 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Brad Thompson and I am the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. It's my pleasure to welcome all of you here this afternoon to our John W. Pope lecture series. Before we begin today's event I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the sponsor of the event. The John W. Pope Foundation has generously supported this lecture series now for over a decade. And now a word about the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. The Clemson Institute is America's premier academic center dedicated to exploring the moral foundations of capitalism. As many of you know the Clemson Institute is also the home of the Lyceum program which is recognized as one of America's foremost academic programs providing students with a great books education in philosophy, literature, history and politics. I am delighted today to welcome to Clemson two people that I greatly admire Andrew Sullivan to my left and Iran Brooke to my right. For the sake of time I'm going to give them the briefest of introductions. Andrew Sullivan holds a PhD in political philosophy from Harvard University. He is one of America's best-known and most influential writers, bloggers and editors. Mr. Sullivan was editor-in-chief of the New Republic Magazine during the 1990s and he has been a writer and blogger for the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly Time Magazine and the Daily Beast. He currently writes for New York Magazine. Andrew Sullivan is the author or editor of six books including virtually normal an argument about homosexuality, the conservative soul how we lost it, how to get it back and love undetectable, notes on friendship, sex and survival. Iran Brooke holds a PhD in finance from the University of Texas. He is the former executive director of the Ein Rand Institute and he is now the host of the Iran Brooke show. Mr. Brooke also spends a good part of the year lecturing around the world on political, cultural and philosophic topics. Dr. Brooke has published several books including In Pursuit of Wealth, The Moral Case for Finance, Free Market Revolution, How Ein Rand's Ideas Can End Big Governments and Equal is Unfair, America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality. We have chosen for our topic of discussion today the following question. Is Western civilization worth saving? We chose this question because the legacy and meaning of Western civilization is contested and because much is at stake in the answer. Now I'd like to divide our conversation today into three parts. The past, the present and the future. We will try to save the last 20 or 30 minutes for audience questions. So let's begin now with the past and some definitions. My first question for Iran, for New York magazine. What is in fact Western civilization? What is this thing that we call Western civilization? What are its core principles and institutions? So if you think about Western civilization or if you think about any civilization, what is a civilization? Civilization is the cumulative impact of the achievements in a particular geographic area of particular peoples. So when we think about what is Western civilization and I think you have to start with its roots, its foundation in ancient Greece. In ancient Greece they start asking the first real philosophical questions about where are we, why are we here, what is the nature of the world out there. And not only do they ask the important questions, the foundational questions, but I think ultimately any civilization, they get pretty good answers. And to the extent that those answers have been taken seriously, have been thought through, you get civilizations when the Arabs adopted, studied certain Greek ideas and Greek foundational knowledge, the Islamic, the Muslim empires of the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries, they flourished, they did very, very well. If we look at Western civilization, the world in which we live today, we're very much grounded in those Greek ideas as we discovered by Thomas Aquinas and then primarily during the Renaissance and through the Enlightenment to this day. And I think at the heart of the achievements of the last 250 years that we associate with the world in which we live, the economic achievement, the technological achievement, the political achievements of liberty and freedom, at the heart of those I think are two fundamental ideas that were captured during the Enlightenment that are based on those Greek principles. And the two fundamental ideas are one, the idea that reason is our means of knowledge, the efficacy of reason that is really manifest itself in the scientific revolution during the 17th century and the 18th century. That the world is knowable primarily through our senses and through our mind by understanding the world out there and the world is real. Again these ideas are a resurrection of our Statelyan ideas going back to Aristotle in ancient Greece. The second idea that really I think comes out of that first, which I think is the more fundamental, is the idea that individuals matter. The primacy of the individual and that the individual happiness matters. That the purpose of life in the end is the achievement of happiness for individuals. Call it individualism. The idea that both morally and politically the individual is primary. Think about the Declaration of Independence. Each one of us has an inalienable weight to the pursuit of happiness. So for me the Western civilization is these two ideas manifest in art, manifest in our culture, manifest in our politics, manifest in our economics. And overall while there are lots of problems, overall the achievements are amazing. I think the greatest art ever produced by human beings have been produced under kind of under the umbrella of these ideas. The greatest political achievements, freedom, liberty, the United States of America preeminently are the great achievements of Western civilization. And the economic success of the last 250 years is stunning. It is you know if you told people 200 years ago that we would be living the way we live today, they would have not believed you. It would have been complete science fiction to them. Our standard of living is so magnificent, so advanced, so fantastic that it's hard to really put into numbers and put into really even into words. Think about the value of running water, the value of electricity, or the value of an iPhone. And I know we like to make fun of iPhones, but iPhones are amazing, amazing instruments. So to me Western civilization is that. It is the achievements over the last primarily 250 years with their roots in ancient Greece and in the Renaissance, the rediscovery of those ancient ideas manifest philosophically and politically in the enlightenment, manifest economically, scientifically, technologically in the industrial revolution and life and life today. Thanks. Andrew. Well that was pretty impressive. How do I, how do I up that? I would, I would say the following. I don't disagree with a lot of that. The difficulty for me is that the last 250 years represents such a massive shift in the West towards obviously the industrial revolution and the, the full global effects of capitalism. I would root Western civilization, I would like to see something more that encompasses all of it. And what I would go back to is the marriage of Jewish theology with Greek reason. And that really occurred through the extraordinary shift in human consciousness that happened when Jesus of Nazareth arrived and spoke a language and behaved in such a way that implied that there were no hierarchies and there were no boundaries and that we were all humans and they were all fundamentally equal. And this was a incredibly radical idea, still is a radical idea when you look at today's tribalisms, when you look at today's nations, when you look at today's social hierarchies, racial hierarchies. It was this, this radicalization. I mean you don't see it in the Greeks. You don't see Aristotle talking about the fundamental equality of human beings. You hear him talking about the fundamental inequality of human beings and the defense even of slavery in certain contexts and also the relegation of women also to a separate sphere, whereas early Christianity, at least the Christianity of Jesus that we see is radically feminist, radically treats women and men independently, interdependently. So, and it was the marriage of that way of being, that expansion of human compassion to the notion of reason as inherited from the Greeks. So that in the Gospel of John, the first words are in the beginning was God, was the word rather, in the beginning was Logos. And Logos means reason, but it also means God in this sense and God is represented in a human being as Jesus Christ. So you have this fusion of a faith that is inexplicable at some level, that demands equality of all people, but that is also essentially something we can subject to reason. So it can be developed, examined, thought about. And that that reason occurs within the human mind and the human soul doesn't occur necessarily collectively, it occurs inside the actual spirit of the human being. Now that's a remarkable thing and we're so used to it, but there are so many cultures in which that individual and that individual spiritual as well as political independence is totally invisible, caste systems, tribal systems. The number of years in human history which have sustained what we would call Western civilization or liberal democratic order is tiny. It is an incredibly fragile and rare event in human history and let alone prehistory. Humans have walked the earth for 200,000 years, only a fraction of that has been under these influences of reason and faith and only maybe two or 300 years of that have managed to evolve that into a system of liberal democracy in which we can live together democratically with toleration and mutual understanding. Yeah, so what I'd like to do now is concretize the general principles, ideas and institutions that you've both now so eloquently talked about. And for the sake of our students, I'd like you both to identify some of the pinnacles, the high points of Western civilization, particularly in the humanities and the arts. So I'd like now to ask each of you to identify one work of philosophy, literature, music, painting and architecture that you think symbolizes the best, the high points of Western civilization. So, well philosophically, one has to I think has to start with Aristotle and then the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment thinkers, whether it be John Locke or even some of the French encyclopedias of the 18th century, I think that they are the ones that really created the modern world from an ideological perspective. And I would add, I ran to that list of philosophers because I think she is crucial to the preservation of those ideas in the modern era. But they are the ones that created Western civilization from a philosophical perspective, you know, starting with the cards and on into the Enlightenment. What was it? Philosophy? Philosophy, literature. So literature, I think literature peaks in the 19th century. I would say, I mean, my favorite and I think who represents much of the spirit of Western civilization would be Hugo in France. Victor Hugo, a book like Lemons and Robles on 93 with big clashes of values and big emotions and fighting for values you believe in and, you know, in recognizing the importance of individuals and the importance of individual values and being willing to fight for those individual values, I think is crucial. In sculpture, I would say, you know, to me, nothing beats Michelangelo's David. It predates in a sense the philosophical understanding of what the Enlightenment or what Western civilization constitutes. But it represents that courageous individual. It represents facing reality boldly with courage as an individual standing up to giants, right, standing up to Goliath. While it's a biblical story, there's nothing in the sculpture itself that is of faith or religion. It is purely secular peace, both materially and spiritually. And I think it kind of foreshadows, it foreshadows the spirit of the founding fathers in establishing this country. It foreshadows that idea of pursuit of happiness, of pursuit of values, of freedom, all in that sculpture. Architecture, you know, I would say that would be later in the, I would say it would be somebody like Frank Lloyd Wright, who is breaking the mold, doing something new, presenting an architecture for a modern world, for a world engaged, very individualistic, homes that are different, homes that are designed for a client in a particular place, taking into account the environment, very much taking into account the personal values, personal, and the freedom to be able to create something new and to break the mold from the past, and yet something that's very functional, and it has a beautiful aesthetic. So the combination of functionality and aesthetic value comes together, I think, in Frank Lloyd Wright. So I think all of those are representative of many, many, many painters and sculptors and playwrights and novelists who represent what Western civilization, what these ideas have managed to produce. Yeah. Philosophy, sorry, great conversation. It's like a parlor game, the high points of Western civilization. Anyway, go on. Philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture. Play to, I think that that's about it. Philosophy, I mean, it's, it's extraordinary. Literature, the works of Shakespeare, some genius, miracle of those plays. And I would couple them, and you'll notice that almost all my responses are earlier, a lot earlier. I will couple that with the essays of Michel de Montaigne, which you may not have heard of, but which you can get anywhere. They are extraordinary, funny, erudite, individualistic, philosophical. They range from all sorts of topics, from big ones to tiny ones. And in Montaigne and Shakespeare, the thing that you notice is, and you see this particularly in Shakespeare, even the little minor figures, they're fully realized characters. What you see in the West is the value and increasing value of the individual character, their personality, what makes them different, not whether they're virtuous or not, not whether they fit into some mold or other, but just because they're themselves as value in themselves, even when you laugh at them, even when you're despise them, there's an individuality here. And that really, that's rare in the world. I think you see it first really in weirdly enough in Augustine, in his confessions, which is a shockingly modern understanding of his own life and relationship to God. Architecture, I always imagine being a medieval peasant on a pilgrimage. And you're walking to a pilgrimage to a cathedral, Chartres Cathedral in France, and you see it looming in the distance. All the normal buildings are small and wooden and destructible. And then suddenly what looks like this extraordinary towering spaceship that's just arrived on earth. And inside you go into this cavernous world of different lights of the stained glass windows changing your perception of reality of the sacred at the altar. This, if you if you have never been to Chartres Cathedral in your life, put it on your bucket list. It's an astonishingly beautiful thing to experience viscerally personally. Painting, I think I would split between all of the French brands self portraits, which are, again, incredibly moving and also a function of this, this growing sense of a Western understanding of individuality and through time. And then I would also place Picasso's Gernica, which was the moment in the 20th century, really, when the during the Spanish Civil War in particular, where the sheer horror of warfare, which has defined human societies from the get go, there was a moment in the West in which this was decided that this was too awful to contemplate anymore. And we have to find a different way of coexisting. Was there one more music music? A lego is misery. Yeah. Oh, I'm with anybody else heard like this was right. It's I once I was lucky enough to it's done in it's Ash Wednesday that it started. It's a Lenten. And it's a it's an astonishing thing because it's it's it's one of the few choral it's all choral there's no instruments just voices. And it's set in four different parts of whichever chapel it's being played in. And I remember when I first went to one, I've never heard it before. And there's a moment in which the treble, which is the boys, hits a note that you just did not believe existed on earth. Yeah, and the the overwhelming sense of some exquisite, exquisite transcendence overwhelms you. And I would say that and really, I mean, anything by Mozart, pretty much. But for me, if I that a lego is misery is is is a is a mo is and again, that's a long time ago. Yeah, do you know how we have that piece of music in the Western world today? I know there's a story to but tell me remind me the story involves a young Mozart. So Mozart was in Rome with his father and the Missouri was only allowed by the Pope to be played in the Vatican. And Mozart was there as a very young boy. He was 14 or 15 years old, I believe. And he heard it and went back to his apartment and wrote it out by memory. And that's how we have a piece of music in the Western world today. Otherwise, it was regarded as so, so extraordinary that it could only be restricted to the special place. Precisely. And that that tells you something about even then that they understood quite how specifically beautiful that was. Yeah. Yeah, so again, I'll be later and more secular in my preferences. So in music, I would definitely say the peak is the peak of the romantic era with Brahms and Chopin and and and yeah, I figured Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything from Beethoven from Beethoven to the early 20th century to me, that is the peak achievement in terms of music and I encourage everybody to try it out, even though it's not not as sexy today, I guess. So I'm starting now to detect some differences. Yeah. Between your on and Andrew and I'd like to exploit those differences now a little bit. And I think really, if we're being honest with each other, that the real difference comes down to the issue of reason and revelation and the attempt. I think Andrew, you want to marry reason and revelation or Athens in Jerusalem. And you're on on the other hand, I think you you want to move away from revelation and Jerusalem towards something towards reason and a secular based form of ethics. So can I can I get the two of you to now sort of just explain to us why why you think reason and revelation must go together and why you think that they can't. Marriage is too strong a word. Because they represent two very different sources of authority and of information. And one is revelation, inexplicable comes to you. And the other is reason which is inductive. And the truth is that humans need both. That we need our reason to navigate the world. But we're also aware in our world that we can't know everything and that there are things that happen to us. Life events, deaths, illnesses. And in the past, so many more completely unpredictable events that could upturn overturn your lives. But you also need meaning. You need a structure for your life to understand why are we bored here and then die? What is the point of this impermanence? What is the point of this? This fragility? Now Pascal had a beautiful expression. Pascal, as you may know, was probably one of the most brilliant mathematicians in history. An unbelievably brilliant brain, regarded as one of the highest peaks of in his time of science, who converted to Christianity overnight and wrote this really amazing little book. We didn't really write a book, he just jotted down little things and thoughts he had and put them together and never compiled them. But they were put together posthumously into a little book called the Pense of Thoughts. And in it, he just simply says the following phrase, in French it's l'usage et soumission de la raison, which is the use and submission of reason. That we use reason to figure out as much as we can figure out. But then there are things we will never figure out. And that's when we surrender to mystery. That's when we surrender to the fact that humans are fallible, that our brains are not as big as we'd like them to be, that we don't know as much as we think we know, that a certain humility in the face of the world and of death is the sanest point of view. And that ultimately that is what matters. Reason is what gets you through the day. And the reason is what gets you to see. And the reason why they're related is because they're both and have to be both about truth. What is true? And the West is very, very interested in this. What is true? You don't have to believe that. You could just say who has power, which is what many people on the far right and the far left argue, which is it's all power, nothing to do with reason. And there's no God, it's just human beings controlling other human beings. Well, the West has sort of said, and I when I say, I mean, this is massive generalization, I'm talking through the years that the logic has run. No, no, reason can figure stuff out, reason can show us things. It can't give us meaning. But it can give us a way to live and solve the immediate problems. But there is something about that. Every human life, we have a problem, we try and figure it out, we solve it. But guess what? As soon as you've solved it, another problem comes up. Think about it. So there is no end to this practical reasoning. It is, it is what a philosopher I studied called the deadliness of doing. That's reason it's deadly in the end. And what you want at some point is an ability to transcend that spiritually, psychologically, emotionally. And that's why all the great religions have always existed. And that's the contribution that Buddhism can make and the Christianity can make and Judaism can make, and Islam can make to making our lives worth something. That was too long. No, no, no, perfect. So, so I agree that it's all about truth. It is all about finding the truth and discovering truth. And truth can only be discovered by reason. There is no truth through revelation, revelation is completely arbitrary and subjective. And this is why the Jews and the Christians and the Muslims and the Buddhists all disagree on what that truth happens to be and are quite willing to slaughter each other on occasion in the name of that truth. Because indeed, there's no way for them to really communicate those truths, because they're not linked to anything in reality. They're not provable by reason. They're just my revelation is different than your revelation. So the only way for me to convince you in quotes is to use force against you and much of those wars that are in really the recognition of the disaster of war, the recognition of the horror of war really enters Western civilization after the religious wars of the 17th century. This is what motivates John Locke to write what he writes and the Enlightenment to kind of recognize that there has to be something more than these futile religious wars and there has to be a principle by which to guide human interaction when they in a society, the principle law comes up with as individual rights and I think he's right with regarding that principle. But no, I think indeed religion is the antithesis of reason. It says there's a certain realm in which we cannot reason, in which we have to accept stuff by faith. Well, accept stuff by faith by what standard? From whom? You know, if you're Catholic, it's from one source. If you're Protestant from another, if you're Jewish from another, from Muslim, you're another and there's no way to arbitrate the differences between those. There's no way to discover what the truth behind them is. So, you know, I would even say that to a large extent religion has been the counter force to Western civilization really from the beginning, the Enlightenment, which I think is the kind of the real beginning philosophically, at least of a Western civilization arising. Is that period in time in which religion is relegated to smaller and smaller places in human life? It's taken out of politics, it's taken out of the public square and it's left for you in your home to do with as you will. It's diminishing, religion is diminishing through this period and I think that it was a healthy phenomena and a phenomena that ultimately led to more freedom, more individuality, but it did leave a hole and the hole is meaning because people still do need meaning, they need purpose. And I think that the, that search for meaning is, is hard. It's there's a certain simplicity to say it comes externally, it comes from an ancient book, it comes from a certain mythology. It's harder to say it's your individual responsibility to find that meaning, to find that purpose in your life. And here's some principles, to use your reason, to use that inductive ability that you have, to find purpose, to find meaning, but I think that's the answer at the end of the day. It is up to you as an individual to find purpose and meaning in your life, to use your one tool of knowing reality, your one tool of discovering truth, to discover what your purpose should be in this life. And I think the ultimate purpose of your life is your own happiness, but again, all of that needs to be fleshed out and thought about in terms of what is happiness and what does it mean to achieve happiness or to pursue happiness? What does it mean to have a purpose as an individual? But the only guide for us to really be doing any of that is our mind, is our ability to reason, our ability to think. And the more we rely on some external factor, like a God, like a religion, like an ancient book, the more we give up on our own mind, the more we're likely to clump up in the kind of tribes that I think we both agree are kind of enemies or problematic in our world, whether it's religious tribes or other tribes, it encourages or discourages us to look for truth, not just in the realm of science, but in the realm of philosophy, in the realm of morality, to look at what should be the guide to life. To a large extent, I think the disagreement goes back to Greece, like everything else does. To the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle on certain deep philosophical grounds. To Aristotle, truth was in the world and to Plato, truth was in another dimension. It was in the world of forms. I think when we look into a different dimension for truth, I think civilization declines. I think we saw that after the rise of Christianity in the Middle Ages, through the Middle Ages, and when the respect for science, the respect for reason, the respect for this world, the respect for individual human happiness, rises. That's when you get civilization. What has that civilization produced that's as beautiful as Shatra Cathedral? Well, to me, Shatra Cathedral is not as beautiful as it is to you in the sense that I think what the cathedral, the message of the cathedral when I walk in is, how little are you, how big is, and I don't find that as beautiful or as stunning or as spiritually meaningful. A standing before David, right, or standing even, falling water standing, you know, I give Frank Lloyd Wright standing in falling waters, and having that sense of weightlessness and that sense of this is a space for me. This is a space I can be happy in. I can't be happy in that cathedral. That cathedral is a massive burden on my shoulders, trying to crush me. It's telling me how puny and insignificant I am, versus God, versus the religion, versus the tribe, versus the group. You are puny and insignificant. No, I'm not. And so am I. No, neither of us are. We are, and that's it. We are ephemera, and we will be forgotten pretty soon. Sure. And without that perspective, we lose track. I would also say that this notion that these great world religions are constantly at war with each other depends upon an understanding of religion that sees it as a series of empirical, absolute, revealed truths that we can either prove or disprove. That is not, in my view, what religion truly is. What religion truly is a way of living, a way of life. And when you examine all the great religions, there's so much in common, the question of mutual love and forgiveness, the question of service, the question of humility, the question, indeed, of how the more you give to others, the more you might receive, the paradoxes that make human beings' lives worth living. And the ability to construct however brilliant a technological achievement does not make a single person happier, a single person more spiritually satisfied. And I would also argue the last 250 years has indeed seen human reason completely explode and create an extraordinary civilization of technological and physical extraordinary lengths. Let me also point out that in those 250 years we have probably set in motion the destruction of our entire planet. The machinery of the individual desire to do well and to prosper has been so unleashed that it has wrought unbelievable havoc on the natural climate and the natural operation of the earth. And to that extent Western civilization has to answer for that it is no good creating a civilization if it destroys the very habitat in which it exists, especially at the rate it's going. And so again I would say reason alone would tell you why not more and more money, more and more wealth. Look at China how fantastic it is. Or it would say in America look the average standard living is actually higher now than before and yet countless people are suffering from unprecedented levels of depression, the suicide levels are up, that the large swaths of this country are numbing themselves on opioids. That so many people are restless and angry because the jobs they do don't really add meaning to their lives. That these are huge questions, paradoxical questions, that the promise of reason progress never really fully realized until the last minute. And the other part of it is that we constructed a machine of wealth creation, product creation, production of things and things and things to sell and buy and sell and buy that it can't be stopped. None of us can stop this machine from China through India through the use of the world's resources and it is an unbelievably ecological destructive force and it will if it continues that is not stopped it will be the greatest crime humanity has committed on this planet because it will be destroying the very planet that gave us life. So let me take two of those issues. First let's start with the depression and the fact that people are so miserable today and indeed there is a problem. I'm not going to deny the problem exists and it's a problem of meaning and it's a problem of purpose and I think to that extent I think the western civilization still has work to do that the idea of applying reason to human purpose to human morality to philosophy is a work in progress and that the enlightenment was immediately attacked and the anti-enlightenment movement which dominates which dominates the world today the anti-western civilization movement which I think dominates today has not as not provided and not allowed for the advancement of ideas that I think that would provide spiritual sustenance to individuals spiritual sustenance and indeed I would add the welfare state I think is to a large extent responsible for this depression if you look at where it happens you know it's stunning to me today in in place like Ohio you know people of the last day jobs over the last 30 40 years there because of industries have closed and they sit at home waiting for those jobs to come back because politicians promise them the one day the jobs will come back they sit at home waiting for the welfare check because they become dependent on the state to support them instead of what americans used to do is get in their car and drive to where the jobs are and there are plenty of jobs in america today northwest arkansas is booming has been booming for decades and people don't go there they stay at home in Ohio using their opioids waiting for the miracle to come because our politicians and our intellectuals and the welfare state implicitly has told them don't worry we'll take care of you in in their message if you see statistics about the the willingness of americans to cross state lines for work to move as we all used to it's way down americans don't move from state to state anymore partially because they lose their benefits partially because they're just waiting around for the messiah to come or donald trump to come and save them it's so i don't think it's capitalism i don't think it's reason that has brought us to where it is indeed it's the rejection of capitalism and they they're not taking reason far enough in terms of finding meaning purpose and and and applying ethics and developing an ethic of living as an individual in the world in which we live that has brought us to where we are in terms of this depression and it's a lot of it has to do with a lack of personal real personal responsibility not that superficial kind of politicians talk about but a real personal responsibility and the and the real personal responsibility means taking responsibility on your own life to find purpose meaning and live it live your life make your life the best that it can be at whatever point you are in your life or whatever whatever your background is whatever opportunities you face there are opportunities to go out there and make your life better now again i think the welfare state and i think the regulatory state and i think that the the mixed economy suppresses those opportunities dramatically particularly if you're poor but there's still enough of them that you don't have to sit at home taking opioids and dying slowly do you know when the greatest opioid epidemic in this country was no in the late 19th century when there was no welfare state uh and it happened partly because of the civil war and afterwards yeah because poppies were grown for the wounded it was the only actual painkiller anybody had and in that same period it spread massively what was going on in that period it wasn't a welfare state it was massive technological and social change caused by the engine of capitalism by the desire for profit which had more concern with the profit than with the stability and security of the lives of the people involved in it now look i am not attacking capitalism i think it is the least worst option that we have of generating wealth and taking care of each other but that is where it should be put in its place it is the goal is human flourishing and there are many ways to it and and no it is not a failure of an individual who's lived in a in a community that had a meaning and a role and an industry and a community and a life it's not that person's fault when that industry has moved on and those people are left and there really isn't much to do the truth is that also capitalism is created now automation and globalization in such a ways that so many more people are actually not going to be needed anymore in our society and the one thing that people need to be happy is to be needed and and i think those things are qualified i think we are learning now as we've learned before in periods of massive disruption that the people are hurt and not everybody is capable of doing what you think they're capable of doing not everybody is capable of pioneering their own life most people don't want that they want security they want their family they want a simple community they want to live a life in happiness um you can go back i'm uh one small point i'll shut up uh hunter gatherer societies uh had higher uh lifespans in general more leisure uh better diets uh and uh and and although they had occasional rather bloody fights you've got another nonetheless could be seen to be flourishing human beings in a way which the early 21st century has not provided so i i disagree with all of that not surprising uh no i think if you expect a little from people you'll get a little that is if you tell people that yes it's not their fault and they shouldn't strive and they shouldn't be self starters and they shouldn't go out and pursue their own happiness then they won't if you if you say it often enough and and and reinforce it with the things like the welfare state and capitalism is an unmitigated amazing success to call it the least of all evils is to denigrate it in a way that it doesn't deserve if you look at human life 250 years ago 300 years ago 400 years ago when the cathedral was barred i mean think about what that cathedral required in order to build all these peasants who are barely surviving where life expectancy was in the 30s where they had nothing nothing and then whatever they had a little bit is taken from them or they're put into indigent servitude to build this in a sense monstrosity pyramid in in in honor of what in honor of of the elites of the time in order to serve the elites of the time no yes later worship god it to worship god who is done what for them they're barely surviving half the kids are dying before the age of 10 they they live what was it but they were not short and uh you know horrific life they it's not pleasant so yes today uh life expectancy in the United States the last three years has declined a little bit we're living into our 80s technology doesn't provide happiness of course it does it provides the happiness that our children don't die at childbirth it provides the happiness that we see them grow up it provides the happiness of providing leisure and entertainment and a million other things little things that we enjoy the fact that i can turn on the lights and read a book in the evening instead of going to sleep because that's all i could do 400 years ago before we had electricity the fact that i can you know that every aspect of this technology enhances my life in dramatic significant ways and in ways that make it possible for me to enjoy all these spiritual benefits i can now listen to every piece of music ever written ever written on my iphone any time of day anywhere in the world at a marginal cost of zero if that doesn't provide a little bit more happiness i don't know what does it surely does provide happiness to me i love music and i i get incredible spiritual joy from the fact that i can listen to it so let's not detach technology from happiness it's crucial and let's not forget that because of technology there are eight billion people living all today who wouldn't live you know about seven billion seven and a half billion wouldn't be around if not for that industrial revolution if not for the fact that we have developed all these technologies that make it possible for them to live and to thrive and to succeed and yes i do place the responsibility and and the whole idea that technology displaces jobs sorry but as an economist really i mean this is the argument we've heard for 250 years as economists the lydites have always argued that at every point i remember my marxist uncle in 1987 telling me that pcs we're going to take over the world and there'll be no jobs any day now right and there are more jobs now than ever you've got millions of people in china working now you can denigrate china with all this trade stuff but people who used to be starving starving are today in the middle class and living good lives and if you go to china you see the dynamism and excitement are people who used to be poor and now a middle class and now have some material wealth and the spiritual value that that provides the daily life the spiritual value that they now benefit from because they can now live a decent life and don't have to live in squalor in the villages and you can still go to the villages in china where they still live in squalor it ain't fun and it isn't spiritually good and is materially good for any of those people living in that squalor so there are more people on the planet today than ever before they're producing more than ever before they're more jobs than they ever were before the idea that in 10 years there'll be fewer job and in 50 years there'll be fewer job I think there's no empirical evidence for that there's no there's no reason to believe that indeed every historical fact suggests the exact opposite there'll be more jobs more opportunities more ways to do stuff in 50 years that are unimaginable to us today than there are today and let me just say something about the environment because we've even if all the stories about ecological decay are true which i'm skeptical about because they you know these dune day scenarios i mean we love to believe that we're the ones are going to end the world and there's always different reasons why we think our generation is going to end the world the solution is and the solution is going to be if we allow it to happen technology there'll be technologies let's say it's CO2 there'll be technologies to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere there'll be technologies to produce energy that are going to reduce our dependent let's say on fossil fuels if that turns out nuclear would be one if people were open to that the idea that we are destroying the planet i just don't think it's true uh do you know how many species we've destroyed in a last 100 years thousands of species when they've hit the earth and the earth survives and we as a species are very good at surviving as our environment changes i'm not denying that species are dying i'm not denying that temperatures go up but we as a species because of our reason because of our capacity to think and invent and and to come we can survive and we can enhance the world around us and the value of other species is measured by the value of those species to our lives there is no intrinsic value in the earth yes there is no of course there is because it's God's creation we have no right to destroy any other species we have a right to coexist and we have dominion over them because of our ridiculous intelligence that is that has taken over our animal lives but that surely means custody not destruction care not throw away and i i do think that this will be the the ultimate verdict on this particular period of a civilization that we were so successful we destroyed ourselves at the expense of becoming irrelevant in this conversation and i think it's now time for me to reassert some marginal authority so i'd mentioned at the beginning that i wanted to go from the past to the present to the future the two of you have naturally transitioned into the present and essentially discussed many of the questions i would have wanted to ask but let me raise one question that has not been discussed thus far relative to the 21st century and the state of the west and that's the issue of of the day the du jour issue in both Europe and in the United States which is the question of immigration so Europe is facing immigration pressure from largely Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East and the United States is experiencing immigration pressures from Latin America so my my question is is immigration particularly from non-western cultures something that enhances or threatens the principles institutions and cultures of the west so i don't think it has to i don't think it should and it's interesting because the three of us earlier mentioned the fact of all three immigrants right everybody on the stage right now as an immigrant i don't think it has to i think indeed i think it just it strengthens civilization to the extent that we know what that civilization is and are willing to defend it and are willing to articulate and are willing to educate it and are willing to teach it that is i think that if we truly believe the western civilization is good and i do i think it's the best i think it's historically being the best i think having people come and educate them teach them and have the confidence in our institutions the confidence in our ideas that we can absorb these people from wherever they happen to come i think it strengthens us i don't think it weakens us i think what's weakening us is within i think it's the anti western civilization ideas i think it's the anti enlightenment ideas it's the anti it's the ideas that are trying to suppress the individual it's the ideas trying to deny the efficacy of reason which are weakening the west and which then if immigrants come and we don't stand up for the western ideas then yes then the institutions are weakening everything but the fault is not the immigrant the fault is with our own inability to defend the principles in which this great country for example was founded i do think the issue of immigration to europe of moslems is a little different because i happen to think that there is there is kind of a war going on if you will a civilizational war between islam and the west a war that they obviously have initiated for now several decades and i think unless you resolve that war in some way i'm against kind of having that in a sense the enemy not that everybody who immigrates is the enemy but the enemy be able to send millions of people into your homeland i think that was that's untenable when there's real conflict and a real between between two between two sets of ideas or two sets of peoples but generally i think the fault the problems within western civilization the undermining of western western institutions the the problems that are articulated that exist today that actually do exist in our world today all our own fault they're not the fault of immigrants i well let's start with just a couple of facts the immigration into europe is unprecedented and the immigration mass immigration to the united states right now in terms of numbers is also unprecedented by a huge degree in terms of raw numbers in terms of percentage it's almost at a peak in in the entire history of the united states something like 14 percent in london let's take london 40 percent of londoners were not born in the united kingdom 40 percent of the capital city have no relationship to the country they are in unless they've got there now and we also have not very effective ways of controlling our borders in such a way that not only has legal immigration this country boomed but obviously illegal immigration has also a boomed incredibly now the question simply is this i i'm persuaded that overall if you if you measure as you often do gd per capita all the usual secular understandings of what it is that makes people happy or well then i think in the aggregate large scale immigration will eventually lead to slightly higher gdp the question is what effect does it have on the culture what effect does it have on a society when its own population is being churned over at such an enormous rate not only churned over but by people very different speaking different languages having different obvious racial characteristics and ethnic characteristics different religions if you let a country that has some sort of sense of its own culture and meaning be completely overturned or completely scrambled by the immigration of people from elsewhere too quickly too swiftly integration will not happen resentment will go up we know for a fact that multicultural multiracial societies have declining social trust that diversity is actually not a strength for many multicultural multiracial societies because it decreases trust between people and also generates tribal politics also happens to render welfare states less tenable because people are prepared to support welfare states if they think they're going to be helping people like them but in terms of people of different races they tend to be much more selfish that's why you begin to see the welfare state collapsing even in places like Scandinavia so my point is simply this that again there are the hardest of stand-state things like your sense of your own country your sense of your own culture the sense of your own neighborhood and that gives people meaning when you tell them their entire town is going to now have 50 percent strangers in it and they're going to make more money and you'll have the wealthier their question is not will I be wealthier it's question what's happened to my town and western elites and I would say especially those who are interested in economics in particular who take the economic argument seriously and I'm I'm not dismissing them although there is debate about this there's definitely debate about whether mass immigration of low skilled workers has an effect of depressing the wages of low skilled workers who are actually in the country as a whole seems me to make sense just just as a matter of supply and demand I think we're in danger of destabilizing because of this not only that but I think the fact that elites ignored most people's very sensible and very sort of small sea conservative just want some cultural continuity and those people who have felt that way for a long time switch on the TV or listen to any expert calling them white supremacists racists bigots deplorables all these people who just want a little less drastic change in their community and their culture at the same time as they're grappling with incredible change in economics and technology and what work they can do yes there's lots of work you know you there's lots of work you can be a war you can be a greeter at Walmart if you want it's not the same thing as being a baker with a role in your little town but the fact is that the quality of jobs has gone up not down the quality absolutely the quality of jobs has gone up not down and the quality of jobs has gone up not down and the quality of life the standard of living of Americans has gone up not down and even all the inequality wage haven't gone up all of that is very very questionable in terms of the pure economics but I'm not making an economics argument I mean part of your argument is we want stagnation we want to stagnate because it's comfortable for us this change is too much at whose expense at whose expense what makes your stagnation unfortunately when somebody else can come in and do your job maybe more efficiently at a lower price with their happiness if you believe in this idea of equal equality of human beings equality of rights of human beings equality of liberty you know by what way do we say no you guys over there you can't have a better life you're stuck in whatever you are some hellhole in the world because these people over here who are living pretty good lives want to stagnate right now they don't want change change is too much for them it's causing them to be depressed and take opiods no you know life is change life is engagement life is to be lived not to sit comfortably with that conservative little C no it's not and I believe that individuals have rights if I want to employ somebody from outside of the country why isn't anybody's business who I employ if I if somebody wants to cross into this country and come to work here why isn't anybody's business that they're coming here and having and getting a job why where do you have a right to your job to stagnate with your technology I mean again these are the kind of arguments that lead to true stagnation and you know take take a good country where there is big immigration and supports cultures is Japan a culture that is shrinking that is dying that and I'm not even talking about economics put aside economics culturally is shrinking and dying and shriveling because there's no dynamism there's nothing changer there's no there's no dynamic elements there and it's it's a it's depressing and and they would recognize it as depressing let's get Andrew in it is not this character I want stagnation as opposed to change I'm a Birkin I believe change is essential and will happen and has to happen the point of change is to keep things the same the point of change the world is always changing but human beings in reality we don't like everything in our lives to be constantly changing we don't it makes us miserable we don't want to be forced to move all the time we don't want to be forced to have everybody in our family working just as sadly there are things we value more as human beings and late stage capitalism right now I'll tell you who benefits from all this change it's not the people of this country it's the 1% who are taking all that wealth for themselves because of the structure of this economy now if you were telling me that middle class people are earning the benefits of the work in the meaningless job so many of them have to do then I would be okay but the fact that it's being absconded essentially by a tiny proportion of plutocrats and that that ran this country for so long is why and your enthusiasm for that level of change and what you call creative destruction well what about the destruction is there not a golden mean here of some sort of incremental change and pace that keeps things stable keeps people feeling that in their own culture without being treated like and also I must say a certain contempt for these people that you've expressed in the Midwest or in core in so far as they can't and I would argue that no that the West is about capitalism and it's about dynamism whether it's more that but it's also about Christianity and compassion and concern and also a social understanding of the way human beings are we're tribal creatures we don't like massive change we like families we only have a few people these technologies that we love are ripping through our social institutions our towns our reach look at what Amazon has done to the experience of retail shopping in a small town and they're all gone it's made it wonderful it's made it wonderful you don't have to go outside and browse around and meet other human beings and interact with other human beings think about how much time it has freed up to listen to music to appreciate great art to do other things in life other than shopping who the hell wants to go because when you go shopping and when you go out in your town you meet people but you could go to the park now you can actually relax instead of shop because shopping now is so convenient and easy and simple the idea that Amazon has been disruptive to human life instead of this amazing benefit to human life I mean I spent almost no time shopping because I can click one click and then I can take that time that I would have spent shopping and done other things but let me pick two points before one is this is not late stage capitalism this is late stage the rejection of capitalism we have today a massive mixed economy every aspect of our economy is regulated and controlled you know and the reason we have these to some extent these economic elites is because some of them at least acronies of manipulated government regulations government controls in their favor and to call what we have today capitalism is I think an abomination what we have today is a mixed economy Sweden has a slightly different mixed economy we have a mixed economy there is no capitalism in its real form in its I'd say pure form but in a real form today you can blame the system we have today for a lot of ills but I wouldn't blame it on capitalism because we don't have capitalism we have this massive mixture of healthcare in the United States a 60% government a 40% private but everything wrong in healthcare is blamed on the private sector nothing is blamed on the 60% government you think that has something to do with prices going up of course it does when the government buys something prices go up that's why education's gone up everything's gone up where the government touches it so we don't have capitalism today that was point number one point number two has slipped from my mind I can't remember what you said and I was so outraged by it but let me just say this I don't feel the void I do want to say this I don't feel contempt for people what I feel is frustration that these people because of our public education system and because of our welfare state and because intellectuals and politicians have told them don't worry you know we'll take care of you they now don't have they have been I am mad at the elites for telling people who historically in this country the working class has been quite willing to get up and move to go to where the jobs are to go to where the opportunities are and over the last 30, 40, 50 years the elites have sent every message possible to these people who I have huge amount of respect for don't do that don't worry we'll take care of you don't be irresponsible yourself are you honestly telling me that the period from the 1980s to 2020 has been less capitalist than the period between 1950 and 1970 so let's take let's take I mean honestly you talk as if we have a new wave of socialism but let's take some objective measures let's take the regulatory registry not just at the federal level but the state level are there fewer regulations today or more than 1950 many, many, many more it's not even close the level of regulation we have today so yes, we're less capitalist today than then we're richer but we're less capitalist if you look at effective tax rates the actual amount of money that Americans pay in taxes it's higher today than it was in 1950s in spite of the fact that the marginal interest marginal tax rate was far higher back then so in many dimensions we are far less capitalist today than 1950s but 1950s weren't a great period coming out of World War II which was heavily controlled and so on but since the New Deal we have been systematically decade after decade less capitalist we went through a brief period of deregulation in the late 1970s and early 1980s and since then again the regulatory I'm a finance guy so if you ask me a banks today a financial institutions day more regulated or less regulated than they were 50, 60 years ago it's not even close they need to be much more regulated given the damage they did to our economy no, it's regulations that have caused the damage oh come on so of course if you look at 2008 it is 100% caused by government policies and regulations it was not private markets that did the insanity that led to 2008 it was the incentives that regulatory regimes and things like too big to fail and a monetary policy against centralized here's the point I want to make before so let's say we want a golden mean we want we want to progress in a particular way who gets to decide what that mean is going to be who gets to decide what enough progress is are we going to vote on it is democracy such a wonderful thing that we want to give that role to the majority or do we want to give it to a some authoritarian do we want to give it to a president do we go how do we want to regulate this how much progress we should rather than the principle in which I think this country was founded was individual freedom led individuals and if you want to slow down in your life the beauty of America today the beauty of the wealth that we've created is you can slow down in life people can take a step back spend less money do less of this trading spend more time with family more vacations because people in the middle class can do this the quality the material quality of life might go down but they could have as much leisure time as they want because with that rich but to have a bureaucrat or to have a committee or to have a vote how much progress at whose expense who gets to deny mobility who gets to deny opportunity which poor kid doesn't have a job or which poor kid doesn't get to become a millionaire because we want to slow things down because it's inconvenient for some people or because the philosopher king has decided this is the wrong pace of growth it's not the philosopher king it's the democratically elected government deciding what the will of the people is period anyway let's let's yeah yeah go for it so let's now finally turn to the future of western civilization doomed so over the course of the last century western intellectuals have noted the decline in fall of the west and i'm thinking here of oswald spanglers the decline of the west and more recently jonah goldberg's recently published suicide of the west so my question now as we end this conversation is what is your prognosis for western civilization is the pro the prognosis one of decline in fall or are we at the beginning of a brave new future so two things one i think the west is amazingly resilient it it has been challenged by by communism by fascism by major wars which i think communism fascism up anti-western ideologies that have confronted the west and the west has survived them but the west is very weak today and the internal forces that are anti-western ideas western civilization anti-reason anti-individualism are rising and are in the ascent and they're all around us and what is truly scary i think today is that there are very few defenders of western civilization there are very few defenders of the founding ideas of this country for example they just to go back to the previous conversation would reject the idea of the will democratic will of the people as being superior to the rights of the individuals this country was founded on certain principles there are almost no defenders today of those principles west of civilization was founded on certain principles there are almost no defenders of those principles in the world today and that to me is what's scary so the next attack from tribalism we're seeing that on the rights today from socialism maybe maybe maybe with the defeat of boney yesterday that's less of a threat but it's it seems to be it seems to inspire many people but i think the threat more is from the tribalistic nationalistic side than it is from socialism i think those threats today it's going to be a challenge for western civilization to confront them because i think there's so few people who understand what it is and are willing to actually defend it and stand up for those ideas i think that's what's going to kill us you know i think i don't think i think it's from within its own weakness and it's it is it's hard to be optimistic about where we're headed Andrew we are the species inherently tribal we like us and we don't like them and that's ingrained in our evolutionary psyche for hundreds of thousands of years if we saw someone little unlike us in the middle of the plains of or the savannas we would immediately think that person could kill me they're from another tribe i don't know where i am kill them first this is deep in our culture which means that liberal democracy which is toleration of everybody else and the use of reason not emotion to overcome our difficulties is deeply hostile to human nature it requires an extraordinary effort of self-restraint it requires moderation in rhetoric it requires appealing to the other side and engaging opposite arguments and it it means taking citizenship seriously not as a member of any particular tribe you're member of not that so i don't vote as a gay person i don't vote as an hv positive person i don't vote as an immigrant i vote as an american citizen and i put those identities behind me and i try and figure out what's the best for the country the common good as a whole those things are under threat because they're hard and they're particularly hard when people are in a bit of a social panic about mass immigration i hate to bring that up again but i think it's if you do not understand that you do not understand what has happened in this country and europe in the last 10 years period we are having neo fascist governments pop up all over europe we have essentially in the last three years seen the the extraordinary fast unraveling of what we might call liberal democracy in favor of extraordinarily emotive crass appeals to tribal identity to emotional fervor we have a president that spends twice a week rallying mass crowds into frenzy of hatred for other people we have whole swaths of the left claiming that white america is inherently supremacist and hateful and evil and we must oppose them for those reasons and we have a president who is intent upon has no understanding of constitutional order no understanding of his role as president and someone who is using the tribalism and increasing it to try and get elected even though he has only a minority amount of support and he is incredibly popular among his supporters for doing so people love this people love it that's why they're going to reelect him almost certainly because the appeal of these primordial lizard brain parts of us is so much more powerful than anything else it's prefrontal cortex and the west has been a long and difficult struggle to restrain those impulses and we have often failed and we failed dramatically and liberalism really emerged because we couldn't do it on religious terms we murdered each other for religious terms we still are look at the Middle East and murdered each other for racial reasons and cultural reasons and so on and so once this psyche takes place and begins to kick in all the ability to unwind it becomes harder and harder and harder and when you have a figure that we have and again do not underestimate the impact of one individual on a society one individual can completely alter the trajectory of a society if they come at the right time and people have consistently underestimated the demagogic genius of Donald J. Trump and the appeal of that over the normal processes of messy ordinary politics in which we have to talk to each other compromise come to some agreement move forward that is so boring in comparison it's so mind-numbing but it is a discipline it's the liberal discipline it's the western discipline and right now the president of the united states is waging war on the western way of life he instinctively understands autocracies he instinctively sympathizes with totalitarian countries he is much more comfortable with bullies than he is with people who are interested engaging other points of view we are in a very difficult situation right now in my opinion I think it's much greater than people realize because I believe liberal democracy in the west is much more fragile than people realize and that we've always known that the west is actually has proven resilient against these dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in the past they're only just nearly lost last time around and nearly lost twice around but that however strong we are against external foes if we turn ourselves into images of them not only will it not be worth fighting for but the republic will be over and if I would be really frank with you having read my play dough and having understood what happens to democracies as they get older and older I think it is coming to an end as Benjamin Franklin predicted and that may resuscitate a faith in your generation particularly so the west is worth saving it's worth fighting for it's worth mobilizing for it's worth defending reason and the individual and toleration and moderation in government because it's created such an extraordinary achievement and it's at risk and it's always at risk but rarely in my lifetime has it felt so much at risk today to strong man politics as it seems so let me take this opportunity to apologize to the audience and particularly to the students in the audience I'd wanted to reserve 20 or 30 minutes for questions and answers but this conversation I'm sorry to say was too good to stop and so I owe an apology to to the audience we have a hard ending time and we're approaching that time so what I would like to do is end this with one final question because we can't end on despair I'm also happy to answer any questions you might have afterwards as long as you don't shake my hand so my last question for the two of you is what will it take to save western civilization are you going first this time we need a revival of liberal education in the universities we need to stand up against the takeover of the universities by ideologies that are deeply opposed to the west deeply opposed to liberal education and the free exchange of ideas so we have to take on those on the far left who are undermining and then we have to defeat this president in November because four more years of deepening this authoritarian tradition and its growing popularity is is intensely and you've got to understand the rest of the world look here the rest of the west is looking here every european country is looking here and it's not looking good and the appeal of these kind of strongmen whether it be Erdogan in Turkey or Orban in Hungary or the future leaders I mean we have we have it's almost impossible now to form a government in Germany without alliance with neo-nazis in Germany we have a populist nationalist government in Italy and we have a president of the United States who's championing figures like Erdogan like Putin and who treats president she as if as if he's some side of savior of mankind as opposed to a brutal genocidal totalitarian so that's what we have to do and we have to start with your generation in some ways I think your generation was a little spoiled because most of you didn't I'm talking to all of you might be students most of you didn't experience the cold war most of you never had a sense of existential threat most of you have taken democracy for granted most of you have seen the gains that we've had for all sorts of people as as simply automatic they weren't they aren't they take pressure they take activism they take action with every generation and we're relying on you and so far you're letting us down so I mean I agree with all of that but I would add that we need a real revival of the ideas that led to the better aspects of the world in which we live today we need a revival of the ideas and the enlightenment we need a revival of the ideas and the confidence we once had in reason and the individual and his capacity to make choices about his own life and to guide his own life and to find meaning and purpose and to pursue his own happiness we need a revival of the ideas of the founding of the ideas of the founding of this country the ideas reflected in the Declaration of Independence the principles that are there we need a revival of the idea that principles matter that you don't just put your finger into the wind you don't just manipulate crowds but they're principles that should guide you as an individual and us as a nation and we need a revival of the idea or maybe for the first time in really history because I think I think one of the things that's underappreciated is the western civilization is an evolving story it is not it did not end back there and it is constantly under attack we need to bring those ideas to the level of individual lives I really do think that religion served an important function in the past it served that function of providing meaning and guidance and morality for human beings but religion is or I should say should be dead we need something to replace it we need a philosophy for living on this earth we need ideas to guide our lives we need morality we need meaning we need purpose we're not going to find it in revelation we're going to find it using reason looking at this world and fitting it to our nature and I'm all I have a different view of human nature I think human nature is what we're capable of not what happens to us when we don't activate our minds yes there is something animalistic and tribal in us when we don't think yes we tend to clump up in groups when we evoke emotions rather than reason but to be human is to achieve humanity and to achieve humanity is to engage in reason and maybe the biggest default of our educational institutions is they don't teach that primarily in younger kids we don't teach kids the importance of thinking the importance of using your mind the achievement in your own life not on a civilizational level but in your own life that achievement has to come from your own independent thinking thinking for yourself I think controversially obviously I think the one of the most important thinkers here is Ayn Rand's I encourage young people to read Ayn Rand's books because I think she provides that guidance that meaning that morality from a secular perspective from a perspective based on reason that can really bring about a revolution in the world in which we live that can change and can ultimately save western civilization and that's what's at stake at stake western civilization is the flourishing that we have the number of people that we have the great standard of living that we have all of that is very very precarious it's only 250 years old 350 years old it's new it's in the history of mankind we've always been poor and miserable and dead for the most part we're in great shape in comparison but all of that is at risk of losing and it's up to your generation to keep it alive it's up to your generation to figure out what led us to this point and to make it better because we could do a lot better than what we have today can I make one small point because the attack on religion was a little much for me people will always be religious they will always seek meaning if you deprive them of the great religious traditions they will find alternatives those alternatives can be much more dangerous you take away religion in the 20th century you will get communism as a form of religion Nazism as a form of religion cults as a form of religion what we have today in this country are two religions one is the cult of Trump and the other is the cult of critical social justice those are cults at war and they are religions they affect every part of that person's life within social justice you even have a born again moment when you become woke with what you do and every single moment of your life is judged according to that morality so the idea that religion is dead is I think painfully wrong the question is what religion will it be a secular cult or will it be rooted in the ancient truths of the great religions that taught us to be humble and to love one another so I agree with most of that I want to see religion eliminated completely I don't believe that the only source of meaning screw you I know but I know but I don't believe I don't believe that meaning can only be found in religion and if you what we need is we have not completed the revolution that is the western civilization we have not bought reason to the question of meaning and when we do then we can eliminate these cults and we can eliminate this tribalism and we can eliminate a dependence on emotion and on revelation and on faith and live what I think is the potential of human life which is as a rational reason-based animal that does not need religion to sustain itself you know I thought we were so close to having a coming together of the minds but of course in the best tradition of western civilization we had a serious conversation and what I'd like to end on this event is being live-streamed and I'd like to say to any high school student out there who has witnessed this exchange of ideas and thought it was motivating I would encourage you to apply to the Lyceum Scholars Program through the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism here at Clemson University if you are a Lyceum student currently at Clemson University I'm really happy for you to have been here today to have witnessed what I think is one of the high points of western civilization namely the conversation between these two gentlemen which I think was conducted with both great civility and passion and knowledge and most importantly I think it was the very best expression of the best of western civilization in that it was an open and free exchange of ideas where two brilliant gentlemen agreed and disagreed and they did it in a civil and decent way and for that I would ask the audience to join me in thanking our two guests