Speaker 1: A lot of funds of edom national self interest and
Speaker 1: an individual loss.
Speaker 2: This is the show, all right, everybody, welcome to your
Speaker 2: one book show on this Monday evening.
Speaker 3: It's eight pm here.
Speaker 2: On the East Coast. Hope everybody had a a good Monday.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you did not look at your portfolios. Uh, and
Speaker 2: it was a pretty brutal out there, all right. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm really happy to have with me today Uncle Gate,
Speaker 2: who I think everybody knows but is the chief philosophy
Speaker 2: officer at the Iron Rand Institute and super busy.
Speaker 3: So it's it's a it's a real treat to have
Speaker 3: him on.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: So welcome Uncle, Hey, you're good to be here.
Speaker 2: So I thought we'd with with your assessment of of
Speaker 2: kind of where we are with with Trump and kind
Speaker 2: of how bad has it been relative to your expectations.
Speaker 2: I know, I know we both were pretty negative or
Speaker 2: very negative on on on this on Trump generally, but
Speaker 2: I think I was particularly this term. I thought it
Speaker 2: would be much worse than the previous one and then
Speaker 2: but he's exceeded my He's worse than I even thought
Speaker 2: he would be. And I'm wondering how how you how
Speaker 2: you feel about it? And then I'd like to talk
Speaker 2: about where you think we're going from here.
Speaker 1: It's about what I expected. I think it's in some
Speaker 1: ways the immigration thing is worse than I thought it
Speaker 1: would be, in the sense of how much it seems
Speaker 1: they want to project power and the So I actually
Speaker 1: don't even think Trump's that interested in deporting people, but
Speaker 1: it is. He knows that it plays to the base,
Speaker 1: and he's willing to play that up. But the people
Speaker 1: he's appointed, I think, are much more. They want to
Speaker 1: just wield the power. They want to kick people out
Speaker 1: to show that they have the power to kick people out.
Speaker 1: I even think they want to do it a little bit,
Speaker 1: pushing the boundaries of the law or even flouting the law.
Speaker 1: They want to show that they can do that. So
Speaker 1: I have a pretty negative assessment of what's happening with
Speaker 1: the immigration and part of just what's happening, but part
Speaker 1: of it's he's surrounded himself in comparison to the first administration,
Speaker 1: I think, with more power lusters than the and that's bad,
Speaker 1: but it's part of I mean, it's part of what
Speaker 1: was so bad about him that he pushes out the
Speaker 1: better people in the Republican Party and you get the
Speaker 1: worse people who want who much more want to be there.
Speaker 1: I think you still had in the first administration. I
Speaker 1: don't know when you think about this, but there were
Speaker 1: people who thought like they have some responsibility to keep
Speaker 1: this guy in check. And it's kind of he's a
Speaker 1: child and you've got to humor him a bit. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of stories that I think there
Speaker 1: were various individuals who thought they had to do that,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to do that, however successfully and whether
Speaker 1: it's fully sincerely or there's a bit they liked the
Speaker 1: limelight and power as well, but there was much more
Speaker 1: that I.
Speaker 2: Think that.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know John Bolton a little bit. I
Speaker 2: met him before he took the position with Trump, and
Speaker 2: he was quite negative about Trump. But he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but if he offered me something, I would do it
Speaker 2: because it would be an opportunity and and I could
Speaker 2: mitigate some the bad I don't think he did. I
Speaker 2: think his book later on really reflected that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's funny because I was in where was I It
Speaker 2: was somewhere maybe I was in London, and Joel Bolton
Speaker 2: walked into the walked into the the club I was
Speaker 2: at I was one of these British airways, a club thing,
Speaker 2: and sat not far from me, and I don't think
Speaker 2: you remembered who I was, but I went up and
Speaker 2: said I just went up and said, you know, just
Speaker 2: thank you for the work you're doing. I know how
Speaker 2: much you know, how much negativity is around it, And
Speaker 2: he seemed to appreciate that. So I thought, given what's
Speaker 2: going on in the world, you know, it's good to
Speaker 2: boost the better people. But yeah, I definitely think that's
Speaker 2: the case. In the first admission. The number of people
Speaker 2: the Easy Economics team I think was there with the idea,
Speaker 2: and there was that guy who published that up ed
Speaker 2: the New York Times about with the adults in the room,
Speaker 2: and we're tried keep keep saying, there are no adults
Speaker 2: in the room this time. Yeah, they complete the complete accolades.
Speaker 2: What do you think about I mean, one of the
Speaker 2: things that holifies me is, yeah, I think the people
Speaker 2: he's appointed on the immigration issue really really bad. But
Speaker 2: part of what holifies me is that the the the
Speaker 2: people on the ground, the people actually uh you know,
Speaker 2: applying these this to the immigrants. There seems to be
Speaker 2: a significant number of them that are just cool and
Speaker 2: nasty and you know, really enjoying the little power lusters,
Speaker 2: really enjoying inflicting this on people. And that's scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm my view has been for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's partly just through the experience with the US government.
Speaker 1: I think the immigration officials that sort of that, like
Speaker 1: the average person who's manning these booths or but who
Speaker 1: would join ice there, it attracts really bad people. I
Speaker 1: don't think every person is bad. And some people think
Speaker 1: of it as yeah, I'm here try to find people
Speaker 1: carrying drugs and stop the gangs from coming in. But
Speaker 1: too many people It's just this is an opportunity to
Speaker 1: wield power over people, and this is like way predates Trump.
Speaker 1: I've told this story to some people before I made
Speaker 1: it that, like, I'm not allowed to talk. My wife
Speaker 1: does not allow me to talk to Immigration Border Control
Speaker 1: anymore because I too many of them. They just want
Speaker 1: power the when I so, I'm a pretty patient person.
Speaker 1: But the we have a green card that says keep
Speaker 1: your card in its sleeve, and I had to You
Speaker 1: used to before it's all automated. You used to have
Speaker 1: to give it to the person, and it was why
Speaker 1: is your card in the sleeve? You have to take
Speaker 1: your car up. So next time I take it out,
Speaker 1: why is your card out of the sleeve. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be in the sleeve. And the third time this happened,
Speaker 1: I just and the idea that it's a job to
Speaker 1: stop people from working, Like my job is to stop
Speaker 1: people from working, to try to figure out if they're
Speaker 1: trying to work in the US and if they are,
Speaker 1: to go after him, and like, how can I attract
Speaker 1: somebody who thinks, yeah, that's a productive activity stop other
Speaker 1: people from working. So it attracts the kind of person who, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I like to tell people what to do, and
Speaker 1: I like to have them this power over me. And
Speaker 1: the other thing for the immigrant, which you're seeing now
Speaker 1: that it's it's a kind of no man's land where
Speaker 1: you don't have any recourse. You can't call a lawyer,
Speaker 1: you can't use your phone. I've been once pulled out
Speaker 1: of the line, and it is scary because they have
Speaker 1: a ton of power and you have no recour or
Speaker 1: you can't get like you can't go back to your country,
Speaker 1: you can't go into the US, you can't call a lawyer,
Speaker 1: you can't use your phone and now they're seizing all
Speaker 1: the electronics. Often it's yeah, so it in comparison like
Speaker 1: to say, to be a government teacher, which that's a
Speaker 1: legitimate job. It shouldn't be run by the government. There's
Speaker 1: so much here that's not legitimate at all, and it
Speaker 1: has to attract people who want to wheeld their legitimate power.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know this idea of sending sending people
Speaker 2: to a jail in in a Salvador, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're rounding people up and they don't get quite the
Speaker 2: people they want, so they just round people up because
Speaker 2: they just need to fill the numbers.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's really scary that they are Americans that are gleefully
Speaker 2: doing this kind of work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when you read about why they're being shipped to Louisiana,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's basically two things. One, it's they
Speaker 1: think they'll get friends or judges when they can, but
Speaker 1: it's also deliberately to keep them away from lawyers. I
Speaker 1: was watching one story. It's not just in Louisiana, it's
Speaker 1: like upstate Louisiana. It's one hundred miles or something from
Speaker 1: it that a lawyer has to drive. They see it
Speaker 1: client like one hundred miles and has to drive back,
Speaker 1: and they're doing it deliberately to make it really hard
Speaker 1: for them to have representation, and that that if you're
Speaker 1: the government can do this to pretty powerless people, it should.
Speaker 1: Like I was talking to someone this week about this,
Speaker 1: that our government is supposed to function by permission. It's
Speaker 1: not the one wielding authority doing whatever it wants. And
Speaker 1: even if you don't care about immigration, even if you
Speaker 1: think which I do think like some of these people
Speaker 1: are gang members, not all, and I have no confidence
Speaker 1: they have any idea what they're doing in trying. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're using tattoos as your primary form of identitification,
Speaker 1: then it is you're gonna catch all kinds of people
Speaker 1: who don't belong. But there are some. But the idea
Speaker 1: that like the government can wield this kind of unchecked power,
Speaker 1: should any American who thinks, yeah, we're supposed to have
Speaker 1: a government of laws and it's supposed to function by permission.
Speaker 1: Not it gives us orders. We give it orders. It
Speaker 1: can't function, it can't keep people away from layers, and
Speaker 1: it can't function in this way.
Speaker 2: What's the system of him going after the University's Columbia
Speaker 2: and now and now Harvard.
Speaker 1: There's a sliver of legitimacy to it, I think, but
Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, it's not done in a legitimate way.
Speaker 1: The the the guys that it's under anti semitism one
Speaker 1: that that that's what we're fighting is we have to
Speaker 1: make them toe the line. I don't think that's what's
Speaker 1: actually going There's a kind of punishment involved, which is
Speaker 1: which is like, that's why it's bad. There's a punishment.
Speaker 1: These are the liberal elites who opposed us so and
Speaker 1: now we're going to go after them, if for the
Speaker 1: anti semitism, if they deported or to took away the
Speaker 1: visas approvals and then deported some Jewish people and Jewish
Speaker 1: looking people who were involved in the protest on the
Speaker 1: on the sort of pro Palestinian pro Hamas side, if
Speaker 1: they said we're getting rid of them, I'd have more
Speaker 1: sympathy to maybe like what they what they really want
Speaker 1: to go after is the people who are pro Hamas.
Speaker 1: But it's too much again that it is these the
Speaker 1: people they're going after will play in the media, that is,
Speaker 1: it will be there are people from Turkey or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they look like they could be the terrorist or
Speaker 1: like what sort of the average American could think? Yeah,
Speaker 1: versus a Jewish student who was involved in the protest
Speaker 1: help organizing these protests in front, They wouldn't. I don't
Speaker 1: think they would dare. The way they would put it
Speaker 1: is the optics will be so bad. That's one of
Speaker 1: the revealing in the in the uh what is it?
Speaker 1: The Defense secretaries they I don't know if you read
Speaker 1: the whole the all the the messages, but they were
Speaker 1: very concerned about how the optics of this will play. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's got to be in spades for what's happening
Speaker 1: with the universities, So I could so I can't take
Speaker 1: seriously that what they're actually going after pro hamas people.
Speaker 1: And then and then yeah, and then they're trying to
Speaker 1: get significant control over the universities and the programs and
Speaker 1: so on that. Yeah, I can't. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you think. I can't see it as it's properly motivated.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think it's properly motivated. Yeah, it's again,
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's getting it's it's throwing beef to
Speaker 2: their MAGA supporters, who uh, and it's and it's a
Speaker 2: it's an attempt, I think, and Kusu Rufo said wrote
Speaker 2: something about, you know, we're going to use the levels
Speaker 2: of power to bring our ideas and everything to the forefront.
Speaker 2: We want to take I mean, if he had his way,
Speaker 2: they would take over the universities. They can't because they
Speaker 2: don't have the people to replace the existing professors, so
Speaker 2: all they can do is really harass the universities at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the impression I have. The most plausible one,
Speaker 1: I think was Columbia. That there were real problems in
Speaker 1: what Columbia was doing. But from what I know about
Speaker 1: Harvard and a little bit I know some people who
Speaker 1: are working on this kind of thing, it's Harvard is
Speaker 1: made or at least tried to make some real changes
Speaker 1: about how they're running things and how it's going on.
Speaker 1: So the idea that they're not they're sort of uncooperative
Speaker 1: is not true as well. It's plausible to me. So
Speaker 1: the stories that came out that this was a draft
Speaker 1: that was sent by accident to Harvard, I believe that
Speaker 1: again that kind so I don't have so the kind
Speaker 1: of view that this is some there are masterminds behind
Speaker 1: all of this, I don't have that view. I do
Speaker 1: think there are people from heritage and so on who
Speaker 1: are involved in really trying to strategize what to do,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they're masterminds either. So I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of screw ups. The going after the
Speaker 1: DEI things seems to be there's a fair amount of
Speaker 1: we're just doing searches and if DEI shows up. There's
Speaker 1: been people in some so I'm in the greater like
Speaker 1: Washington area of the d m V who have said, HM,
Speaker 1: they were government employees who were forced to go to
Speaker 1: the who didn't want were forced to go to d
Speaker 1: I training and because they're on the list of the training,
Speaker 1: they got fired. They didn't And but I believe, like
Speaker 1: how because there's no way they can go with the
Speaker 1: speed and know what they're doing, So they have to
Speaker 1: have all kinds of shortcuts and they're gonna catch including
Speaker 1: people who are against the Yah, you're gonna kick out.
Speaker 2: And they don't care. I mean, that's the other thing
Speaker 2: they don't care about screwing up, That is they don't
Speaker 2: care if innocent people get caught up. It really doesn't
Speaker 2: bother them. So so, so what do you think this
Speaker 2: this is heading I mean, I mean, it's Trump going
Speaker 2: to become a dictator? Is is this heading towards authoritarianism
Speaker 2: in the in the short run? I mean, how is
Speaker 2: there going to be a constitutional you think crisis where
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court says something and he just ignores them.
Speaker 1: I'd be surprised if it's would be that black and white.
Speaker 1: There will be the continuous pushing of the boundaries. So
Speaker 1: of what happened with the immigrant at least what seems
Speaker 1: toff happened with the immigration of a flight is mid
Speaker 1: air and the judge rules something and they then they say, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's outside of airspace, so we can't call it back,
Speaker 1: so we're not defying the order, but the order doesn't
Speaker 1: apply anymore. I think there will be a lot of
Speaker 1: things like that, including that you've got to return this
Speaker 1: person who's sent to Al Salvador and it's sort of
Speaker 1: but what was the Supreme Court? You have to facilitate
Speaker 1: their return, and then it's, oh, well, the dictator inl
Speaker 1: Salvador doesn't want to return it, so what are we
Speaker 1: going to do? Like if it was Zelenski, you would
Speaker 1: berat him in the office, but here it's oh, it's
Speaker 1: convenient if he says he doesn't want to return to
Speaker 1: this person, so we'll say, like, what can we do.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be a lot there. I mean, there
Speaker 1: already is that, and there'll be that continuously. I'd be
Speaker 1: surprised if it's openly defiant that it's ah, they passed,
Speaker 1: there's oh no, we're just not following that versus oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're trying to facilitate it, but we can't. That's what
Speaker 1: I expect. So that is a kind of crisis, but
Speaker 1: it's much more a crisis of thinking of it as
Speaker 1: the whole operation of government. So here if we had
Speaker 1: not just boot liquors, it would be there would be
Speaker 1: pushback in Trump's own party against him. That there was
Speaker 1: a little bit in regard to Terras, but pathetically little
Speaker 1: given out of it, and the destructive to terrorists are
Speaker 1: That's the to me, the much the why we're more
Speaker 1: than drifting towards authority. It's much more that Congress will
Speaker 1: go along with everything. That then that it's going to
Speaker 1: be the court versus the executive. There's that tension for sure,
Speaker 1: And as I said, they're going to try to push
Speaker 1: the envelope and and try to sort of skirt the
Speaker 1: meaning in the letter of the law and say, oh no,
Speaker 1: but the letter of the law, we can't do this.
Speaker 1: But for Congress it's and this has been long standing.
Speaker 1: It's Trump wants people who will just do what he says.
Speaker 1: And if you saw.
Speaker 2: The senator him Alaska saying, she basically said, yeah, we're
Speaker 2: fraid of him. We're petrified of him. We won't we're
Speaker 2: not speaking up, she said, me and my colleagues. And
Speaker 2: she's one of the ones that have voted against him
Speaker 2: a few times, so she's one of the more courageous.
Speaker 2: And yet she says nobody else, nobody else, Uh, we'll
Speaker 2: do it. People are complaining about your audio. Do you
Speaker 2: have a mike? Is it my connection?
Speaker 1: Let me let me try some once in a while.
Speaker 1: The it resets the sound, so let me just check. Mum.
Speaker 2: It seems like it's peaking.
Speaker 1: Oh, it seems like it's so I need to lower
Speaker 1: the gain. Okay, So it was set to what it
Speaker 1: normally is set to. Okay, how's that? Does that sound
Speaker 1: any different to you?
Speaker 2: I think it's a little better. Yeah, let's see how it.
Speaker 2: Let's I guess.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know what's going on. This is what
Speaker 1: I normally use.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, so Congress is just going to go
Speaker 2: along with the president. The court will probably fight back.
Speaker 2: You don't think he's going to actually tell the quote. No,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do what you tell me, although
Speaker 2: Magas seems to be calling for that A lot is
Speaker 2: a lot of in social media, in particular people writing
Speaker 2: ignore the courts, ignore the quotes.
Speaker 3: So where do you think this goes?
Speaker 2: I mean, is this just setting up the next administration
Speaker 2: and the future administrations for even more authoritarianism. Is it
Speaker 2: going to be gradual and over slowly developing.
Speaker 1: That's I think the likely outcome, and I'll say something
Speaker 1: about that. But on the other hand, if we get
Speaker 1: old crisis, so if we get a financial crisis from
Speaker 1: the tariffs, the claim for emergency powers I think will come,
Speaker 1: will come and again. So my view of Trump is
Speaker 1: he's not power hungry, so he's too lazy. I really
Speaker 1: think that he's too lazy to be power hungry. He's
Speaker 1: prestige hungry. He likes to be the spot like and
Speaker 1: he likes the appearance of being tough, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: actually want to be tough. It's too much work. The
Speaker 1: most revealing thing for me in this second term, but
Speaker 1: it fits completely what he was I think in the
Speaker 1: first administration was with the list of pardons, there was
Speaker 1: a sort of I don't know if it was a
Speaker 1: challenging or friendly reporter, but it was. He was sort
Speaker 1: of Trump, you pardoned this guy and he's not like
Speaker 1: his records, not just January sixth, And why did you parton?
Speaker 1: And now he was Trump that wouldn't really, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: parton somebody like that. I'll have to look into it.
Speaker 1: And the guy pre but you did pardon, and you
Speaker 1: gave him by and you gave him a full Parton's
Speaker 1: and and then Trump said, I don't have time to
Speaker 1: read a thousand things of what, So he has no
Speaker 1: idea who he parted. And I really believe that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe all the stories that he will only read
Speaker 1: the first page and you've got to put the points
Speaker 1: the first three bullets. So a list of a thousand
Speaker 1: or whatever people to partner, there's no way he looked
Speaker 1: at it. And he accuses Biden of this, but I
Speaker 1: think partly he accuses Biden because he does exactly the
Speaker 1: same and he knows like he thinks he can get
Speaker 1: Biden and people can't get him on this because he'll
Speaker 1: just admit, yeah, who can read that much? And somebody
Speaker 1: power hungry would It's not that that's not Putin. For instance,
Speaker 1: Putin would know some of the details and would be
Speaker 1: going after someone. So I don't think he's power hungry,
Speaker 1: and that's relevant. I think for what is happening. If
Speaker 1: there's some emergencies, he'll be pushed to you need to
Speaker 1: declare an emergency and get emergency power, and then they help.
Speaker 1: People around him will want to wield that emergency power.
Speaker 1: So I think the more likely thing is that it's
Speaker 1: just continuing down the road to the administration. But if
Speaker 1: we got a financial crisis, a crisis I mean partly
Speaker 1: as a result of Trump's policies, then I could see
Speaker 1: it getting worse more and quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were just in Germany and you went
Speaker 2: to the Duco concentration camp, and any lessons we can
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the rise of the Nazis in Germany
Speaker 2: any parallel to what's going on in the United States.
Speaker 2: Obviously this is the ominous Powerless Lennard's book, But but
Speaker 2: you know, are the powerless to what's going on right now?
Speaker 2: How do you see the dissimilarities and the differences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So every time the Nazis are brought up, people
Speaker 1: think of it as that the last card to draw
Speaker 1: and you can't do it. And it's true, like this
Speaker 1: the Nazis and sort of the final solution is so
Speaker 1: horrific that if that's what, Oh, we're like one step
Speaker 1: away from the Nazis and massive concentration camps. I don't
Speaker 1: think that. But the rise of the Nazis is interesting
Speaker 1: for many reasons. You're talking about the ominous perils, that is,
Speaker 1: talking about the whole intellectual climate that was necessary for
Speaker 1: their rise, and that you have to see it as
Speaker 1: a century and more in the making. I mean century
Speaker 1: in Germany with Kanton Hegel, or a century and more,
Speaker 1: but going back even further than that into the nature
Speaker 1: and ideas and philosophy. Another aspect of it is there's
Speaker 1: a way people can hold it as you've got some
Speaker 1: crazy aber like who knows where they came from, how
Speaker 1: it happened, and they just quickly seized power. So that's
Speaker 1: not what happened. And I think one of the things,
Speaker 1: so this is part of my asking you are. I
Speaker 1: think asking like, what's going to happen if when we
Speaker 1: get the next administration or the next people in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. For me, the most important thing because I
Speaker 1: have a certain view of Trump. As I said, I
Speaker 1: don't think of him as his craving power, but I
Speaker 1: do think there are people around him or cra I
Speaker 1: think the most important thing is that all these people
Speaker 1: it's the end of their political career. I would put
Speaker 1: Rubio gnome jd vance that once Trump is gone, it
Speaker 1: that they cannot get voted into power. There's too many
Speaker 1: in the country. You will say, no, these were bootleckers,
Speaker 1: boot liquors. They would they would basically sell their soul.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's my view of Rubio when you
Speaker 1: see him on camera with with Zelenski, it's the it's
Speaker 1: he knows he's sold his soul yea, and what like
Speaker 1: I've I've now got to play that card in effect
Speaker 1: or or play that persona. But it's so I think
Speaker 1: that's the for me, the most important I would never
Speaker 1: vote for any of them ever, no matter what policies
Speaker 1: they put forth, even if it sounds good, it was
Speaker 1: if you're willing to sell your soul then you're you're
Speaker 1: basically willing to do anything. And then again that like
Speaker 1: that's the difference that we were talking about between the
Speaker 1: first administration and the second. There were people around who thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I have to stay around to try to restrain
Speaker 1: Trump and so, and you have now the people who
Speaker 1: want to enable him or use him to get their
Speaker 1: policy and the that's I think really dangerous and it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have such a negative view of those people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, differentiate between Rubio and Vance.
Speaker 2: Ruby. I think is kind of power hungry and he's
Speaker 2: sold his soul and he knows it. He looks miserable. Vance,
Speaker 2: I think is he knows what he wants. He I mean,
Speaker 2: he's he's he is all in. He he does. I
Speaker 2: don't think he feels like he sold his soul. This
Speaker 2: is his soul, right, this, this is exactly what he wants.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 3: He's a real authoritarian.
Speaker 2: I mean, he calls himself a Christian conservative and I
Speaker 2: think a Christian nationalist and I think he really is
Speaker 2: a nationalist in that sense. He's given that speech about
Speaker 2: America is not an idea, it's a people in a place, right.
Speaker 2: So he's a he's a blood and soil nationalist. And
Speaker 2: he scares me. I don't think he's he can win,
Speaker 2: but I think but he's but who knows in three years?
Speaker 2: I mean, he he scares me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with yeah, So yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think they've all sold her soul, because, as you said,
Speaker 1: that is his soul. Rubio I had in the the
Speaker 1: I mean before Trump won in twenty and sixteen and
Speaker 1: before he got the nomination. I thought of the field
Speaker 1: the Republicans were, that the people vying for to be
Speaker 1: the nominee for their party for the presidential election, Rubio
Speaker 1: was the most American that he seemed to actually believe
Speaker 1: that the story of immigration in America, of what the
Speaker 1: Cuban immigrants have done and their right to flee Cuba
Speaker 1: and then build something, and it's right for America to
Speaker 1: be open to them, and that he can reverse in
Speaker 1: the way that he has and the way like a
Speaker 1: whitewashing Veniceul because we want to send people back to there,
Speaker 1: and so all that is the that that's what I
Speaker 1: think of his part is selling his soul, and that
Speaker 1: the I think an American, normal American should be really
Speaker 1: turned off by that. I think they will. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: so I think I might might be wrong, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Vance doesn't can't have the support that Trump has,
Speaker 1: and I think Rubio couldn't unless he really could somehow explain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm changing course again now. I've I've met
Speaker 1: or sort of known someone who's known Rubio for a
Speaker 1: long time and says like, this is Rubio six point zero,
Speaker 1: that it's he changes his tune all the time, so,
Speaker 1: which is certainly possible. But yeah, so it's the people
Speaker 1: around him Trump now that I think it's very important
Speaker 1: that this be the apex of their political career. And
Speaker 1: when Trump's gone, They're gone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how it happens, given how
Speaker 2: much Magan and Trump control the Republican Party. Now, it
Speaker 2: just seems like this is the Republican Party for the
Speaker 2: foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a lot will depend on if they face
Speaker 1: any real opposition, that is opposition that the sort of
Speaker 1: people who are concerned about the authoritarianism and actually like
Speaker 1: America could feel I could vote for this person against
Speaker 1: these more power hungry people. But if you feel someone
Speaker 1: like Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton, who's another power I
Speaker 1: think is a power luster. Then it's yeah, then I
Speaker 1: can see events being elected, but not if you had
Speaker 1: someone like Obama. I think that people I still think
Speaker 1: he would win. I might have been wrong about that, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think he wered. Of course, when he was president,
Speaker 2: we thought it can't get any worse than this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then it really did.
Speaker 3: Now we miss Obama. That's pretty scary.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 2: Let me tell my wife, every time Obama would come
Speaker 2: on TV, she'd turned a TV and she couldn't she
Speaker 2: couldn't hear him.
Speaker 3: She just got physically ill.
Speaker 2: And and now after Trump, it's like she's saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: I could listen to Obama all day as compitter this guy.
Speaker 3: So let's let's pivot and.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about some of the work we do at
Speaker 2: the Institute, particularly, you know, the focus I think is
Speaker 2: now on on and has been for a long time,
Speaker 2: on developing intellectuals and expanding.
Speaker 3: The realm of intellectuals.
Speaker 2: What's the sense what's the sense that you know, we've
Speaker 2: talked about we need lots of intellectuals. Why do you
Speaker 2: think that is so important? What is the importance of
Speaker 2: having a significant number of intellectual voices out there.
Speaker 3: From the objectives' perspective.
Speaker 1: I still find when I go out into the I
Speaker 1: don't know what the right way to put it, so
Speaker 1: the more mainstream world or something like that, it shocking
Speaker 1: how hemmed in people are by their conventional categories and
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world, and that how alien
Speaker 1: the sort of Einran's ideas. The objectivist philosophy still is
Speaker 1: alien in the sense that they've never heard of this.
Speaker 1: It's not something they've considered and rejected or found wanting.
Speaker 1: It's still they've never heard of you like this, And
Speaker 1: the only way they're going to hear it is if
Speaker 1: there's more and more intellectuals in the culture, and intellectually
Speaker 1: I'm using in a broad term, in a broad way,
Speaker 1: not so it doesn't that I don't mean just sort
Speaker 1: of the leading intellectuals or the most recognized public intellectuals
Speaker 1: or anything like that, just that they encounter it some
Speaker 1: of these ideas in their high school in the college classroom.
Speaker 1: But again, it doesn't have to be like the superstar
Speaker 1: at the at the university or even at the high school.
Speaker 1: It's just they get some more exposure to this in
Speaker 1: a serious way and this is I was telling you
Speaker 1: before the show that I just did a guest appearance
Speaker 1: in a Harvard business class. So that's part of how
Speaker 1: I think of it, as it like, this is the mainstream.
Speaker 1: It's the mainstream in academia, but it's not some and
Speaker 1: it wasn't some professor who's like way outside and everybody
Speaker 1: of the mainstream people think he's crazy or as strange
Speaker 1: views or something. And the guest appearance because it's a
Speaker 1: class where they look at influential people across like not
Speaker 1: just in business, like a wide range of influential people
Speaker 1: and think that it seems at least sort of two
Speaker 1: angles on it in what way if they did did
Speaker 1: these people change the world? So like what's their impact?
Speaker 1: And then what did they have to do to have
Speaker 1: that impact? Including like what did they have to do
Speaker 1: to have the career they had? What kind of dedication today?
Speaker 1: So it's it's and so it's looking at I rand
Speaker 1: as having an impact on the culture and then what
Speaker 1: was like what did she do to do that? And
Speaker 1: like what's for instance, what's the significant's that she wrote
Speaker 1: both fiction and nonfiction? Is that keda understanding part of
Speaker 1: her impact? It's all and the class. So these are
Speaker 1: obviously smart, uh and and dedicated students by and large,
Speaker 1: I would say like much more than just the bare
Speaker 1: majority didn't really know much about iron Rand. And what
Speaker 1: they've heard is the various kind of critics and conventional
Speaker 1: takes on iron Rant. So that you've got and then
Speaker 1: and then on the ideas it was I and I
Speaker 1: still I mean, I've encountered as often, but the I
Speaker 1: mean often to understated that everybody's selfish and that you
Speaker 1: can think that and really like you're at Harvard and
Speaker 1: you can think that. It like it's sort of yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: but what you can't take it to too much of
Speaker 1: an extreme. But everybody is like sort of partly selfish,
Speaker 1: and they have no idea what like what that means
Speaker 1: how to think about that. They don't really believe it,
Speaker 1: because they'll say something different ten minutes later and it
Speaker 1: comes as news to them that, you know, and Ren's
Speaker 1: challenging the whole way you think about selfishness and the
Speaker 1: and I mean one of the good things is so
Speaker 1: both two of us at the institute, myself and Alan,
Speaker 1: did guest appearances in the class, and we've pushed you
Speaker 1: can get on Rend's books for free from us, and
Speaker 1: the professor wrote back that one of them is starting
Speaker 1: reading The fountain Head and part but this is part
Speaker 1: of what the interesting the reaction is. This book's really good.
Speaker 1: He was one hundred pages in. It's like nothing I've
Speaker 1: read before. Why didn't I get this in high school
Speaker 1: or college? Yep, Like I took a guest appearance of
Speaker 1: someone from an I ran institute that I'm sure they
Speaker 1: never heard of, and yeah, I could get afraid. That's
Speaker 1: how I got. And that is there's gotta be so
Speaker 1: many people still like that that this was if you
Speaker 1: had people in high school recommend not even if not
Speaker 1: teaching it to the whole class, but recommending it to
Speaker 1: students who think he thinks like this might have an
Speaker 1: impact and so on. And I mean, we need that
Speaker 1: in thousands and thousands and thousands of times over. And
Speaker 1: that means you have to have thousands and thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of people in schools, in universities who are doing this,
Speaker 1: as I say, like they don't have to be the
Speaker 1: leaders in the field, but are introducing students and just
Speaker 1: young minds to a new way of looking at things.
Speaker 1: And it's easy when you're immersed in I random objectivism
Speaker 1: to think everybody's heard of this, it's still I mean,
Speaker 1: it's better and work we've done at the Institute of
Speaker 1: work we did when you were here in leading institute
Speaker 1: has so they're for sure more people than twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago, but still it's small compared to what it
Speaker 1: could be and needs to be.
Speaker 2: And it's not just that they don't know any And
Speaker 2: it's that I find that they're thinking is so conventional.
Speaker 2: They're all they're objections to capitalism or the objections to egoism,
Speaker 2: just the conventional stuff.
Speaker 3: There's no there's nothing.
Speaker 2: They live within very narrow bounds of what they're exposed
Speaker 2: to in terms of ideas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, I find that it's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I was interested in philosophy. And it's still
Speaker 1: for people who are unphilosophic. This is part of when
Speaker 1: I categorize someone as unphilosophic. And it doesn't mean bad,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean stupid, but it just means they're content with
Speaker 1: the categories they've been offered. Yep, And a philosophic person
Speaker 1: has some inkling and then finds it really interesting when
Speaker 1: someone said and I'm man says is over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. The categories you're using, you can't think
Speaker 1: with these, they're wrong and you need different categories. And
Speaker 1: a philosophic person to me perks up when they hear that,
Speaker 1: and it is really like, there's a whole different way
Speaker 1: of looking at things than the way I've been looking
Speaker 1: at or looking at it, or have been taught to
Speaker 1: look at it, and that it's what iron Rand did.
Speaker 1: But part of the work of intellectuals is to hammer
Speaker 1: that in because it's so difficult to do, and there's
Speaker 1: many people who are won't do it, even like some
Speaker 1: exposure to iron Rand, won't do it unless it's really pushed,
Speaker 1: and part of the work of the intellectuals is to
Speaker 1: say no. Like, what she's doing is she's rethinking selfishness,
Speaker 1: and you can't think of it in the way you're
Speaker 1: doing it. It's not selfishness doesn't come automatically. That's not
Speaker 1: the way the right way to think about it. You've
Speaker 1: i mean, one of the ways that I often put
Speaker 1: it when I'm explaining it to relatively new people. Most
Speaker 1: people's selfishness is it's easy and bad, and her view
Speaker 1: is it's hard and good yep, and like that's so
Speaker 1: it's it's like a very different perspective. And as I
Speaker 1: say that, a philosophic person finds that really interesting. But
Speaker 1: there will be many features people in the culture. And
Speaker 1: again it doesn't mean they're bad who just can't do that,
Speaker 1: won't do the work unless they're getting it in their education.
Speaker 1: Of that it's really forcing them to do it. But
Speaker 1: that's like you need teachers and intellectuals doing that work
Speaker 1: over and over again. And if you don't have that,
Speaker 1: it's then what you'll have of the conventional views are
Speaker 1: conventional for a reason. And part of the reason is
Speaker 1: this is what the educational system gives them, and that's
Speaker 1: all they'll work with. And unless you get like a
Speaker 1: big change in the educational system, it will just repeat itself.
Speaker 1: And it's the intellectuals who have to change the intellect
Speaker 1: the educational system. Nobody else is going to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's it's also the intellectuals and the media
Speaker 2: and the podcast they listen to, and you know, everywhere
Speaker 2: they go they get the same range of views and
Speaker 2: they think that is all that exists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the because ein Rand is out still comparatively
Speaker 1: outside of the mainstream. They both have conventional views and
Speaker 1: then they've succumbed to conventional views of Inrant. But again
Speaker 1: I still find it I shouldn't, but I still find
Speaker 1: it shocking that if you're dealing with bought the level
Speaker 1: sort of the intellectual and achievement level, I think the
Speaker 1: people buy and large you get into Harvard, I've seen
Speaker 1: more of Stanford and like the people at Stanford or
Speaker 1: the students at Stanford, like they're really smart and achievement
Speaker 1: oriented and so on that. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that came up was that Einran just glorifies the rich
Speaker 1: and glorifies business. And I brought up in the in
Speaker 1: the whatever fifteen twenty minutes of remarks that I had
Speaker 1: time to do of well, that's when if you look
Speaker 1: at at the straw and like the major villains are
Speaker 1: businessmen and rich in it, it's and it's they haven't
Speaker 1: even read it. And no one's like, mate that how
Speaker 1: can you have a view of Inrand if you haven't
Speaker 1: read it? And they like, how do you know that
Speaker 1: this is going? And again like that's they would need
Speaker 1: to be challenged in the educational system like you and
Speaker 1: pritically if you know that iin rand is sort of
Speaker 1: she's a controversial figure. You can't just take for granted
Speaker 1: that people told you, well, she loves anybody who's rich
Speaker 1: and hates anybody who's poor, so that must be your view.
Speaker 1: But like that's you. Real teachers and educators would push them,
Speaker 1: like how do you have a view if you haven't
Speaker 1: even read at the shrug, But it's they're not encouraged
Speaker 1: to do that. And I mean, if you want better people,
Speaker 1: better educated, somebody has to do the educated. And if
Speaker 1: it's always just you're blaming the schools, but nobody's going
Speaker 1: in and saying like I'm going to do it different
Speaker 1: or I'm going to do it better, how do you
Speaker 1: expect things are going to change? And this is why
Speaker 1: the you don't need thousands of mine rants, but you
Speaker 1: need thousands of people who are really teaching her ideas
Speaker 1: and worldview in such a way that you'll have students
Speaker 1: and especially the better students, actually engaging with it versus
Speaker 1: even And again I don't think it was ill motivated
Speaker 1: at all. It's just part of this is how they've
Speaker 1: been They've been trained with the conventional categories, and they've
Speaker 1: been trained that this is what Iran stands for and
Speaker 1: so and they have not been encouraged to really probe
Speaker 1: preticting for controversial figures. So I felt sad for the student,
Speaker 1: not oh my god, like how could they be like,
Speaker 1: But it's just, yeah, you think your education is not
Speaker 1: serving you if you're being given all this conventional stuff
Speaker 1: and you're not really encouraged. And I'm not putting like
Speaker 1: this professor. I think it's good that he's bringing Iran
Speaker 1: in and so on, and it's he seemed to of
Speaker 1: the people I've heard serve have been some of the
Speaker 1: case studies. It seemed fairly wide ranging, and that was good.
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at the students, I don't get
Speaker 1: the sense they've really been pushed in their whole education.
Speaker 1: And that's a tragedy.
Speaker 2: And there's something in the culture, particularly in the online culture,
Speaker 2: of everybody has an opinion, right. You don't have to
Speaker 2: know anything about the topic, but you have an opinion
Speaker 2: about it, and you can be actually, really really have
Speaker 2: strong opinions about things you know nothing about, and people
Speaker 2: get rewarded for that in the culture, you know, and
Speaker 2: podcasts and with following on.
Speaker 3: Twitter and places like that.
Speaker 2: And I think that's become much more of a part
Speaker 2: of the culture. Maybe it was always there, but they
Speaker 2: didn't have a venue by which to articulate their ignorance.
Speaker 3: But now since they've got some way to write about.
Speaker 2: It, you see it everyway, people expressing opinions about things
Speaker 2: they know nothing about.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's yeah. I again, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: it's changed versus it's much more visible now, But there
Speaker 1: has to be some element that has changed in that
Speaker 1: it's easy to think of yourself as yeah, I'm an
Speaker 1: expert because I've googled four things, and and so this
Speaker 1: this was another aspect that I just thought in terms
Speaker 1: of thinking skills, really somebody Harvard it. So there were
Speaker 1: two things that that just shocked me that there wasn't
Speaker 1: more pushback in the class in regard to this. And
Speaker 1: again it's just I think this is the educational system.
Speaker 1: So one was buying into the story that ein Rand
Speaker 1: doesn't care about didn't care about her family, and so
Speaker 1: so this is in some of the biographies, this is
Speaker 1: like really trumpeted, and they couldn't nobody brought up that, well,
Speaker 1: she's writing to her family in the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 1: it might be dangerous to do that, and she's like
Speaker 1: one of the most fierce anti communists and being connected
Speaker 1: to her, like might that be a problem for people
Speaker 1: left back? And again like they're at Harvard, so they
Speaker 1: have to know something about Yeah, this to Iran Iranian dissidents,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing happens, or even just like Russia
Speaker 1: now it happens. If you're critical of Putin, you have
Speaker 1: to worry what if you're going back or if your
Speaker 1: family's like some awareness that regimes take it out on
Speaker 1: the families of the of people who are outspoken and
Speaker 1: outspoken critics, Like it doesn't cross your mind, like that
Speaker 1: might be that she's not like super published. She might
Speaker 1: be trying to get her family out, but she's not
Speaker 1: super public about it, and so like it can't even
Speaker 1: occur to a question of like maybe it's something like
Speaker 1: that is going on it, But it was just no,
Speaker 1: it's like obvious that she couldn't set her families. So
Speaker 1: I told them that, and I told him that, you know,
Speaker 1: there would be a reason for and you could see
Speaker 1: that for some of them it was yeah, that could
Speaker 1: make sense, but that it it couldn't occur. And then
Speaker 1: that you have that for a controversial figure, and I
Speaker 1: want to put it like that, a controversial figure not
Speaker 1: I Ran specifically that biographies of a controversial figure you
Speaker 1: should think are very difficult to do. That You're going
Speaker 1: to find people who hate that person and you're going
Speaker 1: to find people who love them that person, and you
Speaker 1: have to be suspicious of both, I think, and you
Speaker 1: have to think, like, how do you really get to
Speaker 1: to the to think you've got a reliable biography. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it in this class, but in one other class,
Speaker 1: because we've done this class a few times now, I
Speaker 1: brought up, uh, like, imagine the person who likes you
Speaker 1: the least wrote your biography for you wrote your would
Speaker 1: you like, how accurate do you think it would be?
Speaker 1: Everybody rely on it and so And when you put
Speaker 1: it in those terms, it was, yeah, like, there's some
Speaker 1: people that really don't like me, and there I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think that biography. And I said, well, like iin, RAN's
Speaker 1: a very polarizing figure and she had people who loved
Speaker 1: her people who hated her. Having a biography that you
Speaker 1: can't just think, well, there's a biography, so it's probably
Speaker 1: accurate or something like that. But again that they don't
Speaker 1: have the tools to think again, not to have the answer,
Speaker 1: but just to have a question about Yeah, a controversial figure.
Speaker 1: It's probably hard to find the biography that is good.
Speaker 2: To what extent do you think it's important to know
Speaker 2: to have an objective read on iron RAN's life in
Speaker 2: order to gain an appreciation for a philosophy.
Speaker 1: I think it would be interesting steem to know it.
Speaker 1: So I used to be so so to put the
Speaker 1: cards onto it. I'm not very interested in Iran's personal life,
Speaker 1: personal history. Just I'm not interested in I don't think
Speaker 1: she was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, and.
Speaker 1: I think that's it's very relevant for thinking of her end.
Speaker 1: And she said of we the living, this is as
Speaker 1: close to an autobiography as I'm going to write. She
Speaker 1: wouldn't she wouldn't be interested in writing an autobiography. And
Speaker 1: what it is is it captures I think, her spirit
Speaker 1: and her way of facing the world, not the concrete
Speaker 1: details of her life. So like Kira, I think, is
Speaker 1: a young heinrand In. Not that Iman wanted to build
Speaker 1: bridges and so on. But if you can abstract, yeah,
Speaker 1: in spirit and that's what interested her, and that's that
Speaker 1: interests me. But you can get that from Einran's work.
Speaker 1: You don't need all the personal details of it, and
Speaker 1: I do so I think more than I used to
Speaker 1: think that it's relevant to think about her personal life
Speaker 1: from the point of view that she said she was
Speaker 1: living her philosophy, and so how is this actually working?
Speaker 1: I mean part of the after that, the shrug, the
Speaker 1: whatever about the author, I forget what that section is
Speaker 1: and my life comes down to I mean it. And
Speaker 1: she says something like, I've used the ideas that it's
Speaker 1: not like I'm telling people to be selfish, but I
Speaker 1: think I shouldn't be selfish and wasn't selfish? No, no,
Speaker 1: she thinks I was selfish, and so it is relevant
Speaker 1: to think of that, but I don't think we have
Speaker 1: access to it. So the in the sense that these
Speaker 1: are personal details, and unless you knew her well, and
Speaker 1: I think like are a good judge of people, a
Speaker 1: good judge of character, then you don't really know what
Speaker 1: was going on with her, like that she was depressed
Speaker 1: after out the drug. What did that mean exactly? What
Speaker 1: was the nature? There's a way in which I can
Speaker 1: imagine it of the cultural reception and of thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: the culture's more bankrupt than I thought it was, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty depressed, Like I can understand, but part of
Speaker 1: the way it's portrayed I have trouble believing it was
Speaker 1: in that form that she sort of the reaction after
Speaker 1: at the drug because in some ways she had to
Speaker 1: know this because she's writing out of the drug, so
Speaker 1: she like she has a view of the state of
Speaker 1: the culture and and she says like this is ten
Speaker 1: years or something down the road. So I think what
Speaker 1: shocked her really is that she had no defenders, not
Speaker 1: that the culture. And but that's very different then the
Speaker 1: way it would be put as all the cultures. She
Speaker 1: didn't get good book reviews. Yeah, and she went into
Speaker 1: a depression. I don't believe. But it's really like, if
Speaker 1: I'm right about that, i'd have to know her, which
Speaker 1: I'd never met her, or know someone who I really
Speaker 1: have confidence in their judgment. I don't know many people
Speaker 1: like that. So it's just for me, it's just it's
Speaker 1: no accessible. So it's interesting but not accessible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to me, it seemed like the disappointment
Speaker 2: would be the no intellectuals, no philosophers got it and
Speaker 2: said oh wow, yeah, and and then no, and that
Speaker 2: the response from businessmen was there, but it was we
Speaker 2: know some of the businessmen who responded positively, and they
Speaker 2: just weren't at the caliber I think that she would
Speaker 2: have wanted and expected, and so many of them were
Speaker 2: religious and they want to give up that that and
Speaker 2: she confronted all these things that we often confront of
Speaker 2: of just this mixture of loving atlas Uk but not
Speaker 2: really getting it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that. And and I think the stories
Speaker 1: that we've seen some of that, I mean after her death,
Speaker 1: of people who would compliment or praise her in private
Speaker 1: but wouldn't do it in public.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I think that would really bother her because it's that's
Speaker 1: a straight moral issue. It's a it's a kind of
Speaker 1: cowardice and't that and that you can't just it's not
Speaker 1: they're not smart enough to get this or see that.
Speaker 1: It's it's and it's so not her that it I mean,
Speaker 1: she's so courageous that there's nobody who, even if they
Speaker 1: see it, have the courage to say it that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I can so I can understand that. And I
Speaker 1: think given the just the artistic achievement that it is
Speaker 1: at the shrugged yep, that nobody can recognize that and
Speaker 1: again it's not all like the vast swaths of people,
Speaker 1: but that some other minds that can really see this
Speaker 1: and will say it that I can imagine of having
Speaker 1: a kind of impact that is, that I can imagine
Speaker 1: that shocking her. It's if you if you think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of her kind of artistic vision, it's
Speaker 1: Whyden's reaction to Rarc, and it's it's he should try
Speaker 1: to crush Roarc, and he sort of halfheartedly tries, but
Speaker 1: he can't bring him to because he can see the
Speaker 1: level of achievement that is, and it is, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I have to recognize this. And and I think she
Speaker 1: thought there'll be some people minds like that, and that
Speaker 1: she didn't get that that's gonna.
Speaker 2: Be particularly particularly given it from what I've you know,
Speaker 2: can't you aware this? But or maybe Leonard said this.
Speaker 2: She she couldn't conceive of her self as a genius,
Speaker 2: so she thought, Okay, well, they have to be other
Speaker 2: really really smart people out there who will get this.
Speaker 2: She couldn't quite conceive of how far ahead of everybody
Speaker 2: else she was. And if I could see her disappointed
Speaker 2: in the fact that there would people like her out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's gotta be. I mean, my
Speaker 1: guess would be it's more than just genius. So because
Speaker 1: I'm sympathetic, it's not like there's one genius in the world.
Speaker 1: It's that I don't think she fully grasped or probably
Speaker 1: or at least at this point, of how rare a positive
Speaker 1: philosophic genius is. And she she comments on this later
Speaker 1: when she's writing the non fiction of how it's like
Speaker 1: she used the metaphor how a few lions have gone
Speaker 1: into the field of philosophy, they've left it for the
Speaker 1: losers in the fact, And I mean she called Kant
Speaker 1: the kind of idiot savan so that there's an element
Speaker 1: of like real powerful mind there, but not it's not
Speaker 1: a positive orientation. And her view is it's not like
Speaker 1: Kant and Aristotle are on the same level. A positive
Speaker 1: genius is just so much to achieve. It's just so
Speaker 1: much more than to use your genius to destroy that
Speaker 1: you're not you're not in the same galaxy, so that
Speaker 1: it it's so rare. And I don't think that she
Speaker 1: was took philosophy as sort of everybody thinks philosophic, like
Speaker 1: how could you not? And so I think Projecting a
Speaker 1: genius that doesn't think philosophically is hard for her. I mean,
Speaker 1: she makes a she's aware of it. In the end,
Speaker 1: she makes this kind of comment about Einstein. It was
Speaker 1: clearly genius, but she puts it only so conventional once
Speaker 1: he gets outside of science. And it's but that I
Speaker 1: think would have been so alien to her that it's
Speaker 1: hard to project. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because even even the geniuses, the villains in her novels,
Speaker 2: you know, they deal with philosophy. They might they might
Speaker 2: be evil about it, but they're not ignorant of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Pot like her Pot. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: part of what her heroes are too. But I mean
Speaker 1: Rearan's not a philosopher, but in comparison, like he's so
Speaker 1: philosophical and and that's like, yeah, so that she didn't
Speaker 1: there's nobody who could understand philosophically what she's doing. That
Speaker 1: I think it was hard for her to understand and
Speaker 1: to project. I mean she came to see it was true,
Speaker 1: but the project that yeah, there can be some genius
Speaker 1: level minds, but they're so conventional yeap philosophically, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, this would be great. Let's uh, we've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of questions, so it's uh, it's start digging
Speaker 2: into those. You guys can still ask questions, so uh,
Speaker 2: but let's start with Wes.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Wes uncle.
Speaker 2: Is there an aspect of philosophy you enjoy talking about
Speaker 2: or studying more than others?
Speaker 1: Yes, I've been broadly speaking, I'm most interested in morality.
Speaker 1: I'm most interested in talking to people about it. It's
Speaker 1: most of what I think about when I'm thinking about philosophy.
Speaker 1: In part, well, in part it's just I would put it,
Speaker 1: I'm a moralist first and foremost like that's it was
Speaker 1: what my attraction to philosophy was attraction to Iron Rand.
Speaker 1: It was when I first read Iinrand. My reaction, in effect,
Speaker 1: if not in so many words, was this, a person
Speaker 1: takes morality more seriously than I do, and I took
Speaker 1: it seriously. So it was like, that's the impression she
Speaker 1: made on me, and that at the shrug made on me.
Speaker 1: So it's been it's my interest from the start into philosophy.
Speaker 1: But part of it is Iran thinks of morality for
Speaker 1: good or bad, as having causal power. That so that
Speaker 1: understand people's actions at an individual level, to understand the
Speaker 1: way cultures work. To understand something like the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: you have to think in moral terms about what is happening.
Speaker 1: I mean part of what we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: about that there's an element of now of people who've
Speaker 1: sold their souls around him versus what there was before.
Speaker 1: That's thinking in moral terms of what is the dynamic
Speaker 1: between him and the people he surrounded himself with and
Speaker 1: so on, And that most people don't think of morality
Speaker 1: as having a causal impact, and that I think they
Speaker 1: just missed so much of what's going on in reality
Speaker 1: because of that. So that's the area that I'm most
Speaker 1: interested in and think a lot about what I'll be
Speaker 1: talking about. An oatcome likely will touch on some aspects
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Let's see Evan.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: This relates to something I said earlier at the two
Speaker 2: PM show. YB mentioned that Cannice Owen and so on
Speaker 2: maybe suffering from acute stupidity annoinsanity. I'm used the skeptical
Speaker 2: of blaming things on stupidity, but in recent years I'm
Speaker 2: wondering if this is a real problem. And I'll just
Speaker 2: say what I mean by stupidity is not that she
Speaker 2: has some innate inability, you know, her mind. You know,
Speaker 2: she's she's she's got a low IQ or something like that.
Speaker 2: What I mean by stupidity is she's not using whatever
Speaker 2: she has. That that that she has embraced a pattern
Speaker 2: of non thought. Uh. That is that makes her stupid.
Speaker 2: That the divorces are from the facts of reality. Divorces
Speaker 2: are from being able to see real causes. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you saw her latest thing about uh, you know,
Speaker 2: NASA and uh and space. Uh, just a Satanic conspiracy.
Speaker 2: But but here's a lion there was. There was really amazing, right,
Speaker 2: she says, it really is, you know, from the Church
Speaker 2: of Satan or whatever, because the whole purpose.
Speaker 3: Is to make us believe in man.
Speaker 2: And she's right, you know, but it's it's so she
Speaker 2: doesn't believe in the moon landing. She says, how could
Speaker 2: they call? She said, how could they call back to Earth?
Speaker 2: There were no cell phones back then. So that's proof
Speaker 2: that it's a conspiracy. I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Gotta laugh at how stupid it is.
Speaker 2: But it's again, she's not she's she doesn't have she
Speaker 2: I don't know how small or not she is, but
Speaker 2: that is just a mind that's gone. It's it's been
Speaker 2: so corrupted by non facts and and uh and by evasion, evasion, evasion, evasion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've stopped even looking at.
Speaker 2: I told everybody today, I said, now I do candice
Speaker 2: on corners like things for entertainment. There's no would beyond
Speaker 2: the point of criticizing, you know, the fact that this
Speaker 2: represents the right to something like that.
Speaker 3: Now it's just so stupid. It's just entertainment.
Speaker 2: So Andrew asks, why is it rational to be selfish?
Speaker 1: Because it's the essence of morality. So the the selfishness
Speaker 1: just means the pursuit in moral terms, it means the
Speaker 1: pursuit of one's self interest, of one's life, of one's happiness.
Speaker 1: And that that the whole perspective in objectivism is where
Speaker 1: do values come from. They come from the fact that
Speaker 1: you're a living thing that has to reach certain goals
Speaker 1: to stay alive, to maintain yourself in the existence, to
Speaker 1: maintain yourself in the world, and to prosper in the world.
Speaker 1: So the whole dedication to selfishness is a dedication to
Speaker 1: what's in your self interest, what will enable you to
Speaker 1: thrive in the world. And from that perspective, what rationality
Speaker 1: is for human beings, our minds, our ability to think
Speaker 1: is our way to thrive in the world. So like,
Speaker 1: what is it? Why is it rational to be selfish?
Speaker 1: Because that's the goal that you need to reach and
Speaker 1: thinking it's your means to reach it.
Speaker 2: Ye, Tom says here Flonka and you on millions should
Speaker 2: be tuning in.
Speaker 3: Yes, they should be.
Speaker 2: Uh It say says for income as a professional jazz
Speaker 2: a guitarist, educata, how can I apply objectivist principles to
Speaker 2: evaluate improvised music or music without lyrics? Are the objectivist
Speaker 2: resources beyond the Romantic Manifesto?
Speaker 1: Not that I know of. So I know there's other
Speaker 1: objectivists who are thinking about music how it works. I
Speaker 1: don't know of anybody's I haven't looked at anyone's work
Speaker 1: in enough detail to have firsthand knowledge or first hand
Speaker 1: view of it. But I would say this is a
Speaker 1: very difficult field. And when you read what Iran's hypothesis
Speaker 1: is in the Romantic Manifesto about how music works, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a rich but complex hypothesis about how it's worked.
Speaker 1: And she says it would require the integration of different
Speaker 1: fields and what's happening in different fields and that integration
Speaker 1: is different. It would be difficult if you had good
Speaker 1: people in those fields to try to think of the
Speaker 1: integration of the physiology of sound and sound of so
Speaker 1: the whole auditory system and the way the mind works,
Speaker 1: of values and emotions work. It's it's so this it's
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to even have a hypothesis about. So
Speaker 1: it's not like if someone spent but half a year
Speaker 1: working and then they can figure it out. This is
Speaker 1: a is a I think like a would be a
Speaker 1: lifetime project and even then, like there's a real possibility
Speaker 1: of failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think, he asks, I mean, now the
Speaker 2: objectives beensible to valuate and provide music and music without lyrics,
Speaker 2: I don't think they are in existence, and they might
Speaker 2: be principles one day. They wouldn't be objectivists because they
Speaker 2: wouldn't be an advanced but they would be. They would be
Speaker 2: at some point somebody will come up with principles to
Speaker 2: be able to value in the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 2: have lyrics is what makes it challenging. Maybe, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't rule it out. And although even lyrics, how do
Speaker 2: you evaluate objectively? The quality of lyrics is a hard
Speaker 2: enough thing even within you know, within prose. So the
Speaker 2: whole field of aesthetics is way underdeveloped. I'm kind I've
Speaker 2: talked about this in the past, way underdeveloped in terms
Speaker 2: of the principles.
Speaker 3: Ironman is giving us a great.
Speaker 2: Blueprint for literature mostly, but there's still a lot of
Speaker 2: work for the other arts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a way to take both what she's
Speaker 1: saying and sort of the field of aesthetics as much
Speaker 1: simpler than it actually is. So one people thing they
Speaker 1: take for mine rand which is not right, and music
Speaker 1: is part of the concrete of why it can't be right.
Speaker 1: That are representational. What it's supposed to do is represent, Yeah,
Speaker 1: represent the world, but represent doesn't mean sort of you
Speaker 1: you want a copy of it. Part of this sound
Speaker 1: is you're not trying to copy what bird songs are
Speaker 1: or things like that. It is the part of her
Speaker 1: hypothesis is it's a creation of a new mental entity,
Speaker 1: and you have to think a lot about that. But
Speaker 1: it's not like we're trying to reproduce something we heard
Speaker 1: or something like that. And so just to think of
Speaker 1: it in those terms, it's difficult to think about what
Speaker 1: that means. And music is not a thing that copies
Speaker 1: in the way one might think of painting as copying
Speaker 1: your visual world. I don't think that, in the end
Speaker 1: is one painting does either, But it's more plausible to think, well,
Speaker 1: that's something that what it's doing, but that's not what
Speaker 1: music is doing.
Speaker 2: Michael asks, I think an organized protest in Boston this
Speaker 2: okon makes sense for a movement to build a witness
Speaker 2: and stand up to the constitutional crisis thoughts and organized
Speaker 2: process protest.
Speaker 1: For most protests, it's an issue of numbers. I'm skeptical
Speaker 1: of protests in general, but for them to have some impact,
Speaker 1: it's an issue of numbers, and we're not going to
Speaker 1: get numbers that will impress anybody. And if we did
Speaker 1: some these small kinds of protests where they block a
Speaker 1: bridge or something like that, if we did that, people
Speaker 1: should rightly look at it as there's got to be
Speaker 1: some being wrong with you and your viewpoint. If you
Speaker 1: think like I can stop everybody if from going to
Speaker 1: and fro by taking over a bridge or something like that, that's
Speaker 1: how you get media coverage. But or real Americans should
Speaker 1: think there's something wrong with you if you think you
Speaker 1: have that power to stop everybody else. So I agree
Speaker 1: that we should be arguing these issues, but physical protests
Speaker 1: is not an argument we should be drawing attention to
Speaker 1: these kinds of issues. I don't think it's legitimate to
Speaker 1: do it by protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Michael thinks we can get five thousand people out
Speaker 2: and that that would create a sture. But even five
Speaker 2: thousand is not that much, and I doubt we could. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I doubt we could get five thousand people. Doodle Bunny
Speaker 2: usually asks obnoxious questions, so he says, why should we
Speaker 2: keep going if they couldn't even stop a clown like Trump?
Speaker 2: It shows objectivism has no influence in the culture, And
Speaker 2: whose fault is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I don't think of it at all like that.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think any small movement you're gonna
Speaker 1: think what they could do is impact the presidential election.
Speaker 1: That would be true of movements and groups on the
Speaker 1: so called left. They don't have a small a viewpoint
Speaker 1: that still has not that many adherents. What's gonna happen
Speaker 1: is not Yeah, they're gonna impact the presidential election. So
Speaker 1: if that were one standard, like I will only give
Speaker 1: to things our only support causes that I think can
Speaker 1: have that kind of impact. Then you can only support
Speaker 1: things that are relatively mainstream, because it's only the things
Speaker 1: that are relatively mainstream that could have make that kind
Speaker 1: of difference. I think of it as we're an organization
Speaker 1: with a longer term mission, and it has to be
Speaker 1: a longer term mission because yeah, we eventually want to
Speaker 1: see these ideas have real cultural impact and changing the
Speaker 1: direction of the culture. But that can't happen in five
Speaker 1: years or of ten years, Like you can't what I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier about how even students who are
Speaker 1: potentially interested in these ideas haven't been exposed to them.
Speaker 1: It's on how are you going to have an impact
Speaker 1: on how they're going to vote in five years when
Speaker 1: they don't know anything even about these ideas, And so
Speaker 1: the real work, but it has to be long term
Speaker 1: because it's you slowly get the ideas more and more
Speaker 1: into the educational system. And I think compared to twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, for sure, iron Rand and the ideas have
Speaker 1: more prominence than they had, but there's still nowhere close
Speaker 1: to having the kind of cultural impact that one anybody
Speaker 1: who thinks the ideas are true hopes that they will
Speaker 1: have in the future, but it's not like the near future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we said, you need thousands of intellectuals
Speaker 2: if you do, if you do a just the math
Speaker 2: on what that will entail in terms of how many
Speaker 2: people you have to get to to get thousand of intellectuals,
Speaker 2: and how long you have to train them and get
Speaker 2: them out there and for them to get any kind
Speaker 2: of reasonable job and reasonable influenced this is you know, many, many,
Speaker 2: many decades. This is not This is not something that
Speaker 2: happens in the show run. Eric says in the chat
Speaker 2: ninety years since Anthem, Yeah, you know, it probably takes
Speaker 2: a couple of centuries. This is not This is not
Speaker 2: something that happens quickly, and particularly given how revolutionary objectivism
Speaker 2: really is in a sense.
Speaker 3: Of it's rethinking everything.
Speaker 2: It's not about politics, this particular issue in politics. It's
Speaker 2: about the way you think about politics from the ground up.
Speaker 2: We think about politics completely differently than everybody else, and
Speaker 2: it's going to take a long time to make that
Speaker 2: change in the culture in terms of how people think
Speaker 2: about these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and my view of this kind of thing is
Speaker 1: you try to do it as quickly as you can.
Speaker 1: And it might be true that in the modern world,
Speaker 1: with modern technology, modern education, the way ideas can spread
Speaker 1: that it can happen more quickly, but when you have
Speaker 1: to have at least as a grain of salt that
Speaker 1: historically there's never been a rapid positive philosophic change they
Speaker 1: like third year or something like that. You get all
Speaker 1: these good ideas that have taken over. It just it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen like that. And I think there's a reason
Speaker 1: why it doesn't happen. It's harder to build than it
Speaker 1: is to destroy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can think of Thomas Aquinas to the creation
Speaker 2: of America as one lengthy intellectual movement of being Aristotle
Speaker 2: back to the West.
Speaker 3: That's five hundred years.
Speaker 2: Something like that.
Speaker 1: Six hundred years, yeah, five hundred plus.
Speaker 3: So it's all right, moulten splendor.
Speaker 2: Why are the Trump magas supporters repeating the lies? Do
Speaker 2: they not know or do they not want to know
Speaker 2: the truth?
Speaker 1: Well, you have to delve into a little bit what
Speaker 1: the lies are. But I think there's a big element
Speaker 1: that they don't want to know. But this is I
Speaker 1: don't think this is there's a way that the you
Speaker 1: can single out the MAGA or the Trump supporters or
Speaker 1: Trump's base, however you want to think about it as
Speaker 1: there's some incredible aberration and that nobody else is liked this.
Speaker 1: I really do think we live in a tribal age.
Speaker 1: Part of what the Trump phenomenon showed is it's more
Speaker 1: tribal than one way of thought. That that's one of
Speaker 1: the lessons that I take. If you asked this so
Speaker 1: to take some equivalent of the MAGA crowd around COVID,
Speaker 1: however you want to put it, the progressive, the left,
Speaker 1: the but just sort of the supporters of it, that
Speaker 1: all of this had to be right, and you wear
Speaker 1: a mask even when you're alone walking outside and so on,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's it, and then you'll berate somebody else
Speaker 1: who doesn't do this, and things like really, when I'm outside,
Speaker 1: I've got to wear a mat and there's people are
Speaker 1: fifteen feet away. It's and if you think of it
Speaker 1: as it was sort of I think of that, it's
Speaker 1: exactly like Trump's space. And there's an element of the
Speaker 1: more you hammer on it, the more you don't have
Speaker 1: to think about like really, I'm saying you've got to
Speaker 1: wear a mask even like I saw people driving and
Speaker 1: find themselves or the mask on it, and it's a
Speaker 1: way of not thinking about it is sort of just
Speaker 1: repeating it and often berating other people. Like the proof
Speaker 1: of how loyal you are to it is, Look, I'm
Speaker 1: going after the pre and that's. Yeah, you don't really
Speaker 1: want to know and you don't really want to think
Speaker 1: about it. But if you think of it as just
Speaker 1: like it's the mega people who do this and nobody
Speaker 1: else does this, I think you're just not you don't
Speaker 1: really you're not really seeing the phenomenon and you're not
Speaker 1: then seeing But unfortunately it's partly it's a little more depressing.
Speaker 1: It's not just the mega people. The I don't know
Speaker 1: if because I think this is very revealing of So
Speaker 1: there were a lot of I mean, like a sizeable
Speaker 1: enough percentage of people voted in this way that AOC
Speaker 1: had to do go on like a podcast or whatever,
Speaker 1: a TikTok of people who voted for Trump and her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to me, that fits completely, Like I'm not surprised
Speaker 1: at all that there's a lot of voters like that,
Speaker 1: But that's they both appeal to more tribal elements in people,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so you have to I think, yes, there's
Speaker 1: a for sure, an element of their trying to convince themselves.
Speaker 1: But it's not just the mega people who do this.
Speaker 2: I just saw a graph about people's attitude towards trade
Speaker 2: by party affiliation, and so a few years ago or
Speaker 2: two years ago, basically twenty percent of Americans were supported
Speaker 2: free trade, twenty percent of Democrats, twenty percent of Republicans
Speaker 2: supported free trade. And since Trump was elected, fewer Republicans
Speaker 2: support free trade. But you know, it went down from
Speaker 2: twenty percent maybe to fifteen or ten percent something like that.
Speaker 2: But among Democrats now seventy percent of Democrats support free trade.
Speaker 2: Now you tell me that they've gone through some kind
Speaker 2: of understanding of the value of trade over the last
Speaker 2: three months that justifies them all being supported as of
Speaker 2: free trade.
Speaker 3: It's just the tribal thing. It's the anti Trump.
Speaker 2: So Trump is anti free trade, we support it.
Speaker 1: It's yeah. And they'll often because I've met unfortunately people
Speaker 1: like this who and if you point out, like haven't
Speaker 1: you just changed sides, they'll say something about trade and
Speaker 1: why globalization is good. But if you ask, is that
Speaker 1: really the reason they believe what they're saying now and
Speaker 1: they hold the position no, it so it's much more
Speaker 1: they're trying to tell themselves a story that I haven't
Speaker 1: just changed sides because my tribes changed. It's no, there's
Speaker 1: reasons for it, but those reasons aren't actually governing their thinking.
Speaker 1: And so that's the sense in which, yeah, they're pretending
Speaker 1: to themselves, not just to other people, to themselves.
Speaker 2: They're pretending, as Oham says, Douglas Murrie on Wrogan was
Speaker 2: a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw the Douglas Murray Dave Smith.
Speaker 1: I haven't watched. I've seen some clips from it, but
Speaker 1: I haven't watched the who.
Speaker 3: He says he's quoting Douglas Murray.
Speaker 1: I guess you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't time travel, but you can travel. It's quite easy.
Speaker 2: That's when Dave Smith admitted to never being anyway. Really, uh,
Speaker 2: do you see a pro reason coalition forming in the
Speaker 2: culture in response to the idiocy of the right and
Speaker 2: the left?
Speaker 1: No? So I think there are better individuals in on
Speaker 1: certain issues, and Murray's really good in regard to Israel
Speaker 1: and and the the pro Hamas sentiment in the West,
Speaker 1: But there's they would have to for really, you would
Speaker 1: have to coalesce around the philosophy, and they don't. So
Speaker 1: this is if you what was it that you can
Speaker 1: think of it as the sort of militant or radical atheist,
Speaker 1: and then you have the intellectual dark web. And it's
Speaker 1: again be put as well, they're responding to the whatever irrationality, mysticism,
Speaker 1: lunacy that they see all over the place and on
Speaker 1: both political sides and so on. But it's too much.
Speaker 1: What's uniting them is opposition to something. And if you
Speaker 1: ask what is it that they deeply have in common,
Speaker 1: it's not even that they have a shared understanding of rationality.
Speaker 1: Is religion rational not like belief in but that you
Speaker 1: need religion? They'll split in regard to that, they split
Speaker 1: in regard how to think about science and the pandemic,
Speaker 1: they split in regard to trumpet. And that's because there's
Speaker 1: not a shared positive vision and it's easy to relatively
Speaker 1: easy to spot irrationality. What actual rationality looks like is
Speaker 1: the much harder question. That's what objectivism is about crucial
Speaker 1: and objectivism is to have a real perspective on rationality.
Speaker 1: You have to see it not just as cognitive as
Speaker 1: but as normative, and you have to integrate your ideas
Speaker 1: and your values, and most thinkers cannot do that because
Speaker 1: they have a conventional view of values which does not
Speaker 1: inter They have some form of altruism slash utilitarism which
Speaker 1: does not integrate with reason. So you get So you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get this coalescing around a positive vision of
Speaker 1: reason governing people's thinking and action. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we've seen it so many times, the appearance
Speaker 2: of some kind of coalition and it can't survive because,
Speaker 2: I mean, the Tea Party was an anti movement, the
Speaker 2: Selectio doc Web was an antime movement, and they just
Speaker 2: fall apart very quickly because they don't stand for anything positive.
Speaker 2: And while I love some of what Douglas movie says,
Speaker 2: we don't agree on unimportant issues, on really important issues,
Speaker 2: particularly in the positive He I think he clearly considers
Speaker 2: himself a cultural Christian, like like Dawkins, and that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So though I was happy to see this, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen Dawkins walked back a little
Speaker 1: bit Christian. Yeah, that I probably shouldn't have. And but
Speaker 1: what's revealing, Like, I think he's right to walk it
Speaker 1: back that he didn't actually mean what he said, but
Speaker 1: he can't he doesn't know what he means that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is the key about I'm I
Speaker 2: think I'm doing a talk.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna talk it. I think, why am I doing this?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm making our center and next week I'm
Speaker 2: doing it next week at Mechanow Center.
Speaker 3: About Western civilization.
Speaker 2: And you know the Mechanow Center, they're quite religious, and
Speaker 2: you know, the whole point of the talk is going
Speaker 2: to be, Yeah, it looks like I support Western civilization
Speaker 2: and you support Western civilization. But we're not supporting the
Speaker 2: same things.
Speaker 3: It's not the same thing.
Speaker 2: And we have to if we don't define what it
Speaker 2: is that we actually supporting, if we don't define what
Speaker 2: Western civilization is properly, then then you know, the good
Speaker 2: in Western civilization is going to die out because to them,
Speaker 2: Western civilization means Christianity. It just does.
Speaker 3: And I think to.
Speaker 2: Marii's better than that. But to a large extent from Mari,
Speaker 2: I think, and I've seen him with Holland, who thinks
Speaker 2: everything is Christianity basically, you know, support that position. I
Speaker 2: don't think he quite holds that, But I think Keith
Speaker 2: thinks that Christianity plays a huge positive role in Western civilization.
Speaker 2: And you know, we think it plays a huge negative
Speaker 2: role in Western civilizations. So, yeah, I had that at Clemson.
Speaker 2: I talked about that it Clemson and the students, very
Speaker 2: bright students, but you could see the cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 3: They just couldn't.
Speaker 2: They agreed with a lot of what I was saying.
Speaker 2: But then as soon as it came to Christianity, Western
Speaker 2: civilization is not Christian, you know.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: A real struggle for them. All the questions almost it
Speaker 2: was talk nominally was in Israel Palestine, and but almost
Speaker 2: all the questions were about Western civilization in Christianity, and
Speaker 2: it was fascinating, and the faculty were amused as well.
Speaker 2: So it was it was a conversation over dinner afterwards too. Right,
Speaker 2: Daniel says, any prediction on the future of America are
Speaker 2: we are we destined to some form of authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're destined. And so it's both, I think,
Speaker 1: theoretically but also practically important that one not think of
Speaker 1: it as destined.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: So Iraan was adamant. She was adamant even about how
Speaker 1: hard it is to make predictions, let alone that it's like,
Speaker 1: it's obvious that this is the only outcome that's possible,
Speaker 1: but even like to think what's likely. She thought, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to do that, and that if there's a
Speaker 1: if you don't have evidence that this is inevitable. And again,
Speaker 1: so it is very, very very hard to have evidence
Speaker 1: that it's inevitable. That then you have to act and
Speaker 1: you have to fight. So there's a way in which
Speaker 1: if thinking, oh, like we're destined for authoritarianism, it's a
Speaker 1: self fulfilling prophecy. It's like, what can you do? So
Speaker 1: don't do anything? Like what and yes, so if nobody
Speaker 1: does anything to fight, then we are but we're not destined.
Speaker 1: It's that you've given up in effect. But so no,
Speaker 1: I do not think authoritarianism is some inevitability, but it
Speaker 1: is the way we're moving. So you need people to
Speaker 1: push against this, and there are people pushing against it.
Speaker 1: But I think particularly in the legal sphere, and it's
Speaker 1: important to support these people like I would support Again,
Speaker 1: we talked about how the Congress as that branch is
Speaker 1: caving in to the present, but I would support any
Speaker 1: congressman that I thought is just willing to sort of
Speaker 1: exxert some of the power of Congress. So some these
Speaker 1: people who said like, yeah, the president shouldn't really have
Speaker 1: the power to impose terroriffs like this, and he shouldn't.
Speaker 1: It's not clearly even does. So there's going to be
Speaker 1: legal push on that. But that that so there's things
Speaker 1: and specific people causes that you can support on it.
Speaker 1: I'm supportive of some of the organizations that are pushing
Speaker 1: back on the immigration things, for instance, and it would
Speaker 1: be crazy for them to think, well, but it's inevitable
Speaker 1: that we're going to have authoritarianism, So what's the point of.
Speaker 2: Doing this, which it says, I'm taking objectivism through Iinman's
Speaker 2: fiction and discovered I have some psychological resistance to objectivism.
Speaker 2: What guidance can you provide for introspecting that resisting resistance?
Speaker 2: He says, I'll ask Aaron.
Speaker 1: To Well, one is good to notice that if if
Speaker 1: you are really fighting the ideas for a certain reason,
Speaker 1: it's to notice, yeah, I seem to be doing this,
Speaker 1: and even if you don't know the reason, but it's
Speaker 1: like I've got some resist I don't I'm starting to
Speaker 1: see that, yeah, maybe this is right or maybe this
Speaker 1: is true, and I'm sort of resistant to go there.
Speaker 1: That's just a good thing to note. And then it's
Speaker 1: to think, what are like, why do I think I'm
Speaker 1: resistant to this? And there's there's possibilities not exhaustive, so
Speaker 1: none of these might fit. But you have to like
Speaker 1: really think about it and think, yeah, does is that
Speaker 1: what's happening? There's people who will equate a philosophy and
Speaker 1: a religion for various reasons. So I'm coming to see
Speaker 1: it's thinking yeah, I'm RAN's right about this, or this
Speaker 1: idea is true. It's am I starting to swallow a religion?
Speaker 1: And I get it? And that's not how I think
Speaker 1: of myself and and and maybe rightly and for good reasons.
Speaker 1: Like you think, yeah, I don't want to just follow along?
Speaker 1: I don't. That's not what I do. But is it?
Speaker 1: Are you following the longer? Do you actually see that
Speaker 1: it's true? And to be able to distinguish? But it's
Speaker 1: not an easy thing to distinguish. So there's people who
Speaker 1: the more it gets systematic and say, yeah, this idea
Speaker 1: makes sense and that and this they connect together. It's
Speaker 1: more like, well, am I following for a religion like
Speaker 1: I've got a system of ideas? Or it can be
Speaker 1: because modern education and culture is certainty is simplistic, so
Speaker 1: and I ran certain like what she projects is certainty.
Speaker 1: I think it's an aruncertainty. But there's an easy way
Speaker 1: to think about it, thinking, yeah, but there's got to
Speaker 1: be something wrong because someone who's this certain and it
Speaker 1: has echoes of the religious aspect, because these two things
Speaker 1: go hand in it. So you can have you can
Speaker 1: have in effect a suspicion of certain indeed that you
Speaker 1: don't really know you have, and it's sort of a need.
Speaker 1: And so you can find that I would put that
Speaker 1: you feel a kind of psychological resistance. You see, it's true,
Speaker 1: but certainty is for morons or religious types of So
Speaker 1: those are two for instance that I've seen people who
Speaker 1: yeah and you and it is yeah, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: change the fact that this idea is true and I've
Speaker 1: got to get over this. But so it's a good
Speaker 1: thing to note. And then you have to probe it
Speaker 1: and don't be like you have to really probe it.
Speaker 1: So those neither of those might be explanations for you,
Speaker 1: and then you have to think, well, what else is
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: And says I think this is to you? You said
Speaker 2: Harris called Trump a fascist without backing it up. Were
Speaker 2: you saying she shouldn't call him that or that she
Speaker 2: should have used your points.
Speaker 1: I don't remember saying that, but I I it is.
Speaker 1: It is true. I think that the the accusations of
Speaker 1: fascists are made way too easy. That is, anything they
Speaker 1: don't like will be label this is fascism, and you
Speaker 1: empty the the term one, you empty the term of meaning.
Speaker 1: But it's also what you do is the the people
Speaker 1: who are not the sort of Trump's base, but people
Speaker 1: supporting him will be disturbed by some of elements of
Speaker 1: real authoritarianism. They will be disturbed by. But if you
Speaker 1: call everything that's happening fascis, then they'll tune it out
Speaker 1: and they'll be it's all. This is just another of
Speaker 1: the people who hate him saying he's engaged in fashions.
Speaker 1: So you if you make that kind of accusation, you
Speaker 1: have to be able to explain it in detail. What
Speaker 1: do you think the fascism And if fascism is cutting
Speaker 1: government positions? Yeah, like, if that's fascism, then it loses
Speaker 1: all meaning and just thinking well that, but is fascism
Speaker 1: bad then like you can never reduce the size of government,
Speaker 1: and yeah, so it it definitely can be counterproductive, and
Speaker 1: by so much of the left, it's counterproductive of what
Speaker 1: they're doing.
Speaker 2: Not your average algorithm. I don't know how it could
Speaker 2: be that so many intelligent people can wall off a
Speaker 2: part of their mind and believe in something that a
Speaker 2: part of their mind must know is not true. A
Speaker 2: lot of people struggle with the idea that people evade
Speaker 2: and people really do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's a recurring question I get on these shows.
Speaker 1: I think one the more you think about the motivations involved,
Speaker 1: the more understandable that it becomes. And it's so a
Speaker 1: few things about that. It is not true that people's
Speaker 1: default motivation is that they're seeking the truth and then
Speaker 1: you have to do something to warp that, or it's
Speaker 1: most people's basic motivation is not that. This is part
Speaker 1: of the fountain Head. It's a different novel from Mineman's
Speaker 1: other novels. It's the one that's most set in a
Speaker 1: kind of just a contemporary world, a contemporary America. And
Speaker 1: you can't get from the film that the perspective is
Speaker 1: most people are seeking the truth, and no, most people
Speaker 1: are secondhanded in various kinds of ways. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're oblivious to the truth, but it's the truth's conditional,
Speaker 1: and it's on a leash. And so it's not the
Speaker 1: bold pursuit of the truth. It's y'all take that if
Speaker 1: it's convenient, not too threatening. But if it is, I
Speaker 1: will start to tune it out. And I will. And
Speaker 1: that's you have to think of it more like that.
Speaker 1: So the if you can't get if you were thinking
Speaker 1: about in regard to Trump, if you can't get the
Speaker 1: people like him for some understandable reasons, then you think that, well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing's crazy. But if you think, if you
Speaker 1: if you can get to the position of thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some pushback against woke, and people respond to that,
Speaker 1: and then if it's going to be yeah, but what
Speaker 1: he's doing with immigration and so isn't there something really
Speaker 1: troubles Well, no, he's sending back gang members and he's
Speaker 1: doing that, and it's and but it's because they still
Speaker 1: want Yeah, but he's tough on woke and then you're
Speaker 1: going after it and I want that. And if you think, well,
Speaker 1: but if you start thinking Trump has real problems, it's
Speaker 1: going to jeopardize that, then it's you sort of downplay
Speaker 1: the problems and and it's and I like, I've had
Speaker 1: many many conversations like it's yeah, it's not too good,
Speaker 1: but it's a one off case like this, and and
Speaker 1: it's and it it's starting to fudge. But you have
Speaker 1: to see this. It's motivated by something, not just oh okay,
Speaker 1: now the person okay, this is sort of blind to reality.
Speaker 1: That's not what's happening.
Speaker 2: Chris asks, I'm seeing list after list that put AOC
Speaker 2: as the most likely Democratic candidate for twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: How likely is an AOC versus Vance election in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I it's so I've seen some of
Speaker 1: the stories because the rallies that she and Sanders are
Speaker 1: doing and getting big crowds and so on. It's I
Speaker 1: agree with the people who think this is they're further
Speaker 1: out of touch in the sense that they think they
Speaker 1: could win a general election like this. It will be
Speaker 1: it will be a way of handing as someone like
Speaker 1: events an election if they do it. And this is
Speaker 1: like how bad the mainstream slash like leaning statists people are.
Speaker 1: So if you remember after the Trump's win in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: people a lot of media outlets like The New York Times,
Speaker 1: but just a lot of people who thought of themselves
Speaker 1: as the mainstream. I was like, yeah, we don't really
Speaker 1: seem to understand the country, and we probably ignored the
Speaker 1: middle of the country for so we've got to start
Speaker 1: really investigating, and they go, what is what are their
Speaker 1: grievances and why do they seem so pissed with us?
Speaker 1: And whatever? The coastal elites or how it was. I
Speaker 1: don't think when you look at that in large, that
Speaker 1: there was genuine soul searching in regard to that. There
Speaker 1: were some individuals who I think had some genuine curiosity,
Speaker 1: like why is it that these people thought Trump's better
Speaker 1: than Hillary Clinton? So, but I think the vast majority
Speaker 1: they're not interested in that, and they've showed that.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: That's really bad, Like it's a form of pretense of
Speaker 1: thinking these people maybe they had some legitimate grievance, and
Speaker 1: they do have some legit, that's the whole thing. They
Speaker 1: do have some legitimate grievances, And there was too much
Speaker 1: of a hand waving towards this. So I think there's
Speaker 1: probably particularly like the some of the crowds that were around,
Speaker 1: there's too much of a focus on Trump and his
Speaker 1: base are crazy not seen yeah, but there's so much
Speaker 1: that's crazy of what's going. I do think Trump is
Speaker 1: based are crazy, but it's not. Think it's the only
Speaker 1: thing that's crazy. And part of the way the New
Speaker 1: York Times and the Washington Post, it's own function is crazy.
Speaker 2: Michael should in generals, members of Ice, and high ranking
Speaker 2: military pussanneil be given directives to side with the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court over the President before they take those positions.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you take seriously when people what they're
Speaker 1: swearing is an oath to the Constitution, that has to
Speaker 1: mean something. And I don't think it has to mean
Speaker 1: you're you have to side with the Supreme Court or
Speaker 1: something like it. But in a division of powers system
Speaker 1: that we have, there are certain things that the court
Speaker 1: has the jurisdiction, It gets the rule, and it gets
Speaker 1: the final say. And in that sense, yes, like if
Speaker 1: a court has ruled, what an oath of the Constitution
Speaker 1: means is yeah, like the Constitution says the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: on this is you in this one has the final
Speaker 1: say and that's then so so yes, in a broader
Speaker 1: sense like it has, it has and it should have
Speaker 1: a meaning that you're swearing an all to uphold the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Part of the challenge now is that he's chosen people
Speaker 2: to those positions who you know clearly hold their alliance
Speaker 2: to Trump and not to the Constitution. Michael, have you
Speaker 2: have you done the numbers? Do you add? About? Always
Speaker 2: asking me, I guess, do you add about a thousand
Speaker 2: new subscribers per year or every six months? It really depends.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm not adding many subscribers. I seem to
Speaker 2: be losing quite a few over Trump. I think, I mean,
Speaker 2: we're still adding small amounts. But typically I add anyway
Speaker 2: from one hundred to three hundred subscribers a month, if
Speaker 2: that's helpful. So over a year, I should add more
Speaker 2: than a thousand, and some years significantly more than a thousand.
Speaker 2: It depends if I get on a good podcast subscription
Speaker 2: go up a lot, if I get good publicity, If
Speaker 2: like now I'm mainly talking about Trump, I lose a
Speaker 2: lot of people. So it varies over time, Right, Thomas,
Speaker 2: what's the possibility that Trump's second presidency will be so
Speaker 2: bad that having JD as VP, that Trump alone will
Speaker 2: end the national conservative movement? So what's the possibility his
Speaker 2: presidency is so bad that the national conservative movement will
Speaker 2: go away.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any possibility of that. So it
Speaker 1: might be that it's harder for it to gain power,
Speaker 1: but that's not the same as it going away. And
Speaker 1: I don't know how much Trump will be seen as representing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're trying to use him. I mean it's directions
Speaker 1: like he's trying to use them. And he has a
Speaker 1: certain kind of that that many people like this a
Speaker 1: feel like he is a people person in a certain
Speaker 1: kind of way. And so he was criticized a lot
Speaker 1: for taking events as his running mate. But I think
Speaker 1: he knew what he was doing in regards and there's
Speaker 1: a way like he's trying to use them, and there's
Speaker 1: a way they think they can use him, and how
Speaker 1: that will play out, it's much more likely I think
Speaker 1: that they're using him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that the only intellectual movement on
Speaker 2: the rights I think I think that they're gonna they dominate.
Speaker 2: That they'll they'll wolf, they'll change, they'll adapt to what
Speaker 2: Trump does, but do it. I mean, the better right,
Speaker 2: the better conservatives are being completely marginalized. I mean they
Speaker 2: they don't have any following.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why I won't. I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: intellectual movement that's not going to go away, because even
Speaker 1: if like Trump is seen as failing and has thought
Speaker 1: of well, the failure is some because he had some
Speaker 1: connection to National Conservative That's not how an intellectual movement
Speaker 1: will go away.
Speaker 2: Does psychology need a philosophical foundation? I think objectivism would
Speaker 2: be the best philosophy with its reality based morality.
Speaker 1: Yes, so I do. Basically any science needs a philosophical foundation,
Speaker 1: but psychology in particular, because it's a specialized study of consciousness.
Speaker 1: If you don't have the basic principles about thinking about
Speaker 1: consciousness that are correct, you're going to just go completely
Speaker 1: wrong in psychology. I mean one of the most obvious
Speaker 1: ways is when you had materialism in philosophy, you had
Speaker 1: psychologic behaviorism and psychology that doesn't even think you're conscious,
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can't get anywhere if that's what. So
Speaker 1: you need a base that the philosophy is establishing. And
Speaker 1: the basic issue in philosophy is how to think about
Speaker 1: consciousness's relationship to reality, and I think objectivism's view is
Speaker 1: right in regard to that. So in that sense it
Speaker 1: would form the base of a proper psychology. R.
Speaker 2: Michael says, do the thinkers behind maga He puts thinkers
Speaker 2: in quotes think that making us less of a consumer
Speaker 2: mtualistic nation will somehow make a spiritually richer and listen,
Speaker 2: nihilistic if we don't have the option to shop an
Speaker 2: Amazon as.
Speaker 1: Much, Yes, in a certain kind of way, I do
Speaker 1: so if the so this is I think an element
Speaker 1: of what one saw in fascist movements of the a
Speaker 1: scorn of materialism, material comforts that makes people soft. So
Speaker 1: the the people who push we need national service because
Speaker 1: that is even like if we had a war, that
Speaker 1: would be the greatest thing that we could be said,
Speaker 1: But even if we have this this kind of hard
Speaker 1: where they learn some kind of like it's a bogus
Speaker 1: but learn a work ethic. And so there's an element
Speaker 1: of that that I think they actually believe it like
Speaker 1: this because it is in part what a religious mentality
Speaker 1: looks like. That people are falling in line and are
Speaker 1: doing their duty, is one way to put it, and
Speaker 1: that that they think of that as and it does
Speaker 1: have it it's spiritually bad, but it has a spiritual
Speaker 1: like this is how people should be thinking, and we
Speaker 1: need to mold people that Again that they have this
Speaker 1: kind of more obedient character where they think like it
Speaker 1: has real meaning to them of yeah, I've got to
Speaker 1: do my duty. That is an element that is that
Speaker 1: is real. It's a perverse spiritual dedication, but it is
Speaker 1: a spiritual dedication.
Speaker 2: Hupa. Campbell. I find it hard to believe less than
Speaker 2: one hundred years after the fall of Nazi Germany, we're
Speaker 2: going to do it all again. I don't think we're
Speaker 2: saying we're going to do it all again, particularly not
Speaker 2: in that.
Speaker 1: This is the conference what we just did in Berlin.
Speaker 1: I talked a little bit about this, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I mean, my talk is going to be
Speaker 1: about saving the Enlightenment, and I think I'm gonna talk
Speaker 1: some about this that it. I think that there is
Speaker 1: an element of something happening again. But if one holds
Speaker 1: it so concretely as well, what we're gonna have is
Speaker 1: concentration camps, and that it's no that to repeat history
Speaker 1: doesn't that's not what it needs to mean to repeat it,
Speaker 1: but that there's that the opposition of that's the to
Speaker 1: think of the Trump phenomena. But more broadly, I think
Speaker 1: populism around the Western world. You have to see in
Speaker 1: what they're say they're in opposition to and the plausibility
Speaker 1: of people thinking, yeah, we need someone who's gonna stand
Speaker 1: up to this. That's part I think of what's repeating,
Speaker 1: but in a different but never a similar form, And
Speaker 1: you you have to think of it like that. Of that,
Speaker 1: like you have to try to really think what gives
Speaker 1: this appeal versus just thinking these whatever, how do you
Speaker 1: want to put Trump's base maga people populist around the
Speaker 1: Western world, they're all crazy and so and one of
Speaker 1: the phenomenon I think one should take seriously, and it's
Speaker 1: something I've been thinking more about. I know people who
Speaker 1: I think of as good who have embraced these kinds
Speaker 1: of things in or in part, and so you can
Speaker 1: just just sort of brush it all away as well
Speaker 1: they're now all irrational or something like that. Are there's
Speaker 1: deeper dynamics going on, and my views it's the second.
Speaker 1: So that's part of what I want to talk about
Speaker 1: probably at o't com.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, particularly on the issue of immigration, both
Speaker 2: Qan in Europe especially. You know, your the dynamics a
Speaker 2: little different than here, but it's it's still immigration is
Speaker 2: still there's something there that people are really upset about
Speaker 2: and offended by that. I think it's still wrong, but
Speaker 2: it's not crazy. Hapah. Once intellectuals is dumbed down the population,
Speaker 2: it's a certain level. Does fascism become inevitable something we've
Speaker 2: answered that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think of it as exactly as dumbed down.
Speaker 1: But if you think of it as the intellectuals of
Speaker 1: conditioned people, yes, And that's sort of the part of
Speaker 1: what the Ominous Parallels is about. And but part of
Speaker 1: the reason I don't think of it as dumbed down
Speaker 1: is my view when you look at the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the peal of fascism is to the more educated people.
Speaker 1: The peal of socialism is to the educated people. So
Speaker 1: Marx thought communism is gonna come in Germany, and like
Speaker 1: the leading into it's not what came. Communism goes to Russia,
Speaker 1: whether people are backward uneducated, because I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: who has some experience with the modern world can really
Speaker 1: think that if we abolish private property, everything's gonna work. Well,
Speaker 1: some person who's hasn't been educated, hasn't been in capitalism thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we just took up people's property over everything's gonna work.
Speaker 1: So the fascist was, yeah, we're not going to to
Speaker 1: just take everybody's properties, we're gonna take their lives. In effect,
Speaker 1: there's still own property, but we will tell them what
Speaker 1: to do. And so that appeals to a more educated
Speaker 1: mind of thinking, well, yeah, maybe that could work. You
Speaker 1: can't just socialize everything and think and so that's the
Speaker 1: sense of which it's not. That's partly why I resist.
Speaker 1: It's the dumbing down, but it is a conditioning of
Speaker 1: people to think this could work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think as a gleatanism appeals to a
Speaker 2: certain type of person.
Speaker 3: Fascism keeps.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's higherarchy, there's a semblance of merit, but
Speaker 2: it's it's you know, so so better people at the top,
Speaker 2: and there's there's a yeah, you know, let's see mcano
Speaker 2: advice for one in their twenties drowning in melancholy for
Speaker 2: months over miss messing up a relationship, the sort of
Speaker 2: she was the one, nothing else is as good.
Speaker 1: I'd be suspicious of that conclusion that in your twenties
Speaker 1: that it's you had that one chance, then it's gone.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean that's what you should
Speaker 2: be rethinking and it's odd because you're in the motion,
Speaker 2: in the motion of the breakup and the you know, uh,
Speaker 2: melancholy of all of that. But you've got to get
Speaker 2: out there and you've.
Speaker 1: Got to.
Speaker 2: There's every reason to believe that there's not one person
Speaker 2: when I'm matched up in some mystical way, to have
Speaker 2: just one person that we met We met with and uh, we.
Speaker 3: Like people for different reasons.
Speaker 2: You could find somebody else who's very different than this woman,
Speaker 2: who will be the one in in uh in a
Speaker 2: in a different way. So you've got to get over
Speaker 2: this idea that there's some it's it's almost a religious
Speaker 2: idea that you know, God has assigned you somebody, and
Speaker 2: there's no such assignment. There isn't a one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it it it the more you can have
Speaker 1: the opposite perspective, which is I was able to do
Speaker 1: it once, why can't I do it again? Yep, versus
Speaker 1: sort of, I was lucky that it happened once. It
Speaker 1: will never happen again. But if you really think of it, no,
Speaker 1: this was I was in a relationship that it was
Speaker 1: good and partly because I was good like in then yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do it again, and you can find somebody else.
Speaker 3: So we got two hours, but just tell her a
Speaker 3: bunch of questions.
Speaker 2: So hopefully okay, okay, Chris Uh. The way that Abigo
Speaker 2: Garcia's clothing and tattoos are being used as evidence of
Speaker 2: gang involvement reminds me of the West Memphis three. Are
Speaker 2: you familiar with that case?
Speaker 1: No, I mean I might, and certainly not under that name.
Speaker 1: If if maybe the description of the case, I would,
Speaker 1: it would ring a bell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me need under the name. But I agree that
Speaker 2: the using those characteristics to identify and therefore penalize him
Speaker 2: is it is a travesty.
Speaker 1: And part of what I've read about it is there
Speaker 1: it makes I still So there's an issue in a
Speaker 1: court of law what meets an evers dentury standard and
Speaker 1: so on, And it can't just be whether they've got
Speaker 1: tattoos or something like that. But but supposedly for some
Speaker 1: gangs tattoo like it really tells you something about membership,
Speaker 1: whereas for others it does it. And the part of
Speaker 1: the allegations for is for some of the gangs here
Speaker 1: it doesn't tell you affiliation, and certainly not that you'll
Speaker 1: have a lot of false positives. Maybe there's not in
Speaker 1: one direction. It tells you something, but not everybody with
Speaker 1: this tattoo is part of the gang. Even though everyone
Speaker 1: in the gang has this tattoo, not everyone who has
Speaker 1: this tattoos in the gang, and that like, that's part
Speaker 1: of what the worry is here. So that's one kind
Speaker 1: and it is the more you're trying to move quickly,
Speaker 1: you just oh, yeah, like we made a mistake. We
Speaker 1: thought it everything works like this gang, but no, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of different gangs that work in different ways.
Speaker 1: And that's part of just the the the the sort
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere around everything the administration is doing. There's
Speaker 1: a different issue of whether you can convict someone based
Speaker 1: on tattoos with no other corroborating evidence, and that's for
Speaker 1: the courts of law to have real evidentiary standards that
Speaker 1: that can happen.
Speaker 2: And ask, how would you characterize the modern intellectual trend
Speaker 2: in epistemology.
Speaker 1: If if that doesn't if that doesn't mean like among
Speaker 1: intellectuals or something, if that means the modern trend in
Speaker 1: the ability to distinguish between faith and reason.
Speaker 2: Thomas says, I'm reading mone Rand and have lengthy, detailed
Speaker 2: questions about the philosophy. Are there any intellectuals fellows at
Speaker 2: AOI that I could email call my objective for my
Speaker 2: objectivist questions?
Speaker 1: So yes, certainly can email. That's not guarantee you'll get
Speaker 1: replies to everything, but for many of us are emails.
Speaker 1: You can find them on the website. Then we have
Speaker 1: things like Discussing Objectivism, which are I think it still is.
Speaker 1: You can drop into three. It's a kind of subscription
Speaker 1: thing for people who go to twelve fifteen of these
Speaker 1: where you're reading something by iron Rand and one of
Speaker 1: the scholars at AARI is having a session where we're
Speaker 1: talking about it and you're meet with some fellow people
Speaker 1: interested in iron Rand. So it's discussing Objectivism, and it's
Speaker 1: the first three you can just drop into for free,
Speaker 1: and then if you want to continue, it's a subscription.
Speaker 1: So that's another place like if you're really reading the
Speaker 1: stuff and I have questions, you can see in advance
Speaker 1: what the essay is and drop into one or two
Speaker 1: of those to see if you can get and.
Speaker 2: You can join AARU or you know, apply for AARU
Speaker 2: and become a student there and then you'll get a
Speaker 2: lot of these questions answered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Thomas asked.
Speaker 2: I also asked, how can I transition from altruism to
Speaker 2: selfishness and friendships. I'm in this conflict way in my
Speaker 2: initial reaction, I don't want to start a friendship because
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a servant to somebody.
Speaker 1: So the I think the important thing is to hold
Speaker 1: it as a positive, not as it I don't want
Speaker 1: to be somebody's servant. And if I've met people like
Speaker 1: this in their encounter with objectivism, of objectivism wakes them
Speaker 1: up to the fact that their relationships aren't real trades.
Speaker 1: And that's the positive. Is you want to be a trader.
Speaker 1: You should think like, I'm bringing something to this relationship.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why people would want to spend time
Speaker 1: with me, be around me, so and I should be
Speaker 1: getting something from the people I'm spending time with. So
Speaker 1: we're both gaining, we're both benefiting. The people who've been
Speaker 1: raised very in a sort of very altruistic frame where
Speaker 1: the expectation is always like you're to give, and it's
Speaker 1: often women are raised like that You're to give, other
Speaker 1: people are to receive, and so can find Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to stop doing that and think like the solution
Speaker 1: to that is not be in relationships, but it's rather
Speaker 1: to change the nature of the relationship. It's not like
Speaker 1: withdraw and because people. I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: servant to people. It's rather try to have relationships where
Speaker 1: there's a positive like you know what you want to
Speaker 1: get from the relationship, and thinking of the other person
Speaker 1: is yeah, they should be thinking of bringing something to
Speaker 1: the relationship. And Ben fit in true too. So trade
Speaker 1: means you're both gaining.
Speaker 2: Yep, James, I think it's worth the cost for AI
Speaker 2: to take out a full page add in New York
Speaker 2: Times of Washington Post within nineteen twenty five Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm skeptical, and because you need a lot of
Speaker 1: explanation for this. So part of the that OBJECTIVESM doesn't
Speaker 1: fit into any of today's camps. We're not part of
Speaker 1: any tribe and so on. There's a way in which
Speaker 1: there's so many people again, as it would be put today,
Speaker 1: that they're on the left who think of themselves as
Speaker 1: we're the ones fighting fascism, we're the ones who are
Speaker 1: telling you and no, you're the ones who have helped
Speaker 1: bringing fascism to the country. So it would that kind
Speaker 1: of ad would so easily be taken as yeah, like
Speaker 1: we're on the side of the academics, and and no,
Speaker 1: they're they're the main reason that we've got Trump, and
Speaker 1: that's part but part that to say there's some push
Speaker 1: against the elites means in significant part there's a push
Speaker 1: against the intellectuals, and that push is understandable. That's part
Speaker 1: of the issue. And if you don't see that that's
Speaker 1: part of what's going on, then you you're non understanding.
Speaker 1: I think the Trump phenomenon, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think we got that much out
Speaker 2: of the for pgads after nine eleven, and that was
Speaker 2: an easier in some ways, an easier topic to deal
Speaker 2: with then I think this is.
Speaker 1: But there's something similar in that. What I think would
Speaker 1: happened with that ad is so if you're asking, the
Speaker 1: way the reader of whatever New York Times Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal is processing it, it would be, oh, you're like
Speaker 1: the neocons. Yep. That And even the ad we took
Speaker 1: out had some quoting of neo cons in it, And
Speaker 1: I mean, we know we're not we know where they are,
Speaker 1: but to explain that in an ad so that the
Speaker 1: person getting it will be, oh, Okay, these people are
Speaker 1: really different than the neocons. So that that's why an
Speaker 1: ad here will there will be put on a certain
Speaker 1: camp on the right. Oh, you're like the neo caay
Speaker 1: here an ad like this against that there were whatever
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five will be put Oh, you're like the
Speaker 1: academics who are writing about fascism and they've been said
Speaker 1: they're warning about Trump and no we're not like that.
Speaker 2: Ye uh tell us say, are there any objectives courses
Speaker 2: or classes that focus on teaching polemics?
Speaker 1: Well, there's certainly an element of that in Understanding Objectivism.
Speaker 1: Of there's a section of proper versus improper Approaches to polemics.
Speaker 1: So I suspect from the question it's how to be
Speaker 1: especially effective in polemics, and there's some of that in
Speaker 1: that course, but that's more a course about how polemics
Speaker 1: can screw up your thinking because you adopt the context
Speaker 1: of what you're arguing against.
Speaker 2: And that's lenin Peaoff's Understanding Objectivism. Yes, Andrew says. Peacock
Speaker 2: claimed he created his course Objectivism through Induction as a
Speaker 2: result of frustration in failing to be able to educate rationalists.
Speaker 2: Why do you think rationalism is a popular affliction.
Speaker 1: I mean for a variety of reasons. It's a popular affliction.
Speaker 1: So teaching people abstract ideas when someone else has formed
Speaker 1: those ideas is difficult, and a short cut will seem like, well,
Speaker 1: start with the ideas and then well can talk about
Speaker 1: examples of them and maybe a little bit of where
Speaker 1: they come from. But there's a way in which that
Speaker 1: whole education like it's difficult. It's inherently difficult to do
Speaker 1: this of how to teach abstract ideas to minds that
Speaker 1: haven't yet formed them, And there's a way in which
Speaker 1: you can teach it in a way it makes it
Speaker 1: seem like, oh, the ideas are already here, and rationalism
Speaker 1: is a perspective of the ideas already here. There's not
Speaker 1: that big of a question of how did they get here,
Speaker 1: because they're already here. And our education system has doubled
Speaker 1: or tripled down on the worst form of that error,
Speaker 1: which is and take it of science and math so
Speaker 1: often or taught. Here's the formulas, sort of memorize these
Speaker 1: formulas will give you all kinds of problem sets where
Speaker 1: you have to apply them. But why do we have
Speaker 1: these formulas? Who created them? And why what problems were
Speaker 1: they dealing with where they couldn't deal until they discover
Speaker 1: these ideas and so on. So oh Newton has three laws.
Speaker 1: Here's the three laws, and now start. And that makes
Speaker 1: it seem like, oh, the ideas are just out there
Speaker 1: in reality, and just go grab them and start using them.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the rationalist whole approach to ideas.
Speaker 1: So the major reason I think it's so prevalent is
Speaker 1: it's the method by which ideas are taught in our
Speaker 1: educational system.
Speaker 2: Action Jackson says, great to see on Call On again.
Speaker 2: It's been a while. John says, I've corresponded over the
Speaker 2: years with people who knew Ironmand and they say the
Speaker 2: existing biographies are accurate. I think we we've talked to
Speaker 2: people who new Ironmand and they say the biographies any inaccurate.
Speaker 2: So take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 1: And I would also say of the so yeah, for
Speaker 1: sure of people who know. But various things have been
Speaker 1: released where they were private before, like even something like
Speaker 1: workshops that she held on it o e. The Fiction
Speaker 1: writing course and things like that, where you're seeing things
Speaker 1: that were not meant for publication in the form that
Speaker 1: you're seeing them where she does not come across at
Speaker 1: all like the way the biographies presented.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's so much of that that the biographies ignore.
Speaker 2: They just don't. They It's as if that material doesn't
Speaker 2: even exist. They just this. You can see real flaws
Speaker 2: in it without actually having known her, just based on
Speaker 2: the published evidence. Daniel, does a country that re elects
Speaker 2: Trump deserve a dictatorship?
Speaker 1: Well, it depends what deserve means. So there's a there's
Speaker 1: a perspective of you get the kind of government you deserve,
Speaker 1: But deserve just means there that there's a causality to it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that everybody morally deserves this. And if
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who are resisting this, like
Speaker 1: what does it mean? Oh but yeah, but you deserve
Speaker 1: a dictators now you're trying to resist this, and anybody
Speaker 1: who's like really pro American what they deserve is to
Speaker 1: live in freedom. And so but from a causal perspective,
Speaker 1: if too many people turn tribal, that you'll get what
Speaker 1: they want is some form of follow the leader, some
Speaker 1: form of authoritarianism. Yeah, so there's a sense in which causally,
Speaker 1: like this is the outcome you're going to get and
Speaker 1: in that sense it's earned. But it doesn't mean like
Speaker 1: people who are actually pro freedom morally deserves this neo.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it make more sense that the world is platonic
Speaker 2: given our need for experts, everything from cause mechanics to philosophers. Also,
Speaker 2: since you're Canadian, are you voting for Pure or for Connie?
Speaker 1: I don't. I haven't voted in the recent elections because
Speaker 1: I don't follow the Canadian politics enough to think that
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing voting the I don't get
Speaker 1: the platonic element. So relying on experts is not blindly
Speaker 1: following authority. And if that's like the connection that Plato thinks,
Speaker 1: you have to have philosopher kings who you can't understand
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but you sort of have to have
Speaker 1: faith that they know what they're doing and have seen
Speaker 1: the forms and are well motivated and so on. That's
Speaker 1: what it means to rely on experts. You have to
Speaker 1: have reasons for thinking of person's an expert. You have
Speaker 1: to have reasons for thinking they know something, and to
Speaker 1: know something means it's in principle accessible to anybody and everybody.
Speaker 1: Like I don't think of a doctor, I go to
Speaker 1: who specialize I don't know in colon cancer as Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I could never learn this. I can't understand this,
Speaker 1: but somehow he's been able to figure this out. So
Speaker 1: I've got to turn my life over. No, it's he's
Speaker 1: specialized in this field. I could learn it if I
Speaker 1: specialized in it, and I want to see that he
Speaker 1: can in effect explain it to me, a non expert
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it. Yeah, Okay, that's plausible
Speaker 1: that that's the causality. And if I studied it more,
Speaker 1: I'd be more convinced that that is the cou But yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not at all like you're blindly fault if
Speaker 1: you're properly relying on experts.
Speaker 2: Andrews says, I'm interested in rand personally as I'm interested
Speaker 2: in a psychology. Through her journal's letters one hundred voices,
Speaker 2: you sense a hero, brilliant, malevolent, live to morality and
Speaker 2: achieve greatness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I certainly don't want to I said that
Speaker 1: I wasn't especially interested in her person I don't think
Speaker 1: there's something like weird. If somebody is in it, it's
Speaker 1: and I know, I mean there's people love working in
Speaker 1: the archives and see it's just it's it's not a
Speaker 1: pressing issue for me.
Speaker 2: Action Jackson says, is there any point in discussing Ein
Speaker 2: Rand with someone whose starting point is Iroinmand was a psychopath?
Speaker 1: Yes, if the if there, if you have some reason
Speaker 1: to think that person will question their starting point. So
Speaker 1: I I mean I brought up a way earlier some
Speaker 1: forms of people thinking, oh yeah, like I know Einrand
Speaker 1: just loves the rich hates the poor. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of variations on that where it's including like, yeah, she
Speaker 1: must be she's for selfishness, or there's some way in
Speaker 1: which she must be a psychopath or something like that.
Speaker 1: And if you ask, like, what have you read of
Speaker 1: Einrand's that you? And if they tell you nothing and
Speaker 1: they yeah, maybe, like maybe that's embarrassing that I have
Speaker 1: such a strong view and I haven't read anything, then yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be able to get somewhere with that person.
Speaker 1: If they just keep telling you, oh no, but I
Speaker 1: know there she's a psychon well, I don't have to
Speaker 1: read anything. It's yeah, then there's no one point further engaging.
Speaker 2: Action says, there's leaving autocompletion on on my phone an
Speaker 2: example of being secondhanded no, you know better than that.
Speaker 2: Jonathan says, uncut. Thank you for so many years about
Speaker 2: standing in aspiring scholarship.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Jonathan pe Gupta says, is it okay to evade and
Speaker 2: be happy about dismantling and cut back of some of
Speaker 2: the Department of Education which seemed unimaginable a few months ago?
Speaker 2: Why would it bove evade?
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about DOGE. Yeah, very much. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm up a little bit. I think the long in,
Speaker 1: the sort of intermediate to long term, it will likely
Speaker 1: make these kinds of this kind of cutting much more difficult.
Speaker 1: I wish I just wish they had done it honestly,
Speaker 1: and even if it was like this is part of
Speaker 1: what I mean by honestly, so not if they had
Speaker 1: done it way better than what they're doing, just honestly,
Speaker 1: if they had said, yeah, we're cutting all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: We're doing it super quickly. There's all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: We don't know what we're doing. We're we might even
Speaker 1: fire good people, we might try to rehire some of them,
Speaker 1: some of them we might not try to rehire. But
Speaker 1: if we don't do it sort of at the start
Speaker 1: and quickly, it will never it will be just be
Speaker 1: tied up in the bureaucratic pushback.
Speaker 2: And so on.
Speaker 1: But if it was much more open and not although
Speaker 1: this is fraud, but many of these programs we just
Speaker 1: don't like and we want to bring it to an end.
Speaker 1: Not if if then I think it, Yeah, something positive?
Speaker 1: What could it happened? Both short term and longer term
Speaker 1: in regardless. But because of the way in which it's done,
Speaker 1: and that there's so much misrepresentation and lying about what
Speaker 1: is done, it makes it easy to push back. Is
Speaker 1: sort of like, this is what it looks like to
Speaker 1: cut government.
Speaker 3: And it yeah, so and very little is being achieved,
Speaker 3: and so it it.
Speaker 2: You know, big promises are being made, very little is achieved,
Speaker 2: and the idea will be Okay, well this is the
Speaker 2: best you can do, and.
Speaker 3: It's far from the best it can be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2: So you know, I don't think you need to not
Speaker 2: be happy that I upontum of education is being cut
Speaker 2: back as long as you can hold the broader context
Speaker 2: of what those's doing more broadly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the problem of education is smaller. That's a
Speaker 3: good thing. It's not as great as it could be,
Speaker 3: but it's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Lucinda says, can't watch live right now, but very excited
Speaker 2: to watch this later. Everyone remember to reach the super
Speaker 2: chet goal. Thank you, Lucinda. Sinda needs to join the
Speaker 2: AARU at some point. She's hardworking student and really smart.
Speaker 2: What about music that is primarily percussion based. I've heard
Speaker 2: objectives feed bad about this, including Iran I recall in
Speaker 2: regard to rap music.
Speaker 1: I mean percussions part of music. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what you know.
Speaker 2: I have a problem with things that have a constant beat,
Speaker 2: nothing ever changes except that constant be. They find it
Speaker 2: mindless and and and kind of primitive, very very primitive.
Speaker 2: And it's it's less similar to what iron Man wrote
Speaker 2: about folk music. It's it's it's a primitive form of music.
Speaker 2: It's entertaining up to a point, but it can't be
Speaker 2: more than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I mean, I don't I'm not a consumer
Speaker 1: of rap, but I can see it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it's all like that though. There's so that's again like
Speaker 1: as a as a form. Uh yeah, when music becomes monotonous,
Speaker 1: it starts going outside of even being music because you
Speaker 1: start to tune it out. But yeah, that doesn't tell
Speaker 1: you like that's all rap is, or that everything there
Speaker 1: is doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like raps, but but it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: there's nothing. I know people who do. Yeah, Daniel says,
Speaker 2: if labor theory exalts the virtue of physical labor, how
Speaker 2: does that comporte with mainstream leftism that scoffs at materialism
Speaker 2: as unimportant in inferior.
Speaker 1: Well, it depends what you mean by mainstream leftism. Like
Speaker 1: this was part of the change from the old left
Speaker 1: to the new Left, and it was a change that
Speaker 1: Einman saw and that she commented on. So the old
Speaker 1: left promised material abundance, if you think of Marx as
Speaker 1: prominent among this, but many of the socialists promised, you're
Speaker 1: we're going to outcompete capitalism, and when the facts of
Speaker 1: reality showed otherwise, they basically had two choices. It was, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're pro material progress, abundance, prosperity, and therefore have to
Speaker 1: give up socialism communism then, or we're going to give
Speaker 1: up material abundance and prosperity. And what the new Left
Speaker 1: did was what we want to cling to our statism
Speaker 1: and control over people's lives. So we'll say I'm put
Speaker 1: to something like, now we'll tell people it's better, you're
Speaker 1: better off to go bare foot. And that's part of
Speaker 1: what the environmental movement was. It's, oh, Okay, we can't
Speaker 1: produce abundance, so abundance is bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that doesn't contradict the fact that they think
Speaker 2: that physical labor is how everything is produced. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you can still be poor, or you can still advocate
Speaker 2: poverty and still believe that. Cluck says, do you expect
Speaker 2: objectivest movement to be? Did you expect the objectives movement
Speaker 2: to be this small and finge sixty eight years after
Speaker 2: the publication of Atlas Shrugged, that's over two generations of exposure.
Speaker 1: Well, I wasn't around. I would have been. I think
Speaker 1: if I were young reading Atlas Shrugged in like sort
Speaker 1: of pre publication form, I would have been in the camp.
Speaker 1: But said, the culture's cooked. In ten years, it's gonna
Speaker 1: all change because like the ideas are so forcefully presented,
Speaker 1: who's not going to see them? That I would have
Speaker 1: been in that camp, I would have been wrong, and
Speaker 1: not just wrong, sort of the whole perspective is wrong.
Speaker 1: That's not how ideas work, it's not how fast philosophical
Speaker 1: change happens, but I would have been so. I yes,
Speaker 1: so I if like, if I were around at that time,
Speaker 1: would be sufficed by how the gradual the change is.
Speaker 1: But it's just because I would have had a wrong view,
Speaker 1: not because the change has been so slow and it
Speaker 1: should have been and we should have expected it to
Speaker 1: been super fast. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have a very impatient listening audience. They want change now,
Speaker 2: Kim ask what led to pragmatism originating and spitting in
Speaker 2: the US as a post other countries.
Speaker 1: This is something that if you read doctor Peacock's The
Speaker 1: Ominous Parallels, there's a lot of discussion of pragmatism in there,
Speaker 1: including its appeal, and one of the ways he characterizes it,
Speaker 1: which I completely agree with, is something like that it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily work for work, but something like it's a
Speaker 1: philosophy design to appeal to Americans. So it's a philosophy
Speaker 1: that promises the cash value of ideas. We're not going
Speaker 1: to get bogged down into theory, spend our time in
Speaker 1: the Ivory tower. We want ideas that work. And what
Speaker 1: America has done is like transformed a country into the
Speaker 1: greatest wealthiest country in the world. They want stuff that
Speaker 1: really works, and we have a philosophy that the whole
Speaker 1: emphasis is not hot air, but ideas that work, and
Speaker 1: if they stop working, we pick up other ideas. And
Speaker 1: that that was the appeal of Oh okay, So this
Speaker 1: is thinkers who actually value practical action in the way
Speaker 1: that Americans do. And that was why it was. It
Speaker 1: really is a philosophy designed to appeal to Americans.
Speaker 2: Andrew says, do you think collectivism is a psychological consequence
Speaker 2: of incorrect epistemology that leads to an impression of cognitive dependence?
Speaker 1: It's in part so most of these kinds of things
Speaker 1: go hand in hand, or putting it a little differently,
Speaker 1: there's vicious circles. So collectivism preaches the idea that you
Speaker 1: really can't think on your own, the individuals hopeless. You
Speaker 1: only think in a group. And the more person absorbs
Speaker 1: that is, they stop like, what's the point of thinking
Speaker 1: by myself if it doesn't work, and so on and
Speaker 1: and but the more you do that, the more helpless
Speaker 1: you are. If you really do give up thinking, which
Speaker 1: is what collectivisms, or to give up individual thinking, which
Speaker 1: means to give up thinking, then you do feel out
Speaker 1: of control and collectivism seems to make more sense then, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: as an individual, I don't have any control and I'm
Speaker 1: not able to do things, but collectivism promises, well, but
Speaker 1: the group will be powerful, so you move more that direction.
Speaker 1: But then you're preached those ideas and yeah, so that
Speaker 1: it forms a vicious circle. Right.
Speaker 2: Do you think Josha Puro might be able to beat Fance,
Speaker 2: Governor of Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: There were a few Democrats that could probably beat Fance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I so it's it's rep if my view of
Speaker 1: Trump is right, that he's not a power luster. I
Speaker 1: think it's still the case that a person who wears
Speaker 1: the power lust on their sleeve turns off Americans. It's
Speaker 1: partly why Hillary Hillary Clinton really turned people off, Like
Speaker 1: I can understand why she did h in comparison to
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, who I don't think of. He's more also,
Speaker 1: like he liked the spotlight to be the circle of attention.
Speaker 1: There was an element there's an element of power lust
Speaker 1: in Bill Clinton, I think, but he didn't wear it
Speaker 1: on his sleeve in the way that Hillary Clinton does.
Speaker 1: And I think someone like a JD. Vance projects much
Speaker 1: more a kind of contempt and why should be able
Speaker 1: to real power and crush people and someone like a
Speaker 1: Josh Shapiro doesn't. He seems more American yep than JD.
Speaker 1: Van's And I still think the electorate would respond if
Speaker 1: that's the choice. They'll respond to the more person who
Speaker 1: seems more positive.
Speaker 2: Neil says, wouldn't it be strategic for AOI to assign
Speaker 2: people to politics, assign people to politics who can help
Speaker 2: spread its ideas? And have you met with YouTube tick history?
Speaker 1: So yes? On the second he came to the conference
Speaker 1: in Berlin, I didn't actually get a chance to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time with him because I mean we
Speaker 1: were both much more talking to the audience okay, to
Speaker 1: the conference than to each other, including like during the
Speaker 1: breaks and so on that on the so what was
Speaker 1: the first again, it was the oh West strategicsy Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can't do that. People have to have
Speaker 1: an actual interest in it. But I would say this,
Speaker 1: I'm not in the camp. If there is such a
Speaker 1: camp of it's too soon to go into politics, people
Speaker 1: shouldn't engage with it. It's the last thing that's going
Speaker 1: to change part of what we were talking about before
Speaker 1: that it's it's a real problem that bad people go
Speaker 1: into politics. And I would support anybody who I think
Speaker 1: of as this person actually values America, even if I
Speaker 1: disagree with the whole slew of things, but they actually
Speaker 1: value the country, value the Constitution in a way that
Speaker 1: there's so much now hand waving towards it. Like the
Speaker 1: National Conservatives, I do not think value the Constant. They
Speaker 1: might say they do, but I don't think they actually
Speaker 1: do so. And I would encourage anybody who I thought
Speaker 1: of of having good motivation to go into policy, Like
Speaker 1: if they're interested, yeah, go. We need better people in politics,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to assign people there, But if
Speaker 1: people are interested in it, yes, I think you should
Speaker 1: go into it. There's positive things you can do if
Speaker 1: you don't have a sort of unrealistic view, Oh I'm
Speaker 1: gonna become president and change the whole country or something
Speaker 1: like that. But if you think, yeah, like maybe I
Speaker 1: could help Congress take back some of the power that
Speaker 1: it's ceded to the executive branch and so, and that's
Speaker 1: a long term goal of why I want to go
Speaker 1: into politic. So yeah, yeah, and if you're well motivated,
Speaker 1: I had support and encourage people to do that.
Speaker 2: All right, Mary Lee says a full page New York
Speaker 2: Times ad costs one point four million and up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: definitely not doing that. I think it cost us two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand.
Speaker 3: After nine eleven. But we had dedicated donors.
Speaker 2: This is what they wanted to do, and basically two
Speaker 2: people funded those ads that we did in the New
Speaker 2: York Times. In Washington Post simon, why did theists distort
Speaker 2: Why do theists distort causality by insisting on a first cause,
Speaker 2: ignoring that causality presupposes existence and action and not a beginning.
Speaker 1: Because most of the arguments for the existence of God
Speaker 1: are rationalizations, so it's not the You probably could count
Speaker 1: on one hand the people who are like deeply religious,
Speaker 1: who've they've been convinced by an argument to believe in God.
Speaker 1: It's they already believe in God, and then it's really
Speaker 1: you just go by faith. Oh no, I've got arguments
Speaker 1: for why there is a God and things like the
Speaker 1: first cause argument. I mean that argument is exploded by children. Well,
Speaker 1: if God's the first cause, who created God? And then
Speaker 1: if it's well he doesn't need a cause, Well, why
Speaker 1: does the universe need a Like a child can see
Speaker 1: through that reasoning, And that's part of what tells you
Speaker 1: that it's a rationalization. It's not why they hold the idea,
Speaker 1: it's they want you to think they hold the idea
Speaker 1: because of this argument, because then it's oh, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm rational, just like you.
Speaker 2: All right. Last question, I think does the the minicarist
Speaker 2: political philosophy known as propartarianism propitetarianism have any meaningful degree
Speaker 2: of integration with objectivism or is it too lacking an
Speaker 2: intellectual rigor and egoistic morality? Is it interesting in any ways?
Speaker 2: Have you heard of these? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, what I think it is is it's so so
Speaker 1: it's two things. I think this is what the question
Speaker 1: is about. So one is the thinking of you. You
Speaker 1: put political philosophies on a spectrum of how big the
Speaker 1: government is. And so minarchy is anarchy is no government
Speaker 1: like it's the smallest zero, minarchy is a little one.
Speaker 1: And then you have whatever our mixed economy. And so
Speaker 1: that's objectivism completely rejects that that as though the essential
Speaker 1: is the size of government, the essential is what government does.
Speaker 1: So it's the powers of government, not the size. And
Speaker 1: it has a positive view that government is a proper
Speaker 1: government is a positive, so it doesn't it doesn't classify
Speaker 1: itself as minarchists. It doesn't think this is the right
Speaker 1: way to look at the political spectrum. It's rather is
Speaker 1: the use of force under objective control, which means is
Speaker 1: it used only against the initiation of force, And proper
Speaker 1: government yes, and improper government including no government, is the
Speaker 1: use of force is not used only in retaliation by
Speaker 1: objectively defined rules and principles. And anarchy is just before
Speaker 1: everybody can use force when it strikes them as yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd like to use force. That's not force under objective control.
Speaker 1: And then the other is the I suspect the propertarianism
Speaker 1: means of thinking of the essence of rights as they're
Speaker 1: about property and no, so objectivism rejects that too. And
Speaker 1: in part there was some mention about egoism. Rights are
Speaker 1: moral concepts and the attempt to make property rights the
Speaker 1: fundamental in regard to rights, not it's the right to
Speaker 1: life and all the aspects, which includes earning and keeping property,
Speaker 1: is an attempt to make rights non moral. It's like
Speaker 1: property rights. Oh, you've made the stuff, so like somehow
Speaker 1: it belongs to you, but belongs to you means you
Speaker 1: are morally entitled to it, and then you need a
Speaker 1: moral perspective and a moral evaluation. It's not like you've
Speaker 1: made the stuff and now it's part of you. No,
Speaker 1: it's not literally part of you, and somebody could take it.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is they would be wrong to take it.
Speaker 1: But wrong means morally wrong, So you need a moral perspective.
Speaker 1: And the people and the libertarians really at least sort
Speaker 1: of a wing or faction, tries to make everything about
Speaker 1: property rights because they think of property rights as this
Speaker 1: bypasses moral argument, moral evaluation, so now it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: and if you try to bypass that, then you can't
Speaker 1: get to a political philosophy, because a political philosophy says
Speaker 1: this is the right way to organize I side, which
Speaker 1: means this is the good way as against the bad ways,
Speaker 1: and that's a moral perspective.
Speaker 2: Yea excellent Thank you, Unca, We've kept you a two
Speaker 2: and a half hours. Appreciate that. Thank you guys for
Speaker 2: allow the questions. And I will see you guys tomorrow
Speaker 2: at some point. Uncle. Probably i'll see you at okonn definitely,
Speaker 2: but I'll see you probably in meetings on zoom before then. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we have a meeting this week actually, yes,
Speaker 2: on Thursday. All right, good, okay, good night, bye bye guys,
Speaker 2: see you all tomorrowka
Speaker 1: Mm hmm