 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Sunday, I appreciate you all being here, thanks for joining us. Apologize for not doing a show yesterday, it was in the calendar, it was scheduled, and then stuff happened, life happened, things that were unscheduled happened, and couldn't be done, had nothing to do with the earthquakes. Earthquakes are continuing. We had a nice, what was it, five point something earthquake yesterday, and all of those continued. So, we're surviving, we're surviving the earthquakes, hopefully it will pass. Now, you know, I guess I should give my condolences to those of you who are huge Neil Putz fans. My condolences, he passed away, I think it was yesterday or the day before. By all accounts, one of the great rock drummers of all the time, and maybe one of the people most responsible for bringing young people to Objectivism in Italian Rand during the late 70s and the 80s, so I know a lot of you discovered Italian Rand because of the rock group Rush, so clearly a loss. Unfortunately, it says I'm still on, let's jump into this. So, let's start with the issue of Iran. This has nothing to do with YouTube censoring anything, it has nothing to do with Facebook censoring anything. This has to do with technical issues, whether technical issues are my aunt, technical issues are YouTube ends. That is hard to tell. It looks like the video quality also on YouTube has deteriorated dramatically. I don't know if that's a bandwidth issue, if that's a YouTube issue, but no, this is not social media trying to silence me. That is not the problem that we're having. Anyway, let's start with the protests that we got, students protests in Iran in the streets demonstrating against their own regime because their own regime came out and admitted under international pressure, they had no choice. The internet basically spread the news, the Americans, the Canadians, the Brits, basically everybody in the world knew that the Iranians had shot down the Ukrainian international airlines and the regime had no option but to admit that it had done so and it admitted it and as a consequence, Iranians are pissed off because most of people on that flight were indeed Iranians. Most of the people who died on that plane were Iranians. They are family members who are pretty pissed off at their regime for having killed their own people. So there are students demonstrating in Iran. Of course, anytime you demonstrate in Iran, you're taking massive risks to your own life and it is truly heroic. So first, kudos to those of you demonstrating. I hope and it's not just demonstrations, it's not just demonstrating about the plane. Some of the plaques that they are using are saying we want an end to the Islamic regime. They are tearing down posters of Soleimani. We'll talk about that so much for the Iranians loving this idiot, this bastard. And they are actually advocating for regime change. They want the Ertugrul Khamenei to resign. Now hopefully they want him to resign and be replaced by a secular government that represents the people. But at this point they want Khamenei to resign. So these are major significant developments in Iran and it is truly heartwarming to see and I hope they get all the support they can get. Now I will say that Trump has in this time actually expressed support for the demonstrations. I'd say it's about time. It should have been done a long time ago. But it seems like he is demonstrating support for them. He says to the brave, long-suffering people of Iran, I've stood with you since the beginning of my presidency, now very true, and my administration will continue to stand with you. We will see, I doubt it. We are following your protest closely uninspired by your courage. And the tweet was translated to Farsi, the local language in Iran, and uploaded to Twitter in Farsi. He also tweeted later to the leaders of Iran, do not kill your protesters. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you and the world is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free. Stop the killing of great Iranian people. Now he would have a lot more credibility to these tweets if he had called for regime change in Iran. If he had actually shown support for the Iranian people when the conflict was at its height after the assassination of the killing of Soleimani, I think we will see. It's hard to tell how the protesters in Iran are taking these tweets. But I think given that they're from Trump, not very seriously, and that's unfortunate. I think America still has moral sway in the world. I think America still has incredible impact on the world. The second president saying, we support you, you're on the right, overthrow your regime has a lot of influence, potential influence on people. So it's sad that the president is Donald Trump and you know my view of Trump. But at least these tweets are reflecting the right thing. They are in words the right thing to be saying today even though it's coming from a person who I don't trust and who I don't really believe. So let's hope. I mean, I think it's hard to be overly hopeful, but let's hope that something good is going to come from these protests in Iran and that there is regime change. In spite of the fact that Donald Trump said over and over and over again that he doesn't want regime change, let's hope that ultimately there is regime change and we can finally get rid of these disgusting mullahs into Iran. So I'm with the Iranian people. I support the, you know, even though I'm not sure they know what positive they want, anything to replace the current regime is a positive. I wish, by the way, Trump had tweeted these kind of tweets about Hong Kong. I think that would have been incredibly powerful. And by the way, there's another aspect of these tweets I wanted to mention. I do think they're significant if Trump can stay with them and can stay consistent with them. That is, I think that China is watching. That is, I think that if the United States can be tough on Iran here with the protests, can stand with the protesters, both morally and maybe even smuggling weapons and finances and anything else that they can do, then China will take that to heart and believe that maybe, maybe, maybe this administration will do the same thing in Hong Kong and be super cautious. By the way, just in terms of Hong Kong, great news this weekend. The woman who won the presidential race in Taiwan is a huge anti-China president. She won by a landslide, one of the largest victories ever in Taiwan. It's a huge slap in the face for China. She was not favored just a few months ago, but the situation in Hong Kong turned the Taiwanese people towards, towards, towards an anti-Chinese stance. So together with the elections in Hong Kong that brought in opposition parties that were significantly opposed to the Chinese, I think the victory in Taiwan is significant. It's another slap in the face of a Chinese dictator. She, and it increases the possibility that within the, the Communist Party in China, they will start to undermine Xi and realize that he's actually hurting China. He's actually setting China back and that this could be a real opportunity to bring about positive political change in China. Not all the way, but at least back to the trend that was in China, you know, five, six years ago. So one can be hopeful. I am hopeful right now. So we can be hopeful about Taiwan, about these tweets about Iran, about, I'm not too hopeful about Trump sticking to these tweets, but about the tweets about Iran. I hope he does. And if he does, that would also be taking, be taken seriously by China. All right. Let's see. Let's, let's turn to Kyle. Oops. Wrong one. There we go. This one. There we go. All right. So there's Kyle. So Kyle is commenting on the killing of Soleimani and the reason I'm using this is both it is a reflection of how the left thinks about these things or how many people, by the way, people like Juan Paul, certain people within the libertarian movement will agree with everything you'll hear Kyle say. So there was a, there was a wide array of Americans who think this way about politics. That is basically the idea that America is always wrong. America is always bad, particularly when the president happens to be in a party that you don't agree with. The libertarians tend to be a little bit more consistent than the anti-Americanism than even the left. But Kyle is commenting on assassination of Soleimani. And I've talked about Soleimani. I've talked about who he was, how bad he was, how incompetent he was, how the extent to which he supported and the national guard, the Iraqi, the revolutionary guard, supported the regime, helped oppress the protesters. This was the regime's arm of oppression and of suppression. Now note the left attitude, and again, the certain libertarians who agree with them, towards Soleimani and Iraq. Anyone? Hopefully you can hear that. Donald Trump decided to assassinate a top Iranian general with a drone. We also have... Well, it's assassinate. And it's, rather than kill, as it would be in a war, you don't assassinate people in a war, you kill them. And because, of course, Kyle, like almost everybody in the United States, doesn't recognize that we are at war with Iran, whether we like it or whether we acknowledge it or not. And, you know, notice how he calls him, a general. Just a military guy. No big deal. Just a military, Iranian military general. Nothing special. An Iraqi military leader who was killed as well. He was the head of, I believe, the popular mobilization forces. Yeah, military leader. Now, the Iranian... No, not a terrorist organization. Not a terrorist organization. Killed Americans. Not an organization that's responsible for murder and slaughter of Iraqis and Americans. And, you know, that is irrelevant. Let's... Sam Soleimani. He was the head of what's called the Kuds Force. So, you know, this guy has an interesting backstory. And the more you learn about him, the more you realize that what Trump did here is just totally unconscionable. Yeah, this guy was Soleimani, according to Kyle Kalinsky, was a good guy. He was one of the good guys in Iran. Listen. So, this guy first rose to prominence when he fought against Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. And then, since then, he's been in charge of providing military assistance to Lebanon. He's been in charge of giving military assistance to Lebanon. Now, I wonder what the Lebanese think about this. Provide... I mean, the dishonesty here. Kyle. I mean, if you watch interviews of Kyle with, like, Joe Rogan and stuff, he comes across as if he's this objective, rational, takes into account all these different arguments. Very level-headed guy, not too radical, not too crazy. He provides military assistance to Lebanon? No, Kyle. He provides military assistance to Hezbollah, a Shiite militia terrorist organization within Lebanon that is not only responsible for the murder of 244 Marines, responsible for the murder and kidnapping of dozens of Americans, responsible for complete mayhem in Lebanon, responsible for holding hostage the entire Lebanese state, even though Shiites whom Hezbollah represents within Lebanon are a minority within Lebanon, as is every one of the religions. They are not a majority, and yet they control because of their military force. These are anti-democratic, something that Kyle and his leftist friends worship, democracy. These are anti-democratic. Talk about murderers, thugs, who would like to impose a theocracy based on Sharia law, based on the Iranian model in Lebanon. The Lebanese hate them, anybody who's not a Shiite associated with a militia, at least. I'm not even going to talk about what they've done to Israel and the terrorism, the attacks on Israel. Put that aside, just what they've done to Lebanon. No, no, this Soleimani guy is a good guy because he's helped the Lebanese. He's provided assistance to the Lebanese, assistance to the most militant, to the most violent, to the most horrific militia within Lebanon that has caused thousands and thousands of deaths. And again, 244 Marines died in Lebanon in 1983 from bombing by Hezbollah, financed and motivated by the Kuds Brigade, the exact brigade that Soleimani is in charge of today. He was a little too young to be responsible for that. But that's who the Kuds Brigade is, that he, Kyle, so admires. They provided military assistance to Lebanon. It's just, it truly is mind-boggling dishonesty. And I mean, documenting now, you saw, I did the Prager University with Greg and Ankar, the dishonesty there, the dishonesty on the left. I mean, all these people, I mean, today, I guess you get 775,000 subscribers by basically lying or not doing your research. Maybe he's just ignorant. Maybe he's just ignorant, but that's even worse. Because why is he talking about a subject he knows nothing about? But to make Soleimani a good guy is so disgusting. Even Iranians know this guy was a bad guy. And Syria? Military assistance to Syria, no. So Soleimani provided military assistance to the Assad regime. Assad is a brutal dictator who is responsible for the death of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of his own citizens. Responsible for using chemical weapons and other weapons to kill, murder his own people. The uprising against him was an uprising, at least initially, a people against a dictator. Now, maybe they were no better, you could argue. But suddenly Assad is pure evil. And the people rising up against him, at least some of them, were much better than Assad. And yet, he presented as, oh no, Soleimani was giving to Syria, not to Assad, to Syria, no. He wasn't giving assistance to Syria. If you wanted to give assistance to Syria, you would guarantee the removal of Assad. You would get rid of Assad, both Soleimani, Iran, and the Russians have assisted Assad against their own people, against the Syrian people. In establishing and giving permanence to one of the most brutal regimes there are and permanence to the oppression of the Syrian people. So again, facts, context, but anything, anything, anything to make the American government bad. Anything to present the American government, particularly one run by Trump, as evil and bad and destructive. To the point, you make the good guys, you make the real evil guys appear to be the good guys. All right, I have to ask, are you guys, can you guys hear me? Is this clack, crashed or hasn't crashed? I'm getting mixed signals from my own monitoring here. I'm asking both for Facebook and for YouTube. Somebody on the chats, just tell me. All right, I'm not getting any response, so maybe you're gone. Is anybody there? All right, you're on. Okay, good. All right, let's keep going here. So yeah, I mean, Soleimani was evil. What he did was evil. You can disagree with the American foreign policy. You can think all the troops should come home. But not to call this guy what he is. Not to recognize his own evil. I mean, Kyle and Ron Paul are the same. The primary focus is anti-American. The primary focus is anti-American. Nobody else is as bad as America. Nobody else is as evil as Trump. Now, as you know, I think Trump's damn bad. But Trump is no... Ayatollah is in Iran. Trump is no Soleimani. So, and America is not Iran. But they hate America so much. So, his most recent claim to fame is, first of all, allying with the Kurds, which is really important, to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda. The Kurds are terrified of this guy, although because the Shiites are in southern Iraq and the Kurds are in northern Iraq, the Kurds are more terrified of the Sunnis than they are of the Shiites. But the idea, yes, he did ally with them to fight ISIS. And he did succeed and was one of his few successes, together with the Americans, together with lots of other forces, together with the Syrian regime, fighting ISIS. But, all right, for a moment there, for a moment there, he was on the same wavelength. He was an ally, quote, of the United States. At the same time, he was killing Americans. At the same time, killing Americans at every opportunity. By Jihadists that were taking over Syria. And he also aligned with the Iraqi government as well to do this. So, it was like a united front against the worst forces of ISIS. Yeah, the Iraqi government, because the Iraqi government was basically a puppet government, a puppet of Iran. A shared government basically installed. Even the Iraqis demonstrating recently were demonstrating against Iranian influence in their own country. Because they, the Iraqis know that they become a puppet government of Iran and they're opposed to that. And again, it's just no context. No context. I mean, this guy comes out as a freaking hero, he's a generalization from ISIS. And, you know, quite frankly, he was one of the leaders in the fight to defeat ISIS and he succeeded in defeating ISIS. And, you know, all of the... So, Cal gets that ISIS is bad, but the Shia regime, which Soleimani represents in Iraq is exactly the same as ISIS. There was no fundamental difference between it. It's mildly more civilized, but still committed to Sharia law over the entire world, still committed to the spread of Islam through the entire world, still committed to world domination of Islam. But everybody knows you're supposed to hate ISIS. But the Shiites, Iran, oh, we love them. I mean, the left has been enamored with Iranian revolution from the beginning, partially because Aitul Khomeini strategically used Marxist terminology during the revolution, leading up to the 1979 Iranian revolution and during the revolution in order to get the alliance with the left. So, the left supported Khomeini within Iran during the revolution. And in the first few months of the revolution, then once Khomeini established control, dominated the country, had what he wanted, he turned around and basically slaughtered, killed all of the leftists who had supported him. But international leftists from French socialists and egalitarianists, they loved the Iranian revolution. It was a revolution against the man. It was a revolution against America. It was a revolution against the Shia. It was a people's revolution. And if you go back at Fuqua and all these postmodernists, they loved the Iranian revolution. They thought it was a huge advancement. They saw it through a Marxist kind of lens of a people rising up to establish a true dictatorship of the masses. A religious one, by the way. But anyway, Kyle obviously thinks one form of Islam is better than the other. Sunni's a bad, Shiite's good. You know, unbelievable. Relevant information about this guy is that he was kind of viewed by Iranians as like an apolitical figure. Untrue, completely. He's completely affiliated with the regime. He is intimately associated with Khomeini, the supreme leader. There's nothing apolitical about him. He was a supporter when he wrote. It's a Wikipedia, you idiot. He wrote to the regime, you've got to crush these rebellions when the students marched in 2009. He has repeatedly advocated for the worst of the regime. For the worst kind of actions by the regime. There's not an ounce, not a shred of non-partisanship about Soleimani. He was not involved in the domestic repression at home. Again, just a plain lie. He headed, he headed the, you know, the Islamic Republican God. He headed the arm of the regime. He headed the military arm of the Mullahs. Everything about him was about sustaining the oppressive regime that exists in Iran today. Everything. So this is just plain misinformation. Talk about fake news. So you can blame, you know, the Ayatollah. There's plenty of blame to go around. But generally speaking, even though he was in the Islamic Revolutionary God. Yeah, it's called the Islamic Revolutionary God for a reason. He wasn't viewed as like part and parcel or partaking in the domestic repression at home. And, you know, according to some, he was next in line to be the Ayatollah. No, he wasn't. He was never next in line to be the Ayatollah. The Ayatollah is a religious figure, not a military figure. He was next in line. The rumors were, he had a number of times been encouraged to run for president. President is very different than Supreme Leader than the Ayatollah. Come on, Kyle. Do a little bit of research. This is not hard. This is all publicly available information. You can get it on Google. You can get it from the New York Times. This is not hidden stuff. It's so frustrating to see these idiots, dishonest idiots. But, yeah, Kyle, this is not rocket science. You should be able to get this right. He was going to run for president. He kept denying, rejecting running for president, staying with the military, staying as the sword of the regime. And he defeated ISIS, and that's his claim to fame. You think this is a reformist? You think this has come peace-loving reformist? He assassinated him. Now, I just need everybody to understand that this is a dude who... Dude. He's a dude. Soleimani. Blood of tens of thousands of people. Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Americans on his hand. And, by the way, Yemenis and Saudi Arabians on his hands. He's a dude. He's a dude. I mean, it's so disgusting. We were just allies with. So it wasn't like, you know, while we were trying to take on ISIS, by the way, after we armed them and funded them, various Jihadist groups, it wasn't like we didn't work with this guy. No, we did. We did. He was the front line on the ground along with the Kurds. So he was just our ally. And I'm going to get to a stunning fact later about the situation in which he was assassinated. What he was doing at the time, which is going to absolutely blow your mind. So, the Trump administration says, well, well, we had to do it. I had to do it because he was about to attack us. Now, that, you know, Trump administration should have never said that. Is there any truth to that? The answer is no. How do you know that, Kyle? The answer is no. This guy's attacked Americans on various occasions. On various occasions. So, really? Tell you otherwise is absolutely full of it. How do you know? There's zero evidence to support that assertion. The evidence that he's killed Americans and fought against Americans and is targeted in Americans in the past should not suggest that he might be scheming for the future. I'm not saying the intelligence existed, but to unequivocally say what he's saying is just false. And as a general rule, there are no, like, Shia terror attacks. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No Shia terror attacks. 244 Marines and their barracks in 1983. The Kabul Tower in Saudi Arabia. I don't have the date, maybe 1994. The many, many, many Shia terrorist attacks during the Iraq war. Khizballah. Terrorist attack after terrorist attack. Car bombing after car bombing. All Shiaites. What are you talking about? No Shia terrorist attacks? Against the U.S. Again, Kabul Tower in Saudi Arabia was against the U.S. Marine barracks was against the U.S. Kidnapping of Americans all over the Middle East. Primarily Lebanon during the 1980s and 90s. Against the U.S. The Shia is, I mean, not to mention the taking of the American Embassy in Iran. I mean, this is just, again, ludicrous. Now, you might say there's never been a Shia attempt on American soil. Well, that's not even true. There was a Shia attempt on American soil just four or five years ago. It was crushed by intelligence, but it was targeted towards the Saudi ambassador, but it was on the U.S. soil. That was an attempt. Maybe it's true that there's never been a successful Shia terrorist attack on American soil, but that's not what Khal is saying. He's saying against Americans, which is just blatantly unequivocally false. From the Salafists, the Sunni Wahhabist fundamentalists. Who are all inspired by the Shiaites. If you read the Salafist, if you actually read Bin Laden, if you read the ISIS, if you read these people, they will discover that what inspired most of them, what really got recruitment up dramatically, was the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. If it could happen in Iran, it could happen anywhere. And the greatest recruitment to the Salafists, the Sunnis, was the success of the Iranian Revolution, the success of Iranians standing up to America, the failure of America to do anything about them. And yet, no, according to Kyle, these are peace- That's where the attacks come from. They all come from Shia. They haven't just killed a thousand of their own demonstrators, which is all done by the Islamic God, the Quds Force, the force that, oh no, they're the good guys. They're apolitical, because the guy running them was Soleimani, a hero of the left in America today. When Mike Pompeo was pushed on this, because he went on the Sunday shows, they do a terrible job by and large, though shows do, but there was a little bit of pushback when he was on one of the shows and the person was like, okay, so you say that, you know, Trump stopped an imminent attack here. There was an attack coming against the homeland. And his response was, no, we have intelligence that he was in the process of planning a plot to Americans in the region. He's always in the process of planning a plot against Americans in the region, always. That's what Soleimani's done for 20 years. So look at all the Weasley qualifiers they put in there. Yes, by the way, the assassination of the Saudi ambassador, which was targeted by Iran, which was by the Iranians, was going to not, you know, shoot him and walk away. They were planning to blow up a restaurant in D.C. There would have been many American casualties. That was a planned terrorist attack on the United States soil. Planned, thwarted by the American intelligence services, the same American intelligence services that Trump and other Republicans are calling the evil, deep state. But nevertheless, we're successful in stopping that particular terrorist attack by an Iranian regime. Again, Kyle, you should know this. This is not hard. This is not sophisticated. You can have a show. 200,000 people have watched this video by Kyle. 200,000 minds are being polluted by this dishonesty. Just plain falsehood. It's not that, oh my God, he was going to attack some, you know, Americans. It's no threat to the homeland, no planning against the homeland, and we're saying, so they said he was going to attack us and come to find out even they admit when they're pushed just a little bit, there was no attack plot against us. We're saying that maybe there was one that was coming in the region, which again, no evidence for, and by the way, I do not believe that for a second. And the burden of proof is not on me. The burden of proof is on them to show us that no, he was actually going to do it. That was a mistake of the administration. They should have never said that. They should have just said this is a guy with the blood of Americans on his hands. This is a guy responsible for killing Americans. This is a guy crucial to the Iranian regime, which is at war with us. We're taking him out. We took him out. Hooray, good for America. And then they should have gone on to advocate for regime change, but that's a whole different story. Show the proof. They don't have it. They absolutely don't have any. Now, here's the under-reported, we learned this yesterday in the U.S. and he hasn't touched this at all. So Trita Parsi, who's an expert on Iran, he says the following, Wow, wow, wow. According to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Soleimani was not planning an attack. He was in Iraq. This is where he was killed at the Iraqi airport. He was in Iraq carrying a message to Saudi Arabia on how to reduce Iran-Saudi tensions as part of an Iraqi mediation effort. Now notice, I mean, a bunch of stuff here. One, who cares? Who cares if he was on such a mission? Who says such a mission is good? Why is it good for America? But second, who cares? He's a bad guy. He needs to die. Second, you believe the Iraqi Prime Minister? You believe the Iraqi Prime Minister? You don't believe your own president? Now there's good reason not to believe Donald Trump or the Secretary of State. But those same reasons all should suggest that we shouldn't believe the Iraqi Prime Minister either. But he's going to just take his word for it. Proof? You just said, Kyle, the burden of proof is on them. Well, the burden of proof is on the Iraqi Prime Minister. Has he provided proof that this is true? No. No, but this is the state of things in the world in which we live. This is a tweet by Rose McGowan. I don't know who Rose McGowan is, but some celebrity. She wrote after Soleimani death, Dear Iran, the USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us. Hashtag Soleimani. I mean, this is so disgusting. So offensive that, you know, it's hard even to know what to say about this kind of stuff. There's no accident that people hate the left as much as they do. Because these people on the left, at least, this kind of crazy left is so nutty. It's so anti-American. It's so hateful. We're talking about an Iranian regime that just killed about a thousand people in protests and the protests were about rising fuel costs. And yet the Iranian regime put snipers on buildings and shot them. Now, as bad as Trump is and granted, I think he's really, really, really bad. We're not shooting thousands of protesters in the street yet. Who knows? 20, 30, 40 years ago. But we're not. We're not a terrorist regime and we're certainly not a terrorist regime when you compare to Iran. I mean, when you hear people like this you almost become a supporter of Trump because what's the alternative? These people are truly nuts. Despicable. Evil. And this is Kyle Kalinsky's audience and this is Kyle who leads the cause. Leads the cause. Now, that doesn't justify Trump. At all. But it sure puts the context into what the nutty left represents and it represents pure nihilism, pure hatred of America. The left couldn't care less about American life, but or an Iranian life for that matter. It couldn't care less about individual human life. Well, we know that from the environmentalist nuttiness that they have. They're not interested in human life. I don't know what they are interested in. Well, we know. At the end of the day they're motivated by hatred and they're motivated by desire to destroy. I mean, you listen to Kyle particularly in this topic, you listen to Kyle and you read those kind of tweets which, by the way, that tweet was retweeted by dozens of celebrities on the wacky left. They are nuts. As nutty or more so than the nuts on the right. And that's who we have today, those two groups. The nuts on the left and the nuts on the right. No, nuts on the left and nuts on the right are growing. Are growing. And I mean, Kyle in this video this is not just ignorance. This is blatant dishonesty. I mean, because if you don't know a topic you shouldn't talk about it. And if you do a little bit of research other than reading maybe Norm Chomsky's blog then you should know that everything he said is just unbelievable false. And again, many libertarians agree with Kyle in this issue. So, shocking. I didn't expect when I saw Kyle's thing to be this bad and the tweets unbelievable. So, that's where we are folks. Bad shit crazy on the left. Bad shit crazy on the right. Go figure what the future of this country is. And that's actually not a bad lead in to our next topic. We got a couple of, let's do these quick three quick questions. Off topic and can wait until the end of the show, but any thoughts on shell Silversteins the giving tree. I mean, the giving tree is awful. It is super altruistic. It is basically it's not about creating a value but about altruism about the importance of giving for the sake of giving. Now it all comes back and the world is a better place, but it's just, it's pure altruist propaganda and I think particularly for kids it's just awful and I'll talk about this in a minute that this is the kind of stuff we educate our kids with and then we're surprised when they grow up and they, you know, they're depressed and they commit suicide and they're are holistic and they take drugs and you know, and all of this stuff. It's anti-life and in that sense evil and I haven't read it in a long time you know, I can probably give you more nuance but basically that's my assessment. Your discussion of music and film struck me recently. Have you watched any Studio Ghibli films? They have a melding of romanticism and realism and a non-western context that composer Joe Hisaishi does great work. No, I have not watched any of those films I guess I'll look into it. I'll say that comment and look into it. My opinion of the new Russian weapon, avant-garde, I guess that's the ballistic weapon or the the I mean my general all I'll say is my general my general view based to some extent of first-hand knowledge of Russian weaponry is that it is pathetic. It is badly made not thought out inefficient and inaccurate and just not good. And this comes from experience of fighting T-72 tanks in the early 1980s to the old T-54 tanks to the to MiG airplanes to just experience of the Israeli military fighting Arab countries. Now partially that was a consequence of the fact that the troops, the Israelis were fighting one, motivated and badly trained, but it is also also a function of Russian weapons just not being very good. So I don't know much about this new weapon. It sounds very scary and hopefully the U.S. is developing tools to combat it but I just don't get that excited about Iranian weapons and Russian weapons or for that matter even Chinese weapons because I think that authoritarian regimes have a have a really hard time developing anything very good and the technology is just behind. And I think that's true of all these regimes and that's why I don't think Iran has any kind of significant military. I don't think they pinpointed missile strike to not hit Americans because I don't think they can pinpoint anything. I think they're pretty I think the mind needs freedom. Technology needs freedom and in unfree countries we don't have that and therefore it doesn't exist. All right, you know what I'm going to do? We're going to delay the next topic until until tomorrow and either tomorrow Tuesday because we're ready in an hour and I know there was a lot of technical issues but we're ready in an hour and I don't want to drag this this is it's a big issue so I don't want to shortchange it by rushing through it so we'll do it tomorrow the day after I've got on my prep ready so we can do that so I'll take super chat questions for the next few minutes if people want that. If not we'll call it a night. What podcast do you listen to if any? I don't really I've dabbled with some podcasts some some on economics some on others but I have to say I don't really listen to podcasts I mainly read. I mainly read. What was in 1984 an example of showing technology being better than it really could have been in that setting? Yes, I think 1984 is that example I think that most science fiction movies that depict dystopian futures have a wrong sense of of technology in that these dystopian futures the authoritarians often have always have a really incredible technology at their disposal and I don't think that's real I don't think that could be possible I think the best dystopian novel in that sense is Anthem because it depicts the real kind of technology that a true authoritarian regime would have which is zero none and you know it's why I'm not afraid of authoritarians because to the extent that they are really authoritarian to the extent that they're totalitarians they can't produce anything so their weapons won't work their people won't be motivated and it's there's nothing to be afraid of and that's all right any more super chat questions or should we call it an afternoon and I apologize for cutting it short but I do think that this topic about suicide opioids, alcoholism and generally the fact that life expectancy in the United States is in decline is a big story by the way there's a book by Victor Davis Hansen about the fact that even under the Nazis the weapons were significantly inferior even though they had a fairly industrial fairly somewhat capitalist background but the state took it over the Nazis took it over and national socialism took it over and the quality of the tanks the airplanes was lacking and while they could develop a v2 missile they probably couldn't have taken it much further than that again innovation innovation requires freedom because innovation requires the mind and the mind can only truly properly work when it is free when it is free thanks for watching I hope I've given you more reason never to watch Kyle again I hope you find ways to discourage them watch Asian comedies watch Asian comedian destroy America on Netflix not sure what that's all about okay I'll give you two seconds for no super chat we will talk to you soon bye everybody