Speaker 1: Funnily that that princesses I loved. Why do you and
Speaker 1: any of.
Speaker 2: This is? Oh right, everybody, Welcome to the Rue Book Show,
Speaker 2: specially edition. We're doing this from beautiful Clemson University campus.
Speaker 2: I'm here with uh doctor Bradley Thompson brad As Uh,
Speaker 2: I will call him uh. And I haven't been here god,
Speaker 2: and I guess since before COVID.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably five years at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so campus is completely different. I don't recognize it.
Speaker 2: There are new buildings everywhere. Were sitting in the new
Speaker 2: Business School, which is uh completely I mean you and
Speaker 2: and I I'd never seen it. Uh. I have to
Speaker 2: say that the Institute for Capitalism, which is a house here,
Speaker 2: has got this beautiful I mean, I remember when it
Speaker 2: was like a dinky little office in a big business school,
Speaker 2: economics department, whatever. And now it's got this whole beautiful
Speaker 2: set of officers, suite of offices, a bunch of staff.
Speaker 2: It really really is cool to see how much progress
Speaker 2: has been made just in the last few years since
Speaker 2: I was here last Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, We've had serious growth in the last few years,
Speaker 1: and Clemson continues to prove to be remarkably welcoming in
Speaker 1: supportive place when few other universities in America would have
Speaker 1: something like what we do, an Institute for the Study
Speaker 1: of Capitalism. And also, let me just say welcome back.
Speaker 1: Oh right, Yeah, it's going to be great to have
Speaker 1: you back in Clemson and where the handshake is a
Speaker 1: little stronger. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about the growth. I mean,
Speaker 2: you recently got a twenty five million dollar commitment over
Speaker 2: you know, several years to grow the Capitalism Institute. But
Speaker 2: tell us what kind of what it used to do,
Speaker 2: what it's doing now, what this money is going to
Speaker 2: be used for the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Clemson now the Snow Institute for the
Speaker 1: Study of Capitalism was founded in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: with a startup grant from BB and T and John Allison.
Speaker 1: And in the early years we were very small. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the first year I was the Clemson Institute and
Speaker 1: wherever I was standing on campus, that's where the Clemson
Speaker 1: Institute was. And then I'm sure many of your audience
Speaker 1: members know or have heard of Eric Daniels. Eric was
Speaker 1: my first hire. And then over the course of the
Speaker 1: next five or six years, we grew very very slowly.
Speaker 1: You know, hired an administrator in the early years and
Speaker 1: then started slowly hiring faculty through postdocs that we had.
Speaker 1: And so in those early years we did what most
Speaker 1: similar kinds of institutes do. We had a lecture series,
Speaker 1: probably the best lecture series on campus. We ran summer
Speaker 1: conferences that we sponsored co sponsored with AARI, a conference
Speaker 1: for undergraduates from around the world on Atlas Shrugged and
Speaker 1: the moral foundations of capitalism. But then in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: we launched our premiere academic program, the Lyceum Scholars Program,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about that, I'm sure we will
Speaker 1: a little bit later in the conversation.
Speaker 3: And that was that changed.
Speaker 1: Everything for us, and we have really grown significantly since then.
Speaker 1: But this twenty five million dollar gift that we receive
Speaker 1: from David and Lennette Snow.
Speaker 3: Obviously has changed everything.
Speaker 1: And what it has done most importantly is that twenty
Speaker 1: million of the twenty five will go into an endowment,
Speaker 1: which means now that the Clemson now the Snow Institute
Speaker 1: is forever. And that's a great thing as long as
Speaker 1: we can stay true or a mission right. And of course,
Speaker 1: the story of most institutes universities right is slow corruption
Speaker 1: over time, and my primary goal in running the institute
Speaker 1: is to preserve the mission and the integrity of the
Speaker 1: institute for as long as I'm here and for many
Speaker 1: decades after you know, I eventually leave. So and then
Speaker 1: with the remaining five million dollars, we will use that
Speaker 1: money to expand our programs.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the funny.
Speaker 1: Things about getting this kind of gift is, you know,
Speaker 1: I receive phone calls and emails.
Speaker 2: And your money.
Speaker 1: Everybody want Everybody wants my money. And secondly, they don't
Speaker 1: think I need any more money, right, I think with
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 3: As they put it, your set.
Speaker 1: Well, the fact of the matter is the five million
Speaker 1: that we actually get to spend above and beyond the
Speaker 1: endowment is really just for an expansion of of our
Speaker 1: current program So so in many ways, it doesn't change anything
Speaker 1: in terms of the fundraising that I have to do
Speaker 1: for the institute. We still have to pay salaries, we
Speaker 1: still have to run our programs and all of that.
Speaker 2: NASMIA is still ambitious and want to even go bigger.
Speaker 3: Well that's the plan.
Speaker 1: So you know, our plan is the double and triple
Speaker 1: in the next five or six years, all of everything
Speaker 1: that we're doing, particularly the Lyceum.
Speaker 2: So if we set aside the LYCM program for a minute,
Speaker 2: what is the What is the institute? Is the SNOW
Speaker 2: Institute actually do.
Speaker 1: So Our mission, in a phrase, is to explore the
Speaker 1: moral foundations of capitalism. So, as you know, there are
Speaker 1: lots of free market think tanks, both on university campuses
Speaker 1: and state policy think tanks, all of which are great
Speaker 1: for the most part, all of which I support. The
Speaker 1: difference though, between all of these free market think tanks
Speaker 1: and what we do is the emphasis on the moral
Speaker 1: foundations of capitalism. So all of these other thing tanks
Speaker 1: are run by economists for economists. They all do public
Speaker 1: policy work in the area of economics. We don't do
Speaker 1: any of that, So I'm not an economist. Nobody that
Speaker 1: I've hired as an economist, in fact, will never hire
Speaker 1: an economist. We focus on the moral, the historical, the
Speaker 1: constitutional foundations, not just of capitalism. In many ways, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could say a better name for the institute would
Speaker 1: now be the SNOW Institute for the Study of a
Speaker 1: Free Society. That's we're interested in promoting a free society
Speaker 1: in its various aspects, but most importantly morally right. So
Speaker 1: we want to be able to defend leis a fair
Speaker 1: capitalism morally speaking, because as you know, that's where it
Speaker 1: needs the greatest defense. The fact of the matter is,
Speaker 1: you know, in any battle of ideas between economics and
Speaker 1: morality over the long term, morality always wins out, which
Speaker 1: is precisely why the defenders, conservative and libertarian defenders of
Speaker 1: capitalism continue to lose, right, because they just want to
Speaker 1: defend it on economic grounds. The problem with that, however,
Speaker 1: is that even Karl Marx understood that capitalism is the
Speaker 1: most productive and efficient economic system ever devised by man.
Speaker 1: He wrote that exactly in the Communist Manifesto, right. And
Speaker 1: the problem is that capitalism, with the exception obviously of
Speaker 1: iin Rand, has never had a proper moral defense. And
Speaker 1: absolutely that is true in the context of American higher education.
Speaker 1: So that's our mission. And you know, we, as I said,
Speaker 1: we do conferences, we do lecture series.
Speaker 3: To promote that.
Speaker 1: And going forward, one of the things that we plan
Speaker 1: to do in the next couple of years is to
Speaker 1: launch what we call the Atlas Shrugged Project. So our
Speaker 1: goal is to make Atlas Shrugged great again, at least culturally,
Speaker 1: by which I mean, you know, we want hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: if not millions, of Americans, particularly young Americans, reading at lists.
Speaker 1: So that that is something that's a new program that
Speaker 1: we're going to be launching in the next copy.
Speaker 2: So what would be what would be the way in
Speaker 2: which you'd achieve something like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, the first, as with everything we
Speaker 1: do here at Clemson, we start, we start locally, that
Speaker 1: is to say, working Atlas Shrugged into courses here at
Speaker 1: Clemson University, running reading groups here at Clemson, and then
Speaker 1: but we want to expand out and this will be
Speaker 1: more of a community oriented program. So the idea is
Speaker 1: to find ways, probably I'm sure, via online courses that
Speaker 1: focused primarily, if not exclusively, on Atlas Shrug. And you
Speaker 1: know what I'd like to see is I'd like to
Speaker 1: see the rebirth of the old Iron Rand campus clubs.
Speaker 1: And I mean that was one of my earliest and
Speaker 1: first introductions to the objectivist movement.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 1: This would have to go back to the early eighties,
Speaker 1: I think, and I remember being at Boston.
Speaker 3: I was I was attending a lecture at Boston.
Speaker 2: I think it's there.
Speaker 1: You go attending a lecture at Boston University by Peter Schwartz.
Speaker 4: And yeah, and you know those were pretty heavy days,
Speaker 4: and so I I want to try to sort of
Speaker 4: revive that would be amazing, you know, Atlas Shrugged in
Speaker 4: the culture generally, but but more particularly with with college students.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we're going to think of ways
Speaker 1: to make that happen. And I also want to start
Speaker 1: running some summer conferences. I want to bring back our
Speaker 1: Atlas Shrugged in the Moral Foundation of Capitalism conferences. My
Speaker 1: real dream, My real dream though, is I want to
Speaker 1: I would like to uh start running summer conferences on
Speaker 1: Atlas in. Tell ride Colorado, which I know you've been
Speaker 1: there for.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful of those beautiful places on the planet.
Speaker 1: It is, and I actually think that it is a
Speaker 1: better representation of Galt's gulch then you ray Colorado, which
Speaker 1: which is said to be the place that I ran.
Speaker 2: It is the place spied hoe. But tell you it
Speaker 2: is more dramatic that the cliffs on both sides are
Speaker 2: much much taller and much more value, is much more
Speaker 2: dramatically set. It is. So you talk about the more
Speaker 2: foundations of capitalism, what extent is is objectivism a part
Speaker 2: of the of that mission, if you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's at the heart of the mission,
Speaker 1: because where else would you go.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, Adam Smith would claim he has them all
Speaker 2: defensive capitalism, right, he.
Speaker 1: Would kind of sort of claim, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: self evidently not sufficient. Not and only is it not sufficient,
Speaker 1: it's wrong on many many levels. And you know, he
Speaker 1: completely concedes to altruism as a first premise. Right, His
Speaker 1: defense of cap morally speaking, is because we can help
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And it's true that capitalism delivers
Speaker 1: the goods and raises the boat for for everybody. But
Speaker 1: that's is not and should not be the primary moral defense.
Speaker 1: The primary moral defense of capitalism is that it's grounded
Speaker 1: in human nature and in the greatest possibilities of human nature.
Speaker 1: And and you know that that's what we have to
Speaker 1: that's what we have to liberate and and and if
Speaker 1: in the sense we discover is that you know, I
Speaker 1: Ran talked about the virtue of selfishness, and we should
Speaker 1: be talking about the moral virtues of capitalism. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make Atlas great.
Speaker 2: Again, as is always great again, Well it is always great.
Speaker 1: But in the culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Atlas great again. In the culture, it's that it's
Speaker 2: a long that's a long one. So the big program,
Speaker 2: or the program I think you spend the most time
Speaker 2: on within the institute is the Lyceum. Lyceum program we
Speaker 2: us actively with students. Once you talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about that and how that's changed over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we started the Lyceum scholars Program in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a wild idea I had. The
Speaker 1: original idea was actually much bigger and more ambitious, but
Speaker 1: in order to get up and running, we chose a
Speaker 1: much more modest plan, which it turns out I think
Speaker 1: was a much better idea to begin with. So the
Speaker 1: first thing to say about the Lyceum scholars Program is
Speaker 1: that it's a scholarship program. Up until this year, we
Speaker 1: have given ten scholarships per year to incoming freshmen, renewable
Speaker 1: over four years, which means high school students high school
Speaker 1: seniors apply for it, and we use a great books
Speaker 1: approach to studying the history of liberty, capitalism, the American founding,
Speaker 1: and the principles of moral character. And in exchange for
Speaker 1: the scholarship, the students take our eight course curriculum. So
Speaker 1: freshman year they take a course called Wisdom of the Ancients,
Speaker 1: of course, an ancient Greek and Roman moral thought. I'll
Speaker 1: just give you one course of each year. Second year
Speaker 1: they do a course on the political theory of capitalism,
Speaker 1: in which we do.
Speaker 3: Use Atla Shrug.
Speaker 1: In their junior year they do a course on the
Speaker 1: American political thought of the American Founding. And then in
Speaker 1: the senior year they do a course called Wisdom of
Speaker 1: the Moderns, which is modern moral thought. Essentially, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the books change every year, but Shakespeare to Iinrand and
Speaker 1: the course as it's currently being taught includes the fountain
Speaker 1: Head excellent. Yeah, so it's it's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: Great Books curriculum, but not simply a Great Books curriculum.
Speaker 1: It has these particular emphasies. So our position, unlike many
Speaker 1: other Great Books programs, is that we're not simply about
Speaker 1: the pursuit or the quest for truth, right, because a
Speaker 1: lot of these programs that they pursue, they pursue, but
Speaker 1: they never get there right.
Speaker 2: And they don't want to suggest, maybe that they can get.
Speaker 1: Precisely right, that there actually is a truth, because to
Speaker 1: suggest that there is truth would be, from their perspective,
Speaker 1: a kind of dogmatism. And our position is that there
Speaker 1: is truth, that the truth is something, that the truth
Speaker 1: about things can be understood, and that and you know,
Speaker 1: most university logos, most university mottos include.
Speaker 2: Truth, right, but how many from an ancient tradition nobody
Speaker 2: would do that today.
Speaker 1: Precisely, And and the other the other, one of the
Speaker 1: other virtues that they or values they talk about, is
Speaker 1: virtue itself.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the you know, Harvard motto and virtually all the
Speaker 1: Ivy League mottos take very seriously when they were founded,
Speaker 1: the ideas of truth and virtue. But of course they
Speaker 1: don't anymore, not even not even close, because from their perspective,
Speaker 1: we live in a post truth society. And so in
Speaker 1: addition to making Atlas great again, we're going to make
Speaker 1: the truth great again and virtue and that's really kind
Speaker 1: of at the heart. So we take very seriously. In
Speaker 1: addition to this kind of modified Great Books program, we
Speaker 1: take very seriously the question of moral character. Moral character
Speaker 1: and the development of moral character within our students is
Speaker 1: something we take seriously, very seriously, and I don't think
Speaker 1: any other college or university with the exception possibly of
Speaker 1: Christian colleges, right takes that seriously, but I think we
Speaker 1: actually take it even more seriously through our Socratic tutor program.
Speaker 1: So this Socratic tutor program that we run is there
Speaker 1: is no other academic program in the United States or
Speaker 1: really around the world quite like it. So what we
Speaker 1: do is we assign to each one of our Lyceum
Speaker 1: scholars what we call socratic tutor. Socratic tutor is a
Speaker 1: faculty member connected to the program, and the socratic tutor
Speaker 1: will meet with his or her two teas every other week.
Speaker 1: And each tutor will have six or seven two teas,
Speaker 1: and they meet the more than one and they meet
Speaker 1: one on one, so this is not a group meeting.
Speaker 3: They meet one on one for about an hour.
Speaker 1: Right. So that means over the course of the semester,
Speaker 1: each student will meet with their tutor about eight times.
Speaker 1: And the purpose of which is twofold first, to help
Speaker 1: these young men and women translate theory into practice. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if they are in our freshman course Wisdom
Speaker 1: of the Ancients, this course of an ancient Greek and Roman
Speaker 1: moral thought, and one of the books they read is
Speaker 1: Aristotle's Nick McKee and Ethics well, I can tell you,
Speaker 1: as somebody who is much older than you know, an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old reading it for the twentieth time is
Speaker 1: still a challenge. It's a very very difficult book. And
Speaker 1: the question is how does your typical eighteen year old
Speaker 1: twenty first century American translate Aristotle's ideas into their lives
Speaker 1: here now today. So that's the first concern, right, and
Speaker 1: because that's we take that seriously, because we don't think
Speaker 1: reading great books is simply about philosophizing.
Speaker 2: Abstract knowledge absake of abstract knowledge.
Speaker 1: Precisely right, Yeah, it is for living, that's precisely right.
Speaker 1: But that's the hard part. That's where the rubber hits
Speaker 1: the pavements, and the question is how do you do that? Right?
Speaker 1: We don't want our young people just philosophizing about ideas
Speaker 1: and then you know, on Friday and Saturday night doing
Speaker 1: lots of things that maybe they ought not to be doing. Right.
Speaker 1: In the end, we want them to lead lives of
Speaker 1: nobility and honor. And that goes to the second purpose
Speaker 1: of the Socratic tutor program, which is we take the
Speaker 1: question of moral character very seriously, and we want our
Speaker 1: students to think seriously about moral character and their own
Speaker 1: moral character in particular. And you know, the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is, most young people ages eighteen to their
Speaker 1: early twenties, they don't really think seriously or deeply about
Speaker 1: the question of moral character and their moral character in particular.
Speaker 1: And so through these conversations we get them to do that. Now,
Speaker 1: let me make it clear, however, the purpose of this
Speaker 1: is not by the end of their four years to create, generate,
Speaker 1: promote a kind of ideal student or citizen or person
Speaker 1: of moral character. Right. We're not that vain that we
Speaker 1: think that we can do that or even should do that.
Speaker 1: What we're really trying to do is plant seeds. Right,
Speaker 1: So my goal is not to transform some young person's
Speaker 1: life over the course of four years. My goal, my
Speaker 1: hope is that you know, maybe ten years down the road,
Speaker 1: when they're married and maybe are starting to have kids
Speaker 1: and have a job, and they for they face the
Speaker 1: first crisis, the first real major crisis of life, and
Speaker 1: you know, and they're struggling, and and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe one of these students will back to those sessions
Speaker 1: that he had with one of our socratic tutors and think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that conversation with professor X, and he or
Speaker 1: she said something that actually applies to this crisis that
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with in life right now. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: really just planning seeds with the hope that they'll bloom
Speaker 1: later in life.
Speaker 2: So, a lot of a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: in the culture because of religion, I think, view mal
Speaker 2: character as a list of negatives. You know, don't party
Speaker 2: too hard, don't do this, don't do that, and commandments
Speaker 2: and focus primelion the negative and what not to do.
Speaker 2: Rand's of course view of ethics is very different than that,
Speaker 2: and and agents have a different perspective. And so how
Speaker 2: do how do you how do your socratic tutors approach
Speaker 2: this question of what is what does it mean to
Speaker 2: have moral character? Because obviously there's not agreement about what
Speaker 2: it even means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can tell you that not all of
Speaker 1: my faculty agree on all of these issues. Right, So
Speaker 1: we come to these questions sometimes with somewhat relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: different perspectives, But the focus really is on trying to
Speaker 1: get the most out of these young people, right. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we live in a time and age where
Speaker 1: many young people have a deficit of meaning in their lives. Right.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's there's the there's this famous book
Speaker 1: written in the forties or fifties, the Search for Meaning.
Speaker 1: Yep uh. And you know, and I and I think
Speaker 1: as that you know gen Z today as much as
Speaker 1: any generation that I've ever known in you know, in
Speaker 1: my adult lifetime, is searching for meaning, right and and
Speaker 1: and so you know, one of the questions that I'll ask,
Speaker 1: one of one of the first questions that I might
Speaker 1: ask a student when they one of my own tutor
Speaker 1: two teas, is so you're on who is the best
Speaker 1: version of yourself in ten years? Right? And of course
Speaker 1: they've never thought, really thought about that.
Speaker 2: Question, particularly when you're young.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the.
Speaker 1: First go to answer is, well, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer, and maybe I'll be married, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll have kids. And I'll say, no, no, no, that's that's
Speaker 1: those are all fine things, right, But that's not what
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: What's the best.
Speaker 1: Version of yourself? Morally? Who is who is the person
Speaker 1: that you want to become? So one day, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: you may be you may be a husband or a wife.
Speaker 1: You may be a mother or a father, you may
Speaker 1: be a ballet instructor, you may be a soccer coach,
Speaker 1: You're certainly going to be a colleague. And and in
Speaker 1: all of those relationships, these you will have moral relationships
Speaker 1: with all of these people in your in your life.
Speaker 1: And what is the best version of yourself that will
Speaker 1: help other people to become better themselves. But in the end,
Speaker 1: the real question it's not about so much first your
Speaker 1: relationship with other people. It's always about your relationship with
Speaker 1: with yourself, right, That's what is most important. And in
Speaker 1: my experience, this is the one thing that I find
Speaker 1: that most young people, in fact, not even young people,
Speaker 1: I think most people that I've experienced in my life,
Speaker 1: they don't have a proper relationship with themselves, right. They
Speaker 1: don't introspect deeply enough into who they are, what they are,
Speaker 1: what their virtues and vices are, and what that best
Speaker 1: version of themselves is and or could be, right and so,
Speaker 1: and of course what that means is this is fundamentally
Speaker 1: a question about truth, right, discovering the truth about oneself,
Speaker 1: discovering the truth about one's values, discovering the truth about
Speaker 1: one's own choices in life. Right. And and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I talk about with my students
Speaker 1: in our soocratic tutor sessions, actually is the question of truth.
Speaker 1: So you're on, you know, what is truth? Young?
Speaker 3: Young You'uron?
Speaker 1: An eighteen year old Uron comes into my office, sits down,
Speaker 1: and literally the first words out of my mouth will
Speaker 1: be so you're on, what is truth?
Speaker 2: And it's it's a question that almost nobody can answer today.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was this amazing exchange between Lex Friedman
Speaker 2: and oh god, what's his name, the guy who runs
Speaker 2: open AI, Sam Altiman, the guy who winns Open. So
Speaker 2: here's the guy responsible for training AI. Right right? And
Speaker 2: Lex asks him what is truth? And he basically says
Speaker 2: there's no such thing? And you know nothing. He says
Speaker 2: maybe some maybe math is truth, maybe math right right?
Speaker 2: And but that so rationalistically, some creation above here is truth.
Speaker 2: And I think about the fact that we live in
Speaker 2: a culture in which all the information could be filtered
Speaker 2: through a eye. Soon AI trained by people who don't
Speaker 2: believe there is such a thing as truth. Right, It's
Speaker 2: it's a scary proposition. This is one of the most
Speaker 2: important questions you can ask anybody.
Speaker 1: It is right? And and no student has ever given
Speaker 1: me a satisfactory answer.
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't expect no.
Speaker 2: Maybe after four years with you.
Speaker 1: Maybe after four years, but you know, should ask the
Speaker 1: same question, and we do. We do ask the same
Speaker 1: questions in the end. And but you know, so they
Speaker 1: give me incomplete answers to the question, and then we
Speaker 1: and then I tell them, all right, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's inadequate, so let let's and they usually want
Speaker 1: to give me kind of a dictionary definition or another
Speaker 1: question I often ask is you know what is friendship?
Speaker 1: And the first thing they do is they give me
Speaker 1: Aristotle's definition of friendship from the from books nine and
Speaker 1: ten of the Nick Mcker.
Speaker 2: I've just read it.
Speaker 1: Because mostly because they've just read I said, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I tell him, I've read you know, I've read Aristotle.
Speaker 1: I know his views on friendship. Just tell me, you
Speaker 1: know what is what does friendship mean to you in
Speaker 1: your life? And then what we do is you know
Speaker 1: and I'll say, so, you know you're on do you
Speaker 1: have any friends? And of course uran will say, oh,
Speaker 1: I have about fifty friends.
Speaker 2: I don't have many friends at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so but the real most often they say ten, right,
Speaker 1: so ten's a good number to work with. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: so you've got ten friends. Well, what is the difference
Speaker 1: between number one and number ten? Right, And so we
Speaker 1: talk about that, and all of a sudden, and by
Speaker 1: asking a lot of other questions. So you know, I
Speaker 1: may ask a young man, do you have any female friends?
Speaker 1: What does it mean? And our female friends different from
Speaker 1: your male friends? Right? And what do you consider yourself
Speaker 1: to be friends with your parents? Which most young people do,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, so we start attacking the
Speaker 1: question of what friendship is from a number of perspectives,
Speaker 1: but none of which are based on books. It's all
Speaker 1: based on one's first hand experience, your observation. Right, So
Speaker 1: when you look, you have friends yourself, when you know,
Speaker 1: tell me about your friendships, your own personal friendships, What
Speaker 1: about the friendships that you observe? What about your parents' friendships,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And so we attack the question
Speaker 1: from a variety of perspectives, then trying to induce certain
Speaker 1: characteristics that really get to the heart of what friendship is.
Speaker 1: But now I want to go back to truth because
Speaker 1: so you know, one of the things that you say
Speaker 1: about friendship, right, friendship is a relationship. That's that's where
Speaker 1: you start friendship. Friendship is a relationship. Well, guess what
Speaker 1: so is truth? Truth is a relationship. Truth is a
Speaker 1: relationship between an idea or a proposition and objective reality. Right, so,
Speaker 1: which is very difficult for my students to understand because
Speaker 1: most of my students think, for instance, that if there
Speaker 1: were no human beings on planet Earth, truth would still exist.
Speaker 2: Yes, and truth somehow gets implanted in you. I think
Speaker 2: they most don't have anytrinsans that religious based correct conception of.
Speaker 1: Truth reveal exactly. So we start to think about truth
Speaker 1: as a relationship, right between an idea, proposition and objective reality.
Speaker 1: And but it's still too abstract for them. They have
Speaker 1: a very difficult time understanding it. So I give them
Speaker 1: example what I think is actually the best example to
Speaker 1: talk about truth, and that is a court a court
Speaker 1: room in a jury trial. Right, what is involved? What's
Speaker 1: involved in a jury trial?
Speaker 3: Well, we know this.
Speaker 1: Something happened.
Speaker 2: Should show them twelve any of the men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, precisely. Something happened. Somebody was murdered, all right,
Speaker 1: and we're not certain who did it. The prosecution thinks
Speaker 1: it knows who did it. The defense is defending the person,
Speaker 1: a person who says they did not do it. So
Speaker 1: what's at stake. What's at stake is the truth about
Speaker 1: what happened. The prosecution presents its evidence demonstrating that the
Speaker 1: defendant committed the crime. The defense presents its evidence demonstrating
Speaker 1: that the defendant could not have done it. And the
Speaker 1: jury and by the way, every witness who comes on
Speaker 1: the stage right has to put their hand on a
Speaker 1: bible and say and And they're asked, do you swear
Speaker 1: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
Speaker 1: the truth? Right?
Speaker 3: So it's about truth.
Speaker 1: It's about identifying what actually happened, right, which is a
Speaker 1: relationship right now? But what is the most difficult when
Speaker 1: it comes to the question of truth. What is the
Speaker 1: single most difficult relationship. That's what I said earlier. It's
Speaker 1: one's relationship to oneself. The most difficult area in life
Speaker 1: in which to be truthful, right, is not with your
Speaker 1: parents or your friends, your colleagues. It's with yourself and.
Speaker 2: The most important one, not just it was difficult one,
Speaker 2: the most important.
Speaker 1: One and absolutely the most important one. Right. So this
Speaker 1: is this very long winded way of just giving you
Speaker 1: an example of what we do.
Speaker 2: Kind of conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but ultimately it always comes back to helping these
Speaker 1: young men and women think seriously and deeply, probably for
Speaker 1: the first time in their lives, about their moral character
Speaker 1: and the core sort of the core pillars of their
Speaker 1: moral character, the single most important of which is their
Speaker 1: own relationship with their self and their own selves and
Speaker 1: whether they can be truthful about who and what they are.
Speaker 1: And once you have once once you gain that insight
Speaker 1: into who and what you are right, then you can
Speaker 1: start to think seriously and deeply about who is the
Speaker 1: best person that you envision in ten years.
Speaker 2: So what is your vision for where this program is heading?
Speaker 2: What is your ambitious, ambitious goals for I see in program.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, thankfully, with this gift from the Snow family,
Speaker 1: this year, we will be doubling the number of scholars
Speaker 1: we take into the program. So we'll be going from
Speaker 1: ten to twenty, and then we hope to go from
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty within five or six years, and then
Speaker 1: eventually to quadruple the number. Now, let me also mention
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned this yet because of the success. Let
Speaker 1: me take a minute to talk about the success of
Speaker 1: this program. Because of the success of it just here
Speaker 1: on the campus at Clemson University. I had regular Clemson
Speaker 1: students knocking down the doors wanting to be a part
Speaker 1: of the program, and I had to tell them, I'm sorry, Bet,
Speaker 1: you had to apply as a high school senior. You
Speaker 1: know you can't get in this stream. So we created
Speaker 1: a parallel track program that we call the Lyceum Fellows
Speaker 1: Program for regular Clemson students. The requirements are exactly the same,
Speaker 1: except they only have to take six of the eight
Speaker 1: required courses, and they also have more flexibility in taking
Speaker 1: those courses. And we now have over one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty Lyceum Fellows. So right now we've actually got just
Speaker 1: north of two hundred students in the Lyceum program, and
Speaker 1: within the next few years we want to double and
Speaker 1: triple those numbers. And we went at five six hundred
Speaker 1: students in the Lyceum program. Let me also share with
Speaker 1: you in your audience, I think some extraordinary statistics. When
Speaker 1: we first launched this program in twenty fourteen, I only
Speaker 1: had two staff members working for me. At the time,
Speaker 1: we had a five thousand dollars marketing budget, and we
Speaker 1: literally did not know what we were doing in terms
Speaker 1: of marketing to high school students. I was expecting thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty applications for a program that nobody in America
Speaker 1: knew anything about. That first year, we had one hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety applications. This year for the current freshman class,
Speaker 1: we had over one thousand applications from high school students
Speaker 1: around the United States. So, I mean, you know, build
Speaker 1: it and they will come. And we have built it,
Speaker 1: built it, and yeah, we have built it and they
Speaker 1: are coming, which is which has been extraordinary. We have
Speaker 1: just enormous potential for growth. I mean. And what this
Speaker 1: tells us, of course, is that there is a yearning,
Speaker 1: burning desire of ordinary Americans, high school students and their
Speaker 1: parents for this kind of an education. So we're going
Speaker 1: to be expanding, all right. So there's internally here at Clemson.
Speaker 1: The other remarkable thing is that there are over the
Speaker 1: course of the last few years at least ten other
Speaker 1: universities have contacted me because they want to try to
Speaker 1: replicate what we're doing here at Clemson with the Lyceum program.
Speaker 3: And just in the last month.
Speaker 1: I've had conversations with several people around faculty members around
Speaker 1: the country who want to do this. So it's an
Speaker 1: idea I think whose time has come and our goal is, uh,
Speaker 1: we want to export this, right, We're not going to
Speaker 1: keep this here just a Clemson.
Speaker 3: That's not how you change the world.
Speaker 2: So you may have to change the world. So put
Speaker 2: this into the perspective of your view on how the
Speaker 2: world gets changed. How do we change the world?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean I hate to be trite.
Speaker 2: Be trite. Truth sometimes is traits.
Speaker 1: Ideas have consequences, right, That that is a truism that
Speaker 1: that has sort of guided my life from from the
Speaker 1: time I was a freshman in college and I sat.
Speaker 2: They have consequences and us as individuals and they have
Speaker 2: consequences for.
Speaker 1: The culture in general. And uh, you know another metaphor
Speaker 1: to use, right, is that economics is downstream from politics.
Speaker 1: Politics is downstream from culture. Cure is downstream from the universities, right,
Speaker 1: and the ideas are in the universities. So I have
Speaker 1: always believed that that if you really want to change
Speaker 1: the culture in any meaningful and permanent way, it has
Speaker 1: to it has to be through through the generation of ideas,
Speaker 1: the culture of ideas, and at the heart of the
Speaker 1: culture of ideas in the United States, right are the
Speaker 1: colleges in universities. So generally speaking, that's that's how we
Speaker 1: do it. And you know, and we also live at
Speaker 1: a very interesting time in history. America's universities are collapsing.
Speaker 1: They're collapsing for a number of different reasons. They're collapsing demographically,
Speaker 1: right there just aren't enough students. I heard recently that
Speaker 1: I think a college is closing every other week in
Speaker 1: the United States, and that trend is only going to
Speaker 1: continue and actually deepen. And of course they're being destroyed
Speaker 1: internally ideologically, and you know, of course we've seen this
Speaker 1: in particular in the last eighteen or twenty months post
Speaker 1: October seventh. And the fact of the matter is there
Speaker 1: is a major shift going on in this country. People
Speaker 1: parents do not want to spend one hundred two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to have their son or daughter indoctrinated in
Speaker 1: bad and evil ideas, and so they're looking there, They're
Speaker 1: looking for alternatives. And I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we've been so successful, is because we provide
Speaker 1: an alternative to what's going on at Harvard. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I mean, you know, since since October seventh,
Speaker 1: there has been a major turn away from the IVY
Speaker 1: League I've been promoting this hard on my various social
Speaker 1: media sites.
Speaker 2: Have you seen any increase in applications here at the
Speaker 2: interest oh at those program? Yeah? Well, now, I mean
Speaker 2: the growth, the growth has been massive anyway, but have
Speaker 2: you seen any added increase?
Speaker 1: Yeah, since October seven, not since October seventh. But that's
Speaker 1: for internal reasons, because to be honest, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have the most serious application of any college or university
Speaker 1: in the United States. Our students, high school students, they
Speaker 1: have to write three essays, uh, and they're they're not
Speaker 1: you know, why do you want to you know, why
Speaker 1: do you want to go to college? Or you know,
Speaker 1: why should you dig wells in Guatemala? Right?
Speaker 3: These are serious questions.
Speaker 1: One of the questions that we ask on the application
Speaker 1: is is three words why be moral?
Speaker 2: Okay? Right?
Speaker 1: Not your typical college application essay. And so we we've
Speaker 1: actually sort of tried to uh the number of apps.
Speaker 1: So we have three application, three essays on the application,
Speaker 1: and we had a thousand applications, three thousand essays that
Speaker 1: my staff of eight people have to read in one month. Right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, so we would otherwise see, yes, a
Speaker 1: huge spike and you know, one of the things I
Speaker 1: want to make sure your audience hears directly from the
Speaker 1: horse's mouth. The IVY League is dead. The IVY League
Speaker 1: is a clown show, and now everybody knows it. And
Speaker 1: there has been and the new and this is what
Speaker 1: I've been promoting on social media. The new IVY League
Speaker 1: is south of the Mason Dixon. Uh. And there have
Speaker 1: been a number of newspaper articles promoting southern universities and
Speaker 1: Clemson in particular.
Speaker 3: So Clemson is the new Harvard.
Speaker 1: That's my line, and I'm sticking with it.
Speaker 2: All right, you heard it, You heard it here first.
Speaker 2: So one way change the culture is by teaching people
Speaker 2: and getting them engaged with these ideas and changing minds
Speaker 2: and impacting their ability to think. Another is to advocating
Speaker 2: for ideas, writing books, audicles. So tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about what you'll be doing in terms of books, audicles, essays,
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so some of your audience at least might know
Speaker 1: of my twenty nineteen book, which I happen to have
Speaker 1: a copy, of America's Revolutionary Mind, A moral history of
Speaker 1: the American Revolution and the Declaration that defined it. I
Speaker 1: think this is my best book, and so for those
Speaker 1: of you who are on you're on super chat, you
Speaker 1: might go to Amazon get yourself a copy.
Speaker 3: And then most recently.
Speaker 1: Just a month ago, I published this five hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty page book, The Political Thought of the American Revolution
Speaker 1: A reader. It's and it's volume one. Okay, Volume two
Speaker 1: will be coming out in a week or two. Oh wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is it's what.
Speaker 2: We call a reader who's essays a in here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's the essays of all of the major
Speaker 1: American revolutionaries. So James Otis, Daniel Delaney, Richard Bland, John Adams,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, et cetera, et cetera, and many
Speaker 1: many more.
Speaker 2: How many volumes do you plan on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there'll be two volumes on the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: Then I will do a separate volume on what I
Speaker 1: call the American Founding, it's distinct from the Revolution. And
Speaker 1: then I'm also going to do a volume on loyalist
Speaker 1: political thought, those people during the revolution, right, who are
Speaker 1: loyal together to.
Speaker 3: The British crown.
Speaker 1: And then two more things. So you know, and many
Speaker 1: of your audience members actually have have been politely harassing me.
Speaker 1: Now for a couple of years wondering where the next
Speaker 1: volume right. So, going back to America's Revolutionary Mind, I
Speaker 1: promised in the preface to the book that there would
Speaker 1: be a second volume titled America's Constitutional Mind.
Speaker 3: And I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: To report that that book has actually been on the
Speaker 1: back burner for the last five years. And it's been
Speaker 1: on the back burner because, as I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I started a sub stack called the Redneck Intellectual and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I've been putting out five thousand
Speaker 1: word essays every other week or so, and that's just
Speaker 1: taken up a huge amount of time and drawn me
Speaker 1: into you know, sort of never ending controversies, which I enjoy.
Speaker 1: And uh So that so I've been doing a lot
Speaker 1: of writing on my sub stack, and for your audience,
Speaker 1: I think they might be interested in this. I've got
Speaker 1: a new series that will be coming out. It's actually
Speaker 1: been written for about seven months, but it'll be coming
Speaker 1: out sometime in the next month or two.
Speaker 3: On self interest, on the on the sort.
Speaker 1: Of the the the the the history of self of
Speaker 1: self interest in moral philosophy, with a particular emphasis. Uh One.
Speaker 1: One of the essays is on the Christian view of
Speaker 1: self interest, which I think your your your audience will
Speaker 1: will find will find of interest. So anyway, last thing
Speaker 1: I'll say and then I'll end on this, and that
Speaker 1: is I am back to write America's Constitutional Mind. It
Speaker 1: is two thirds the three quarters finished. I've got two
Speaker 1: or three more chapters which i'll have done within the year,
Speaker 1: and so it'll be out sometime in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: All right, that's that's fantastic. I mean, you're also going
Speaker 2: to work in a project. I hate to bring this
Speaker 2: up because you aren't going to work on something about
Speaker 2: the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you're you're you're you're recalling the conversation.
Speaker 3: We had about a long time eighteen years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because because the contrast, of course, in the in
Speaker 2: the too many people out there in the intellectual world,
Speaker 2: you know, have viewed these two revolutions as the same, right, right,
Speaker 2: and they're maating from the same ideas, and they're not,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 1: So if I live long enough, I will write a
Speaker 1: book comparing and contrasting the American and French revolutions. I've
Speaker 1: got parts of it written, and I do. Actually, your
Speaker 1: audience is either not gonna believe me or just think
Speaker 1: I'm insane. But I do have another book do both, Yeah,
Speaker 1: could be both. I've got another book half written titled
Speaker 1: Political Philosophy in the Age of Revolution, which will be
Speaker 1: case studies of the great thinkers philosophers of revolution, namely Locke, Modesky,
Speaker 1: were so Burke, pain and Tookeville.
Speaker 2: Cool. So you know, there are probably some listeners out there,
Speaker 2: you know, young, ambitious maybe thinking about a career in academia,
Speaker 2: a careers intellectuals, who might be feeling like everything's already
Speaker 2: been written. This is you know, there's nothing that interesting
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: Fix that, because yeah, well it's understandable. I entirely understand,
Speaker 1: particularly when you're young.
Speaker 2: You don't really know.
Speaker 1: Right well, and you you're just overwhelmed by how much
Speaker 1: has been written, right and and it's hard to think
Speaker 1: that anything more could be said, for instance, about uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the American Revolution or or the Civil War,
Speaker 1: for instance, and that that is it's an understandable view,
Speaker 1: but it's it's wrong. The fact of the matter is
Speaker 1: I I have come to the view actually that we
Speaker 1: know very little about the American Revolution. I mean, we
Speaker 1: know all about all the superficial events, we know about
Speaker 1: all the battles but I mean America's revolutionary mind. This
Speaker 1: there's no other book, you know, mind me saying like
Speaker 1: it on the American Revolution. And and I was inspired
Speaker 1: to write it when I read a quotation from John Adams,
Speaker 1: which i'd read many times before was very familiar with,
Speaker 1: where Adam says he asks himself rhetorically the question what
Speaker 1: was the American Revolution? Followed by a second question, the
Speaker 1: war question mark he said, no, the American Revolution was
Speaker 1: not the war. The American Revolution took place in the
Speaker 1: minds of the American people in the fifteen years before
Speaker 1: shots were fired at Lexington. When I read that, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the thirtieth time that I had read it
Speaker 1: that shazam, like all the lights went on, and I
Speaker 1: realized that despite the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds,
Speaker 1: maybe thousands of books written on the American Revolution, we
Speaker 1: don't know the causes, the nature and the meaning of
Speaker 1: the American Revolution because there's been there's never been a
Speaker 1: book that attempts to understand the moral revolution that took
Speaker 1: place right in the minds and actions of the American people.
Speaker 1: And that quotation changed everything, and it changed the way
Speaker 1: I approached the study. The reading and then events actually
Speaker 1: in the form of the book the writing of And
Speaker 1: I think that that is true of virtually everything. So
Speaker 1: for your audience members maybe who follow me on substack.
Speaker 1: Last year I did a series of essays on the frontier,
Speaker 1: the role of the frontier in American history, and I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I came to realize that if I had
Speaker 1: another life to live, that there are no end of
Speaker 1: books that one could write.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were talking earlier about the death of books
Speaker 2: about the nineteenth century and how much we don't know
Speaker 2: about the nineteenth century. I mean, just to I mean,
Speaker 2: this is the century of capitalism. It's a century industry,
Speaker 2: It's a century of the frontier. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: century where America goes from a relatively poor country to
Speaker 2: the rigious country in the world. I mean, so much
Speaker 2: happened during the century, and we know we have very
Speaker 2: few good history books. And part of it is this
Speaker 2: idea that ideas shape history, morality, shape approached a bouty
Speaker 2: shape history. You know Iman's you know a few thinkers
Speaker 2: who who've thought about this in one way or another. Man,
Speaker 2: Really that's a theory of history. But so many books
Speaker 2: about so many periods of history need to be written still.
Speaker 1: From that perspective, absolutely, no, no question about it. And
Speaker 1: every every subject, every historical subject that you think has
Speaker 1: been exhausted, I would argue that we barely know anything
Speaker 1: about it. And that's certainly the attitude that that you
Speaker 1: have to have if you're a young particularly if you're
Speaker 1: a historian. You know, history in many ways is uh,
Speaker 1: history is really a kind of philosophy, or.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the concrete that allow you to come to
Speaker 2: philosophical conclusions.
Speaker 1: So largely, well, it's it's what you need.
Speaker 2: You need to have an empirical data, and the history
Speaker 2: provides you with empirical data.
Speaker 1: History is teaching philosophy by examples, right, and and so
Speaker 1: you know, I described in the book what I developed
Speaker 1: as a new approach to the study of history that
Speaker 1: I call the moral Moral history. And I do think
Speaker 1: that using adopting this methodology, this historical methodology, I think
Speaker 1: opens up all kinds of new scenes and venues for
Speaker 1: the reinterpretation of the past. So yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: would say, don't listen to anybody who tells you that
Speaker 1: the subject has been exhausted. Absolutely, I think we barely
Speaker 1: we barely scratched the.
Speaker 2: Surface, right, So we've got a few questions and we
Speaker 2: can see you know I'm here. It comes in because
Speaker 2: I'm giving a talk in a little while, an hour
Speaker 2: and a half, I think on the war in the
Speaker 2: mid least to the sum scholars, which will be fun
Speaker 2: because it'll be a small group, but it might be
Speaker 2: I think engaging, and we have an opportunity for lots
Speaker 2: of Q and ah. So any any anything, I mean
Speaker 2: you've told us about the new books, anything we've missed
Speaker 2: in terms of anything exciting going on right now that
Speaker 2: you want to say before we go to the questions.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we've covered a fair amount. But you know,
Speaker 1: people should contact us if they want to learn more
Speaker 1: about the Lyceum program.
Speaker 2: So where do they find information about it? Yeah, they
Speaker 2: just go online google Clemson Lyceum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Clemson Lyceum, Clemson Capitalism snow Institute the Study of Capitalism,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot there. And I'm always having people
Speaker 1: who who come through the area and want to come
Speaker 1: and visit, and I'm always happy to host and entertain
Speaker 1: people who we have.
Speaker 2: We have a kid who are Lysium scholars, who are
Speaker 2: three of them of the of this of the class
Speaker 2: right now, children of parents who I think listen to
Speaker 2: the show involved in with the institute in one way
Speaker 2: or the other. So so it's becoming a real alternative
Speaker 2: of people searching for something outside of the conventional education
Speaker 2: that's out there. Education and quotation boksa that's out there
Speaker 2: all right, Wes asks. Wes asks, is the list of
Speaker 2: books that are part of the program publicly available?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, it's it's on our It should be on
Speaker 1: the website. And I think we have course syllabi on
Speaker 1: on on our website, on the Lyceum website. So if
Speaker 1: you just go to you know, the Snow Institute's website
Speaker 1: and then go to the Lyceum program, and I think
Speaker 1: if you just search around, to be perfectly honest, like
Speaker 1: I haven't gone to our website in probably two years,
Speaker 1: so I don't really I can't. I'm not entirely positive
Speaker 1: about what I'm saying. But yeah, and if if, if
Speaker 1: that's not adequate, we send out our course syllabi for
Speaker 1: people who ask, so.
Speaker 2: How could he do that? Okay? Right, So you can
Speaker 2: send a message probably on the website if you don't
Speaker 2: find what you're looking for, send a message and they'll
Speaker 2: they'll get back to you. I always said we wouldn't
Speaker 2: talk about politics, and I have no interest. But you're
Speaker 2: gonna get asked. Ian wants to know what you think.
Speaker 2: Do you think the president has a the proper power
Speaker 2: of impoundment? Do you know what that means?
Speaker 1: I have no idea what.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what that means is it's it's the big
Speaker 2: crisis now in DC, which is, if Congress allocates a
Speaker 2: certain amount of money for certain program and it's written
Speaker 2: in the law and its law, and if he there's
Speaker 2: a budget and the budget, can the present us say, nah,
Speaker 2: I don't like this program. I'm not gonna I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna spend the money on that program. I'm gonna impound
Speaker 2: the money. I'm gonna either use it for something else.
Speaker 2: You just not spend it. I cannot spend it.
Speaker 1: Thank you Ian for the question. But that's above my pag,
Speaker 1: right I I I don't know. Yeah, I mean simple answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need a We need a somebody who's studied
Speaker 2: the law and the Constitution from that perspective. All right,
Speaker 2: here's another one. No, this is uh, thank you Brad
Speaker 2: for being strong against woke. Hey, you're on and Brad,
Speaker 2: how important are soft skills in a business professional setting.
Speaker 2: I like being direct, but some find that to be
Speaker 2: too abrasive.
Speaker 1: So from Thomas, Umm, look, I mean I I would
Speaker 1: advise two things. First, speak the truth, be truthful, but
Speaker 1: also be but also be decent. Sometimes the way I
Speaker 1: put it is be Canadian. You know if he's Canadian,
Speaker 1: that's why, right, So by which.
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, just be polite.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Two things. Actually I'll add a third. So the advice
Speaker 1: I give to college students who want to go to
Speaker 1: graduate school where there will almost certainly be facing a
Speaker 1: hostile environment. There are really only there are three things
Speaker 1: that you can do to survive and to do well.
Speaker 1: And these were the things that I lived by when
Speaker 1: I was a student, and they are First, yes, be Canadian,
Speaker 1: by which I mean just always be polite, decent, courteous yep. Secondly,
Speaker 1: always speak the truth, which I always did, even when
Speaker 1: I knew my professor's disagreed with me, and sometimes even violently. So.
Speaker 2: But third, did you ever suffer grade? Why? Because of that?
Speaker 3: Maybe on the margins?
Speaker 2: And if you thought somebody would fail you because you
Speaker 2: spoke the truth to them, I don't think because professors
Speaker 2: out there who will do Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, so I well, I never failed, so I never
Speaker 1: thought I would fail.
Speaker 2: But you know, you were in a different era. I
Speaker 2: was in a different era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was on the market. So if I
Speaker 1: suffered it at all, it was only on the margins, right.
Speaker 1: It was the difference between an A and an A minus.
Speaker 1: And but I definitely, I mean, I definitely got into
Speaker 1: it with with some some professors. I mean, I distinctly
Speaker 1: remember when I was in graduate school, a professor.
Speaker 3: It was a small seminar.
Speaker 1: We're sitting around a table and I said something, and
Speaker 1: he was a large man, and he literally he took
Speaker 1: his fist and he pounded the table as hard as
Speaker 1: he could. He was he was so angry by by
Speaker 1: what I said. But here's the lesson of the story,
Speaker 1: and this goes to the third point. The third piece
Speaker 1: of advice I can give you is just always work
Speaker 1: harder than everybody else. So if you are one polite,
Speaker 1: two you work hard, and three you speak the truth,
Speaker 1: you'll be You'll be fine. So that same professor who
Speaker 1: reacted literally violently in my presence to something I had
Speaker 1: once said, the last time I ever saw him before
Speaker 1: he died, he.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget this.
Speaker 1: Uh he he. I were I was in his car
Speaker 1: and he was dropping me off somewhere, and he turned
Speaker 1: to me, knowing that it might be the last time
Speaker 1: I would ever see him again, and and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, Thompson, he said, I know I've been hard
Speaker 1: on you during your time here at Brown. He said,
Speaker 1: but I want you to know it's because I respect
Speaker 1: you and because I thought you could handle it.
Speaker 3: I thought you could take it.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what that meant the world to me.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course that's a real compliment. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: like number, says Brad. Thoughts on the administration, it's a
Speaker 2: two dollars question, you can you can wing it.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the two dollar question should be your question.
Speaker 1: I'll take the two hundred dollars question.
Speaker 2: There you go, There you go. It's not enough to
Speaker 2: get Brad to talk about the administration.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have opinions, but I think those opinions are
Speaker 1: best kept to myself for the moment.
Speaker 2: Okay, em it says American Mind. Great book. Thank you,
Speaker 2: doctor Thompson.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you Emmett.
Speaker 2: Alright, now, these questions I think, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: this one if you wanna this is this is related
Speaker 2: to something I said yesterday. So I'll just answer this questically,
Speaker 2: just to correct something from yesterday. This is from not
Speaker 2: your average algorithm. Uh. The reason people signed waivers over
Speaker 2: use of they image at ocon or other film private
Speaker 2: advantages because it's on private property and there is an
Speaker 2: expectation of privacy. That is not the case on a
Speaker 2: public sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You don't need anyone's consent to film in public or
Speaker 2: use their images. It's your responsibility create your own privacy,
Speaker 2: according to the Supreme Court. I get that, but I
Speaker 2: would argue Supreme Court is wrong. And part of the
Speaker 2: problem here is that there is private there's public space.
Speaker 2: You should treat public space from the perspective of these
Speaker 2: kind of issues, perspective of rights, as if it was private.
Speaker 2: So imagine the pavements were private. Could you then film
Speaker 2: in public in a sense in a in a setting
Speaker 2: in would would the you know, maybe you could if
Speaker 2: the owner of the of the place said, hey, if
Speaker 2: you walk on my side work, don't expect privacy. You
Speaker 2: would develop norms that associate with private property. The problem
Speaker 2: is that where we have a public space, I can
Speaker 2: tell you that. My sense is you can't just you
Speaker 2: can't just film me walking in a public space, use
Speaker 2: my image anyway you want to take my face and
Speaker 2: put it on somebody else's body or something like that,
Speaker 2: use it in plann, use it to have me say
Speaker 2: things I don't agree with. I don't believe in that.
Speaker 2: All of that seems wrong. My image is mine and
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be able to use it. And even if
Speaker 2: I even if you say okay, you can use it
Speaker 2: in a public space, and you can use it in
Speaker 2: a public space as you took it, you can't then
Speaker 2: manipulate it. So there has to be guardrails here that
Speaker 2: recognize your ownership over your own image. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you have any thoughts about this.
Speaker 1: I don't, although that does kind of raid. What you've
Speaker 1: just said raises an interesting and maybe slightly deeper philosophic question,
Speaker 1: which I know is debated in objective circles. So I'll
Speaker 1: ask you, do you believe in the idea of self ownership?
Speaker 2: No, because I think although Iran uses that term, I
Speaker 2: think peacock. Yes. But but if you really I think,
Speaker 2: particularly at least I know Lanard, I think Leonard. I've
Speaker 2: also heard him say that it doesn't make sense, and
Speaker 2: I agree with it doesn't make sense, but because I
Speaker 2: think it reverses, it's reversus hiochy right to own imply
Speaker 2: somebody owning it. So you have to have self before ownership.
Speaker 2: So self comes before ownership. So once you have a self,
Speaker 2: you own things. But you're just you. But you own
Speaker 2: your in a sense of it's yours, your bodily fluids
Speaker 2: and your kidneys and whatever. I think you own your image.
Speaker 2: And and certainly the ability and this is the context
Speaker 2: of AI today, the ability to manipulate your image, the
Speaker 2: ability to have you say things you don't believe in,
Speaker 2: or say things that they invent, or the ability to
Speaker 2: put you in situations you would want to be in.
Speaker 2: There's something wrong with people's ability just to take your
Speaker 2: image and do whatever they want with it.
Speaker 1: So it might be.
Speaker 2: True that in a public space you can fill me
Speaker 2: and I don't, I don't have a say and no,
Speaker 2: but then that's all you can use. You can't then
Speaker 2: take that image of me and use it in some
Speaker 2: other in other ways. So they have to be limitations
Speaker 2: in this. Otherwise it becomes Yeah, it becomes anarky, right,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I think the self ownership is an issue
Speaker 2: of of just conceptual hieroarchy, and also the way that
Speaker 2: the libertarians try to do the self ownership, because in
Speaker 2: a sense what they say is well, self ownership is
Speaker 2: self evident. Of course you own yourself, right, and then
Speaker 2: they derive everything from that, right. But none of that
Speaker 2: is obvious, none of that. There's very little it's self
Speaker 2: evident in life. And certainly concepts like ownership and self
Speaker 2: are not self.
Speaker 1: Evident correct, right, And they're also and as with the
Speaker 1: concept of rights, it's always in the context of a relationship.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's a relationship to other people.
Speaker 1: Right. So it seems to me that the one sense
Speaker 1: in which you could say that self ownership is legitimate, right,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, if it's the case that the fruits
Speaker 1: of a man's labor are his by by ownership, they
Speaker 1: are an extension of who and of what he has
Speaker 1: done to create it, right, And and and you know
Speaker 1: I have control over what I've created, and and what
Speaker 1: I've created has been created by my hands, uh my,
Speaker 1: my my mind ultimately most importantly my mind. I certainly
Speaker 1: have I I have self self governance, right, I govern myself,
Speaker 1: I govern the I control my mind and how I
Speaker 1: exercise my will.
Speaker 2: It's just an ownership business. And and also it's it's
Speaker 2: it's something outside of you that you own, or something
Speaker 2: inside of you that you own, but it's you are you,
Speaker 2: and and to own you is is is so just hieroartical.
Speaker 2: It's also leads to these with Again, libertarians will argue, well,
Speaker 2: if I own myself, I can sign myself into slavery.
Speaker 2: I can you know, I you know I can. So
Speaker 2: it leads to these strange but that's them, right. I
Speaker 2: just don't think hierotically conceptually.
Speaker 1: So in other words, for you, it's redundant.
Speaker 2: That's definitely redundant. But it's just that the concept of
Speaker 2: self comes first. Ownership is something you do, so you know,
Speaker 2: to do you already you already are right so and
Speaker 2: you don't need it. It's not necessary. I think you're right.
Speaker 2: Your your your fruits of your labor, are product of
Speaker 2: your effort, your you need to survive, your requirements of survival.
Speaker 2: They are yours by the fact that you created them
Speaker 2: with your labor, your effort, your mind that went into
Speaker 2: went into making them, you know, rights, freedoms, of action,
Speaker 2: your freedom of action. They don't require ownership here. They
Speaker 2: don't require the concept of ownership yet.
Speaker 1: M H.
Speaker 2: Ownership is again I think further down.
Speaker 1: Downstream, downstream, yes, conceptually, but.
Speaker 2: I'm not a philosopher. Alright, Michael is asking, is Germany's
Speaker 2: far right firewall crumbling? I mean, I'll I'll just say
Speaker 2: it certainly looks like it. That is this idea that
Speaker 2: we keep out the far right, particularly in this case
Speaker 2: the AfD, uh because they they have a certain affiliation
Speaker 2: and association with Nazism and and we wanna shut that out. Uh,
Speaker 2: that certainly seems to be crumbling. First of all, it's
Speaker 2: crumbling because they're very popular, right, they have twenty percent
Speaker 2: of the vote, uh, at least according to the polls
Speaker 2: right now, and they might have more than that. We'll
Speaker 2: see what happens in the elections. But it's crumbling. Uh.
Speaker 2: I give an example of it crumbling, is is uh
Speaker 2: the vote that happened I think yesterday or the day
Speaker 2: before in the Buddist whatever, where they voted on an
Speaker 2: immigration new immigration law and it couldn't pass without the
Speaker 2: af D supporting it, and the FD did support it,
Speaker 2: and it passed because the AfD supported it, so clearly
Speaker 2: in order to pass certain types of legislation, they're going
Speaker 2: to need the AfD. Now there is a move right
Speaker 2: now in Germany, convenient to all the existing political parties,
Speaker 2: to ban the AfD, that is, to take it outside
Speaker 2: of the law, which they can do. They have a majority,
Speaker 2: you know, the non AFT or eighty percent, so they could.
Speaker 2: You could do it, but it would be horrible, what
Speaker 2: a violation of freedom of speech. I'm not a fan
Speaker 2: of AfD. I think I think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: really horrible stuff in there, but that's not the way
Speaker 2: you deal with it. You don't deal with it by
Speaker 2: banning it and excluding it from political participation. If Germany
Speaker 2: had a constitution, that would be that would be barred,
Speaker 2: but of course they don't have a constitution. And remember
Speaker 2: Germany really started the whole hate speech movement because it
Speaker 2: was in Germany after World War Two where the first
Speaker 2: violation of free speech occurred in the West, in the
Speaker 2: modern West, when or maybe not the first violation of
Speaker 2: free speech or exaggerating but political speech at least when
Speaker 2: Holocaust denial was viewed as a crime. You could go
Speaker 2: to jail for Holocaust denial, and that was the first
Speaker 2: and that was the wedge, and of course everything is
Speaker 2: a slippery slope. We believe in slippery slopes. And today
Speaker 2: if you you know, if you condemn I don't know
Speaker 2: Muhammad or the Qur'an, you could go, you could get
Speaker 2: in trouble with the law in most of Europe. And
Speaker 2: it really started with the Holocaust denial. So the best
Speaker 2: thing to do with Nazism is to condemn it, to
Speaker 2: fight it, to ideologically object to it. But criminalizing ideas
Speaker 2: is always wrong. Agreed, absolutely so. And you know, the
Speaker 2: FD is now big because because their long Musk has
Speaker 2: endorsed them, I mean explicitly and quite strongly. And in
Speaker 2: a recent appearance where he made in front of the
Speaker 2: National Convention, he told them that it was time for
Speaker 2: Germany to stop, in a sense obsessing about their past,
Speaker 2: which which there's an element of truth to that, but
Speaker 2: there's also an element of real danger there. So and
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is a lot of things, but you know,
Speaker 2: he the subtleties and nuances is not his strength. So
Speaker 2: I think I think he was I think he was
Speaker 2: wrong to say what he said. All right, Jeremy says
Speaker 2: great to see you, Brad. I'm glad you were able
Speaker 2: to do a stream. Yeah, me too. This was fun, cool,
Speaker 2: absolutely right? Anything else, anything else you want to talk about.
Speaker 2: So we've got a few minutes. You're asking your audience
Speaker 2: or me, I'm asking you, and I'm asking that I
Speaker 2: want to ask any questions. They've got a couple of
Speaker 2: minutes to ask now they need to be quick about it.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know why we're not doing this show
Speaker 3: in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: Well I've invited you. Yeah, I invited you, but you
Speaker 2: never seem to find the time to come. And I
Speaker 2: see my fault, absolute fault. And I can see why.
Speaker 2: I visited Brad's new home today, and I think if
Speaker 2: he still lived in the old house, he would be
Speaker 2: coming to Puerto Rico quite often. But now that he lives
Speaker 2: in this beautiful house with a beautiful view on the
Speaker 2: you know, kind of on a golf course, it's really
Speaker 2: pretty there. And now it's like this is the ugly
Speaker 2: season because everything is gray and the no leaves on
Speaker 2: the trees. I can just imagine what it's like in
Speaker 2: the spring, where everything is green and it is beautiful.
Speaker 2: It must be beautiful. So yes, the incentive to come
Speaker 2: to Puerto Rico has clearly gone down since he moved
Speaker 2: to the New Rose.
Speaker 1: It has, but I'm available between December and January.
Speaker 2: January. December January is usually a very good time to
Speaker 2: usually a very good time to come to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a kok asques. This is a topic that
Speaker 2: Brad loves to talk about. I know, would Brad say
Speaker 2: that he defeated the BAP Dolks.
Speaker 1: Well, question, Kirk, thank you? If it's the Kirk, I think,
Speaker 1: I know, and.
Speaker 3: Well, I know, I can't.
Speaker 1: Say that I've defeated Still the bare still there, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming his Twitter account and his podcast are growing,
Speaker 1: his books are still selling. I mean, his Bronze age
Speaker 1: mindset has been now out eight years or so, seven
Speaker 1: eight years, and it's well, look.
Speaker 2: At literally what just happened to Kotishyovin, who's not exactly BAP,
Speaker 2: but similarly in that world, just did this big New
Speaker 2: times in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, so he's gaining and promo. Look, I mean
Speaker 1: I wrote my BAP essays because I saw the influence
Speaker 1: that he was having on particularly young men between the
Speaker 1: ages of eighteen and thirty five, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was a pernicious influence.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I wrote, I wrote my essays.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and I mean it
Speaker 1: is sort of interesting. I mean, I guess I've won
Speaker 1: to the extent that bapp seems to have an obsession
Speaker 1: with me now and talks about me on a semi
Speaker 1: regular basis on his podcast and is still tweeting about me.
Speaker 1: So I mean, he clearly views me as some kind
Speaker 1: of threat I think to his ideas, and you know,
Speaker 1: but it is I think also the case that I
Speaker 1: think the more fundamental point is that for objectivists and
Speaker 1: I think for everybody, is that there is a lost
Speaker 1: there's a generation of lost young men, and we need
Speaker 1: to find a way to appeal to them, to help
Speaker 1: them find meaning in their lives. And I have always
Speaker 1: thought and continue to think that objectivism can and should
Speaker 1: be the philosophy which gives them that kind of meaning,
Speaker 1: because that philosophy is in many ways. I mean, not
Speaker 1: only is it pernicious, it's just stupid.
Speaker 2: It's stupid, and in that sense, we've talked about this
Speaker 2: many times. The more dangerous trend out there with young
Speaker 2: men is their attraction to you know, Catholicism slash the
Speaker 2: integration into intellists, the means and mules, and kind of
Speaker 2: that part of the religious right or a new religious
Speaker 2: right that's much more philosophical and dangerous. Also at the
Speaker 2: end of the idea is a pretty stupid but they're
Speaker 2: much more anchored.
Speaker 1: They are, and they're advocating. I mean Curtis Jarvin you mentioned,
Speaker 1: he's a monarchist, right, he thinks that the American Revolution
Speaker 1: was a mistake and that the wrong side one right.
Speaker 1: And then the Catholic integralists, Uh, they want world popedom.
Speaker 1: They want a world governed politically from the Vatican.
Speaker 2: And they take this seriously. I mean it sounds upset
Speaker 2: of ridiculous, like the Muslim Sharia law, you know, global domination.
Speaker 2: But they really believe this stuff, and they really think
Speaker 2: that America, because of its its values, is an abomination.
Speaker 1: They do, and they also hold positions of genuine not
Speaker 1: only political power, but academic power, right. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: an integralist, one of the leading integralist thinkers Adrian Vermuil
Speaker 1: at Harvard Law School, dinneen Is at Notre Dame and.
Speaker 2: A huge influence on Jade Vans didn't yeah, no.
Speaker 1: Exactly, so I agree entirely. The Catholic integralists are a
Speaker 1: much much greater threat to the future freedom in this country.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing. I go back to the
Speaker 2: point you made earlier. God, we should be able to
Speaker 2: crush him right well, should be able to intellectually defeat
Speaker 2: these guys and be objectivism should be so much more
Speaker 2: attractive to young people than ancient Catholic I mean, what's
Speaker 2: you know, young people are supposed to be radicals and
Speaker 2: want to be different.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm passionate about ideas, but I will say
Speaker 1: this gen z really is searching for meaning in their lives.
Speaker 1: And you know, first Jordan Peterson was able to fill
Speaker 1: that void. He gave them a He helped them to
Speaker 1: regain meaning in their lives. But what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson, I believe it was August of twenty and
Speaker 1: nineteen when he kind of fell off the earth and
Speaker 1: disappeared for a year and a half because of health reasons.
Speaker 1: That same month, the Claremont Review of Books did a
Speaker 1: somewhat positive review of Bapp's Bronze Age Mindset, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, as I say, the youth vote switched
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, Peterson was gone and bapp
Speaker 1: was attracting the attention of young men. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that he does quite successfully is
Speaker 1: I mean, I think part of his goal is to
Speaker 1: give young men a sense of meaning, and most interestingly,
Speaker 1: he focuses on aesthetics, on beauty. You know, he says,
Speaker 1: we live in a world of ugliness, and there's a
Speaker 1: sense in which, of course that is entirely true.
Speaker 2: But his conceptions of aesthetics is, oh, it's it's shallow
Speaker 2: and superficial.
Speaker 1: To say the least of what it is. But even
Speaker 1: that fact alone tells you, right that there is a
Speaker 1: hunger and a need for a kind of new aesthetic,
Speaker 1: a new sense of beauty, and a new understanding of meaning.
Speaker 1: So I guess what I'll you know end this. My
Speaker 1: answer to this question on is objectivists, I think need
Speaker 1: to do a better job of understanding their audience. And
Speaker 1: let's just say the audience is young people between the
Speaker 1: ages of eighteen and thirty five, and we need to
Speaker 1: better understand.
Speaker 3: Where they're coming from, what their needs are.
Speaker 1: Because I Rand, like I Rand has answered solutions to
Speaker 1: the problems of meaning that they're experiencing. Right, it may
Speaker 1: not be, for instance, in capitalism, the unknown ideal. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's in the in the Fountain hit for the Fountain
Speaker 1: had for sure and her and I RAN's the romatic manifesto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's the other sense, is I
Speaker 2: completely agree we live in a desert. Aesthetically, I imagine
Speaker 2: what this we're looking out the windows on the campus.
Speaker 2: Imagine what this would look like if it was ancient Greece, right,
Speaker 2: this would be covered with culture. There wouldn't be just
Speaker 2: I mean it would be there would be a real.
Speaker 1: Esthetic to it.
Speaker 2: And this is pretty, it's pretty, but it's just it's
Speaker 2: kind of bland. And particularly this building was sitting in
Speaker 2: this missmash of architecturally. I don't know who designed it exactly,
Speaker 2: but there's this, you know, it's neither here nor there,
Speaker 2: but there's a real thirst for beauty that is not
Speaker 2: fulfilled in the modern in the modern world. And again,
Speaker 2: has answers to that. Romantic manifesto is clearly answers has
Speaker 2: answers to that. That's right, right, Cook, Thank you. Cook.
Speaker 2: Cook wants to point out that the one great book
Speaker 2: that you wrote that you didn't mention is the one
Speaker 2: that I was a small part of, and that's ne
Speaker 2: ecncivitism and obituary for an idea, a book.
Speaker 1: Which I will mention I do not see when you're
Speaker 1: back in Puerto Rica broadcasting. I do not see on
Speaker 1: your bookshelf.
Speaker 2: It's on the bookshel. Oh, it's definitely on the bookshelf,
Speaker 2: no question about that. And it's a book that I
Speaker 2: use often. The link to Amazon because I'm accused almost
Speaker 2: on a weekly basis of being a neo conservative, so
Speaker 2: I like to link to the book. I don't know
Speaker 2: if any of those people actually buy it. But wait,
Speaker 2: last two questions. Call says, how does bad handle students
Speaker 2: coming in who are religious, philosophically speaking, faith in, epistemology,
Speaker 2: altruism and ethics, magical worldview and metaphysics.
Speaker 1: Good question, great question, Tough question to answer as I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here on campus, you know, surrounded by my students, right,
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is, you know my students, Well,
Speaker 1: let's say the students in the Lyceum program are of
Speaker 1: n plus religious conservatives, and they are also really really smart,
Speaker 1: and they are also wonderful people. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: I don't have the luxury of sitting behind a paywall
Speaker 1: on a private blog denouncing lots of things. I live
Speaker 1: in this world and am surrounded every day by wonderful
Speaker 1: people who maybe have different values than I do. And
Speaker 1: my job is not to publicly denounce them. My job
Speaker 1: is not to attack them. My job is not to
Speaker 1: mock them. My job is to make them serious young
Speaker 1: men and women who take ideas seriously, who take their
Speaker 1: own moral character seriously. And you know, if I can
Speaker 1: introduce them to if I can broaden their perspective, then
Speaker 1: you know, I think I've succeeded. You know, the other thing,
Speaker 1: in addition to being Canadian, you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: moral decency goes a long way, right in helping to
Speaker 1: bring people who might not share your own views around
Speaker 1: to at least being opened to your views.
Speaker 3: Right, if you.
Speaker 1: Model your own moral philosophy and people who have a
Speaker 1: very different moral philosophy, different religion, if they see you
Speaker 1: and they can admire you and respect you, knowing that
Speaker 1: you do not share their deepest, let's say, theological commitments,
Speaker 1: at least, at the very least, it diffuses their immediate
Speaker 1: what would otherwise potentially be an immediate hostility and if
Speaker 1: I can do that much, then I think I will
Speaker 1: have succeeded.
Speaker 2: All right, justin this one could be a three hour
Speaker 2: the whole book so quick. And so was America's founding
Speaker 2: of Christian founding?
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, read the book, read the book, actually
Speaker 1: read both books.
Speaker 2: Yeah they you can hear it from his mouth, so
Speaker 2: to say, yeah.
Speaker 3: No exactly. The answer is no.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say that ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: all of America's founding fathers weren't Christian. Of course, they
Speaker 1: were Christian. They were all Christian. They took their Christianity
Speaker 1: very very seriously. But was it founded as a Christian nation?
Speaker 1: The answer is the answer is no. And you know,
Speaker 1: one way you can answer or look at the question
Speaker 1: is to ask what the Puritans would have thought of
Speaker 1: what was founded in seventeen seventy six and seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: The Puritans would not have They.
Speaker 1: Would have considered it a moral and theological abomination.
Speaker 2: Yep, okay, justinos asks, do Bible stories implicitly support capitalism?
Speaker 2: Non explicity.
Speaker 1: Look, I.
Speaker 3: Know a lot of.
Speaker 1: Christian pro capitalists, of course, who tell me all the
Speaker 1: time that that the Bible supports capitalism and they and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I don't remember the exact passages, but you know,
Speaker 1: they can rattle off at least half a dozen parables
Speaker 1: and stories in the Bible that they think support capitalism.
Speaker 1: And sure, maybe maybe there are some which would seem
Speaker 1: to support capitalism. Well, of course, the term which was
Speaker 1: not even understood, the very idea of las fair capitalism
Speaker 1: was not understood, no conception of anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 1: But I think what's most important is that you have
Speaker 1: to look at the overall philosophy, particularly the philosophy the
Speaker 1: teachings of Christ, which i'll be writing about on the
Speaker 1: sub stack. You know, I mentioned this series of essays
Speaker 1: will be doing on some self interest. It's really self
Speaker 1: interest in altruism. And the most important of the essays
Speaker 1: will be on the Christian view of self interest in altruism.
Speaker 1: And I kind of lay out the Apostles Creed, which
Speaker 1: I think is profoundly anti capitalist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the similar the amount is profoundly
Speaker 2: anti capitalist. And look, I mean my view is the Bible,
Speaker 2: like many books like it, was written in a way
Speaker 2: that you can find pretty much anything you want in it,
Speaker 2: that it's got an agenda. Certainly the New Testament I
Speaker 2: think has an agenda, but it also has enough so
Speaker 2: that it can satisfy lots of different perspectives and lots
Speaker 2: of different people. When we studied the Old Testament in school,
Speaker 2: we'd study a sentence, and then we'd study the fifty
Speaker 2: different interpretations of fifty different rabbis of that statement, and
Speaker 2: each one of them to put it completely differently. And
Speaker 2: if you come at it already a convinced capitalist, then
Speaker 2: you'll find capitalism. But it requires you to evate in
Speaker 2: parts of it. They're inconsistent, all right, They keep coming
Speaker 2: with questions, right, Paul says, I thought the founders were
Speaker 2: mostly Deists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean some of them were clearly deists. Jefferson,
Speaker 1: Deist Adams, John Adams pretty close to being a deist,
Speaker 1: Madison Washington, I mean, Hamilton. I mean, they were sort
Speaker 1: of all in that world. None of them were five
Speaker 1: point Calvinists, although some of founding fathers were five point Calvinists, right,
Speaker 1: So second third tier founding fathers were Calvinists. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think there were any Founding fathers who said
Speaker 1: that they were not Christian, were certainly not anti Christian.
Speaker 1: Most of them in to one degree or another, you know,
Speaker 1: uh said that that that they that they were Christians
Speaker 1: to one degree or another.
Speaker 3: But what's important.
Speaker 1: What's important, though, is what they created publicly, yes, right,
Speaker 1: And what they created publicly was a constitution which created
Speaker 1: a government. And that constitution is grounded in certain moral principles.
Speaker 1: And what are those moral principles? Are those moral principles
Speaker 1: explicitly defined as the laws of God? No, the principles
Speaker 1: are defined as the laws of nature. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you read again, it's all in here. If you read
Speaker 1: the revolutionary pamphlet literature, you can't help but be struck
Speaker 1: by how enlightenment these revolutionaries were, how pro enlightenment they were,
Speaker 1: and students of John Locke and and who who grounded
Speaker 1: their moral theory on what they call the moral laws
Speaker 1: and rights of nature. And now maybe they thought the
Speaker 1: ultimate source, you know, was God, or as they as
Speaker 1: Jefferson put in the declaration, nature's God. But even the
Speaker 1: idea of nature's God, right, is very different than the
Speaker 1: Puritans old God.
Speaker 2: In the declaration right, he used creative.
Speaker 3: Well, he creators used.
Speaker 1: But in the first sentence of the declaration he talks
Speaker 1: about the laws of nature and of Nature's God. Right,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not just God, it's Nature's God, which is.
Speaker 3: Very which is an enlightenment.
Speaker 1: It's a new it's a kind of a Newtonian God,
Speaker 1: that is, a god who created the universe and then
Speaker 1: stepped back and let it run on its own.
Speaker 2: All right, rob It says, thank you for the reasonable,
Speaker 2: insightful discussion, gentlemen, very much appreciated. And oh, and what
Speaker 2: do you think of the newmonistration? He's kidding, Justice says, Okay,
Speaker 2: this will be the final question, doctor T. I don't
Speaker 2: know if anybody calls you doctor T, doctor T. Is
Speaker 2: this still any Canadian left in you?
Speaker 1: That's a that's a that's a great question. I left
Speaker 1: Canada in nineteen seventy nine to escape Pierre trudeau socialism,
Speaker 1: and I have other than going back to visit my family.
Speaker 1: I've been out of Canada since then, so you know,
Speaker 1: for many, many decades, and and and as I've written
Speaker 1: about before in different contexts, I from the time I
Speaker 1: was a seven or eight year old boy born in Canada,
Speaker 1: I knew that I was born in the wrong country,
Speaker 1: identified with America from the time I was a child.
Speaker 1: So even even when I was living in Canada as
Speaker 1: a Canadian, I didn't identify as Canadian. Now that said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can take the boy out of Canada,
Speaker 1: but you know there are surely there are some elements
Speaker 1: that you can't take out of the boy, some Canadian
Speaker 1: elements in me. Apparently there's one word that gives me
Speaker 1: away as Canadian. It's the about word. And I don't
Speaker 1: hear myself, but there you go. And you know, I
Speaker 1: guess the other thing is I still put a high
Speaker 1: value on manners and politeness and just being a decent bloke.
Speaker 2: There you go. So I mean by that interpretation, being
Speaker 2: an American is about the ideas that you hold and
Speaker 2: your sense of life and your character, not about where
Speaker 2: your parents were born. Yeah, it's a big debate going
Speaker 2: on right now. Of course. All right, this is quick one.
Speaker 2: My son is a senior in high school looking at colleges.
Speaker 2: Is it super difficult to get into your program? And
Speaker 2: how can we find out more about admissions? I thought
Speaker 2: you'd want to answer that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean you have to do two things.
Speaker 1: You have to Your son would have to apply first
Speaker 1: to Clemson University, to be honest. If he's a senior
Speaker 1: in high school right now, it's it's too late. It's
Speaker 1: too late to apply to Clemson, and it's it's too
Speaker 1: late February. Yeah, it's too late to apply to the
Speaker 1: Clemson to the Lyceum program. So I'm very sorry.
Speaker 2: That's fine. Tell him to take a year off. It's
Speaker 2: good for him anyway. Most most Americans need a year
Speaker 2: off before they go to college anyway, because they don't
Speaker 2: know anything about anything. And then you can apply next year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: So why can they find out of information about admissions?
Speaker 1: It's all on the website, well, admissions to Clemson or yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all on our website at the Snow Institute for
Speaker 1: the Study of Capitalism and just go to the Lyceum
Speaker 1: tab and it's all there. The application process is all there,
Speaker 1: and you know our curriculum. Just about everything you want
Speaker 1: to know is on the website.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been a pleasure as always. It's good to
Speaker 2: be in Clemson. Back at Clemson, even if it's just
Speaker 2: one day. And I will see you guys. Actually don't
Speaker 2: know when else see you because I'm traveling. So when
Speaker 2: I have an opportunity, I'll turn the live stream on
Speaker 2: and we'll do a ship but have a great rest
Speaker 2: of your week and a weekend. And Brad, thank you
Speaker 2: and we'll see you right see everybody, Thanks everybody,