 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday night. It is Saturday. A little tired, a little tired, got in, got in home 3 a.m. this morning from Denver, Colorado. Denver, Colorado is where I was after Austin, Texas, where we did the debate individualism versus conservatism on Wednesday night, Thursday, well, I'll talk about Thursday in a minute. Anyway, Denver was great, did a good, really good talk in Denver. And then today, got in at 3 a.m., 2 p.m., I gave a talk here in Puerto Rico, which is always fun and land up hanging around with the people that invited me to give a talk and talk to a bunch of people. And anyway, it's been a busy day. I am exhausted, ready to go to bed. My wife said, ask, just skip the show. I said, no, I can't. That would be wrong. Anyway, here I am. Hope you appreciate it. Sacrificing for the cause as usual. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. All right. We are going to be talking about today is just a recap of the debate a little bit. Talk about individualism a little bit. Talk about conservatism a little bit. So we'll add up some of the, some of what happened during the debates. It's, I know that many of you, most of you probably haven't heard the debate. It's not up on YouTube yet. I hear from a number of you that it seemed that the link on the debate dropped at around 10 p.m. I hope the recording survived that so that when we put it up on YouTube, we'll be able to put up the whole thing. The last segment was my closing statement. And then Yoram Chazzoni, the guy debated closing statements. I hope we'll be able to put all that up. I'm hoping the debate will go up any day now. Should be sometime this week. This is really dependent on, this is really dependent on UT. So this is a University of Texas. It's their video. That put it up. I did get permission from everybody to post it up on my channel. I think Yoram Chazzoni is going to post it up on his channel. So the debate should get a lot of visibility, a lot of play. So I'm excited about that and that should be really good. So yeah, we're going to talk about the debate today. We'll talk about more broadly about the whole issue of individualism versus conservatism. It's a topic, this issue of conservatism, it's a topic we're going to talk about a lot over the next few years. It's particularly national conservatism as a form of conservatism. It is, this is something that's on the rise and it's something that's only going to gain in influence and significance. And we're going to be there calling the shots and providing the counter arguments and dealing with all that as we go forward. So looking forward to doing many shows, many shows about conservatism, in particular the national conservatism. As I said, I then went to Denver, did my talk on the morality of capitalism in Denver. That was a lot of fun. I think we had a great audience, a great group there and that was great. So that was yesterday. Thank you for leadership of the Rockies, for inviting me every year. Now it's been, I don't know, I think the first time I talked to it was 2002 or three. So it's been a long time, a long time that we have been, that they have hosted me as a speaker. So it's always cool to go back there. I expect to go back then at the end of next year. Okay, just some housekeeping stuff. Tomorrow the show will be at 3pm, no, 2pm east coast time, 2pm east coast time. So those of you keeping track and wanting the schedule tomorrow at 2pm east coast time. I'm a little confused with east coast, west coast and Puerto Rican time. And then we'll be in a regular schedule of Tuesday, Thursday at 7pm east coast time, Tuesday, Thursday, 7pm east coast time. Saturday, Sunday shows were very depending on the plans I have that weekend. But either 7pm east coast time or 2pm east coast time, those are kind of the convenient times that usually work on the weekend. So I will update you and if you follow me on Twitter, if you follow me on Facebook, we'll always have updates over there. Generally, we're now entering into the second third of December. December is a time where I like to kind of plan, figure stuff out, figure out what the next year is going to be. So as I think I said last time, I'm going to focus December on really figuring out where do we take the Iran book show from here? What is the plan for 2022 and beyond? I am open and encouraging of any suggestions you guys might have about that. So any suggestions, any advice is welcome. We're looking to significantly grow the subscriber base. We're looking to significantly grow income. We have to grow income about, I don't know, 25%. I'd say over 2022 from the actual video from the show and then have significant presence in terms of speeches. So the other thing I'd ask everybody is, hey, think about ideas you might have on how to grow the show, how to make the show better, how to get more subscribers, how to get more cash. But then also what I'd appreciate is, let me just see, is if you have any ideas speaking opportunities. I love speaking. I like speaking in front of live audiences more than I like doing the show and I can get pain gigs. I can get non-pain gigs. So particularly students and young people, even if there's no funding for me to come, I can get outside funding. So any place, any ideas, universities, high schools, other forums that you think are interesting, anywhere in the world, how about that? Anywhere in the world, I am game. So let me know, uran at uranbookshow.com, slow for ideas for speaking venues. In particular, if you have a speaking venue that can actually pay, that is even better. So keep an eye out for those and let me know. All right. Finally, before we start on the show, Super Chat is open. We don't have anybody keeping track of Super Chat. I don't know what happened to Ali and to Catherine. So we don't have anybody keeping track. But we had about $100. Remember, we got a goal of $600 for every one of these shows and we try to make it every time. I'm not going to bug you about Super Chat questions. But please feel free to ask. You can ask about anything. Priority will be given to two things, questions that have $20 or more attached to them or questions on the main topic of our discussion today, which is conservatism versus individualism and generally, more broadly, the debate. All right. Thanks. Let's get rolling. So as many of you know, I did a debate on Wednesday with, you know, Alida, one of the founders really of the National Conservative Movement, Yoram Chazzoni. Yoram is an Israeli. He was born in Israel. He left when he was a child to live in America. And then as an adult, went back to Israel. His wife is American, born but emigrated to Israel with him. They are conservative Jews. So a little bit like Ben Shapiro were Yarmica. Yoram and his wife have nine children, which is consistent with kind of the conservative Jewishness. And they, yeah, you know, Yoram has written many books. I first read him in the 1990s when I was doing a talk about the rise and fall of the state of Israel. That was the name of the talk. You can still find it somewhere online. And I read one of Yoram's books about the intellectual history of Israel. And it was brilliant. It was an excellent book. I didn't agree with some of it. I didn't agree with his interpretation, for example, of Kant and other philosophers. But overall, I thought it was excellent. And I incorporated much of what I learned from the book into my lecture. And since then, I've been keeping track of him, unbeknownst to me, Yoram Chazzoni is somebody who's read Ayn Rand, who liked Ayn Rand, not an objectivist obviously, but liked Ayn Rand. His kids, he tells me, all read Ayn Rand. So somebody who followed my career early on and liked what I was doing. And we kind of met, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. We had breakfast in New York at some point. And we've been staying in touch since then. And now that he's become a prominent national conservative, it was, I bought two, three, four, when he published his book on nationalism, he wrote a book in the virtue of nationalism. I offered to debate him at Clemson University. Unfortunately, it was a little too expensive for the Clemson Institute to pay him. But then in Texas, there was a particular individual who's a big fan of his, who was willing to pay his fees. So we arranged this debate and it was really good. So one of the things you'll notice about the debate, and this is a plus and a minus, I guess, but I think it's evident, is that in spite of the fact that we disagree and we have a deep disagreement, there is a certain level of respect and a certain level of, I guess, friendliness behind it all. And so Michael asked, Yom Khozoni is a friendly, gentle fascist. Yes, there's a certain element of that, although he doesn't consider himself a fascist. I think his ideas lead inevitably to fascism. I think he's aware of that danger and is worried about it. But nevertheless, these are his ideas. He doesn't think it's inevitable. He thinks he comes from a long line of conservative thinkers that have actually bought freedom. He actually believes that the founding fathers, many of the founding fathers were conservatives from his ilk. David Goodman writes, Yom showed you a lot of more respect than Richard Wolfe did. Yes, well, does this suggest the intellectuals on the right aren't as dark and unreasonable? No, I don't think so. I think if you'd had Sohab Amari on debating me, I think he would have shown very little respect. I doubt that Sohab Amari. And indeed, when I've interacted with Sohab Amari on Twitter, he has shown disdain and real disrespect. I think it's particular to Yom Khazoni that he showed respect. And it's particularly to the fact that he's read Ayn Rand and likes Ayn Rand, particularly to the fact that he likes me personally and the fact that again, all these kids read Ayn Rand. So there's a certain respect there. So while he doesn't agree with it, he thinks individualism and Ayn Rand's objective is seriously flawed. He is, I believe, wrong on a lot of different things. There's a certain respect there, underlying respect that I think some conservatives have, but fewer of the new conservatives have. Again, I would say if I debated Sohab Amari, if I debated Danine from Notre Dame, or if I debated Vermeurean, who is a law professor at Harvard, they would show great disdain. They would get just as angry as Richard Wolfe did. And I don't think we'd have a civil debate. I think one of the advantages of debating Yom was it was a good debate. It was solid. It was civil. I think the debate was to some extent misframed. And we could talk about that. I'll talk about that in a minute. But it was intellectual. It was calm. Nobody was yelling. We weren't trying to put each other down. It was a battle of ideas about specific ideas. And I think that is the way debates should be. It's what you hope debates will be. But that does not mean that, and I don't think it's true, that Yom in that sense represents conservatism. Indeed, I know he does not. He represents him himself. And the other aspect of this, which I think is interesting, and I think, and I know this is, it's tricky, but I think it's worth talking about at some point. Maybe we'll talk about it later today, is the fact that Yom is Jewish. And this relates to the Ben Shapiro as well. I think there's something different about Jewish conservatives of this ilk and Christian and Catholic conservatives. And even in the debate, Yom said, well, I don't hold the altruistic view that the Christians hold. And I think that is true. By the way, I didn't mention it, but it's worth mentioning here because I'll refer to it. The next day, the debate was on Wednesday. But the next day, both Yom and I were on the Lex Friedman show. So we went to Lex and Lex did a three and a half hour interview with both Yom and myself. I think it probably was a bathroom break. It'll probably be closer to three hours and 15 minutes or three hours and 10 minutes. I'm not sure. But it was a substantial, substantive, long, detailed continuation, if you will, of the debate. Because while it was an interview, it clearly focused on the things, or some of the things we disagreed about. We'll talk about the things we didn't get to on Lex Friedman. So I expect a Lex Friedman interview out in about two weeks. I'm excited about it. It's another opportunity to get in front of the Lex Friedman audience. I hope you guys both watch it, listen to it. It's important that my interviews on Lex Friedman show get high viewership because that's how I'll be invited back. I mean, if nobody listens, Lex's motivation to invite me back is going to be reduced. So I'm hoping that we get significant more, that you guys help make it a highly viewed segment, but also hope that you really share it and you get it around. We have maybe an opportunity after that goes out to re-engage with some of the ideas that are discussed in that. Maybe you can ask some questions around that. Maybe we can get to it. So part of the fun of doing the debate in Austin is that Lex actually came to the debate and then he could follow it up with a detailed conversation. And for those of you who were at the debate or maybe missed him, Lex Friedman was at the debate. He didn't wear his black suit and black tie, white shirt. So you might have missed him, but he was definitely there. So that was a huge, huge upside of doing this debate. Let me get these headphones off. I really don't need to be wearing them. All right. Where were we in terms of the debate? So I think the debate was first done in a rational, friendly, calm way, which I think is a huge, I think for you guys, for listeners, for watchers, for the audience, it is a huge benefit because it's actually an intellectual discussion. You actually get into intellectual issues and you can actually cover intellectual issues that way. By the way, those of you who are joining, I see a lot of people have joined in the last few minutes. The debate will be hopefully put up on YouTube this week. I will put it up on my channel as soon as it is available. I am right now kind of dependent on the University of Texas to put it up, but as soon as it goes up, I will make it available. The livestream cut off at some point. I am really hoping, very much at the end, but still cut off, I am very much hoping that they have video of the whole thing that is not cut off. So we will see. We will find out, I guess, soon enough. I will contact them on Monday to find out when it is going up on YouTube and when I can put it up on YouTube as well. Remind everybody to give the show, if you like it, give it a thumbs up before you leave and the super chat is buzzing. So please continue to ask questions using the super chat. I appreciate it. Let's see. So I think the debate, for those of you, I think you all know, the debate was a debate on individualism versus conservatism. But what is interesting about it is because you all kind of wanted me to go first in a sense for me to defend individualism first. And what happened as a consequence of that, which I think in the end is good, is that the debate really became a debate about individualism. And the issue of conservatism was not fun and set up. It was not fun and set up. And I think the same thing, funnily enough, happened on the experiment show. And I think the reason for that is that conservatism is a pretty conventional view to some extent. And what's really radical and different and challenging and pushes the envelope is this idea of individualism. And as a consequence, I think that's much more interesting to talk about, much more controversial to talk about, much more challenging to talk about, and much more provocative. So the debate turned out to be, and I'm interested in if I was in the middle of it, so I don't have really a good kind of third party perspective on it. But so you guys can tell me in the chat if you think this is right. The debate really turned on a discussion of my opening statement about individualism. And we didn't really dig in to my criticism of conservatism, or my criticism of nationalism, or my criticism of religion as integrated into the state, which is part of Yom Khazoni and part of the national conservative agenda. We never really dug into that. We never really spent a lot of time on that. And I think that's also true of the Lex Friedman interview. And to some extent, that's a shame. But to another extent, I'd much rather focus on defending individualism, dealing with the challenges to individualism, knocking back the questions about individualism. Then I would slamming conservatism, or particular view of conservatism. So it was, I thought in that sense the debate took on an interesting and quite positive turn in that it focused really on individualism. And I think the confusion that so many people have about individualism, and the specific confusions that I think conservatives have about individualism. And some of this was new to me. It knew to me when I was reading up on Yom Khazoni, when I was reading other conservatives, I just read a piece by David Brooks, which I think summarizes conservative thought, the history of conservatism quite well. And it's absolutely true that variety of different branches of conservatism, interpretation of conservatism, if you believe, if you read David Brooks now, he will tell you that there are no real conservatives in the Republican Party. And he is very opposed to the national conservatives as well, and very opposed to Trump as a conservative. He thinks Trump's ridiculous that Trump is a conservative. But I learned quite a bit about conservatives attitudes, particularly towards reason. I mean, this is an interesting observation. I hope you guys find it interesting, but it was interesting to me. You know, I make a big deal about reason in my talks, and I make a big deal about reason when we do our chats here on the Iran Book Show. I mean, reason is a foundational concept in objectivism. You can't get any of the objectivism without really a link, without a link to reason. Reason is at the core, right? And yet, reason like a concept like freedom is not something that is well understood by people. It's not something that, for example, Yom Khazoni, or for that matter, I think Burke, or many of the conservatives, actually understand. Reason to them does not mean the identification that the faculty that identifies and integrates the data provided to us by our senses. Reason to them is not something connected directly to reality. It's not something that uses empirical evidence as the basis for abstraction. To them, reason is a faculty, to some extent at least, if not to a large extent, divorced from reality, divorced from empirical knowledge, divorced from facts. It is a faculty that kind of starts from axioms, from first principles, and then deduces everything. It doesn't have, it doesn't have any kind of basis in reality for them. So conservatives are empiricists. They are skeptical of reason. They believe reason is primarily a means of central planning. That reason is divorced from experience. That reason is divorced from reality. That reason, therefore, is floating. They call this rationalism, and we in objectivism call it rationalism as well. Rationalism is ideas divorced from facts. It's using deduction and pseudo logic, divorced from reality and facts. It's having floating abstractions, not linked, not connected to reality. An idea of reason connected to reality in the way Iran reads it, and in the way I take for granted when I talk about reason, is not something that they even consider that they know how to think about, unfortunately. To them, they're two things. There's empirical reality from which we kind of get a sense of the world, and they don't use reason in terms of how we get a sense of the world. We learn from it somehow, and that learning gets institutionalized into our institutions, and that becomes tradition, and that becomes, and then if it doesn't work, we adjust, we fix, we get on the right path, or what we think is the right path, and we keep moving forward, and we'll make mistakes, and we keep adjusting. We keep adjusting as we go along, based on past precedents, and based on reality as it is right now. But there's no reasoning, there's no abstracting away principles, there's no abstracting away the truth, and then aligning our behavior and aligning what we do on the truth, and yes, that truth could be fallible, truth is fallible, but a mechanism, a means of learning from reality, they don't consider that reason. I'm not sure what they call it exactly, and that's important because it just emphasizes the idea that as objectivists, as promoters of a radical set of ideas, as promoters of something truly new, different, it's really, really crucial for us to define our terms. Frank says it sounds contient, yes, they basically completely accept the Kantian understanding of the concept of reason. Now, you could argue that that exists in Locke as well, that to some extent at least, not fully, Locke was a rationalist, at least in terms of his justifications for his epistemology, not necessarily in the way it was explained, but in terms of his justification for it, he was a rationalist. But suddenly, their conception of reason is a Kantian conception of reason. So for example, Joam Khazoni hates Kant, but while hating Kant and thinking Kant is the destroyer of Western civilization, and we agree on that, he nevertheless embraces Kant's view of reason. And so do I think all conservatives. And therefore reason is out because reason is just rationalistic unrelated to empirical knowledge. And what they can't conceive of, or what is difficult for them to conceive of, and where they fault, they error lies, is the unwillingness to accept this context, content of the objective, as Ayn Rand understands it. That is as objective reality and then objectivity, and then this objectivist concept of reason. And it's not just objectives, concept of reason. This is science. This is how science is done, right? You observe reality. You observe certain phenomena in reality. You observe certain relationships in reality. You abstract from that an understanding of it, you integrate it into the rest of your knowledge, and you come up with an understanding of it that then in science you attest. You would come up with a hypothesis in scientific method, and you attest that hypothesis. But you always start with experience. You always start with the facts. That is the identification part of reason. You identify what's going on. Then you integrate it, and that's the new knowledge. And then you test your integration against reality. You reduce it back to reality to see if it actually is true. And that kind of abstraction, which is what science does, which is what the scientific method's all about, which is what we see in action with science. They don't have a sense of it. They don't have a sense of it. And of course, part of it is that they're not scientists, and they're intellectuals, and they live in their own little bubble, and they come up with intellectual arguments. And I think religion plays a bit in this, right? The wall of revelation, the wall of discovering truth that's divorced from experience. So John's an interesting religionist because he's an empiricist. So it was interesting because it just reinforces the idea that we as radicals have to really, we really have to define our terms constantly. What do we mean by reason? You can't just take it because we all understand each other. Take it that everybody else out there understands us as well. They don't. Most people have a content understanding of reason. And I think that if you're mentioning reason, you're talking about some deduction from original, I don't know, some kind of arbitrary axioms. And none of that is indeed true. New knowledge, almost all new knowledge is inductive. And this is not me saying all new knowledge is inductive. It's not me saying, this is, I'm running a peak of this is objectivism. So that was, I thought, interesting in preparing for the debate, the extent to which that is true, to the extent to which they are anti reason, because they have a one conception of reason. And indeed, the right conception of reason is beyond them. They can't comprehend it. And indeed, most philosophers can't comprehend it. Anyway, so I thought the debate was a good debate. It was a debate I think people could learn from. It was a debate that, you know, I think John focused on objections to individualism rather than positive presentation of the virtue of conservatism. And that gave me an opportunity to rebut them. I also thought that the questions brought out a lot of that. There were a lot of good questions. And generally, the audience was particularly intellectual. I'd say most audience were objectivists, but there were a number of students there who asked questions. And the questions were good. And they were not just, they were good questions. And they were not got your questions, which is always a danger with an objectivist audience. They were good thoughtful questions that got us talking about important things. Okay, let's look at some of these super chat. Robert says, excellent debate is always the question for which they, socialists, nationalists, have no answers why. Why should one act for the sake of something anything, which is no personal value significance? Yes. And that's the sense in which he never made a positive case for conservatism. Now, I asked that why. I asked the why in terms of, you know, my objective objection to his collectivism. And I asked it in my opening statement, and he never really answered because there never really is an answer. And, but that is, that is the key. And that's why I think there's so much more content on the side of individualism to talk about, including to attack. So I think much of the conversation, both in the debate and at the, at the freedmen interview was very much on the focused on the individualism. But again, I am interested, curious about your responses to the debate and what you thought there was covered and whether you have any questions coming out of it, any comments, any suggestions, any criticisms. So please use the super chat to do all that. We're at about $170 so far. Okay. Michael asks with $50. Thank you, Michael. Yohan mentioned he was caring for mentally apparent and gets no selfish benefit from it. However, but he is doing it out of tradition. Why don't you address this during the debate? How would you handle such a situation in your own life? If I remember right, that was during the Q&A, you can't address everything. And it's, it's really, I mean, that is a, it's a complicated issue. You have to attribute motivation to him. And so, so it's complicated. And it's difficult to do when you're asked to only respond to questions with two minutes, which is what we were asked to only have two minutes. So I, there were other things that I thought were more important relevant to that. But here's what I would have said. I would have said two things. If it's truly you're doing it only out of a sense of duty and out of a sense of tradition, then I think it is a sacrifice. And it's not good. You shouldn't be doing it. Why are you doing it? Where's the, where's the positive answer to why? Tradition is not an answer. Tradition or tradition is an answer, but it's an irrational answer. It's not, if you don't have a self-interested reason to do it, if you don't have a rational reason to do it, if you're doing it just because that's what people do, that's what's expected of me, now you're complete second-handed, or this is the tradition that's complete second-handed. I expect you at least to have some explanation, but that's the problem with collectivism, tradition, altruism, is they don't have an answer to the why. They don't have an answer to why do you do it. What's the reason? And they certainly don't have a reason to answer, partially because they don't believe in reason as important. How would I handle the situation? Well, it depends. And that's the thing that happens when you have a rational morality. It depends is obvious. Everything is contextual. Everything depends on the circumstances, the relationship, what's going on. For example, how close is this relative to me? Or in this case, parent. But let's say it's a relative. I think he said relative, not parent. How close is the relative to me? Close, distant, I see him all the time, never see him at all. So what is the relationship? How important is this person to me? It's a parent I kind of like, but I never see, and don't care that much for. It's a parent I love, respect, admire, who had a crucial part in raising me and helping me become the person I become. My relationship with that person is completely different depending on that answer. So who is the person? What's my relationship to it is, defines how I would deal with that situation. A remote relative, or even a close relative that is remote in a sense that I didn't have a relationship, don't have a relationship with. Obviously, I wouldn't care for. I mean, I'd consider providing some funding with other family members to provide support to them if I had some positive relationship with them. But if I had no positive relationship with them, I wouldn't even do that. If it was my wife, my child, a parent that I love deeply, then of course I would do it. Not out of a sense of tradition, or out of a sense of duty, but out of a sense of love. This person is dear to me. They are struggling. They're having a hard time. They need help, even though it's hard, even though it's painful. They're part of me. You can't separate the people I love in that sense from me. So of course I would take care of them. Of course it would help them out. Of course it would be difficult. But it is part of what it means to have a deep relationship with somebody. It's part of what it means to love. Part of that is to take care of somebody. Particularly as we grow older, this becomes evident. As we grow older, things are going to be rough. You don't just walk away from somebody you love because things are rough. You don't walk away from somebody you love because they're hurting. They're struggling. In the country, what then does your love mean? It's the same as a question somebody asked me actually in Denver, am I talking Denver? Well what about soldiers who fight in a war? Aren't they being selfless? No. If your values are sometimes going to acquire you to do difficult things, your values are sometimes going to require you to risk your life. Your values are sometimes going to require you to spend a lot of money. So for example, for a soldier, your values are sometimes going to require you to go to war because your value of freedom, the value of living on your own terms, the value of providing for your family and for the people that you love and making sure that they live under freedom, that sometimes will require you to risk your life. It certainly required the Founding Fathers to risk their lives. Not to risk your life for it. Not to fight for it. It's indeed a betrayal of yourself, a betrayal of your values. And this is what people get wrong about individualism. This is what people get wrong about the whole idea of individualism. Individualism doesn't mean living on a desert island. Individualism doesn't mean not caring about anybody else. Individualism in the pursuit of happiness doesn't mean short termism. It means identifying the values that will make you happy and fighting for those. And sometimes you will fight for them and not win. And it means that if a person, another person, a friend, a lover, is in deep trouble or is deeply hurting or is mental problems or physical problems, then one cares for them because they are a value to you and it's your loyalty to your own values that you do it. This is why it's selfish to do it because it's your loyalty to your own values. And that's what people don't get about being selfish. Being selfish is not about going by emotion. Being selfish is not about being short term. Being selfish is not about some superficial, I want to have my ice cream now. Being selfish means deciding on choosing, evaluating constantly, reaffirming a higher key of values and then fighting for those values. Now, not at arbitrary higher care values. Not at higher care values based on tradition. Not at higher care values based on what other people think. Higher care values that you have discovered that you have chosen as yours because these are the principles that you believe will lead to your happiness consistent with your morality, consistent with your philosophy. And you don't just willy-nilly dump a bunch of them just because, whoops, it's going to take a lot of work. Part of being a valuer is being a worker. It's working hard to achieve them, right? So I think that's a deep misunderstanding of what individualism means. Good question, Michael. Thank you. Let's see. I had another $50 question here. Let's find it. Yeah, Wes says, I found it interesting when Yoram brought up that not all relationships are voluntary. That seems to leave the door wide open for a tribal nation to have control over all relationships they think are important. Yes, I think that's right. And that's the key. Look, it's true that the fact that you were born into a particular family is not voluntary, right? You don't get to choose your parents. You don't get to choose the country you were born into. You don't get to choose the tribe that your family happens to belong to. And my point is so, once you're capable of choice, once you're capable of doing those choices, those are all metaphysically given. But once you're capable of choosing, you should evaluate your parents. You should evaluate your tribe. You should evaluate your country. Evaluate in the context of your life and choose what relationship you want to have with your parents, what relationship you want to have with your tribe, what relationship you want to have with your country. And one of the points that we never got into, really, not in the debate and not in the next few minutes of view, is this is why I am so adamant about immigration. You should be able to choose where you live among the many choices. And nobody has a right. Nobody has a right to tell you you can't live here. As long as you're not violating any other people's rights, the fact that you happen to be born to the wrong tribe, in the wrong nation, with the wrong parents, does not somehow limit your right to your own life, does not somehow limit your right to your own pursuit of happiness. So I think this is really, really important that they can't tell the difference between what is metaphysically given and what is actually chosen. And once we get the choice, once we get to what's available to human choice, that's when coercion is out. That's when you want to maximize the opportunities for people to actually make choices. That's why freedom is so important. Because freedom is the mechanism by which, within the realm of what's available to human beings to choose, freedom allows you to make the choices based on your values, your high-care values, based on your pursuit of your happiness, conservatism or any form of statism. You know, restricts those choices, limits those choices, chooses whether you're okay or not okay, what you should be allowed to choose or not. And God forbid you were born in Nigeria, now the choice to live in a free country is not available to you because we who live in the free country don't like the color of your skin, don't like the place you come from, don't like the culture you supposedly bring with you, so you're out. Which is disgusting to say the least. So, yeah, choices are, choices are what freedom is all about. The ability to use your mind, your reason to make choices, to act on those choices and to live the life that you want to live within the realm of what's available. That's what that's what it's about and that's what we fight for. If we're not fighting for that, then it's hell with it. And not tradition, not tribalism, not conservatism, none of that has legitimacy. Yeah, F your culture, absolutely Richard. F your culture. Freedom is what this is about. This is not about preserving some frigging culture that you happen to have that you want to exclude people because of whatever politics is about freedom, not about preservation. Conservatism is about preservation. Of course, some cultures are better than others. By a long shot, I've been arguing that since, you know, for 40, 50 years. And Western culture is the best culture and Western culture when it was capitalist and free and where people could emigrate into it freely as they did in the 19th century was even better than it is today. Yeah, culture is a great and the best culture will win. If you know you've got the best culture, if you advocate you've got the best culture, if you have self esteem around your culture, but culture having a good culture does not give you the right to use force to exclude people. You don't get a gun because you have a good culture to shoot people who you just don't like. Wes says audio is wonky for a little bit. Maybe it was me talking about, you know, culture and the YouTube was trying to soften my words. So they, they made it a little wonky. It really boggles my mind how advocates of freedom, advocates of freedom want to use coercion and force to exclude people from freedom. It's truly amazing to me that even advocates of freedom don't understand what freedom is. But that's what fear does to people. That truly is what fear does to people. All right, let's see other $20 questions related to the debate and, and yeah, swordfish studio is right. I was at the debate in person. Cool. You did a good job. Thank you. Joem didn't have an answer for the limiting principle of his philosophy because there is none. You can justify anything when the nation has more moral value than individual. Exactly. And that's the answer to many people on the, on the, on the, on the chat right now, right? You can justify anything when you define your collective and you get to exclude other people and you get to use force against them when they have violated your rights. That's how you get wars. That's how you get genocides. That's how you get statism. That's how you lose freedom. And the most powerful force today leading us towards the loss of freedom is fear, fear of the other, fear of the other. So, yes, he didn't have an answer to the limiting principle of his philosophy because there is no limiting principle. That limiting principle needs to be rediscovered and rethought and reexamined. And at the end of the day, the limiting principle is going to be determined by the people. As he said, he kept saying, and he said this again in the interview, you've got to trust the politicians. You've got to let good people and you've got to trust them and they'll do the right thing. Well, how's that worked out for anybody? And why? If you give people power, what will happen? If you give people power over other people's lives, what would happen? The more power you give them, the more they'll abuse it. And conservatism, even if it starts out from a good place, oh, we're just going to preserve the American Constitution, all it can end up in because it has no principle guiding it, because it doesn't recognize the sanctity of the individual, because it refuses to accept the primacy of individual rights, which it doesn't, it doesn't accept individual rights, has to ultimately slip, slide away into statism, ever-growing statism. And you're seeing that, you're seeing that with Trumpism presenting itself as conservatism, and you're seeing it with national conservatives who adopt a conservative mantle and now who are justifying statism and nationalism and central planning and trade barriers and controlled economies and control over people's lives in a variety of different ways. And the institution of religion, that's the other aspect of national conservatism, the addition of religion into politics, all in the name of, this is the best we can do to conserve the culture, God forbid, our culture slips away. And look, Yoram is, I think, the best among them. And yet, if conservatives had dominated in the 19th century, we would have not have had an industrial revolution. If we had, it would have been a lot slower. We would have not had wealth creation. We would have not had entrepreneurs. We would have not had the wealth. Today, we would not have the technology that we have today. And just because you guys are afraid, again, fear is the number one driver of statism, number one driver of statism. You're afraid of immigrants. So you use the state to shut them out. You're afraid of economic competition. You use the state to shut it down. You're afraid of big tech. You use the state to break it up. You're afraid of wokeism. You use the state to impose a different set of ideas on people. Ain't gonna end well. Fear should not be a motivation for anything. Throughout the 19th century, conservatives regaled against the industrial revolution. Change was much too fast. They reeled against romantic love. People choosing to love each other, having sex before marriage, God forbid. How could that be? We must reign it in. So what we have today is statists across the political spectrum. And the conservatives are just as bad as the others. I think worse only in the fact that they are more likely to long term dominate politically. Maybe not ideologically, but politically. I think America is much more conservative than it is woke. Gail, yes, good question. We need to show an obligation of duty in family. Evaluation of relationship is key. Yeah, I don't think duty is the right word. Duty is something that you do without reason. So I would not use duty. But yes, you've got to evaluate the relationship, evaluate what you should do in the context of the relationship. Wes's question we did already. Let's see, how would you want to explain a moral atheist like me? How would Yoram explain? I could explain. How would Yoram explain? A moral atheist like me, I don't like steel, etc. I mean, I don't think Yoram thinks that atheists can't be moral. I think he's explained it as atheists for a variety of different reasons have adopted what he would consider a fundamentally religious morality, but they've adopted it. So he would say the source and origin of the idea of do not steal and do not lie and do not murder, the source and origin of that is religion. But you don't need religion in order to hold those ideas. I think that's what he would say. And again, I think this is much more Jewish than Christian in that sense, the idea that Jews are much more secular, even religious Jews than Christians are. And they have a very different conception of altruism. For example, Yoram goes on and on in particularly in the interview with Lex Freedom, emphasizing the differences between Judaism and Christianity. And the Jewish ethics is not the Christian ethics. It's not focused on sacrifice. It's not focused on turning the other cheek. Lex Freedom at some point asked Yoram directly, do you believe it's ever appropriate to turn the other cheek? And Yoram says, no, absolutely not. It's never appropriate to turn the other cheek. I like that. You know, Jews don't play that game of sacrifice and weakness that Christians do. Why would you ever want to turn the other cheek? No says preach on Iran. Thanks, Noel. That's very generous contribution. I really appreciate it. And just to give you an update in that regard, we're about $350, maybe $340, 350. So still $250 to go. So I appreciate the support guys and anything, anything you guys, you guys can do to get us to the $600 is greatly appreciate. And I skipped the shows last week. So this is our first week show in a week. Hopefully we can get us up to a $600 mark show tomorrow will be at 2 p.m. East Coast time. And then Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. at 7 p.m. East Coast time, I keep mixing up for the weekend time and East Coast time. But yes, we're $350. We've got $250 to go. Let's make it count. Let's make it happen, guys. Let's see. Cook says, since I didn't get to buy you a beer in Austin, yeah, because you guys went to, what I was told to me was some kind of dive, dive bar. I don't do dive bars. You want to have a beer with me? You have to come with me. It's a nice place where you can sit in comfortable chairs and really the most important aspect of having a drink. And I know this is very strange to you guys, but much of your culture is strange to me too. Quiet. Quiet. I mean, the thing I find more obnoxious than anything else is going to a club or bar where it is so loud, you can't think. Never mind talk. Have a conversation. Have a discussion. You just can't think. You can't hear yourself. What's the point? I guess if you're just going to get drunk, then that's perfect, because the last thing you want to do as you're getting drunk is think. But I don't get drunk. So to me, if I'm going, and this is not mantis criticism, you cook, I know I'm going off this tangent off of your thing, but they went to a dive bar and if they wanted to really hang out, they shouldn't have gone to a dive bar. They should have come to a nice bar, quiet bar where we could hang out and talk and have a conversation. See, it drives me nuts to go into a bar or a club. I don't understand this idea of picking up women, girls, whatever you want to call it, in a place where you can't exchange a word, because it's so loud you can't hear each other one way or another. I just don't get clubs. I don't get noisy bars. I mean, I get concerts, but the whole beauty of concerts is you don't talk. You just go and listen to music. I get dance music, but then, okay, we're not going to talk. And then why would you go there to pick up somebody? You go there to hang out with somebody you already picked up? I don't know. I am confused by modern culture. Coke says it was called dive bar as a joke. They have a scuba dive theme. Outside was quiet, and I agree I like quiet. Good. Well, maybe next time. I don't know. Anyway, next time in Austin, Coke will try to hang out at some way quiet, and we'll do that. All right, let's see. What else do we have? We have a bunch of additional questions of strolled in. We're now at $470, so we're getting quite close to the $600 goal. So another $130, and we're there. So please participate. Join us in the Follick & Fund. If the protection of military secrets is necessary for national security, is espionage of an act of military aggression? When should a free nation spy? Why should a free nation respond to espionage upon itself by how should by foreign states? Yes, I think espionage is an act of war. Espionage is a violation of relationships between countries, and it's a violation of the laws of the country, which you live in. Spies should be dealt with harshly. Is it an act of war that would justify setting troops in? Well, it depends on the context. Everything, of course, is a context. You're not going to go to nuclear war with the Soviet Union because you catch a spy. You penalize the enemy in some way, and you keep going. You don't go to nuclear war over stuff like that. But I just watched a movie I recommend. So here's a movie I recommend. It's called The Courier. The Courier, it's with the British actor who played Sherlock in Sherlock. I forget his name. It's very well done. It's very well made. It's an interesting story. It's based on a true story, and it's about spying. It's about a spy. And yeah, I would definitely recommend this movie. It's very, very well done, and exciting, and interesting, and pretty amazing that it was a true story. But so when should a free nation spy? A free nation's a spy on anybody who's a threat. But it should not spy on its friends. It should not spy on countries that it does not want to appear to be an aggressor. So it should be cautious. But Benedict Cumberbatch is the actor in the Courier. Thank you, Seeker. Yeah, it's definitely a movie worth watching. It's very well done. And it's about bravery, and it's about courage, and it's about how courage and bravery affect you psychologically. His wife in the movie. The wife. So in the movie, a businessman is recruited to be a spy for the Americans and the British in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. And she's this ordinary sales guy. Not much of a life. Not much of a, not much self-esteem, not much umph to him. And the movie's very good at showing it how he starts spying, and in a sense it gives him a certain self-esteem. He starts, for example, working out. His sex drive goes up, so he starts having sex with his wife more often. She doesn't know what's going on. She thinks maybe he's having an affair. You know, she has no clue what's going on exactly, because he's not allowed to tell her he's spying. So that kind of psychological effect. And while he's very, very afraid early on, he builds up courage. So in the end, you know, he's willing to do something pretty crazy out of this sense of courage and the sense of confidence, which he pays for afterwards. But so it's very good in that sense. Look, we have no policy, a foreign policy today, but let's say you catch a, I don't know, these days a lot of the spying is cyber, crypto, cyber, not crypto, cyber spying. Imagine you get, you discover the Chinese have gone into your networks and stolen a bunch of stuff and done stuff. Well, I mean, if you had any kind of self-esteem as a government, as a defense establishment, you would then basically smoke as many Chinese computers as you could. If you could prove it, it was the Chinese. You would go into the Chinese government computers and you would destroy them. Hack anything you can and just set them on fire to the extent that you can. Put bugs in them to spin out of control. Whatever it is, you can do. I don't know enough about computers to know what you can do. You can do a lot. And if they can hack into our computers, I'm sure we can hack into this. So retaliate. But retaliate in a way that makes it clear to them that don't do this again. We're stronger than you. We're more committed to you than you. We're more aggressive than you. We'll crush you. So if that's how you want to play, fine. Okay. Fendt Harper says, okay, wait a minute. I'm going to wait with Dracula. Wes says, I heard your arm's opinion that the founders were conservatives towards traditional British values. The idea that the founders at the time of the research were conservatives seems ridiculous to me. Yeah. I mean, he has a whole theory. He's coming up with a book about this where really the conservative movement starts sometimes in the 15th, in the 16th century and has these precursors and what many of the founding fathers do, want. Not all of them. He acknowledges not all of them. He never mentions Madison, for example. And when I said Madison wrote the constitution, he said, oh, that's just, what did he say? That's propaganda. And I think it was half joking. But he thinks that Washington and Hamilton and Adams and others were basically wanted to preserve the British constitution without a king, but basically preserve the essence of the British constitution in the United States. And that's what motivated them. I think he's completely wrong. I'm curious to add, I know that Brad Thompson would think he's completely wrong. I didn't get into a deep argument about that because it's not my area of expertise. And I don't think it's crucial to the debate. But no, I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that the founders, including Washington, certainly including Adams, but also including Hamilton were revolutionaries. And in spite of the flaws that all of them had, all of them had some flaws, including Jefferson, who put aside public education and so, you know, who advocated for public education and so on, all had massive flaws. And none of them were conservatives, certainly not in the sense of conservatives in today's world. At least back then you could argue that there were certain features of British common law and British constitutional government that were worth preserving while making changes to a lot of other things to create something new. But today, what are they trying to conserve? Richard asks me just, this is just in the chat, it's not a super chat, but I'm just in the mood to answer this. He says, does Iran still hate Trump? More than ever, more than ever. I mean, he's turned out to be, if that's even possible, more despicable than I even imagined him to be when he was president. His behavior since he lost in November is so beneath contempt that I despise and hate Trump more than I've ever despised and hated him. It just grows on me. The more I know about him, the more I know about what he did, and the more I see his behavior today, the more I fear his next presidency, and the more I despise everything about him, everything about him. What did I want to say about, yeah, let me just say, this is what the founding fathers did, and this is what conservatives can't imagine doing, because they don't use reason in this way. They don't think that this is how you should use your mind, that this is what rationality means. Right? And that is the founding fathers looked at history. They looked at the empirical reality. They looked at the British common law. They looked at the British system of government. They looked at the British division of labor. They looked at the Venetian republic. They looked at Athenian democracy. They looked at the entire history of mankind and politics and everything like that. And they extracted from that. They abstracted away. They took away all the non-essentials, and they said, what works for human flourishing? What works to preserve liberty? What works in terms of the value of the human being? And first they came up with a concept of individual rights as this idea of we need to respect that in order to promote human flourishing. And then they said, how do we devise a government? And they took some pieces from the English. They took some pieces from different places, and they put a system together that, yes, is very similar to England, but has no king by the way, but is also very different than England. It has a federalist arrangement, for example, where the central government doesn't have as much power as England does. So they weren't conservative, but they weren't rationalists in a sense of detached from reality. They built the best system available based on all the knowledge that they had, from history, from understanding human nature, from understanding the world, from understanding reality. They used reason to perfect the world out there. Ooh, all my enemies have come out. This is interesting. I don't know what drew them to me tonight, but we've got a bunch of haters on the chat. It's always good to have them here wasting their time listening to somebody they despise. Let's see, Shay says, Judaism is duty to the law, not tack of is to the weak, better or worse, different at least. So let me defend Judaism a second, Shay, because I mean, there's some truth to that, but this is the thing about Judaism, which is not as true, I think certainly not in Catholicism or the Protestantism and the formation starts getting to this. In Judaism, the law is not well defined. The law is up for interpretation. The law is to argue about and figure it out so that you have a Talmud where you have different schools of law, different views of the law, debating how to apply it to different cases, which you do not get in Catholicism. Here is the law, you shall do the thing that I say. In Judaism is, here's the law. What does it mean? How do you apply it? Does it work here? Does it work? And we might disagree as they say 50 rabbis will have 52 opinions about any, the meaning of any particular passage in the Old Testament. So there is a tradition of disputation, of argument, of study, of analysis, of disagreement in Judaism, in the application of Judaism, at least in the healthy part of Judaism, not in the crazy, ultra-orthodox, dogmatic, mindless Judaism. But in the healthier part of Judaism, the debates and considers how to apply and what the law actually means. And that's very different. And that's a huge plus. And I think people like Yom Khazani and others would argue that even the common law in England and some of the principles that came out of the common law in England were based on the Talmud, or at least were inspired by the Talmud. Now I don't know if that's true or not. But it does make sense. There is a common law tradition, like the Talmud is a type of common law. And the idea of disputation, which is baked into much of Judaism, at least as a tradition, if not as a religion, is healthy, is healthy. And then of course, remember Judaism also was Aristotelianized by Mayanities and by other Jewish philosophers who brought Aristotle into the religion and made it better in that time. So I think that while it's true that Judaism is duty to the law, because the law is not fixed, it's not intrinsic, it's not categorical imperatives that you just know what it is, like it is for Kant, right? And Kant is duty to the law. But Kant, the duties are there. You know what they are. And if you don't know what they are, I will tell you what they are. And you just have to do them. Jews say, wait a minute. Why? Why should I do them? What are they? How do you explain it? Give me a citation. That's not what that citation means. And that's much healthier. It's still not right, because they still give much more, much too much credence to a law written 2,000 years ago, much too much credence to rabbis who wrote 1,500 years ago, or 2,000 years ago, whatever. But Christianity is not like that, but certainly Catholicism at least is not like that. And that said, since Catholicism is super, super, you know, much, much worse than Judaism. And the Reformation, in a sense, opens it up. It gives you the ability to interpret. And that's why the Protestants have multiple sects. That's why you have lots of different Protestant churches, because they all interpret things differently. Now that, in a sense, is healthier than a dogmatic, top-down, rigid, authoritarian Catholic church, which is redundant because the Catholic church can only be authoritarian. That's its fundamental nature. The Pope speaks to God. God tells you what to do. Okay, a friend, Hopper asks, I recently read Dracula by Branch Stroker, very pro-human, praising the strength of reason and logic and broadcasting one's plans into the future. They say duty, but given the threat of Dracula, I would say it's selfish to fight Dracula. Yes, Dracula was written, I'm pretty sure, in a pretty good period, in a positive period, in a period in which people had a real belief in humanity. It's written in a time of reason. People should fight Dracula. Duty is used in a variety of different ways. But don't forget that there are certain ways in which it is used that are worse than others. So yes, you have to consider when they use the word duty and how they're using it and what context they use it. Suddenly, duty can be used as, this is the right thing to do. This is the self-interested thing to do. But that is not necessarily the case. Most people post-cont, and certainly that's not how Kant uses it. And I attack duty because that's what Kant used. He used the term duty and he used it in the most authoritarian way possible. Derek, I remember to do that. I will do it, but let me get through the $20 questions because they're a priority because that's what I always say. If you would have put $20 on it, I would have already pitched the book. Bree says, your most popular videos are response videos. I think if you want more viewers, do what the viewers like. They are very successful YouTube channels that only do debunk videos, I would say 50-50 left and right. I agree, Bree. One of my resolutions for 2022 is to try to do, I don't know, maybe a response video once a week or at least once a week when I am in town. So of the four videos I do a week when I'm in town, I do one that is a response video because I think you're absolutely right. It's what people watch. It gets the most views. It also gets the most subscriptions. So I plan on doing more of those. And yes, I agree with you, half left, half right. That'll piss off some of the people in the audience right now. Derek says $20 thing was my idea last year. It absolutely was Derek's idea. And now he's suffering the consequences. Now he's suffering the consequences of his own idea hoisted by his own batard. Sorry, Derek. We're almost there. But yes, Derek really got us into the super chat thing. He got us into asking you for money through super chat, got us into the $20 gets priority, got us into, you know, kind of doing more kind of active fundraising during the thing. I think we've reigned it in a little bit since then because some of you have complained or suggested that. So I've done that. But Derek gets a lot of credit for doing all of that. Thessie says, ever thought about opening your own objectivist ball might promote the philosophy? Yeah. Why don't you do it? Somebody out there, here's a call for somebody to open up an objectivist ball. But here's my proposal. Maybe this is wimpy, but maybe not. How about we open up an objectivist coffee shop? Because I don't know, a bomb is fundamentally essentially not a place for thinking, not a place for philosophy. It's the opposite. Let's be honest, it's a place to escape reality, to escape thinking, to lose real contact with reality. So Thessie, here is your mission if you agree to accept it. Let's have an objectivist coffee shop. We can call it, I don't know, ASA, Coffee is Coffee. I'm not good with names. We could call it the objectivist hangout. We could call it, I don't know, the coffee of reason. I don't know. This is all really bad. But let's do a coffee shop. Let's start a chain. We can do the first one for Thessie. We can do the first one in London. And yeah, a coffee bar. We can call it a coffee bar. We can have a coffee serving coffee all day and make it a wine bar in the evening, serving like really, really good kind of appetizers with really, really good wine. I like that. Because after you've debated philosophy all day long, what you need is a nice glass of wine to relax with good food before you go to bed. So I like this. The objectivist, Gold's Coffee Shop. Gold's Goldscher's Coffee Shop. Gold's Coffee, beer and wine. No, beer. I don't know. Yeah, you can't. All right, beer and wine as well. Something. You know what the hell? This is my challenge to you guys. There must be an entrepreneur out there who can make this a reality. As Derek says, my names are all terrible. Yes, they are. But you guys have to come up with something good. All right, we're about 60 bucks short. So three $20 questions and we're there. Go. We don't have a lot of time to get there. So I'll leave it in your hands. Capitalist Nick says, we need to get a debate with Bradley Thompson and your arm. Bradley has expertise to challenge all his premises and revisionism behind his historical views in the American revolutionaries. What kind of chances are of that happening? Who knows? They might very much happen. You know, bad can always invite your arm for a debate at Clemson University. Remember, your arm is just one of these national conservatives, I hope. First, I'm hoping to do a series of debates with your arm. I think we can do, we can take the debate we did on the road and maybe get into more depth on some issues and change it over time. I think it would be really, really interesting and really, really valuable. Your arms agreed to that. We just need to find the funding for that. And we need it. I think venues will be easy. So I really think it's about the funding. It's not, you know, I don't think something like that. That's something like that is not cheap. But I'm hoping we can do that, maybe do, you know, five debates a year or something like that, one of them in Israel, the rest of them in campuses around the United States, universities are ideal. But then maybe you can debate other people. But I'd also like to debate other national conservatives. I think this is, I think this is the most important debate in the world. I think the debate against the left is, you know, it's what is going to replace the left that is so crucial. All right, let me get to Derek's point. As you know, I interviewed Matt Ridley, what was it, two weeks ago, when his book, Viwell, came out, Viwell, The Search for the Origins of COVID-19. I thought it was an excellent interview. I encourage you all to watch it. You can watch it on my channel. You can watch it on my Ingenuism channel. Both of those channels are available for you to watch the Matt Ridley interview. Matt is really smart, really thoughtful, a man of reason, I think, and somebody that is really objectively dug into this question of the origins of COVID. And the book doesn't come to a definitive conclusion. It certainly is tilted towards the lab leak theory, but that is not definitive. And I think what I like about Matt is that he stays objective. He realizes what he knows and what he doesn't know, what is evidence, and what is not evidence, what is just hearsay, what is evidence versus what is proof, what is certainty versus what is probability. Most of the people I know today can't think in those terms. They want definitive. Trump said X, therefore, X is true. Biden said X, therefore, X is false. There's no subtlety. There's no looking at evidence. There's no studying. There's no thinking. Matt does that thinking. And I think that the book, which is a good read, a fun read, an interesting read, viral, viral research for COVID-19, which you can get on Amazon, is a really, really good read. It reads like a detective story. You get a sense of what it would take to figure out where this virus came from. And I know many of you think that the way to discover truth is to watch a YouTube video, buy somebody with a doctor in front of his name. That's enough. We're done. We're finished. Dr. X said something that confirms my biases. Therefore, it must be true. Well, viral is a good illustration of the kind of work, effort, thinking, analysis that has to go into figuring out what is true and what is not. Highly recommended. If you buy it, they're really trying to make a push today and tomorrow for people to buy the book. I think the best-seller lists take in information from today and tomorrow, and then it's kind of over. So if you buy the book today or tomorrow, you put an order in for the book today or tomorrow, then it will help the book get onto the best-seller list, which is a huge predictor of whether the book sells well in the future or not. Derek says, origin, not origins. Oh, I said origins. The search for the origin of COVID-19. Singular origin of COVID. Matt's great probably agrees with you and me more than most of your show's viewers. Oh, I don't know. I think Matt and I disagree in quite a few things, but when it comes to things like science and innovation, it comes to things like objective analysis of these kind of things, Matt is definitely a person to read and definitely a person to look up to. So I'm an admirer. Count me as an admirer of Matt's work. All right. We've got a few other $20 questions. Let's see. James. Some people might say your view in Israel is nationalism. If one is against the right of return, aren't you asking three million Palestinians to sacrifice as a collective? Are they all terrorists? No, they're not all terrorists. Some of them might be amazing positive people, but there is no right to return. There just isn't such a right. They engaged in a war. They took up arms. They deserted their homes in a war. They lost. Suck it up. They lost. Now, when peace comes to the Middle East, when we live in a world where 20 Arab nations are not trying to destroy the state of Israel, when we live in a world where anti-Semitism is not everywhere and Jews are not being rounded up or threatened or attempted to be murder on a regular basis, then Israel should not have restricted immigration. But right now, restricted immigration is part of itself defense. Right now, they have no choice. And that means restricting people that potentially will hurt them. And since the battle lines are around Islam and around Arab and around Palestinian, then that's how they should restrict people coming into the country. But there is no right to return. If somebody, and I've said this many times, if a Palestinian can show that their land was unjustly stolen from them, taken from them, or they were driven off their land, not in a military operation, but under just the sheer, just out of spite and out of want of taking their land, then absolutely they should use the court system in Israel and the court system should agree and they should be able to get their land back. But three million Palestinians, I don't even know where their number comes from, but whatever number of Palestinians who live in refugee camps around the Middle East, they chose that life. They ran. They weren't asked to leave. They ran. They were told by their own leaders that once they were victorious they could all come back. They took up weapons and tried to kill Israelis. They should have settled in other countries and emigrated. When you lose a war, that's what happens. I mean, it's stunning to me. You know that Poland after World War II kicked out, I think it was three million Germans, literally uprooted them from their homes and sent them to Germany and said, you cannot live in Poland. Even though those Germans had lived in Poland there for generations and generations and generations. But they were ethnically, whatever the hell that means, German. Do those Germans now, should they be filing a right to return? What about all the Germans that were kicked out of the Czech Republic? Millions. So you don't have a right to return. You lose a war you've lost. Don't lose wars. That's a lesson. Don't run. Don't act from fear. Evaluate your options. The Arabs who stayed in Israel during the War of Independence lived better lives in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East. The Arabs who used to work for me as construction contractors, when I was a civil engineer, used to tell me they blessed Allah every morning that they were born in Israel because their life in Israel was so much better than their life would have been in Jordan and Syria or Jordan Syria or Lebanon or any other Muslim country. So no, it's not collectivism to defend yourself against an enemy that declares itself your enemy. Alex asks, oh no, $20. You want to sum up the debate succinctly. Conservatism is a political ideology. Individualism is a morality and the fundamental differences are epistemological. Would that be accurate? No, I don't think so. Individualism is not a morality. Egoism is a morality. Self-interest is a morality. Individualism is a political system based on a political moral principle. And individualism and conservatism are dueling, contradictory, political ideologies. Individualism is the political ideology of capitalism. To a large extent, individualism, capitalism are interchangeable. Individualism places the emphasis on individual rights. Capitalism places the emphasis on a free economy, just in its terminology. But individualism is the system of individual rights. It's a system in which the sanctity man that's based on a morality of self-interest, a morality that views man as an ending himself. The fundamental difference is epistemological, sure, but it is also moral. Conservatism does not view individual life as an ending itself. It does not view the purpose of the human life. It's the pursuit of happiness. And therefore it does not view the political system as that political system that enables the pursuit of happiness. So conservatism and individualism fundamentally opposing political ideologies that have cut fundamentally different ethical systems and fundamentally different epistemologies. One is based on reason as objective, as an objective feature of faculty. And the other is based on either intrinsicism by some or empiricism by others. Hopefully James that clarifies. Cooke says, weren't there intellectual salons and revolutions that began in taverns during the 18th century? Yes, in the 18th century, in the 19th century, intellectuals hung up with coffee shops all the time. There was the salons that people would come and hang out together at somebody's living room. They would usually hire musicians, would play concerts, they would have book clubs, they would discuss books, they would discuss music, they would discuss the arts, they would have painters do exhibitions. At the 19th century, he had a vibrant intellectual aesthetic life. And it's something we don't have today. It doesn't exist today. I mean, where's the last time somebody invited you to a party where people sat quietly, listened to a trio playing beautiful music, you then got up and had an opportunity to chat. Maybe somebody led a conversation in some corner, you could participate or not. And then you could also look at beautiful paintings on the wall and maybe meet the artist who painted them. But that was a regular feature in London, in Paris, in Vienna. This is European culture at its best, at its grandest. And this is to a large extent unfortunately what America lacked. And I wish we could revive that tradition. Poets doing poetry recitals in people's homes and the people inviting their friends and people getting dressed up and making an evening of it. I'm not a big believer in getting dressed up, but other than that, I'm a huge... I used to do that. So when I lived in Austin in the 1980s, late 80s and early 90s, every single Friday, we got together with friends and that group sometimes was large, sometimes it was smaller, but there was a core seven people I think that were always there, something like that. But sometimes it was 15, sometimes it was 20, sometimes it was the seven. And we'd watch a movie every single Friday. And we'd usually have a conversation about it afterwards. And then in 1992 and 93, I ran a little project called Dan's House. And it was a friend of ours, Dan, one of the participants. And Dan's House had a living room that I had basically designed in a sense of chosen all the art for. And we had dozens of painting up on the wall. We had a really good television. And we used the house for study groups, for reading groups. We used the house for movie nights, music nights where people would come over and listen to music. And we did that every single weekend, sometimes both on Saturday and on Sunday, in addition to the Friday night movie night. I don't know anybody else who's done that. I don't know any other place in the world that that is happening. I wish Objectivus were more in tune with that cared more about the aesthetic experience in life cared more about socializing in a healthy kind of way around values around shared values. That would be amazing. But that's that's what I did. That's what I did for years. And that's the kind of thing I emphasized. Coke does something he calls the Jefferson dinner parties in Austin. And part of his vision is that vision of a salon like that, an intellectual salon. And I applaud him for doing that. I applaud him for doing that. I think that's one of the ways in which we will slowly take over the world is by showing people what is possible, what can be done, what kind of life can be lived. Cook says, I'm working on it here. And we have more seven regulars, more than seven regulars here, poetry, theater, art, music, books, ideas, we're doing it all now we just need to make sure we don't hang out at dive bars. And then it's all set, you know, these all should be, they should be nice places, quiet places, places where you could have real conversations, places that are geared towards the experience you want to have. So if you're going to watch a movie, no talking should be allowed during the movie. It should be dark. You should have a good television and you should be big, should be a big television. If you're going to listen to music, while the music is playing, nobody should be talking. It should be about the experience of the music and then afterwards you can discuss it. But while the music is playing, while the movie is playing, you don't talk. You completely focus your mind on the aesthetic experience. Somebody's reading poetry. You don't on the side chat and yell because you're destroying the experience for everybody else. So there's a real skill and art to doing these things right. And I'm excited about what Coke is trying to do in Austin. It's great. All right. Alex Leibovici says, the tradition of interpretation and Judaism is due to the absence of a central authority. Absolutely. Which is the result of the specific history of the tribe. Yes, I think that's right. But whatever the reason is, I think Judaism is a million times healthier than Christianity. It doesn't have original sin. It doesn't have guilt. Original sin leads to guilt. It doesn't have enough, the phobetarian streak that Christianity has. I think that's why you get Jews who are intellectuals, who dominate the intellectual world because they are thinkers. It's why you have so many Jewish scientists because they don't take dogma as the end result as the last word or whatever. It's about discovery and the process of interpretation and discussion, debate, and disagreement. That comes from a particular history, absolutely. But that history is important. That's the tradition. And in the case of Judaism, the tradition of Judaism is a lot healthier than the tradition of Christianity, particularly Catholicism, but Christianity more broadly. All right. If you have any more questions, Super Chat is the way to ask. Don't ask in the chat. I can't answer all the questions in the chat. All right. Let's go down. These are all non-$20 questions. Joao asks, do you believe in a unified soul or self or just in consciousness? And why do you say that the human being is indivisible when we shoot signals to different parts of the brain wanting different things? See, yes, I believe in a unified soul or self. You have to be careful how you define those things. I don't think those things are mystical or outside of reality. They are part of reality. What is the physics basis or the biological basis of self? I do not know. Nobody knows. But a soul or self is, it's not just consciousness, but it's a feature of consciousness. It's a feature of a particular kind of consciousness. It's a feature of human consciousness. Animals don't have a soul. They don't have a self. They don't have free will. Human beings do. Why do I think beings is indivisible? Because I think, well, it's not that humans, because you have a self, you define what you want. Now, is it potentially that different parts of the brain considering different aspects of the decision are providing you with input that would lead to different conclusions? Yeah. But that's what a self means. You get to decide. You get to be the integrator. You get to make it a whole, to make it a unity. But let me say something about research, brain research, and I'm thinking of bringing in a colleague who's a neuroscientist, who's an objectivist who's a neuroscientist to talk more about this. You got to be careful with this research. Not because the scientists are wrong or trying to deceive you or anything like that. It sounds like I missed the $20 question. Let me see if I can find it. Yeah, I can't go back and get it. So, capitalist Nick, can you just write the question in the comments like you are right now and I will take it. I'll believe you that it came into $20. I somehow didn't copy it over or deleted it by accident, but I will answer it. I am skeptical of the conclusions of research about very, very complex things where we do not have a deep understanding of like human consciousness and where sweeping conclusions are made. There's a famous experiment where a certain stimulus is created and you're supposed to click, use your finger, decide, make a decision and click your finger and it shows that before you make a conscious decision, in a sense the brain has already decided for you and therefore everybody uses that as proof there's no free will. Then it turns out that that's not what the experiment actually shows at all and people have redone it. How many of these experiments are repeatable? There's a huge problem in science today. Being able to repeat, you know, confirm experiments. So, all of that needs to go into consideration. Is this a legit experiment? Is the conclusion justified by what they find? Is this so new that they don't really know what they're talking about, that the results might be interesting, but the conclusions are too soon, too sweeping. There's a lot about the human brain we have no clue about, no clue about. So, anything about the human brain should be taken with a lot of grains of salt, a lot of grains of salt. Okay, capitalist nick, I'm waiting for your question. I don't quite, I don't see it. If anybody else has an ability to go back in the chat and find it and wants to repost it, I will answer it. All right, Liam asks, really good debate, sorry my question is off topic, but I'm trying to reconcile objectivism with physics. If reality is absolute, how can time be relative to the way Einstein proved in his equation? Look, you're asking, you're asking very, Stephanie just posted it. Where did you post it Stephanie? There it is. No, I don't see it. Where did Stephanie post it? Hi, why can't I find the question? Okay, here it is. We need to get a debate with Bradley Topson and Yoram. I said that, continued. Bradley has, oh, this is the question, how close do you think Ben Shapiro is to Yoram's national conservative views? Ben has a streak of free market libertarianism that is in conflict, conflicted with his conservative views. Yoram defines himself as a modern orthodox Jew. So I think that both consider themselves more than modern orthodox Jews. They both wear Yarmulkes, they both, I think, have a very similar kind of interpretation of Judaism. They both, I think, view the Old Testament in very similar ways in Jewish law in very similar ways. I do think Ben Shapiro is much more aligned with free markets and comes at his views about politics from the perspective of free markets. So much more from political economics has a much more positive view of the founding fathers in that perspective, not as conservatives, but as radicals. And has put some much stronger emphasis, much stronger weighting on markets. And I think ultimately I wonder, and I didn't push Yoram Hazoni on this, but I wonder whether Ben Shapiro has a better view of, let's say, gays, gay marriage, and other kind of social issue questions that Yoram does given his much more attachment to tradition. Now Ben Shapiro doesn't like the whole gay issue and doesn't think it's moral and so forth. But I think politically he's reconciled himself with the fact that they should have equal rights. I don't know what Yoram thinks of that. I have a feeling he might question and might argue for overturning gay marriage, for example, whereas Ben, I don't think would argue for that at this point. Maybe would, maybe I'm wrong. Oh, so we're back to the Einstein question. Look, this is a very difficult question and it's, but let me, let me put it this way. Physics cannot overturn philosophy. If physics makes an argument, like some interpretations of quantum mechanics, that basically say that reality is not what it is, that A is not A, then the physics is wrong, or more accurately the interpretation is wrong. And I think it's no accident that there are many interpretations, not many, there are other interpretations of quantum mechanics that don't deny the law of identity or the law of causality or of the idea of existence exists. And I think the same thing can be said of Einstein, right? You know, you can have mathematical equations that are true, but the interpretation of what they mean qua reality might not be. Einstein, for example, was heavily influenced by Kant, we know this. He has a somewhat rationalistic view of going from math to reality rather than from reality to math. And back and forth in a sense, which is I think the proper methodology. So the physics, i.e. what's actually going on out there? And the math, I think are consistent with the objectives metaphysics. But physicists often interpret the math and what's going on out there wrong. And that's up to them to make it reconcilable with the law of identity and the law of causality. And if it's not, then they've got a problem. But reality is absolute. Now reality is absolute doesn't mean, I don't know what that means reasonably time. You'd have to have now a theory of time. And what does time actually mean? Objective is math is a theory of time, but the theory of time is separate from the idea of reality is absolute. How does the theory of time fit into reality being absolute? How does the theory of time fit into Einstein's theory of time? These are very, very complicated questions, but don't confuse physics with philosophy and philosophy with physics. And you know, so they're real problems. And we shouldn't take everything we read about about people's interpretations of physics as those are the real interpretations of physics. I don't know what to make of the idea of the relativity of time. And I'm not sure what Einstein is showing is the time is relative in the sense that it has no absolute value. What does absolute mean in science versus what absolute means in philosophy? They can't contradict each other, but they could have different contexts. So the whole area of philosophy of science is complex and needs real work to integrate the two and to show how our major discoveries in modern physics are not in contradiction, at least most of them, the important ones, are not in contradiction with our philosophical truths. And I think that is what people are doing and that is what is real. All right, Lee, I must ask, have you seen Sean Carroll's work trying to move the quantum phenomena away from the content interpretation? I've heard of Sean Carroll's. I don't think he's the only one. I'm not an expert in this. I don't know really anything about it other than the quantum explanation that I was taught when I studied physics. It doesn't make any sense to me. But I do know of a number of interpretations of the quantum phenomena that would move them away from a content view and would show them to be consistent with our understanding of reality. Quantum is not that mysterious, but I've heard that Sean Carroll is working on that. I think he's a physicist and that he's not a physicist, but whoever he is, all the power to him, whether, you know, whether he's right or wrong, opening up that debate about what does the quantum phenomena actually represent? What does it mean? What are we observing when we observe these experiments? What are these mathematical equations with clearly work? What do they actually mean? How do we interpret them correctly? That is, you know, I take God's work, but you know what I mean? That's reality's work. That's the important work that needs to be done to put physics on the proper philosophical foundation. And I met a lot of physicists who know that the explanation for quantum mechanics is wrong and that work needs to be done. Daniel asked, if you got elected rather than President Kennedy, what would you do with the Soviet Union? I mean, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, I would have done much the same as President Kennedy. I would have, you know, I don't know enough about what, you know, I certainly would have stood up to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I would have embargoed them completely, but I would have added to what Kennedy did. I would have denounced them morally. I would have spoken much more like Reagan did than like Kennedy did in terms of the essence of communism and what it stood for. If I had wanted to take over Cuba, I would have used American forces, not sent Cuban to die on the shores of Cuba in the Bay of Pigs, or I would not have done it, but you don't do half-assed things, either go for it or you don't go for it. So, I think my main complaint about Kennedy's dealing with the Russians as he wasn't explicitly, fundamentally, principally, morally condemnatory of communism and the Soviet Union. Yeah, I wonder if Freeman says, which is true, that Niels Bohr had a very different interpretation of the quantum phenomena than the Copenhagen Convention, and he was sidelined because of that and that his interpretation was never really picked up seriously, but his interpretation is completely different. Niels Bohr was one of the great physicists of the 20th century, and Albert Einstein, of course, famously was anti the quantum explanation. His famous quote was, he didn't believe that God played with dice and that the quantum phenomena was just probabilistic. And so, you've got two of the greatest physicists of the 20th century rejecting the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, and I think a lot more work needs to be done to figure out where A is Bohr right, and if he's not right, what's an alternative explanation for the Copenhagen irrational explanation of the quantum phenomena? Faith, liberty, and praxis says, great job in the debate. Thank you. I was wondering if you could debate anyone who is not currently living, who would it be? Debate anyone who is not currently living? I don't know. Who would be the best? I mean, Karl Marx popped into my mind. Jesus popped into my mind. I'd like to debate the Son of God. I think that would be cool. Don't you guys think that would be cool if I debated the Son of God? Philosophically, zombie hunter, your question is next. I'm trying to think what else? Yeah, you know, those two come to mind. Aquinas maybe debating him would help him get over the hump. I wouldn't want to debate on you man, no. All right, Philosophically, zombie hunter asks, about your second debate with John Mackie, do you think that people sometimes package deal profit maximization with profit prioritization? Sure. And I don't like profit in the terminology. I like maximizing long term shareholder wealth. That's how I would phrase it because that captures much more than just accounting profit and it captures the long term. It makes it clear that you're not sacrificing the long term for the short term. But I think people are very confused about those terminologies. Frank asks, Walk tells Tui, I don't think of you, but this is hard for many people. Can you do a rules for life show about not depending on others approval? Yes, but I think I've already talked about it. If you go back to my rules of life, I'm pretty sure I talked about exactly that quote from Walk about relationships, about what it means. Because people ask me when you don't think of other people. Sometimes you do think of them, you hate them, the wall of hate. But yes, I'll try to do a rules for life talk when I do more about that. By the way, I'm looking for a sponsor for the rules for life show. So if you know anybody who's willing to sponsor the rules for life shows, I'm looking for sponsorships generally, but in particular, for the rules for life shows for 2022, somebody who's willing to do a thousand bucks a month for the whole of 2022, I would do a rules for life show every month for that. And that would be terrific. And maybe that will also be the basis ultimately for the book, for the rules for life book, you are on rules for life book. Darius asks, why did I ran support Uber status Keynesian Nixon over a more market friendly conservative Reagan? Because I ran didn't view economics as primary. She viewed Reagan as a power luster who was going to bring religion into the Republican Party. See, I ran counter to many of you, I know. I ran, for example, viewed Roe versus Wade as one of the most important decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. And she viewed it as a pro-liberty decision, even though it was flawedly decided. She viewed it as fundamental to individual rights. And she viewed anti-abortion as a reason to vote against somebody. She would not support a candidate if they were anti-abortion and Reagan was anti-abortion. And on top of that, Reagan was going to bring the moral majority into the Republican Party. And she believed and it turned out she was absolutely right that that would turn the Republican Party into a religious right party, that that would turn, that would take the one party that had, during some periods, stood for freedom and individual rights into a party that now was completely religious and would abandon individual rights. And she was absolutely right. Reagan brought the moral majority into the heart of the Republican Party and today, in a sense, the evangelicals ruled the party. They decide who the next president will be, who the next Republican candidate would be, what Republican policies will be. So she voted not only did she not approve of Reagan, and she approved of Nixon, she approved of Ford. She would not vote in the 1980 election. When the choice was Reagan, Jimmy Carter, you would think that would be an obriner. She wouldn't vote because she viewed the evil of being a religion into politics so much, she viewed the evil of being anti-abortion so high that she would not vote for Ronald Reagan as a consequence. All right, let's see. All right, we are done for today. We will be on tomorrow at 2 p.m. east coast time. We'll also be on Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. east coast time. And, you know, don't forget, if you like the show, if you get value from the show, then please become a monthly supporter of the show as you run bookshow.com slash support on Patreon and subscribe star. And, you know, one of my goals for 2022 is to raise the monthly contributions by 50%. So to raise the monthly contributions by 50%, you can help me do that. Some of you can just raise your contribution by a little bit, that will go a long way to helping. But the big way to raise the contribution level is for those of you who don't yet support the show, and there are hundreds of you, maybe even thousands of you out there, who don't yet support the show to get you to support the show. And if you guys could support the show, you make this possible, you trade value for value with me, and you make it possible for me to invest in the show, to grow the show, to do more marketing, to do more things, to grow this, to do more debates, to maybe do more interviews. All of that is made possible through your contributions. So those of you who can afford to do more and would like to do more and think it's a value to do more, please do so. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please consider doing it at whatever level, you can afford it at whatever level. It represents in terms of a value. If the value is only $5 a month, that's fine, no matter what your wealth is. If you have a lot of money and the value is $500 a month, that's great. And if you'd like to sponsor, you're on rules for life, because you value those shows. In particular, $1,000 a month would basically support that for all of next year. Thanks guys. I will see you.