 is pure apelka with my copelka only on the blaze radio network all right uh wow what a what an honor for me and a real pleasure for me to be filling in for apelka my name's youron brook and i'll be with you the next uh three days three days so uh uh mike told me uh you guys would treat me well he warned me you can get a little rowdy uh but uh i welcome your calls and welcome your participation let me uh i think i'll start by telling you a little bit about who i am because plus probably most of you have never heard of me and uh then uh lots of talk about you know uh trump's talk speech last night about uh about afghanistan and about coming together as one nation always uh interesting terminology and then uh we can talk more about front policy and state of our universities is going to be important uh for me but but lots to talk about no no shortage of news out there on any given day that we can discuss but let let me start by telling you a little bit about me a little bit about my ideas a little bit about where i come from uh uh ideologically if you will intellectually and and let me just say upfront this claimer please do not hold uh mike apelka um responsible for anything that i say only i am responsible what i say um and i'm i'm sure i'm gonna say stuff that that well you know you won't be happy with he might not be happy with who knows so i'm i'm uh i was born and raised in israel i i uh i lived most of my early life uh in uh in the state of israel i i emigrated i emigrant to the united states my my perspective on immigration might be a little different than yours and might be a little different than many of the hosts on the blaze because of my background but not only because of my background primarily because of my philosophical ideas and my view of what america stands for what america really is um maybe the most formative event in in my life really certainly from any ideological from a um from ideological perspective was a book i read when i was 16 and let me tell you a little bit about what i was like when i was 16 like most israelis back then i was a a real socialist i i really believed in the in the in the state could solve all problems i believed in egalitarianism and equality i believed that the state was above all other things and sacrificing for the state was one's most important duty so i was kind of a nationalist and a socialist that's a scary combination when i think of it today but that's how we all were in israel back then this is in the in the 1970s we were raised on it we were bred with it every all of our songs all of our stories i i want to tell you a way of upbringing was focused on socialism and nationalism the the tribe the jewish tribe and uh and very much the state the israeli state and then this idea of of of socialism of of sharing of equality equality of outcome opportunity equality um and um very much part of how we were raised in those days and then i read a book a book i think many of you have probably read and if you haven't read you've heard about and if you've heard about and haven't read you should read and if you haven't heard about it i don't know where you're living i don't know where you're living uh the book is atlas shrugged by inrand atlas shrugged by inrad if you haven't read it you should read it it should be an everybody's reading list millions of people have already read it i think it was uh it's a book that is already uh being unbelievably influential and shaped much of american culture and and this book blew me away and if you've read it you know it's pretty it's pretty radical in a good sense i i use the term radical as consistent and and positive and good um many of you might have read it and and not made much of it many of you might have read it said yeah that's a kind of what i believe in uh for me it changed my life it completely turned my life upside down everything i'd be taught everything it turned out i believed in anything everything politically and philosophically that my parents believed in that my neighbors believed in that my favorite politicians believed that she challenged the book challenged and uh it completely you know radicalized me it it completely changed me it was the most important event in my life from an intellectual perspective and and i fought the book i fought it i i know a lot you know you might have read it and say yeah i agree with that no i disagreed with everything i did not would agree with the word she said i threw the book on the wall i argued with her didn't help didn't help she won i lost uh of course i won overall by the time i'd finished the book i was completely convinced and and have been studying iron rands philosophy iron rands ideas uh ever since uh have really studied them deeply have taken them to heart i live these ideas and everything you hear from me is my attempt my attempt to convey to you iron rands philosophical ideas in the context of today's political cultural environment uh it's my attempt because who knows what she would have thought she was a genius i am not but it's my attempt to take you know donald trump's speech from last night and give you an analysis based on these ideas and and and let me tell you you know one of the most important things that i man taught me and that i hope to help convey to you and and what i hope i do every sunday i have a show every sunday on the blaze uh from two to four you can always you can also follow me on facebook on twitter just plug my name in and and put my name in google youtube you can you can subscribe to my channel and youtube and all the other fun social media stuff i'm there and you can you can you can participate if anything i say strikes you as interesting uh please please follow up on it one of the things that i i try to convey in all my speeches and all my talks and i speak i i think this last year i gave 109 public lectures in i think over 30 countries so i travel a lot overseas and and speak some of my sunday shows in the future going to be from all kind of uh bizarre international locations so um one of the most important ideas maybe you know a key idea that really frames many of the other ideas is that ideas deep philosophical ideas ideas about the nature of the world ideas about the nature of human beings ideas about morality ideas of what shape the world around us it is philosophical ideas philosophical ideas philosophy that's subject that you hated in school and we'll talk about that it's good that you hated it in school because what you were taught for the most part was crap but its ideas that shape history its ideas that shape politics its ideas that shape the events that are happening all around us and to some extent i've always known that but i never really opened my eyes to that fact and since then i've been looking at the world and looking at current events all from the perspective of trying to analyze trying to figure out what are the fundamental ideas driving these trends driving what is happening in the world around us and and i think most of us most of us are pretty upset by the state the world is in i mean we're about a little bit a week away from over a week from charlottesville we have got a war in afghanistan that has lasted uh more than 16 years uh we've got isis kind of on the run but still committing terrorist attacks like we saw just a few days ago in basalona the world seems to be in disarray our universities and we'll talk quite a bit and if you follow me we will talk quite a bit about the state of american universities the horrific state of american universities and american education more broadly the state of the world is not good and and one of the things that i think explains some of the violence we're seeing in america the the the clashes inside this country the rise of donald trump as president of the united state something i think most of us most of us thought was unthinkable a year or 18 months ago all of this can really be explained by the ideas that are dominant in the culture and the inability the inability of people to confront those ideas so what we're talking about this ideological philosophical clash that is happening in the world around us and what we need to do those of us who believe in america those of us who believe in freedom those of us who believe in the founding principles of this country what kind of ideas we need to embrace what kind of ideas we need to study in order to protect this greatest of all countries really in the history of mankind all right uh we're going to take a quick break you're listening to the michael palca show but this is uran brook filling in we'll be right back you're listening to pure opalca with michael palca on the blaze radio network well at least today mike's not here he will be back on friday i'm filling in for the next uh next three days uh my name's uran brook and uh we started uh with a little bit of my personal history just because i think it it relates to a lot of the things going on in the world today you know one of the things that that happened to me when i read atlas shrug uh when i was when i was 16 is that i really at the end of that novel i committed myself to making it somehow to the united states of america i committed myself to to immigrating uh to this great country and uh i was 16 you know not exactly couldn't exactly make it uh back then and it took me it took me a decade to actually make it to the united states but from that point in time one of the things that kept going through my mind is i want to live in the freest country in the world i want to live in a place that has the most opportunities to make the best life for myself as possible i want to live in what is the greatest country on the planet at least that is what i believed back then some extent it's still true although not quite as good as uh as uh as as my uh imagination believed it to be and not quite as good as as america's potential is we could be a lot better we could be a lot better anyway committed myself to doing that committed myself to finding a way to get into this country to to make it in and and this is this is why i sympathize so much with immigrants who come to this country you know they want a better life yeah i wanted a better life they want to make the most of their life as did i and they want to find a way to come and of course our immigration system is so screwed up don't even get me started and how screwed up our immigration system is it's hard to find a legit way to get into this country so anyway couldn't leave at 16 couldn't leave at 18 because in israel some of you may know this uh there's a draft and you get enlisted and you go and serve three years in israeli army whether you want to or not and so i served in israeli army for three years spent some time in uh israeli military intelligence learned a little bit about our enemies in in the muslim world and uh you know still use some of what i learned way way way back then in in in my analysis of of world events in my analysis of kind of american foreign policy or the lack of it or an israeli foreign policy and the lack of it or kind of american and israeli weakness got an undergraduate degree because you had a you know the only really way i could figure out to get into this country was to go to school here and um you know so i had to get a degree got a degree in engineering seems like a a previous life i was a civil engineer did construction work that's so weird um anyway came to the u s to get a graduate degree uh in an mba and ultimately got a phd finance so i have a phd finance i was a finance professor for seven years and then i was off at the job of running the einrand institute connecting back to reading out the shrugged when i was 16 now i got the job of actually being the advocate for her ideas out there in the world of of creating an in of of helping build up an institution dedicated to those ideas to that philosophy and i did that for for 17 years today i'm the executive chairman of that institution um more doing things like i'm doing right now speaking out there in the world on behalf of her ideas on behalf of her philosophy uh so everything everything i say is guided by those ideas those ideas i read about you know what is it uh yeah it's exactly it's scary i you're gonna figure out my age but 40 years ago exactly 40 years ago summer of 1977 is when i read atlas shrugged blew my mind changed my life changed my ideas all right uh if you want in on the conversation on any topic we raise or anything else or anything from my biography or any any issue that comes up in the news uh happy happy to take your call 888-900-3393-888-900-3393 happy to hear from uh you uh apelka fans so there's a term for you guys i i forget it now but uh you know happy to hear from you challenge me ask me questions um i'm gonna get into into the more controversial stuff here in a minute so came to america one of the things that was interesting when i came to america is i came on an f1 visa which was a student visa one of the things they do with the student visa is they make it impossible for you to actually make a living while you're going to school because i came with no money i came with two little suitcases with my wife she came on an f2 visa an f2 visa says you cannot work anywhere anytime while you're on that visa so what are you supposed to do as a student come here right now i could work on campus so i got jobs i got ins and out and end kind of jobs where i could but we struggled and we struggled for no reason my wife could have gone to work but it would have been illegal two minutes to actually work in the united states of america that that's a little strange that would would be uh illegal to actually work so you know just just more illustration of how difficult we make it we even make it difficult for people who come here to study people who come here to get an education and then once they get that education we make it extraordinarily difficult for them to get a job so it's very difficult and one of the big challenges we have in this country is the insane immigration laws and unfortunately donald trump and the latest immigration plan is not making that any easier we will we will talk about that all right so uh we're coming up on a break in in about a minute we've got a couple of callers on the line so please neil max hold on uh i'll get you right after the break you you both want to raise some big topics so i need some you know real time to actually engage with them and when we come back i want to talk about why the left is winning and this really fits into max's uh to max's uh ideas now let me just say the left is winning even though republicans hold the house the senate and the presidency these republicans are far more leftist than republicans were you know 50 years ago 30 years ago republicans have moved to the left and the left democrats have moved to the left leftist ideas statist ideas of gaining power in this country uh uh increasing dramatically all right we've got a hard break here three two one filling in for you're listening to pure okay with michael palca on the blaze radio network pure palca with michael palca on the blaze radio network all right today you're getting pure palca from uran brook but please don't hold mic responsible for anything that i say all right we're gonna we're gonna be taking uh we're gonna take some calls we've got uh we've got a bunch of callers i knew as soon as i mentioned immigration you know people would want to call in it's it's it seems to always be a hot topic but our first caller wants to talk about communism versus capitalism uh neil you're on uh the michael palca show how's it going uh hey hey my name my name is neil it's it's an honor to be on your show um honestly uh i'm a big huge fan of vine rand i've just gotten into her and uh honestly um i've uh and i also want i'm sorry i'm just uh take a deep breath you're fine yeah uh man well um i wanted to ask this question uh i was having this uh this argument with one of my friends who happens to uh be a communist and we're really left leaning his status and basically uh we were having this conversation about uh hind rand and basically uh of course he of course he disagrees with her but basically he said that well the reason why uh and rand and uh and cap and capitalism doesn't work is because like the republicans have tried it time and time again like for the example of uh whole ryan and ted cruise and i honestly disagreed with that but honestly i didn't know how to how to refute that so well i mean it's it's it's pretty simple to refute it look what does capitalism means there's a big confusion out there because people pretend that america today is capitalist or the paul ryan believes in capitalism or the ted cruise even believes in capitalism and they don't they don't and and i know this might come as a shock to some of you out there but they don't capitalism means the complete separation of state from economics capitalism means no state involvement in the economy capitalism means leaving us free free which means unregulated uncontrolled uh it means a government that does only one thing protect our individual rights which means protect our freedoms protect our freedom to act on our own behalf to start our own businesses to sell our things to protect our property so it's a system where all the property is privately owned and where the government's only job is to protect us that's it arbitrate disputes that we need a legal system but other than that a government that leaves us alone now you tell me when in american history have we ever had that now we came close close in parts of the 19th century maybe between the civil war in 1890 or or or something like that we came close but we've never really had it even during that period the gamma was doing all kinds of nonsense regulating railroads uh you know controlling a lot of the land uh taking over the canals and and and and taking them over for government control so we've never really had pure capitalism real capitalism in this country. Paul Ryan who is who is a big proponent of the welfare state he just wants to make the welfare state more efficient is not pro-capitalist and it's it hasn't been tried a lot of times if you look at how many regulations there millions and millions of different little regulations on every aspect of our business uh business lives um that's not capitalism if you look at that tax code the the amount of taxes we pay i pay in california 55% of my income goes to the state either to california to federal government 55% that's not capitalism that's socialism so there is no capitalism in america today we are mixed economy mixed up of some capitalism not very much and a lot of statism a lot of socialism a lot of government intervention and every aspect of our lives so i i agree when they criticize Paul Ryan or they criticize Ted Cruz fine they're not criticizing capitalism they're criticizing people who are mixed economy people who maybe are slightly less regulations but they're not they're not for real capitalism they're not for the the the idea behind the founding of this country which is freedom and individual rights which is a government that leaves us alone as jefferson said if if your neighbor doesn't have his hand in your pocket what he does in his own home in his own business now i'm paraphrasing here jefferson right is none of your business and yet it's all our business because the government intervenes in all of that so when they attack republicans that is not attacking capitalism republicans are not the party of capitalism i wish i wish there was a party in the united states today that it was a party of capitalism indeed what we need is an american capitalist party scrap these two loser parties these two leftist parties these two status parties these two parties that that that want to grow the state and increase its effect on our lives i want to be i want to be free i want to be able to to live my life without permission from some bureaucrat without permission for some politicians that's what this country is really about so you know your friend is is equating republicans with capitalism huge mistake and one of the things i try to emphasize over and over and over again is what capitalism really is it's freedom it's individual rights it's a government that only only only protects us from cooks and criminals and fraudsters and terrorists and foreign invaders arbitrates disputes and leave us us alone and of course it doesn't even do those things very well today because it's so distracted by redistributing our wealth so um you know when when republicans come out and say the solution of medicare is to phase it out and and those of you who are republicans who want to defend medicare call in right let's let me have it when they say the solution of medicare is to phase it out the solution of security is to phase it out then we will know republicans are capitalists but you're not going to hear that partially because america doesn't want capitalists so republicans give us what we want and america's way way to the left of where it needs to be does that make sense neil yeah it makes it makes perfect sense got some ammunition to go back to your friend and i don't know how you have a friend who's a communist that that boggles my mind so so the real question is you have a friend who advocates for ideas that are responsible for the murder of over a hundred million people i don't have friends or communists i won't even i mean only i won't i won't talk to communists i'll yell at them but i can't talk to communists unless they're very young and i think they could still be swayed against it but it's like having a friend who's a nazi in my view right nobody would admit to having a friend who's a nazi and yet we treat communism as different and in my view communism and nazism are the same thing they both advocate the subjugation of the individual they both are collectivist and place the group above the individual and they both are responsible for death and destruction both believe in the use of force in order to achieve anything in order to attain social goals both are the equivalent and yet we somehow tolerate communism and i will get to i want to talk about why we tolerate communists in a way that we would never tolerate nazis again because we somehow we're all lefties and and communism is the ultimate leftist ideology all right neil thanks for calling really appreciate it uh we're gonna take a quick break and and we've got max on the line who wants to talk about the rise and fall of america which is a perfect topic for me so you're listening to the iran to iran brook on apelka and we'll be right back after this pure apelka with michael palca on the place radio network all right and this is your ron brook filling in for michael palca and max dropped out we were gonna talk about the rise and fall of america i was looking forward to that uh max if you're listening call back uh you know i'd love to talk to you all right we're gonna take we're gonna take uh abboton who wants to talk about immigration we're gonna make this quick because i don't really want to spend the rest of the the show talking about immigration we could talk for a long time but uh let's see what abboton has to say since i raised the topic and i encouraged you guys to call hey i'm here on uh hey i want to run an idea about you uh so one thing i've been thinking of is my family immigrated to the united states from iran in the 70s and the 80s my family on my extended oh then we should hate each other you're an iranian and i'm an israelian what are we going to do about that that's right but you know in the time since we've immigrated my family i've been thinking about it i've probably created hundreds of millions of dollars in economic value here in the united states which means we've deprived iran of that value that they would have created and i think immigrants the united states we disproportionately select for people who are going to make something of their lives that's why they come to the united states so isn't it both in our economic and our national security interests to encourage that brain drain to encourage people from all over the world who want to make something of life to come here to deprive our opponents of those resources and of those of that economic value so you're calling to get me in trouble with the blaze audience is that is that the goal that's the purpose i thought that it would actually be a point that might resonate with that i mean i agree with you completely um i agree with you completely the uh our immigration policy should be much more open much more favorable towards people who can come here to work we should i mean my ideal immigration program given the fact that we're in a mixed economy given the fact that there's a lot of welfare and given the fact that you know we're messed up in so many respects uh my ideal immigration program would have anybody who can get here who will work uh can come in and look my argument about immigration is not about economics i can make the economic argument i think immigration is great for america partially because of what abatin said you know your immigrants who come to this country work produce the entrepreneurial they create they build whether it's a low skill level at the very very high skill level uh the more immigrants the better who are willing to work for a living i i believe in that i i think anybody working is creating value uh work is win win immigration is win win if uh you know they're coming here to work and that would be my entire focus let as many people who want to come to this country come as long as they're willing to work and we would get the best the best people in the world that's who we would get right the the uh the the most entrepreneurial the smartest the most ambitious uh people in the world would come here again where the high skill the low skill and they would improve their own lives and they would improve improve economy but beyond that i as an american have an individual right to invite anybody i want into this country as long as my inviting them does not physically harm my neighbor or any other american so as long as i'm not inviting into this country a terrorist a criminal or somebody carrying an infectious disease why is it any of your business who comes to work for me who comes to visit me who comes to stay in my hotel so our immigration policies are violating the individual rights of americans that's what i have against them right the economic argument is is an invalid argument the idea that that oh you hoods wages in america first of all you don't have a right to a wage you don't have a right to a job you don't have a right to health care you don't have a right to other people's stuff the only right you have is to be left alone left free protected that's it you have a way to be protected from physical force used against you not protected in terms of your salary not protected even in terms of your economic opportunities those are your responsibilities all the government is there to protect you from is the use of physical force by terrorists by criminals by the government itself that's it so there is no you can there is no economic argument against immigration add to that the fact that you know by any measure immigration is a huge benefit to them to the economy qua economy in terms of again entrepreneurship in terms of anybody who has a job is creating value win-win relationships i'm i'm paying you because you know i gain from it and and and uh you're creating value you you go and shop you you're creating economic activity from an economic perspective you can run the models you can run the you can study economics and you will find an argument against immigration in the economics literature it just doesn't exist freer opener borders are better economically much better economically in closed borders but i believe in the argument from the rights perspective from individual rights right and yeah i agree completely but in in the in the pursuit of our rights wouldn't wouldn't there been argument for the government to actually go out of its way to find people who would be productive in america no because it's not the government's job it's not the government's job to do that it's not the government's job to encourage people to immigrate it's not the government's job one minute to go out and find people it's the government's job to protect us and it needs to screen the people coming in to make sure that they're not criminals or terrorists or carrying infectious diseases but other than that you know if they again in the current environment if they've got a job why stop them from coming in uh the government has no role in in going out and deciding we need these professions versus those professions like they like trump's current plan right that's central planning since when did the government know when the economy needed the government's pathetic when it comes to things like that it has no clue what kind of jobs are needed in american what kind of jobs are not needed in america if you have a job that's all the government should require and it as long as you're not a danger then they should allow you in ten all right you're listening to your own book show we will get to you max i promise right after this two you're listening to the page radio network