Hello everybody. Today we have with us mister Yarn Brooke. He is an
Israeli American entrepreneur, writer and activists, an objectivist, and the current chairman
of the Iron Rand Institute, where he's been executive director from twenty to twenty
seventeen. Also the founder of BHZ Capital Management LP. How are you doing
this afternoon, mister Brooke. I'm doing well. Thank you call me you
on. I've had several people sort of in the libertarian circles and beyond on
my channel for interviews. I felt like I hadn't had an objectivist on and
I feel like you're the leading objectivist today. So well, I appreciate that.
It's I'm glad to be on, looking forward to discussion, glad to
have you. So do you think you could start by telling me a little
bit about your background, what you do and the history of the Iron Rand
Institute. Sure. I was born and raised in Israel, so Israeli Military,
got my undergraduate in the TECHNI the Israel Institute of Technology in Engineering,
went on to get an MBA in PhD in finance at the University of Texas
UH Finance professor from nineteen ninety three to two thousand, then joined the Animated
Institute in two thousand and I think you told the rest of that story.
You know, I first read iron read when I was sixteen in Israel.
I read Atlas Shrugged, and at the time when I read it, I
was pretty much opposed to every idea that was in the book, almost every
idea in the book. You were raised a socialist originally? Correct? Pretty
much? I mean, I you know, my parents when they originally came
to Israel had the dream of living on a kiboots. They never actually made
it, but you know, Israel was very socialist back then. Everybody was
a socialist. I didn't know anybody he was not a socialist, basically,
it was it was very unusual, at least in among my friends for anybody
to express a different point of view. When did that change? Like I
know, I know right now there's been a sort of like they say,
a right word swing with Yahoo was an interesting country in nineteen seventy seven was
the actually the same year right at La Shrugged. It was the first year
non labor party party won an election. So that was Bagan. For those
who you might remember, he was part of what today is that he could
or same party that Natanyao is that the head of and that was the first
election Israel was founded in nineteen forty eight. This was the first election that
a non labor party, non social democratic party, was elect was voted in.
That was the beginning of the change. Israel today basically has no left.
There is no left in Israel now, certainly not socialist left. Everybody
everybody in Israel pretty much as a centrist. There's center left, the center
right, and there's far right, you know, and the far right is
primarily religious, dominated by religious parties. I say that I could. Natennel's
party is a center right party, even though it sometimes wants to play on
the far right. It's it's basically a center right party. It's vote is
a center right, and the opposition is center left. But the center left
opposition parties are pretty center kind of the more radical leftist ideas have very little
representation in Israeli politics today. The almost everything is tilted is tilted through right.
And by right, I mean here just to be clear, I don't
consider myself right, I don't consider myself left. Right to me is nationalist,
usually religious, central powerful central government, particularly interfering in our social in
our social lives and usually usually right today means a government and interferes and now
economics as well. I mean, you see that in the US, and
you certainly see that elsewhere. So you know, I don't consider myself anywhere
on that political spectrum. I think we need to reconceive the spectrum. Yeah,
agree with that. Yeah. So so if I go back to this
story, so I read out The strugg that same year, nineteen seventy seven
as it happened, and it again I was raised. It was a very
nationalistic country kind of by almost by definition because of the way it was founded.
So I was raised very collectivist, very nationalist, very socialist, and
I right of course rejects all that. I was already an atheist at that
point, so that wasn't a big deal. I ran as an atheist,
but so that was no big deal for me. But everything else was earth
shadowing. Basically, after that book consumed everything, tried to consume everything she'd
written, and if dedicated the rest of my life to kind of understanding it,
applying it, studying it, And as part of that, I got
involved with kind of the Iron Rand movements, if you will. In the
United States. When I moved here and that's how I got ultimately to be
CEO and now chairman of the board of the Institute. I took classes from
the leading philosophers in iron Rand's thinking in the nineteen nineties and was you know,
ran a conference business around that. So that's kind of my story.
The Institute was founded in nineteen eighty five, three years after Ironrand had died.
She died in eighty two, and it basically dedicated to preserving and promoting
her ideas to keep them alive. And a lot of that the Institute did
through promoting her novels and trying to get her novels read by young people.
The Institute runs today the largest high school essay constiest in the world. It
gets it provides free books to teachers who want to teach iron Rand, Fountain,
ad Shrugged anthem quite predominantly in high schools, so we provide them books
for free. We provide curricula, so we try to get people exposure to
the ideas. And then we also have today something called the Ironmand University,
which is within the Ironman Institute, and it is dedicated to really training people
in the philosophy, primarily future intellectuals. Primarily people who then teach or become
speakers, or do media, write up eds, write audible books, whatever.
So you are of course leading proponent of the philosophy objectivism, which of
course devised by Russian American author and philosopher Irand firstly, do you think you
could explain what exactly objectivism is, its moral foundations, and what distinguishes it
from libertarians, because I know Iron Rand to not consider herself a libertarian,
called them the hippies of the right quote unquote yeah, so yeah, yeah.
Let me let me start with the distinguishing, because that is relative,
that is relatively easy at that kind of big picture level. And then as
objectivism is the philosophy, it has positions in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,
and in politics and in even aesthetics. Libertarianism at best is a political philosophy,
but it's not even really an integrated, coherent political philosophy because there's a
whole variety of of different views within it. Libertarianism has no Libertarianism has no
philosophical foundation, it has no metaphysics. No true libertarians are can agree on
metaphysics or epistemology or morality. You can be you can be a Christian,
you can be pretty fundamentalist, you can be an atheist, you can be
you could be a subjectivist, you can be an intrinsicist, you can be
pretty much anything and then have political views that somehow quote libertarian. Objectivism is
an integrated philosophy. It has clear use in every aspect, every big branch
and philosophy. And while it doesn't have answers to every question in philosophy,
has tries to have answers to all the big questions in philosophy. And again,
libertarianism is more eclectic and not really philosophical, primarily focused on politics and
economics almost exclusively. I'd say it's like, do you think it could define
objectivism? Yeah? Yeah, So objectivism first is a philosophy of Ie Ran.
So it's a name for philosophy. It's a name for a particular set
of ideas as defined by their author, by which who is Igne Ran?
But what is it? So now this is going to be superficial and quick
and kind of objectivism philosophy on one leg or on a few toes. In
metaphysics, Ran holds that reality is what it is. It's uh, it
isn't uh it isn't created by a consciousness. UH. It isn't created by
emotions. It facts the facts. Reality is what it is, A is
a and and the laws of causality apply to h to reality. You know,
we have in epistemology, we have the tool to to to no reality
UH, to discover it, to understand it, and that is our faculty
of reason. We don't gain knowledge through our emotions. We don't get knowledge
through revelation. Knowledge doesn't just imprint itself on us our emotions and our tools
of cognition. The only way to discover knowledge is to use our rational faculty
to observe reality UH facts and integrate those facts logically by use. By the
use of logic, only individuals can reason. Groups don't reason. There's no
group consciousness. Nobody can reason for you any more than anybody can eat for
you. We can contribute to one another's UH cognitive development by by you know,
stimulating and asking questions and conveying information. But you can't do somebody else
is thinking for them as as you know. So the unit of thinking is
the individual. And in morality RAND advocates for you know, the individual is
the unit that is alive. The individual is the unit that must act.
The individual is the unit that must live. And and and think you're the
ones you said. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
Yeah, civilization I think or something like that. Yes, And and basically
it's not free from men in the sense of other men are not of value
to you, of course they are, but free from them in a sense
of various levels and forms of enslavement. Right, So, so you know,
throughout history men have been subjugated in one way or to other men,
and civilization as the process of freeing the individual from that subjucation and only dealing
with other men in a voluntary process, a voluntary process of trade. So,
in morality, your moral responsibility in life is to survive, to thrive,
to flourish, and ultimately to be happy. That is your moral purpose.
And you are You're not there to sacrifice your life other people. Other
people are not the standard of morality. So you don't give up your life
for them and your values for them, But you don't also expect them to
give up their values in their life for you. So you don't you know,
you're you're not sacrificed to them, or you don't expect them to sacrifice
to you. And sacrifice here means giving up something important without expectation of anything
in return, or something less valuable in return. So morality is an egoistic
morality. It's a morality of self interest. It's a morality of individuals pursuing
their own rational, long term self interest. Tool by which we do that
is our mind is a reasoning faculty. So if you had to boil down
Rand's morality to one world, I'd say, think, I think before you
act. Act based on thought. So individuals need the ability to think in
order to pursue their happiness. The enemy of thought is force coursion, and
therefore when we come with it, when we're in a society with other people,
the one rule needs to be no coersion, no force. The concept
that captures that is the concept of individual rights, the idea that every individual
has an inalienable right to live his life free of coersion based on his own
judgment in pursuit of his own values. And the political system then manifests rights
as capitalism. It's the system that basically leaves people free to pursue their judgment
in pursuit of their values. Fee of cos and she rejects all full of
statism, but she also rejects, and this is a difference with libertunism.
So as she rejects anarchism of all forms, she believes in a government,
a strong government that does one thing and one thing only, and that has
protect you, protect you from others who would who would curse you, whether
those others live outside of your borders or inside your borders. Its stay to
protect you. We could get into the aesthetics if you're interested, But yeah,
if we have time towards the end, perhaps we could do that.
So objectivism has faced both controversy and scrutiny over the years from both people on
the religious right, mainstream democrats most notably, and even other libertarians like Robert
Nozick, who argued that it doesn't explain why people couldn't rationally prefer having no
values as a means of furthering a particular principle or set of values. It's
been accused of promoting selfishness. What would you have to say in response to
this? Do you believe that this is primarily a misinterpretation of Brand's ideas?
And additionally, what criticisms of objectivism would you theoretically find the most valid,
if any. Well, I think most of the criticism sadly, and I
wish this wasn't true, but most of the criticisms of brand strong Man who
position. You know, a lot of the people critical of Ironman, if
I never read her, or at least if they've read it, they didn't
understand. And a lot of that, you know, some of that,
and we'll get to kind of nosic, but a lot of that has to
do with, you know, the emotionalist gut response reaction to a philosophy that's
egoistic, that's selfish. People cannote or think about selfishness as meaning exploiting other
people, as meaning being a lying, cheating s ob and doing whatever it
takes to get your way, and your way meaning whatever you feel like.
An Ironman is clearly not for that. She calls the philosophy selfish, her
morality selfish, but she doesn't mean that by the word. What she means
by selfish is pursuing what objectively you're what is objectively good for you in the
long run, and doing so rationally. And I have not seen a critique
of that. It just seems that people always fall back on the straw manning
anyway from you know, Ben Shapiro arguing that, you know, what's to
stop somebody from just hitting on the goal at the bar? You know,
he's married, he's got kids at home, that there's an effort involved in
maintaining a marriage and taking care of kids. Why not just go sleep with
a woman at the ball? What the hell? And the reality is that
if you're rational and if you think long term, there lots of reasons not
to sleep with a woman in the ball. Part of them is that you're
just not attracted to us as good looking she may be, because you have
a you know, a more wholesome perspective and what is attractive, and that
comes from being rational and having a long term perspective on life. And you
love your wife and your kids. So it would actually be a sacrifice to
sleep with some random woman at the bar and put in jeopardy your relationship with
your wife and your kids, and put in jeopardy just the integrity of your
own soul. So that kind of understanding of what self interest means and linking
it to reason and rationality something people really resist. It's it's interesting just to
think about why that is, but people really do resist it. So I
think those criticisms are either ignorance or evasive of what she actually is talking about,
what she actually says. I think there are other criticisms Knowsick who try
to deal with and but I think it's just wrong. I just think Knowsick
is wrong. I think he it's to some extent he doesn't understand it.
But I think more deeply, I think it just makes logical stakes in trying
to refute her. You know, and for example, the way you phrased
it before illustrates one have no values or to achieve a value. Well,
but that's a contradiction in terms right there. You you know, if you
have no values, you have no value to achieve. If you have no
values, why even live? What's there's nothing? You're just nothing. So
you're not striving towards anything. As soon as you're striving towards something, you
are, you are value. And then the question is is the value good
for you? Isn't it a good for you? And and and you know
you want to avoid things that are bad for you because the bad for you
and life is the standard and if life is not the standard of what is?
So I think there's just some logical mistakes there. Look, when it
comes to the philosophy itself, to philosophy, I have not found any critique
that is convincing. I have not found any critique that is that really is
deeply challenging. Uh, you know, to and you know, at best,
on a bad day, you could get me to say, given how
people behave, it's how to conceive as man as the rational being because there's
so much huractionality out there. But then you know, you find the things
that man is created and man is none, and you see the glimpses of
that rationality, and you know what's possible. And I think that's what ein
Man is arguing, is she's not arguing that people all like this. It's
what people can be and what we should be, and what we should strive
to be, and what it means to be a moral human being, and
that I think every human being has the potential to do. It's sad that
very few people choose to do it. So moving on to religion, Rand
was highly critical of it, believing that organized religion and even belief in God
itself was actually an insult to man. Do you think you could elaborate further
on what she meant by this, and is there a direct link between this
idea in Nietzsche's notion of slave morality? And moreover, did she ever draw
a direct link between this and communism? Okay, a lot there, All
right, let's bake it down. So first, well, forgot to religion,
or let's start with they're just a belief in God. I mean,
the problem with a belief in God is that it's based on by definition faith.
There is no evidence for God. There are no logical arguments for God.
In spite of the attempts of some people to present some, they're not
real arguments, and philosophers have refuted them over and over again. And at
the end of the day, nobody believes in God because there's a logical argument
for God. At the end of the day, people believe in God because
they believe in God because they've they've taken it on faith. And Rand would
say anything taken on faith is bad. You know. The standard for human
cognition, the standard for discovering the truth, the standard by which one should
live is reason, fact, evidence, logic. That's what we should pursue
in order to achieve success at living. That's what human life means. That's
what progresses human life. Faith in God is the negation of that. Whether
some people want to say, well, it's a negation only is one little
part of me. It's almost never just one little part, because that faith
has implications, particularly when you get to organized religion. But but beyond that,
if reason is really our means of survival, whose reason is really a
tool? Why have an exclusion clause? Why have some parts of your life
not guided by reason? So she rejects the whole idea of faith in God
lepricans many of the conspiracy theories going on right now, anything that's based on
faith and not evidence and facts, I mean, Q and on you could
argue is basically a gnostic religion. Yeah, And I think there are a
lot of kind of religions out there in some form another that basically take a
lot of the kind of principles of Christianity and just you know, change them
and morph them into into something into something different. But it's all based on
faith. And she rejects faith. So so that's and then once you get
into organized religion, I would say, particularly Christianity, I'm sure the supplies
that I know, the supplies to Islam as well, and to some extent
to Judaism, but I think Christianity is the model in the West. She
then has a lot of critique gives Christianity as a philosophy, if you will.
Generally, she viewed religion as a primitive form of philosophy. You know,
man has a real need for answers, answers kind of the big questions,
you know about life. Where did this world come from? What is
the nature of reality? What's the nature of my consciousness? How do I
know reality? What is right? And what is wrong? Right? And
religion provided some primitive alliances to it, because you know, everything else,
science and everything else was pretty primitive back then, so religion was as good
as a god as a philosophy. She was very critical, particularly Christianity,
because of its altruism, because of its morality. I mean, obviously,
the epistemology isn't a pistemology of revelation. You know things because somebody, it
was revealed to somebody and then they told you about it. That revelation is
to the prophets, or to the pope, or to Jesus or whoever.
So she rejects out of pistemology, and she rejects the whole metaphysics of a
world created by a God. But I think a lot of the criticism is
around the morality. Christianity basically says, you know your life, the purpose
of your life should be the sacrifice. The purpose of your life is some
higher goal, and indeed, in another life, in another dimension, in
another world, your purpose in life is God. You need a sacrifice to
God, or to the religion, or to other people, but you cannot
live your own life or your own sake. You know. The symbol of
Christianity being Jesus on the cross suffering the most horrific death possible, not for
his sins, not for anything he did, but sins other people committed.
Talk about a massive injustice, and Rand would view it as a massive injustice,
So somebody to die for other people's collect tying into collectivism, I assume,
definitely into collectivism. He is sacrificing the individual for the sake of the
group, even though the individual is a hero. You know, within the
context Christianity certainly a hero. So she rejects the morality and the whole,
the whole system that religion builds in order to justify knowledge. But also he
knows to justify what's right and wrong. And her philosophy is a real challenge
to conventional philosophy and to religion in terms of all the metaphysics, epistemology,
but more than anything in ethics, which is how people live, because it
says, no, your purpose in life is not to suff it's not to
sacrifice, it's not to do what the group demands or what God demands,
somebody else demands. You purpose in life is to pursue your happiness. That
is that's a that's a major revolution in ethics. And you know she it's
not completely out of noway, because this builds an Aristotle. Aristotle ethics is
an egoistic ethics. It's an ethics of self fulfillment, of flourishing, of
individual human flourishing. So that's that's the essence. You mentioned communism, communism,
the very strong parallels between communism. I think in Christianity you can replace
God, you can replace God or Jesus with the politarian and they're the elect.
I mean, I remember I had this conversation with I don't know if
you know, Michael Rechtenwald, but no, okay, you know, but
former Marxist professor who became a libertarian, But yeah, I know about I
asked him what he thought about the idea. It was just something that came
to mind about how if you think about it, Marxian eschatology is very similar,
like the idea of okay, there's especially when you think of like pre
millennial like interpretation of the end of like the idea that okay, there's going
to be this great time of horror, You're going to have a Eventually Christ
will return, There'll be the reign of a thousand years. It'll pass away
old heaven and old Earth. You'll have a new heaven on earth. Same
with that, you'll have a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat. The old or
the state will wither away, and there's needs will be taking care of magically,
no explanation how, and you'll be able to live in heaven. According
to communism, of course, truth is revealed to the dictatorship. The dictator
knows what the truth is, he represents it politarian. The politarian doesn't know
what's good for it. He has to dictate to them, just like just
like in Christianity, and of course the ethic of sacrifice, you must sacrifice
yourself to this noble cause, to this poltarian God and to this mystical future.
So yes, I think Christianity is a secularization of Christianity. It's it's
a communism secuation of Christianity. And it's why it's so popular. It's it's
it's so popular because it's not that radical. It's it's just taking your Christianity
seriously, but rejecting God. And that's why I think it. It latched
on. You know, it's not surprising it latched on in Russia. It
latched on where people were more mystical, took the Christianity most seriously, but
what was really important to them, and the Christianity was not God. It
was really important to them in the Christianity was the sacrifice and uh and and
the revelation and this this story of achieving paradise sometime in the distant future.
Yeah, reminds me of that. There's an old Oswald Spangler quote which is,
uh, it was Christianity as the grandfather of Bolshevism. I remember,
yep. I think that's absolutely right. And then you talked about the slave
morality, and well, I don't think Iran has ever referred to the morality
of altruism or the morality of Christianity is a slave morality. She wouldn't have
used those terms. But but yes, altruism in the essence is a slave
morality, right, It's a morality. It says your life doesn't belong to
you, you must sacrifice it to others, you know, to God,
to the proletarian, to the group, to the collective in some form,
to the weak, to the poor, to the meek in some form.
And that that is, I think, a slave morality. And I think
that is suddenly Imrand rejects that whole idea. I think where I Rand disagrees
with Nietzsche really, really fundamentally is on the positive, not so much on
his critique, but on the positive, on what should replace the slave morality
and how does one think about it? The world of reason versus emotion,
All of that is very different differentiates Ran from Nietzsche quite. It's like the
Enlightenment versus Romanticism debate they had. Yes, absolutely so, I considering Rand
as as a continuation of the Enlightenment in all important philosophical senses. Okay,
so, although she promoted secular values, Rand was heavily inspired by the writings
of philosophies of people like Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of whom was
the basis of Christianity's metaphysical framework, and the other, of course being a
Christian saint. Many would argue that it's impossible to detach the spiritual from their
philosophies. How does rand and by extension, yourself, also being a secularist,
square this with your religion. Well, so, first, you know,
I don't think Aristotle was certainly now religious, and I certainly don't think
his metaphysics or his morality aligned necessarily with religion. It is Thomas Aquinas that
kind of forced Christianity to embrace Aristotle and and kind of created diffusion that I
think was unnatural and is unnatural, kind of broke apart with the Reformation,
right, I mean, the Reformation rejects all that and is much more based
on pure emotion. Evangelic in the evangelical movement today rejects that. So I
think that fusion of astarted with Christianity was never completely natural, was always unnatural
and had to dissolve, And it starts dissolving in the Renaissance, and it
gets more fully dissolved in the in the Enlightenment. She admired Thomas Aquinas because
of his deep, respectful reason and because he is the one who brings reason
back into Western civilization. In a sense, with the fall of Rome and
the disappearance of the libraries, the ancient libraries, many of them as started,
is lost, the whole idea of reason is lost, and we go
into what I think was a dark ages, and the dark ages of mysticism
and irrationalism. Acquainas brings civilization out of that, and he basically sets the
conditions for the Renaissance that happens about a hundred years after he dies. But
without Acquaintance, there's no renaissance. And that's why she's such an admirer of
Acquaintance. It's not she She admires the arguments, specific arguments. She admires
what he does to Western civilization and where he takes it. I mean,
I consider, uh, you know, I have no problem with the idea
that I have a spirit. I just don't consider that spirit mystical. I
have a consciousness. I have spiritual experiences when I contemplate arts, when I
listen to music, when I uh, you know, see a you know,
look at the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo. But they have nothing to do
with religion. They have nothing to do with God, they have nothing to
do with something mystical. They have something to do with the soul, the
consciousness that that I have that to some extent I control or I have helped,
you know, work to create, so I you know. Rand also
talked about separating religious concept from religion. That is that a lot of these
concepts shouldn't have just a religious connotation, and it's a shame that they do.
So I think spirit is one of those I don't think. I don't
think one should necessarily do. The human spirit is something that is mystical.
It is it is about our character, it's about how our mind, it's
about how you know our values. So you are obviously an advocate for secularism
yourself, I believe. Would you consider yourself agnostic? Is that you're I
don't know. I'm I'm an atheist and I've been an atheist since the age
of six. So okay, this is this, This was the easy part.
Why do you believe that a secular society is preferable to one that is
religious, particularly when religion regardless of whether or not God exists. That's a
completely different conversation has actually provided a certain amount of efficacy over the course of
civilization. Again, when we go back to the idea of finding meaning,
side challenge all of that. So, first, you know, I start
with the question is it true? Is it false? That? To me
is what's important? And God doesn't exist, So that's it. So why
would I advocate for God because people have advocated for him for two thousand years?
Why would I believe in something just because other people do it. I
see no evidence for it, I see no reason for it. Therefore,
so what's important is the truth. What's important is reality, not what works.
And then I challenge if it works right to the extent. Religion is
practice consistently, it is destructive, it is harmful. It leads to dark
ages. Dark ages is what Christianity is. Anything better than the dark ages
is the victory as secularization over Christianity or over religion. The renaissance is the
rediscovery of ancient ideas, ancient sculpture. I mean, you cannot make Michelangelos
David. You cannot sculpt Michelangelos David in the dark Ages. First of all,
you'd be stoned to death, the sculpture would be destroyed. They tried,
the religion has tried to do that in fluence anyway. They tried to,
you know, they tried to destroy David. And even though Michelangelo was
religious and became more and more religious as he aged, that spirit of the
David is a secular spirit. That is, an individual who is competent,
who is able to deal with reality. If you look at the sculpture,
there's no God, there, there's no religiosity. There. There is a
David standing up to Goliath by himself alone and with his own strength, as
with own determination, all in that sculpture. That is the spirit of enlignment.
The spirit of enlignment is the beginning of the shrugging off of religion,
the beginning of man standing up for himself. They called it humanism, which
is the beginning of a secular philosophy. And that is the beginning of the
rejection of religion, the beginning of the rejection of Christianity. And I think
that only intensifies with the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, where men are starting
to see that they can understand reality without a God, without revolution. You
know, the Bible actually contradicts science the things in the Bible that don't make
sense. Science can explain the world, yes, can explain everything yet,
but it can explain more and more and more, and we have the tool
for understanding the worlds. What do I need? Religion? And I think
the alignment is a period in which people start relegating religion even more, shrugging
religion off even more, and making kind of a personal thing and everything else
science understanding the world. Politics were secular, but in only in private life
are we religious. And it's trying to shrug off the remnants, the last
remnant of it. Morality right and wrong, undermined by religion, not promoted
by it, you know, because they teach a wrong morality. So I
think a properly construed secular society, a secular society built on rational principles,
on the role of reason, is a fons superior society than a religious society.
And the more secular the society has become over time, the better it's
become, both materially and I think in every other regd you know, the
life expectancy, material success, but also aesthetics and aesthetic creation. I think
to a large extent that the spirit that created all that over the last two
hundred fifty years is a consequence of the alignment of the consequence of rejecting religion
on embracing it. So you're Israeli and consider yourself a Zionist, on which
you've written extensively. So many libertarians pardon, not really, but oh you
don't okay. So I don't send myself as Zionist unless you're anti Zionist,
and then I'll fight you. But I'm neither. He know, you know,
I think Zionism is a necessary evil, if you will, okay,
So so many That's what I'm getting, So many libertarians being non intervenetists,
having critical of Israel, with some even considering themselves to be full on anti
Zionists or against the existence of an Israeli state itself. What is your argument
as to why you believe it is important to support Israel? How would you
approach that if you were trying to convince somebody who is anti Israel to kind
of come over to that perspective. Well, first, let me say,
I don't know what you mean by support Israel, because I want to be
clear. I don't think the United States government should be sending Israel money I
don't think American troops should be sent to the Middle East to fight for Israel,
you know, any of that. I think what Israel deserves is a
mall support and to some extent our military working with Israel as an ally,
not not giving them, but trading with them as an ally. And why
do I think Israel deserves a'm all support Because it's a good country. It's
it's fundamentally a country that is basically free. You know, it's not as
fee as I would like it to be, but neither as America. But
it's basically free. It's a country that basically respect individual rights, the property
rights, the religious rights, that the individual rights of its citizens. Again,
is it perfect. No, It's got flaws, It's got problems,
particularly in giving too much respect for Jewish fundamentalists. But it's basically a rights
respecting, free, good moral country, and as such deserves our support,
particularly given that it is attacked by everybody. It's being attacked for since its
founding, by its Muslim and Arab neighbors, who represent the exact opposite civilization
and culture than the Israel does. Israel represents a culture and civilization of individualism,
of relative free markets, of freedom speech, of all the things that
we associate, I think with Western civilization. It's the Middle East, of
course, like in its dark ages, essentially the Middle East, especially if
you take especially if you like analyze it in the context of like civilizational cycles,
like after the end of the Ottomans, after that lights out. Yeah,
I mean, it's an interesting there's an interesting I mean, we can
get into the history of that, because I think it's interesting. But the
reality is that civilization launches with Aristotle, and whoever adopts Aristotle is civilized,
and whoever rejects him is not. The Arabs were civilized when they embraced Aristotle,
which was from about nine hundred a d. To about twelve hundred eighty.
They did phenomenally well, the biggest libraries in the world when Baghdad and
later in places like Kodava and Toledo in southern Spain, they had scientists and
mathematicians. They made real progress in the scientists while Europe was still Mayad and
mysticism and witch burning and craziness. The Muslim world because of their respect for
Aristotle, we're doing amazing things. And then a famous Muslim philosopher by the
name of a Ghazzali, who one of the things that they were trying to
do in the Muslim world was trying to writ him solve faith with reason,
same thing Thomas Aquinas would later do right for Christianity. And they couldn't write.
They kept trying and kept battling in but they tilted towards reason, and
that's why they published. And then al Ghazali came was the greatest philosophy's time,
and he went into the desert to contemplate this question of faith versus reason.
And he came back one day and he said, I've got the solution.
We must abandon reason. Faith is it? You cannot have both.
And literally within fifty years, every library is burnt in the Photo Crescent,
the area between Baghdad, Baghdad and really Egypt. That civilization disappears by the
time the Mongols arrive and completely the story back Dad. There's no libraries there
anymore, and there's no science, and there's no The only remnants of that
survive in Spain, and those are taken over by the Christians. And it's
those books that they take when the Christians take some of these cities in Spain.
Those are the books that travel to the University of Paris where Thomas Aquinas
reads them. He reads the Arabic translations of the original Greek, right,
he doesn't read them in Greek. Only later they translated the Latin. And
so that's the path. You know, the Arab saved civilization because they saved
Aristotle. But Aristotle the respects to the individual, respect for reason. That
is the civilization of force, the moves of forward. And if you think
about Israel, going back to Israel, Israel represents individualism. It has a
generally individualistic culture and reason. It's a it's a culture that respects science,
respects thinking, respects argumentation. Again, not consistently. It's too religious,
way too religious for my taste, but it's it's westernized. And the Arab
world is a world dominated by mysticism and faith and is still in the dark,
has retreated into the dark ages as a consequence of kind of Elgas,
all these teachings. So, yes, we should support Azraelka's a bastian a
civilization, just like I think we should support Taiwan relative to China, just
like we should support Ukraine relative to Russia. That's a whole other issue.
I disagree with men in libertarians on right. You know, whenever barbarism raises
its head, we should support the civilized and because that's who we are,
and and and and anybody who threatens another civilized country is a threat to us.
Yeah. I feel like a lot a lot of people, especially the
people who are critical of Israel, forget, like what is the country where
Arabs have the most rights? Like that? That's that'll shut them up.
That'll basically it's like don't you care about right, it's support It's like fine,
Like I criticism of the Israel government completely understand that, as you and
I both used earlier. But I mean if you support the creation of like
replate giving it back to Palestine, like not only does that completely revert all
that progress, but then also you risk it becoming a vassal state of Iran.
I mean absolutely. And look, the Palestinian authority has some autonomy in
the West Bank. They have Gaza. Gaza is completely independent, and yet
Gaza is a religious theocracy. It is it is brutal, it is horbable.
They throw gays off of buildings, They they they execute people with no
real rule of law. It is barbaric and primitive, and it is a
vassal of you on to a large extent. The West Bank is terrible.
There's no free speech on the West Bank. Try try criticizing Mahmoudabas, who
is the president. Last elections were I don't know, twenty years ago.
Yet he's still president. This term expired a long time ago, doesn't matter.
Nobody cares. There's no democracy or semblance of kind of elections. So
absolutely, you know, I used to when I lived in Israel. I
actually worked as a construction manager and all of my all of my contractors were
Arabs, and you know, they used to tell me. And I think
this has changed because of them becoming more religious, unfortunately over the last twenty
years. But this is back in the eighties. They would say thank Allah
that I was every morning. I think, I'll love that I was born
in Israel. You know, they go, they say, I go see
my relatives in Cirio and Jordan or in Egypt. Life here is so much
better than over there. And it is the richa the Fria. They write,
some more respected and and and and many of them, at least I
think most of them understood in you then, okay, so final question.
You will be hosted by the SOHO form for a debate between you and Brian
Kaplan regarding monarchism versus anarchism. You argue in favor of the former. Of
course, I assume that goes back to the Rand's criticism of anarchism and in
pro monarchism. But so that said, what is your specific argument in favor
of monarchism. How does that differ from other monarchists libertarians such as Robert Nozick
and moreover, what are your criticisms of anarchism itself specifically? Well, if
you want to give us, like a little example of what your argument's going
to be, sure, well, I don't want to give Brian heads up
here, but will be it. I think he knows first. I don't
consider myself a Menichist. I don't like that term. I consider myself an
advocate for limited government limited to the protection of individual rights. That's its own
classical liberal is out of term. You are still maybe, but you know
again, I consider myself I think I like the term capitalist because I think
that captures it. But at the end of the day, limited government limited
by the principle of individual rights. I don't like the I don't think meno
key you know it's an ism. I find the whole construct of that would
problematic. But the the essence of my argument is that individuals, as I
said earlier, in order to be able to use to pursue their reason in
pursuit of their own values and pursuit of their own happiness, to pursue their
life, must be free to use their mind and uh free of coersion.
The coersion fundamentally is the enemy of society. So in order to create a
civilized society, the first step once must make is eliminate coersion from society.
And the only way to do that is by creating some kind of monopoly over
the use of a force, limiting that monopoly over the use of force to
only use it as retaliation in defense, but extracting force for society, so
we can all start interacting with one another knowing force is not allowed. Force
is not an option. Forces off the table because we have this entity that
is basically outlawed. It it is eradicated and is maintaining the peace, maintaining
maintaining that. You know that that that is followed, that there's a and
then you know, I believe that they are objective rules. Uh, you
know that needs to be that need to be determined in terms of both what
are the laws, what are the ways in which we've sticked force? And
then what are the procedures by which we go about enforcing it? Right?
I mean, how do we know somebody's a criminal, how do we know
somebody initiated force? Rules of evidence? I mean, there's a massive amount
of things that one has to determine in order to figure out how to objectively
have a justice system that enforces laws that are properly defending individual rights. All
of that requires real thinking, and that needs to be done by in a
sense of centralized authority where they, you know, people can really think it
through and figure this out. Anarchy is, in my view, the legitimization
of force. He says, Look, force is just one other thing we
human beings do. Let's have a market in it, let's negotiate around it,
let's compete over it, and some you know, different agencies will have
different laws, different rules. It will all be in the same geographic area.
You might have your system of government in a sense running you and I
have my system of government and will somehow negotiate and all these security forces,
all these private governments, private militaries, private police forces will all negotiate deals
between them. And I say, first, that's a rejection of the objectivity
of law, the fact that there are objective values, the objective laws.
There's there's an objective good law and objective bad law. It leaves it up
to you know, socially determined in a sense marketplace determined. And second that
that it's it basically reverts to who to violence, right, It basically revots
if if the if what we're trading, if what we're trading honest force,
then if I can build the strongest of those militaries, I'm going to do
a hostile takeover my competitors. And that hostile takeover will always engage involve force,
will always involve violence. Why not. I mean, there's no authority
that says that's not okay. It's it's already been legitimized by the very acceptance
of anarchy. So I think anarchy by definition has to evolve to some form
of authoritarianism, some form of might makes rights. Uh, And with one
dominant security agency creates a government and rules over that territory. But now agree
that's actually when I was the first time I had Walter block on, I
asked him, in the absence of the state, what is to stop another
state from forming, particularly one that's that's like undemocratic. It has to I
mean, over any particular geographic area, you cannot have multiple legal systems,
you cannot have multiple police authorities. That only devolves into violence and ultimately,
you know, victory of one over the others. It's not a stable equilibrium.
We have competition of governance. The competition of governance is different geographic area
having different governments, and you know, they can offer different things and therefore
people can move from one to the other and uh and and that's where you
get the competition. But over a particular geographic area, it's just a recipe
for violence. Okay. So to that end, thank you so much for
coming on. Before we go, are there any particular like books or writings
of yours that you would like to share for the audience. Well, first,
I'd like people to go to the iron Rand Institute website iron Rand dot
org a y n R n D dot org. You can find a lot
of information there. You can also, hopefully, hopefully those of you have
not read iron Rand, pick up a copy of fountain Head or a shrug.
I think, I think, I think you'll really enjoy those books,
whether they change your mind or not. The books that are worth engaging with,
ideas worth engaging with. And then for me, I would say,
you know, I've got a channel on the on YouTube, you're on books,
you're on book, I'm on Twitter, so so look me up.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. That'll be fantastic. And yeah, just
google you google my name and everything is right there available. I've also got
a few books, Equal is Unfair that deals with inequality and free market Revolution
that deals with kind of the capitalism and free markets, and then finally a
book in a model defense of finance. And you can find all those books
on Amazon. Okay, again, thank you so much for coming on.
It was a pleasure talking to you, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Fantastic rest of your summer, and good luck soho debate. Thank you.
I'm looking forward to that, right m.