek, Mises, Milton Friedman was there. And they used to get together, they still get together in once every two years of big conference and they would, and one time, you know, von Mises, living von Mises, got up and drew your meeting and says, you're all a bunch of socialists. And why did he say that? Because in the room were a bunch of people who believed that a central bank was necessary, right, Hayek and Friedman, considered great libertarians. Iron man would say, you can't believe in liberty and believe in a central bank. I mean, it's just not consistent, right? So first of all, she's principled, right? So she's consistent. She's for free markets and everything that entails, right? True freedom, true protection of individual rights and everything that entails, without exceptions. And libertarians have people who want to dabble in economic regulations and economic controls and all kinds of stuff, all the way to anarchists. We think, you know, we don't need government at all and we can just have private police forces or whatever, right? Which is, in my view, and Iron Man's view, completely nuts. You can ask me about that if you want, but there's a video, there's a video online of me debating this Polish with body and economist who is an anarchist on this issue. But anarchy is incompatible with capitalism. Anarchy is incompatible with freedom. Anarchy is incompatible with liberty. It's basically a blood bath. It's the mafia. So you've got a big tent. You call it libertarians. Some of them believe in anarchy and therefore don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in freedom, in my view. You even have some communist anarchists, all the way to people who believe in some, a little bit of government intervention and everything in between. And so what is libertarianism? I don't know. And then on top of that, Rand would say, look, the economics and the politics of it, that's important. But that's not what's really important. What's really important is the philosophy, which really important is how are you going to guide your life? How are you going to live your life? And that's philosophy. And indeed, she argued that you can't justify the political system unless you first define how you live your life, how human beings are supposed to live. So what I tried to do very briefly today, right? Unless you understand that human beings are beings of reason and they require, therefore, freedom to think and that forces the enemy of thought and that, therefore, you must extract force from society in order to allow them to reason, to think and to produce, then the politics mean nothing. So what she said is the philosophy is what matters, but the libertarians don't agree with the philosophy. Right? The libertarians want to be subjectives or they want to be religious or they want to be conscientious or they want to be Platonist. They want to be whatever the hell they want to be. And she said none of those philosophies that you all advocate for are consistent with actual freedom. So what's the point of having a political philosophy, if you will, if it's not grounded in an actual philosophy for living as an individual human being? And if the philosophy that you hold in terms of how individual human beings should live is incompatible with your political system, then there's going to be a crash and you're never going to get it. And most of them, you know, if you read Hayek, he's so confused, philosophical. He's so, I think, mixed up when it comes to his social ideas. He's a great economist, but when it comes to his ideas about life, he's conventional. He's just average. And therefore, he's not convincing when it comes to economics. Or when you think about Milton Friedman who's a utilitarian at the end of the day. Well, the number of critiques of utilitarianism that philosophers have thrown, right, have presented in the whole true, utilitarianism is a flawed philosophy. So if you're going to build the whole system into utilitarianism and utilitarianism is flawed, then nobody's going to buy your whole economic philosophy. You have to build this economic theory, political theory on a proper foundation. And that's what I think is objectivism. That's what Rand thought was objectivism. So she said, unless you're willing to accept this philosophy, you know, we don't have much in common at the end of the day. Yeah, we kind of say similar things, but do we mean the same thing? But not always as the fact that Milton Friedman believed in a central bank or as, you know, these anarchists believe in competing, you know, military forces, competing police forces suggests. So she said, you all, you know, as the contradiction that happens between, let's say, Christian religion and, and capitalism, which is, I think, inevitable. So that's the fundamental difference. Objectivism is a philosophy. Libertarianism is a unspecified, mixed up political theory that has a huge range in terms of what it is. And that's why I think people are moving to classical liberal, because at the very least classical liberal excludes the anarchists. Anarchists are like classical liberal. So they're trying to go backwards in order to resurrect some kind of smaller umbrella, right? Smaller affiliation that is more cohesive, but even there. What's the philosophy? Other questions? You talked in your podcast about Mr. Sunshine? Yes. Patricia. Sorry for another sixth question. But you made it. Sorry about sex today, okay. You noticed, and I thought quite encyclically, that despite the great romantic relationship between the two, it didn't kiss or feeling hold hands or anything on screen. They hold hands a couple of times. Yeah, that's right. Does that say anything potentially about the culture that produces that kind of art? And so to what extent is that irrational or constructive? Yes, I do think it's something about the culture of it. But the show is so good that I hate to say anything negative about the culture that produced it, because I think overwhelmingly the culture that produced it has to be positive, because the show is so romantic. It's so positive in its view of values. So what makes Mr. Sunshine so powerful is that both heroes, the heroine and the hero, both of them, pursue values seriously. They're all in for the value they believe. Now, the values are not consistent. That's why they can never get together. But they're all in on the values that, so she's a patriot. She will do anything for Korea to free Korea from the Japanese. That is our highest value. She loves this man, but rightly or wrongly, she loves the cause of freedom in her case, or what she views as freedom, more important than the man. That's what she's after. He loves her more than anything. He will do anything for her. He doesn't love Korea that much. Korea treated him badly. People in Korea treated him badly. And a bad childhood, right? So his focus is selfish. And on the woman he loves, and anything he'll do for her. But the thing that makes this so unique, unique relative to American shows or relative to European shows, is they take, it takes values seriously. It takes life seriously. And it shows life as beautiful even when it's tragic. It's gorgeous. I mean, film, everything about it is just beautiful. And it gives the sense of life can be beautiful. And I'm surprised anybody likes it. Because it's so not, I mean, maybe you guys like it. It's so not modern. It's so anti-modern. It's so anti-cynical. Anti-cynicism. Anti, you know, the naturalism and realism was so used to in television and film. Everything's realistic the way it is. Where Mr. Sunshine is the way it should and could be, right? And the conflict is a big conflict, right? It's a conflict of love versus Japanese occupation of big political issue. It's not just some little, you know, who cares, right? It's big passion, big values, big like that. But it suffers at the end from a certain platonic view of love, right? And a certain disdain for the physicality of love. And I think it's the only weakness I could find in the show, right? The only weakness, I mean, I think the show would be much more fulfilling and much more positive if even, you know, I don't know how much to give it there at the end, but, you know, he dies and so, I'm sorry. But if just before, the night before, two nights before, whatever, they had had sex, I think it would have made all the difference. Because at least the show would have ended with the idea that they physically manifested their love. They realized that love fully. And then it didn't, you know, in a sense, it doesn't matter after that. But here, it's a love that's unfulfilled even to the end. So he dies with the love being unfulfilled. Reciprocated that unfulfilled. And so it makes it more tragic than it needed to be. So it could have been just as powerful. And yes, I think there's a certain aspect in the filmmaking when it's projection of the culture, projection of the writer, because I don't know how much of this is the culture, is a certain view of pure love is platonic love, is unsexualized. That's in its pure form. So, yeah, the only weakness of the show, because I loved it. I don't know how many of you have seen it. You know, I encourage you to watch it. It's on Netflix. I don't know what it's on in South Korea, but, you know, here it was on television, I guess. And it's just one of the best shows I've seen in decades, you know, a long time. It was so beautiful. And it's a tribute to Korean culture that not only was it made here, but it was successful, right? Because it could have been made in America. And in America, it would have been deemed as just a soap opera. And nobody would have had any attention to it. But it's not a soap opera. You know, soap opera is silly. They have silly conflicts that are unimportant, that are un-irrelevant. This had the grandeur of, I hate to say it, because, you know, of kind of a who-go novel, almost, right? Big conflict, big love, big, you know, powerful, powerful thing. And beauty, real, just sheer beauty. And it understood that the movies and television is a visual art. So much of what, you know, other movies, because they're so realistic and, you know, so the visual gets lost. And here, every frame was composed, was thought through, every touch, every movement was choreographed. The scenes that I can still remember. I can't remember movies that I've watched in the last few weeks. I can't even remember anything about them. Never mind scenes, particular moments in them. But here, I can remember them because they're so, they were so beautiful and so powerful in the emotion they evoked. Big fan. Could you just touch on briefly, briefly about the morality of Christianity versus the morality of capitalism and how, like, a contradiction there is? Sure. I mean, I think that the, if you think about the morality of Christianity, the essence of Christianity, of the morality of Christianity, is sacrifice. It's suffering for a cause. A cause external to you. A cause that you have no interest in this life in, only in another life, in a mystical life, in a pretend life. So it's all about sacrificing for others. So think about Jesus on a cross. I don't know how many of you follow Jordan Peterson or watch Jordan Peterson. Like, Jordan Peterson views Jesus on a cross as a superhero. He is the ultimate human hero. Why? Because he's willing to give up his life in the most brutal, horrible death for sins other people commit. It's the ultimate altruistic act. It's the ultimate act of self-negation and of living for other people. And that's the most simple, so you to be moral. The ultimate to be moral. The standard of morality is the superhero, dying, not for sins he committed. That would be understandable if you commit sins, you pay for them. But for sins other people commit. Right? For nothing he did, for no reason he died. And so the whole idea here is that you should live for other people, you should sacrifice for other people, you should die for other people. If you look at saints, Christian saints, ever seen a painting of a Christian saint smiling? No. That would defeat the idea of a saint. What makes you a saint is not helping other people. If helping other people made you a saint, then no gates would be a saint. Then Carnegie and Morgan and Rockefeller would be saints. The great, you know, entrepreneurs and industrialists in Korea would be saints, because they helped other people. They changed the world. They made the world a better place for millions and billions of people. Businessmen are saints. But no, they're not saints. Christianity doesn't think they're saints. Why? Because they benefited from helping other people. They helped themselves while helping other people. And that's not acceptable in Christianity. It has to be pure. You have to live for others. You have to suffer in helping others to be a saint. Some other Teresa, who helped very few people, relatively speaking, is a saint because she suffered. She had a miserable life. That made her a saint. If you have a good life while helping other people, you don't get a saint. Lots of people have helped more people than other Teresa. Lots of people have helped. I mean, for businessman help, the world more than other Teresa. But even charity workers, you know, social workers go out there and work with poor people. There are lots of people who have done more good than other Teresa. But they didn't suffer as much. They didn't project that suffering. They didn't make up a deal of their suffering. She did. She became a saint. That's the standard. So Christianity at the end of day is about, is about sacrifice. It's about altruism. It's about living for others. And that's what gets you into heaven. And when you don't do that, Christians who pursue their own interests in this world and accumulate wealth, maybe run a business, do stuff like that, they feel guilty. So guilt is part of Christianity because altruism is anti-life. And when you live, you feel guilty because you should have been Mother Teresa. You should have suffered. And I think there's this real conflict. And that's why you can't ground, you can't base capitalism on Christianity. Because capitalism is about succeeding. It's about trading. It's about win-win relationships. Not about suffering. Not about sacrifice. Not about giving. It's about making, producing, trading. And there's nothing, Christianity is not about that. It's not the essential element. You want to ask about this? Yes. Okay, so yeah. What would you say to those who would describe Christianity and an essential element of Christianity as being, oh, there is a spark of the divine in everyone. Potentially, I'm not exactly sure about what the Christian totally believes, but that every person is a value or potential value? And how that's kind of opposed to the sort of low-ending fruit of this, oh, altruism is evil. Well, I think that Christianity is mixed. Right. And any primitive philosophy, which is what religion is, is mixed and contradictory. And Ayn Rand said that the one good thing about Christianity, the one thing that Christianity added, if you will, to Western civilization, the only thing really that it added in terms of value is this idea that the individual mattered, right? That you had this spark of divinity and therefore you mattered in some way. See, I think she overestimates that. I mean, that's my personal view. I think that already existed in Greece. Individuals mattered. Look at Greek sculpture and tell me that they didn't care about individuals. So I don't think that contribution to Christianity. And if you look at Christian history, it doesn't matter. Christian history doesn't care that you have a divine spark, right? Because if you look at the periods where Christianity dominates, it oppresses you, it crushes you, it commands you. It doesn't care about your opinion. It doesn't care about anything about you as an individual. Sacrifice to God, sacrifice to the church, sacrifice to your fellow man. That's it, right? So when Christianity is dominant during the dark ages, during the reign of the Catholic Church, or even in Calvin's dictatorship, right? If you want the Protestants, right? What did Calvin do with the spark of divinity and every human being? He created the dictatorship because these little sparks needed to be told what to do and how to behave and pain needed to be inflicted on them. And if you read Montlutha, what does Montlutha write about this world? He says, this world is horrible. This world is disgusting. Human beings are awful. Disgusting creatures. And then we only can attain the beauty and the full manifestation of our humanity in the afterlife. That's when the world is beautiful and divine. So you have to die in order for that to happen, right? So all of the history of Christianity negates this idea of the spark. And to me, that's what's important. Because even if it's somewhere in the New Testament, right, it doesn't play out. Nobody cares. Not Aquinas cares, right? And Aquinas changes the world. But Aquinas changes the world across secular philosophy, not quite Christian philosophy. So I'm very down on Christianity. And down on Judaism, right? Because I read the Old Testament as saying you have no freedom of religion, no freedom of speech, no economic freedom. And you're supposed to obey. It's very authoritarian. I mean, the essence of religion is authoritarianism. God says you, go kill your son. Yes, sir. Off I go. And that's what makes you a moral hero, is that you don't question, right? You don't question. Abraham doesn't say to God, go to hell, right? Which is what he should have said. He obeys. And that is moral authoritarianism. And that's off. I wrote that down. I want to talk more about that. But what about Abraham? Abraham and I did. It's clear-cut. It's what they call involve, you know, clear-cut a shut case, right? And there are a thousand examples like this, right? Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments, comes down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, and he sees a few Jews worshiping a golden calf. He doesn't calmly put the tablets down, go over to them and say, you know, you do your thing, we do my thing, we just don't have anything to do with you, go over there and do your worshiping. We believe in one God. That's not what he does. He gets angry, he drops the tablets, he shouts, he goes to his brother, they get a bunch of people, they catch a sword, and they kill, if I remember, like 30,000 people that day. And God rewards them. God says, good job, right? Aaron, you can be the priest of the Jews from now on, because you did such a good job defending my religion from those pagans. I didn't, oh just, it's full of this stuff. Slaughter and mayhem in the name of God, and obey, obey, obey. Right? Why doesn't Moses see the light of his room? These are, these are, these are what we're raised on, right? Why does Moses is never allowed to go into the state? He takes the Jews out of, out of Egypt. He comes, he does all this things, he travels with them for 40 years in the desert, but he's not allowed to go on. He strikes the rock, he strikes the rock instead of just, you know, because God is going to bring the water out of the rock, and he strikes the rock instead of just letting the, letting the water just spring out of it. And God says, you have little belief, you had to hit it so that the water would come out. If you didn't believe, I could do it without you hitting it. So you're not going to see, I mean, really, what kind of God are you? I mean, I've worked 40 years to get the people here, you know how little he can get? Give me a break. I mean, it's full of crap like this. It's, and it's, it really is, it's bad stuff. Okay, so back when I was a student, the object of this club at Harvard was predominantly minority. What was it? Yes. Wait, was this? Well, 1989. Okay, interesting. Yes. And now the thing is, I actually, I went around and I started buying used copies of the virtue of selfishness. Can't even black people say, read this. And when they read the essay on racism, a lot of them, okay, this is great, the part about individualism. But then they're saying, why does she spend so much time attacking the black leaders at that time? Yeah. And the, so I got two questions. One, people respond to me, why did she attack it up so much? And then the second thing is, what is it that she did or said at that time when black people were fighting against the government? They know about the essay, but was there anything else that I should have mentioned at that time? Oh, I mean, I'm getting questions. I've never gotten before. This is great. These are good questions. I mean, it really boils down to what did I mean do about the civil rights movement and to what extent did she fight on the side of the civil rights movement? And she didn't do much other than the essay on racism. And if I had a, if I had a criticize as I ran, in terms of the areas she focused on during that period, because she was writing extensively in the 1960s about issues, political issues. I think it's sad that she didn't write more about civil rights. I think she should. I think it was a bigger issue than I think she realized. And I think it boils down to she thought racism was such a disgusting, ridiculous, horrible thing that nobody could take it seriously. That it wasn't a big deal because, you know, it's just so stupid. And I don't think she had full realization of what was going on in the South and what had gone on in the South during Jim Crow, during the Jim Crow area. I mean, think of it. She came, she came as a 21 year old from Russia. Her focus was primarily in communism and fighting communism. She then went to LA or Chicago, then LA, then back to New York, right? She never lived in the South. She never experienced the South. She never knew the South. I'm sure, I'm sure she's here and there. I mean, she, she at least once that we know of encountered anti-Semitism, right? So she knew it existed. And Josh, she lived through World War II. She said, on one occasion, she said, she never considered herself a Jew except in the face of anti-Semitism, right? Then she would probably state that she was Jewish when she faced an anti-Semitism. And she once had somebody in her home talk positively about Hitler. She got furious and kicked the person out of the house. So I don't think she fully understood how much a part of American history was. And I think during that period, if you lived in the North, I think it was somewhat, I think it was around, but I think it was suppressed, a lot of what was going on in the South and a lot of what had happened since reconstruction. So her focus was really collectivism versus individualism. And again, racism is so obvious, right? It's so simple in her mind. And I think correctly so. That she, what more do you write after you write her essay on racism? She laid it out. That's it. I wish she'd applied it more to the issues going on in the South. I wish she had acknowledged more the evils of what were going on down there and condemned them more strongly and more. But I think her orientation was much more towards communism, much more towards the threat of statism and collectivism. And that's specific conflict between individualism and collectivism. I think she felt like by writing the essay on racism, it covered it. But I agree with you. I wish you would have done more on that. And she condemns the leaders because what she sees in them is the collectives. And she can't let them get away with it. But it's just that when a lot of folks when they came to the paragraph where she condemned the Civil Rights, 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yeah, but she condemns only one aspect of it. She condemns one aspect of it. And that is a condemnable. I still condemn it. And I wish we got rid of it. It's the one aspect that says that you can't discriminate. And that's wrong. You should be allowed to discriminate. But again, I think the reason people are so object to that is because collectivism is deeply ingrained in so many people. It's therefore, right? If you're an individualist, you don't believe in the government forcing discrimination or anti-discrimination. You leave people free. And now she saw that as the bigger threat, I guess. And I think it was the bigger threat, right? It is the bigger threat. And at the end of the day, it's the collectivism that has led I think America back to racism. I think racism is an issue again in America. But I think it's an issue again in America because we've been so collectivistic. And I think to some extent that part of the Civil Rights Act has led us back towards more racism. Because the reverse racism in a sense that the left by latching onto identity politics and by using that aspect of the Civil Rights Act for the right identity politics has led people on their right to say, oh, you want to play identity politics? We can do that too, right? And that's some white Americans are doing that in a sense of we're white. And this is important. Well, I mean, it's all primitive barbaric collectivistic nonsense. And I meant I identified it as such. And I think she felt that that was enough now. But I do think that it turns out civil rights were more important looking backwards. And there was a lot more to say about the civil rights movement. And there's a lot more positives in people like Martin Luther King's in spite of the negative aspects to what they did. And she could have focused on that. But again, it's like, you know, I meant we're very little about religion. Because she didn't think religion was a force in American politics until until the very end in the last few years of her life. She realized religion was a big force. But I think in the 60s and in the 60s and 70s, when she was writing most of the stuff, early 70s, religion was dead. I mean, nobody, religion was unimportant. Who cared about religion? So she didn't write much about religion. And I think her view was racism is dead. And the big mistake is reverse racism. Because racism is finished. I mean, racism is stupid. Nobody will be a racist. So I don't think she fully appreciates the power of racism and tribalism in that form, that really, really primitive form of collectivism. And it's power. And I don't think she fully realized how religious America was. Again, she was. She didn't visit the South often. She didn't realize how religious, how powerful religion was in America. And she didn't see, I don't think she saw the turn to religion that was coming. And she saw it in 76. She certainly saw it in 1980. She refused to vote for Ronald Reagan, because she she said Ronald Reagan will bring religious religion into the heart of the Republican Party or make religion integral to the Republican Party. And she was right. Whatever you think about Ronald Reagan, that he did. And that is destroyed through a Republican Party. So the Republican Party now is not the party of liberty, not the party of freedom, not the party of even a little bit of capitalism. It's the party of Donald Trump, which is exactly opposite of that. And that's Ronald Reagan's fault. And she would condemn Reagan for that today. But that's, you know, so, you know, she didn't see everything. Or she didn't see that everything. I mean, she saw everything because she commented on racism, she commented on religion, but she didn't see them in that maybe in the fullest future context she couldn't have, and maybe she could have commented, and she should have, I think, commented more on civil rights and racism. And actually, essentially, we're trying to do more of that, because particularly now with the rise of racism in America, I think, increased racism in America, we're trying to comment more on those kind of issues. And there's a huge backlash. A lot of people don't like us commenting on these issues. Interesting. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brooke. And be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel. And he's on Stitcher and all the iTunes and all that. So he has a podcast that he comes out with. And thank you again. One more.