LA Riots; Greta for Hamas; SCOTUS; China Trade; Middle Class; Gene Editing | Yaron Brook Show
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The Radical Fundamental Principles of Freedom. Rational Self-Interest. An Individual Life. This is the Yaron Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Yaron Brook Show on this Monday, June 9th. Got a lot to cover today, a lot of newsworthy stuff going on in the world to cover over the weekend and this morning.

So we will just jump in and get started. So again, thanks for joining me. And let's start. LA broke out in riots. I think I've said that many times on this show. I've been doing the show for 10 years now, over 10 years. And yeah, there have been a few riots since then in Los Angeles. So Los Angeles, more riots. This time, demonstrations that turned into riots.

were basically, you know, in response to ICE agents going into people's workplaces and arresting what they believe are illegal immigrants. You know, it's not just that they're going to workplaces and arresting people. They're doing this in mass. They're doing this

with tactical gear on. They're doing this with masked faces. They're basically, in a sense, the U.S. government has declared war on the illegal population. But it's more than that. It's how can they tell if they're illegal? So they go into a workplace and they're basically stopping anybody who looks a little different, who primarily looks brown. And

And you should stop, just as an aside, and you should stop lying about my positions. I mean, I'm glad you're putting $5 behind your lies, but you should really, really listen to what I actually say and not, you know, we'll get to it and I'll answer your question, but...

God, that is such an outrageous, just bold-faced misrepresentation of everything I've said and stood for for 24 years. 24 years. It's just disgusting. It really is. It's dishonest because I've gone out wearing bulletproof vests to address the threat that is Islamists.

I said something different. That is not what I said. I did not say Islamists are not a threat. I mean, listen to exactly what I said. And, you know, you've listened to the show enough to put it in context of everything else that I've said and everything else I've said over the last 20-something years. She writes, you claim Islamists are not a threat to the U.S., no Europe. You know, even if I misspoke somehow and said, you know, in a flippant way,

In the context that I think Christianity is a big threat, you know, not to put that not to put that in the context of everything I've said about the Islamist threat. What I've written, I've written essays about this. I've written extensively. I've done whole talks. I've done debates. I've done panels. I, you know, stood out in I've been attacked by all kinds of groups for my position on Islamist issues.

You know, it is it's and you take you take I don't know what I said yesterday exactly. But you take even if I said something out of context, you take it out of context and that's what you write. I mean, you often, you know, have hostile questions and you present your questions in a hostile way. But this is beyond the pale. I said they can't take you. That's right.

And I can argue why they can't take care of it. That's not what you said. You claim Islamists are not a threat to the U.S. nor Europe. I've never said that. They're a massive threat. They can't win, but they're a massive threat. They kill people all the time. They destroy lives. The first show I did on the Iran book show was after Charlie Hebdo.

defending the right to draw cartoons of Muhammad and to illustrate the extent to which Islamists are a threat to Europe and Europe should wake up before a lot more people die. So what you're doing, I mean, you really should think about what you're doing because it's, you know, and you're putting it out there and somebody new reads this and said, Iran said that? To hell with them. It, you know, it's,

God, you'd think I'd get even a little bit of credit for the thousands, tens of thousands maybe of hours I've spent on the Islamist threat to the West and why Western civilization is threatened by Islam. But no, I said it can't win in Europe because I think the Europeans will slaughter them all. But that's enough to wipe out everything else I've ever said and to wipe out the context of what I said yesterday.

Sorry, but sometimes the dishonesty and the nuttiness, you know, in public, it just is overboard. And particularly on this issue on which I've staked so much of my career, it just infuriates me. All right. Anyway, ICE goes in and people started demonstrating. As often happens at these demonstrations, the demonstrations get captured by, I think, ultimately what is a minority group.

of kind of Antifa anarchists, far leftists, who then start burning cars, attacking policemen, wearing kafirs. So this turns into a pro-Hamas demonstration.

Waving Mexican flags, that doesn't help. And rioting and turning it into, you know, burning cars. It is interesting, the cars they chose to burn were Waymo cars. And they called them on this, you know, they ordered a Waymo car. So a bunch of Waymo cars came to one place because a bunch of people ordered them. And then they burned them all, which is all clearly coordinated violence.

and so on. Anyway, police in L.A., L.A. County, L.A. City, and California were trying to deal with this, but as riots in L.A. This is, again, not the first riots in L.A. They got out of hand over the weekend. The riots of Pamela in the Hispanic community, but my guess is

that most of the writers, or put it this way, the most violent of the writers, the most, you know, the ones wearing the keffiyehs and everything, are not necessarily of the immigrant community. They are probably students at, you know, UCLA and other universities around there, and they're probably sport white brats. And...

So, you know, all of that is all of that happened over the weekend. And there were also demonstrations in other cities, but none of them got quite as as as rowdy as and quite as violent as the one in in California. People arrested, you know, the police were dealing with it, maybe not dealing with it greatly, but they were dealing with it anyway. So on Saturday, Trump, you know, tweeted this.

A once great American city, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals. Now violent insurrection insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our federal agents to try and stop a deportation operation. But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.

I'm directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all relevant departments and agencies, to take all such actions necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the migrant invasion and put an end to these migrant riots. Order will be restored, the illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free. Thank you for your attention on this matter. I mean...

Note the language being deployed here, which is just disgusting and outrageous in and of itself. Los Angeles has not been invaded. There's a lot of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles. But the fact that ICE is going into workplaces in order to arrest them suggests that they're actually working, paying taxes, working for a living, not working.

criminals i mean this is the problem they can't find enough criminals and now they're hunting down and arresting and treating really really badly hard-working immigrants who happen to have crossed the border without permission you know what a crime oh god what a crime uh and uh the city's not occupied uh you know even with the riots and even with the with the violence um

My guess is 90% of Los Angeles didn't even know what was going on unless they had turned on their television. They were probably unaffected. This is clearly just a disgusting language in which to apply to this. These are not insurrectionists, mobs. The only insurrectionist mob that I've seen in the last few decades in the United States was the mob on January 6th.

storming the Capitol. A number of people have put videos of that mob up online and people confuse it with L.A., but there's no similarity. That was an insurrectionist mob. And that's a mob that Donald J. Trump pardoned. All of them, even the ones who brutally beat police officers in a much, much more violent fashion than anything happening in L.A. right now.

Now, riots are lawless and riots are wrong and riots are bad. I even think demonstrations that block traffic and do things like that are wrong and should not be allowed. But on the other hand, I completely understand the unbelievable frustration of people in communities that are peaceful, that are hardworking, that are trying to feed their families, and they're being brutally attacked by, you know, militarized ICE agents.

militarized immigration officers. And yeah, I mean, I think demonstration is what they should be doing. It is, of course, sad that these demonstrations are taken over by the far left that is

driving these demonstrations and into riots. I mean, there's no reason immigrants or immigrants in these communities would be burning Waymo's. Waymo's is a statement about technology, taking jobs. It's a leftist, you know, a leftist attack and talking point that has nothing to do with immigration issue.

There's zero reason why illegal immigrants or the people within that community should be wearing kafirs. The kafir is a symbol of support for Hamas. And as such, is a far left talking point that has nothing to do with this community. There's, you know, so the tactics being employed, the organization that these people, the people rioting,

The organization that they are showing and the causes that they seem to be fighting for have nothing to do with immigration, have nothing to do with ICE. And it is tragic that a valid concern around militarized deportations has turned into riots and giving an excuse for Donald Trump to declare another emergency like this country is under, whoa, I mean,

God, we must be in real deep, deep trouble because there's emergency at every corner to declare another emergency so as to deploy the National Guard. So what what Donald Trump did was basically federalize the California National Guard and deploy it in Los Angeles. This is the first time that the National Guard has been deployed in

into the state National Guard has been deployed by the federal government without having been requested by state or local officials since the 1960s during the civil right era when the National Guard was deployed in order to put into effect the Civil Rights Act and prevent, you know, massive discrimination and massive attacks from

on blacks in the South. Now, by the way, that tweet that Trump put out about deploying the troops was maybe unsurprisingly retweeted with American flags by none other than Donald Trump's latest nemesis, Elon Musk, who, since Donald Trump has threatened to

threatened with government contracts, retracting government contracts, threatened generally. I mean, that threat on Friday where he said, you know, if Elon Musk funds Democratic candidates, he's going to get it or we're going to go after him or something like that. Unbelievable threat to the First Amendment right of every citizen to fund whoever the hell they want. The president of the United States issued that threat. That was way underreported, way underreported.

I mean, he does so many horrific things, this president, that it's hard to keep track of all the bad things that he does. That was one of the worst. Going after Musk. If you dare to fund Democrats in the next election cycle, we're coming after you. When, you know, there are legit contracts that the government has with the Elon Musk companies. Well, Elon Musk took the threat seriously and...

Many of the tweets that he put up attacking Trump and claiming a connection between Trump and Epstein and things like that have been deleted. They're no longer online. And now he's retweeting positively. Trump tweets trying to get back in good favors, says not to be attacked by his own government. Later in the weekend, Donald Trump tweeted, we made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent instigated riots in California.

If we had not done so, listen to this. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated, catastrophizing, you know, just absurd exaggeration, fear mongering, particularly among, I think, the MAGA masses who maybe never been to L.A. and have no clue what's going on other than the pictures they see on TV and this kind of B.S.,

He continues, the very incompetent governor, Gavin Newsom, and mayor, Karen Bass, should be saying, thank you, President Trump. You're wonderful. We would be nothing without you, sir. I mean, imagine wanting people to say to you, we would be nothing without you, sir. I mean, what kind of a human being demands that of other people? Instead, they choose to lie to the people of California and America by saying that we weren't needed.

And that these are peaceful protests. Just one look at the pictures and videos of violence and destruction tell you all you have to know. We will always do what is needed to keep our citizens safe so we can together make America great again. The 2000, what do you call it, National Guards that we deployed were not in the streets yesterday.

They were protecting and they were deployed in several federal facilities around L.A. But that is not where the fires were. It was not where the demonstrators and police clashed. Indeed, if anybody was holding the demonstrators back and preventing them from completely obliterating the city of Los Angeles, God, it was California and L.A. police, not the troops that Donald Trump deployed. And yet...

I mean, he can get away with this. This is the thing. Politically, he can get away with it. He can write. If not for me, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated. And people are going to go, whoa, what a president. So tough. He's so good. So, I mean, everything about this presidency just, I think, shows us the extent to which, I don't know, this country has gone down a

a path of ignorance and subservience and unthinking, ultimately driven, I think, by tribalism in a way that I've never seen this country behave. And this president manifests this. And I know I'm super anti-Trump because you know what? He deserves it. And I'm super anti-Trump. I mean, and if that makes me

to the left of, you know, if that makes me more anti-Trump than MSNBC, then so be it, because Trump deserves it. The reality is the National Guard was not deployed in the streets at all on Sunday. All the efforts to deal with yesterday's demonstrations and riots in the city were handed by LAPD, LASD, and CHP, California Highway Patrol. There were no crowd control measures carried out by the National Guard.

But don't prevent that can't prevent Trump from taking credit for all of it. It was him. He saved Los Angeles from burning down. You should call your friends or acquaintances in L.A. You should call them and ask them whether L.A. was on the verge of being disseminated. Anyway, the executive order, the special order that Trump used to deploy national guards can also be used to deploy the U.S. military, including Marines, military.

based on the decision of the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexseth. It is at his discretion. It is also true that under this, under the kind of order that he put together, that Trump put together on Saturday, they can be deployed anywhere in the United States, not just in Los Angeles. So

We, Trump has just assigned himself the ability to deploy American National Guard and troops any way he so desires. Trump was actually asked, I've got the video in front of me, actually asked, what is the bar for sending Marines into Los Angeles? And Donald Trump said exactly what you'd expect him to say. He said, quote, the bar is what I think it is, unquote. It's whatever I want, whatever I feel like, that's the bar.

dangerous bar, dangerous position to put the country, right? Remember that on January 6th, Donald Trump was president. And the one thing Donald Trump did not do on January 6th, the one thing he did not do on January 6th was call the National Guard to help suppress the riot that was happening in Capitol Hill. And those Capitol Hill cops just got brutalized for absolutely nothing.

And again, all of those people who did the brutalizing have been pardoned. Horrific. It turns out that in terms of escalation, escalating these protests into more violent, I mean, it is federal immigration authorities, ICE, that first used violence, i.e. flashbang, grenades, and pepper spray on people who were protesting employees' arrests.

You know, after this, hundreds rallied outside the Los Angeles Federal Building to condemn the crackdown, demand the release of service employees, you know, union members. The union president, I guess, had been arrested while he was documenting a raid. The what is it? Service Employees International Union, California President David Huerta was arrested. So detained, at least. So it looks like ICE attacked protesters first.

But look, you know, riots are never appropriate unless you're moving towards revolution. There's no excuse for rioting. There's no excuse for violence. And the criminals, those who burn cars, those who are using violence against police should be arrested and they should be, you know, thrown in jail. They should be punished to the full extent of the law. And the demonstrators, the real demonstrators, the people who are really concerned about

What ICE is doing should be the first ones to advocate for that. But, you know, this is what happens. And this is what, you know, lots of people warned about this, that if Trump was going to fulfill his campaign promise of mass deportation, not just of criminals, not just of illegal immigrants that were, you know, joining gangs and and and and and

becoming criminals. But if Trump was going to do mass deportation of people working and living, many of them living in the United States for decades, if he was going to do that, then that was going to cause problems. That was going to cause people to get really upset. And I can understand them. And I think demonstrating this makes a lot of sense. Just stop the violence. It hurts your cause. Stop waving Mexican flags.

It hurts your cause. Kick out the guys who are wearing keffiyehs. It hurts your cause. Cause, I mean, the anti-tech attitude that caused people to burn down the Waymo cars hurts your cause. Focus on what matters. The immigration issue, where you are in the right. Stephen Miller, of course, never to miss a beat. Stephen Miller from the White House.

Right? Believe it or not, California used to be a paradise. Mass migration has brought us to where we are now. Really. So it's illegal immigrants that forced California to adopt high taxes. It was illegal immigrants that actually got the Californians to invest in high-cost speed rail that never got built and, you know, wasted billions and billions and billions of dollars. It's migrants. Migrants, overwhelmingly.

that have brought California to the over-regulated monstrosity that it's become. You know, the wage hikes to public sector employees, that's all immigrants, particularly the illegal ones. Or the really high minimum wages and all the other horrible policies that California has passed. All of that, all of that is not, you know, is not, that's not our politicians' policy.

It's not intellectuals. It's not the voters. That's all illegal immigrants. You didn't know that. You didn't know that illegal immigrants were actually the ones in control of California and driving it towards, you know, the horrible policies that it's engaged in. But no, Stephen Miller will do anything and everything to demonize and dehumanize migrants. And as such, you know, he is, of all the people surrounding Trump, he is the worst person

He is, you know, it's real evil what he does. The consequence are going to be much more violence and it's going to be in his hands. By the way, somebody criticized a journalist, criticized Miller for some of his comments on immigration pretty, you know, pretty viciously. The Trump administration is now asking, asking this journalist employer to

to consider firing him because, you know, to criticize Miller and Donald Trump like that is just not acceptable for, you know. This is the free speech president. Free speech president. Why is ICE agents masked? Because they're afraid, you know. They're afraid for their lives, you know. If they show their face, people are going to come after them, right? ICE is afraid. So it uses the same tactics against

that the supporters of Hamas and university campuses use. They use the same tactics as the rioters are using or some of the rioters are using in L.A. right now. They use the same tactics as, you know, cowards everywhere use. What exactly are they afraid of? Their lives are going to be threatened, really? They're threatening people's lives, but they are law enforcement officers. They should be held accountable for what they do.

Part of that accountability is not covering your face. It is authoritarian regimes that have their police, their law enforcement cover their face. For exactly that reason, they do not want to be held accountable for what they do. Just to give the lie to the idea that all this is done to make America safe, safe again, safe to prevent murder, rape, robbery. If you look at the amount of money the United States spends on immigration and border enforcement,

as compared to how much the federal government, granted, not state and local government, but federal government spends on catching crooks, FBI, Secret Service, DEA, DOJ, DHS, ATF, IRS, all law enforcement. All of that together is a fraction of what the government spends on immigration and border enforcement. We spend close to $35 billion on immigration and border enforcement, much less than that

and all these others together, combined. And if you look at their latest big, beautiful bill, one of the areas where we're going to be spending a lot more money in order to save America from all those criminals is not by beefing up the FBI or by giving grants to local police. You know, about 50% of all murders in the United States go unsolved.

We're not putting lots of money into that, like helping police forces in cities all around the country, you know, buy into better technology or hire thousands of more police officers. I mean, you could do that. The federal government could raise the money and then tax and use the tax money and then give grants to different police forces around the country to beef up their resources so they could catch the criminals and the gang members.

and send them to jail or send them to El Salvador, but criminals. No, no, no, no, no. We are going to add $167 billion, billion, to the border and immigration enforcement. So we're going to take a budget of just under $35 billion and turn it into a budget of $200 billion. $200 billion. I mean, they're going to be able to build unbelievable walls along all our borders. They'll be able to equip ICE with maybe tanks,

So they can go into Walmarts, break down the walls with their tank and arrest people. $200 billion. And nobody cares. Nobody cares. I mean, here's a great way to cut government spending. Just keep bordering immigration enforcement at the levels they are right now. So there you go. $200 billion. So yeah, we will see how that is deployed. Finally...

And this is the bottom line, right? You know, Matt Walsh from Matt Walsh. You know, Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh writes, ban all third world immigration, legal or illegal. There should be a moratorium on all immigration from the third world. We've reached our capacity. We cannot be the world's soup kitchen anymore. That's right, because they come here and they go to soup kitchens. They don't work.

They just exploit us and they steal from us and they take us and they depend on charity. And notice that just the third world, we don't want. I wonder, here's a question for Matt Walsh and for Charlie Cook, as we'll see. I wonder, does South Africa count as third world? Well, probably if you're black. But what about if you're white and Afrikaner?

Does it count as third world? Do we not want them? Oh, no, they're fine. They're good. They're refugees. They're wonderful. Why? What's the difference? Because they're white. Charlie Cook. It's time to ban third world immigration, legal and illegal. We've reached our limit. We have a huge cultural, educational, housing, financial and essential services problem. Not just problem. It's an emergency to fix now because of it. So all the problems we have.

Culture, education, housing, finance, essential services, all the problems that we have in America today. They're all the fault of immigrants. Did you know that? And not just any immigrants. All the fault of third world immigrants. Really? Our educational problem is a third world immigrant problem. Really? Housing? It has nothing to do with how many houses we build, zoning, I don't know, Fannie Fannie, lots of other distortions, the housing market. No, no, no. It's those immigrants. They're taking our houses.

financial problem, all the debt that the United States has accumulated, the massive debt, that's an immigration problem. How much of that money is spent on immigration? Well, very little. Now it's going to be $200 billion on preventing it. But what are we talking about? See, this is the thing about modern conservatives or modern rightists. They used to be for personal responsibility. Now it's all about for playing the victim.

And blaming the other, like all little, you know, at the end of the day, little fascists blame the other. It's not our fault. We didn't do it. We, you know, our ideas are perfect. We would have run a government wonderfully. We would have created the best educational system in the world.

But it's those guys. They ruined it. They destroyed California. They're destroying the country. They're bankrupting us. They're creating a cultural, educational, housing, financial, and essential services problem, which we wouldn't have had if not for those guys. And, you know, they have a different color skin. They look a little different. And yeah, we don't like the way they speak.

Charlie continues and he says we need a net zero immigration moratorium with a ban on all third worlders. So he wants net zero migration into this country. So the same number of people come in as go leave and zero from third world. However, he defines third world. This is where we are. All right. So L.A. is we need to continue watching it and see what how it evolves.

To what extent Trump uses this ultimately to deploy and to allow him to deploy troops all over the United States or wherever he feels like he needs to, wants to, because it's his emotions that dictate this. There's no, you know, he's going to take credit for whatever success happens in L.A. Again, even though the National Guard has done nothing so far, he's already taking credit.

This is horrific, particularly in the context of, you know, the inaction and worse, the ultimate support for the January 6th riots. This is, I mean, these riots are nothing as compared to other riots I've seen in L.A. Stopping them should be a priority if possible.

And I wish that was the priority, but that's not the priority. This is more about electoral politics. This is more about patting himself on the back. This is more about huge power grab, which by applying this executive order can now, he can now deploy troops anywhere. So we need to watch, need to watch and see what happens, how this evolves. And by the way, as a part of this, it's worth noting part of this whole attitude towards immigration is

That on Friday, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, you remember the El Salvadoran man who was deported by accident to the El Salvadorian jail and whom the courts required the Trump administration to return to the United States and they claimed, oh, no, they can't. They can't do it. They can't return him. Anyway, it turned out that he has been returned to the United States. And to say face to

to save face, the Justice Department has announced that they will be trying him. He's going to face charges for human trafficking and I think gun smuggling. I think that's it. So human trafficking and gun smuggling. You know, he's going to be tried for being a member of the MS-13 group.

and that he worked with this transnational criminal organization, and then he's going to, everything is going to be, everything they do, human smuggling, drug smuggling, is going to be blamed on him. The, you know, this is just, it's kind of crazy. They brought him back to send him to jail, and, you know, to make him a criminal so they can send him back to El Salvador to the high security jail in El Salvador. It'll be interesting to see how this trial plays out.

It is reported was reported on Friday that Ben Schrader, who is a high ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, in Tennessee, was resigned as a result of the case against Garcia, claiming that he believed that the case was, quote, being pursued for political reasons. I'm shocked. No, the Trump administration would never do that. They would never go after somebody for political reasons. They wouldn't deploy troops.

for political reasons, just to look good to their base, that would never happen. Anyway, yes, we talked a lot about Garcia, and our Supreme Court can breathe easy. He is back, and now he's going to be tried. And talk about kangaroo to carts. It really is. This is America. Welcome to the United States of America. Well, if we leave America for a little bit, and we go over to the Middle East, specifically to the...

Eastern Mediterranean, there was a boat, a aid boat, a boat filled with aid for the Palestinians, loaded with tons of aid. Actually, a pretty small boat with very little aid. Most of that aid, I think, was consumed by the people on the boat because they had to eat. This boat was heading towards Gaza to bring in aid to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

On that boat was the great moral crusader of our time who has, you know, has made herself the great moral crusader since she was, I don't know, 15 or something like that. She is now no longer 15. She's now, I think, in her 20s, although she still looks very, very young. Greta, Greta, Greta Thunberg.

It was on this boat, and this boat was stopped yesterday by the Israeli Navy. They actually deployed a SEALs, you know, a SEALs team, the Premier Special Forces Group, in order to board the boat. The SEALs team brought Greta and her companions sandwiches and drinks,

As they attached the boat to an Israeli Navy boat and pulled her towards a port in Israel. Greta has put out a video declaring and telling the world that she has now been kidnapped and is being held hostage by the, I guess, by Israeli commandos.

And, you know, that they please, you know, do everything you can to free Greta. I mean, Greta eating her sandwich is now a victim of kidnapping. I mean, there's something in me, and it's small because I'm not that cruel, that wishes she'd made it to Gaza and that Israel would have allowed her to meet up with Hamas and spend a lot of time there and get to know the Hamas people.

They would have loved her. They would have really liked Greta. They could have talked about gay rights or about climate change. They would have been very enthusiastic, I'm sure, about the fact that the world is going to end. I don't know why does Greta care about Palestinians if the world's going to end anyway, like in three months? Is the five years up yet? Are we there yet? Is it all over yet? Anyway, it should be any day now, according to Greta.

Anyway, Greta is calling on her comrades all over the world to come and support her and to put pressure on the Israeli government, on the Swedish government, I guess, to release Greta and the others as soon as possible. Israel has said from the beginning that their plan was to take them to ports in Israel and put them on a plane and send them home.

Poor Greta is being held hostage. And it's going to take Swedish government pressure on Israel to have her released. Really? Who does she think she is kidding? I mean, it's it's the world is kind of a it's a circus out there. It's a circus left, right. It's a circus that everybody is dancing, dancing to. What a what a place.

They're going to send her on a plane. I mean, she might be complaining because the plane is a gas guzzling machine. And, you know, I hope they put her in the back of the plane and coach in the middle seat. But, yeah, I mean, she would be horrified. They really should give her a dinghy with a, you know, a little kayak maybe and have her try to row to Cyprus or something.

But, I mean, I think the yacht she was traveling on had a diesel engine, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think it was a sailboat. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what, Greta's obviously not concerned about global climate change anymore. Interesting. Interesting. Maybe she discovered she was wrong. Maybe that happened. Hard to believe. All right, on a more serious note, it is, it's always important to remember that

that there's still fighting going on in Gaza, and Israeli soldiers are still dying in Gaza. I think it's horrific that Israeli soldiers are still dying in Gaza, but it's happening. Indeed, on Friday, four soldiers were killed, five were injured. When they entered a building in southern Gaza that had been rigged with explosives, the building collapsed on them. They were clearing a Hamas compound.

And the bomb detonated or the, you know, whatever detonated, explosive detonated, and they were all killed. These are all young kids. If you look at the pictures, you know, in their 20s, I think one of them was 33. It's just horrific. I mean, I don't understand why Israel doesn't just flatten these buildings. Why does it actually send troops in? Maybe we're looking for tunnel entrance. I don't know. But you think they just flatten them. Now, maybe it's rules of engagement.

Maybe it's rules of engagement. Given how many of these buildings are booby-trapped, given how many soldiers Israel has lost to booby traps, basically, to soldiers going into clear buildings that turn out to be booby-trapped to the extent that the soldiers miss when they enter, they should just flatten every building they're suspicious of, every single one of them. Just turn them into dust. And, you know, much of Gaza is that way. Just keep doing it. This is...

and depressing. This war should have been over a long time ago. Israel should have been in full control of Gaza a long time ago. They should be fully occupying Gaza by now. Also, all the shootings that we keep hearing about of Gaza civilians on the way to getting aid, all of that should not exist because of Israel basically controlled the territory of

It wouldn't exist. All of that is a consequence of the fact that Israel doesn't control it. And Hamas is still able to function in vast portions of the Gaza Strip and is doing everything that they can to prevent Gazans from getting aid, you know, from Israel and this nonprofit that's been set up to provide the aid to them. All right. What do we want to talk about now? Yeah.

All right, let's let's a little bit of change of pace. Let's talk about SCOTUS, about the Supreme Court. I had a busy Friday and, you know, they they had a number of rulings and a number of non rule and a number of non rulings. One of the things one of the things that happened on Friday is that the court refused to take up a Second Amendment case, which was a little surprising. It was a Second Amendment challenge to Maryland's ban on.

on AR-15s. So AR-15s, semi-automatic rifles that, you know, that are pretty popular out there. And this could have been an opportunity for the court to actually rule that states cannot regulate AR-15s if that is what they believe. There were three dissenters, Thomas and Alito and Gorsuch, all wanted the court to hear the case.

but the majority ruled that they would not. Kavanaugh expressed strong support for the idea that AR-15s are protected by the Second Amendment and urged the court to take up other bans elsewhere in

You know where they could make a ruling about this once and for all. And he was hoping they would do this in the next term or two. I mean, I think a lot of there's going to be a lot of legalese and trying to interpret why Kavanaugh sided with not taking this case and wanting to take other cases. And what are the differences?

I think some of those are subtle, but I think that there is probably a majority in the court or at least clearly four members. And then it will depend on the specifics to get the fifth to declare unconstitutional bans on rifles like AR-15. But for now, the Maryland ban on AR-15 stands. On Thursday, the court, you know, had three unanimous decisions, three unanimous decisions.

all penned, all written by the, let's say, left-leaning members of the court. And all interesting in the sense that they were unanimous and, again, in the sense that they were written and penned by those on the left. You had Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services written

where Justice Jackson wrote for the court in holding that the Sixth Circuit had erred by subjecting a straight female plaintiff to a higher standard for making out a Title VII workplace discrimination claim based upon sexual orientation. And this is about the reverse discrimination argument. And this is huge and a real shift. I mean, this is the kind of case where

The 10 years ago, the left would have probably won. That is, they would have ruled that reverse discrimination is not discrimination, that you can't discriminate against the majority or whatever. The fact that now even the three leftist judges are willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the reverse discrimination case, I think is a huge breakthrough. And it's, again, I talked about this Friday yesterday.

A big, big, big step towards ending kind of the DEI woke mentality, you know, attitude, political progress in this country. And this relates to private companies' discrimination. Right now, what the court is saying is all forms of discrimination are wrong. Now, ultimately, what they need to rule is that the section of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits

private companies from discriminating is against the Constitution. It's not within the powers of government to do to prevent private individuals from discriminating on private businesses. That is the real revolution. We will see if and when that happens. But this is a step in the right direction to making it now so absurd. Everybody can claim discrimination. And it doesn't matter whether you belong to the minority or the majority.

In Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estudios Unidos Mexicanos, the court ruled throughout a lawsuit that was brought by the Mexican government that it accused U.S. gun manufacturers of knowingly supplying firearms to Mexican drug cartels and thereby aiding and abetting their unlawful conduct in Mexico. This decision was written by Justice Kagan, who basically was not willing to extend, if you will, the

responsibility. The fact that these guns were produced by Smith & Wesson and others did not place them in a position of reliability vis-a-vis them being smuggled into Mexico for the use by the cartels. Most of the guns in Mexico, most of the guns in Mexico that are used by the cartels supposedly arrived from the United States and

smuggled into Mexico from the United States as fentanyl comes from and people come from Mexico to the U.S. the traffic in that direction is primarily that of guns and this was again Justice Kagan ruling on this again I think a correct ruling and in Catholic Charities

Versus Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review, Justice Sotomayor, another of the left-leaning justices, wrote for the court holding that the Wisconsin Supreme Court's application of the Wisconsin tax exemption violated the First Amendment and then imposed a denominational preference without a compelling government interest for doing so. I hate compelling government interest stuff, but there you go. So they couldn't discriminate between different

religious affiliations for denying them a nonprofit, I think, nonprofit status. It's interesting that they're all unanimous. It's interesting that the Chief Justice let the three liberal justices write the opinions. I think that, you know, makes them have broader applicability. It also probably makes them less

Probably the language is probably a little softer than it would otherwise be on some of the issues. But, yeah, it's these were, I think, a big deal and a big deal that it was actually that it was actually done that way. Also on Friday, in a non-unanimous fashion, the court ruled for the Trump administration against Trump.

other judges who had placed injunctions on the ability of DOGE to access things like social security information. And the courts lifted the stay so that DOGE can access that information, again, pending the lawsuit going through and discovery and everything to do with the lawsuit itself. This was a 63-year

And generally what we've seen is the court has tended not to, has tended basically to allow the Trump administration to continue doing what it's doing while these lawsuits continue. That is,

It's for the most part, with the exception of the immigration stuff, some of the immigration stuff, and we'll see what happens with tariffs. But for the most part, it's allowing the Trump administration to continue doing as the actual cases go through. That is, they could ultimately rule that what the Trump administration is doing is unconstitutional and needs to stop. But they're not stopping them in advance of that. They're letting them do it and letting the court decide.

Process happened. That is, it goes to the district courts and then gets appealed to the appellate court and then it will get appealed to the Supreme Court. They're letting the process work its way through the courts, except in cases like the immigration where people's lives are immediately affected in a big way, like being imprisoned for life in a jail in El Salvador. And that's where the court is clearly affected.

Split six to three, where the three more left leaning judges would like to block the Trump administration from pursuing from pursuing from continuing the action. And, you know, and block it while this is all under review. OK, let's see. Let me I saw some big stickers here. Yeah. Melanie, 50, 50 euros. Thank you, Melanie. Really, really appreciate that.

Thank you. Mike, thank you for the sticker. Zotero Dichotomy, thank you for the sticker. Catherine, thank you for the sticker. Anne-Marie Alleyne and Silvanos got us started early on. Thanks, guys, for the sticker. We are still, you know, a fair distance from our goal for the second hour. We're ending. We're just about ending the first hour now. We still got a while to go. We're going to do two hours easily, maybe three.

Potentially three. That's why I put 750 as the goal. We do 250 an hour. So please consider asking questions, but not just asking questions, using stickers or anywhere you want to support the show. Keep them coming. And let's try to hit that goal for at least two hours for a second hour. But potentially, if we go for three hours, let's hit the three hour goal. Whoops. I didn't mean to press that button, but I did. All right. Let's see. Where do we want to go from here? China trade. Yeah. Numbers came out.

Numbers came out this weekend about a trade in May with China. And what we see is the Chinese shipments to the United States sank by 35% in May from a year earlier in May. That is May over May. This May was 35% smaller. And a part of that is because in March, they imported so much in order to get in before the tariffs came in.

that a lot of companies have inventory from that, so they didn't. But April saw a decline, a significant decline, 8.1%. No, that's not the right number. Anyway, a decline in April, which I don't have the number of, and now a 35% decline in May. It's the biggest percentage decline ever.

In U.S.-bound shipments, basically since COVID, since February 2020, the beginning of COVID, where they kind of shut down. And, oh, 21% drop in April. So 21% drop in April, and then from previous April, and then 35% drop from the previous May. Now, for China, most of the decline in exports were offset by

by shipping stuff elsewhere in the world, primarily Southeast Asia and the European Union. Overall, Chinese exports rose 4.8% in dollar-denominated terms from May of a year earlier, and it had increased 8.1% in April. So China's still exporting, just exporting elsewhere,

And it's exporting to other places around the world. But the United States is not importing. And we still don't feel the shortages. So that is interesting that we don't feel the shortages yet. I'm going to be interviewing Scott Lincecum soon on the show. And we'll be talking about trade and we'll be talking about how the trade affects and why we're not feeling shortages and why we haven't seen shortages.

prices go up yet in significant manner in terms of um uh you know top line inflation numbers cpi uh but we'll talk about all things trade with scott linsicum when he's on the show i think in a week we forgot to trade with china uh the united states has sent uh three top officials to london to start negotiating with the chinese uh today i think it's today i think the talk start today

They've got U.S. Treasury Secretary Bassett, Commerce Secretary Lutnick and Trade Representative Greer are going to represent the United States in the talks. China's foreign ministry said that Vice Premier He Lifeng will be representing the Chinese. The problem, of course, here is that Bassett

And Lutnik and I think Greer all disagree about what the United States actually wants in terms of trade. They all have a very different perspective on trade. Lutnik is, I think, is not particularly smart, as it turns out, particularly with regard to trade, and doesn't really know what he wants. But it'll be interesting how these trade negotiations go and what happens as a consequence, right?

Trump, of course, has already said that he thinks that the trade negotiations will go very well. Very, very well. He had a phone call with Xi and that phone call went very, very, very well. And so that is... We'll follow the trade negotiations in London with the Chinese and we'll follow the consequence of...

of the terror so far on the United States. Again, with an interview with Scott Lincecum. And Scott, Scott is coming. When is Scott? Let me just check this. I've got a couple of interviews coming up. Scott is next Monday, Monday the 16th at 8 p.m. East Coast time. Eight. Ooh, it's late. Maybe we'll shift that to seven. And then the week after that,

But this is early. I'm not sure why it's so early in the day. We've got an interview with Norbert Michel, who's got a new book out on tariffs, regulations and Trump. And that would be I mean, he's he's really good at financial regulations and other issues. So it'll be interesting to get his perspective on what's going on. You can ask him about all the deregulation we're expecting from the Trump administration.

All right. Let's see. Let's see what else. Oh, I want to show you this graph. There's not a lot to say. I just want to show you the graph. It's a cool graph. And I just want you to just let it sink in. I want you to just contemplate this for just a few minutes.

A few seconds because I'm not going to have it on that long. Let it sink in. And I'll show it to you every few months just to remind you because just to counter the narrative of both left and right in the world out there, on the world out there. You know, this graph shows the percent of U.S. household by total money income in constant dollars,

It's all adjusted for inflation from 1967 to 2023. And we're told how terrible, how terrible, terrible, terrible income has been for American households during that period. But what you actually look when you adjust for taxes, redistribution, so money you get from the government, when you take into account everything that's relevant for the actual amount of money that households have, what you see first and foremost is

is the number of people, number of households with $100,000 or more is way up. It's not even close, way up. It's almost, it's not quite triple, two and a half times, right? From 13.1% in 1967 to 40.9% in 2023. 40.9% of US households today earn over $100,000 or more. So,

Yes, what this looks like is the middle class is shrinking. It used to be 54 percent and now it's 38 percent. All of that is a consequence of the fact that high income Americans call rich 100,000. The strictness which but high income, non middle high, high income Americans, that percentage has increased dramatically.

And if you look at the low income, $35,000 or less. Now, again, this is driven to some extent by redistribution. But this is, I mean, the money people have is actually gone from 32% to 21%. So the rich are getting, the number of rich people is increasing dramatically. And they're working for it. And they're being taxed for it. And in spite of all the taxes, that group just keeps on increasing. So after tax income, that group keeps increasing.

And the group the money is being redistributed to, and this is healthy, is actually shrinking. So this should be, this is a good thing. This is a good thing. Now, people are going to say this is household income. So this is caused by the fact that two people are working instead of one. People are working. Maybe the kids are working as well. So together it's all $100,000. This doesn't take into account the fact also that $100,000 buys you jobs.

in many respects, a lot more because of tech than it did back then. And, you know, everything else, standard of living is much higher and everything else. All right, let's see. All right, this is an amazing story. And I think it's an exciting story. Brian Armstrong, who is the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, is a billionaire, has announced that he is ready to fund a US startup that is focused on gene editing

Human embryos, human embryos. This has never been done in the United States. It's been done once in China. And that means that you would go in to an embryo and you would edit their genes to get rid of genetic diseases. It's the first major commercial investment in something like this in the world. The guy who did it in China, the scientist who did it in China, actually landed up in jail as a consequence in China.

Armstrong on June 2nd in a post on X announced he was looking for gene editing scientists and bioinformatics specialists to form a founding team for an embryo editing effort targeting, you know, whatever medical needs like genetic diseases. He said, I think the time is right for the defining company in the U.S. to be built in this area. Now, you know, this is pretty amazing because,

It could revolutionize, revolutionize, you know, our fighting diseases. I mean, people also claim, you know, now you can add the G's to increase IQ or to change the color of their eyes or the color of their hair or whatever. Sure. And who cares? So you can't. Why does that matter to anybody? But the real kicker here is you can get rid of a lot of diseases, a lot of inclinations toward diseases. Now, this is all motivated by the fact that

that there have been some dramatic improvements in gene editing technology recently. It's made it much safer. We saw the gene editing they did on that baby that I told you about a few days ago. So this is super exciting. It could lead to all kinds of things. I hope it comes true. That is, I hope he... I mean, he has the money. I hope he deploys it and that he gets the scientists and they launch and that the regulators don't get in the way. So...

Now, just last week, just to give you a sense of, you know, he's swimming against the current probably. Just last week, several biotech trade and academic groups demanded a 10-year moratorium on heritable human gene editing, saying the technology has few real medical uses and, quote, introduces long-term risk with unknown consequences.

They said the ability to program desired traits or eliminate bad ones, risk a new form of eugenics, one that would have the effect of potentially altering the course of evolution. Yeah. I mean, human beings, the whole point of human beings is, is to alter the course of evolution. What's the point otherwise? To take away the risk element, to take away the uncertainty and to bring science. So, you know, it'll be interesting. Suppose the Armstrong has $10 billion. He has a lot of money to deploy to something like this.

Previously, Armstrong has co-founded a company called New Limit, which is a life extension venture and which this year raised 130 additional million dollars to explore methods to reprogram old cells into embryonic-like states. So this is like stem cells to create stem cells. So, I mean, yeah, this is cool stuff, all good stuff, but there's a lot of people don't like it. A lot of bioethicists don't like it.

And, of course, there's the, you know. So it's going to be interesting to watch. It's exciting. It's super positive. This is the frontier of science right now, at least in biology, the ability to gene edit. As far as we know, the modification of the genome in the twins that were done in China,

went fine. And so they cannot get HIV, if I understood that right. They change the gene that makes them susceptible to AIDS. And I think that's right. And supposedly the twins are healthy and fine. But we now have the tech. The tech is only getting better. In five years, it'll be better than it is today. And this is going to happen. It'll be great if...

A U.S. company got started to really find ways to capitalize this in the most effective way possible and hopefully regulators stay out of its way and let them do their thing. And we will see. There's going to be, as I said, there's going to be a lot of conflict and a lot of backlash, both on the left and from the right, over this. All right, let's see. I just like this quote. This is just a few things, tidbits at the end here.

In the 1950s, Eisenhower was asked if the United States should have a military parade to show off its might. And this is a quote from Eisenhower. Quote, absolutely not. We are the preeminent power on Earth. For us to try and imitate what the Soviets are doing in Red Square would make us look weak. Just leaving it out there, leaving it out there as the day of the parade gets closer and closer. All right. We'll end with that.

And we don't need this. We're going to move that there. All right. Reminder that if you want to ask me a question, question about anything, really, I take questions about anything, amazingly, you can do so in the Super Chat. And we're chugging away. We're cutting away at the deficit. So we're getting very close.

to our goal. We're only $125 short of that goal. So feel free to jump in with questions and support that'll get us to that goal. Value for value. You're listening. You're getting some value out of what we're doing. You can do that in the Super Chat feature in YouTube. If you're on Twitter, you can't do that. If you're on Twitter and elsewhere, or if you're watching after the fact, please consider supporting the show

On Patreon, patreon.com, just put your Ron Brooks show. You can do it there. Any amount, $5, $10, $25, $50, $500, $1,000 a month would be great. I love that. It really does provide a regular, predictable support for the show, and I know what's coming in. I will – I want to say something about –

Yeah, at $10 a month, you get an ads-free version of the podcast. So you get the podcast without any ads. So anybody who's listening out there to the podcast and you hate the ads coming in, just do $10 on Patreon, $10 a month on Patreon, and you'll get an ads-free version of the podcast. So please consider doing that. Of course, if you do $2,500, $1,000, you get the ads-free version as well. So don't let the $10 limit you.

And what else did I want to say? Yes, I want to remind you all of our sponsors, the Ayn Rand Institute. You've still got, what is it, seven more days, a week exactly, to register for Ocon if you want to be there live in person. You can get a, you know, it's an amazing event. Go to Ocon 2025 Boston and you can see the program. It's a fantastic program. It's going to be a lot of fun, both intellectually and socially.

You can get a discount if you listen to your own book show. Just put in there's a discount code place when you register. 25 YBS 10. That's a 10% discount. 25 YBS 10. And to find the links and everything, just go to einran.org slash start here. einran.org slash start here.

And you will find a link there to register for Ocon and use. You can also use the discount, by the way, if you want to register for a online registration, that is watch all the talks online without actually being in Boston, which is a shame because you won't have the personal interaction, but you still get the intellectual content online. So, you know, consider doing that as well.

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deregulating the industry. So yeah, go ahead and sign up at alexabstein.substack.com. So don't forget Patreon. Don't forget to sign up at patreon.com for the Iran Book Show. All right, let's go to questions. Let's start with Remo, 60 euro. Thank you, Remo. I know you do not give personal investment advice, but maybe you can give some personal development advice. What should one do during times of economic stagnation?

For someone in his 20s in Holland, who is now a couple of years into his career, I mean, you should, you know, I don't know that the fact that there's stagnation going on really changes what you should do. You should be investing your time in learning everything there is to learn about the career that you are pursuing. You should be working hard, particularly in your 20s. You should be working super hard.

to get promoted, to get advanced, to learn everything there is to learn, which will open up opportunities for you. Opportunities with the firm that you're working in now, but you always want to have your eyes open for opportunities in other firms, even other countries, particularly in Holland, you've got the entire European Union. A little more difficult is the UK or the US, but you want to keep your eyes open what's going on. I mean, the other thing right now I would say is whatever your field is,

Whatever job you have right now, you should be really paying attention to AI. You should be paying attention to the latest AI models and the impact they might have, and are probably already having, on your profession. How can you use AI to do your job better? How can you use AI to push your skill level further? How can you use AI to...

gain a comparative advantage vis-a-vis your peers so that you get the promotion or even your bosses so that you get a significant, you know, increase in responsibilities and hopefully in pay. So AI is a big area where you should be studying, not the tech behind it, unless you're in tech, but its application, how to use it. In particular, the application, its application to

your life, to your career, to what you expect down the road. So stagflation, growth, whatever is going on in the world, you should be focusing on really making the most of your career. So absolutely push ahead. Boaz says that I predict today I will create more jobs than it will destroy, but it doesn't look like that at the moment. Absolutely looks like that in the moment.

Every data point that I'm seeing about AI shows that it's creating more jobs than it's destroying. Every time a company fires people for AI reasons, it hires more people because it discovers it needs more people given AI. Unemployment is not increasing. You know, the decline in tech jobs has nothing to do with AI. I didn't have time to cover this story today, but there's a lot of talk about

The tax change that was made in 2017 that discouraged tech companies from hiring programmers in the United States. We'll go over that in another show. So, no, there's zero evidence right now that I can see that AI is reducing the number of jobs out there. So I'm trying to think of what else you could do, personal development. Yeah, I mean, just...

Push. Don't let the fact that there's stagnation or economic slowness out there affect how you view your career and how aggressively you pursue it. Wes, thank you for the sticker. Really appreciate that. Fifty dollars. That is great. And let's see. Lucinda, thank you for the sticker.

And Melanie, I already thanked you, but 50 euros, it's worth thanking you again. Thank you guys for all the support. So we are now $65 away from reaching our second hour goal. We've got 40 minutes to reach there, so we've got plenty of time. But a few $20 questions, we've made three $20 questions, and we're there right off the bat. So please consider asking a question and using $20 for it.

But stickers, stickers, you know, load up on stickers. Ninety nine cents. Stickers also help. If everybody did. Ninety nine cents. We'd get all of that money. So ninety nine cents. Two dollars. Five dollars. Ten dollars. Twenty dollars. Any amount. All right. Rational IP.

Another 60 euro. Thank you, Rational APM. Just listen to the Ayn Rand interview with Michael R. Jackson on Ayn Rand, ARI's channel. It is admirable to hear Rand answer the questions with such knowledge and conviction. We need voices of reason now more than ever. Keep up the fight for individualism. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think if there were, I mean, we're not going to get another Ayn Rand, but if there were just more people, if we had dozens of

of intellectuals right now doing interviews, answering questions, doing podcasts, writing substacks, building, creating intellectual content on scale. If we had dozens, I'm not even saying hundreds or thousands, we would win because it's just the ideas out there, the ideas market is pretty thin. It's not serious.

We have huge comparative advantages. And I have to say, I'm encouraged. I think you're going to see a number of new sub-stacks starting up in the next few weeks, months, certainly years, decades.

You're going to see more YouTube channels of objectivist intellectuals. I'll try to have them on the show to make you aware of them. I just saw one on education that went up that looks really, really interesting, really, really fascinating, both in privatizing education but also on just education.

uh so we're gonna get that out there we're gonna get more voices and we need more voices and then as they produce more content as they get more out there they'll be doing more interviews and there will be more and more and more i think content and more and more and more people exposed to it and we will start accelerating our growth thank you lucinda and yeah you guys should do what lucinda does a buck 99 or euro 99 and uh there's a sticker michael

This Gestapo has got to stop. I'm proud of the people in L.A. who stood up. We have to do this everywhere. We have to let this administration know that peaceful workers in the United States should not be treated as criminals. I agree with you completely. You know, I wish the people in L.A. had...

restrained themselves and stuck to protesting rather than engaging in violence, even if it turns out I started the violence, they should not retaliate with violence. I think one of the great virtues of the civil rights movement

Movement was its ability to use protest and civil disobedience to get to get its cause hood and and to get real change enacted without resorting to violence. And this is a movement. Unfortunately, the people there are lots of groups on the far left and, of course, lots of groups on the far right that that are committed to violence that do not want that.

that are motivated by nihilism more than anything else. But hopefully this anti-deportation, anti-immigration movement can be a peaceful movement, can be large, can be significant. And we can see large demonstrations out in American streets objecting to what this administration is doing. Roland, 10 Swiss francs. Thank you. Swiss francs are still worth a lot.

More than a dollar. That's good. Rick Rum, I read that EV industry in China is in serious trouble. BYD and others are discounting their cars and it's become a race to the bottom. Your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised. I think there are a number of factors there. One is that, again, much production in China is motivated politically and funded by the government and manipulated by the government so that you're going to have distortions in the market. I think second, whenever you get a new industry,

Even when it's in a relatively free market, you're going to get for a while what's called overcapacity. A lot of people jumping in and trying to make and in the EV market in China, certainly at that point where there's just a lot of companies making lots of different electric vehicles. And there's just not that much demand for all the different types of vehicles. And ultimately, some of those companies are going to have to go out of business because

And, you know, some of those companies will be there'll be some consolidation in the market. That's what happened. Think about how many auto companies were in the United States in the 19 teens or in the 20s. There were dozens of them. Ultimately, they'll get consolidated. Some will go out of business and the strongest automobile electric vehicle manufacturers in China will be the ones who survive and they will be the ones who thrive in the end.

I also think that, look, the tariffs and generally the attitude against trade is a problem for the Chinese electric vehicle markets. They would like to be able to export a lot of vehicles. They're almost completely blocked from exporting electric vehicles to the United States. So we in the U.S. are denying ourselves access to

to, you know, amazing technology that is very, very cheap. I mean, these cars are really good cars. The BYD cars are really good, and they're much cheaper than Teslas. Now, I don't know that we want electric cars to begin with, but the reality is that the market should decide that, not our politicians in Washington should decide it. So let's see. So it's a natural phenomenon.

What's going on in China? And it's, you know, made, I guess it's egged on and made more severe maybe because of the trade, you know, the tariffs and trade barriers that are being placed all over the world, including in Europe against Chinese electric cars, because all these countries are afraid because the domestic car manufacturers are going to suffer more.

for the competition. All right, Tom, what unites Greta's climate change and Gaza positions in the most elementary philosophical positions, would you say? I think I know, but I'd like to hear your take. Well, I think fundamentally, it's a hatred of Western civilization. It's a hatred of the Enlightenment. It's a hatred of, you know, of successful man. Man is successful.

It's what drives hatred of Israel. It was always, it's what always has driven hatred of Israel. Israel is a, is a successful, uh, country with, uh, that has achieved much. And, and of course, uh, climate change is, is, uh, is meant to attack industrialization. It's attacked industry and, and, uh, and the profit motive and, uh,

capitalism and freedom and, you know, everything to do with Western civs. So basically all of this is motivated by hatred of Western civilization, driven by kind of a mentality of original sin, which Greta has in spades, a mentality of original sin combined with altruism, which is Christian. Now, so Greta is the ultimate Christian right now.

even though she's probably an atheist, but she manifests Christian morality in everything that she does. And I think it's Christian morality driving her to all of that. So original sin, you know, we are destroying the planet, original sin, we're being successful, and they are supposedly victims here, zero-sum mentality in both, all of it is zero-sum mentality oriented morality.

But it's original sin and I'd say altruism and fundamentally hatred of the West. Hunter, gracious, gracious, gracious. Thank you. Fifty dollars to get us over the two hour target. Thank you.

Hunter says, Americans published famous British novel, A Clockwork Orange, without the final chapter, when Alex chooses nonviolence and seeks a better life. Instead, it ends with the implication he is unchanged and violent. What does that say about U.S. in 1962? Interesting. That is interesting. I didn't realize that. I mean, it's not clear what it says. It could be a rebellion against

Against behaviorism. I mean, if you think about the movie, and I haven't read the book, I only watched the movie, and I haven't watched it in a long time, so correct me if I got this wrong. He is conditioned to hate violence. He's conditioned by, you know, he gets these drops that make you feel really, really sick every time he sees violence or pornography on the screen. And therefore, in real life, every time he has the temptation to engage in violence, he's

He gets that same nauseous feeling, and that is a way to condition him against the violence. And I guess in the book, does he choose to live a nonviolent, better life? Or is it a result of his conditioning that he and it could be that what the American publisher decided to do was was basically go against the behaviorists model of

of viewing human beings as kind of, what is it, Pavlov's dogs, that you can condition them one way or the other, and that it really had to be a real choice, and so he didn't really make a real choice. We're not going to let him live a happy ending in the end. Of course, he doesn't deserve a happy ending in the end either, right? He deserves bad stuff happen to him. Yeah, I mean, the film is a very disturbing film. It's amazingly made,

The worst thing about the film is that it creates an association in your mind of the horror in the film with Beethoven's Ninth, because they keep playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the film. But it's, you know, Stanley Kubrick, and it's amazingly made. In Hunter, it says, in the novel, the conditioning has failed, but he chooses to be nonviolent, affirming free will. Wow. Okay, I didn't realize that, and I can't remember if that's in the movie or not.

But, you know, if that's the case, then that's about the best ending you can have for a novel like that. And why would Americans cut that out? Because, you know, whoever the publisher was in 1962 rejected the concept of free will. And so maybe they were affirming the behaviorism. Maybe they were affirming that you cannot change behaviorism.

or the only way to change is through this kind of conditional behavioristic methodology. Yeah, whatever it is that says about America, it's not good. Like taking out the free will element in the novel is really bad. It's really evil and it changes the entire theme of the novel. And I'm surprised, shocked that the author would let them get away with that. The author you'd think would have

the right to basically determine whether that is the case or not, whether what chapters are published or not. So it's really weird. Maybe the original novel...

had that as the ending and you know the american version and then some publisher in europe said no no we want a happy ending and he was forced to add a chapter and then when the americans published it he was relieved not to i don't know it would be really interesting to to read up about the history of clockwork orange and what really happened there observator push

Personal finance, should electricity, water, gasoline be classified in my budget as a commodity? Fungible, traded, raw materials, public good, commercial good, public service, public services. So why do you care? I mean, what does it matter, right? It's in your budget as an expense, right? So I don't know why any of that matters. It's a tradable. It's not raw material exactly. It's not a commodity, right?

Water maybe is a commodity. It's certainly not a public good. I don't believe there is such a thing as public good. I don't know what a commercial good. Public service, again, I don't like public, but it's kind of a public service, but it's not public in the sense that it's not all provided by the government. Why isn't it just categorized as a utility expense? I mean, that's how it's categorized in my budget. I mean, electric and water categorized as utilities, right?

And gasoline is characterized as an auto expense, as a cost of running my automobile. It goes together with my car loan in one category and automobile. So I'm not sure why you care. Why you care will help me determine how you should categorize it, if I knew that, understood that. Hunter says about Clark Woodridge, publishers were on record, I believe, saying it played better to America.

Anthony Burgess, the author, was famously peeved. I'm surprised still that he didn't have the ability to stop them from doing it. So it's not a good sign that in 1962 they believed that. It just shows that at least the publishers were supernaturalistic and rejected any hint of romanticism. Romanticism in Ayn Rand's view being primarily...

on free will, on the idea of free will in a novel. Marylene, thank you for the sticker. Barbara, thank you for the sticker. Linda, thank you for the sticker. Really appreciate the support. Observer Persh says, characterized as utilities while just epistemologically curious. Well, I mean, epistemologically, you'd have to have a clear definition in your mind of what does public good mean? What does a commercial good mean? What does a public service mean?

What does a commodity mean? It's certainly not a commodity. None of those are commodities. So you have to have a clear definition of what they mean. And I'm just not sure it's with the effort to go through the exercise to figure that out, just as if it doesn't have a practical application. You know, it's a utility expense. Another $50 from Observateur Persh.

He says, aesthetics, entertainment. Do you value Broadway musicals in general, at least to the degree you watched the Tony Awards last night? Thanks for your show. No, I don't watch award shows generally. I don't like them. And they usually are not, I don't know. I don't particularly like the people there. And I don't usually agree with the awards that they're giving out, Oscars. I used to watch the Oscars.

But I don't follow Broadway musicals much, I have to admit. I mean, part of the problem is I don't live in New York and I don't live somewhere where it's easy to see musicals. If I go to New York, I'd rather go to the opera. Again, not that I have anything against Broadway musicals. I like them when I see them, but I just don't.

I don't spend a lot of time and focus a lot of time on there. And if I like Broadway musicals, they tend to be old ones from the 50s and 60s, 40s. So I'm not really current on them. If I go to London, I'd rather see a serious play than a musical. But yeah, I mean, at least historically, there was some of the best music written was for musicals. And I think that's in the 20th century, musical and film music was

It's some of the best serious music written in the 20th century and probably in the 21st century, much better than serious classical music by serious classical composers, which often is not music at all. So I don't, but not because I think it's no good.

Ali, does Elon Musk represent the morality of capitalism, where manipulation, dishonesty, inflation, inflated ego, erratic behavior, and pursuit of attention are rewarded? No, because I don't think they are rewarded in capitalism. They're much more likely to be rewarded in a mixed economy. So I think Elon Musk represents a morality of a mixed economy, somebody who can

you know, take a variety of political positions, schmooze with and get really excited and then get to schmooze with political leaders, get notoriety for standing up against regulators. So, you know, if you think about it, five, six, seven, eight years ago, Elon Musk was this guy doing Tesla and SpaceX and kind of respected him as an entrepreneur, but he wasn't

A household name, what made him a household name is his, you know, political, cultural entree into things like Twitter and then politics with Donald Trump and all of that. Maybe a little bit some of his better commentary around COVID, what COVID was going on. But no, I think it's quite the opposite of what a morality of capitalism represents today.

Capitalism is not involved in manipulation, dishonesty, or any of that. Sadly, people associate that with capitalism, and Elon Musk just reinforces their beliefs that those things are associated with capitalism. And in that sense, he does a lot of damage to capitalism. He does a lot of damage to it. Jeffrey, what is the relationship between principles and values? Well, some values are principles.

The principles of morality, that is some values of values on principle as part of a moral code. But not all values are. You know, the fact that you value sushi, great sushi, is not a principle. It's a statement about your preferences and about your value hierarchy related to food.

But it's not a kind of universally applicable guide to making decisions in life, as let's say the fact that you value reason would be. The fact that you value reason affects everything, everything that you do, every aspect of your life. So the value of reason is a moral principle because it guides every decision you have.

And the fact that you have to make a profit, that's a business principle. Profit is a business principle. Businesses cannot survive without profit. And it's universal. And it should shape much of your decision making when it comes to business. But we have a lot of personal values, day-to-day values, the choice of our career, the choice of our... That, you know, don't serve as principles that guide our life. They serve as guideposts, as...

something we're directed towards. I should... You should take a look, and I should do the same thing, take a look at Leonard Peikoff's book, essay, on why we should live on principle. And he had a book. I thought they brought a book out. I have it somewhere. There's a book of Leonard Peikoff essays that was brought out. Yeah, but I don't know.

Somewhere in my bookshelf, I can't find it, where that essay is there. But not all values are principles. Not all principles are values. Principles are, you know, grand integrations, large-scale integrations that serve as guides to living so that you don't have to rethink everything from the beginning. And moral principles in terms of values are values.

Mall principles, the principles. Yeah, the book was given away at the last Ocon, and I have a copy somewhere here, and I thought it would be with my other Leonard Peacock books, and I can't find it. Anyway, later, I'll look for it and put it in its rightful place. Thank you, Jeffrey. I really appreciate it. All right, Lucinda had something to say about, yeah, she said about Clockwork Orange. In the Clockwork Orange book, the main theme is the futility of artificial conditioning.

The title actually symbolizes this. Nava also first shows the conditioning failing before the redemption. Yeah, I mean, that's good. It's much better. And I can't remember if the movie does the same thing or not. She then goes on to say, I'm just doing these because they're related to a topic we've already discussed.

If I remember right, in the Clockwork Orange novel, the main character does worse things than in the movie. Pretty sure he rapes two 10-year-olds in the novel. Oh, God. Maybe that's why they didn't want redemption. I mean, there's a sense in which he doesn't deserve redemption. In a sense in which after you kill and rape, the only thing that you deserve is death. And, you know, the redemption is—there's a sense in which it's impossible to

So I can understand maybe they didn't want him to be redeemed even through free will. Redemption would have him surrender himself to the authorities and demand to be placed in jail for the rest of his life. That would be true redemption. And I guess he didn't do that. So maybe it was an issue of justice. Maybe, and this is a better interpretation, I guess, of the American publisher's motivation. Maybe it was an issue that they thought the American public wouldn't tolerate, given what he had done, him being redeemed.

through free will or anything, any other way. In other words, not fully suffering the consequence of what he had done. Observer to push politics. How much of the L.A. social discord do you think is attributed to Trump as an intentional tactic to deflect from his Musk-Trump spitball contest playing out on an international scale? No, I mean, I don't think so. I mean, I think it was just a matter of time before...

At some point, people got fed up with these ICE raids. I think it was more likely to happen in L.A. than anywhere else. Partially just sheer numbers and partially because, you know, Los Angeles has more people who are friendly towards the immigrants cause. And then I think Trump was just looking for an excuse to bring out the troops. I didn't mention this earlier. I should have. But Trump is always, I think, regretted.

and even blames maybe his defeat in 2020 on the fact that he did not ultimately deploy the troops after the Rodney King riots all over the country. He wanted to, and his Secretary of Defense, to his credit, kept telling him no, that it was not constitutional to let the local authorities deal with it. He tried to deploy federal agents in Oregon for a little while, and it did not go well, but he did not actually...

deploy national guards and Marines and so on. And he wished he had. I'm sorry, George Floyd, not Rodney King. God, LA riots. It came out Rodney King. The George Floyd riots. So he wished he had. And those riots got pretty bad. And there was an argument to be made that he should have, particularly in Portland. But he didn't. And people stood up to him and kind of told him not to do it. This time,

There is nobody to tell him no. And this time he didn't wait for the riots to get out of hand. He didn't wait for the local authorities to fail. This time he jumped the gun, not because of, I think, Elon Musk, but because he wants the power and he wants to assert it and he wants to be out there. And now it's convenient for him because it also changes the debate. It changes the discussion. But I don't think he kind of caused the riots to happen in L.A.,

and encourage them to happen or something like that. I think they happened. It was just a question of time when they would happen. And he jumped on the opportunity because he's been waiting to jump on the opportunity since the George Floyd riots of 2020. Anne, all right, so let's deal with Anne's question that I got angry with at the beginning of the show. You claim Islamists are not a threat to the U.S. nor Europe. Maybe Israel should be as cavalier about Islamists, or do they have nicer intentions for us?

I mean, this is such a complete misrepresentation of what I said. I said that I don't think that they're the ultimate threat. I think that they will be defeated. I have fought against Islamists everywhere. And I think that a lot of Europeans are going to die. And indeed, a lot of Europe is going to drag itself into fascism and authoritarianism because of Islamism. And in that sense, it is the number one threat in Europe.

But the ultimate victory is not going to be the victory of Islam. Islam will not take Europe over. Some authoritarian thugs will. And they will be doing it probably in the name of some nationalistic religious cause. But the only thing that makes them possible is the Islamists. And on the path to getting there, the Islamists are going to kill a lot of people because that is their modus operandi.

And to avoid Europe, and to some extent the United States, becoming authoritarian hellholes, we need to defeat, crush, eliminate Islamism as a force in the world.

I have called for flattening Iran, giving it the infrastructure that its philosophy deserved. I've called for war against every single Islamist organization in the world, including the Muslim Brotherhood that has its tentacles into Europe and even into some mosques in the United States. Nobody, and I mean frigging nobody that I know of, has called for tougher military response.

to the Islamic threat than I have. And it is in that context of the Islamist threat to Europe and to the United States that I think Europe and the United States should support Israel in its fight with the Islamists. Because any defeat of any Islamist organization anywhere in the world helps the U.S. and helps Europe. So to claim that I argue that Islamism is not a threat to the United States and to Europe, as I said in the beginning of the show, is a complete lie.

Otter, dishonest, and I say dishonest because I've talked about this so much for so many years, misrepresentation of my views. I view them as a massive threat. They just are not going to win. They're going to lose. But in losing, we lose more because we will ultimately, they will be handing the West over to people within the West who are really, really, really bad.

So my point is, Islam cannot win in the West. It certainly cannot win in America. But they can do a lot of freaking damage on the way. And part of that damage is the destruction of the West and handing it over to our worst enemies, which is religious, nationalist, authoritarian thugs. So, really, and if anything I said there was new to you...

then, you know, and Anne is not new. So anything I said there is new to you, then you haven't been listening to my shows for very long. You haven't been listening to me for very long. You haven't been listening to my talks for very long. You haven't been following me for very long. And before you make accusations like that, you should actually listen to what I actually say.

I've said, how many times have I said that before we stop, that what we need to really do instead of stopping Muslim immigration, what we really should do is declare war on Islamism, on Islamists, and destroy every organization that is associated with them and every country that supports those organizations. How many times have I said that? Dozens. Every time we talk about immigration, I say the same thing.

You know, at some point, it's just you can't win with some people. They're just so hostile to me, I guess, that any little thing that I say, they're going to misinterpret and take out of context and distort and pervert, you know, to come out at me with some ridiculous accusation. This one being about as ridiculous as you can come up with, given my history. All right, Paul, thank you for the sticker. Capitalist spy, thank you for the sticker. All right, Michael.

You notice local police have become a lot more respectful of people's rights since the George Floyd riots. I mean, you say that. I have not noticed. I don't know if that's true. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. I mean, for a while, they became way too loose and way too respectful of criminals. And as a consequence, you got a spike, I think, in violent crime. That has come down as police have become more.

more rational and more engaged and more involved. And the defund the police movement has become more marginalized. And to the extent that these riots bring back the defund the police, you know, the left is going to suffer from that. These are not popular positions. So to the extent, you know, Donald Trump wins if what comes out of these protests is defund the police and yay for Hamas.

Michael says, suppose ARI was headquartered in Berlin in 1930s. What would the protocol be? Civil disobedience, organizing underground violent resistance, organizing escape routes for objectivists. I think escaping. I think the main thing at that point would be escape. I think it would be too. Once Hitler comes to power, it's too late and you got to get out of there. You got to get out. Shazbat in the Clockwork Orange movie.

It was heavily implied that the purpose of the conditioning was to clear space in the prisons for political prisoners. Alex joined the regime at the end and continued his old ways. Society lost. So he's not reformed in the movie. It's a bleak movie all around, a pretty horrific movie. Thank you, Shazbat. Henry, hi, Iran. Good to watch you at the Institute of Economic Affairs talks in London the other week. Rupert Lowe says,

Ex-Reform MP recently did an interview with The Spectator. He referenced Atlas Shrugged as a must read with a watch. Yeah, I saw that or I saw a reference to it. So that that's great. Whenever a politician mentions Atlas Shrugged, hopefully he's he's a good politician. I don't know. But hopefully that increases readership. That's what we want. We want more people to read the book.

Michael, do you think SCOTUS does not like Trump on a personal level so they'll expedite the process of nullifying his tariffs and other authoritarian measures? I don't think they like Trump on a personal level, but I don't. Well, with the exception maybe of Thomas, who I think maybe does like Trump on a personal level. I know his wife likes Trump on a personal level and was very involved in the Trump campaign way back.

But I don't think that'll affect how they rule. I think that this court is going to try at least to really focus on the law, rule from the perspective of the law, and not let their personal allegiance, again, maybe with exception of Roberts, affect their ruling. I don't think they're going to rule against Trump because they don't like Trump. I think they'll rule against Trump because they really, truly do think that what he's doing is unconstitutional.

And I think for now, they're giving him the benefit of the doubt in the sense that of allowing a lot of his stuff to flow through to him continue to act on it without stopping it until they have a chance to actually engage with the law itself. Michael says, as flawed as he is, could Elon Musk run as a libertarian and do any good or as a Republican, maybe governor of Texas? No, I mean, I don't think Elon Musk can. I don't think he's, he hasn't shown any,

He hasn't shown an ability to be political. He hasn't shown any knowledge of politics or any inclination. He hasn't shown the ability to focus politically.

on a political issue and solve it. And I think it's not what he should do and not where he should be. I think he should be a great entrepreneur. He should be focused on being a good businessman and leave the politics to other people. I don't think, given his emotionalism when it comes to political issues,

I don't think he runs his businesses like that. I can't imagine, but he's clearly an emotionalist when it comes to politics. It doesn't belong. He doesn't belong in politics. He shouldn't, shouldn't go there. Observatory push another 50. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Physiology, psychology, how much wine intake would you consider to be overconsumption? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'm not a scientist. I mean, partially depends on your tolerance to alcohol, but

You know, I know people who can drink a bottle of wine and they're fine. I can't drink more than a glass, right? Or typically, sometimes I drink more, but over a very long meal. So I don't know. I mean, that's very individualist, individual. I mean, you know, when you start fading, when the wine is affecting your thinking, it's...

It's physiology. Now, again, it depends also what your goals are, right? So there is evidence, again, I don't think proof, but evidence that any amount of alcohol is not good for you, even wine. How much it's not good versus the pleasure of it, you know, I don't know. So whatever, I think you have to balance the enjoyment you get out of it

versus the potential cost involved. The cost to your health long-term, that would lead you to minimize your drinking overall. And then the psychological, the cost to your ability to function as a reasoning human being in the short run, that is while you're drinking, that would determine how much you can drink at any given seating level.

But generally, a glass or two, I think nobody, pretty much everybody says a glass or two is fine. Not every single night, but a couple of times a week, two glasses of wine is fine. But to drink a whole bottle is a lot if you're doing it regularly. But you're the manager, right? You have to decide how much you enjoy it and what's the cost to you. And only you can tell that. Adam, trade surplus and trade deficit are mercantilist terms.

and need to be replaced cognitively, they are anti-conceptual. I mean, I don't know that they're anti-conceptual. They represent something. They represent the flow of goods, where goods are flowing to and where money is flowing from. So I don't see that as problematic. I think they're used in an anti-conceptual way. I think they're used to represent as if it's a problem.

But a deficit just means that, you know, you are buying more and, you know, from whatever entity it is that then it is buying from you. And it's just a way to aggregate that across the country. And to say, you know, the consumers in this country or people in this country have a trade deficit or surplus with people in that country. That's all. So I think if you break it down to what it actually means, it's pretty straightforward, pretty simple and not that interesting.

Now, you know, there's a question of whether any aggregate number in economics means anything. You know, whether all aggregation, if there's any validity to aggregation in economics. And I think there's some. It gives you some insight to what's going on. But it's overused. Supikask. Biggest thing objectors disagree on? I don't know. Biggest thing? Who's an objectorist? Which objectorists? Yeah, I'm not sure.

We'll have to have a panel one day on Ocon. Things we disagree about. I'm sure we disagree a lot about art. That makes sense. Certainly about what we like. What we like. Is art a problem? No, everybody agrees on that. I mean, is disagreement within politics? How bad is Trump? Maybe. Probably disagreements about foreign policy. Probably some disagreements. Should we have to defend Taiwan? Should we? You know, I don't know. Don't know.

have to think about it. Steven, hi, you're on love your show. Have you heard of ICE agents waiting to pick up respondents, aliens in immigration court? What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I've heard of people going for like interviews at the immigration court. They're in the process. And then somebody will say you didn't dot the I, you didn't cross the T seven years ago when you applied for this or that, and they arrest them and they deport them.

And in immigration courts and all of that. Yeah, I mean, they're using whatever tactic they can. Capture low-hanging fruit to capture the easy ones and get rid of them. They're not going after criminals, gang members, and so on. They're going after whoever they can. And I think it's all despicable. I think it's terrible. I think it's literally terrible. I have a huge amount of respect for illegal immigrants.

In many respects, I admire them for taking the risk to improve their lives by coming to America. And the way they're treated is really horrific. Shazbut, I have heard that alcohol's impact on the liver is due to depletion of nutrient lectin. Adding this to commercial products would eliminate the risk, but regulators oppose it because it would encourage more drinking. You said drilling, drinking. Um...

Maybe. I don't know. I heard it has an impact on the brain, on brain cells. So I'm not a doctor. You really shouldn't take drinking advice from me. I don't drink much, and I'm not a doctor. Yes, it was more drinking. But that is possible. That is possible in terms of its effect on the liver. But it has other effects as well, as far as I know. Neo, what other options did Palestinians have during the 2005 elections to

other than Hamas? And would it have made the situation any better? Yeah, I mean, they had one other option, I think. I think only one. Maybe they had more, but at least they had one. And that is the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority certainly is less murderous. I mean, not a lot less, but less thoroughly committed to murder and destruction and the annihilation of Israel than

and was moving towards a more moderate position in 05. And Hamas clearly, you know, stated that its sole purpose was the destruction of Israel. Israel should have never let Hamas be on the ballot. They should have never let it function as a political party in that election because of its dedication to the destruction of Israel. That was a compromise Israel made to satisfy George Bush Jr. Would it have made a difference? Yeah, definitely.

How much of a difference? Hard to tell. Would have made some difference. Blaze Guitar Lessons. Can you put the link to the graph in the chart? Yeah, I'll try to find it. I closed that window, but I'll find it. I'll put it up in a future show. Probably not today. Super Caskey, how often are you mistaken as a New Yorker? Periodically. Periodically. My accent is mistaken as a New Yorker accent, but it's not a New York accent. It's much more of a Boston accent, if it's anything. People are quickly corrected.

Christian, why do so many atheists reject God, then embrace subjectivism and intrinsicism under the banner of secular humanism? Is this an anti-intellectual rejection of reason? Well, I mean, I think that first, just the rejection of God doesn't give you a positive set of ideas. So they don't know what to be once they reject God. And they package deal God with absolutist ideas.

So one of the reasons they turn to subjectivism is because they want to avoid dogma, and because they associate dogma with religion, and they've rejected religion. And look, the reality is that other than objectivism, all other ideologies, theories, views, moral codes are either subjectivist or intrinsicist. So

If they're not exposed to objectivism, what option do they have other than subjectivism and criticism? So it's not surprising because it's kind of the only alternatives they have. It's that or what? Nothing. If objectivism is not available to them. Handler Man, what is your opinion of Netanyahu? Do you oppose Israel's settlements in the West Bank?

Oh, God, this is a long this is a big question. I am very, very, very negative on Netanyahu. I have been a critic of Netanyahu since the 1990s. I think Netanyahu is a wimp. I think he's he's weak and shallow and a demagogue and interested above all in political power above anything else.

So I'm a huge opponent of Netanyahu, not because he's tough, but because he's weak. You know, I think that Gaza should have been flattened and taken over and reduced to ashes to a large extent in the first weeks after September, after October 7th. Indeed, I think Israel should have done that.

You know, 15 years ago, in the first time the Gazans lobbed missiles into Israel from Gaza, Gaza should have been dealt with, should have been, you know, occupied.

So I think Netanyahu is partially responsible, to a large extent responsible, for October 7th. I think his policies led to it. I think his policies reflect weakness. And he supported Qatari money going into Gaza. I mean, there's a lot of things they did. It would take me a couple of hours to describe everything I oppose Netanyahu. In terms of the settlements in the West Bank, it depends which settlements.

So if settlements are built on land that is stolen from Arabs, then, yeah, I think those settlements are illegitimate. I think property rights would demand that those settlements be dismantled and done away with. But settlements that are built on land that is purchased from Arabs by Jews, I don't see what the problem is. You know, somebody purchased land and they built a settlement on it.

Or for that matter, if settlements are built on land that is owned by nobody or owned by the government, because it was owned by the Jordanian government, now it's owned by the Israeli government and used to be owned by the British mandate and before that by the Ottoman mandate, then again, there's no problem as long as land is not being confiscated, not being stolen, not being taken by force from individual Arabs.

I have no problem with the settlements. Now, I have a problem with the mentality of the people who live in the settlements. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them, are nationalistic religious nutcases who have a messianic view of their position in Israel and what should be done. And many of them are willing and have engaged in violence towards their Arab neighbors. And they think when they do, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. So,

I support some settlements, not all. And I support the application of Israeli law on all people, including the Jews who attack Arabs. And I think they should do a better job in doing that. But the key to this is property rights. Observer to Pashel, getting to know you. Do you have any deep regrets from your personal experience through life at this time? Examples, psychometric responses, too many to count.

I don't understand what psychometric response is. I don't know what a psychometric response is. Again, thank you, begging, being true to you. Yeah, I don't know what you're exactly asking. Do I have deep regrets in my personal experiences through life at this time? You know, yeah, I mean, some. Not many, but some. You know, maybe related to my kids and family.

my relationship to them or how I interacted with them when they were primarily teenagers. But not much beyond that. I'm trying to think of other regrets I have, deep regrets. And I don't know what it means, psychometric. I don't know what psychometric means.

And Observateur Pichot goes on in a comment, he says, and the difference between blaming and a rational assignment of evil versus good through a reasoned process, rationally moral conclusion. I mean, I always try to go through a reasoned process in assigning evil versus good and in moral, in coming to moral conclusions. So, you know, I've had regrets. Sure. I mean, I regret it.

appeasing some people that I shouldn't have appeased for longer than I should have appeased them. So I regret being nice to people that didn't deserve to be nice to because there was some of the benefit I was receiving, or I regret in some cases not firing people earlier than I ultimately fired them, or tolerating bad performance, bad behavior, and

longer than I should have. So yeah, I mean, if I'm being guilty of anything, it's been tolerating bad people for too long. Observatory Press says psychometric response is based on a survey standard. Just your take on personal regrets through life. Are you like most people who think they could have done something better than in the past? Sure. I mean, I think it's rare that you could say everything I did in the past was absolutely the right thing. You learn, you learn.

You gain information. We're all very much raised in an irrational world with a lot of irrational premises as part of it. So there's certainly mistakes that I made, trade-offs I made that are wrong that I think ultimately resulted from, I think, relatively small but still small acts of evasion.

that, in essence, were immoral that I made in treating people in ways they didn't deserve to be treated. Usually too well, not too bad, too well. I should have been harsher with some people earlier, and it took me too long. It took me too long before doing what should have been done, and I should have seen it earlier. And looking back, I shouldn't have. So sometimes I find it generally harder to be harsh on people.

harsh with people. I give people too much of the benefit of the doubt. And I think I've learned over the years that that is definitely a weakness that I've had. Hopefully, it's something that I've learned to get better at. And I'm less bad at that today than I was back then. Thank you, Observateur.

No, I think they want to win this war. They are critical of Netanyahu. They're the only people really critical of Netanyahu for not being tough enough. That's not true. Others are as well. So, no, I think if they were in charge...

If they had political power, the kind of political power that could dictate it, they would be a lot tougher and they would win the war much faster. But this is the problem, that sometimes winning the war puts you in a worse position because of who won it for you. It goes back to my answer about Islamists. You know, if we have to revert to a far-right solution for Islamists or to a far-right solution for Israel, we're stuck with the far-right. And that is...

The cure is worse than the disease in a sense, or as bad as the disease. All right, everybody. Thank you. We did great today on the Super Chat. Really appreciate the support. Really, really, really, really do. I will see you all tomorrow at about the same time, maybe an hour later, maybe 3 o'clock. But 2 or 3 o'clock p.m. tomorrow for the Iran Book Show. We'll go through the news. We'll cover stuff. And yeah.

Have a great rest of your Monday and a great week in front of you. Bye, everybody. And thank you for all the super chatters, particularly ObservatorPinch that did a number of $50 questions. So thank you, thank you, thank you.