 Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show and this Friday, January 19th. Sorry for the irregular hour. This was supposed to be early in the day show but you don't need to know. But it didn't work today. I figured I'd sneak it in in the evening so that we wouldn't leave today without a news roundup. I know some of you depend on this for your news intake for the day. I wouldn't want to deprive you of it. I'll jump right in. Sadly, but not surprisingly at all. We are seeing defeatism sneak into the discussions of what's going on in the Middle East by both Israel and the United States. Israeli intelligence officials have for weeks not been saying, well, Israel can't really win. They can't really achieve their goal. They should stop trying. They should stop pretending. And here we're not talking just about Biden officials, political officials. We're talking about generals. We're talking about intelligence sources. And I think this is true throughout the American intelligence community. There's this sense that victory is impossible after all. They were the ones who bought into the fact that the victory was impossible in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why should victory be possible for Israel? With regard to the Houthis, we're already seeing both the press and experts and intelligence sources and military commentators and former generals and whatever saying, well, there's nothing really we can do about the Houthis. The only way to deal with the Houthis, the only way to deal with opposition, the only way to deal with the bad guys is negotiation. We have to negotiate. We have to come to a political solution. There is no military solution for these problems. Even in Israel, a member of the war cabinet, a former IDF chief of staff who sadly lost his son in the fighting in Gaza last month. But a former IDF chief of staff, one of the people in my view responsible for positioning the IDF to take the beating that it did on October 7th. You know, him and Gantz and Gantz who might be the next prime minister in Israel. He went on television, I think yesterday and said, whoever speaks of absolute defeat is not speaking the truth. That is why we should not tell stories. So you can't win. Defeating the enemy is impossible. Stop talking about absolutely defeating Hamas, eliminating Hamas. It's not possible. We won't do it. We haven't achieved it so far and we won't achieve it going forward. It's just not possible. I mean, again, not surprising. But the reality is that the West does not know how to win a war. The United States has not won a war really since World War II. Israel has not won a war, really won a war, I don't know, since 1973. Maybe you could argue it won the war in 1982 in Lebanon, but then lost. They don't know how to win. And part of it is that they're afraid to acknowledge what it would take to win. A lot of people will die. A lot of the enemy will have to die. As much as Gaza is devastated now, it would have to be even more devastated. Winning means bringing the Palestinians to their knees, humiliating them. Winning means destroying the Houthis' capabilities to wage war. Not a few cruise missiles are not going to do that. A sustained, a sustained, ruthless campaign abomin' the Houthis could. So we've lost the ability, the capacity, the willingness, the moral confidence to win. And you're already seeing it. I predicted October 7th that Israel would not do what's necessary. It's done more than I expected. It won't do what's necessary. And it's clear the United States is not going to do what's necessary either. To do what's basically needed to protect the shipping lanes in the Middle East. They will, in the end, fall to the Houthis. If they fall to the Houthis, they're not going to fall too. But of course, America just folded to the Taliban. So why not to the Houthis? Why not to every tin pot, you know, ridiculous, primitive, barbaric terrorist groups out there in the world? America will just fall to anybody. And Israel, it looks like too. Of course, Israel's folding bears much greater existential risk. And I think what we're going to see in the months to come, Israel will have done enough to sustain short-term peaceful existence. It's the long term that worries me. It's the long term that Israel is going to be challenged with. All right. Let's turn quickly to the primaries, the Republican primaries. We'll be hitting, we'll be arriving in New Hampshire next week, New Hampshire primary. New Hampshire is the one place where Nikki Haley seems to have some chance of maybe beating Donald Trump. She will get a lot of the independent vote in New Hampshire, in New Hampshire independence vote in the primaries. But the reality is that if I had a bet right now, Trump will win New Hampshire. And I think win New Hampshire relatively easily. And I think much bigger than that is the fact that in South Carolina, the state that Nikki Haley was governor of, the state you'd think she would have in her pocket. She's trailing Trump dramatically, significantly. And Tim Scott, the senator from North Carolina, is now endorsed Trump. And this is the sense in which the Republican Party deserves Trump. I mean, now I'm all in on Trump should be the candidate and the Republican Party should lose big as much as I hate to say it. The Republican Party needs to lose big because of Tim Scott, you know, relatively moderate kind of nice guy, reasonable guy seems like. If that part of the Republican Party is so scared of Trump as to jump to endorse him, then the Republican Party is hopeless, completely and utterly hopeless as a protector of anything, of anything. What is it protecting? Donald Trump, Donald Trump and whatever he feels like doing. I don't know how anybody can trust this party. I don't know how anybody can trust anything that they do. I mean, Trump is the nominee that, you know, with Tim Scott endorsing Trump, Nikki Haley is basically finished. DeSantis is already finished. DeSantis is skipping New Hampshire. He's he's been, you know, down in South Carolina trying to trying to increase his numbers over there, but he's way behind in South Carolina. Tim Scott could have endorsed DeSantis if he didn't want to endorse Haley. But he didn't. And if if Trump loses, and if Republicans lose big in the House, let's say, they will have nobody to blame. It's not a binary choice. It was never a binary choice. They had an opportunity to elect lots of alternatives to Donald Trump. It's not binary at all. Trump did not have to be the candidate. And Trump is not better than Dems. Trump is worse than the Democrats. He's much worse. His respect for the American system of government is beneath contempt. And it's lower than the respect any Democrats have, or at least the Democrats that are likely to be in power. He is just as bad as Democrats on the economics and worse than Democrats on foreign policy, worse than Biden on foreign policy. So you will get what you asked for. You will get a Biden Trump choice. And I think it's so likely that Trump loses that choice loses that choice. And Trump loses. And it's also likely that Trump brings down the Republican Party in the House and maybe even in the Senate where they should be winning big in the Senate this coming round. And then you'll blame me because I didn't support Trump. It's unbelievable, unbelievable that this is the man that the Republican Party is choosing to run for president. Unbelievable. Talking about choices in Republicans, Republicans and Democrats are getting together to try to hash out a deal about the border. The Republicans have basically said, look, we're not going to vote, we're not going to give Ukraine any aid. We're not going to give Israel any aid. We're not going to approve aid to Taiwan unless you settle the border dispute, unless you settle the border dispute. And they've come up with a bunch of proposals. Biden has actually caved on a lot of them that will dramatically restrict the ability of people to come into the United States, beef up border security, turn people away at the border, reduce the number of people entering the United States for asylum dramatically. On pretty much every front in at least in a short run, Democrats have caved to Republicans and are willing to give it to them. And I think if the Senate had a vote for this, I think they would have an overwhelming majority for this border bill that includes aid to Ukraine and to Israel. And this is where Trump is worse than Biden, because Trump is vehemently opposed to this bill. He's placing huge amount of pressure on the House of Representatives not to begin to vote. He is, you know, he is opposed to compromise on the border. We know why because it takes away an election issue from it. Trump loves the idea of millions of people entering the United States illegally right now so he can make a big deal out of immigration. But what if this proposal, which turns people away, cuts down on the number of immigrants coming through the border? What does Trump run on? And Trump opposes giving Ukraine aid. Now just that, in my view, should make him ineligible to be president. He wants to cut a deal with Putin to give Putin, give Putin, hand Putin over. Oh, pieces of Ukraine. And he will refuse to give Ukraine aid in order to cut a deal, make a deal. Despicable, disgusting, and I think anti-American self-interest. Trump is, ultimately, would be a lackey of Putin. I think a lackey, ultimately, of Xi. And it's terrible in the foreign policy. But the point here is, there's a deal on the table that actually gets, I don't know, it doesn't get everything Republicans want. It gets maybe 50%, 60% of what Republicans want on border security. When Trump wins, he can then, by executive order, get the other 40% maybe. And yet, they're going to kill this deal and therefore kill support for Ukraine and Israel. Because it doesn't serve their political purposes right now. It just doesn't. Oh, Trump is much more of a lackey than anybody else. Anybody else. All right, let's see. All right. So, the Senate might pass this bill. The Speaker of the House of Representatives so far has said, Johnson has said that he will not bring it up for a vote the way it's constituted now. They're still negotiating. It's hard to tell how this plays out because there's a lot of politics involved. But the fact is, Republicans got Democrats to cave. And they're not going to get their way because Trump needs this as an election issue. Talk about Republicans, Democrats caving. You know, Johnson came in and said, Speaker of the House, he said, you know, we're going to have spending bills. We're not going to have these extensions of partial spending, holding spending the way it is just to keep the government running. We're going to have spending bills. We're going to do this properly. Since he said that, he's brought a vote and managed to get across with the help of a significant majority of almost all Democrats. A number of extension, budget extension deals and no spending deal has been passed. None. The, you know, the conservatives, I don't know, the wing of the Republican Party supported by Marjorie Taylor Greene, represented by the woman who thinks they are space lasers run by Jews. This insane woman who is now a make America great again, I guess, you know, a spokesman and symbol of their political might. She is really upset a GOP leadership about not sticking to cutting government spending. And which they should, of course, and, you know, they opposed the continued resolution, but the continued resolution was passed with the help of Democrats and with the help of a significant number of Republicans, the right wing of the Republican Party voted against it. They would like to see, you know, they would like to argue that they should be spending cuts without telling us actually what those spending cuts would actually entail and where the spending cuts would actually happen. It's when you're in that position, it's really easy to yell cut spending, cut spending challenges when you get into power of actually doing it. Republicans are notorious for yelling cut spending, cut spending when they are opposition, and then when they are in power, spending, spending, spending, spending, spending. Anyway, the spending bill to extend government spending and not to shut the government down, the continued resolution passed the House, passed the Senate is now law. And we delay any talk about a government shutdown until, until March, when the continued resolution runs out. And we have to figure out again what to fund in the government and what not. I expect you'll probably have continued resolutions without an actual budget, basically, until the end of this, until the elections. Congress has no interest before an election to compromise and to actually cut a spending deal. They won't shut down the government because I think neither party wants to actually be responsible for the government shutdown. But they won't do anything substantial in terms of cutting spending or anything dramatic one way or the other. They'll just keep on funding the government like was funded last year without making any decisions about actual changes to the funding structure. Typical cowardice of politicians, particularly in an election year. All right, this may be bad news for Donald Trump and good news for Biden. Surprisingly, surprisingly, when you look at polls regarding the consumer sentiment, what's called consumer sentiment, how optimistic or pessimistic consumers are about the economy. This is a fairly good predictor of, you know, the economy. And of course, the economy is a fairly good predictor of how people will vote. Consumer sentiment is on the uptick. Consumers becoming more and more confident about the economy. They are, they kind of, I think, over the shock of inflation. Inflation, of course, has come down significantly towards the end of the year. Last year ran at a 3.0 something rate. It's probably going to be below three this year, which is not that dramatically outside of norms. The labor market, as I've been telling you all of last year, has been solid. People have money in their bank accounts. Consumer spending continues. Recession fears seem to be fading. It seems like the Fed has accidentally brought about what everybody calls a soft landing. And as a consequence, consumer sentiment has gone up 29% since November. That's the biggest two-month increase since 1991. Wow, since 1991. That is a long time ago. Basically, people's mood is increasing and that bodes well for the attitude towards incumbent politicians. Now, whether that plays out exactly that way, we're still a long way from the election. There's still another 10 months to go. But this should be a data point, just a point. That you cheer Democrats up, because I think that if consumer sentiment continues to rise and gets back to kind of high levels, which had existed, consumer sentiment was quite high during the Obama administration. But during the latter part of the Obama administration and then during the Trump administration all the way until COVID, consumer sentiment was very high. If it gets back to those levels, it's hard to believe that the incumbent loses. It's possible, but it's hard to believe that they do. So I think Democrats are going to be watching that carefully. Again, the numbers in terms of economic growth all suggest that the economy is in pretty good shape. And many items, people are complaining about or complaining not that long ago, about $6 eggs, $6 cartons of eggs, eggs are down back to $250. So we forgot the eggs inflation has been negative over the last period. And I think that's starting to show up in sentiment. People are seeing prices are not increasing that much. Prices are stabilized. In some cases prices have gone down. Some prices are still going up. But it's just that shock that I think people experienced primarily last year. Prices just going up in huge leaps and bounds. Much of that is disappearing. All right, finally, a story from the magnificent state to the north of us, Canada. Oh, it's a country. Sorry, it's not a state. I thought it was a state. A country of Canada. If you remember a few months ago, we did a show on the story out of Canada, where Jordan Peterson had been accused of being insensitive and using words that were not becoming of psychiatrists. And the College of Psychologists of Ontario had ordered Jordan Peterson to undergo remedial social media training. In other words, sensitivity training. Now just think of this. Jordan Peterson and the College of Psychologists of Ontario in order for him to preserve his license as a psychologist wanted to send Jordan Peterson to sensitivity training, to remedial social training, to reeducation camp. Jordan Peterson appealed this decision to a court on Tuesday, a panel of three judges with the Ontario Court of Appeals dismissed Peterson's motion. And so first I went to the Ontario Divisional Court. The Ontario Divisional Court appealed the authority of the College of Psychologists of Ontario to basically deny Peterson a psychology license unless he went through this training. They said they had their power. And now the Appellate Court has said that they agree with the original court. In other words, Jordan Peterson now has to make a choice. Go to remedial social media training or lose your license. Now Jordan Peterson is very clear which one of those he's going to choose. He's basically said, look, I'm independently wealthy. It's not like my income depends on my standard of living. My quality of life depends on any way I'm being a psychologist. There's no way in hell I'm going to give into these bastards. There's no way I'm going to training. And he has basically said he's not going to. And he will continue the fight. It's not clear how he will continue to fight. But he said that he intends to win this fight. And winning for him means that the College of Psychologists, the board of the College of Psychologists will ultimately apologize to him and resign en masse. I'm skeptical about whether that will ever happen. Not because I don't think Jordan is completely correct here. He is absolutely correct. All my disagreements with Jordan Peterson put aside, I will fight for his right to be insensitive. And I'm against licensing laws anyway. Suddenly. And the College of Psychologists should not be granted by the state and authority to declare who can be a psychologist and who cannot. And I will fight for his right to fight to deny them. And yet, I don't think he can win this battle. It's too entrenched. The powers to be are too entrenched. I mean, to fight this, to win this battle would mean the College of Psychologists doesn't have that power to decide who's a psychologist and who's not. That would change too much of the existing licensing regime. Certainly in Canada with implications for places like the United States as well. So sadly, Jordan Peterson is likely to lose this campaign, which is sad. It's horrible. It's horrible that Canada has reached this kind of sorry state, sorry state that it's obviously in. All right. That is the news. There wasn't a huge amount of dramatic stories. Nobody was bombing anybody new today. The same people who were bombing everybody yesterday were bombing everybody today as well. So there wasn't anything dramatically new. And North Korea claimed to do some kind of atomic test underwater. But I just don't know if there's anything there to really talk about. All right. Quick reminder, this show is funded from the support of people like you. You guys make this show possible. There's no show without you. We have our targets for each one of these shows. And I think I put on the wrong target here. Yeah, I did. I did the evening shows because it's evening instead of one of the news roundup, which is 250. So please consider supporting your show if you're listening live, if you're watching live right now using the super chat or a sticker. Sticker who reminds me I should thank TZ. I should thank Steven. Steven just did a $20 sticker. Thank you, Steven. And I should thank friend Harper and Jonathan. We also have a new member who joined your own book show members Christian Klein here on YouTube. You too can become a member as well. Just click on the membership button below. Yesterday was funny because we had a bunch of Indians who couldn't figure out how to use the super chat but didn't want to use the super chat but complain bitterly on the chat about it anyway. So one of the huge benefits of the super chat is you can ask questions, which means you get to guide the direction of the show. You get your topics discussed. So please consider using that. Please consider making contribution. We're a little off from a goal for the day. So please consider making contribution. There are almost 100 people watching live. Some of you, you know, it would be great to see you. Many of you to see you contribute. If all of you contributed, that would be amazing. Amazing. All right, let's see. Of course, there are people here who... Anyway, super chat. Oh yeah, reminder. I've got to remind you that the Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of the Iran book show. Right now, they are taking applications for the Iron Man Conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March. And they will be taking applications for scholarships until January 31st. So you've only got a week and a bit to apply. The conference will be held in Austin. Ben Baer and Greg Salmiere will be the primary professors at the conference. You will get to spend some significant time with them, delving deep into Iran's philosophy. It is a great, great place to, you know, a great place to study these ideas, to meet other objectivists, to interact with some of the philosophers of objectivism who are going to be teaching there. And I don't think it's based on youth. It's based on your interest in, you know, really digging deep into Iran's philosophy. Of course, you can also apply for a scholarship, I think you can still apply for the Iron Man Conference in Amsterdam at the beginning of March. So yes, please consider going to einran.org. Start here and applying for your scholarship. Don't miss out, it's a great opportunity. And look, if you get a scholarship, it's all expenses paid. So it's worth the effort of applying. And of course, if you come from the Iran Book Show, it might give you an edge. I don't know, maybe, but definitely tell them that you came from here. And that'll really help. All right. So don't forget your einran.org slash start here and apply. All right, let's see what do we want to do? We want to answer super chat questions. Cool. A query from Australia. A series of questions. Let's start with this. What was learning about history like for you in the beginning stages? I'm thinking of studying self-teaching. But the amount of people, dates, events, and periods seem overwhelming at the moment. At the point where I have, whoops, serious doubts about my ability to integrate. Did you feel the same way in the beginning? I have an overall basic understanding of the trend of history. Thanks ultimately to the philosophy course Dr. Pekov gave on the history of philosophy. Grease through all medieval modern contemporary. Along with an interest enough to watch YouTube videos on what life culture and governing was like in those periods. Are there any, whoops, I have to switch to over here. Begin a book, so begin a method approaches to study that you would recommend when wanting to dive deeper than just a surface level understanding of history. Certainly I think reading the ominous parallels by Lena Pekov is a must in terms of the integration of philosophy and history. So the integrating factors. I think then there's a number of different approaches you can take. And look, I have a hard time with dates, locations, events, periods, all of that as well. And it takes a long time to get it. And I still don't know the specific dates. And to some extent I don't really care. I know I have some general understanding of what happened at 13th century for each one of the centuries. But I probably get a bunch of stuff wrong and it's taking me a long time to get that. Of course, I haven't really, I'm not a professional historian, I haven't really done a proper study of history in the sense of getting to where I would know it, Pat. But if you're really interested, look, one way to do it is get, there is a series of books. Now this is a major, major undertaking. But there was a series of books by Will Durant. Basically, History of the World. From the beginning, pretty much still today, at least through World War II, I think. Every volume is a period. I can't remember how many volumes there are, 15 volumes or something. It's huge. But it will give you the entire sweep. In reading those, if you did, I wouldn't focus on dates. Not in terms of 1223. Okay, this is the 13th century, or this is the Middle Ages. I mean, if you can get a prehistory, a very, very early history, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, right? What comes after the Renaissance? What would you call the period right after the Renaissance? God, I mean, in Otto's, Rococo, Enlightenment, Age of Reason. But generally, Age of Science, Age of Reason, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, 20th century. Then that's what you need, that categorization, right? You don't need the dates. And then generally, what comes before what? French Revolution, then Napoleon, right? And then the rise of nationalism in Europe. And then the unification of Germany, unification of Italy, nationalism, that makes sense, unification. Then World War I, right? I mean, those are the kind of, those are the kind of level you need to grasp it. And you'll, I mean, if you read, I've never read the history of civilization, but Duant, which is all these volumes. Now, he has a condensed version, a one book version. You could start with that and see if you like his writing. But he writes not for professional historians. He writes not for the academics. He's writing for a general audience. Osav, what do I have of his? There's another few other ones. Duant, here's something. There it is. Yeah, he also has, this is an old book, but this is World Duant. He also has a history of philosophy, which is quite good. The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers by Will Duant. So he's a very educated guy, did a lot of stuff. But there's also, I've got a book here, The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. The Story of Mankind by Van Lunes, Henry Van Lunes. And I wouldn't even worry about some of these guys are going to be, they're not philosophically going to align with you. But as long as they give you a scope of history, that is a lot. That is a lot. I'd also recommend books like The Cave in the Light, which give you a, you know, really from Greece till today. The Cave in the Light is a history book guided by a philosophical perspective, the influence of Aristotle and Plato on history. Now it's not pure history, but it's, it's motivating because it's got philosophy. It's interesting. It's integrated because it's got philosophy. And then it just pick up, pick up a history books that interest you about periods that interest you. See, I don't know all of history as much as I'd like, but I now know a lot more about the Enlightenment that I did before. And I want to know more about literally the history, right? The history of the Enlightenment. Van Lunes is very good. So these are books that are hard to get because they're old, right? So in the days where history was history, not just, you know, specialized, whatever. Look for books that have a theory, a scope of history. And sometimes you won't like the philosophy sometimes might be Marxist, a lot of historians are Marxist. It doesn't bother me too much as long as I know the bias and I can tell what it is. And as long as I can get certain sequences of events and places and intellectuals and influences, if I can get that, I don't need them interpretations necessarily. So, yeah, I mean, that would be an approach. Find a period in history that you find particularly interesting. I don't know, Greece, Rome, read up about it, read the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. And then there's a bunch of new books about Rome that have, and you'll find that different authors have different approaches to why Rome fell. That's interesting that they have different approaches. And you're going to have to figure out what makes sense to you. That is, there is no one definitive, unequivocally correct history. History is going to be in dispute always. We don't know exactly what happened. And causal relationships, the details of causal relationships in history are very hard. A very hard. See people already misrepresenting me. I don't want Biden. I don't want Biden to be president. Biden drops dead. I don't want Trump to be president either. That's the challenge you have. And I don't want Trump to be president more than I don't want Biden to be president. I think Trump is more destructive. So both are destructive. One is more destructive than the other one. I don't want to crack down on the border. Why does anybody think I want to crack down on the border? Or think the border is that important? All right. Graham says, just wanted to show my support. Thank you for your show. Thank you, Graham. I appreciate it. Most of the people on it. I mean, a significant number of the people here don't seem to be fans. All right. Yeah, if your main interest is Rome, then read up about Rome. I'd read up about Greece officially because you need the context for Rome. And then really dig into Rome, the Republic and then the Empire and the details and see, and then the rise of Christianity, which is part of Rome, the impact Christianity has on Rome, on its rise and decline. All of that is super interesting. All of that is super interesting. So yeah, read up on that in great detail. Become an expert on that and then go to the next area. And indeed, Durant has a book, just one book on Rome. Maybe even more than one book on Rome. Which one of my wars? I have several wars. Michael says, how long it going to be before people start having a positive sense of life again? It's so refreshing and rare when I meet an upbeat person in Good Spirits. A long time, I think. I think given the state of the world today, as reflected on my chat, it's not good. It's not good. So basically Michael, it's going to take a long time because a sense of life is based on deep conclusions that people come up to about the world around them. It's based ultimately on the philosophy of a culture. It's based on the self-confidence of a culture. And all of those are dramatically in decline. And the self-esteem can get, you're not going to get the sense of life without getting ideas changed without people having a certain confidence in the culture and confidence in their own life. The philosophy of altruism and collectivism and mysticism. And a culture of adoration of a thug like Trump cannot be a culture of a great sense of life. Something has to give. Something has to change. John Worth says, what is YBS specifically doing to increase its demographics among students who enter the INRAN essay contest? Well, YWAN book show is doing actually nothing for that demographic. I don't have access to the INRAN essay contest entrance. The INRAN Institute does, but I do not. The INRAN Institute pursue those students, tries to get them involved in the programs. Primarily, the main focus is to try to get them to read another INRAN book and then hopefully to get them to enroll in some of the classes and courses of the INRAN University. At some point, one would expect that if they're interested in INRAN, because they've entered an essay contest, they will also discover that the YWAN book show exists and that will cause them to listen maybe to a show or come to an event that I do somewhere and get engaged and hopefully that'll get them hooked. The reality is that the YWAN book show, if you look at my demographics, I'm pretty weak. The demographics are pretty weak. In high school, I have very, very few listeners, very, very few. I college eight students, a little bit more than high school, but still few. The demographics only really kick in as significantly at 25. And most of my listeners, well over 50% of my listeners are 25 to 45. That is the sweet spot for this show. And that is way after they've entered an essay contest. Even if they've been exposed to me before, they're just too young for the content that I'm producing. The content could be the fault of it. It's just the reality of it. The content that I produce is much more post-college, post-first degree. It's when you're starting to confront life both, it's when you are practically confronting the politics of life, but also practically confronting the goal setting and the idea of the stuff I do for life. But also just the reality of work and things like that, that my show seems to resonate with people. So well over 50% is 25 to 45. Graham says he's 23 and loves the content. No, there are lots of exceptions. And there are high school kids here that love the content. And I appreciate that. I'm just saying, again, 50, I can't remember. It depends on the particular month, but close to 60% are 25 to 45. All right. Michael says, I see you've been getting a lot of new trolls in the chat lately. This is great. It means new people are discovering you and viewing you as a threat. Yeah, I mean you could, yeah, I've always had trolls, right? They come and go. The names change a little bit. But basically they've always been here since I started in 2015. No, yeah, I started January 2015. I've had them. They intensify during election years because they hate my position on Trump. And some of them will go away because at some point they'll have enough of hearing my disdain for Trump. And you'll start hearing more and more and more TDS, TDS, TDS, because that's what people say when they don't have an argument. They just call your names. But yeah, and they can't grasp that my goal in life is not to defeat Democrats. My goal in life is not to defeat the Democrats. That's not a goal. My goal in life is to preserve liberty and to educate people about freedom and liberty. And Trump winning doesn't help me with that. Trump winning hurts my ability to do that, both the educating part and the part of actually achieving it. So, you know, I voted for Democrats. I voted for Republicans and I've not voted. And I think all three options are legitimate options depending on the election, depending on the circumstances, depending on what's going on. Vandy says, come on, Iran. Didn't you know that the goal of life, you should have capitalized life, is to own the left. He capitalized own the left. All right, yeah, you're right, Vandy. I apologize. I screwed up. I messed up. I forgot. I forgot. Maybe we should support Trump. God, maybe that's the way to own the left. On the other hand, we could let the left win and then they'd get owned by the other devastating failure. That could be a better, bigger owning than Trump. But then that becomes complicated, right? That's thinking for DHS and we know Trump supporters can't do that. All right, thanks, Vandy, for the humor. Coke says, is there a parallel between Francisco's money speech and America's military power? Hmm, I haven't thought of that one. The most powerful military and best weapons can create any enemy, but it's useless if you don't have the will. And how's that related to Francisco's money speech? Everything is integrated. So it has to be related, right? I mean, it has to be relationship. Well, having a lot of money, if you don't know what to do with it and you don't have a sense of earning it, that is, you didn't make the money. You just have it. And you don't have the moral vision. You don't have the idea of what to do with it. The money is useless. The money can actually be something that hurts you. Well, same with military power. The current American regime, if you will, the current American government has inherited the mightiest military force in all of human history. The might of the American military machine is in a sense perpetuated by the military industrial complex, as it's called. And yet it's in the hands of politicians who do not know what to do with it. There's a deep sense in which they did not own it and they have no sense of what to do with it. They do not know how to win and they don't have the moral courage to win. So they've got a great tool, just like in Francisco's speech, you have money, but you don't know what it means. You don't know it's true value. You don't know how to use it and it makes it value less. And I think that's right. I think that's right. That is the relationship between the Francisco's money speech and this. By the way, I did an interview with Breedlove, the Bitcoin guy, Robert Breedlove on Francisco's money speech. You know, he did a reading of Francisco's money speech on his Twitter channel. It's a really nice video that he did for it. And then we did a whole discussion about it, which I thought was very good. You should check it out on Breedlove's channel podcast. I think you'll enjoy it. Michael Sander says, if you go on Jordan Peterson's show, you'll get to 50,000 subscribers overnight. I doubt that, but yeah, I'd love to go on Jordan Peterson's show. I'm trying to find an angle to get there, but so far, no success, but that would be ideal. I'd much rather go on his show than debate him. I want to go on his show and just answer his questions and go from there. So we'll see if that ever happens. I'm hopeful. Buster Jones, I noticed Palestine supporters in mass don't really look into why they support Gaza. The interviews I see are so emotional bound. Do you think that people could change their minds if they realize that land used to be desolate? I don't think so because it doesn't matter to them. The people who support the Palestinians, the people from the left and the right, but the people on the left too have kind of embraced, in a sense, the whole woke ideology, the intersectional ideology. History is completely subjective to them. History is not about facts. It's not about reality, and it doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is who's strong, who's weak. Who's successful, who's not. Who's rich, who's poor. By definition, strong, successful, rich, bad. Poor, unsuccessful, oppressed in some way, good. The whole way in which they view the world is oppressed or oppressed. Facts, they don't want them to get in the way. Now I think a lot of these kids when they leave college and actually have to face reality, and they strive to be successful, and they realize that it's not that fun to sacrifice everything they have for the purpose of some person who claims to be oppressed. I think at some point they grow out of it. They become human again. But until that happens, I don't think there's any hope. Right now they're in the clutches of an ideology that says all of history, all of current events, everything can be stood from this one perspective, the perspective of oppressor and oppressed. And that's all you need to know. If that's the way they think about the world, then it's very, facts are not going to get to them. So learning that the land was desolate and the Jews actually created the prosperity that is there, they'll argue that they exploited something, somebody, or they ruined the environment. I mean, it was desolate because there was swamp, no, not swamp, swamp is a non-PC word. You have to use wetland. The land in Israel used to be a wetland. And then these evil Jewish capitalists came in there and they dried the swamps. Who knows how many species went extinct as a consequence. They changed their environment, evil them. They built something on virgin land. How dare they? How dare they? So I think that it's going to take them getting out of the spell that intersectionality and the new left has on them. Michael, the UN appears to function solely as a dictatorship and terrorism protection racket. I mean, yeah, of course. I mean, it's got 200 and something members. Most of the countries in the UN are dictatorships. The number of free countries in the UN is small, relatively speaking, as a minority. And overall, even the free countries are not particularly proud of their freedom and don't advocate for it and don't claim moral superiority over the rest. So you've got dictators who are completely comfortable and confident in their mori upper-endai. And you've got the good guys who are lack confidence and lack authority and lack anything. And yeah, I mean, what do you expect the UN to be? It's an immoral institution to begin with. Completely immoral. An animorality is reflected by the fact that they will protect and stand by any dictator or terrorist out there. He else has explained the fall of Rome. For 30 Shekel, that is a big deal for 30 Shekel. That is for a long show. But I would say the outline of it is there were basically two corrupting forces that undermined the Roman Empire. And of course, Rome was destined to fail once it became once it abandoned its Republican nature and adopted an imperial structure, an authoritarian imperial structure. And just think about the kind of emperors that Rome had from Nero and Caligula. I mean, just horrible, horrible people. And that was the structure that they had created so there's no other way to get around it. So I think two forces undermined Rome philosophically. One is kind of a new platonistic skepticism and cynicism. A knowledge that the world in some sense was unknowable. And you get this from the, what do you call it, from the God. The Sophists and the Greek philosophy. Anyway, a general skepticism and cynicism which led them to embrace cynics, cynicism, which led them ultimately to the Romans to embrace a kind of hedonism and in Nero's case, a real nihilism. But I think a lot of it is an issue of cynicism, a skepticism that leads to hedonism and leads to really not caring about the world. And that was a big part of, you know, the Stoics, thank you. I don't know why I could not get the Stoics. I mean the influence of the Stoics. But generally the influence of kind of non Aristotelian Greek philosophy that undermines knowledge, undermines self-esteem, undermines confidence and therefore makes them weak. And to a large extent I think that the Romans doubted their own virtue, doubted the value of their life, doubted the value of the empire. They wouldn't fight. They stopped fighting. They stopped having the confidence to fight, you know, and existentially they embraced it and they embraced a bunch of other things. But basically this was kind of a neoplatonism that they embraced. And secondly, to fill the gap, the hole that in a sense the hedonism had created and the cynicism and skepticism had created in the Roman spirit, Christianity entered and, you know, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. And Christianity is a religion of weakness. Christianity is not a religion that leads you to fight. Christianity is not a religion that encourages you to embrace life-affirming values. Christianity is a religion of weakness. It's a religion of sin. It is a religion of manners, meek and small. It's a religion of an afterlife and it's a religion that inculcates a mentality that is not a mentality that is going to fight for civilization. This is why Christianity cannot be the solution for the West because at the end of the day it's a religion that is by definition self-flaginating and in that sense it can't stand up to Islam. Islam is a religion, relatively speaking. Islam is a religion of warriors. Islam is a religion of success. And Christianity is not. It kind of embraces a warrior spirit at some point in the Middle Ages under the Romans but it can never do it wholeheartedly. And it struggles against Islam and it loses for the most part against Islam until late, until really Christianity has become less important and other things are more important and only in the 17th century does the Christian West stand up and defeat the Muslims for the first time and start pushing back against them. But that's late. That's late. Yeah, Christianity is still going. So is Hinduism. So is Confucianism. So is Judaism even older than Christianity. So is Islam and growing. So is a lot of religions. Doesn't make it good, doesn't make it right, doesn't make it just. So I think Christianity, which also embraced Neoplatonism but from a different perspective and Neoplatonism or the post-Plato kind of philosophies of Greece that were pessimistic, many of them deterministic. Part of the problem was that the Romans were convinced that they were declining, that they were finished, that they were ending because they bought into certain deterministic, fatalistic philosophies. Cave in the Light sheds light on this. So does of course the rise and fall of the Roman Empire although a lot of modern historians have challenged that book. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire basically blames Christianity for the fall. But a lot of more modern authors question that. But it's no question Christianity had a big part of it. I mean remember after Constantine, Christianity is the religion of the Roman Empire. Keep calm and carry on. Carry on. Do you think the US has civil war in near future? No, I mean I've done shows on the civil war, on a civil war. You can look it up. You're on book civil war. You'll find some shows where I did about the upcoming civil war. I don't think so. I don't think either side is actually committed enough except for a few small groups of wacky nuts to actually pick up arms and fight. I don't think they believe in anything strongly enough. I don't think they're brave enough to actually take up arms and start fighting. I think when the fighting happens, you'll discover that a lot of people are really brave with words. But war is horrific and to actually engage in war and to fight and to shoot and to watch people die. God, most people don't have the stomach for it. And a lot of people who are going to carry the flag and yell and scream and threaten and even carry guns with them. When it comes to actually using them in something like a civil war, it wouldn't have the guts. But more importantly than that, who's going to fight whom? Like, is Texas, which side is Texas on? Because the reality is Texas is 45% Democratic, 55% Republican. The 45% Democratic are, you know, they might not be quite as well armed as the Republican side, but they're well armed, they're smarter, they're, you know, they probably have better strategy. It's not clear who wins. And that's Texas, 45, 55. Who wins California? I mean, California might be more 60, 40, but the 40% Republicans don't mess with those 40%. So it's not like there's a line. It's not like the civil war with the South and the North. Red, blue, every red state in every significant red state has a lot of blue in it. Georgia has a lot of blue in it. Florida, a lot of blue in it. North Carolina, lots of Virginia. Are there blue or red? They might go one way or the other, but by a small margin. So what are you going to have battles within the state? I just don't, I just don't see it. Now it could be, yeah, you have a battle everywhere. You know, I just, I just don't think Americans have it in them. What are they fighting about exactly? Again, there's some fringe element within both sides that are willing to go and shoot the other side. But what are they fighting for? Can articulate that? Are they willing to go and kill other Americans for what? So I don't, I don't see it. I don't see it. Keep calm and crayon. Best U.S. president of all time, the worst. God, I mean best, I'd have to say George Washington is the best primarily because he left after two terms, the opposite of Donald Trump. Maybe the worst is Donald Trump because he refused to leave after one term when he lost. That I think qualifies you maybe is the worst. It is a tough competition for the worst because you've got Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt. And then, so those three, and then I'd say Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, all four are eligible for the worst president of all time. So those seven, I think are the worst. Maybe there was worse in the 19th century, but probably not. I think it has to be in the 20, 21st century, the worst ones. LBJ was nowhere near as bad as these. And so, you know, hard to tell which one of them is worse. Certainly Trump is up there, right? Certainly in the top seven. Probably in the top, in the worst seven, probably the worst three is Trump. Best, they're not that many candidates. Oh, the other one is for best is Grover Cleveland. I'm reading, I started reading, I haven't gotten into, I haven't finished it. Well, I barely started it, but I've started reading a biography of Grover Cleveland that seems really, really interesting and really, really fascinating. So I'm looking forward to really getting into that. And at that point, I'll tell you what I think. But so far, from what I know of Grover Cleveland and not from the biography from my stuff, he would make the top five as well. Nobody in the 20th century, maybe Coolidge would make the top 10. Coolidge is the last good president. I don't think it was great. I think it was good. One of the great evils of Coolidge is the 1921 and 24 immigration bills. Just for that, he should run in hell. But, you know, so Coolidge is mixed, again, probably the best president of the 20th century. But that's not saying much. 20th century is mostly bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, worse. All right, John, happy Friday. Have a great weekend. You're on. Thank you, John, $100. That is amazing. Really, really appreciate that, John. Thank you. All right, Corey, this is one of the things that confuses me. Didn't Rome reach its greatest height under the Empire in 117 AD? Was this just a consequence of the Republic still having an effect? Yes. I mean, it is. It's a certain momentum. And what is, you know, what is the greatest height? The greatest height means the most land under control, the strongest military. Yeah, but, you know, in a primitive society like that, where technology and economics, that is, the production of wealth doesn't matter that much, you can go a very, very long way, even as an empire. So, you know, the wall of the mind, the need for liberty and freedom is to achieve political success as I think somewhat different during that period in today. Where everything is determined by technology, by economic growth, by military technology. You need free people because you need the mind. Rome didn't need it as much. But Rome was still benefiting from the momentum of the Republic. No question about that. And that's why it couldn't survive. And also, look, the bad philosophy took a while to filter into Rome, right? So while the Republic was abandoned, it still had some decent philosophy. It still had Aristotelian ideas influencing it, other better Greek ideas. And the corruption of those ideas takes a long time. And the infiltration of the more corrupt ideas takes a long time. And of course, the infiltration of Christianity doesn't really become dominant until Constantine, which is 32080, something like that. It doesn't have to one-to-one. The Republic goes away. It's just like, you can look at China and say, wait a minute, how did China grow so fast? It's in a authoritarian state. But you're not looking deeply into what's happening on the ground where there's a lot of freedom for the entrepreneur. You have to be able to look at the right level given what's actually going on. Christian, what do you think about the Federation plan? Sounds better to me than the dead horse of two-state solution, Swiss-style Federation for Israel Palestine? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good idea. I think, look, any solution is not a solution unless the Palestinians are thoroughly defeated. And the whole state of mind is changed. And the whole philosophy of life is altered. And then once that happens, there are lots of solutions. Federation is a great idea. But the Palestinians today could not have a Federation. They would want it. They would undermine it. They would use it as a platform to aggress against Israel. It just wouldn't work. So the exact form by which the conflict is solved in the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is the ideas that the Palestinians hold and take into the future, into whatever that solution happens to be. Jason says, save the Republic, defend free trade, defeat Trump in the primary. Hooray to that. Sadly, super unlikely to actually happen. I think the Indians showed up again. I think my Indian fans all showed up again. All right. Have a great weekend, everybody. I will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, two shows tomorrow, two shows. One at 12 p.m. East Coast time. I'll be doing my show in Hebrew, which I was supposed to do Thursday. We got delayed Saturday. So we will do the show in Hebrew for the Israelis among you. The Hebrew speakers among you will be tomorrow at 12 p.m. East Coast time. 7 p.m. Israel time. 7 p.m. Israel time. And then at 2 p.m. East Coast time, I'll be doing a show on David Guggen. Guggen's? David Guggen's. What we'll be doing in the show's title is David Guggen's The Pursuit of Value. So we'll be talking about what's good and bad, the good and the bad and the ugly of David Guggen's. So join me for that show. It should be an interesting show. I think a positive show because we'll be talking about values and how to achieve them, how to attaining. Even when I'm negative about David Guggen's, the show will be positive. So please join us for that. It should be a lot of fun. And Vandy says, do a show in Hindi. In Hindi. To capitalize on your new Indian fan base. If only I could do a show in Hindi. That would be amazing. All right. I'm waiting for my Indian fan base to figure out how to use Super Chat. And as soon as they figure out how to use Super Chat, this show is going to the moon. Talk to you soon, everybody. Bye. Have a great, great weekend.