¶ Intro / Opening
You know the quarter Berry.
Sois hi?
¶ Introduction to Yaron Brook and his work
Everyone, Welcome to Zuga now in English. I know this is not very common. We typically speak in Portuguese, but we we couldn't waste a chance to speak with Iron Brook, which is the guests of today. Thank you so much for being.
Here, Thanks for having me and speaking English.
Appreciate It's an amazing pleasure to have you here. I know that you've been doing some events here in Portugal in the last day. You left some today here I think, how is it called Atlas? At Atlas Campus is helping to make to put that together as well for some For the the people that are listening at home, guys, this is a new space, so pardon us if we will have some like sound issues or image issues. It will get better through time. It's the first time we
are doing the postcar podcast in this space. However, for the people at home that don't know you. So, Aaron Brook is the shareman of n RN's institute, we'll talk about what that means.
Who is rant?
Where is objectivism? Is the author of books like Free Market Revolution, Equal is Unfair, which is also a concept that will discuss today, and the leading advocate for capitalism and objectivism. So thank you again for being here. It's an honor.
How it's been a pleasure.
How it's been the visit so far in Portugal, It's good.
¶ Overview of Ayn Rand's Objectivism
Everything's been good. It's a quick visit. I'm on a European tour, so this is I don't know, the ninth event I'm doing in ten days or something ridiculous like that in nine different countries. But it's all good.
It takes stamina. Well done for that.
Yeah, I know it takes temina, because I'm not sure I have it anymore. I used to do a lot better.
People here in Portugal might be wondering. Okay, tell me more. I've never heard about this objectivism stuff. Who is n Rant? So can you? Can you tell us? And let's start with that, what is objectivism? Who is n Rant?
Sure? I mean? Ironland was an author and American author who wrote in the middle of the twentieth century and probably had a probably among the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. I think she'll have a profound impact on the future of mankind, certainly of the US and in Europe. She's a best selling author. I think she
already had huge impact. I'd say on kind of the generation that elected Margatacher and Ronald Reagan, and kind of the move to the to the right that happened in the nineteen eighties, or to the free market right that happened in the nineteen eighties. She still sells an amazing number of books, so she's still somebody who inspires people all over the world. Her books have been translated into
pretty much every language, including Portuguese. And we were just talking Portuguese in Brazil and Portuguese Portugal, because I guess you guys don't read each other's translations, but like the.
English American stuff, you know, we like to keep it. But it's a bit different. It's a bit different. The differences in language are more extreme in terms of I'll do construct phrases. Although we obviously understanding each other, we don't like it both ways, so we just keep translating again and again for Portuguese Portugal and Portuguese Brazil.
Yeah, so her books are translated pretty much into every major language out there and a lot of minor languages. I mean, she was born, She's got a fascinating life history. She was born in nineteen oh five in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and she kind of witnessed the Russian Revolution from her balcony. I mean, it happened right there in Saint Petersburg. So she lived under communism. She experienced what communism was like. Her father, who was a pharmacist, owned a pharmacy that
was taken from them. The apartment was taking from them, had to live with other families, and she, from a very young age, had a kind of an individualistic spirit. She was an independent thinker and she hated Communism from day one. And it was obvious that if she stayed in Russia she would not survive. They would kill her.
So she got out as soon as she could. There was a small opening in the nineteen twenties where she could leave and go do some research in the US and come back, but she knew she would never come back. Her family knew she would never come back. Made it to the United States, got there, you know, a young Russian woman with nothing, went to Hollywood because she wanted to write for the movies. Ultimately got all kinds of jobs, odds and ends jobs, and ultimately became a script writer
in Hollywood. She will plays her first novel is We the Living, which is a very kind of autobiographical novel. It's about a young woman growing up in Russia and witnessing the revolution and dealing with that. Very powerful novel. If you want to understand communism, read with the Living. She wrote a small book called Anthem that was first published in the UK, kind of a dystopian novel atte very very small, quick read. And then she she wrote a book called The fountain Head, which took her quite
a few years to write. She was It was published in nineteen forty five, and she sent it out to publish this and nobody wanted it, so twelve publishers rejected it, and then the thirteenth thirteenth publisher took it and didn't print a lot of copies because they didn't think it would amount to much. But it became a best seller. It became a kind of a word of mouth bestseller, you know, to this day, tens of thousands of copies just in the United States, and then globally because it's
been translated. And then she started working on a magnus Opus, which is Atla Shrugg, and she published that in nineteen fifty seven. This time all the publishers wanted to publish it because they'd seen what happened with The Fountainhead, and it came out as an instant bestseller. It again still sells hundreds of thousands, I think of copies all over the world, and she became a real celebrity in the United States. At that point, she started writing philosophy and
commentary on the culture. So she didn't write another novel, but she wrote lots and lots of articles that were then put into books Capitalism, non Known Ideal, the Virtue of Selfishness, pretty controversial philosophy, Who needs it? These are the kind of books she wrote about the very early beginnings of the environmentalist movement and about the new Left which was rising in the nineteen sixties, so she really covered that. She talked about politics and everything that was
going on in the world. Really during that period. She analyzed and covered given her unique philosophical perspective, and she wrote some pretty philosophical books like Introduction to Objectivists of Pistemology, and she landed up calling her philosophy kind of all these ideas that she developed in the novels and then that she developed in her nonfiction writing. She called that
the philosophy of objectivism. So that came together, and it turned out given all her writings that she you know, she had a position on metaphysics and epistemology, on ethics, on politics, and on aesthetics. She's got a book called the Romantic Manifesto, which is a theory of art that she developed. So you know, I think she'll go down as one of the great philosophers and certainly maybe the most important thinker of the twentieth century.
All Right, and that's said, with all those amazing novels and so on, I've read fountain Head and not Los Shrugged, I've not. I've not read With the Living yet.
So you should. I think you'll enjoy it. I think
¶ Objectivism and political implications
you will.
Oh will? I will?
Thanks.
So that said in a Nutshelle, how can you describe to people that never heard about objectivism?
What is that? I mean?
People have heard the virtue of selfishness.
They are in.
Portugal, so they will scream far right if you say that.
So well, I don't know if I wish for the far right thought the virtue selfishness. I don't think they do. But in Portugal, and we can talk about that. Everything they don't like.
Is the far exactly. In Portugal, everything that is not like social democracy. Socialism type is a far right extremist. Well, let's explain to people.
Is objectivism so subjectivism, I mean it's hard to do because objectivism is philosophy. So it's many many, many books, many many volumes could be written. But on kind of on one foot the brief topic. You know, I believe that reality is what it is. It's not what you wish it to be. It's not what what somebody else wishes to be. It it existence exists as a the law of causality kind of Uh. And then we as
human beings have the tool to no reality. We know reality through reason, through our senses and through our and with the use of our mind integrating the information we get from our senses. We don't know it from our emotions. Our emotions are not tools of cognition. They don't teach us about reality. They teach us about ourselves maybe, but not about reality. And we don't. We don't learn truth from revelation. Truth comes from reason, from from from observing
and integrating. Uh. And then you know, reason is a faculty that only individuals have. There's no collective consciousness, there's no collective thinking. Uh. And so individual is the unit that is of importance, and uh the individual should, according to objectivism, pursue his own interests, his own life, survive, thrive, flourish, and ultimately happiness. So the goal of morality should be to teach us how to live, how to live well, how to flourish, how to thrive, how to be the
best human beings we can be. It's not to teach us how to sacrifice and live for others, and it's not to demand other sacrifice for us. It's to live your life as an independent human being, using your reason, your means of your tool to know the world as your guide and then you know. So if such individuals pursuing their own happiness, pursuing your own life, they want to be basically left free, recognizing that the enemy of
reason and the enemy of thinking is force cousion. So you want a political system that rejects that takes out of society force and cosion. So you want a government that has a monopoly over the use of force, but only can only use it in retaliation, can only use
them to protect people from force inclusion. So she's against socialism, she's against fascism for left, for right, she is she is for capitalism, which he defined as the system where the government's sole job is the protection and defense of individual rights, where all property is owned privately, and where there is a complete separation between state and economics. So so pretty radical as a as a free marketer, as the you know, but it's more than just a market.
It's the idea that rights much must be protected. That is the role of government.
So you spoke about some concepts that some people might think they're very subjective, like happiness, right, Happiness for me can be can mean very different things than what it means for you. Happiness for you might be doing a very nice tour through Europe talking about and random objectivism. To me, happiness is like staying with my family and enjoy a nice a nice dinner them. So how can that be the self interest joining force of the pursuits
of happiness. How such a subjective thing can can be meddled and consistent with objectivism?
Then, So, first, I don't think it's subjectives, you know. Subjective is a term, a philosophical term that really means you know, whatever, whatever you feel like. Well, and I think the pro the principles, the rules to achieving happiness Happiness is not just something that you win, that you whim, that just comes out of your own particular whims. It's certainly personal. Each one of us is going to experience happiness differently, in which can experience happiness from different things.
But even then there's a principle guiding it all. Happiness comes from achieving your values, assuming those values are rational and pro life. Right, If your values involved injecting heroin and UH and being a sadamasochist, then you're not going to achieve happiness by your values. Your values, well, you destroy you, make you unhappy, and actually kill you. So you have to have life affirming rational values. If you have life affirming rational valuers, and they can be a lot,
it can be. I think everybody needs a career. I think, you know, we can talk about that. But career is where you get your self esteem, and I think self esteem is necessary. But some people might emphasize more family, some people might emphasize more travel, some people don't like to travel. There are a lot of specifics that differ
from people, but I don't call them subjective. Hopefully, you know, you can define what your values are and why their values to you, you know, and in a rational way, in a way that you can communicate, and I can do the same for mine. So the formula for happiness is to achieve your rational life affirming values, and to constantly strive to improve, to constantly strive for something better, whether it's within your career or whether it's within your family, you know whatever.
Real what if myself interested just to maximize pleasure.
Well then you won't be happy. You'll land up being miserable. The hedonists don't actually achieve. They achieve momentary pleasure, but they don't actually achieve happiness. We are not a being that is pure material. That is, we're not a being that can only survive on a material a pleasure. Pleasure is important. I'm all full pleasure. I love pleasure. I think pleasure is great, and pleasure is a requirement for happiness,
but it's not enough. And people who dedicate themselves just to having to partying and drinking and drugs or whatever, sex, whatever, you know, they can have fun for a while, but that doesn't add up to happiness. And that's another thing. Happiness is not a momentary emotion. It's not like I'm happy one minute and I'm not happy the other minute. Happiness is an underlying state of being. It's some that
you carry with you for you actual real life. You can get bad news, you can something really horrible can happen. It makes you very, very, very sad, and yet fundamentally you're still a happy person. So happiness is not something that you switch on and off all the time. It's something that once you attain it and you sustain it is sustained as an underlying sense of a being.
So when you say self pursue your self interest and your own happiness and so on. But at the same time, there's judgment in terms not judgment in a bad sense, but judgment in the sense of, obviously there are ways to pursue your self interest that are better than others. How do you explain that to people? A little bit more little because some people say, oh, awesome, I can pursue my self interest. I will just do what I
want and anybody can be good. Is there such a thing as objective morality on the objectivist framework?
Absolutely, I mean reality is objective. So the standards of your behavior, the prince supposed by which you behave, which is what morality kind of articulates, are objective and they're not dependent on you. They are uniform to the entire human race. That is, these are principle that apply to everybody, no matter where they are, no matter what their circumstances are.
That is, it's true for all human beings that the way in which we survive, the way in which we thrive, is by the use of our reason.
And can you give examples, like one of those universal objective moral rules.
Live by reason, live by your mind, be rational. Be rational is a moral principle. I know that's very outside the norm of what people consider morality, but that's because I think morality today is completely messed up, and it's anti human and it's it's destructive. It's why we have so many problems in the world, why we have so many political problems, but also just personal problems. There's a
lot of people unhappy in the world. There's a lot of poverty and death and destruction in the world, and it comes from the fact that we have a screwed up morality. So I think for two thousand plus years, or really since the beginning of mankind, we've messed around with morality, and we've dedicated morality to thinking about how to sacrifice the other people, and how to place the well being of other people in front of everything else. And we haven't really thought about how to make our
own lives good. And this is the revolution I think that iron Ran brings. So then number one, if you had to boil down all of Ironrand's thinking into one principle guidance to life, think, use your mind. I mean, the reality is that almost any time you get into trouble and you go, oh God, that that was a mistake, it's almost always the case that you followed your emotions and you didn't think it through beforehand. I mean it's
¶ Reason as the foundation of morality
almost never that you go, I thought about it too much, right, It's I didn't think it through. I didn't really look at all the evidence. You know, you you get involved with a with a woman who's you know, ultimately not so good for you. Yeah, you let your let your libido dictate what you do, rather than think about about what the consequences of what your what your actual actions
on what her character might or might not be. So thinking is the essence is that the core of human morality what guides us to flourishing, it will makes every value possible. I mean, none of us are born if you look at just basic human values. None of us are born with the gene to hunt. I mean, I know some men think they do, but they don't have it. Right. You know, if you go up against a bison, you have to run down a big animal. Right. We're not fast,
we're not strong, no clause, no fangs. Right, So you're not going to be successful. So you need tools. You need weapons, you need you need strategy, you need teamwork. All of that requirets thinking. All of that requition. We don't have a gene to create bows and rows, bows and ls. Some genius invented it. We probably burnt him at the steak and uh and and and then people copied it with some genius had they invented. So, you know, the mind is the source of all human values.
So what do you decay? For example, there's a bunch of a bunch of people that would say, I'm thinking clearly and very precisely. That's why I reached a conclusion that socialism is the best You even had the expression of scientific socialism, as you know, right, So they really wanted to prove the point that socialism was the best rational economic system that you could have. How do you
¶ Why equality is not a moral ideal
work with those people in terms of rational with better reasoning, what is our.
Sure So you could you could make an excuse for maybe car marks that he didn't know better. Maybe right, Mars is full of contradictions and full of full of garbage and his writing, but you can make it. Use that one hundred and fifty years ago, two hundred years ago, Okay, it seemed scientific, although it wasn't today with the complete failures of socialism. I mean, what people who are socialists today do is they take a knife and they stick it in both of their eyes and they blind themselves
to reality. The one thing socialists don't do is use their mind. The one thing socialists don't do is think, because if they use their mind, if they use their eyes, if they use their mind, they would see the complete another failure of socialism. And if they use their mind, they would see that socialism cannot work because it's a rotten theory. Marx is wrong and pretty much everything he
said why he's still popular is bizarre. Right, emotional, it's emotional, it's driven by emotion, it's driven by morality, right, by a rotten morality.
That's one thing that I was about to say, which is if I go to the streets right now in Portugal and I ask someone about their most important let's say, top three values that you have. I bet you like eighty percent of people will say equality in one of those values. But you would say, and you wrote it, equality is unfair. Yeah, absolutely, So can you do you care to explain that concept to people, which is very foreign here in Portugal?
Sure, I mean we're all different, we have different skills, different abilities. I mean, it's a fact, and it's what makes life interesting and fun. Is the fact the world different. Wall the same, it would be horrible.
So given the wall different, we all have different values.
We all work at different jobs, a different level of engagement. We work harder, we work less. Some people like to be at the beach a lot of the time. Some people are lazy, some people are hard working. We have different moral characters, all different in every dimension. So the outcome of that is going to be we're going to produce at different levels. So it's produced a lot. So it's produce a lot a bit, And the economic inequality is just a reflection of how much you produce. And
that's that's just reality. You can ignore reality, you can evade the reality you can pretend it doesn't exist, but the fact is we all produce different amounts, and therefore income is different and our wealth is different. When you try to equate us in terms of outcome, then you have to use cursion. You have to use force. You have to take from the person who was really hard working, had a great idea, started a business, created something that
didn't exist before. You have to forcibly take from that person and give it to In some cases people who just maybe are not that smart, or maybe people who are you know, got a bad break in life, or people who are lazy, or people with bad moral character who people don't want to work hard, who you don't want to sit in front of the television and play video games all day. So they get by using force. They steal, in a sense, the wealth from the person
who actually created it. So the only way to achieve equality is through violence. It's through taking. And so equality is a phenomena of violence, and it is it ignores the metaphysical reality they were not equal, the mesicallygical reality that we don't produce the same amounts. Now, people believe that businessmen exploit the money they own is not earned right,
rich people do. But the reality is that you can't become rich unless you make products that people want and you sell it to them at the price they're willing to pay, and thus doing your making your customers lives better. Because nobody buys stuff to make themselves worse. Nobody buys stuff because they don't care. People buy stuff because they believe that by buying it, their life will be improved.
And you're doing that by creating the stuff. By opening a store, by opening a restaurant, you enhancing the lives of the people you engage with. And instead of viewing them as virtuous, as good people because they've gone out there, they've worked, they've they've created something for themselves and made everybody else's lives better, we viewed them as scoundrels, as bad guys, exploiters, and we want to take their stuff.
That's unbelievably unjust. There's another moral principle, right justice. Justice means getting what you deserve. If you sit all day and play video games, you don't deserve anything, right, you deserve the video game. That's it. And if you starve, it's your problem. If you go and build a new company and create a new product that people enjoy and value and are willing to pay for You deserve to
make a lot of money. So the system that allows some people to make a lot of money and other people to have less is a system of justice, the exact opposite of kind of social justice, which is what the socialists push for.
Ye, So it's complete reversal. They don't even believe in objective morality, right, They the New Left, and this every type of thing that I've seen, they all deny objective morality, but they seem to be the most moralists as possible. Yes, a funny combination.
They live by a certain objective morality. That is, their morality is based on on altruism. The morality is based on the idea that the poorer you are, that the less you have for whatever reason, it doesn't matter to them why you're more virtuous, you're good. And the more successful you are, the ritue you are, the more prosperous you are, the more you've done with your life, the more evil you are. And the idea is that the only way to get success, to be successful in life,
is to exploit the unsuccessful. So everything is about oppression oppressed and oppressed oppressor. So the successful oppressors. The failures are oppressed, and therefore the failures of the good guy and the successors are the bad guys. And you can see that all over the world. So if a country is rich and successful and prosperous, they must be evil. If a if a country is poor and miserable and treating people horribly, and everybody is everybody is really in
bad shape, well they must be oppressed. So the other good guys and and and that's global politics today.
So there's a phrase from Solzenski that really puts it well in terms of equality. It was also born in Soviet Union, born and lived there, and all these books.
Were persecuted then were sent to the Gulags, and I lived a horrible in.
The Gurlag archipelago. He says. He has a really good quote when he says that human human beings are born different. That's it, just like you said. So if we are different, we will never be the same. Only and if we are free, we will never be the same.
Right, exactly.
The only way that we are equal is if we are not free, yes, absolutely, and even and even then, you know, even when we not free, we're not equal.
I mean, it was everybody equal in Soviet Union. No, I mean, is everybody equal in the Gulug? I mean, I think one of the points he makes is no, not even in the Gulag. Some people are more industrious and find ways to do better in the Goolug. Some people just give up and die very quickly in the Goolug. So even when you have zero freedom, when everything is controlled, we're not all going to be equal, you know, because we're all different.
And that's what would you say that the quality is are anti human value?
Yes, now there is one form of equality that's proke, human and good. I mean, the founding fathers of America, they start off the Declaration of Dependence. They start off the Declaration Independence with the statement all men are created equal. But they they didn't mean it in a sense that the socialists or the left mant it. They mean it, and they meant it in the sensus. Politically, that is
that all men have equal rights. They will all have the right of life, liberty, you know, property, in the pursuit of happens, we all must be protected by the law equally. That sense, a political equality, I think, is the only sense in which equality means anything for human beings. Any other sense of equality, equality of outcome, equality of opportunity, all forms of you know, trying to evade the metaphysical reality and using force and coasion in order to do it.
¶ Libertarianism vs. Objectivism
So permit me a pivot now in the discussion. So we are known as a libertarian podcast. We discuss about politics, economics, philosophy. That's why you're here, right. Why did n Rand didn't refer to ourselves as a libertarian much? Why objectivism and objectivists in general don't refer to themselves as libertarian because it seems as a political system. I mean, libertarianism seems like an expected political system if you think objectively.
Or maybe not. This is what we're going to talk about, right, So it's not that Ironman didn't refer to herself as a libertarian. Ironland was very negative on libertarians. She was very negative on them. And so I think there are a few reasons. One, objectives is a philosophy. It's not a it's not politics, it's not a political it's not just a political philosophy, it's a philosophy. And Ironmand rejected the idea that you could have a political philosophy libertarianism
without a system. Morality, epistemology, metaphys without a philosophical foundations. She thought it was a waste of time to just focus on politics as mostly in an economics, which is what most libertarians focus on. She said, you need a philosophy, and everybody has a philosophy and what And she worried that because the libertarians accepted anybody's philosophy, that it basically made the politics untenable. It made the politics unintelligible, and
ultimately it was a weak foundation. It was a quicksand right. You couldn't build a good foundation. You needed a proper philosophy to have the foundation of liberty. And of course she was right. And the consequence of that is that you you know, what does libertarianism actually mean? Right? You know, some libertarians believe in limited governments and individual rights, but there were a lot of libertarians out there who believe in anarchy, that there should be no government and anything goes.
Libertarians have defended pedophilia. I mean, if the child wants it, they have at liberty to do it. Right. It's pretty crazy, but they're all under the tent of libertarianism because they have a rotten definition of a philosophical definition. You know, the So the libertarians who take a lot of different and and and in many cases pretty crazy positions right now, for example, you've got libertarians who hate America, who hate Israel, who hates civilization, and who are pop puting, and yet
they call themselves libertarian. You know, the libertarians. There's no liberty in any of the you know, there's no liberty there. And you've got at the same time people who are exactly the opposite. So is what is libertarianism? What's the policy that libertarian actually retornis am actually advocate for. And I think the problem is it's too big of a pretent. There's too many different elements underneath this label, and it
doesn't have the proper philosophical foundation. So there's no way to fix the tent without a foundation.
I would say. And we can speak a little bit about it, because I completely agree with you when you say that libertarian libertarianism is incomplete. And most of people that say they are libertarian and they don't think too much about it because it sounds good. It doesn't sound good in Portugal at all. It's a very hard thing to sell, let me tell you. But it does sound good in people that try to prioritize freedom because that sounds good, right, I mean, why should people steal from me?
Why should people tell me how to live? I should decide that for myself. It's very consistent with objectivism. But they try to explain everything and try to re orientate the world in a sense with only objective, with only libertar Liberty is very simple, actually, and it doesn't try to solve much. It's it's very in my mind, that's my perspective. I see it just as the principle of non aggression, no non aggression, the non aggression principle.
That's it.
So it doesn't tell you all to live at all. It just tells you you shouldn't aggress and initiate violence against someone else, and that's it. In all forms. Anything else, then you have other systems that inform your reasoning. But of course, example we are Libertardian and conservative, so I super agree with you that without a moral system that underpins your liberty, then you just descend into guests.
Absolutely so. So so yes, I mean, this is this is the challenge, right So.
But I wouldn't say it's a fault of Libertatianism. I would say people are just trying to do with libertarianism more than it promises.
But look, libertarianism is really a term that was founded, created really in the nineteen sixties to a lodge extent by Mario rothbod Correct, who was an anarchist who believed in a lot more than a non aggression principle. And of course the non aggression principle is not a principle because it has to have a mal reason. Why don't digress? I mean, every system of thought in human history was pro aggression. You know, Judaism is progression, Christianity's progression Islamist progression.
Every secular philosopher and ever existed is progression if it's for the good cause, if it's for the right cause, right, and they've all practiced aggression. So you need to justify the non aggression principle. It's not a starting point, it's an end in a sense. And I think in order to justify the non aggression principle you have to have the right moral code. Almost everybody has a wrong model code.
And therefore when you come to the non aggression principle, they go, well, that doesn't sound right, that doesn't make any sense, because it doesn't it's inconsistent with what forward before. So you know, so libertarianism from the beginning, we're set up as a system that's much more than non aggression.
It has positions and pretty much everything, and it has positions about and even when it comes to kind of if we agree that there should be an individual right, well, where the rights come from, which rights exist, who has rights? How do we apply it in government? Those all tricky questions. They're not obvious and how to do it. Non aggression doesn't tell you how to solve those problems. Those are
problems that need we solved. And yet your philosophical foundations are going to dictate to a large extent, how you solve those problems, and therefore we disagree. So I think it's a problem to have a big tent. And since I do have a philosophy, I do have the model foundations. Uh, there's no reason for me to belong to attend because I find itself. For example, I think libertary. I think
anarchists people who call themselves an alco capitalist. I don't know if you guys call yourself an aco capitalist, but I think that is a very very dangerous ideology. I think it's an anti freedom ideology that ultimately leads to bloodshed. I don't think it leads to the non aggression principle. I think it actually leads to aggression. And it's a
¶ Objectivism's critique of anarcho-capitalism
it's a it's an issue in arco capitalism that actually engages the idea of individual rights. Right. It's because there's no entity that actually protects individual rights, because individual rights are tradable in the marketplace.
What do you say if people give you some like historical examples like the medieval Island because people also have different.
I love Medieval Iceland because it's yeah, everybody, everybody, everybody gives me the me, just finish.
Because some people also see an archo capitalism in different ways, and I really don't like it when people think, oh, an archo capitalism is just there's not going to be leadership at all, no hierarchies, no everything. And I think that's pretty dumb, to be honest, I think that's pretty dumb to think that humans will organize themselves in that way because leadership and aerarchy is a pretty natural human expectant consequence.
Yeah, so I've never be free. I've never heard of a design of an alcoho capitalism that makes any sense to me. They all fall apart, they all turn into violence. And so Iceland was one of the first examples that people always use. In one of the primary example, David Friedman used it, of course. So I visited Iceland, and I asked, as a libertarian economist there, I said, you know, how do how do I learn about that period in Icelandic history? Because I'd like to learn more about what
actually happened. He said, the best thing is is go read the Sagas, the story of kind of the stories of what was going on. So I bought they were selling the Sagas, and I bought them and I read them on a plane and all, my god, right, so this is what happened in Iceland. Right, I would steal your horse, so you would come and kill my wife,
so I would kill your children. And then we go in front of this big gathering right that they had once I don't know a month, once a year in Iceland in and we and they say, oh, well, you guys need to stop, and you give him and you compensate him and say okay, and we do all that, and then we go back home and we go No, I'm still pissed off. At you, So I go kill some more of your children, and you come and steal
more of my host. And the whole saga is is everybody's killing everybody else, constant violence, which is exactly the way I perceive anarchy to be. Anarchy is a system of violence. It's a system.
But that's not what happened, right, That's.
Exactly what happened in Iceland.
Because most of most of the most of the data informs that there was much less murder than the medium average of what you had in Europe.
No, they were the First of all, You've got to be suspicious of data from that period of time, particularly if you're doing median vis a vis might not that story. These are the only accounts we have. These are really the only accounts we have of what happened in Iceland. We don't have detailed records, we don't have a history, a formal history. Really, all we have to learn from Iceland to Loge extent is what the stories that were told.
This is. This was not a civil This the other thing, right, it's pretty primitive, right, This is not a civilization where they were doing science or or writing, or engaged in writing, or engaged in history. Or engaged in everything. It was primitive and it stayed primitive for a very very long time. So if you look at societies where you actually saw progress, which I care about, I just don't. I don't want to live in Iceland, you know, just being a farmer. I want to I want I want to progress. If
you look at progress, progress doesn't start in Iceland. Progress starts in Florence. A progress starts in in in in Europe under very very different conditions h than it did in Iceland. So there's no example that I know of in human history where a it was truly peaceful and b you actually had anything good happening. Right. So it's one thing to live in peace, it's another thing to advance the progress for good stuff to happen.
Becausepaia progress pretty much. I mean, they build amazing palaces. They made themselves rich by planting tobacco that it was forbidden in Italy at the time. Caspaia.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the story because.
It was like five hundred of years long, their story. But I think you make some great points. I think you make some great points.
And you know I've debated this. You can find my you know, I've done a couple of debates on this, when in Poland and one with Blan Kaplan. Uh, and they've got to link the essay on why I objected OCCO capitalism.
I think you make some good points, and it is difficult to defend in a sense because it's a freedom system, so you don't really know, but you are defending.
Because it's not a freedom system. This is the fundamental philosophical issue. It's not a freedom system because for freedom you have to define what freedom means. And to do that you have to have a principle of individual rights. You have to have a system of right and rights
need to be defended, and you can't. You know, Brian Kaplan, when I debated him, acknowledge the fact that in a system with multiple police forces, where we're competing and different judiciaries, yes, the individual rights will be violated because you know, what come to compromises. I'm not buying an idealistic system in which we compromise on individual rights.
That happens nowadays, right, well, nowadays, it's not a good system.
I'm not defending. I'm not defending the system that exists today. I'm not defending government.
Even more if you already have law enforcement states.
Well, I'm saying you have to have. I mean, we don't live in a world that understands what individual rights are. We don't live in a world that has composed its laws and its principles based on individual rights. So we don't you know, we can't learn much about what a proper system would look like based on you know, what we have today.
Exactly, So that it's a fair argument both ways, but you do you make a good case for it. I would like to extend some of these conversations also for some of the rights, because you spoke about and one of their phrases, it was really a good one that I'd like just said, if the pursuit of happiness is rational and pro life, objectivists are not known for being pro life, right, so I would like to discuss that
¶ Abortion and the right to life
point on an abortion so when the right to life begins?
So, yeah, we're very pro life. I mean, objectivism is all about pro life. It's the life of the mother, the life the life. Yeah, it's all about semantics, right, I mean, you guys chose the anti abortion side, chose pro life for some antic reasons. Sounds good. We're pro poor life, the real human life that actually exists, versus the potential human life that doesn't exist yet. So we view a fetus is not human, right, it's a potential human.
It will become a human being, but it's not yet human, and it's not yet an individual, so rights about individual. So it hasn't been individuated, it hasn't been separated. So all the rights at this point politically, all the rights with the mother, you know, the it's it's the state has the total responsibility of protecting the mother, not the fetus. The state has no relationship with the fetus. It's not an individual, it's not being separated, and it's not human yet.
It's only a potential human. It's certainly in the first few months it's just you know, it's am CLMP of cells.
But you don't think it starts after a few months, right, Well when when? No, because it's worth worth defending that.
Well, once it becomes human and separate, So when it's born.
So when it's born, So for example, if if I have like eight months, if so there's a newborn which was born a little bit prior to the nine months, let's say seven months and a half, is already born is in terms of development is exactly the same as the other.
Well, it's not. It usually has to be in a in a you know.
Special case, let's say eight months now, it doesn't really matter.
I mean, it's not a matter of time. It's a matter of being born. But that's matter what I.
Want to that's what I want to test with you, which is if I'm more like a week prior and there is the same baby which is still in the womb, I mean, those are essentially the same beings in terms of development, in terms of capabilities and everything. So why one can be killed and the other as the full right to life?
It seems a bit I mean defense, I mean, because they are completely different entities. One is breathing, the other is achieving all of it's all of its life requirements come through the ambility corde. It's not breathing, it's not eating, it's not digesting. It's it's it has no individual life. It's not an individual yet, you know. It's it's it's not right to begin at the time. To be to have rights, you have to be an individual. So it's just a legal it's a legal concept, right.
So uh, but let's not discuss it that the legal concept, right, because legality doesn't dequate to morality. Let's keep it on the morality.
But on all principle, it's often immol to have an abortion. So morality is about reason and rationality. So it's a question of why is a woman having an abortion? Uh, if you if you lived in Brazil and had Zica and and your your fetus's brain had shriveled and was like tiny, and if it was going to be born, it would survive for a few months in complete out of misery and pain the entire time.
It's immoral not to abort that child, you think so?
Absolutely? But absolutely are.
We certain that that's going to be his life?
I mean, that's called science. It's it's called science.
It because not certain one under oh yes it is.
Example, if you if you have a shrunken brain and and you know, we we know what zeka is, we know how it performs.
Absolutely we know exactly what the life is going to do.
An example, and even if it's not, let's say I'm going to have a child, yeah, and it's ninety percent.
Probable that I'll have it a life like that exactly, I would I would absolutely kill it before. Absolutely, But why because because the misery of ninety percent probability misery is so horrible that I would never.
Want to inflict on another human being that kind of misery. It's why I believe in That's why I believe suicide is not immoral. It's often moral. It's why you know, so I think sometimes sometimes life is not worth living.
Yeah, but you just said, like some a few moments ago, that you can be suffering a lot and still be happy, right, So it doesn't really equate to a utilitarian.
A baby, a baby that has no conception and is born and is just suffering. It's it's intense pain. Oh god, I would give I would do anything to avoid that.
But if even if I said to you, okay, let's then forbid every single others of the ninety nine point six percent of abortions, you would still didn't care because you would still be in favor of that.
Right. Yeah, but again you you you shifted on me because you've gone to politics inte of morality. Right, So politically politically absolutely, it's not an individual, it doesn't have rights, no, but morally speaking, morally politics, but you know, may.
The point is, is it rational. That is the point.
Look, almost no abortions happened in eighth in the eighth months, the number of abortion in the eighth month is almost zero. And when it does happen, you would be fine with it. But when it does happen, yeah, But the point is that that we're looking we're talking about actual phenomena, like because of morality, not because of legal Because of morality, doctors won't perform the abortion in the eighth month, and and and mother and and and and potential mothers don't
want to do it. So that's that's a moral point. Legally, yes, legally, state has no business it, right, the state has no business. So Mali doctors won't do it for good reason. And I don't think you know, I think it's good that they don't do it if you're a woman, because it's because somemall issue. Let me get to the mall issue.
If you're a woman and you've they you know, you're you're pregnant, you know you're going to have a baby, and you know coming eight months you feel like you don't want to have it, that's you know, again, my morality is about reason. Right, you have to take responsibility. So at that point, just you're you know, the whim of not doing it. That's why you know it's it's it's harmful to you as a woman to have an
abortion at the eighth month. It's dangerous for you. There's so many reasons why you wouldn't want to do it. So the only time we have abortions in the eighth month is either because the fetus is really in bad shape and it's not it is going to have a horrible life, is not going to survive, or the mother is going to die as a consequence. So those are
the only abortions in those stations. Earlier than that, most of almost all abortions happened before the twentieth weeks, something like ninety two percent of abortion having before twenty first week. And at that point, Yeah, it's not a human being, it's not individuated, and it has no there's no moral issue. I view it the other way around. Look, if you're a woman and you're pregnant and you don't want.
To have a child, don't have sex.
Oh god, yeah, but that's that's what it boils down to. You should have sex. Sex is wonderful, Have lots of sex. People, Please sex.
And why the sex exists. Let's be rational, why the sex exist in nature?
Yeah, but see we're not animals. No, but my question, Yeah, for sex existence. We're not animals, but we're not that kind of animals. We'll step above animals. So we can take something that in the animal kingdom only exists for procreation, and we can make it a spiritual, meaningful, pleasurable, you know, engaging, stimulating, fun thing to do.
But the next sequence of sex will remain. You can do all of that.
No, but that's why you have contraception. Right, you can have abortion. This is the beauty of abortion. So I'm not just anti anti abortion, I'm poor abortion. I think that if you're if you're a woman and you're pregnant and you do not want to have a child, you your moral obligation is to have an abortion because the worst thing in the world is to bring a child into the world who is not wanted. So have that abortion and and live your life. And plus you're gonna
have to live nine months. I mean, I had a predator. I've got two kids, so I know what pregnancy is like. Nine months which are hard. You know, it's not easy for a woman to go through pregnancy, particularly when you don't want it. So I think the right thing to do, the rational thing to do, the moral thing to do, is to get an abortion, and to get it very very early. This is why abortion pills are great, and getting an abortion in the first three months is ideal
because it very little medical impact on you. It's still just a clump of cells and you get to live your life the way you want to live your life.
We are a comp of cells, just much more more cells than yeah, but we're.
Not comp of cells, not human. My my skin cells, my skin cells are human. They have all my DNA. But I do this and they die just like the fetus, and they die.
They are human as well.
Yeah, but that's why we don't. We don't get upset when my skin cells die. We don't get accept when when you.
Brush your screen. It will never become a full rational human being.
With The point is you cannot conflate a potential with the actual, exactly the the the fetus's potential. It's not actual until it's actual, and one day will become actual. And the separating point is pretty clicker.
Because I would say it's much it's I would say probably if you ask an adult human being, what do you think would be worse? You're not being desired in the world by your mother, are you dying? They will pretty much say, I mean that would.
But you're not get conscious of your own death, so it's meaningless, right, So you never existing is the point.
And a lot of a lot of humans about the four months old.
Yeah, but you can't because he's already experienced reality and he's already functioning by himself. And and it's it's.
Completely itself, is not autonomous.
Nobody's walking, he's calling, is sticking, he's moving, is moving.
He's moving inside of the belly as well.
No, it's just moving with a fluid. He's moving. He's not self initiating action. It is a huge is a huge difference.
So if a baby moves in the womb, it's not the mother that moves it.
It moves by himself. No, it's floating in the liquid and it moves around.
Come on, it kicks, you know that, you know, come on, But.
It's not kicking because it wants to kick. It just kicks. It's not it's not it's not self directed. But the action is not self.
It's the same. I know two months old at all. Yes, it doesn't decide anything, it just acts.
But some things it decides absolutely some things at once, and it desires and it goes. It sucks, right, it knows how to suck.
Because the I have an issue with because I think ultimately is another version of the consciousness argument. It's like, oh, it doesn't have this particular ability that I think is necessary for you to give him rights. The conscious people they say, oh, they need consciousness, they need to feel pain and feel consciousness. And that's around an arbitrary number that sometimes put that twenty weeks or whatever. Some people say eight weeks, some people. It varies widely.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's somewhat arbitrary. I mean, I I someone understand people who say, you know, if it could survive outside the womb, then you shouldn't abort it. That That is what I think is there is the most reasonable argument you can make. But but I don't accept even that argument because again it's not you know, legally, it does not it does not have the rights. And look, I don't think women should have bought.
But after a certain point, what do you mention legal legally doesn't have the right thing. It doesn't really matter because we're talking about morality.
So legally, so again, morality legally I.
Could be could considered a threat to the States and to me.
To me, the moral is the rational, uh it is. It is mauld to do with your body as you see fit, and it is mauld to do with your body what you think is going to make your body better. The fetus is part of the mother's body. To deny her the ability to determine what happens to her body is to deny her freedom. It's to deny her agency.
¶ Pain, morality, and moral status
And it's imo. It's immoral to tell a woman you you know, you can't make a change in your body that has massive implications for the rest of your life. Having children, as you know, because you have them, is a massive, you know, responsibility, it's huge. So and to deny sex because of that, which which I think ultimately is a lot of the motivation behind some people at least anti abortion stands, is horrific. Sex is a re information of life. It's a beautiful thing. It's an amazing thing.
People should be encouraged to have sex, not not discourage, and then use contraception, use the methods not to get pregnant, and if an accident happens, there's an out. You're not doomed then to having a child for eighteen years. You're responsible to me. If you have a child, you're not responsible for it for eighteen years. In every aspect, it's not a small responsibility. This is a major responsibility. So
be very, very very sure that you want it. And I want to give you as many opportunities to get out of that decision as possible, so that when you take on responsibility, you know exactly what's happening.
Isn't that because I understand obviously the concept. It is a it is a challenge of different moral systems in terms of bodily autonomy, and oh, you are telling the woman what to do with her body. I mean, I would say it's not everybody is within everybody, But it's fine. It's a fine argument. It's valid, it's and the right to life and all of that. I understand that complication.
But wouldn't you say that's fleeing away from consequence. I mean, obviously I want to have sex for pleasure only sometimes, and that's fine, that's completely fine, it's reasonable. I think that's a great evolution.
All the sex I have today, all the sex I have to for pleasure.
Exactly, you're not not having. But if it happens because it is a natural consequence of sex, it is an expected consequence of sex. Why should you have? Why should you not deal with the consequences?
You want dealing with?
Is a life?
You know? Yeah, if one of the ways in which we deal with the consequence is to go through a small medical procedure and get rid of it, It's very easy and very simple. Is you know, you can take a pill and it just it just flushes out. So so you know, science, science is made. But but but everything is about dealing with the consequences. That is, again, if you don't view the fetus as as as fully manifest human life, then the best way to deal with the consequence is to get rid of it.
So, for example, imagine on the pursuit. Yeah, we do have questions, Okay, good, when does human life begin?
Objectively speaking, well, and it's separated from the mother, when it's an actual independent being, I e.
It both, But that's when you recognize rights. Right, human life begins at conception, right, it's human and it's a life.
Absolutely not my again, my my skin cell has all the DNA that that that cell has in the beginning, and it's I don't consider it human life. So it's it's it's a couple of cells, you know, splitting and it's multiplying. But it's not it's not yet human. It's not yet developed into into into a human being, and it's not individuated. So no human life begins when it's born.
Let me ask you something. It's life, it's just not human. Imagine I'm doing an abortion potent human life. Imagine I'm doing an abortion at seven months whatever. It doesn't matter because for you morally it would be no problem because it's not a human yet.
I didn't say there would be no problem. I said it would be.
Why would be a problem.
Then again, it depends on why the woman is doing it. Because it's seven months. It's it's a complicated medical procedure seven months.
It can happen.
Yeah, so it can be moral. I'm not saying it's always.
So you would have a problem if I would do a procedure on a seven month pregnant woman that would abort the child. But I would I would do it slightly different. I would cause the most painous possible to the fetus. Would you have a problem with that?
Yeah, because you're being a sadist and you're not a good human being.
But it doesn't matter. It's like it's like causing the most pains possible to this phone. Yeah, but you wouldn't have a problem with me smashing my phone.
So do you have a problem Do you think I would have a problem with you causing the most pain possible to your dog? Yeah?
That was my next question.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's to cause a lot of pain to your dog, so purposefully right to go through a process of making pain for your dog for no reason I value, so you value. Yeah, but I have no problem with you killing your dog. I don't think you should go to jail for killing your job. I don't think it's always in mal to kill your dog. If your dog has cancer and you kill it, that that's okay.
But no one is talking about going to jail. It's talking you feel it easymoral. If I would beat the shit out of my tops, I think that's a pretty nasty thing to even though you don't recognize.
So, so the feed is you need to kill it quickly so it doesn't feel pain.
That's right.
So this is what happens in abortion. In an abortion, In an abortion, they do everything to zero. It's not it's obviously not a comp ofselves for seven months, right, it's it's it's it's a live being.
It's just not human exactly. But I mean, if it doesn't add the right to life, it certainly doesn't have the right to comfort. Why should we protect it from suffering.
I'm not saying anybody should protect it. There's no legal issue here. You have an issue with it, yes, morally, I have an issue with inflicting pain on purpose. Right, we're talking about on purpose here. Now we're not talking about it's the only way to do with the abortion. We're talking about on purpose and inflicting pain. I have a problem with anybody inflicts pain on purpose to another living being, whether the human or not. And this is not human.
But but now, but you just every.
Cell in my body is living. That doesn't make it human.
So I agree that it's not human. What is it?
It's a fetus. It's it's a potential humans on the way to becoming human.
Just like a child, it's on the way to becoming an adult.
No, a child is already human, and it's already separate and already has its own mind, and it's already conscious, and it's already doing a lot of things. It makes it a human being.
I super appreciate you entertaining this go back and forward. I would put too much on data. I think it's it's it's it becomes a bit clear. I disagree. It's fine. You obviously disagree with me. I don't think it's super consistent. I think it lacks consistency on the fact that, then why should I care about inflicting pain on something that I don't even that tobute value at all. However, I super appreciate you.
But I don't think. I don't think. I don't think it's right to not that you reat value to it at all. It's a potential human being. There's value that every potential has a value. The question is how high is that value and how important? If you weigh the value of a of a fetus and again most of them before twenty one weeks of a three month old fetus versus the value of a woman who's going to give up eighteen years of your life to take care of it. To me, it's click cut who who you side with.
¶ Woman's autonomy vs. potential life
Thank you, thank you for that, for clarifying that it's really good. Can I test the pursuit of happiness value? So imagine I'm a father, I am actually and I do have two children. So imagine I decided to have an amazing family, amazing wife, two kids. But then I say, you know what, my pursuit of happiness requires me to abandon my family. Now, my ultimate objective is to go to somewhere else create I don't know, let's do something virtues like a company, solve a lot of issues to people.
I could even create an organization that creates easiest way for you imagine the most virtual stuff. But I would abandon, completely, abandon my family. Would you say that's completely fine with objectivism.
No. And the reason is that when you have child, and this is related to our previous conversation, when you have a child, you're in a sense signing a contract. So you could you could take take business. Right, Let's say you sign a contract where you're going to, uh, you're gonna you know, somebody's gonna invest in your business and uh, you know you you just for ten years. These are the terms, and this is all and let's say, a year into it, you go, yeah, I don't feel
like doing this. I'm gonna go go go go in an island interest. No, that's that's a that's.
A you know, you're you're beingoist.
You are you are violating something much more important, which is your integrity. You're violating your your you know you've made you've made commitments. So being an egoist means having integrity. Being an egoist means being honest. That's what rationality means. You cannot be rational and not be honest. You cannot be a rational being and have no integrity. You cannot be a rational being and not be productive. You can be a rational being and live off other people, assuming
you're an adult. Right, So, once you have a child, you basically signed an eighteen year contract to take care of that child. Now, after eighteen years, you have no obligation to in my view of sixteen or seventeen. Some way along the line, you stop having obligations to your children, and indeed your children have no obligations to you. Those obligations anything beyond eighteen obligations that hopefully are created by the fact that you've got a relationship and you like
hopefully love each other. But you know, not all parents love their kids, and not all kids love their parents. And yet they made a commitment, so eighteen years they're stuck with it. This is why I'm so poor ebotion, because don't get in, don't get into that commitment unless you're one hundred percent sure you want to do it, because otherwise you score up your life and you score up your kids life, which is what happens to a lot of people.
So what what would you say? Because you said in the beginning, and there's something that objectivists say and the I'm super thankful for you to entertaining this this type of scenari don't you say because you said, we are anti sacrificed. You should not be sacrificing to anybody other than yourself.
But sometimes you are. Yeah, but yeah, but sometimes you make mistakes in life, right, So sometimes you make a mistake and uh, you know you you you have children when you don't really want children, and you've.
Got to suffer the consequence of your mistake. Just like just like my abortion point for me now, just.
Again, having an abortion, ask any woman who's had an abortion is not costless, No, it isn't so well, no, because because the woman has to go through a medical procedure that's pretty unpleasant. And uh and and so so she is suffering some consequences and the latest she waits, the consequences are bigger. I was just but but the point is that point is that it's not so. Sometimes in life, you get you you invest in a stock and it's in a goes down. You didn't intend it
to go down, but it goes down. You lose. Those are the consequences of making bad decisions, or in this case, it might not have been a bad decision. Things outside of your control. You know. Sometimes you marry the wrong person and you have to figure out how to separate. No, you know, because if you marry the wrong person, that is a contract that's reversible. Having kids is not a reversible contract. It is, So that's the difference. Some contracts
are reversible, some or not. When you make an obligation to the bank to you take out a loan and you have to pay ten payments of whatever, that's not reversible.
¶ Integrity and rationality in ethics
You have to make the payments. So even though you now regret taking out the loan, the business didn't work out, you have to continue and that's an issue of integrity, and you're not going to be happy unless you stick to your commitment.
That is, your happiness depends on your integrity. I can tell you why I'm much much happier if I abundoned my family. I can tell you that, No.
That's just not true.
I don't I don't believe you. I do not believe I agree with you. I think you wouldn't be the case, but I would. But people would make that.
Yes, But you see, almost all of those cases are based in emotion, and objectivism against rejects arguments from emotion. Look, objectivism holds that I said, be rational is the primary value, but it has it has virtues, virtues that every human being has to bide by if they want to be happy. You're not going to be happy, you know. One of the visues that might be controversial is unless unless you have pride. Pride is one of the virtues that are required in order to be happy, and pride means that
you take your life seriously. Pride is a commitment to model excellence. Pride is a commitment to live the best life based on them all principles that you can lead and if you don't have that you, I don't think you can achieve happiness.
I completely agree with what you said. What I was trying to get at is that sense on when you say we should not sacrifice for others. I think this is clearly an example of you should be selfless in the way that you take care of your children. You sacrifice.
Never be selfless. God, you're not selfless with your kids, because I mean, you're not selfless with your kids, So.
So you certifice.
For them, you do not sacrifice. I never sacrifice my kids. So if I stay, to give me an example of a sacrifice you make for your.
Kids, have time, I don't think that I other. Okay, so you could go to the movies and in my business or even in my work, yeah, I know that I would achieve more. I would have it mylf. You do you sacrifice for that?
You do less at work? Because so what's more valuable to you your children or your work?
Definitely my children.
Well, then how is it a sacrifice? You're training a lower value your work for high value your children. So a sacrifice is when you give up a high value and get nothing in return, or give or give up a high value and get something of low value. In the turn, or give up a high value and get something in return in another life. You know, you know which, which I don't think exists. Right. So if right here on earth you are giving up something of low value
and getting something of high value, that's a trade. I do that every single day. So I don't sacrifice my kids.
¶ Prioritizing values for happiness
When I don't go to the movies and stay with them, it's because they're most important, more important than than the movie. If they're sick and I don't go to work because I and I stay with them, it's because they're more important than me going to work that day. So I always have a higher key of values, and I strive to always. You know, we can't do everything in life. You can't do every single thing that you want, so you always have trade offs. You want the trade off
to be higher, agree instead of low. So that's not a sacrifice.
I agree with you in everything.
That's so, So you're not sacrificing.
However, in the example that I gave you, I would be sacrificing because I don't put my kids up in that hierarchy of values and I want to live, and you're telling me that's immoral. You should stay, you should sacrifice.
I'm saying that your integrity, your moral virtues are right at the top of your moral hierarchy of your high k values. Otherwise you cannot achieve happiness. So the standard of morality is your moral code. So once you've made that commitment having your children, are going to take care of them eighteen years and just abandonment. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't get a divorce and take care of them in another way or but you have to. You've made a commitment to your kids, and to some extent,
you made a committed to the wife. This is why there's alimony and all these other things. So you financially might support her, but you have to live up to your commitments. That's called integrity, and that's a that's a significant portion of that is at the top of the hierarchy. Moral values is always at the top of the higher chary.
You're a good sport. Thanks a lot. Because I'm trying to also connect with the public in portogh because they think that oh, no, sacrifice is a good thing.
But see sacrifices losing that says.
I think there is a crack in the world. I would say because if I don't value my family even if I've done the previous commitment, that can change my mind. Right, you're not opposed to changing my mind in terms of my.
Again, this is why studying a family is such a big deal. And this is and it's a big deal. It's not and I think you know, I'm not worried about people not having a lot of kids, you know, because I think a lot of people do a lousy job with their kids and shouldn't have kids. So it's a big deal having a family. It's a huge responsibility. Make sure you're ready for it. Make sure you're with the right partner for it. You know, I don't believe you should have children a year after you get married.
You know, get married, live with a woman for five, six, seven years, make sure you're compatible, make sure you work together, and then have kids. Right. I know people who have a bad marriage and to solve the conflict in the marriage, they have kids. That it drives me crazy. It was idea ever because the kids will just make that all the challenges even was but but so yeah, I take it very seriously. Your commitments in life are very serious. If you say you're going to do a job, do
the job. If and here you said, I'm going to do the job of taking care of these kids, then do it. Uh and so so, Yes, it is sometimes you have to make long term investments and you have to you have to live up to those commitments.
Yeah, I agree, I agree, I agree with that. Can we move on to a simple question. So and Wren
¶ Aristotle's influence on Ayn Rand
said that she liked Aristotles, right, Yeah, what she liked about Aristotles.
I mean she liked she liked a lot about Aristotle. I mean she liked his emphasis on reality a is a kind of the whole idea of reality is what it is, and the identification of that. She liked.
Uh, she liked and ethics. I think that's true.
Yeah, I mean she she basically liked the ethics. The standard of the ethics is individual human flourishing. She would disagree with the particular virtues. She had different virtues, and she comes at them very ferily than Aristotle does. But she likes I mean, he's the only other philosopher, a thinker who had an egoistic moral system. His system is based on your own flourishing, and here are the ways
to get it. They disagree on the ways, but they agree on the human flourishing as the standard you dominea, happiness is the stand is what you strive towards. You know. She liked the fact that he was the father of logic, right and and really the father of science. He was a scientist himself. Now, he wasn't a very good one in a sense that a lot of his conclusions scientific conclusions turned out to be wrong, but his methodology was right. So the only way to correct Aristotle is to use
Aristotle's method to correct it. Look, he was the greatest philosophy in all of human history. I think, you know, almost all of the modern world that exists today is due to Aristotle. Uh and and so yeah, I mean she was she was the only he's the only philosopher she really admired because of Zados. I mean, ideas were I mean, there were flaws in them, but again, he lived twenty five hundred years ago, so you'd expect that.
Would she disagree with him also on because he had the mover argument for the existence of a deity right existence of a god?
Yeah?
What did?
Would and Rand also disagree on Objectivists also disagree with aristotles on that if to move something, there needs to initiate movement, and there needs to but there's needs to be someone that initially moves something in the universe is moving, you know how it goes?
Right?
Yeah, I mean and and you know who initiated the initiator?
So this was my slik way of introducing religion.
Yes, so so who do you think who initiated the initiator? You know, I don't think it's a particularly good argument, but again, it's twenty five hundred years ago, you know. I think Iman, you know, argued that religion was a permittive form of philosophy. I think Aristotle is pretty advanced philosophy. And that's why God plays such a small role in universe. It just thoughts and then he walks away. He's not a present God. So you know, I don't think I
don't think it stands up. His argument stands up to logic and reality. But I'd rather take his argument for the existence of God as something that moved it and went away then conventional religions argument for ever present God who intervenes in human affairs and who listens to our prayers.
¶ Religion, morality & human flourishing
Do you think it is at least or it has been utilitarial and speaking like if you think purely as a utilitarian, I think at least that has been Would you recognize the utility of it to create those moral codes that you say are essential for humans to flourish with freedom within each other.
No, I think it's exactly the opposite. I think it's I mean, in almost every realm, I think religion has been a net negative for humanity, particularly i'd say over the last two thousand years. Yes, I mean, what it did is retard the ability to come up with rational, objective moral codes. Because it's it.
Even if you're so, let's focus on European experience, because otherwise I'm not just just your talk just about you. Most of most of the philosophers of like the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are they are there. They were all like priests, like.
Yeah, and they were terrible philosophers. They were really really bad, with exception of a quietness. We'll get to good. Yeah, well not really good. He was good, but we'll get to why he was good. He was good in comparison to everybody else, he was really good, but in terms of objectively he was only good. And in comparison to Aristotle, I mean, but so so the point is this imagine a world and I know it's hard, but imagine a
world that where Christianity never rises. And who takes Aristotle seriously, just Aristotle right takes Aristotilian philosophy and now says, okay, let's work on this problem that he gave us how to construct the best moral system, given you doming air, given the need for human flowishing, I think we would be a thousand years more advanced today than we all right, I mean, that is an amazing world. You wouldn't have socialists,
you would't have communists. You know, you wouldn't have a fascist because because you'd have built a moral system from the beginning on a foundations of reason, on a foundation of science, and a foundation on the best philosopher ever was laying, which is a foundation of self interest. Instead, and I don't want to I'm gonna say harsh things about Christianity. I don't want to offend it. So instead
you get Jesus. Instead, you get a philosophy that says that your idol, your hero, is somebody who died a most horrific death, a really painful death. We really talk about pain, right, A horrific death, not for his sins that I could get under stand right, but for everybody else's sins and in an act of ultimate sacrifice that
is horrific. That's the ma all ideal. So the mall ideal now is for me to sacrifice the other people the all ideal, and every saint, every saint that we have in the list of saints, all give up their lives for the sake of you know, other people.
Higher idea, but not a higher.
Idea that's connected to this world, the higher idea that's connected to another world. Then none of us have any evidence exists. All of it is about the other world. So if you think about Aristotle, Aristotle believes in he doesn't believe in sacrificing for another world. You know, he doesn't believe in sacrificing for God. His God just set the world of notion and it's gone. He doesn't believe in sacrificing for other people. He believes in sort of
virtues that will get you. I disagree with some of those virtues, but that's a see, that's an interesting conversation. We can have a conversation once we agree that you need virtues in or to achieve individual happiness, and that this world is our standard we can now have an a discussion about which virtues make sense, which virtues don't. Instead, we have had two thousand years of discussing how to sacrifice, who to sacrifice, to win, to sacrifice when it's not
good to sacrifice, and then what Thomas Aquinas does. Because for a thousand years, up until Thomas Aquinas, Christianity was almost exclusively and all the philosophers and all the monks and exclusively focus on on on the other world. This world sucked. It was horrible. It was terrible. You just need to somehow survive it and you get to the other world. And it was it did.
It really sucked at the time.
It did, and it did to a large example because Christianity, I mean Christianity was the cause of the sucking.
It was more, it was more advents than other cultures in Filago, for example, that the Church founded most of the universities.
That no, I mean, I mean, I'm reading a lot of history right now, so I'm writing a book, by the way.
But didn't Church created most of the universities.
But late late in the Middle Ages, I mean.
There were no universities property.
But the universities in the beginning when they started, they were universities. By the way, we're talking about Europe Kale right, Oh, no, the scale was much larger. Baghdad was much larger than anything was done in the West. In Bukar, in Central Asia, in India and China, there were universities on a scale much bigger than anything that existed in the West. They were richer, they were more prosperous, they were they were
more advanced scientifically in every respect in the West. The West from the period of the rise of Christianity until Thomas Aquinas and really until the Renaissance till fourteen hundred, was a primitive society on a global scale. It was way behind the Arabs, the Muslims, it was way behind
the Indians, and it was way behind the Chinese. I mean, what does a magnitude behind, Right, It's only when Thomas Aquinas does something miraculous instead of the focus on the other world, which I think sustained Europe into poverty and misery for a thousand years. By the way, in those thousand years in Christendom, not a single astronomic observation was made. Right now, for most of the Greeks and the Romans,
people will make astronomical observations all the time. And this is just an indication of almost no science, almost nothing. All the scientific achievements are happening in the Arab world, in the Indian world, in the Chinese world. So then the Quinas says, I've read Aristotle, and Aristotle puts a huge emphasis on this world, on reality, unhappiness. Maybe we need to integrate them. So he brings Aristotle in from and then you start seeing progress. Then you start you
get universities. Then, I mean the university started a little before, but also from the discovery of Aristotle, the University of Paris. They're getting the book where they're getting Aristota from from the Arab libraries in Coldeba and Toledo. That the Christians are concrete and they're taking those books and they're translating. They read Aristotle not in Greek because they don't know Greek. They read him in they translate the Arab transfer of
the original Greek into Latin. And that's how they read Aristotle. Since the Arabs who save civilization as horrible as that as I unimagine was that is given the Arab world today. But it is interesting because what happens in the Arab world is they have this amazing enlightenment in sense of Renaissance enlightenment from eight hundred to twelve hundred, and it dies. It dies for a couple of two reasons. One mongol invasions kill a lot of them. But the second is
they start taking Islam seriously. And the more you take religion seriously, the less progress science success there is the more so. And that happened in the Christian world, that happened in the Islamic world, it happens, it happens in India with Buddhism and everywhere you go. When religion is primary, then science and progress and human happiness and flourishing and all of that goes down when religion is subsides and
you allow for these ideas to come up. And of course the wealth that we have today is a product of enlightenment. It's a product of a secular society. It's not a product of religion. It's a it's an egagment of religion. And again, just having moral values doesn't guarantee
feeder happiness. You need the right moral values, and I think Christianity has the wrong moral values because it emphasizes another world and it emphasizes wu based, an authority based system, which also opens up human consciousness to authority.
Can I can I object to that? Examples? So for example, you mentioned socialism and communism. I mean, everybody knows that was an atheist movement. Everybody knows that.
But it's just not true.
So even called religion.
People, yes, even even what's his name, oh God, this book called Dominion, which is which is a big, very successful book. Even in Dominion, he knows and he realizes that all marks does, and all that socialists do is secularize Christianity. That is the fun mental thing that they do. They take them all code of Christianity and they secularize it.
And indeed, if you look at the first communes, the first socialist settlements in the in human history, they're all Christian and and then the the the Church suppresses them because it doesn't want its authority questioned and it doesn't like this this stuff. But it's all based on someone in the mound. It's all based on the ideas in the Old Testiament, at least their interpretation of it. You might have a different interpretation, and that's fine. It's one
of the beauties of of of of religious books. You can find whatever the hell you want in them. You bring your own philosophy to it, and you and you, and you, you take from it what you want. But you know, no socialism and and and and communism, of all the trappings of religion. They have all the trappings of a particular religion, Christianity. It's it's a it's a very Christian, secularized Christian philosophy, and it's basically based on idea of sacrifice. It's based on the idea of morality
that the individual doesn't matter. There's some higher being that you should sacrifice too. And here they replace God with the proletarian, and you should sacrifice to the proletarians they replaced they replaced the pope with a with a dictator, because you need somebody to commune with the spirit, you need somebody to get revealed truth. And it's the exactly opposite. Yeah, but it's exactly opposite.
People will inevitable create hierarchies of value, and they will substitute all the things.
Yes, but the whole point is not to substitute God. The whole point is to go by reason, to go by rationality, and rationality is not a God. Reason is not a god. Reason is a methodology, and the beauty of the Enlightenment is that it doesn't. What it does is it introduces reason. And what Marks does, in spite of calling himself scientific, is you reject reason. He rejects
evidence that the communist reject reason, Fascism reject reason. So all of these are the rejection of reasons I view, I view anti reason ideologies, religion, communism, socialism, Marxism, they have much more in common. What's new is the Enlightenment and objectivism. Objectivism I view as a continuation of the spirit of the Enlightenment, of the ideas of the Enlightenment is pro reason, so anti reason, proism. That's the way you should divide ideas up.
And you're probably very aware of the French Revolution.
Yeah, but the Frenchier evolution was motivated primarily Again, history matters. The Frenier evolution is primarily motivated by the one thinker in France who is anti Enlightenment, and that is Russau. Russau writes his first major essay is an essay that says, but.
They use the same arguments, did they even substitute.
Is pro Yes? You know that right, yes?
And you know the consequence, yes, course.
But they're inspired. They're inspired not by the Enlightenment that actually advocated for reason. They're inspired by Rousseau, who's a bad guy, but he's the one who dominated why because he the closest to Christianity. He was the closest of religions.
So when people were built, rejected Christianity, they even burned known.
But that's the beauty of it, right, The beauty of it is that if you create a secular philosophy, it's very similar to Christianity. You can be added Christian and pretend that you're free of Christianity, but you're not because it's so similar. The difference is the funding fathers, the founding fathers, created a new system, not based on Christianity, not connected, not based on Christianity. No individual rights.
¶ Founding Fathers on religion and government
It's given by God, right, I mean, it's there on.
The it's by by they create it exactly. So yeah, but but but what kind of what kind of creator is it? It's nature? It's Christian They were all English, they were they were not Christian. They were deists. Most of them were deists. Jefferson was a Deist. They were very unconventional Christians. They viewed more. They viewed, Uh, Christianity is as you know, they rejected all the miracles, right. You know there's a Jeffersonian Bible where he cuts out of the New Testament all the miracles.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, there's something called the Jeffersonian Bible. You can look it up. It's really interesting. No, you know, they are men of the Enlightenment. If you look at their libraries, their libraries are dominated by Enlightenment writings, the Minutes of Science, the Renaissance Man. Yeah, religion plays a role. They hadn't completely rejected it yet, but it's a small role relative. There's no The whole system of government that they create
is something that's created. It comes out of the writings of Lacke, and it comes out of the writings of Monusque and out of others. It's not something that they're just taking from the Old Testament or the New Testament. It's something that they create a new whereas the French Revolution is very much in its values aligned with Christianity. That's why, you know, and that's why it's so easy to accept. That's why the masses just embrace it so quickly.
But you have to separate the Enlightenment from so is the first anti Enlightenment philosopher, and he is the most influential philosopher during the French life, during French Revolution, which is the tragedy. The French Revolution could have been a good thing if it had just gotten rid of the king and they hadn't had all the bloodshed. But it
could have been. It could been. It could have mimicked the American Revolution, and they chose not to mimic the American Revolution and in that sense, to be an anti Enlightenment phenomena instead of a po Enlightenment phenomena.
Yeah, awesome, and we will move to that. Let me just do a final point on that. What about if you look at today, So the secular world of today,
¶ Secularism in the modern world
why don't you say that it's more idnistic.
I hate the secular world of today exactly, but I also hate the religious world of today. So it's it's a false economy, right to take there.
But it's the world without religion, and look at what it brought to Yeah.
But you know, it's a world without religion, and yet here we sit streaming all over the world that marginal cost of zero this podcast. It's an amazing world that we have because it's it's a non religious world. So yes, I mean a lot of people lack values because they haven't been introduced a prof of philosophy. And what we need is to replace religion, not with nothing, not with a void. I'm not arguing that we should all become hedonists nihilists, which I think a lot of people become,
but replace religion with philosophy. And if we replace religion with philosophy, then the world would as good as it is. And I think it's pretty wonderful as it is in spite of out all our negativity. It's pretty amazing that we're sitting here and doing what we're doing. And I flew here and everything. It could be so so so much better and people would be so so much happier. But for that, they don't need the cutch of religion. What they need is a new philosophy.
Awesome, thanks a lot for clarifying that. Let's go to some of the questions. Okay, okay, but are your favorite thing then? So Mario Golmus says that religion has delayed science for decade maybe centurists. Those are facts, he said, So it's with you and the monol Bourgado says that it can say what it wants, but the West wouldn't be what it is today without Christianity.
Yeah, we wouldn't have socialism, we wouldn't have communism, we wouldn't have all the bad elements.
Well, I think that's a bad example, right, because socialism it's it's like an atheist movement.
But it couldn't be.
But it's not a good example.
First of all, it's not true because as I said, the first the first socialist communities were Christian communities in in the in the in the tenth century.
The first university is like in Europe or Catholic. But again they were the biggest philosophers.
But you don't need you know, the universities came about in spite of Catholicism, not because of Catholicism. They they weren't. They weren't They weren't made possible by Catholicism. They somehow achieved the success in spite of being in a Catholic world.
But they were. But I understand what he's saying, But they were actually directly funded through the She's not like they against the searching looks, let's just funded them.
I get that the church, the Church often acted against, you know, certain of its interests, that then changed its mind. So so you know, the church funded all the great art in the Renaissance, and then Luther got pissed off at that and among many other things, and started. So there was a counter there was a counter reformation, and you know, they went to the they went to the Sistine Chapel and in Michelangelo's what do you call it? Uh? When you be when the dead all rise? Uh? And
and and Jesus decide who goes to heaven hell? What do you call that?
I don't know what he called that. When Jesus came zus volta it's see the connect anyway, there's the.
Huge painting in the Sistine Chapel. There is and and and the pope pope tells them to cover up all the penises. Ye yep. Because the counter reformations they go back and forth, right, they go back and forth during time. But look, the reason universities were founded, the reason that the Church, the Church did that is not because of Christianity. It was because they were discovering all these secular writings
in these libraries. They were discovering in Spain of Aristotle of the first doctors from Greece, the astronomers from Greece, the scientists from Greece, and they needed to integrate this material and they created universal universities for that. So it's the discovery of a secular world. And when we look at a secular world, you can look at Greece, you can look at Rome as examples, rather than looking at
at socialism or communism. Those were just a secular and in the Greece you could argue more and yeah, but you know, gods that are running around among us and having sex is not exactly.
It's not exactly religion. But let me just push back a little bit because I've been reading Lock and even some of the founders in the in the US are always pretty adamant in terms of their inspiration on Christianity to found our society. And even Lock himself he has texts saying what I've written is not for the beast Like atheists. He actually said.
¶ John Locke and the birth of individualism
That I know, I know, I know, but but but yes, I know that, but but but look, you know, he lived in the he lived in the early you know, in the seventeenth century, in the late part of the seventeenth century, you could not be religious at that point. Everybody was. Everybody was crazy. Everybody no, no, he he doesn't believe atheists have rights, and he doesn't really Catholics have rights, by the way, so he says really nasty things about Catholics.
That's true, and he.
Has to escape London and go to Amsterdam because the Catholic king is coming. So look, I mean, Lucke is not God right and and he's flawed.
And I say that because a lot of people.
But his logic is not derived from theology. His logic is derived from reality.
He himself said it was I know.
But but it wasn't.
Yeah, and there was I was about to say something. Oh. There is a book called Inventing the Individual. That's why I say this, And I'm saying this for a point,
which is the eventual of the individual. That book argues actually, and it goes to the history of the Church and the history of Christianity, and it argues that actually the liberal, objectivists, libertarian all those combination of values that combine with each other to create the individual, and that sense, the egoistic individual that should pursue its happiness actually derives from Christian believes.
That is that is a big reach because you know, when Christianity dominates the no egoists and they know people pursuing their values, what you get as the Dark Ages. When Christianity wins, what you get is collectivism. You don't get individualism, you know, and and the creation of the individual. You know, you already have those ideas in Greece before I'm on Greek philosophers, before the invention of Christianity. So so no, I don't buy any of those argum. It's
like exposed people looking back and try to rationalize. If you actually look at the history, it's very clear Western civilization becomes civilized when it introduces Greek ideas, and the more committed it is to religion, the less civilized it is.
¶ Preview: Christianity versus the West
The more committed it is to Greece, the more civilized it is. So there's a direct relationship. So I've got a book coming out. You might be interested. I mean, it's I'm hoping to come out next year because we're still writing it. But it's basically Christianity versus the West. So my argument is Christianity is hampered West, and the West not helped it. That it's it's held it back and we'll compare with some of the other civilizations. This is why I'm doing a lot of reading on this
with the other civilizations at the same time. But it's it's pretty amazing what was going on, for example, in Central Asia in the ninth and tenth century when there was nothing going on in the West.
Thanks a lot, Thanks a lot for thinking and.
And I just want to say this, the reason it was going on in Central Asia is because they were translating the Greeks. So you know, they had all the Aristotle's writings, that Plato, they had the other science, and they worked they developed that. So even though they were nominally Muslim, they you know, Islam was in the background, and they focused on philosophy and science. Just like post a Quinas, we kind of put religion Christianity a little bit to the side and we focus on Aristotle and
the sciences and all this stuff. So every civilization that's exposed to Greek ideas does well.
All right, Thanks a lot for explaining it. I think it's pretty clear your your view, and that's what matters the most.
Yes, you have more appreciate that.
I could finish off with.
There's a lot of religious opposition and I could tell that.
No, but it's it's it's because I knew that like abortion, religion and all of those topics will give an interesting conversation for you to actually explain your views. And I do. I do disagree, and I think that's obvious. But but it's good. Another question, says Manuel, Uh, a Christian society can resist better to invasion of Muslims, for example, which is happening right now, to a secular society.
I think that's absolutely not the case. It's it's, uh, you know, a secular society. Again, what secular society? Secular means nothing, right, So what secular society and objective is?
Second that Europe is a very secular organized society right now?
Right, I mean yeah, but but it's but secular without values is not a value to me. Right. I'm not defending I'm not defending a Europe as a stance today versus some Christian ideal I think.
Christian idea, right, I mean we organized around the Crusades, I mean Portugal was born that way.
No, I know. And the first people, you know, who are the first people you killed out you killed during the Crusades, Who were the first Muslims? No, first people you killed in the crusade. Read up in the first crusade with the Jews. So the crusade starts in northern Germany and northern France and northern Germany. They sweep down in Germany, they killed any Jew they find, They kill whole communities. They slaughtered them all way before they reached
they reached the Middle East. So it was bar Babic Christianity. It has been in its history of bar Barbic religion, and it it you know, it went to war with the Muslims over something that was irrelevant. What was irrelevance to a peasant in France who wouled Jusalem? What a stupid War's engaging.
Not only about that, right, because all of the most of the Middle Easts, in that part which is now I mean Israel, it was a Byzantine empire, was Bristian, right, so they were defending the invasion of in Christian territory. There became an attacks on non prior Christian lens.
There was never a well, there was all the time, right, I mean, much of the crusades were in Scandinavia, which were pagan countries, and there was an attack there to convert them into Christianity. Most of Europe was Christianized by the sword, and through through you know, Constantine, post Constantine to own Empire expans Christianity throughout Europe by the sword. So so no, you know, I think that the best way to combat the kombat Islam is with a with
a secular ideology that's based on reason. And believe me that my views, if people had listened to me after nine to eleven, or even before nine to eleven, then we would not have an Islamic problem right now. So again, I don't sympathize with everybody who says I'm secular. I mean, obviously communists and socialist are my enemies on ninety nine percent of the stuff. Just because they say they're secular doesn't mean anything to me, doesn't make them my allies.
I have a particular philosophy, This is the point. And Christianity it doesn't know how to deal with Islam and UH and the secular world does it does the secular
¶ Secularism vs. Islamist fundamentalism
it doesn't. It doesn't know how to deal with the slamp and and what it will lead to is religious wars, which is not what we need. What we need is the deal with the Slam and the deal with the Slam through reason, and then the stand Islam is a religion and why it's an enemy of the West, and how to deal with it as an enemy.
For example, maybe I'm creating a false picture, but I don't think I am, Which is, if you are. If if Islam looks at the Christian world as infidels and they want to create a world in which they are not here and they convert to Islam, they are using the sword. So it's I mean, it's self defense that you would use the sort back, and that's I think.
I'm all for using swords back. I have no problem with you.
I think that's that's Manuel's point, which is, Look, I've looked at history and I seen Christians coming up together around the same values and combating Islam. Yes, but what would I don't think you like, but what another religion? Yes?
But what world were they defending? It was a Christian world, yes, and thus primitive, barbaric violence and unfree. So you cannot have a Christian world uniting to fight Islam and have freedom. The Christianity and freedom are not compatible, and particularly not compatible when it's going to go to war.
Now, now, what are the nations that are most free, they all left Christian backgrounds.
In the world secular today. They've all they've all mean secular since they became free.
But you don't think there's an underlying contamination effect on everything.
Every single one of the free countries. Japan is not a Christian country, and it's a it's a it's a it's a free country relatively speaking, right, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore.
Korea was influenced by the US to be a free country.
Yeah, all of these countries were influenced by the US and all and the US was influenced by the Enlightenment to be a free country, by the secular Enlightenment to be a free country. And again, Jefferson read, you know, the founders of America read a lot more of the secular Enlightenment than they did of theological debates about how many how many Angels that and I have a needle. So so the America is a secular country. And the freedom that America enjoyed is a product of its secular nature,
not of its religious nature. And coming together on the false ideology which I think Christianity is is not helpful. So in order to combat Islam. You need to think and you need to figure out how to defeat them. It's not that hard because they're pretty weak and pretty barbaric and pretty primitive. So it's not it not hard to defeat is Slam.
And but they're winning rounds in Europe. I think that's Manuel's point.
Oh, I agree that they're winning.
But that and n say about this migration problem in Europe.
I don't know what I mean would say. I'll tell you what I would say, because men did not have this problem. You know, Islam, the Islamic world has a real problem of fundamentalists, religious fundamentalists, Islamism, Islamic radicals, however you want to call it, Islamic totalitians who believe that God has given them the world and they will dominate the world, and they should rule over the world, and they will use force in order to gain that. The
West has to recognize that. First step one, recognize that fact. Step two, identify that it's a real threat, and declare war on it. So after nine to eleven, George Bush, a good Christian, I called Islam a religion of peace and celebraated the Ramadan. On October two.
Thousand and one in two.
Thousand and one. Yes, in the White House Ramadan October, a month after nine to eleven, the Ramadan was celebated. Now that is unbelievably Christian, turn the other cheek, love your enemy like you do, and horrifically anti objectivist, an anti reason and anti rationality. I said at the time, declare war and crush them. Any make a list of every organization and every state that adheres to Islamic fundamentalism.
That would be al Qaeda, obviously al Kaida, you know today isis ramas Chris Bala, islami Jihad, the Muslim brotherhood which is behind all of this.
Iran not Iraq was a secular country.
Who cared? I mean, the guy was a monster, but he didn't you know, he wasn't spending terrorism around the world. Who did? I won, So you won should have been the target. So if you understand who the enemy is Islamic, this Islamist ideology, then you can have a proper list of enemies. And it's not oh, it's a it's a religious world. We have to push back on Muslims because some Muslim countries are not your enemy, but some are
really your enemy. Iran is an enemy and destroy them and then we all over and we could have destroyed them in a maunt of weeks months.
So what the advice would you give for us that are struggling in Portugal. We are struggling a.
Long claar war on Islamic on the Islamist not Islam, on the Islamist ideology. So make it so that you can kick them out and and and and and you know, if they're preachers out there, preaching Sharia and preaching the destruction of Western civilization, send them packing.
I agree. Okay, let's move on. If Islam was a religion of peace, the Islamic extremists would be extremely peaceful. That's for sure a good point.
Well, there is no such thing as a religion apeace. That is a contradiction in terms. There's never been a religion of peace. Again, Christianity christianized Europe by the sword, and not against Muslims, against Pagans and against Jews. Yeah, I mean, this is the combination of Rome and Christianity, right, and and Augustine, Augustine who is one of the fathers
of the Church. Augustine has whole writings about the morality of war, and in order to justify when is war justified was only justified to convert somebody to Christianity, So was ali fied for good? Good defined by Christianity. And this is my point about force. Everybody. Everybody agrees force is okay if it's for the right cause. Augustine, who defined Christian morality with regard to violence, said violence is okay if it promotes Christianity.
Yeah, but sorry, guys, if I'm taking a while to translate, because you guys write in Portuguese and I have to translate in my hand. And by the way, that noise.
You're hearing is it's pouring wain hopefully, I don't know if you're hearing, we're hearing it.
What's other questions, Odrico, can you scroll a bit so I can see a little bit more questions? Do we need to leave, Miguel, Yeah, we will finish, finish right away. So let's see if there's any last question and we'll just finish.
Uh.
It's the same people's using the correct term fundamentalist Islam, meaning it's how Islam was funded. That's true violence, force, et cetera.
Yeah, I mean, I mean it's interesting how the different religions were founded. Islamos founded and this is what gives them the I don't know, the the gall if you will to go out and try to try to dominate the world. They were founded by a warrior, by a warrior trader. Uh, you know. And and and Christianity was founded by you know, somebody was crucified.
A peaceful guy. Right, they never heard anybody.
Yeah, peaceful, but I'd say week week and uh suffering and uh and failed right as a as an individual, he never saw his success. If if you think as a man, if you think he was successful, what happened you're successful? Well after his death. Muhammad was successful in his life. But but that tells you something about the attitude of both religions. Right, Muhammad was successful during his life,
the whole plot he was. I mean he conquered lands, but he conquered lands, I mean successful in in those kinds of times.
I think Jesus being being being murdered by the Romans and the and.
That it makes it makes it good.
That was that was the plan. It was not like it was successful on this plan. It was actually the plan.
It's not his plan, you know. I I don't think that was I don't think he was a plan you know, I think le Yeah, he had the masses with Jesus a certain point. No, he had he Christian. He doesn't really gain any it doesn't gain numbers and cloud or anything until Constantine. You know, it brings it into the Roman Empire. That's when it really starts taking off. And and then it's using the soul to conflot people.
¶ Closing thoughts & upcoming events
Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.
Pleasure.
Are really a good fun guy to discuss a lot of topics.
With sounds good.
How okay, what do you need? It's in what's up? Or yeah, I will I will, uh, yes, okay, yes, of course. Okay, guys there at home, if somebody is interested in her hearing more about what we are discussing here. There's going to be extra conferences and events. There was one yesterday. It's already recorded and available in YouTube because I saw it. There's going to be uh in a conference in the seventeen and nineteen of April. Is that it in the next year, And there is a group.
Called CON's it's an in conference in Porto. Uh it's we do want to year? Is that? No, we do any year in Europe? But it is the first time it's in Porto. First time it's in Portugal, so that we'll be being speaking a number of speakers from the US and so yeah, people should should should go check it out online and uh hope to see a lot of a lot of people from Portugal at the conference if we can will be there, Yeah, that'd be great, beret to go.
There is also a group of Objectivists in Portugal. If people want to join what is the group called objectives in Portugal? Where where can they find them? Okay, get in touch with with with us comment down below and we will comment where you can find I guess there are groups Discord, Instagram, whatever, there are groups that you can join.
And there is an event on Thursday, so the day after tomorrow this since this is live, there's an event in Lisbon on Thursday with a pretty pretty famous people who's will be there in Carlous. It's called in the morality of Capitalism.
That's that's a good topic we would not disagree on.
Yeah, so you can you can, well we will disagree on what the morality is, but.
Maybe not, maybe not, we don't know. Thank you so much. Is there a pleasure any extra last message you want to give before we.
I mean, people should check out my podcast You run book show. You can find it on YouTube pretty easily. You on bookshow dot com is the website and if you're interested in iron Rand go read some minevent. I think everybody will benefit from it, whether you agree or not agree. In the end, read at less the Fountain at read the Virtue of Selfishness, provocative title or capitalism
not known ideal. These are good and you can check out I ran dot org a y n r n d dot org for information about her, about her life, about the books, what languages they're available in. It's all available on the website.
Thank you so much.
Er my pleasure, absolutely, super real fun absolutely and it was really fun. It was fun for me absolutely.
Guys, stick with us. We'll have a NEXTRA podcast today at nine pm, probably between.
Eight and what about your kids?
Yeah, what about talk kids exactly, That's what I say about sacrifice. Guys, stick with us. We will have a conversation about home schooling, about even I mean, you'll see, you'll see Juan Calsu and the sand will be here. You know them already. It's going to be a great conversation. Tonight, and we will actually try to follow, for example tomorrow and in the other days, the presidential interviews on on a typ so be be sure to follow that as well.
If you still don't follow us on Instagram, you will be always aware of the next episodes. Thank you so much, Thank you for the questions, Thank you for listening. If you like it, share it with everybody that you know. Thank you so much. And Susan, thanks you guys.
You know, the quarter of public.
So spious.
Some Kingrodas and mothers Sibius and awesome