Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Yoram Brook and Yoram Hazoni.
00:00:04 This is Yoram’s third time on this podcast and Yoram’s first time.
00:00:09 Yoram Brook is an Objectivist Philosopher, Chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, host of
00:00:15 the Yoram Brook Show, and the coauthor of Free Market Revolution and Equal is Unfair.
00:00:21 Yoram Hazoni is a National Conservatism thinker, Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation that
00:00:28 hosted the National Conservatism Conference.
00:00:32 He is also the host of the NatCon Talk and author of The Virtue of Nationalism and an
00:00:39 upcoming book called Conservatism, A Rediscovery.
00:00:44 Allow me to say a few words about each part of the two word title of this episode, Nationalism
00:00:51 Debate.
00:00:52 First Debate, I would like to have a few conversations this year that are a kind of debate with two
00:00:58 or three people that hold differing views on a particular topic but come to the table
00:01:03 with respect for each other and a desire to learn and discover something interesting together
00:01:09 through the empathetic exploration of the tension between their ideas.
00:01:14 This is not strictly a debate, it is simply a conversation.
00:01:18 There is no structure, there is no winners, except of course just a bit of trash talking
00:01:23 to keep it fun.
00:01:24 Some of these topics will be very difficult and I hope you can keep an open mind and have
00:01:29 patience with me as the kind of moderator who tries to bring out the best in each person
00:01:34 and the ideas discussed.
00:01:36 Okay that’s my comment on the word Debate.
00:01:39 Now onto the word Nationalism.
00:01:42 This debate could have been called Nationalism versus Individualism or National Conservatism
00:01:48 versus Individualism or just Conservatism versus Individualism.
00:01:54 As we discussed in this episode, these words have slightly different meanings depending
00:01:58 on who you ask.
00:01:59 This is especially true, I think, for any word that ends in “-ism”.
00:02:04 I personally enjoy the discussion of the meaning of such philosophical words.
00:02:08 I don’t think it’s possible to arrive at a perfect definition that everybody agrees with,
00:02:13 but the process of trying to do so for a bit is interesting and productive, at least to
00:02:19 me.
00:02:20 As long as we don’t get stuck there, as some folks sometimes do in these conversations.
00:02:26 This is the Lex Readman Podcast, to support it please check out our sponsors in the description
00:02:31 and now here’s my conversation with Yoram Brooke and Yoram Hosoni.
00:02:37 I attended the excellent debate between the two of you yesterday at UT Austin.
00:02:41 The debate was between ideas of Conservatism, represented by Yoram Hosoni, and ideas of
00:02:47 Individualism, represented by Yoram Brooke.
00:02:51 Let’s start with the topics of the debate.
00:02:53 Yoram, how do you define Conservatism, maybe in the way you were thinking about it yesterday?
00:02:58 What to you are some principles of Conservatism?
00:03:02 Let me define it and then we can get into principles if you want.
00:03:07 When I talk about political Conservatism, I’m talking about a political standpoint that
00:03:14 regards the recovery, elaboration, and restoration of tradition as the key to maintaining a nation
00:03:22 and strengthening it through time.
00:03:24 This is something that if you have time to talk about it like we do on the show, it’s
00:03:29 worth emphasizing that Conservatism is not like Liberalism or Marxism.
00:03:35 Liberalism and Marxism are both kind of universal theories and they claim to be able to tell
00:03:42 you what’s good for human beings at all times in all places.
00:03:47 And Conservatism is a little bit different because it’s going to carry different values
00:03:52 in every nation, in every tribe.
00:03:54 Even every family, you can say, has somewhat different values and these loyalty groups,
00:04:01 they compete with one another.
00:04:03 That’s the way human beings work.
00:04:04 So it’s deeply rooted in history of that particular area of land.
00:04:08 Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say land, you’re right that many forms of Conservatism are
00:04:14 tied to a particular place.
00:04:16 So how does the implementation of Conservatism to you differ from the ideal of Conservatism,
00:04:22 the implementations you’ve seen of political Conservatism in the United States and the
00:04:26 rest of the world?
00:04:27 Just to give some context, because it’s a loaded term, like most political terms.
00:04:32 So when people think about conservative in the United States, they think about the Republican
00:04:36 Party, what, can you kind of disambiguate some of this, what are we supposed to think
00:04:41 about?
00:04:42 Yeah, that’s a really important question.
00:04:44 Usually the word conservative is associated with Edmund Burke and with the English common
00:04:52 law tradition.
00:04:54 Going back centuries and centuries, there’s kind of a classical English conservative tradition
00:05:00 that goes Fortescue, Hooker, Coke, Seldon, Hale, Burke, Blackstone before Burke.
00:05:11 If you take that kind of as a benchmark and you compare it, then you can compare it to
00:05:17 things like the American Federalist Party at the time of the American founding is in
00:05:23 many respects very much in keeping with that tradition.
00:05:29 As you go forward, there’s an increasing mix of liberalism into conservatism.
00:05:36 I think by the time you get to the 1960s with William Buckley and Frank Meyer, the jargon
00:05:44 term is fusionism.
00:05:45 By the time you get there, it’s arguable that their conservatism isn’t very conservative
00:05:52 anymore, that it’s kind of a public liberalism mixed with a private conservatism.
00:05:58 So a lot of the debate that we have today about what does the word conservatism actually
00:06:04 mean, a lot of the confusion comes from that, comes from the fact that on the one hand,
00:06:09 we have people who use the term, I think properly historically to refer to this common law tradition
00:06:17 of which Burke was a spokesman, but there are lots of other people who when they say
00:06:22 conservative, they just mean liberal.
00:06:27 I think that’s a big problem.
00:06:30 It’s a problem just to have an intelligent debate is difficult when people are using
00:06:36 the word almost too antithetical.
00:06:39 What would you say the essential idea of conservatism is time?
00:06:42 You mentioned your father’s a physicist.
00:06:44 So a lot of physicists when they form models of the universe, they don’t consider time.
00:06:50 So everything is dealt with instantaneously.
00:06:53 A particle is represented fully by its current state, velocity and position.
00:06:58 You’re saying, so you’re arguing with all of physics and your father, as we always do,
00:07:06 that their time matters in conservatism.
00:07:10 That’s the fundamental element is the full history matters and you cannot separate the
00:07:14 individual from the history, from the roots that they come from.
00:07:19 The parallel in political theory is what’s called rationalism.
00:07:25 I guess we’ll probably talk about that some.
00:07:28 Rationalism is kind of an instantaneous, timeless thing.
00:07:31 Before I mentioned that liberalism and various enlightenment theories, they don’t include
00:07:36 time at all.
00:07:37 Their goal is to say, look, there’s such a thing as universal human reason.
00:07:42 All human beings, if they reason properly, will come to the same conclusions.
00:07:47 If that’s true, then it removes the time consideration.
00:07:51 It removes tradition and context because everywhere where you are at any time, you ought to be
00:07:57 able to use reason and come to the same conclusions about politics or morals.
00:08:03 So that’s a theory like Immanuel Kant or John Locke is an example, Hobbes is an example.
00:08:12 That kind of political theorizing really does say at a given instant, we can know pretty
00:08:19 much everything that we need to know, at least the big things.
00:08:23 And conservatism is the opposite.
00:08:26 It’s a traditionalist view, exactly as you say, that says that history is crucial.
00:08:33 So you’re on, you say that history is interesting, but perhaps not crucial if in the context
00:08:41 of individualism.
00:08:42 No, I mean, I think there’s a false dichotomy he presented here, and that is that one view
00:08:47 holds that you can derive anything from a particular historical path and kind of an
00:08:53 empirical view.
00:08:54 And if we know the history, we know where we should be tomorrow.
00:08:57 We know where we should stand today.
00:09:00 And the other path is we ignore history, we ignore facts, we ignore what’s going on.
00:09:04 We can derive from some a priori axioms, we can derive a truth right now.
00:09:10 And both are false.
00:09:11 Both of those views, in my view, are false.
00:09:14 And you know, Ayn Rand and I reject both of those views.
00:09:19 And I think the better thinkers of the Enlightenment did as well, although they sometimes fall
00:09:23 into the trap of appearing like rationalists.
00:09:25 And Jorm and I agree on one thing, and that is that Kant is one of, you know, we’ve talked
00:09:33 about this in the past, Alex, but we both hate Kant.
00:09:36 We both think Kant is, I at least think Kant is probably the most destructive philosopher
00:09:44 since Plato, who was pretty destructive himself.
00:09:49 And part of the problem is that Kant divorces reason from reality.
00:09:52 That is, he divorces reason from history.
00:09:55 He divorces reason from experience, because we don’t have direct experience of reality
00:09:59 according to Kant, right?
00:10:01 We’re removed from that direct experience.
00:10:03 But I view Kant as the anti Enlightenment, that is, I view Kant as the destroyer of good
00:10:09 Enlightenment thinking.
00:10:11 And I acknowledge a lot of history of philosophy, people who do history of philosophy view Kant
00:10:18 as the embodiment of the Enlightenment, that is the ultimate.
00:10:21 But I think that’s a mistake.
00:10:22 I think both Rousseau and Kant are fundamentally the goal, the mission in life is to destroy
00:10:28 the Enlightenment.
00:10:30 So my view is neither of those options are the right option.
00:10:33 That is, the true reason based, reason is not divorced from reality.
00:10:39 It’s quite the opposite.
00:10:40 Reason is a tool.
00:10:41 It’s a faculty of identifying and integrating what?
00:10:45 It’s identifying and integrating the facts of reality as we know them through sense perception
00:10:52 or through the study of history, through what actually happened.
00:10:55 So it’s the integration of those facts.
00:10:58 It’s the knowledge of that history.
00:11:00 And then what we do is we abstract away principles based on what’s worked in the past, what hasn’t
00:11:06 worked in the past, the consequences of different ideas, different past, different actions.
00:11:10 We abstract away principles that then can be universal.
00:11:14 Not always.
00:11:15 We make mistakes, right?
00:11:16 We can come up with a universal principle, it turns out it’s not.
00:11:19 But if we have the whole scope of human history, we can derive principles as we do in life,
00:11:25 as individuals, we derive principles that are then truths that we can live by, but you
00:11:30 don’t do that by ignoring history.
00:11:32 You do that by learning history, by understanding history, by understanding in a sense tradition
00:11:36 and where it leads to, and then trying to do better.
00:11:40 And I think good thinkers are constantly trying to do better based on what they know about
00:11:44 the past and what they know about the present.
00:11:46 What’s the difference between studying history on a journey of reason and tradition?
00:11:53 So you mentioned that Burke understood that reason begins with an inherited tradition
00:11:57 yesterday.
00:11:58 So what’s the difference between studying history, but then being free to go any way
00:12:03 you want and tradition where it feels more, I don’t want to say a negative term like burden,
00:12:12 but there’s more of a momentum that forces you to go the same way as your ancestors.
00:12:18 It’s the recognition that people are wrong, often are wrong.
00:12:23 Including parents?
00:12:25 Including your parents, including your teachers, including everybody.
00:12:28 Everybody is potentially wrong, and that you can’t accept anybody just because they happen
00:12:34 to come before you.
00:12:35 That is, you have to evaluate and judge, and you have to have a standard by which to evaluate
00:12:39 and judge the actions of those who came before you, whether they are your parents, whether
00:12:44 they are the state in which you happen to be born, whether they are somebody on the
00:12:49 other side of planet Earth.
00:12:51 You can judge them if you have a standard.
00:12:52 And my standard, and I think the right standard, is human well being.
00:12:57 That which is good for human beings, qua human beings, is the standard by which we judge.
00:13:03 I can say that certain periods of history were bad.
00:13:07 They happened.
00:13:08 It’s important to study them.
00:13:09 It’s important to understand what they did that made them bad so we cannot do that again.
00:13:14 And I can say certain cultures, certain periods in time were good.
00:13:17 Why?
00:13:18 Because they promoted human well being and human flourishing.
00:13:21 That’s the standard.
00:13:22 To derive from that, okay, what is it that made a particular culture good?
00:13:26 What is it that made that particular culture positive in terms of human well being and
00:13:30 human flourishing?
00:13:31 What made this bad?
00:13:32 And hopefully from that, I can derive a principle.
00:13:35 Okay, if I want human flourishing and human well being in the future, I want to be more
00:13:39 like these guys and less like those guys.
00:13:41 I want to derive what is the principle that will guide me in the future.
00:13:45 That’s I think how human knowledge ultimately develops.
00:13:47 I think people often make a mistake, I’m not saying your own, but lots of people don’t
00:13:53 actually read the original sources and so what happens is people will attack conservatives
00:13:58 assuming that conservatives think that whatever comes from the past is right.
00:14:02 And actually, it’s very difficult to find a thinker who actually says something like
00:14:07 that.
00:14:08 Seldon or Burke, the big conservative theorists hooker, they’re all people who understand
00:14:15 that the tradition carries with it mistakes that were made in the past.
00:14:21 And this is actually I think an important part of their empiricism is that they see
00:14:27 the search for truth as something a society does by trial and error.
00:14:31 And what that means is that in any given moment, you have to be aware of the possibility that
00:14:36 things that you’ve inherited are actually false.
00:14:39 And the job of the political thinker or the jurist or the philosopher is not to dig in
00:14:46 and say whatever it is that we’ve inherited is right.
00:14:50 The job is to look at the society as a whole and say, look, we have this job of first of
00:14:57 all conservation, just making sure that we don’t lose good things that we’ve had.
00:15:01 And second, seeing if we can repair things in order to improve them where it’s necessary
00:15:06 or where it’s possible.
00:15:07 And that process is actually a creative process.
00:15:11 This is a way in which I think it is similar to Jeroen’s philosophy that you take the
00:15:15 inherited tradition and you look for a way that you can shape it in order to make it
00:15:21 something better than it was.
00:15:25 That’s a baseline for what we call conservatism.
00:15:28 It’s not, yeah.
00:15:29 Just a comment.
00:15:30 So the trial and error, the errors is, you’re proud of the errors.
00:15:35 It’s a feature, not a bug.
00:15:37 So you mentioned trial and error a few times yesterday, it’s a really interesting kind
00:15:40 of idea.
00:15:41 It’s basically accepting that the journey is going to have flaws as opposed to saying,
00:15:48 I mean, the conclusion there is the current system is flawed and it will always be flawed
00:15:55 and you try to improve it.
00:15:57 When you listen to your on talk, there’s much more of an optimism for the system being perfect
00:16:06 now or potentially soon, or it could be perfect.
00:16:09 And to me, the way I heard it is almost like accepting that the system is flawed and through
00:16:15 trial and error will improve and Jeroen says, no, we can have a perfection now.
00:16:25 That’s the way it sounds to me.
00:16:27 Yeah.
00:16:28 And I think that’s right.
00:16:29 I think the difference is that at some point, just like in science, I think one can stop
00:16:34 the trial and error and say, I can now see a pattern here.
00:16:40 I can see that certain actions lead to bad consequences, certain actions lead to good
00:16:45 consequences.
00:16:47 Let me try to abstract away what is it that is good and what is it that is bad and build
00:16:54 a system around what is good and reject what is bad.
00:16:56 I think ultimately, if you read the founding fathers and whether we call them conservatives
00:17:00 or individuals, what the founding fathers actually did, all of them, I think, is study
00:17:05 history.
00:17:06 They all did.
00:17:07 They all talk about history.
00:17:08 They all talk about examples of other cultures, whether they go back to the Republic in Venice
00:17:14 or back to the ancient Greeks.
00:17:17 They studied these.
00:17:18 They learned lessons from them.
00:17:20 They try to figure out what has worked in the past and what hasn’t and try to derive
00:17:24 principles.
00:17:25 They got pretty close to what I would consider kind of an ideal, but they didn’t get it
00:17:32 completely right.
00:17:33 Here we sit 200 and something years after the Declaration and after the Constitution.
00:17:38 I think we can look back and say, okay, well, what did they get right?
00:17:41 What did they get wrong based on how is it done and where are the flaws and we can improve
00:17:47 on it.
00:17:48 I think we can get closer to perfection based on those kind of observations, based on that
00:17:56 kind of abstraction, that kind of discovery of what is true.
00:18:00 Just like at some point, you do the experiments, you do the trial and error, and now you come
00:18:05 up with a scientific principle.
00:18:07 It is true that 100 years later, you might discover that, hey, I missed something, there’s
00:18:11 something, but to not take the full lesson, to insist on incrementalism, to insist on
00:18:19 we’re just going to tinker with the system instead of saying, no, there’s something really
00:18:23 wrong with having a king, there’s something really wrong with not having any representation,
00:18:30 whatever the standard needs to be in the name of we don’t want to move too fast, I think
00:18:36 is a mistake.
00:18:37 The problem with trial and error in politics is that we’re talking about human life, right?
00:18:45 So there was a big trial around communism, and 100 million people paid the price for
00:18:51 the trial.
00:18:52 I could have told them in advance, as did many people, that it would not work.
00:18:56 There are principles of human nature, principles that we can study from history, principles
00:19:01 about economics and other aspects.
00:19:04 Well, we know it’s not going to work.
00:19:05 You don’t need to try it again.
00:19:06 We’ve had communal arrangements throughout history.
00:19:09 There was an experiment with fascism, and there have been experiments with all kinds
00:19:13 of political systems.
00:19:15 Okay, we’ve done them.
00:19:17 Sad that we did them, because many of us knew they wouldn’t work.
00:19:20 We should learn the lesson, and I think that all of history now converges on one lesson,
00:19:26 and that is what we need to do is build systems that protect individual freedom.
00:19:31 That is the core.
00:19:32 That’s what ultimately leads to human flourishing and human success and human achievement, and
00:19:36 to the extent that we place anything above that individual, whether it’s the state, whether
00:19:41 it’s the ethnicity, whether it’s the race, whether it’s the bourgeois, whatever it happens
00:19:45 to be, class or whatever, whenever we place something above the individual, the consequence
00:19:49 is negative.
00:19:50 That’s one of these principles that I think we can derive from studying 3,000 years of
00:19:57 civilization.
00:20:00 It’s tragic, I think, because we’re going to keep experimenting, sadly.
00:20:03 I see it, right?
00:20:04 I’m not winning this battle.
00:20:06 I’m losing the battle.
00:20:08 We’re going to keep experimenting with different forms of collectivism, and we’re going to
00:20:11 keep paying the price in human life and in missed opportunities for human flourishing
00:20:17 and human success and human wealth and prosperity.
00:20:21 Let’s take communism as a good example.
00:20:23 None of the major conservative thinkers would say, you know what’s a good idea?
00:20:27 A good idea would be to experiment by raising everything that we’ve inherited and starting
00:20:33 from scratch.
00:20:34 I mean, that’s the conservative complaint or accusation against rationalists as opposed
00:20:40 to empiricists.
00:20:41 I mean, using rationalism, let’s take Descartes kind of as a benchmark.
00:20:46 Can you also maybe define rationalism?
00:20:49 Yeah.
00:20:50 These are two terms that are in philosophy, especially in epistemology.
00:20:54 They’re often compared to one another.
00:20:58 Jeroen said that it’s a false dichotomy, and maybe it is a bit exaggerated, but that doesn’t
00:21:04 mean it’s not useful for conceptualizing the domain.
00:21:08 So a rationalist is somebody like Descartes who says, I’m going to set aside, I’m going
00:21:15 to try to set aside everything I know, everything I’ve inherited, I’m going to start from scratch.
00:21:20 And he explicitly says, in evaluating the inheritance of the past, he explicitly says,
00:21:27 you take a look at the histories that we have, they’re not reliable.
00:21:30 You take a look at the moral and the scientific writings that we receive, they’re not very
00:21:34 good.
00:21:35 His baseline is to look very critically at the past and say, look, I’m evaluating it.
00:21:41 I think all in all, it’s just not worth very much.
00:21:44 And so whatever I do, beginning from scratch, is going to be better as long as, and here’s
00:21:50 his caveat, as long as I’m proceeding from self evident assumptions, from self evident
00:21:59 premises, things that you can’t argue against.
00:22:01 I think, therefore, I am.
00:22:03 And then from there, deducing what he calls infallible conclusions.
00:22:07 So that model of self evident premises to infallible conclusions, I’m calling that rationalism,
00:22:14 I think that’s kind of a standard academic jargon term.
00:22:19 And it’s opposed to empiricism, which is a thinker, I think in universities, usually
00:22:27 the empiricist is David Hume.
00:22:30 And David Hume will say, we can’t learn anything the way that Descartes said.
00:22:36 There is nothing that’s that self evident and that infallible.
00:22:40 So Hume proposes, based on Newton and Boyle and the new physical sciences.
00:22:50 So Hume proposes a science of man.
00:22:53 And the science of man sounds an awful lot like what Yaron just said, which is we’re
00:22:56 going to take a look at human nature, at the nature of societies.
00:23:01 Human nature, we’re going to try to abstract towards fixed principles for describing it.
00:23:06 Human societies, we’re going to try to do the same thing.
00:23:09 And from there, we get, for example, contemporary economics.
00:23:13 But we also get sociology and anthropology, which cut in a different direction.
00:23:19 So that’s rationalism versus empiricism.
00:23:23 Can I just say?
00:23:24 Yeah, go ahead, please.
00:23:25 Yeah, I agree with that.
00:23:26 I think empiricism, the one thing I disagree is I think empiricism rarely comes to these
00:23:33 abstractions.
00:23:34 I mean, they want more facts.
00:23:36 It’s always about collecting more evidence.
00:23:39 But this is where I think Ayn Rand is so unusual and where I think there’s something new here.
00:23:48 And that’s a bold statement given the history of philosophy.
00:23:50 But I think Ayn Rand is something new.
00:23:53 And so she says, yes, we agree about rationalism and that it’s inherently wrong.
00:23:59 Empiricism has the problem of, OK, where does it lead?
00:24:03 You never come to a conclusion.
00:24:04 You’re just accumulating evidence.
00:24:06 There’s something in addition.
00:24:07 There’s a third alternative, which she is positing, which is using empirical evidence,
00:24:14 not denying empirical evidence, recognizing that there are some axioms, there are some
00:24:18 axioms that we all, at the base of all of our knowledge, that are starting points.
00:24:24 We’re not rejecting axiomatic knowledge.
00:24:27 And integrating those two and identifying the fact that based on these axioms and based
00:24:32 on these empirical evidence, we can come to truths.
00:24:36 Just again, like we do in science, we have certain axioms, scientific axioms, we have
00:24:40 certain experiments that we run, and then we can come to some identification of a truth.
00:24:44 And that truth is always going to be challenged by new information, by new knowledge.
00:24:48 But as long as that’s what we know, that is what truth is.
00:24:52 So truth is contextual in the sense that it’s contextual, it’s based on that knowledge that
00:24:58 surrounds it.
00:24:59 It’s always available to change if you get new facts.
00:25:02 Absolutely.
00:25:03 It’s always available to change if the facts that you get, and they really are, I mean,
00:25:07 the burden of changing what you’ve come to a conclusion of truth is high, so you’d have
00:25:12 to have real evidence that it’s not true, but that happens all the time.
00:25:16 So it happens in science, right?
00:25:17 We discovered that what we thought was true is not true, and it can happen in politics
00:25:22 and ethics even more so than in science because they’re much messier fields.
00:25:27 But the idea is that you can come to a truth, but it’s not just deductive.
00:25:33 Most truths are inductive.
00:25:36 We learn from observing reality and, again, coming to principles about what works and
00:25:41 what’s not.
00:25:42 And here I think this is—Ayn Rand is different.
00:25:46 She doesn’t fall into the—and she’s different in her politics, and she’s different in
00:25:49 her epistemology.
00:25:50 She doesn’t fall into the conventional view.
00:25:53 She’s an opponent of Hume, and she’s an opponent of Descartes, and she’s certainly
00:25:57 an opponent of Kant.
00:26:01 And I think she’s right, right?
00:26:03 So—
00:26:04 If it’s okay, can we walk back to criticism of communism?
00:26:09 You’re both critics of communism and socialism.
00:26:12 Why did communism fail?
00:26:14 You started to say that conservatives criticize it on the basis of rationalism, that you’re
00:26:21 throwing away the past.
00:26:22 You’re starting from scratch.
00:26:24 Is that the fundamental description of why communism failed?
00:26:27 I think the fundamental difference between rationalists and empiricists is the question
00:26:33 of whether you’re throwing away the past.
00:26:36 That’s the argument.
00:26:37 And it cashes out as a distinction between abstract, universal, rationalist political
00:26:43 theories and empirical political theories.
00:26:48 Artificial political theories, they’re always going to say something like, look, there are
00:26:57 many different societies.
00:26:59 We can say that some are better and some are worse, but the problem is that there are many
00:27:06 different ways in which a society can be better or worse.
00:27:11 There’s an ongoing competition, and we’re learning on an ongoing basis what are the
00:27:15 ways in which societies can be better and worse.
00:27:17 That creates a kind of, I’d say, a mild skepticism, a moderate skepticism among conservatives.
00:27:24 I don’t think too many conservatives have a problem looking at the Soviet Union, which
00:27:29 is brutal and murderous, ineffective in its economics, totally ineffective spiritually,
00:27:36 and then collapsed.
00:27:38 Okay.
00:27:40 So I think it’s easier for us to look at a system like that and say, what on earth?
00:27:45 What should we learn from that?
00:27:47 But the main conservative tradition is pretty tolerant of a diversity of different kinds
00:27:53 of society and is slow to insist that France is so tyrannical, it just needs a revolution
00:28:00 because what’s going to come after the revolution is going to be much better.
00:28:03 The assumption is that there’s lots of things that are good about most societies and that
00:28:09 a clean slate leads you to throw out all of the inherited things that you don’t even know
00:28:16 how to notice until they’re gone.
00:28:17 LW.
00:28:18 Could I actually play devil’s advocate here and address something you also said?
00:28:23 Can we, as opposed to knowing the empirical data of the 20th century that communism presented,
00:28:29 can we go back to the beginning of the 20th century?
00:28:32 Can you empathize or steel man or put yourself in a place of the Soviet Union where the workers
00:28:39 are being disrespected?
00:28:41 And can you not see that the conservatives could be pro communism?
00:28:48 Communism is such a strongly negative word in modern day political discourse that you
00:28:53 have to put yourself in the mind of people who like red colors, it’s all about the branding,
00:29:05 I think, but also like the ideas of solidarity, of nation, of togetherness, of respect for
00:29:15 fellow man.
00:29:16 I mean, all of these things that communism represents, can you not see that this idea
00:29:23 is actually going along with conservatism?
00:29:26 It is in some ways respecting the deep ideals of the past, but proposing a new way to raise
00:29:34 those ideals, implement those ideals in the system.
00:29:37 Yes, I’m going to try to do what you’re suggesting, but historically we actually have a more
00:29:43 useful option, I think, for both of our positions.
00:29:46 Instead of pretending that we like the actual communists, we have conservative statesmen
00:29:52 like Disraeli and Bismarck who initiated social legislation.
00:30:01 The first step towards saying, look, we’re one nation, we’re undergoing industrialization,
00:30:08 that industrialization is important and positive, but it’s also doing a lot of damage to a lot
00:30:15 of people.
00:30:16 And in particular, it’s doing damage not just to individuals and families, but it’s doing
00:30:20 damage to the social fabric, the capacity of Britain or German to remain cohesive societies
00:30:26 is being harmed.
00:30:28 And so it’s these two conservative statesmen, Disraeli and Bismarck, who actually take the
00:30:34 first steps in order to legislate for what today we would consider to be minimal social
00:30:40 programs, pensions and disability insurance and those kinds of things.
00:30:45 So for sure, conservatives do look at industrialization as a rapid change and they say, we do have
00:30:53 to care about the nation as a whole and we have to care about it as a unit.
00:30:57 And I assume that your own will say, look, that’s the first step towards the catastrophe
00:31:02 of communism.
00:31:04 But before your own drives that nail into the coffin, let me try to make a distinction
00:31:11 because when you read Marx, you’re reading an intellectual descendant of Descartes.
00:31:17 You’re reading somebody who says, look, every society consists of oppressors and oppressed.
00:31:27 And that’s an improvement in some ways over liberal thinking because at least he’s seeing
00:31:31 groups as a real social phenomenon.
00:31:35 But he says, every society has an oppressor class and oppressed class.
00:31:38 They’re different classes, they’re different groups, and whenever one is stronger, it exploits
00:31:42 the ones that are weaker.
00:31:45 That is the foundation of a revolutionary political theory.
00:31:50 Why?
00:31:51 Because the moment that you say that the only relationship between the stronger and the
00:31:56 weaker is exploitation.
00:31:58 The moment that you say that, then you’re pushed into the position and Marx and Engels
00:32:02 say this explicitly, you’re pushed into the position.
00:32:04 We’re saying, when will the exploitation end?
00:32:07 Never until there’s a revolution.
00:32:09 What happens when there’s a revolution?
00:32:10 You eliminate the oppressor class.
00:32:12 It’s annihilationist.
00:32:13 I mean, you can immediately when you read it, see why it’s different from Descartes
00:32:20 or Bismarck because they’re trying to keep everybody somehow at peace with one another.
00:32:25 And Marx is saying, there is no peace.
00:32:27 That oppressor class has to be annihilated.
00:32:30 And then they go ahead and do it, and they kill 100 million people.
00:32:34 So I do think that despite the fact your question is good and right, there are certain similarities
00:32:40 and concern, but still I think you can tell the difference.
00:32:43 That extra step of revolution to you is where the problem comes.
00:32:48 That extra step of let’s kill all the oppressors, that’s the problem.
00:32:52 And then to you, the whole step one is the problem.
00:32:56 Well, it’s all a problem.
00:32:58 First I don’t view communism as something that radical in a sense that I think it comes
00:33:05 from a tradition of collectivism.
00:33:07 I think it comes from a tradition of looking at groups and measuring things in terms of
00:33:12 groups.
00:33:13 It comes from tradition where you expect some people to be sacrificed for the greater good
00:33:17 of the whole.
00:33:19 I think it comes from a tradition where mysticism or revelation as the source of truth is accepted.
00:33:28 I view Marx as in some sense very Christian.
00:33:31 I don’t think he’s this radical rejecting, I think he’s just reformatting Christianity
00:33:38 in a sense.
00:33:39 In a sense he’s replacing God with the proletarian.
00:33:43 Knowledge you have to get knowledge from somewhere, so you need the dictatorship of the proletarian,
00:33:48 you need somebody, the Stalin, the Lenin who somehow communes with the spirit, the spirit
00:33:53 of the proletarian.
00:33:54 There’s no rationality, not rationalism, there’s no rationality in Marx.
00:33:59 There is a lot of mysticism and there is a lot of hand waving and there’s a lot of sacrifice
00:34:04 and a lot of original sin in the way he views humanity.
00:34:08 So I view Marx as one more collectivist in a whole string of collectivists.
00:34:14 And I think the Bismarckian response, I know less about Disraeli so I’ll focus on Bismarck,
00:34:23 and Bismarck is really responding to political pressures from the left and he’s responding
00:34:29 to the rise of communism, socialism, but what Bismarck is doing, he’s putting something
00:34:36 alternative, he’s presenting an alternative to the proletarian as the standard by which
00:34:42 we should measure the good.
00:34:45 And what he’s replacing it as the state, he’s replacing the proletarian with the state,
00:34:50 and that has exactly the same problems.
00:34:52 That is first it requires sacrificing some to others, which is what the welfare state
00:34:56 basically legitimizes.
00:34:59 It places the state above all, so the state now becomes I think the biggest evil of Bismarck
00:35:03 and I definitely view him as a negative force in history, is public education.
00:35:08 I mean the Germans really dig in on public education, really develop it, and really the
00:35:14 American model of public education is copying the German, the Prussian Bismarckian public
00:35:20 education.
00:35:21 Can you speak to that real quick, why the public education is such a root of moral evil
00:35:27 for you?
00:35:28 Well because it now says that there’s one standard and that standard is determined by
00:35:33 government, by a bureaucracy, by whatever the government deems is in the national interest,
00:35:39 and Bismarck is very explicit about this.
00:35:41 He’s training the workers of the future, they need to catch up with England and other places
00:35:47 and they need to train the workers and he’s going to train some people to be the managerial
00:35:52 classes, he’s going to train other people to be – and he decides, right, the government,
00:35:55 the bureaucracy is going to decide who’s who and where they go.
00:35:58 There’s no individual choice, there’s no individual showing an ability to break out of what the
00:36:03 government has decided is their little box, there’s very little freedom, there’s very
00:36:08 little – you know, ultimately there’s very little competition, there’s very little
00:36:12 innovation, and this is the problem we have today in American education, which we can
00:36:16 get to, is there’s no competition and no innovation.
00:36:18 We have one standard, fit all, and then we have conflicts about what should be taught,
00:36:23 and the conflicts now are not pedagogical, they’re not about what works and what doesn’t.
00:36:28 Nobody cares about that.
00:36:29 It’s about political agendas, right, it’s about what my group wants to be taught and
00:36:33 what that group wants to be taught, rather than actually discovering how do we get kids
00:36:38 to read?
00:36:39 I mean, we all know how to get kids to read, but there’s a political agenda around not
00:36:42 teaching phonics, for example.
00:36:44 So a lot of schools don’t teach phonics, even though the kids will never learn how
00:36:48 to read properly.
00:36:49 So it becomes politics, and I don’t believe politics belongs in education.
00:36:53 I think education is a product, it’s a service, and we know how to deliver products and services
00:36:58 really, really efficiently at a really, really low price at a really, really high quality,
00:37:02 and that’s leaving it to the market to do.
00:37:04 But your fundamental criticism is that the state can use education to further its authoritarian
00:37:12 aims.
00:37:13 Well, or whatever the aims – I mean, think about the conservative today critique of American
00:37:17 educational system, right, it’s dominated by the left.
00:37:20 Yeah, what did you expect, right?
00:37:23 If you leave it up to the state to fund, they’re going to fund the things that promote state
00:37:28 growth and state intervention, and the left is better at that.
00:37:31 It has been better at that than the right, and they now dominate our educational institutions.
00:37:36 But look, if we go back to Bismarck, my problem is placing the state above the individual.
00:37:41 So if communism places the class above the individual, what matters is class, individuals,
00:37:46 and nothing, they’re cogs in a machine.
00:37:49 Bismarck, certainly the German tradition much more than the British tradition or the American
00:37:53 tradition, the German tradition is to place the state above the individual.
00:37:56 I think that’s equally evil, and the outcome is fascism, and the outcome is the same.
00:38:01 The outcome is the deaths of tens of millions of people when taken to its ultimate conclusion.
00:38:06 Just like socialism, the ultimate conclusion of it is communism, you know, nationalism
00:38:12 in that form, kind of the Bismarckian form, the ultimate conclusion is Nazism or some
00:38:18 form of fascism.
00:38:20 Because you don’t care about the individual, the individual doesn’t matter.
00:38:23 I think this is one of the differences in the Anglo, you know, Anglo American tradition
00:38:29 where the Anglo American tradition, even the conservatives, have always acknowledged and
00:38:35 it goes back to…
00:38:36 Especially the conservatives.
00:38:37 Yes.
00:38:38 Well…
00:38:39 The conservatives were there first.
00:38:40 They acknowledged.
00:38:41 Well, you’ve defined conservatives to include all the good thinkers of the distant past,
00:38:45 and they’re all good thinkers.
00:38:46 We agree on that.
00:38:47 I’m defining conservatism the way that Burke does.
00:38:51 I’m just…
00:38:52 Look, this is a very simple observation.
00:38:55 Burke thinks, when you open Burke and you actually read him, he starts naming all of
00:38:58 these people who he’s defending.
00:39:00 And it’s bizarre, I’m sorry, it’s just intellectual sloppiness for people to be publishing books
00:39:05 called Burke, The First Conservative, The Founding Conservative, The Found…
00:39:08 I mean, this is nonstop, it’s a view that says Burke reacts to the French Revolution,
00:39:15 so conservatism has no prior tradition, it’s just reacting to the French Revolution.
00:39:18 And this is…
00:39:19 I mean, this is just absurd.
00:39:20 Can I ask a quick question on conservatism?
00:39:23 Are there any conservatives that are embracing of revolutions?
00:39:27 So are they ultimately against the concept of revolution?
00:39:30 Yes, Burke himself embraces the Polish Revolution, which takes place almost exactly at the same
00:39:36 time as the French Revolution.
00:39:38 And the argument is really interesting because there’s a common mistake is assuming that
00:39:42 Burke and conservative thinkers are always in favor of slow change.
00:39:46 I think that’s also just factually mistaken.
00:39:51 Burke is against the French Revolution because he thinks that there are actually tried and
00:39:57 true things that work, things that work for human flourishing and freedom included as
00:40:04 a very important part of human flourishing.
00:40:07 He like many others takes the English constitution to be a model of something that works.
00:40:17 So it has a king, it has various other things that maybe your own will say, well, that’s
00:40:21 a mistake, but still for centuries, it’s the leader in many things that I think we can
00:40:26 easily agree are human flourishing.
00:40:29 And Burke says, look, what’s wrong with the French Revolution?
00:40:33 What’s wrong with the French Revolution is that they have a system that has all sorts
00:40:37 of problems, but they could be repairing it.
00:40:40 And instead what they’re doing by overthrowing everything is they’re moving away from what
00:40:45 we know is good for human beings.
00:40:48 Then he looks at the Polish Revolution and he says, the Poles do the opposite.
00:40:52 The Poles have a nonfunctioning traditional constitution.
00:40:55 It’s too democratic.
00:40:57 It’s impossible to raise armies and to defend the country because of the fact that every
00:41:03 nobleman has a veto.
00:41:05 So the Polish Revolution moves in the direction of the British constitution.
00:41:11 They repair their constitution through a quick, a rapid revolution.
00:41:16 They install a king along the model that looks a lot like Britain and Burke supports it.
00:41:21 He says, this is a good revolution.
00:41:23 So it’s not the need to quickly make a change in order to save yourself.
00:41:31 That’s not what conservatives are objecting to.
00:41:33 What they’re objecting to is instead of looking at experience in order to try to make a slow
00:41:40 or quick improvement, a measured improvement to achieve a particular goal, instead of doing
00:41:45 that, you say, look, the whole thing has just been wrong.
00:41:48 And what we’ve really got to do is annihilate a certain part of the population and then
00:41:51 make completely new laws and a completely new theory.
00:41:55 That’s what he’s objecting to.
00:41:56 That’s the French Revolution.
00:41:57 And that then becomes the model for communist revolutions.
00:42:01 And for me, I mean, the French Revolution is clearly a real evil and wrong, but it’s
00:42:06 not that it was a revolution and it’s not that it tried to change everything.
00:42:09 I mean, let’s remember what was going on in France at the time and people were starving
00:42:13 and the monarchy in particular was completely detached, completely detached from the suffering
00:42:18 of the people and something needed to change.
00:42:22 The unfortunate thing is that the change was motivated by an egalitarian philosophy, not
00:42:30 egalitarian in the sense that I think the Fauny Fathers talked about, but egalitarian
00:42:33 in the sense of real equality, equality of outcome, motivated by a philosophy, by Rousseau’s
00:42:40 philosophy, and inevitably led, you could tell that the ideas were going to lead to
00:42:44 this, to massive destruction and death and the annihilation of a class.
00:42:48 You can’t, annihilation is never an option.
00:42:51 That is, it’s not true that a good revolution never leads to mass death of just whole groups
00:42:58 of people because a good revolution is about the sanctity of the individual.
00:43:01 It’s about preservation, liberty of the individual.
00:43:04 And again, that goes back to, and the French Revolution denies and Rousseau denies really
00:43:10 that in civilization there is a value in a thing called the individual.
00:43:13 I think this is a good place to have this discussion.
00:43:18 The Fauny Fathers of the United States, are they individualists or are they conservatives?
00:43:26 So in this particular revolution that founded this country, at the core of which are some
00:43:31 fascinating, some powerful ideas, were those founding fathers, were those ideas coming
00:43:38 from a place of conservatism or did they put primary value into the freedom and the power
00:43:45 of the individual?
00:43:46 What do you think?
00:43:47 There were both.
00:43:48 I mean, this is something that’s a little bit difficult sometimes for Americans, I mean,
00:43:54 very educated Americans, they talk about the founding fathers as though it’s kind of like
00:43:58 this collective entity with a single brain and a single value system.
00:44:06 But I think at the time that’s not the way any of them saw it.
00:44:12 So roughly there’s two camps and they map onto the rationalist versus traditionalist
00:44:18 empiricist dichotomy that I proposed earlier.
00:44:23 So on the one hand, you have real revolutionaries like Jefferson and Paine.
00:44:29 These are the people who Burke was writing against.
00:44:31 These are the people who supported the French Revolution.
00:44:33 So when you say real, so when you say Paine, you’re referring to revolutionaries in a bad
00:44:38 way, like this is a problem.
00:44:40 These are people who will say history up until now has been, with Descartes, but applied
00:44:48 to politics.
00:44:49 History up until now has been just a story of ugliness, foolishness, stupidity, and evil.
00:44:56 And if you apply reason, we’ll all come to the same conclusions.
00:45:03 Paine writes a book called The Age of Reason, and The Age of Reason is a manifesto for here
00:45:10 is the answer to political and moral problems throughout history.
00:45:14 We have the answers.
00:45:15 And it’s in the same school as Rousseau’s The Social Continent.
00:45:19 You don’t like that?
00:45:20 Not at all.
00:45:21 Well, I thought it was the opposite.
00:45:22 I think they’re the opposite.
00:45:23 Okay, so let me…
00:45:24 Just to throw in a quick question on Jefferson and Paine, do you think America would exist
00:45:30 without those two figures?
00:45:32 So like how important is spice in the flavor of the dish you’re making?
00:45:38 I don’t want to try to run the counterfactual, I don’t have confidence that I know the answer
00:45:43 to the question.
00:45:44 But it’s so much fun.
00:45:45 You know what?
00:45:46 I’m going to offer something that I think is more fun.
00:45:49 More fun than the counterfactual is America had two revolutions, not one, okay?
00:45:55 At first, there is a revolution that is strongly spiced with this kind of rationalism.
00:46:05 And then there’s a 10 year period after the Declaration of Independence.
00:46:09 There’s a 10 year period under which America has a constitution.
00:46:12 This first constitution, which today they call the Articles of the Confederation, but
00:46:16 there’s a constitution from 1777.
00:46:19 And that constitution is based on, in a lot of ways, on the hottest new ideas.
00:46:25 It has, instead of the traditional British system with a division of powers between an
00:46:31 executive and a bicameral legislature, instead of that traditional English model, which most
00:46:38 of the states had as their governments, instead of that, they say, no, we’re going to have
00:46:42 one elected body, okay, and that body, that Congress, it’s going to be the executive,
00:46:50 it’s going to be the legislative, it’s going to be everything, and it’s going to run as
00:46:54 a big committee.
00:46:55 These are the ideas of the French Revolution.
00:46:57 You get to actually see them implemented in Pennsylvania, in the Pennsylvania Constitution,
00:47:04 and then later in the National Assembly in France.
00:47:06 It’s a disaster.
00:47:07 The thing doesn’t work.
00:47:09 It’s completely made up.
00:47:10 It’s neither based on historical experience, nor is it based on historical custom, on what
00:47:15 people are used to.
00:47:17 And what they succeed in creating with this first constitution is it’s wonderfully rational,
00:47:23 but it’s a complete disaster.
00:47:24 It doesn’t allow the raising of taxes.
00:47:27 It doesn’t allow the mustering of troops.
00:47:29 It doesn’t allow giving orders to soldiers to fight a war.
00:47:33 And if that had continued, if that had continued to be the American Constitution, America never
00:47:41 would have been an independent country.
00:47:42 There I’m willing to do that counterfactual.
00:47:45 What happens during those years where Washington and Jay and Knox and Hamilton and Morris,
00:47:55 there’s like this group of conservatives, they’re mostly soldiers and lawyers.
00:48:02 This is in Washington, most of them are from northern cities.
00:48:06 And this group is much more conservative than the Tom Paine and Jefferson School.
00:48:17 Some historians call them the Nationalist Party.
00:48:20 Historically, they give up the word nationalism and they call themselves the Federalists,
00:48:24 but they’re basically the Nationalist Party.
00:48:26 What does that mean?
00:48:27 It means on the one hand that their goal is to create an independent nation, independent
00:48:32 from Britain.
00:48:33 But on the other hand, they believe that they already have national legal traditions, the
00:48:41 common law, the forms of government that have been imported from Britain, and of course
00:48:46 Christianity, which they consider to be part of their inheritance.
00:48:51 This Federalist Party is the conservative party.
00:48:56 These are people who are extremely close in ideas to Burke.
00:49:00 And these are people who wrote the Constitution of the United States, the second constitution,
00:49:04 the second revolution in 1787, when Washington leads the establishment of a new constitution,
00:49:11 which maybe technically legally, it wasn’t even legal under the old constitution, but
00:49:17 it was democratic.
00:49:18 And what it did is it said, we’re going to take what we know about English government,
00:49:24 what we’ve learned by applying English government in the states, we’re going to create a national
00:49:28 government, a unified national government, that’s going to muster power in its hands,
00:49:32 enough power to be able to do things like fighting wars to defend a unified people.
00:49:38 Those are conservatives.
00:49:40 Now it’s reasonable to say, well, look, there was no king, so how conservative could they
00:49:46 be?
00:49:47 But I think that’s a reasonable question.
00:49:49 But don’t forget that the American colonies, the English colonies in America by that point
00:49:53 had been around for 150 years.
00:49:55 They had written constitutions, they had already adapted for an entire century, adapted the
00:50:01 English constitution to local conditions where there’s no aristocracy and there’s no king.
00:50:06 I think you can see that as a positive thing.
00:50:08 On the other hand, they have slavery, that’s an innovation, that’s not English.
00:50:13 So it’s a little bit different from the English constitution, but those men are conservatives.
00:50:17 They make the minimum changes that they need to the English constitution and they largely
00:50:23 replicate it, which is why the Jeffersonians hated them so much.
00:50:28 They call them apostates.
00:50:30 They say they’ve betrayed equality and liberty and fraternity by adopting an English style
00:50:37 constitution.
00:50:38 So I would imagine, Yaron, you would put emphasis of the success of the key ideas at the founding
00:50:43 of this country elsewhere, at the freedom of the individual as opposed to the tradition
00:50:49 of the British empire.
00:50:51 The one thing I agree with, Yaron, is the fact that yes, the founding fathers were not
00:50:55 a monolith.
00:50:56 They argued, they debated, they disagreed, they wrote against each other.
00:51:00 Jefferson and Adams for decades didn’t even speak to each other, though they did make
00:51:03 up and had a fascinating relationship after.
00:51:08 You and I are making up too.
00:51:09 There you go.
00:51:10 It’s like the founding fathers.
00:51:13 You know, there’s this massive debate and discussion, but I don’t agree with the characterization
00:51:19 of Paine and Jefferson.
00:51:20 I don’t think it’s just to call them rationalists because I don’t think they’re rationalists.
00:51:25 People who’ve looked at history, at the problems in history, and remember this is the 18th
00:51:29 century and they were coming out of a hundred years earlier, some of the bloodiest wars
00:51:35 in all of human history were happening in Europe, many of them over religion.
00:51:42 You know, they had seen what was going on in France and other countries where people
00:51:46 were starving and where kings were frolicking in palaces in spite of that.
00:51:54 They were very aware of the relative freedom that the British tradition had given Englishmen.
00:52:01 I think they knew that, they understood that, and I think they were building on that.
00:52:06 They were taking the observation of the past and trying to come up with a more perfect
00:52:12 system, and I think they did.
00:52:13 In that sense, I’m a huge fan of Jefferson.
00:52:16 You know, there are two things that I think are unfortunate about Jefferson.
00:52:20 One is that he continued to hold slaves, which is very unfortunate.
00:52:26 The second is early support for the French Revolution, which I think is a massive mistake
00:52:31 and I wouldn’t be surprised if he regretted it later in life, given the consequences.
00:52:36 But they were trying to derive principles by which they could establish a new state,
00:52:41 and yes, there was pushback by some and there was disagreement, and the Constitution in
00:52:48 the end is to some extent a form of compromise, it’s still one of the great documents of
00:52:53 all of human history, political documents, the Constitution, although I think it’s
00:52:57 inferior to the Declaration.
00:52:59 I’m a huge fan of the Declaration and I think one of the mistakes the conservatives makes,
00:53:03 one of the mistakes the Supreme Court makes and American judiciary makes is assuming the
00:53:09 two documents are separate.
00:53:10 I think Lincoln is absolutely right, you can’t understand the Constitution without understanding
00:53:14 the Declaration, the Declaration of what set the context and what sets everything up for
00:53:18 the Constitution.
00:53:20 Individual rights are the key concept there, and one of the challenges was that some of
00:53:25 the compromises, and compromise is not necessarily between groups, but compromises that even
00:53:30 Jefferson made and others made regarding individual rights, set America on a path that we’re
00:53:37 suffering from today.
00:53:39 I mentioned three last night, one was slavery, obviously that was a horrific compromise,
00:53:46 one that America not just paid for with the Civil War, 600,000 young men died because
00:53:53 of it, but the suffering of black slaves for all those years.
00:53:58 But then the whole issue of racial tensions in this country for a century and to this
00:54:04 day really is a consequence of that initial compromise, who knows what the counterfactual
00:54:10 is in America if there’s a Civil War right at the founding, because there would have
00:54:14 been a war no matter what, but if it had happened in the late 18th century, early 19th century,
00:54:19 rather than waiting till 1860s, but then second was Jefferson’s embrace of public education,
00:54:29 his founding of the University of Virginia, which I think is a great tragedy, which nobody
00:54:34 agrees with me on, so that’s one of the areas where I’m pretty radical.
00:54:39 And then they embrace, both by Jefferson and by Hamilton, for different reasons, but an
00:54:45 embrace by both of them of government role in the economy.
00:54:49 And I do finance, so I know a little bit about finance, and the debate between Jefferson
00:54:54 and Hamilton about banking is fascinating, but at the end of the day, both wanted a role
00:54:58 for government in banking, they both didn’t trust, Jefferson didn’t trust big financial
00:55:04 interests, Hamilton wanted to capture some of those financial interests for the state,
00:55:08 and as a consequence, we set America on a path where, in my view, regulation always
00:55:13 leads to more regulation, there’s never a case where regulation decreases, and we started
00:55:18 out with a certain regulatory body around banks, and a recognition that it was okay
00:55:22 to regulate the economy, so once we get into the late 19th century, it’s fine to regulate
00:55:26 the railroads, it’s fine to pass antitrust laws, it’s fine to then continue on the path
00:55:31 of where we are today, which is heavy, heavy, heavy, massive involvement of government in
00:55:36 every aspect of our economy, and really in every aspect of our life, because of education.
00:55:41 So I think the country was founded on certain mistakes, and we haven’t been willing to
00:55:47 question those mistakes, and in a sense that we’ve only moved in the opposite direction,
00:55:52 and now America’s become, whereas I think it was founded on the idea of the primacy
00:55:57 of the individual, the sanctity of the individual, at least as an idea, even if not fully implemented,
00:56:02 I think now that’s completely lost, I don’t think anybody really is an advocate out there
00:56:08 for individualism in politics, or for true freedom in politics.
00:56:13 We’ll get to individualism, but let me ask the Beatles and the Rolling Stones question
00:56:16 about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
00:56:19 Rolling Stones.
00:56:20 Well, because it’s like which document, Beatles or Rolling Stones, which document is more
00:56:23 important?
00:56:24 It’s obviously the Beatles, right?
00:56:25 Okay.
00:56:26 Is there a question here?
00:56:27 Is there even a question?
00:56:28 But let me then even zoom in further and ask you to pick your favorite song.
00:56:33 So what ideas in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence do you think are the most
00:56:39 important to the success of the United States of America?
00:56:43 I’ll answer the question, but before answering the question, I want to register a dissent
00:56:48 from your own.
00:56:49 Is it the public education?
00:56:50 Is it which?
00:56:51 No, no, no.
00:56:52 Actually, look, we’re not so far apart on public education.
00:56:57 I’m actually kind of surprised that you’re so anti Bismarck because his public school
00:57:01 system, his national public school system was created in order to stick it to the church.
00:57:07 It was the church that ran the schools before then, and so that’s a different…
00:57:11 I’m all for sticking it to the church, any opportunity, but not when the alternative
00:57:15 is the nation.
00:57:16 I’d rather see a free educational system where freedom is in education.
00:57:21 Okay.
00:57:22 So I want to register a dissent about Lincoln.
00:57:25 Look, Lincoln is an important figure and a great man, and he was presiding over a country,
00:57:30 which at that point was pretty Jeffersonian in terms of its self perception.
00:57:35 He said what he needed to say.
00:57:37 I’m not going to criticize him, but I don’t accept the idea that the Declaration of Independence,
00:57:44 which starts one revolution, is of a piece with the second constitution, the constitution
00:57:51 of 1787, the nationalist constitution, which is effectively a counter revolution.
00:57:57 What happens is there is a revolution.
00:58:00 It’s based on certain principles.
00:58:01 There are a lot…
00:58:03 Not exactly, but in many ways resembles the later ideas of the French Revolution.
00:58:09 And what the Federalist Party does, the Nationalist Conservative Party does, is a counter revolution
00:58:14 to reinstate the Old English Constitution.
00:58:18 So these documents are, if you’re willing to accept the evidence of history, they are
00:58:23 in many respects contrary to one another.
00:58:27 And so if I’m asked what’s the most important values that are handed down by these documents,
00:58:34 I don’t have an objection to life, liberty, and property, all of which are really important
00:58:41 things.
00:58:42 I do have an objection to the pompous overreach of these are self evident, which is absurd.
00:58:50 They can’t be self evident.
00:58:51 If they were self evident, then somebody would have come up with them like 2,000 years before.
00:58:56 It’s not self evident.
00:58:58 So that’s damaging.
00:58:59 I like the conservative preamble of the constitution, which describes the purposes of the national
00:59:08 government that’s being established.
00:59:10 There are seven purposes, a more perfect union, which is the principle of cohesion, justice,
00:59:19 domestic peace, common defense, the general welfare, which is the welfare of the public
00:59:26 as a thing that’s not only individuals, but there is such a thing as a general welfare,
00:59:31 liberty, which we agree is absolutely crucial, and posterity, the idea that the purpose of
00:59:37 the government is to be able to sustain and grow this independent nation, and not only
00:59:43 to guarantee rights no matter what happens.
00:59:45 You don’t like the, we hold these truths to be self evident, so you’re definitely a Beatles
00:59:50 guy.
00:59:51 You don’t want the pompous, you don’t need that revolutionary strength.
00:59:56 Look, I think that that expression, self evident truths, it does tremendous damage because instead
01:00:05 of a moderate skepticism, which says, look, we may not know everything, it says, look,
01:00:11 we know everything.
01:00:12 Here it is.
01:00:13 Here’s what we know.
01:00:14 We know.
01:00:15 Here’s what we think.
01:00:16 So, you know, I’ll agree with you all.
01:00:19 I don’t like self evident.
01:00:20 I don’t like self evident because he’s absolutely right.
01:00:22 It’s not self evident.
01:00:24 These are massive achievements.
01:00:27 These are massive achievements of enlightened thinking, of studying history, of understanding
01:00:33 human nature, of deriving a truth from 3,000 years of historical knowledge and a better
01:00:40 understanding of human nature and a capacity.
01:00:43 It’s using reason in some ways better than any human beings have.
01:00:49 I mean, the founding fathers are giants historically, in my view, because they came up with these
01:00:54 truths.
01:00:55 I do think they’re truths, but they’re certainly not self evident.
01:00:57 I mean, if they were, your arm is right.
01:00:59 They would have discovered them thousands of years earlier or everybody would accept
01:01:03 them, right?
01:01:04 I mean, how many people today think that those, what they state in that document is true?
01:01:09 Pretty much, you know, five people.
01:01:11 I don’t know.
01:01:12 It’s very, it’s very, your criticism of modern society, yes, we’ll get there.
01:01:16 It’s very, very few people recognize that if they were self evident, bam, everybody
01:01:21 would have become, you know, would have accepted the American Revolution as truth and that
01:01:26 was it.
01:01:27 A lot of work has to go into understanding and describing and convincing people about
01:01:32 those truths.
01:01:33 But I completely disagree with your arm about this idea or I’ll voice my dissent, as we
01:01:39 said.
01:01:40 I disagree with your official dissent.
01:01:42 About A, that this being two different revolutions and B, that the American Revolution had any
01:01:47 similarity to the French Revolution.
01:01:50 You know that Jefferson and Payne, they were in France running a different revolution.
01:01:55 I know, but they were waiting constantly.
01:01:58 I mean, they were in communication with Madison, there was a lot of input going on.
01:02:01 I know, and Jefferson’s sitting there in Paris pulling his hair out because Madison has come
01:02:06 under the influence of these nationalists and he can’t believe it.
01:02:09 The reality is that the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution
01:02:15 is vast and it is a deep philosophical difference and it’s a difference that expressed, I think,
01:02:23 between the differences.
01:02:24 You know, Joram, in his writings, lumps Rousseau with Locke and with Voltaire and with others
01:02:29 and I think that’s wrong.
01:02:32 I think Rousseau is very different than the others.
01:02:34 I think, again, Rousseau is an anti enlightenment figure, Rousseau is in many respects hearkening
01:02:40 back to a past, an ancient past and I think a completely distorted view of human nature,
01:02:47 of human mind.
01:02:48 He rejects reason.
01:02:49 I mean, Rousseau is on the premise that reason is the end of humanity, reason is the destruction
01:02:55 of humanity, reason is how we get civilization and civilization is awful because –
01:03:00 I don’t disagree.
01:03:01 We’re only talking about different texts.
01:03:04 When I say Rousseau, I’m just talking about the social contract.
01:03:06 Yeah, but the social contract, there’s similarity between others, but he takes it in a completely
01:03:11 different direction and we agree social contract is a bad idea, but you can’t have a contract
01:03:16 that you don’t actually voluntarily accept, but Rousseau is the French Revolution.
01:03:21 Rousseau is about destruction and mayhem and chaos and anarchy.
01:03:26 He is the spirit behind the French Revolution.
01:03:29 I think the American Revolution is a complete rejection of Rousseau.
01:03:31 I think Jefferson is a complete rejection of Rousseau.
01:03:34 I don’t think Jefferson is a fan of Rousseau.
01:03:36 He is of Voltaire and he certainly is of Montesquieu.
01:03:38 If you look at the Federalist Papers, the intellectual most cited in the Federalist
01:03:43 Papers I think in terms of just the number of times it’s cited is Montesquieu.
01:03:48 So I think that the American Revolution is an individualistic revolution.
01:03:51 It is a revolution about the rights of the individual.
01:03:55 The French Revolution is a negation of the rights of the individual.
01:03:58 It’s a collectivistic revolution.
01:04:00 It’s not quite the Marxist revolution of the proletarian, but it’s defining people in classes
01:04:06 and it’s a rebellion against a certain class and yeah, kill them all, right?
01:04:12 Off with their heads.
01:04:13 It is a negation.
01:04:15 It’s about egalitarianism in the sense of equality of outcome, not in a sense of equality
01:04:19 before the law or equality of rights, which is the Jeffersonian sense.
01:04:23 I think it’s wrong to lump Jefferson in to the fraternity egalitarian notion of the French,
01:04:33 which is far more similar to what ultimately became socialism and Marxism and that tradition.
01:04:42 It’s anti individualistic, the French Revolution is, whereas the American Revolution, the first
01:04:46 one, is individualistic.
01:04:48 It’s all about individual rights and while there’s certain phrases in the Declaration
01:04:52 of Independence that I don’t agree with, it’s beautifully written and it’s a magnificent
01:04:58 document, so it’s hard for me to say I don’t agree, but who am I?
01:05:02 These were giants, self evident is one of them.
01:05:06 I’m not particularly crazy about Endowed by the Creator, but I like the fact that it’s
01:05:13 creator and not God or not a specific creator, but just a more general thing.
01:05:18 But putting those two ashes aside, it’s the greatest political document in all of human
01:05:22 history in my view by far.
01:05:24 Nothing comes close.
01:05:25 It is a document that identifies the core principles of political truism, of truth.
01:05:34 That is, the role of government is to preserve and to protect these rights, these inalienable
01:05:38 rights and that is so crucial that these rights are inalienable.
01:05:42 That is, a majority can’t vote them out, a revelation can’t vote them out.
01:05:48 This is what is required for human liberty and human freedom, the right that is the sanction,
01:05:55 the freedom to act on your own behalf, to act based on your own judgment and as long
01:05:59 as you’re not interfering with other people’s rights, you are free to do so.
01:06:04 That is such a profound truth and that to me is the essence of political philosophy.
01:06:10 That’s the beginning and it’s based on, just not to fall into, Yolam’s going to say it’s
01:06:17 a rationalist, it’s based on a whole history of what happens when we negate that.
01:06:21 It’s based on looking at England and seeing to the extent that they practiced a respect
01:06:27 for individual liberty, of property, of freedom, good things happened.
01:06:32 So let’s take that all the way.
01:06:34 Let’s not compromise on that.
01:06:36 Let’s be consistent with the good and reject the bad and when England goes away, distance
01:06:42 itself from the rights of man, from the idea of a right to property and so on, bad things
01:06:47 happen and when they go to it, let’s go all in and I’m all in on the right to life, liberty,
01:06:54 property and the pursuit of happiness.
01:06:55 And I think the idea of pursuit of happiness is profound because it’s a moral statement.
01:06:59 It’s a statement that says that sanctions and says that ultimately people should be
01:07:06 allowed to make their own judgments and live their lives as they see fit based on how they
01:07:12 view happiness.
01:07:13 They might be right, they might be wrong, but we’re not going to dictate what happiness
01:07:16 entails and dictate to people how they should live their lives.
01:07:20 We’re going to let them figure that out.
01:07:23 So it has this self interested moral code kind of embedded in it.
01:07:29 So I think it’s a beautiful statement.
01:07:31 So I think the declaration is key and I think there was an experiment.
01:07:35 An experiment was proposed in that period before the Constitution where the experiment
01:07:41 was let’s let the states, let’s have a kind of a loose confederation, let’s let the states
01:07:47 experiment with setting up their own constitutions and rule of government and we won’t have any
01:07:52 kind of unity.
01:07:54 And I think what they realized, and I think even Jefferson realized, is that that was
01:07:58 not workable because many of the states were starting to significantly violate rights.
01:08:05 There was nothing to unify, there was nothing to really protect the vision of the declaration.
01:08:11 You needed to establish a nation, which is what the Constitution does, it establishes
01:08:16 a nation.
01:08:17 But the purpose of that was to put everybody under one set of laws that protected rights.
01:08:25 The focus was still on the protection of rights and I agree with six of the seven of the principles.
01:08:33 Which did this group?
01:08:34 The common welfare, the general welfare, which I’m worried about, right?
01:08:37 I think in the way the founders understood it, I think I probably agreed with it.
01:08:42 But it’s such an ambiguous—
01:08:43 I’m sure you don’t agree.
01:08:44 Maybe I don’t.
01:08:45 Can you state the general welfare principle?
01:08:48 Well the idea that part of the role of government is to secure the general welfare is something—
01:08:53 This is something we didn’t get to in the debate, we really should have, is the question
01:08:58 of whether there is such a thing as a common good or a public interest or a national interest
01:09:04 or a general welfare, do these words, do these terms mean anything other than the good of
01:09:11 all of the individuals in the country?
01:09:13 That’s an important—
01:09:14 Yeah, so that’s right, so that’s why I object to it because I think it’s too easy
01:09:19 to interpret it as.
01:09:20 So I interpret it as, well, what’s good for a general, a group, a common people, it’s
01:09:27 a good collection of individuals, so what’s good for the individual is good for the common
01:09:29 welfare, but I understand that that’s something that is hard for people to grasp and not the
01:09:35 common understanding.
01:09:37 So I would have skipped the general welfare in order to avoid the fact that now the general
01:09:42 welfare includes the government telling you what gender you should be assigned, so I would
01:09:48 have wanted to have skipped that completely.
01:09:51 So I think the Constitution is completely consistent with the Declaration with a few
01:09:54 exceptions of general welfare, but perfection is a difficult thing to find, particularly
01:10:01 for me politically, but it’s a magnificent document, the Constitution.
01:10:05 It doesn’t quite rise to the level, I think, of the Declaration, but it’s a magnificent
01:10:08 document because—and this is the difference, I think, between the English Constitution.
01:10:13 Here’s what I see as the difference.
01:10:17 The difference is that the Constitution is written in the context of why do we have a
01:10:22 separation of powers, for example?
01:10:24 We have a separation of powers in order to make sure that the government only does what
01:10:27 the government is supposed to do, and what is the government supposed to do?
01:10:30 Well, fundamentally, it’s supposed to protect rights.
01:10:33 I mean, all of those seven, or at least six of the seven, are about protecting rights.
01:10:37 They’re about protecting us from foreign invaders.
01:10:39 They’re about protecting peace within the country.
01:10:43 They’re about preserving this protection of rights, and why do we have this separation
01:10:48 so that we make sure that no one of those entities, the executive or the legislature,
01:10:53 the judicial, can violate rights because there’s always somebody looking over their shoulder.
01:10:56 There’s always somebody who can veto their power, but there’s a purpose to it, and that
01:11:00 purpose is clearly signified and characterized, and that’s why I think the Bill of Rights
01:11:05 was written, in order to add to the clarification of what exactly we mean.
01:11:09 What is the purpose?
01:11:10 The purpose is to preserve rights, and that’s why we need to elaborate what those rights
01:11:16 are.
01:11:17 And Madison’s objection to the Bill of Rights was to say not that he objected to having
01:11:20 protection of rights, but to listing them because he was worried that other rights that
01:11:26 were not listed would not be, and his worry was completely justified because it’s exactly
01:11:30 what’s happened.
01:11:31 It’s like, the only reason we have free speech in America is because we’ve got it in writing
01:11:34 as a First Amendment.
01:11:35 If we didn’t have it in writing, it would have been gone a long time ago, and the reason
01:11:39 we don’t have, for example, the freedom to negotiate a contract, you know, independent
01:11:46 government regulation, that was not listed as a right in the Bill, even though I think
01:11:51 it’s clearly covered under the Constitution and certainly under the Declaration.
01:11:54 So there was a massive mistake done in the Bill of Rights.
01:11:57 They tried to cover it with the Ninth Amendment, but it never really stuck, this idea that
01:12:03 nonenumerated rights that are still in place.
01:12:06 So I don’t see it as a second revolution.
01:12:08 I think it’s a fix to a flaw that happened.
01:12:13 It’s a fix that allowed the expansion of the protection of rights to all states by creating
01:12:22 a national entity to protect those rights, and that’s what ultimately led to slavery
01:12:28 going away.
01:12:29 You know, under the initial agreement, slavery would have been there in perpetuity because
01:12:36 states were sovereign in a way that under the new Constitution they were not, and in
01:12:40 a sense, the Constitution sets in motion, the Declaration and then the Constitution
01:12:44 set in motion, the Civil War.
01:12:47 The Civil War has to happen because at the end of the day, you cannot have some states
01:12:51 with a massive violation of rights, what’s more of a violation of rights than slavery,
01:12:55 and some states that recognize it’s not, it inevitably leads to the Civil War.
01:13:01 Yaron was just saying that, you know, other than the general welfare, these principles
01:13:05 are about individual liberties.
01:13:07 I just don’t think you can read it that way.
01:13:09 The first stated purpose of the Constitution of 1787 is in order to form a more perfect
01:13:15 union.
01:13:16 A more perfect union, it’s describing a characteristic of the whole, it is not a characteristic of
01:13:22 any individual.
01:13:24 If you look at how the individuals are doing, you don’t know whether their union is more
01:13:28 or less perfect.
01:13:30 So what they’re doing is they’re looking at the condition in which in order to be able
01:13:35 to fight the battle of Yorktown, somebody has to write a personal check in order to
01:13:40 be able to move armies.
01:13:41 A more perfect union is a more cohesive union, it’s the ability to get all of these different
01:13:47 individuals to do one focused thing when it’s necessary to do it.
01:13:52 Well it’s more than that, right, so I agree with that, but for what purpose?
01:13:57 That is, and this is why, you know, this is why it’s so hard with these historical documents
01:14:02 because there’s a context and there’s a thinking that they can’t write everything down, right,
01:14:07 which is sad because I wish they had.
01:14:09 What’s the purpose of a more perfect union?
01:14:11 The purpose of the more perfect union is to preserve the liberty of the individuals within
01:14:15 that union.
01:14:16 Well how do you know?
01:14:18 Because if you look, what’s the rest?
01:14:20 So what is the common defense?
01:14:21 The common defense is to protect us from foreign invaders who would now disrupt what the rest
01:14:26 of the Constitution is all about.
01:14:28 All of the Constitution is written in a way as to preserve, find ways to limit the ability
01:14:33 of government to violate the rights of individuals.
01:14:38 The beauty of this Constitution, and again, it’s connection to the Declaration and tradition,
01:14:43 right?
01:14:44 What came before it?
01:14:45 What came before it was a document, which they all respected, which was the Declaration,
01:14:49 which set the context for this.
01:14:50 And now the union is there in order to provide for the common defense, great, because we
01:14:55 know that foreign invaders can violate our rights, that’s what war is about.
01:14:59 To protect us from peace, to establish peace and justice within the country, that’s based
01:15:04 on law, the rule of law, and again, individual liberty.
01:15:09 So to me, when you read the Founders, when you read the Federalist Papers, when you read
01:15:13 what they wrote, what they’re trying to do is figure out the right kind of political
01:15:19 system, the right kind of structure to be able to preserve these liberties, and not
01:15:25 all of them had, from my perspective, a perfect understanding of what those liberties entailed,
01:15:30 but they were all, even the conservatives that you call conservatives, were all in generally
01:15:35 in agreement about the importance of individual liberty and the importance of individual liberty.
01:15:39 Of course, because almost all of these rights are traditional English rights, they exist
01:15:44 in the English Bill of Rights, in the English Petition of Rights, they exist in force.
01:15:49 All of these are traditional.
01:15:50 And what they’re trying to do is perfect that.
01:15:51 They’re trying to take the British system and perfect it.
01:15:54 But you keep leaving out that they want to be like England in that they want to have
01:15:59 an independent nation.
01:16:01 An independent nation is not a collection of individual liberties.
01:16:04 An independent nation, the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence is the
01:16:09 declaration that there is a collective right, that we as a people are breaking the bonds
01:16:13 with another people, and we’re going to take our place, our equal station, among the nations
01:16:17 of the earth.
01:16:18 But for what purpose?
01:16:20 The purpose is to protect individual rights.
01:16:22 And there’s no collective right.
01:16:24 Your argument is completely circular.
01:16:25 You’re not allowing the possibility that there could be great and decent men that you and
01:16:32 I both admire who wanted the independence of their nation, not because that would give
01:16:39 individuals liberty, but because the independence of their nation was itself a great good.
01:16:45 So we clearly disagree on this, because I don’t think the independence of the nation
01:16:48 is a good in and of itself, because it’s –
01:16:50 But did they think it was?
01:16:52 I don’t think they did.
01:16:54 And this is why they tried so hard not to break from England, and why many of them struggled,
01:17:02 really, really struggled with having a revolution, because England was pretty good, right?
01:17:07 England was the best.
01:17:08 And this is where we should get to the universality of these things, because I do think England
01:17:12 was the best, and universally and absolutely was the best system out there.
01:17:18 And they struggled to break from England, because they didn’t view the value of having
01:17:23 a nation as the primary.
01:17:25 But what they identified in England is certain flaws in the system that created situations
01:17:30 in which their rights were being violated.
01:17:32 So they figured the only option in order to secure these rights is to break away from
01:17:38 England and secure a nation.
01:17:39 Now, I am not an anarchist, as Michael Malice is, because we’ve discussed it.
01:17:44 I believe you need nations.
01:17:46 You need nations to secure those rights.
01:17:48 That is, the rights are not – you can’t secure those rights without having a nation.
01:17:53 But the nation is just a means to an end.
01:17:55 The end is the rights, and I think that’s how the founders understood it, and that’s
01:17:58 why they created this kind of country.
01:18:01 I think this is a good place to ask about common welfare and cohesion.
01:18:07 Let me say what John Donne wrote that, quote, no man is an island entire of itself.
01:18:14 Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
01:18:18 He went on, any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore
01:18:25 never sent to know for whom the bell tolls.
01:18:29 It tolls for thee.
01:18:32 So let’s talk about individualism and cohesion, not just at the political level, but at a
01:18:40 philosophical level for the human condition.
01:18:43 What is central?
01:18:45 What is the role of other humans in our lives?
01:18:49 What’s the importance of cohesion?
01:18:51 This is something you’ve talked about.
01:18:53 So Aaron said that the beauty of the founding documents is that they create a cohesive union
01:19:00 that protects the individual freedoms, but you have spoken about the value of the union,
01:19:07 the common welfare, the cohesion in itself.
01:19:13 So can you maybe elaborate on what is the role of cohesion and the collective, not to
01:19:19 use that term, but multiple humans together connected in the human condition?
01:19:25 Sure, I keep getting the feeling that Yaron and I are actually having a disagreement about
01:19:30 empirical reality, because I think that enlightenment rationalist political thought features the
01:19:37 individual, it features the state.
01:19:40 There isn’t really a nation other than the nation, the people as a collective is created
01:19:46 by the state, and when the state disappears, then the collective disappears.
01:19:51 Now, I think that when conservatives of all stripes look at this kind of thinking, that
01:19:58 there’s the individuals and then there’s the state, and there really isn’t anything else.
01:20:04 When they look at that, they say, even before you get to consequences, it’s a terrible theory
01:20:10 because when we try to understand any field of inquiry, any domain, any subject area,
01:20:16 when you try to understand it, we try to come up with a small number of concepts and of
01:20:25 relations among the concepts, which is supposed to be able to explain, to illuminate as much
01:20:33 as possible the important things that are taking place in the domain.
01:20:37 And conservatives look at this, individuals and the state, and they say, you’re missing
01:20:42 most of what’s going on in politics, also in personal human relations as well.
01:20:50 But it just doesn’t look like a description of human beings, it looks like a completely
01:20:54 artificial thing.
01:20:55 And then conservatives say, well, look, once you adopt this artificial thing, then the
01:20:59 consequences are horrific because you’re not describing reality.
01:21:02 So a conservative reality begins with an empirical view of what are human beings like, and the
01:21:12 first thing you notice about human beings, or at least the first thing I think conservatives
01:21:16 notice is that they’re sticky, is that they clump, they turn into groups.
01:21:20 And you take any arbitrary collection of human beings and set them to a task, or even just
01:21:27 leave them alone, and they quickly form into groups and those groups are always structured
01:21:33 as hierarchies.
01:21:34 This is this competition within the hierarchy, who’s going to be the leader, who’s going
01:21:38 to be number two.
01:21:39 But everywhere you look in human societies, universally, there are groups, the groups
01:21:46 compete and they’re structured internally as hierarchies, and then there are internal
01:21:51 competitions for who leads the different groups.
01:21:55 And when we think about scientific explanation, we allow that there are different levels of
01:22:00 explanation that a macroscopic object like a table, it doesn’t have properties that can
01:22:07 be directly derived from the properties of the atoms or the molecules or the microfibers
01:22:13 that make up the table.
01:22:15 And that’s understood, that there’s what academic philosophers call emergent properties,
01:22:21 that when you get up to the level of the table, it has properties like that you can’t put
01:22:25 your fist through it, which you can’t necessarily know just by looking at the atoms alone.
01:22:31 And I think conservatives say the same thing is true for political theory, for social theory,
01:22:36 that looking at an individual human being and thinking about what does that individual
01:22:41 human being need, which Jeroen does very eloquently in his writings.
01:22:46 But that doesn’t tell you what the characteristics are of this hierarchically structured group.
01:22:53 As soon as you have that, it has its own qualities.
01:22:56 So an example, the question of what holds these groups together, and we need to answer
01:23:01 that question.
01:23:03 I try to answer it by saying there’s such a thing as mutual loyalty.
01:23:07 Mutual loyalty is shorthand for human beings, individuals have the capacity to include another
01:23:14 individual within their self, within their conception of their self.
01:23:19 When two people do it, it creates a bond, like a bond between two atoms creates a molecule.
01:23:27 That doesn’t mean that they lose their individuality.
01:23:30 Within the group, they may still continue competing with one another.
01:23:33 But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t, in reality, a bond, and that real bond is the
01:23:39 stuff of which political events and political history are made, is the coming together,
01:23:46 the cohesion and the dissolution of these bonded loyalty groups.
01:23:51 That’s the reality of politics.
01:23:54 And so when I hear these discussions about individuals in the state, I feel like we’re
01:24:00 missing most of the reality, and in order to understand the political reality, we need
01:24:05 to understand what makes human beings coherent to groups, what makes them dissolve, what
01:24:12 makes the groups come apart and end up creating civil wars and that kind of thing.
01:24:16 I think we also need to know, in practice, rival groups do come together and bond.
01:24:25 I mean, basically, when we think about democratic society, we’re talking about different groups,
01:24:33 we can call them tribes, or you can come up with a different name, but different tribal
01:24:37 groupings with different views, they come together to form a nation, and they’re able
01:24:43 to do that, even though often they hate each other, like we were talking about the American
01:24:48 Revolution, and often they hate each other, and nevertheless, they’re able to come together.
01:24:53 Why?
01:24:54 How?
01:24:55 And that leads us into questions like, how does honor, the giving of honor by one group
01:25:00 to another, how does that increase the mutual loyalty between groups that are still competing
01:25:08 with one another?
01:25:10 All of these questions, I think we have to answer them in order to be able to talk about
01:25:15 politics.
01:25:17 And I think the reason, the first reason why one should approach politics as a conservative
01:25:23 rather than as an individualist is because it gives us these theoretical tools to be
01:25:29 able to talk about reality, which we don’t have as long as we keep within the individualist
01:25:33 framework.
01:25:34 As we’re talking, the metaphor that’s popping up into my mind, and this is also something
01:25:40 that bothers me with theoretical physics, the metaphor is there’s some sense in which
01:25:46 this thing’s called theories of everything, where you try to describe the basic laws of
01:25:51 physics, how they interact together, and once you do, you have a sense that you understand
01:25:55 all of reality.
01:25:57 In a sense, you do.
01:25:59 And that to me, that to me is understanding the individual, like how the individual behaves
01:26:05 in this world.
01:26:06 But then you’re saying that they’re, hey, hey, you’re also forgetting chemistry, biology,
01:26:12 how all of that actually comes together, the stickiness, the stickiness of molecules and
01:26:17 how they build different systems and they, some systems can kill each other, some systems
01:26:22 can flourish, some can make pancakes and bananas and some can make poison and all those kinds
01:26:28 of things that we need to be able to, we need to consider the full stack of things that
01:26:36 are constructed from the fundamental basics.
01:26:40 And I guess, Yaron, you’re saying that, no, you’re just like the theoretical physicist,
01:26:47 it all starts at the bottom, like if you need to preserve the fundamentals of reality, which
01:26:54 is the individual, like the basic atom of human society is the individual, do you?
01:27:01 So yes, so the basic unit, the basic moral unit, the basic ethical unit in society is
01:27:07 the individual.
01:27:08 And yeah, of course we form groups and you can’t understand history unless you understand
01:27:13 group formation and group motivation and I have a view about what kind of groups should
01:27:18 be formed and politically, from a political perspective, voluntary ones, ones in which
01:27:25 we join when we want to join and we can leave when we want to leave and ones that help us
01:27:32 and clearly groups help us pursue whatever it is a goal is ultimately.
01:27:38 So in the pursuit of happiness, there are lots of groups that one wants to form, whether
01:27:43 it’s marriage, whether it’s businesses, whether it’s sports teams, there are lots of different
01:27:49 groups one wants to form, but the question is what is the standard of well being?
01:27:54 Is it the standard of well being some algorithm that maximizes the well being of a group,
01:28:01 some utilitarian function?
01:28:03 Is it something that’s inherent in the group that we can measure as goodness and to help
01:28:11 with individuals within as long as we can get the group to function well, we don’t really
01:28:16 care about where the individuals are.
01:28:17 So to me, the goal of creating groups is the well being of the individual and that’s why
01:28:23 it needs to be voluntary and that’s why there has to be a way out of those.
01:28:27 Sometimes it’s costly, it’s not a cheap out, that’s why you should really think about what
01:28:31 groups you and this on an issue that’s very controversial, maybe we can discuss, maybe
01:28:36 not.
01:28:37 To me, immigration is so important, open immigration or free immigration is because that’s another
01:28:42 group that I would like people to be able to voluntarily choose both in and out and
01:28:48 I’d like to see people be able to go and join that group that they believe will allow for
01:28:54 the pursuit of happiness.
01:28:55 But let me say that that’s a description of an ideal, what I’m just saying.
01:29:00 I recognize that that’s not the reality in which we live.
01:29:03 I recognize that that’s not the reality in which history.
01:29:06 Recognizing that the individual exists in a sense, philosophically, is a massive achievement.
01:29:15 Human beings, however they evolved, clearly we started out in a tribal context in which
01:29:21 the individual didn’t matter.
01:29:23 We followed the leader, the competition was for power, power over the group and dictates
01:29:28 how the group should work.
01:29:32 The history of human beings is a history of gaining knowledge and part of the knowledge
01:29:36 is the value of an individual.
01:29:39 You can see that in religion, you can see that in philosophy, you can see that through
01:29:44 the evolution.
01:29:47 We evolved from tribes into nations and then empires and conflicts between nations and
01:29:52 conflicts between empires.
01:29:54 We tried a lot of different things, if you will.
01:29:56 I don’t think we always did it on purpose, but different philosophies, different sets
01:30:01 of ideas drove us towards different collectives, different groupings, and different ways in
01:30:07 which to structure.
01:30:09 After 3,000 years of known history, there’s history before that, but we don’t know much
01:30:14 about it, 3,000 years of known history, you can sit back and evaluate.
01:30:19 I think that’s what is done in the Enlightenment.
01:30:23 You sit back, and certainly we can do it today, we can sit back and evaluate.
01:30:27 What promotes human flourishing and what doesn’t?
01:30:29 What do we mean by human flourishing?
01:30:32 Who’s flourishing?
01:30:33 Well, individual human beings.
01:30:35 Now, since I don’t believe in a zero sum world, and the world is not zero sum, we can see
01:30:39 that, it’s empirically possible to show that the world is not a zero sum game, my flourishing
01:30:44 doesn’t come at your expense, so I can show that a system that promotes my flourishing
01:30:49 probably promotes your flourishing as well and promotes the general welfare in that sense
01:30:53 because it promotes individuals flourishing, and we can look at all these examples of how
01:31:01 we evolved and what leads to bloodshed and what doesn’t and what promotes this ability
01:31:06 to flourish as an individual, again, an achievement, the idea of individual flourishing, and then
01:31:11 we can think about how to create a political system around that, a political system that
01:31:17 recognizes and allows for the formation of groups, but just under the principle of voluntary.
01:31:24 You can’t be forced to join a group, you can’t be coerced into forming a group other than
01:31:29 the fact that you’re born in a particular place, in a particular, you know, that in
01:31:33 a sense, but that’s not forced, there’s a difference between metaphysics and between
01:31:37 choices.
01:31:38 So this is something that came up in the debate that Yoram said that not all human relations
01:31:42 are voluntary, and you kind of emphasized that a lot of where we are is not voluntary.
01:31:48 We’re grounded, we’re connected in so much.
01:31:51 So how can a human be free in the way you’re describing, individual be free if some part
01:32:00 of who we are is not voluntary, some part of who we are is other people?
01:32:04 Well because what do we mean by freedom?
01:32:06 Freedom doesn’t mean the negation of the laws of physics, right?
01:32:10 Freedom doesn’t mean ignoring, freedom means the ability within the scope of what’s available
01:32:18 for you to choose, being able to choose those things.
01:32:22 So in a political context, freedom means, you know, the absence of coercion.
01:32:30 So once you’re an adult, you know, Yoram says you’re born into a particular religious
01:32:35 context, absolutely, but once you’re an adult, I think it’s incumbent on you to evaluate
01:32:39 that religious context and look at different religions or nonreligion or whatever and choose
01:32:45 your philosophy of life, choose your values, choose how you want to live your life.
01:32:50 That’s the freedom.
01:32:51 The freedom is, one system says you’re either coerced by the state or coerced by the group
01:32:58 or coerced by society around you to follow a particular path, or the expectation is,
01:33:06 the demand is, the pressure is to conform to a particular path, and my view is, no,
01:33:12 you should be in a position to be able to choose your path, and that choice means you
01:33:16 look around, you evaluate, you evaluate based on history, based on knowledge, based on all
01:33:23 of these things, and you choose what that path would be.
01:33:26 That’s fundamentally what freedom means.
01:33:28 Yes, you cannot choose your parents, but of course not.
01:33:31 Nobody would claim that that’s within the scope of what is possible.
01:33:34 I think the coercion freedom dichotomy, these are too few concepts, coercion and freedom.
01:33:43 It’s too simplistic to be able to describe what we’re actually dealing with.
01:33:47 The traditional Anglo conservative view is that society has to be, it has to be ordered,
01:33:56 it has to be disciplined, and there are two choices for how it can be ordered.
01:34:03 One is that a people is, by its own traditions, you would say voluntarily, but these are mostly
01:34:11 inherited traditions, by its own traditions, it is ordered.
01:34:16 For example, people just in general will not go into somebody else’s yard, because that’s
01:34:23 the custom here, is we don’t go into somebody else’s yard without their permission.
01:34:27 Fortescue, we’re talking about 500 years ago already, Fortescue says that the genius of
01:34:34 the English people is that our government can be mild and apply very little coercion,
01:34:40 because the people are so disciplined.
01:34:43 When he says the people are so disciplined, what he’s saying is that our nation, our tribes,
01:34:51 we have strong traditions which channel people through tools of being honored and dishonored.
01:35:00 That’s a reality that exists in every society, and it’s not captured by your distinction
01:35:05 between coercion and lack of coercion.
01:35:08 When I’m going to be dishonored if I don’t care for my aging mother, I’m not being coerced
01:35:16 like the state comes and puts a gun to my head, but I am being pressured and given guidelines.
01:35:22 I’m saying that’s wrong, and I’m saying that’s dangerous, because that could easily be used
01:35:31 for bad traditions.
01:35:32 No, of course it is.
01:35:34 What’s the standard by which we evaluate what a good tradition is and what a bad tradition
01:35:37 is?
01:35:38 It’s the English.
01:35:39 You’re getting to the standard too fast.
01:35:40 Wait, wait.
01:35:41 You’re getting to the standard too fast.
01:35:42 But first I want to know, factually, is it true that all societies work like this?
01:35:47 Because if it’s true that all societies work like this, then saying we should be free from
01:35:50 it is just a fantasy.
01:35:52 No.
01:35:53 A, I don’t think all societies work like this.
01:35:54 I think much of what happened in America post founding in the 19th century didn’t work like
01:35:59 that.
01:36:00 I think that’s the genius of America, and I think what happened during the 19th century
01:36:03 in the Industrial Revolution, what happened in the 19th century to some extent globally
01:36:08 but certainly in the United States didn’t work that way.
01:36:11 It broke tradition.
01:36:12 I think all innovation breaks tradition, and I think that’s what the genius of this country
01:36:16 is and the post enlightenment world is.
01:36:21 I think pre that tradition, they work that way.
01:36:24 And then the question is, do people understand why they do what they do?
01:36:28 That is, I don’t want people doing what I think is right just because I think it’s right
01:36:35 and I’ve created a society in which somebody founded this country in a particular way,
01:36:42 so we’re just going to follow.
01:36:43 I want people to understand what they’re doing.
01:36:45 So I want people to have a respect for property, not because it’s a tradition, but because
01:36:48 they understand the value of a respect for property.
01:36:53 I want people not to murder one another, not because there’s a commandment, thou shall
01:36:56 not murder, but because they have an understanding of why murdering is bad and wrong and bad
01:37:03 for them and bad for the kind of world that they want to live in.
01:37:07 And I think that’s what we achieve through enlightenment, through education, and where
01:37:13 we don’t treat people just as a blob, a tribe that just follows orders, but we now treat
01:37:19 individuals as capable of thinking for themselves, capable for discovering truth, capable of
01:37:25 figuring out their own values, and that’s the big break between.
01:37:30 And this is the break, I think, that the Declaration represents, the break between society that
01:37:36 is based on tradition, following commandments, following rules, because they are the rules,
01:37:41 because they are the commandments, and a society where individuals understand those rules,
01:37:46 understand.
01:37:47 Yes, it’s now become a tradition, let’s say, to respect individual rights, to respect
01:37:51 property rights, but they’re not following it because it’s a tradition.
01:37:54 They’re following it because they understand what it is about it that makes it good.
01:38:00 So that’s the world, I think, that we were on the process of evolving towards, and that
01:38:06 is what got destroyed in the 20th century and has certainly disappeared today.
01:38:11 And I think that’s the great tragedy, is that we’re evolving to a place where people understood
01:38:15 the values that represent it.
01:38:18 Of course, the danger with tradition is, I mean, we’ll agree, right?
01:38:23 Yeah, it’s okay to kill the Jew, right?
01:38:25 Or it’s okay to steal people’s property if they’re of a certain color, or it’s okay to
01:38:30 enslave.
01:38:31 Those are all traditions.
01:38:32 And yet, once you stop and say, but what are they based on?
01:38:36 Is this right?
01:38:37 Is this just, based on some moral law?
01:38:40 No, it’s not.
01:38:42 There’s something wrong here.
01:38:43 We can’t achieve happiness and success if we follow these rules.
01:38:46 You’re talking about reason and tradition, but I think I would love to sort of linger
01:38:50 on the stickiness of humans that you describe.
01:38:54 So you kind of said this primary, the individuals, is primary and that was a great invention.
01:39:00 But to me, it’s not at all obvious that somehow, that the invention that humans have been practicing
01:39:09 for a very long time of the stickiness of community, of family, of love, that’s not
01:39:20 obvious to me, that’s not also fundamental to human flourishing and should be celebrated
01:39:28 and protected.
01:39:29 Of course it is.
01:39:30 Now, I suppose the argument you’re making is when you start to let the state define
01:39:38 what the stickiness, how the stickiness looks between humans, so you’re really like the
01:39:42 voluntary aspect.
01:39:44 But I just want to sort of, the observation is, humans seem to be pretty happy when they
01:39:51 form communities, however you define that.
01:39:56 So romantic partnership, family.
01:39:58 Some communities.
01:39:59 Some communities.
01:40:01 People are miserable in other communities.
01:40:02 So the nature of the community matters, right?
01:40:05 We know this.
01:40:06 We know that some bondings are not healthy and not good for the individuals involved
01:40:10 and they don’t thrive.
01:40:13 So I absolutely, I mean, I’m a lover, not a fighter, right?
01:40:17 I’m a huge believer in love.
01:40:18 The whole philosophy I think is a love based philosophy.
01:40:22 I fight in order to love, right?
01:40:23 So love is at the core of all of this and it’s a love of life.
01:40:30 It’s a love of the world out there and it’s a love of other people because they represent
01:40:34 a value to you.
01:40:37 So the stickiness is there, it’s, you know, my point is A, it should be chosen.
01:40:43 It should be consciously chosen and this is, put aside the state.
01:40:46 Forget the state for a minute.
01:40:48 Forget coercion.
01:40:49 Forget all that.
01:40:51 What I would encourage individuals to do, and this is where, you know, I’m not primarily
01:40:56 a political, you know, interested in politics, although I tend to talk most about that.
01:41:01 I’m primarily interested in human beings and how they live in a sense in morality.
01:41:05 And what I would urge individuals to do is to think about their relationships, to choose
01:41:11 the best relationships possible, but to seek out great relationships because other human
01:41:16 beings are an immense value to us.
01:41:20 And you know, when I write, you know, maybe you won’t quote this or not, but when I write
01:41:25 that, you know, about the trade of principle and trading, you know, it’s easy and obvious
01:41:31 to think of it as a materialistic kind of thing.
01:41:34 You know, I get, you know, I do the chores this day and my wife does the chores the other
01:41:38 day and we’re trading.
01:41:39 But trading is much more subtle than that and much more, can be much more spiritual
01:41:42 than that.
01:41:43 It’s about the trading in emotions.
01:41:48 It’s about the way one sees each other, it’s what one gets from one another.
01:41:53 I think friendship is a form of trade.
01:41:55 Now I know that that seems to make it material, but I don’t think of trade as a material
01:42:01 thing.
01:42:02 Friendship is incredibly important in life.
01:42:04 Love is incredibly important in life.
01:42:06 You know, having a group of friends is incredibly important in life.
01:42:10 All of these are sticky and important.
01:42:11 Okay.
01:42:12 How can I try to be eloquent on this?
01:42:14 So if you give people freedom, if you give people, well, not politics, relations, relationships.
01:42:25 So this is interesting because we have an interesting dynamic going on here in terms
01:42:28 of beliefs, they’re differing and there was interesting overlaps, but there’s a worry.
01:42:36 If you look at human history and you study the lessons of history and you look at modern
01:42:39 society, if you give people freedom in terms of stickiness and human relations and so on
01:42:45 full, like if you not give people freedom, emphasize freedom as the highest ideal.
01:42:53 You start getting more tender online dating, the stickiness dissolves just like in chemistry.
01:43:00 You start to have a gas versus a liquid, right?
01:43:03 That’s the worry.
01:43:04 So you have to study what actually happens.
01:43:08 If you emphasize that the stickiness, the bonds of humans is holding you back, the exercise
01:43:17 of voluntary choice is the highest ideal, the danger of that is for that to be implemented
01:43:25 or interpreted in certain kinds of ways by us flawed humans that are not, I mean, you
01:43:31 could say we’re perfectly reasonable and rational, we can think through all of our decisions,
01:43:35 but really, I mean, especially you’re young, you get horny, you make decisions that are
01:43:41 suboptimal perhaps.
01:43:42 So the point is you have to look at reality of when you emphasize different things.
01:43:49 So when you talk about what is the ideal life, what is the ideal relations, you have to also
01:43:55 think like, what are you emphasizing?
01:43:57 I think you both agree on what’s important, that community can be important, that freedom
01:44:02 is important, but what are you emphasizing and you’re really emphasizing the individual
01:44:06 and you’re emphasizing, Yoram, you’re emphasizing more of the community, of the family, of the
01:44:16 stickiness of the nation.
01:44:18 Well, look, I don’t want to deny the place of the individual.
01:44:22 I think that there really is a very great change in civilization when the books of Moses
01:44:33 announce that the individual is created in the image of God.
01:44:39 That’s a step that’s, as far as we know, without precedent before that in history, and to a
01:44:46 very large degree, I mean, one of the kind of unspoken things going on is that Yoram
01:44:53 and I really do agree on all sorts of things, I think in part because we’re both Jewish.
01:45:00 You did say Yoram is basically Moses, yes sir.
01:45:04 No, I said he was channeling Moses, but that’s still, in my book, that’s still pretty impressive.
01:45:10 No, that’s a compliment, I took it as one.
01:45:13 For me, that’s a compliment.
01:45:14 And we’ll talk about this a little bit just for the listeners, just so they know, Yoram,
01:45:19 amongst many things, we’ll talk about the virtue of nationalism, but you’re also a religious
01:45:25 scholar of sorts, or at least leverage the Bible for much, not much, but some of the
01:45:32 wisdom in your life.
01:45:33 Look, the way that Yoram looks at enlightenment, or maybe at Ayn Rand, that’s the way that
01:45:40 I see the Hebrew scripture and the tradition that comes from it.
01:45:45 It has the same kind of place in my life, and I just, I don’t know how much we want
01:45:51 to explore it, but I think that the agreement that we do have about the positive value of
01:46:01 the creative individual, the positive value of the individual’s desire to improve the
01:46:08 world, and in my book that means including his or her desire to improve his family, his
01:46:17 tribe, his congregation, his nation, but it still comes from this kind of, what Yoram
01:46:24 calls selfishness, the desire to make things better for yourself.
01:46:29 In Hebrew Bible and in Judaism, that just is a positive thing.
01:46:34 Of course, it can be taken too far, but it just is positive, and it doesn’t carry these
01:46:39 kinds of, you should turn the other cheek, you should give away your cloak, you should
01:46:44 love your enemy, these kinds of Christian tropes do not exist in Judaism, and so it
01:46:49 just, I like listening to Yoram, I do feel like he goes too far on various things, but
01:46:55 I also hear underneath it, I can sort of hear the Jewish current and the resistance to things
01:47:04 about Christianity that Jews often find.
01:47:06 Okay, I’ll ask you a question there.
01:47:09 Can you make an argument for turn the other cheek?
01:47:12 No.
01:47:13 I tend to, I guess you would equate that with altruism.
01:47:18 I tend to.
01:47:19 Unjustice.
01:47:20 It’s unjust to turn the other cheek.
01:47:23 I agree.
01:47:24 Okay.
01:47:25 You don’t love yourself if you’re turning the other cheek, it’s a lack of love, lack
01:47:29 of self respect.
01:47:30 Well, let me push back on that, because I like turn the other cheek, especially on Twitter.
01:47:38 So I like block the offender on Twitter.
01:47:42 No, so Twitter aside is more like you’re investing in the long term version of yourself versus
01:47:54 the short term.
01:47:55 So that’s the way I think about it, is like the energy you put onto the world.
01:47:59 The turn the other cheek philosophy allows you to walk through the fire gracefully.
01:48:05 It’s some sense.
01:48:06 I mean, perhaps you would reframe that as not, then that’s not being altruistic or whatever,
01:48:13 but there is something pragmatic about that kind of approach to life.
01:48:19 Disciplining yourself so that you become a better version of yourself.
01:48:22 I mean, not only do we agree, but I think every religious and philosophical tradition
01:48:28 probably has a version of that, even Kant, who we joined together in finding to be terrible.
01:48:35 Even Kant makes that distinction between the short term interest and the long term interest.
01:48:39 So I think that’s universal.
01:48:41 I don’t know of anybody who’s really disagreeing about that.
01:48:44 The thing that we were talking about a couple of minutes ago before we got onto this tangent
01:48:49 is the relationship between the individual who is in the image of God and is of value
01:48:59 as an individual.
01:49:00 Nevertheless, there’s this question about what is good for that person and also what
01:49:07 makes him happy.
01:49:08 I’m not sure that those are exactly the same things, but they’re both certainly relevant
01:49:13 and important.
01:49:15 And I feel like, I mean, I think we’re beginning to uncover this empirical disagreement about
01:49:22 what it is that’s good for the individual and what it is that makes them happy.
01:49:25 And I’ll go back to something I raised in the debate, which is this theory of Durkheim
01:49:32 that now has been popularized by Jordan Peterson.
01:49:40 Durkheim argues that he’s writing a book on suicide, he’s trying to understand what
01:49:48 brings individuals to suicide, and he coins this term, anomie, lack of law.
01:49:54 And the argument is that individuals basically are healthy and happy when they find their
01:50:04 place in a hierarchy.
01:50:06 Within a loyalty group in a certain place in a hierarchy, they compete and struggle
01:50:11 in order to rise in the hierarchy, but they know where they are.
01:50:15 They know who they are.
01:50:16 The kids today like to say they know what their identity is because they associate themselves.
01:50:22 Their self expands to take on the leadership, the different layers, the past and the future
01:50:27 of this particular hierarchy.
01:50:29 And I completely agree with you, Ron, that some of these hierarchies are pernicious and
01:50:35 oppressive and terrible, and some of them are better.
01:50:40 What we might disagree about is that you can find human beings who are capable of becoming
01:50:49 healthy and happy off by themselves without participating in this kind of structure.
01:50:55 The minute that you accept, if you accept, that this is empirical reality about human
01:51:01 beings, it’s an iron law, you can’t do anything.
01:51:06 You can tell human beings that they can be free of all constraints, all you want, and
01:51:11 you can get them to do things that, as you say, they can have contempt for hierarchies.
01:51:19 They can say, I’m not going to serve the man, I’m just going to burn them all down.
01:51:25 You can get kids to say all of these things.
01:51:29 You can get them either to be Marxists who are actively trying to overthrow and destroy
01:51:34 the existing hierarchies, or you can make them some kind of liberal where they basically
01:51:38 pretend the hierarchies don’t exist, they just act like they’re not there.
01:51:43 In both cases, and it’s not a coincidence that that’s what universities teach is your
01:51:47 choice is either Marxist revolution or liberal ignoring of the hierarchies.
01:51:53 In both cases, what you’ve done is you’ve eliminated the possibility that the young
01:51:58 person will be able to find his or her place in a way that allows them to grow and exercise
01:52:08 their love, their drive, their creativity in order to advance something constructive.
01:52:13 You’ve eliminated it and you’ve put the burden on them, a kind of a Nietzschean burden, to
01:52:21 just be the fountain of all values yourself, which maybe some people can do it, but almost
01:52:29 no one can do it.
01:52:30 And I think that’s empirically true.
01:52:32 And so I think by telling them about their freedom rather than telling them about the
01:52:39 need to join into some traditionalist hierarchy that can be good and healthy for them, I think
01:52:46 we’re destroying them.
01:52:47 I think we’re destroying this generation and the last one and the next.
01:52:51 Yaron, is the burden of freedom destroying mankind?
01:52:57 What freedom?
01:52:58 I mean, how many people are indeed free?
01:53:01 Look, the problem is that we’re caught up on political concepts and we’re moving into
01:53:09 ethical issues.
01:53:11 And I don’t think it’s right to tell people, you’re free, go do whatever the hell you want.
01:53:17 Just use your emotions.
01:53:20 Just go where you want to go in the spur of the moment.
01:53:23 Think short term.
01:53:24 Don’t think long term.
01:53:25 Well, don’t think.
01:53:26 Why think?
01:53:27 One has to provide moral guidance and morality here is crucial and crucially important.
01:53:34 And part of taking responsibility for your own life is establishing a moral framework
01:53:40 for your life.
01:53:42 And what does it mean to live a good life?
01:53:44 I mean, that’s much more important in a sense of a question.
01:53:47 And it is my belief that people can do that.
01:53:51 They can find and choose the values necessary to achieve a good life, but they need guidance.
01:53:57 They need guidance.
01:53:58 This is why religion evolved in my view, because people need guidance.
01:54:01 So I had called religion a primitive form of philosophy.
01:54:06 It was the original philosophy that provided people with some guidance about what to do
01:54:10 and what not to do.
01:54:11 And secular philosophy is supposed to do the same.
01:54:14 And the problem is that I think religion and 99% of secular philosophy give people bad
01:54:21 advice about what to do, and therefore they do bad stuff.
01:54:25 And sometimes because when they do good stuff, it gets reinforced, we survive in spite of
01:54:33 that.
01:54:34 But ideas like Kant and Hegel and Marx and so on give young people awful advice about
01:54:40 how to live and what to do, and as a consequence, really bad stuff happens.
01:54:43 And the world in which we exist today, which we agree there are a lot of pathologies to
01:54:50 it, a lot of bad stuff going on, in my view is going the wrong way.
01:54:53 In my view, a product of a set of ideas, on the one hand I think Christian ideas, on the
01:55:02 other hand I think secular philosophical ideas that have driven this country and the world
01:55:06 more generally in a really, really bad direction.
01:55:09 And this is why I do what I do, because I think at the core of it, the only way to change
01:55:16 it is not to impose a new set of ideas from the top, because I worry about who’s going
01:55:21 to be doing the imposition.
01:55:22 Plus, I don’t believe you can force people to be good.
01:55:26 It’s to challenge the ideas, it’s to question the ideas, it’s to present an alternative
01:55:30 view of morality, an alternative set of moral principles, ultimately an alternative view
01:55:36 of political principles.
01:55:37 But it has to start with morality.
01:55:40 If you don’t – and my morality is centered on the individual and what the individual
01:55:43 should do with his life in order to attain a good life, I believe that leads to happiness,
01:55:49 the good life, that’s why it’s good, right?
01:55:53 The goal is survival and thriving and flourishing and happiness, ultimately.
01:55:58 But politics is a servant of that in the end.
01:56:02 It’s not an end in itself.
01:56:04 So the real issue is, you know, you asked before what is the value of relationship.
01:56:08 There’s an enormous value in relationship because we get values from other people.
01:56:11 We don’t produce all our values.
01:56:12 We don’t produce all our spiritual values, and we don’t produce all our material values.
01:56:17 Other people are a massive benefit to us because they produce values we can’t – there’s
01:56:22 a massive division of labor in terms of values, not just in economics, but also in philosophy
01:56:27 and elsewhere.
01:56:28 It’s why we have teachers.
01:56:29 It’s why we have moral teachers.
01:56:31 Moral teachers are important to help guide us towards a good life.
01:56:34 Not all of us are philosophers.
01:56:36 But what I do demand, if you all are individuals – this is where I put a burden on people,
01:56:41 right?
01:56:42 Understand what you’re doing, right?
01:56:45 You know, don’t embrace a moral teaching because it was tradition.
01:56:49 Don’t embrace a moral teaching because your parents embraced it.
01:56:53 Don’t embrace a moral teaching just because your teachers are teaching it.
01:56:57 Challenge it.
01:56:58 Think about it.
01:56:59 Embrace it because you – embrace it.
01:57:01 You might be wrong.
01:57:02 You might embrace the wrong one, but take moral responsibility.
01:57:06 Take responsibility over your life by evaluating, testing, challenging what you have received
01:57:13 and choosing what you’re going to pursue.
01:57:18 And I acknowledge empirically that most people don’t do that, and this is why intellectual
01:57:25 leadership is so important.
01:57:28 This is why you want to get – you want the voices in a culture to be good voices so that
01:57:33 those people who don’t think for themselves end up being followers, but they end up being
01:57:38 followers of somebody good versus followers of somebody bad.
01:57:41 But for the thinkers in the world out there, who I think are the people who count, who
01:57:45 are the people who shape society –
01:57:46 Oh, boy.
01:57:47 No, no.
01:57:48 Shape society.
01:57:49 Wait a minute.
01:57:50 Not count in a sense that you can dismiss the lives of others and, you know, because
01:57:53 I’m – you know, obviously I’m anti coercion and anti violence, but –
01:57:56 They sound like Plato.
01:57:57 But – yes.
01:57:58 I don’t want to sound like Plato.
01:58:00 But in a sense that they’re the ones who shape – who end up shaping the world.
01:58:03 They’re the ones who end up shaping how the world is.
01:58:06 I want those people to make choices about their values and not to just accept them based
01:58:12 on tradition or based on the commandment or based on where they happen to grow up.
01:58:16 And in that sense, again, you know, I do – and this is an interesting point where we disagree,
01:58:24 but I’m not exactly sure what Jerome’s position is.
01:58:26 I do believe in universal values.
01:58:28 That is, there are things that are good, and there are things that are evil.
01:58:31 And I think we’d agree on that.
01:58:32 When there are systems, we agree that communism and fascism are evil.
01:58:36 Well, I think we should be able to agree that some things – some political systems are
01:58:40 good.
01:58:41 And maybe there’s this middle ground where we both think that they’re not particularly
01:58:46 bad but not particularly good, and you all might think they’re better than I think
01:58:49 they are.
01:58:50 But if we can agree on this is good and this is evil, right, then the systems that tend
01:58:55 towards the good are good, and the systems that tend towards the evil are evil.
01:59:00 But that’s universal, right?
01:59:02 You know, I look at places like South Korea, Japan, Asia – you know, cultures that are
01:59:07 very, very different in many respects in the West.
01:59:10 And yet when they adopt certain Western ideas about freedom, about liberty, about individualism
01:59:19 – I mean, the Japanese Constitution, because MacArthur forced it in there, has the pursuit
01:59:22 of happiness in the Constitution, not because they chose it because he put it in there.
01:59:26 But they, to some extent, adopted that, and they’re successful places today.
01:59:32 Those societies in Asia that didn’t adopt these values are not successful societies
01:59:37 today.
01:59:38 Yaron, Japan has a birth rate of, what is it, 1.1, 1.2 children per woman?
01:59:47 I mean, look, there are some things – there are some places where you give people freedom
01:59:54 – this is also biblical, right?
01:59:57 The idea that everyone did what’s right in his own eyes, okay?
02:00:01 This is a refrain in the Book of Judges.
02:00:06 And the Bible is not an anti–freedom book.
02:00:08 I mean, there’s many, many – look, I –
02:00:10 Well, let’s talk –
02:00:11 No, we’re not – fine.
02:00:12 Well, we –
02:00:13 Oh, we’ll get there.
02:00:14 Okay.
02:00:15 Oh, he’s going to guide us.
02:00:16 Okay, look, just as an asterisk, I’m not asking you because the Bible is such a great
02:00:21 authoritarian book – it’s not that at all.
02:00:24 In my view, if you want to know where this – what you call the sanctity of property,
02:00:33 where does the sanctity of property comes from?
02:00:35 It comes from the Ten Commandments.
02:00:36 It comes from Moses saying, I haven’t taken anything from anyone.
02:00:40 It comes from Samuel saying, I haven’t taken anything from anyone.
02:00:42 It’s the condemnation of Ahab, of the unjust kings who steal the property of their subjects.
02:00:49 So, property and freedom, I think there’s a great basis for it in the Bible.
02:00:57 But right now, I’m focusing on this other question, which is what happens when everyone
02:01:03 does what’s right in his own eyes?
02:01:05 That’s the Book of Judges, and that’s this civil war, moral corruption, theft, idolatry,
02:01:12 murder, rape – I mean, that’s what happens when everyone does whatever is right in his
02:01:18 own eyes.
02:01:19 Well, no, that’s what it says in the text.
02:01:22 Okay, so when I look at – you’re right, there are things that I think are objectively
02:01:28 true.
02:01:29 I think it’s really hard to get people to agree to them, almost impossible.
02:01:33 But when I look at a country which is approaching one birth per woman – in other words, half
02:01:44 of the minimum necessary for replacement – you can say whatever you want.
02:01:50 Whatever you want about immigration, we can have that discussion.
02:01:52 But the point is that when your values are such that you’re not even capable of doing
02:02:00 the most basic techniques that human beings need in order to be able to propagate themselves
02:02:04 and their values and the way they see things, then I – look, you’re finished.
02:02:09 You can’t say that –
02:02:10 So if I implied that Japan is an ideal society, I take that back.
02:02:15 But let’s think about Japan for a minute.
02:02:17 I just think we’re in trouble, and we’re in trouble –
02:02:20 I agree with –
02:02:21 All right, all right.
02:02:22 Give me a second.
02:02:23 I’ll hold you to that.
02:02:24 It’s being a tutorial.
02:02:25 No, I’m sorry.
02:02:26 It’s his show, man.
02:02:27 It is his show.
02:02:28 We enter into his hierarchy and that’s it.
02:02:31 We should talk about hierarchy.
02:02:35 Just to clarify, how do you explain the situation in Japan?
02:02:39 Is it the decrease in value in family, like some of the – just expand on that.
02:02:45 How do you explain that situation?
02:02:47 You’re saying that that society is in trouble in a certain way.
02:02:50 Can you kind of describe the nature of that trouble?
02:02:53 I’m saying that when the individual is part of a social group – this can be a family,
02:03:02 a congregation, a community, a tribe, a nation – when the individual feels that the things
02:03:08 that are happening to the society are things that are happening to him or to her.
02:03:13 And I want to emphasize, this is not the standard view of collectivism that Mussolini will say,
02:03:21 the glory of the individual is in totally immersing himself in the organic whole.
02:03:27 That’s not what I’m saying.
02:03:28 I’m saying that human beings have and are both.
02:03:32 They enter into a society to which they are loyal and they compete with one another in
02:03:41 the terms that that society allows competition, but also sometimes by bending the rules and
02:03:45 by shaping them and by changing them.
02:03:49 What you see in many societies, certainly throughout the liberal West, but also in countries
02:03:55 that have been affected by the liberal West, by industrialization and ideas of individualism,
02:04:00 what you see is a collapse of a willingness of the individual to look at what is needed
02:04:08 by the whole and to make choices that are, as Jorn would call them, selfish because the
02:04:18 purpose of them is self expression, competition, self assertion, moving up in the hierarchy,
02:04:26 achieving honor or wealth in order to do those things.
02:04:31 But when you stop being able to look at the framework of a particular society and identify
02:04:38 with it, you cease to understand what it is that you need to do, not every single person,
02:04:46 but I’m talking about society wide.
02:04:48 So there are a few individuals who are just going to have a fantastic time and live the
02:04:51 kind of life that Jorn is describing, and the great majority, they stop being willing
02:04:56 to take risks.
02:04:58 They stop being willing to get married.
02:04:59 They stop being willing to have children.
02:05:01 They stop being willing to start companies.
02:05:03 They stop being willing to put themselves out to do great things because the guide rails
02:05:09 that told them what kinds of things and the social feedback that honored them when they
02:05:15 did things like getting married and having children, they’ve been crushed.
02:05:19 And what have they been crushed by?
02:05:20 They’ve been crushed by the false view that if you tell the individual, be free, make
02:05:25 all your own decisions, that they will then be free and make all their own decisions.
02:05:29 They don’t.
02:05:30 They just stop.
02:05:31 They stop being human.
02:05:33 That’s powerful.
02:05:34 So do you want to respond to that?
02:05:36 Yes.
02:05:38 So I don’t think anybody should have children.
02:05:40 If the goal, there’s a good tweet clip that you can make.
02:05:50 I don’t think anybody should have children for the goal of perpetuating their nation
02:05:55 or expanding their society or for some, I think they’d make horrible parents if that
02:06:03 was the goal, the purpose of doing it.
02:06:06 I think people should have children because they want to embrace that challenge, that
02:06:10 beauty, that experience, that amazing, very, very hard, very, very difficult experience
02:06:18 in life.
02:06:19 And it’s about being able to project a long term, but also being able to enjoy and love
02:06:24 the creation of another human being, that process of creation.
02:06:28 It is a beautiful, self interested thing.
02:06:30 And by the way, not everybody should have children.
02:06:32 I think way too many people have children.
02:06:34 There’s some awful parents out there that I wish would stop.
02:06:38 I mean, there are.
02:06:39 Life is precious and life of suffering is sad.
02:06:43 It’s sad to see people suffer and a lot of people are born into situations and are born
02:06:47 into parents that destroy their capacity to ever live a good life.
02:06:52 And that’s a tragic and sad thing.
02:06:57 So I don’t measure the health of a society in how many children they’re having or health
02:07:04 of a couple of whether they have children or not.
02:07:06 Those are individual choices.
02:07:07 Some people make a choice not to have children, which is completely rational and consistent
02:07:12 with their values.
02:07:13 Now when you look at a society overall, I do think having children and not having children
02:07:18 is a reflection of something.
02:07:20 I think it’s a reflection of a certain optimism about the future.
02:07:22 I think it’s a reflection of thinking long term versus short term.
02:07:26 I think a short term society doesn’t have children.
02:07:28 People don’t have children there because children are a long term investment.
02:07:32 They require real planning and real effort and real thinking about the long term.
02:07:38 But those are moral issues.
02:07:39 And again, we’re confusing or mixing.
02:07:43 When I say Japan, look how well Japan has done.
02:07:45 I don’t mean the specific Japanese people and how many kids they’re having and what
02:07:49 kind of life they’re having in terms of these kind of particulars.
02:07:53 But think about the alternatives Japan faces if you look around the options that they face.
02:08:01 They tried empire.
02:08:02 They tried nationalistic empire.
02:08:04 It didn’t turn out too well for them or anybody who they interacted with.
02:08:08 They could have become North Korea.
02:08:11 We know how that turned out.
02:08:12 We know what that is.
02:08:13 We’ve seen Cambodia, if you’ve ever been to Cambodia and seen the kind of poverty.
02:08:16 And yes, maybe Cambodians have lots of children, but God, I’d rather be in Japan any day than
02:08:22 have children in the kind of poverty and horrific circumstances they have.
02:08:27 But in the context of the available regimes that were possible post World War II for the
02:08:34 Japanese to embrace, they embraced one that generally led to prosperity, to freedom, to
02:08:39 individuals pursuing values, not perfectly because they didn’t implement the philosophical
02:08:45 foundation, the moral foundation that I would like them to have.
02:08:48 They’re still being impacted by Kantian, Hegelian, whatever philosophy that’s out there in the
02:08:54 West that’s destroying the better part.
02:08:57 So you give people freedom, now what do they do with it?
02:09:00 And if they have a bad philosophy, they’re going to do bad things with that freedom.
02:09:05 You tell people to do whatever they choose to do.
02:09:08 But if they have bad ideas, they will choose to do bad things.
02:09:12 So it is true that the primacy of morality and the primacy of philosophy has to be recognized.
02:09:19 It’s not the primacy of politics.
02:09:21 And indeed, you don’t get free societies unless you have some elements of decent philosophy.
02:09:29 But you can get free societies with a rotten philosophy, but they don’t stay free for very
02:09:33 long.
02:09:34 So how can it be a decent philosophy if it doesn’t care about posterity?
02:09:39 If you’re willing to say, I’m offering guidance, I think you should live as a traitor, all
02:09:46 relationships should be voluntary, those are interesting things.
02:09:50 But the moment that it comes to posterity, to the future, to there being a future, let’s
02:09:55 say that there were a society that lived the way, in general, according to your view.
02:10:00 Let’s say there was such a society.
02:10:02 How can you not care whether that society is capable of passing it on to the next generation
02:10:06 or not?
02:10:07 But the way to pass it on to the next generation is through ideas and not through having children.
02:10:11 Having children is an individual choice that some people are going to make and some people
02:10:15 are not, but the fundamental that preserves the good life.
02:10:19 What does that even mean?
02:10:23 If every generation from now on, your society that was good at a certain point has half
02:10:28 as many people in it, it’s going to very quickly, it’s just going to be overrun.
02:10:33 Overrun by whom?
02:10:35 What do you mean overrun by whom?
02:10:36 Are we just totally ahistorical?
02:10:38 If you’re the Spartans and you have all of these warrior values, but you stop having
02:10:43 children, you get overrun, you get defeated.
02:10:45 Well, in the case of Sparta, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
02:10:47 But I get it.
02:10:48 That’s not my point.
02:10:49 You have to have the ability to have enough children to create enough wealth and enough
02:10:54 power, enough strength.
02:10:56 Who makes these kind of conclusions, the decisions about how many you make it as an individual
02:11:01 and you decide that in order to…
02:11:03 No, we’re not talking about…
02:11:04 We’re talking about what kind of intellectual, cultural, religious inheritance you give your
02:11:10 children.
02:11:11 Yes.
02:11:12 And those are the ideas that I give my children and those ideas are going to perpetuate because
02:11:15 they’re good ideas.
02:11:16 If they’re bad ideas…
02:11:17 No, they’re not going to perpetuate.
02:11:18 They can’t be good ideas if they don’t produce future generations.
02:11:23 What are you talking about?
02:11:24 Why would they not produce future generations?
02:11:26 Because look at every liberal society on earth is in democratic collapse.
02:11:32 There’s not a single liberal society on earth today that I’m willing to defend.
02:11:36 Because they’re not living by my philosophy, they’ve not accepted my ideas.
02:11:40 They have a semblance, they have a semblance of a political system that is a little bit
02:11:46 like what I would like, far from what I would ideal, but they certainly don’t have a moral
02:11:50 foundation.
02:11:51 I believe that people who have the right moral foundation, most of them, not all of them,
02:11:55 but most of them will have children, most of them will continue into the future, most
02:12:00 of them will fight for a future, but not because they care what happens in 200 years, but because
02:12:06 they care about their lifetime and part of having fun and enjoying one’s lifetime is
02:12:11 having kids, is projecting into the future.
02:12:14 Are you really going to tell me that people have children because it’s fun?
02:12:19 They’re fun when they’re four years old.
02:12:20 They’re not fun when they’re 15.
02:12:23 When they’re 15, they’re not fun.
02:12:24 I agree with that.
02:12:25 No, they’re just not fun.
02:12:26 Look, you don’t do this.
02:12:27 I’m learning so much today.
02:12:28 You don’t do this for fun.
02:12:31 Marriage also you don’t do for fun.
02:12:32 There are times that are fun and there are times that are not fun.
02:12:35 Fun is not exactly the right word, but you certainly do it for happiness.
02:12:40 You do it for fulfillment.
02:12:42 You do it as a challenge.
02:12:43 You do it for making your life better, for making your life interesting, for making your
02:12:49 life challenging, for embracing.
02:12:53 Part of it is fun, part of it is hard work, but you do it because it makes your life a
02:13:01 better life.
02:13:02 It’s very interesting, empirically speaking, if you dissolve the cultural backbone where
02:13:07 everybody comes up, like the background, the moral ideas that everybody is raised with,
02:13:12 if you dissolve that and if you truly emphasize the individual, I think Yoram is saying it’s
02:13:19 going to naturally lead to the dissolution of marriage and all of these concepts.
02:13:24 So basically saying you’re not going to choose some of these things.
02:13:30 You’re going to more and more choose the short term optimization versus the long term optimization
02:13:37 beyond your own life, like posterity.
02:13:40 So I don’t think about posterity.
02:13:42 I don’t know what posterity means.
02:13:43 I can project into my children’s life.
02:13:46 Maybe when I have grandchildren, it’s the grandchildren’s life, but it ends there.
02:13:49 I can’t project 300 years into the future.
02:13:52 It’s ridiculous to try to think about 300 years into the future.
02:13:54 Things change so much.
02:13:56 But that’s the founding fathers.
02:13:58 That’s the conservative founding fathers.
02:13:59 Well, no, I don’t think.
02:14:01 I think they set up a system.
02:14:02 I think the whole idea was to set up a system that was self perpetuating that would if people
02:14:09 lived up to it, right?
02:14:10 No, no.
02:14:11 Would perpetuate itself into 300 years.
02:14:12 No systems are self perpetuating.
02:14:14 Things rise and fall and it’s the…
02:14:15 They don’t necessarily rise and fall.
02:14:16 I don’t believe in that.
02:14:17 Let me speak to your heart for a second.
02:14:21 The great individuals in societies are the people who have seen the decline, understood
02:14:27 it and provided resources in order to redirect and bring it back up.
02:14:32 You can’t agree to that?
02:14:34 I don’t see it that way at all.
02:14:36 Yes, I want people out there to rebel against conventional morality.
02:14:41 I think conventional morality is destructive to their own lives and broadly to posterity
02:14:46 because I think it’s unsustainable, it’s not good and this goes to…
02:14:48 I think conventional morality is Christian morality.
02:14:51 It’s a morality that’s been secularized through Christian lens and I think it’s destructive,
02:14:55 but I don’t want them to dump that and not replace it with something.
02:14:59 I want and I think it’s necessary and essential for people to have a moral code and to have
02:15:05 a moral code.
02:15:08 Morality is a set of guidelines to live your life.
02:15:11 It is a set of values to guide you, to help you identify what is good for you and what
02:15:15 is bad for you.
02:15:16 Here’s the thing.
02:15:17 Let me argue against it.
02:15:18 Let me…
02:15:19 Hold on a second.
02:15:20 You’re saying central to this morality that people should have is reason.
02:15:25 Yes.
02:15:26 Okay.
02:15:27 You’re not saying other things.
02:15:28 You’re basically saying reason will arrive a lot of things.
02:15:32 Why are you so sure that reason is so important?
02:15:36 There’s nothing else.
02:15:37 No.
02:15:38 Hold on a second.
02:15:39 But it seems like obvious to you.
02:15:40 So first of all, humans have limited cognitive capacity.
02:15:43 So even to assume the reason could actually function that well from an artificial intelligence
02:15:50 researcher perspective.
02:15:51 It seems…
02:15:52 The whole discussion about whether there is such a thing as artificial intelligence, whether
02:15:57 that is what it is.
02:15:58 But…
02:15:59 But see, here’s the thing.
02:16:00 I mean, you’re very confident about this particular thing, but not about other aspects of human
02:16:03 nature that seems to be obviously present.
02:16:06 So yes, human relations, love, connection between us.
02:16:12 So it’s very possible to argue that all of the accomplishments of reason would not exist
02:16:17 without the connection of other humans.
02:16:19 But of course that’s true.
02:16:21 It’s not obvious though.
02:16:22 It’s possible that reason is a property of the collective of multiple people interacting
02:16:28 with each other.
02:16:29 When you look at the greatest inventions of human history, some people tell that story
02:16:32 by individual inventors.
02:16:35 You could argue that’s true.
02:16:36 Some people say that it’s a bunch of people in a room together.
02:16:41 The idea is bubbling.
02:16:42 And if you’re saying individual is primary and they have the full power and the capacity
02:16:48 to make choices, I don’t know if that’s necessarily obviously true.
02:16:52 So there’s a straw manning going on here of my position, right?
02:16:56 Of course.
02:16:57 My favorite thing to do.
02:17:00 You don’t do it and you do it more politely than anybody else I know when you do it.
02:17:04 Of course we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
02:17:06 Of course, invention and science is collaborative.
02:17:10 Not always, not a hundred percent.
02:17:13 Newton stood on the shoulders of giants.
02:17:16 I don’t know how collaborative he was.
02:17:17 He wasn’t exactly known as a bubbling up and testing ideas out with other people.
02:17:22 But this is a metaphysical fact.
02:17:25 You can’t eat for me.
02:17:26 There’s no collective stomach.
02:17:28 You can’t eat for me.
02:17:30 You know, you can provide me with food, but I need to do the eating.
02:17:33 You can’t think for me.
02:17:35 You can help stimulate my thought.
02:17:37 You can challenge my thinking.
02:17:39 You can add to it.
02:17:41 But in the end of the day, only I can either do my thinking or not do my thinking, but
02:17:44 I need to think.
02:17:45 But you can think all by yourself alone.
02:17:48 What does that mean?
02:17:49 All by yourself.
02:17:50 Right?
02:17:51 Can I think on a desert island?
02:17:52 Yes, I can think on a desert island.
02:17:54 Can I think as big and as broad and as deep as I can in Aristotle’s Lyceum?
02:18:03 Of course not.
02:18:04 I’m a much better thinker in Aristotle’s Lyceum or in any kind of situation like this
02:18:09 where you’re going to challenge me and I have to come back and I have to think deeply about
02:18:13 what it is you said and why I’m not communicating very effectively and why you’re not understanding
02:18:17 me.
02:18:18 Of course, now you’re causing me to think much more deeply and to challenge me.
02:18:22 But it’s still true that I have to think.
02:18:24 And if I don’t think for myself, who’s going to think for me?
02:18:28 Right?
02:18:29 So this is why I’m not a philosopher.
02:18:32 I’m certainly not an original thinker in that sense.
02:18:36 I recognize the fact that there are geniuses that are much smarter than me, whether it’s
02:18:40 Aristotle or Ayn Rand or people that inspire me.
02:18:43 I study their work.
02:18:44 I try to understand it to the best of my ability.
02:18:46 But I don’t take it as gospel.
02:18:49 I take it as this is something I need to figure out.
02:18:53 I need to learn it.
02:18:54 I need to understand it because it’s good for my life.
02:18:56 It’s important to me.
02:18:58 But I have to do the thinking.
02:18:59 It won’t be mine.
02:19:01 It’ll be Ayn Rand’s.
02:19:02 But it won’t be mine unless I’ve done the thinking to integrate it into my soul, into
02:19:07 my consciousness, into my mind.
02:19:10 But it’s still true that I have to think for myself, not on a desert island.
02:19:15 I now regret ever using a desert island in the book as an example, because …
02:19:20 We’ve achieved something.
02:19:21 There is progress.
02:19:22 We’re moving …
02:19:23 Progress towards truth is taking place.
02:19:24 Because clearly, it was misunderstood.
02:19:25 I didn’t make myself clear.
02:19:26 I didn’t make myself clear enough in the book in terms of what I meant.
02:19:34 But I do not advocate for thinking alone in a dark room, not engaging with reality, not
02:19:42 studying history, not knowing about the world, or on a desert island, not interacting with
02:19:46 other people.
02:19:47 So you’re a collectivist?
02:19:48 No.
02:19:49 I’m a trader.
02:19:50 So I enjoy what we’re doing right now because you’re challenging me.
02:19:53 You make me a better thinker.
02:19:55 It’s interesting.
02:19:56 The fact that a lot of people are going to watch this plays into it as well.
02:20:01 But I would probably enjoy engaging with you in conversation.
02:20:04 It’s not even recording, so …
02:20:05 Yeah.
02:20:06 There you go.
02:20:07 I would enjoy engaging with you in conversation even if it wasn’t being recorded, and even
02:20:11 if it was because that kind of conversation makes me a better … There are some people
02:20:16 who I wouldn’t.
02:20:17 There are some people who make it worse, that you walk away from the conversation because
02:20:22 they’re harmful to you.
02:20:23 And this is where choice comes in.
02:20:24 I want to be able to choose who I engage with.
02:20:28 I don’t always have that choice because, as a public intellectual, you go in front
02:20:32 of audiences.
02:20:33 You don’t always choose who it is, but you want to choose who you engage with and who
02:20:36 you don’t.
02:20:37 You want to choose the forum in which you engage and how you engage.
02:20:41 And the standard for me is reason.
02:20:43 There is no other standard.
02:20:44 So you asked a deep question to start off.
02:20:46 Why reason?
02:20:48 Because that’s where the values come from.
02:20:50 That’s the only tool we have to discover truth.
02:20:53 Yes, you know, reason is something that it doesn’t guarantee truth.
02:20:57 It doesn’t guarantee the world is right, it’s fallible.
02:21:01 But it’s all we have.
02:21:02 It’s the tool in which we evaluate the world around us and we come to conclusions about
02:21:06 it.
02:21:07 There just isn’t other tools.
02:21:09 Emotions are not tools of cognition.
02:21:14 Consciousness is a tool.
02:21:16 Emotion like love, all of these things are ways to experience the world to say that reason
02:21:22 is the best tool.
02:21:23 But there’s a difference between experiencing the world and evaluating the world in terms
02:21:28 of what is truth or what is not.
02:21:30 As a scientist, I appreciate the value of reason.
02:21:32 And emotions and love are consequences.
02:21:36 They’re not primary.
02:21:38 Emotions are consequences of conclusions you’ve come to.
02:21:40 Your emotions will change very quickly, relatively speaking, when your evaluations of a situation
02:21:46 will change.
02:21:47 Different people can see exactly the same scene and have completely different emotions
02:21:51 because they’re bringing different value systems and they’re bringing different thoughts to
02:21:55 the process.
02:21:56 Maybe love is primary.
02:21:57 But let me ask.
02:21:58 Love is the same thing.
02:21:59 You can fall out of love with somebody.
02:22:01 Why?
02:22:02 Because you learn something new.
02:22:03 Because you’ve discovered something new about the person.
02:22:05 Now you don’t love them anymore.
02:22:06 This is the wrong podcast to bring up love.
02:22:07 We’ll talk forever about it.
02:22:09 So, Yoram, you wrote the book, The Virtue of Nationalism, contrasting nation states with
02:22:15 empires and with global governance like United Nations and so on.
02:22:19 So you argue that nationalism uniquely provides the, quote, the collective right of a free
02:22:26 people to rule themselves.
02:22:28 So continuing our conversation, why is this particular collection of humans we call a
02:22:35 nation a uniquely powerful way to preserve the freedom of a people, to have people rule
02:22:42 themselves?
02:22:43 Before I say anything on the subject, I should emphasize that I’m not a rationalist.
02:22:49 I’m an empiricist and I’m offering what I think is a valid observation of human history.
02:22:58 I don’t have some kind of deductive framework for proving that the nation is the best.
02:23:03 And empirically, we know something about the way systems of national states work and about
02:23:07 the way empires work and the way tribal societies work.
02:23:11 What we don’t know is, you know, is it possible to invent something else?
02:23:16 I mean, there’s a lot of things we don’t know here.
02:23:18 So with the caveat that I’m making an empirical observation, the basic argument is human beings
02:23:25 form collectives naturally, loyalty groups, and for most of human history and prehistory,
02:23:32 as far as we know, human beings lived in tribal societies.
02:23:36 Tribal societies are societies in which there’s constant friction and constant warfare among
02:23:46 very small groups, among families and clans.
02:23:50 And we reach a turning point in human history with the invention of large scale agriculture,
02:23:55 which allows the creation of vast wealth.
02:23:57 It allows the establishment of standing armies instead of militias.
02:24:01 You know, Sargon of Akkad says, I can pay 5,000 men to do nothing other than to drill
02:24:08 in the arts of war and then I’m gonna send them out to conquer the neighboring city states
02:24:12 and there you have empire.
02:24:13 The Bible, which is the source of our image, our conception of a world of independent nations
02:24:22 that are not constantly trying to conquer one another, the source of that is the Bible.
02:24:27 And the biblical world is one in which Israel and various other small nations are trying
02:24:38 to fight for their independence against world empires, against empires Babylonian, Assyrian,
02:24:46 Persian, Egyptian, which aspire to rule the world.
02:24:51 My claim is fundamentally twofold, it’s moral that whenever you conquer a foreign nation,
02:25:00 you’re murdering and you’re stealing, you’re destroying.
02:25:04 As your own would say, you’re using force to cause people to submit.
02:25:10 So there is something in the prophets that rebels against this ongoing atrocity and carnage
02:25:18 of trying to take over the whole world.
02:25:23 And there’s a prudential practical argument, which is that the world is governed best when
02:25:30 there are multiple nations, when they’re free to experiment and chart their own courses.
02:25:34 That means they have their own route to God, they have their own moralities, they have
02:25:41 their own forms of economy and government.
02:25:44 And what tends to happen in history is that when something is successful, when something
02:25:49 looks like, when a different nation looks at it and say, well, those people are flourishing,
02:25:54 they’re succeeding, then it’s imitated in the way that the Dutch invented the stock
02:26:01 market and the English said, look, that makes them powerful, so we’ll adopt it.
02:26:06 So there’s endless examples of that.
02:26:09 So that’s the argument for it.
02:26:10 The argument is since we don’t know a priori deductively from self evident principles what
02:26:20 is best, it’s best to have a world in which people are trying different things.
02:26:25 So quick question, because the word nationalism sometimes is presented in negative light in
02:26:30 connection to the nationalism of Nazi Germany, for example.
02:26:37 So you’re looking empirically at a world of nations that respect each other.
02:26:43 I use the word nationalism the way that I inherited it in my tradition, which is it’s
02:26:49 a principled standpoint that says that the world is governed best when many nations are
02:26:56 able to be independent and chart their own course.
02:26:59 That’s nationalism.
02:27:00 As far as the Nazis, Hitler’s an imperialist.
02:27:02 He hated nation states.
02:27:04 His whole theory, if you pick up, I don’t recommend doing this, but if you do…
02:27:08 I’m actually reading it right now, Mein Kampf?
02:27:10 Right.
02:27:11 If you do read Mein Kampf, then you’ll see that he says explicitly that the goal is for
02:27:15 Germany to be the lord of the earth and mistress of the globe, and he detests the idea of the
02:27:23 independent nation state because he sees it as weak and defeat.
02:27:27 He might as well have said it’s Jewish.
02:27:28 So let me ask from the individual perspective, for nationalism, what do you make of the value
02:27:35 of the love of country?
02:27:38 The reason I connect that… So I personally, what would you say, a patriot?
02:27:45 I love the love of country.
02:27:48 Or I am susceptible… Or how should… In a Randian way, I enjoy… I in a self interest
02:27:56 …
02:27:57 That’s good.
02:27:58 Don’t run away from it.
02:27:59 Well, I love a lot of things, but I’m saying this particular love is a little bit contentious,
02:28:04 which is loving your country.
02:28:06 That’s an interesting love that some people are a little uncomfortable with, especially
02:28:11 when that love… I grew up in the Soviet Union to say you just love the country.
02:28:18 It represents a certain thing to you, and you don’t think philosophically like I was
02:28:22 marching around with marks under my arm or something like that.
02:28:26 It’s just loving community at the level of nation.
02:28:33 It’s very interesting.
02:28:34 I don’t know if that’s an artifact of the past that we’re going to have to strip away.
02:28:39 I don’t know if I was just raised in that kind of community, but I appreciate that.
02:28:44 I guess the thing I’m torn about is that love of country that I have in my heart that I
02:28:51 now love America and I consider myself an American, that would have easily, if I was
02:28:57 born earlier, been used by Stalin, and I would have proudly died on the battlefield.
02:29:03 I would have proudly died if I was in Nazi Germany as a German, and I would proudly die
02:29:08 as an American.
02:29:09 Are you sure about these things?
02:29:11 Yes.
02:29:12 That’s interesting.
02:29:13 I think about this a lot.
02:29:14 It’s interesting to run a radical counterfactual and be sure of the answer.
02:29:18 I mean…
02:29:19 I’m not sure.
02:29:20 I think about this a lot because, obviously, I’m really interested in history.
02:29:25 This is the way I think about most situations is I empathize.
02:29:29 I really try to do hard work of placing myself in that moment and thinking through it.
02:29:35 I’m just… Okay, I just know myself psychologically.
02:29:39 What I’m susceptible to, that’s a negative way to phrase it, but what I would love doing.
02:29:46 I’m just saying, my question is, is the love of nation a useful or a powerful moral, from
02:29:57 a moral philosophy perspective, a good thing?
02:30:01 I think it is a good thing, but before we ask whether it’s a good thing, I think it’s
02:30:04 worth asking whether there’s any way to live without it.
02:30:08 The idea of national independence of a world or a continent which politically is governed
02:30:14 by multiple independent national states, that is a political theory.
02:30:19 Somebody came up with that in the Bible or elsewhere.
02:30:23 Someone came up with this idea and sold it, and a lot of people like it, but the nation
02:30:29 is not an invention.
02:30:32 Every place in human history that we have any record of, there are nations.
02:30:41 The fact of people creating families, families creating an alliance of clans, clans creating
02:30:51 alliances of tribes, tribes creating an alliance that becomes the nation, we see that everywhere
02:31:00 in human history, everywhere we look.
02:31:03 The love of a group of tribes that have come together in order to fight opponents that
02:31:10 are trying to destroy your way of life and steal your land and harm your women and children,
02:31:19 the love of the leadership that brings it together.
02:31:24 This is a George Washington type figure or an Alfred the Great type figure or Saul, the
02:31:32 biblical Saul, somebody who has the wisdom, the daring to unite the tribes, overcome their
02:31:39 internal, mutual hatreds and grievances and rally them around a set of ideas, a language,
02:31:48 a tradition, an identity as people say today.
02:31:53 That love is irradicable from human beings.
02:31:57 Maybe we’ll have a brave new world, people will take drugs in order to get rid of it.
02:32:00 The problem is that could be leveraged by authoritarian regimes.
02:32:03 Yes, but that’s true of everything.
02:32:05 It’s like saying you can have children and you can teach them to be evil.
02:32:08 You can make a lot of money, you can use it for evil.
02:32:11 You can have a gun for self defense, but you can use it for evil.
02:32:14 Come on, that’s human.
02:32:16 That’s being human.
02:32:17 You guys are making love this primary, which I don’t think it is.
02:32:20 How dare you, your honor.
02:32:22 I know.
02:32:23 There are lots of people in the world out there who don’t love their nation because
02:32:25 the nation is not worth loving.
02:32:27 That is love is conditional.
02:32:29 It’s not unconditional.
02:32:30 Love is conditioned on the value that’s presented to you.
02:32:34 I lived through this experience in my own life.
02:32:37 I grew up in Israel at a time of everything was geared towards patriotism and the state.
02:32:48 I would say I was trained to, when I saw a grenade, to jump on it because that was every
02:32:54 song and every story and everything was about the state is everything and you should sacrifice.
02:33:03 When the flag went up, I got teary eyed.
02:33:06 I bought into it completely and at some point, I rejected that and I changed and I changed
02:33:13 my alliance and I rejected my love of Israel.
02:33:16 It’s not that I don’t love it anymore, but it’s certainly not my top love and I’m certainly
02:33:20 not looking for the grenade to jump on and I’m not volunteering to go fight the war there.
02:33:25 I fell in love from a distance with the idea of America.
02:33:30 I love the idea of America more than I love America.
02:33:33 I could see myself falling out of love with America given where it’s heading.
02:33:38 It’s not automatic.
02:33:39 It’s conditioned on what it is that it represents and what value it represents for me.
02:33:47 I think that’s always the case with love.
02:33:51 It’s not true that children have to love their parents.
02:33:55 That’s the ideal and hopefully most children love their parents, but some children fall
02:34:00 out of love with their parents because their parents don’t deserve their love.
02:34:04 The same with the other way around.
02:34:07 I think parents are capable of not loving their children.
02:34:11 Love is a conditional thing.
02:34:12 It’s not automatic.
02:34:13 Let me point out an agreement.
02:34:14 Let me say something about an agreement.
02:34:15 You’re trying to bribe me with an agreement.
02:34:18 To soften the blow, mostly I like to talk to Yaron about his ideas and I don’t want
02:34:25 to talk about Ayn Rand, but I want to say something.
02:34:28 Just one thing about Ayn Rand.
02:34:32 All my kids read Ayn Rand’s books.
02:34:34 My father read The Fountainhead.
02:34:39 We know Ayn Rand.
02:34:42 I’ll tell you it is incredibly difficult reading for me.
02:34:47 It’s painful.
02:34:48 It’s painful to read.
02:34:49 Why is it painful?
02:34:51 Not because I disagree with the view of trading and business and the creativity of it and
02:35:00 Reardon Metal.
02:35:01 That stuff moves me and I do admire it, but to read a book that’s a thousand pages long
02:35:12 in which nobody is having children, nobody is having a stable marriage, no one is running
02:35:21 an admirable government that’s fighting for a just cause, anywhere, anywhere.
02:35:29 I feel like it’s focusing on one aspect of what it is to be human and to flourish and
02:35:36 that everything else is just erased and thrown out as though it’s just not part of reality
02:35:42 and I’m scared.
02:35:43 I’m scared of what happens to teenagers who hormonally are in any case.
02:35:48 They’re programmed to pull away from their parents and experiment with things.
02:35:55 They’re biologically programmed to do that and you give them a book which says, look,
02:36:03 you don’t have to have a family.
02:36:04 You don’t have to raise children.
02:36:05 You don’t have to have a country.
02:36:06 You don’t have to fight for anything.
02:36:08 All you have to do is assert yourself and trade.
02:36:13 I think it’s destructive because it’s not realistic.
02:36:16 It’s just not real.
02:36:17 But I got none of that from Ayn Rand.
02:36:19 I got none of that from Ayn Rand.
02:36:23 The books were not about a family.
02:36:24 You could write a book in Ayn Rand style where people have a family, but the goal, the purpose,
02:36:32 it’s a novel.
02:36:33 It’s not.
02:36:34 It’s a novel which is delimited with a particular story.
02:36:37 There’s one family in Gulch Gulch and there’s a little passage about raising children and
02:36:41 the value of that because it’s not core to what she is writing about, but that doesn’t
02:36:47 exclude it.
02:36:49 When I read Ayn Rand, I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16, and I read it over the years
02:36:53 several times more.
02:36:54 It never occurred to me, oh, Ayn Rand’s anti family, I shouldn’t have a family.
02:36:59 That thought never came into my mind.
02:37:01 I always wanted to have children.
02:37:02 I continue to want to have children.
02:37:04 I thought of it a little differently.
02:37:06 I thought of how I would find a partner a little bit differently.
02:37:09 I thought about what I would look for in a partner differently, but not that I wouldn’t
02:37:14 want to get married.
02:37:15 One question I have is what effect it has on society, so outside of you.
02:37:21 So for example, you mentioned love should be conditional.
02:37:23 I think…
02:37:24 Well, it is.
02:37:25 Whether you like it or not, it is.
02:37:26 You might pretend that it isn’t, but it’s always conditional.
02:37:27 Well, let me try to say something and see if it makes any sense.
02:37:31 So could there be things that are true, like love is conditional, is always conditional,
02:37:38 but if you say it often, it has a negative effect on society.
02:37:43 So for example, I mean, so maybe I’m just a romantic, but good luck saying love is conditional
02:37:50 to a romantic partner.
02:37:52 I mean, you could, I would argue, en masse, that would deteriorate the quality of relationships.
02:38:01 If you remind the partner of that truth that is universal, like you have to, I mean, okay,
02:38:10 maybe it’s just me.
02:38:11 I’ll just speak to myself.
02:38:12 It’s like there is a certain romantic notion of unconditional love.
02:38:16 It’s part of why you have so many destructive marriages.
02:38:20 It’s part of why…
02:38:21 So you would say that’s a problem.
02:38:22 Yes, it’s a real problem because, yes, there is a, you talked about honoring your spouse
02:38:29 and there’s a real truth there and I respect that.
02:38:33 Yes, you have to do certain things.
02:38:35 Love is not, you marry somebody and there’s a real attitude out there in the culture.
02:38:39 You marry somebody and okay, now we’re going to, we’re just going to cruise.
02:38:42 It’s just…
02:38:43 Right.
02:38:44 Hollywood.
02:38:45 That’s the Hollywood marriage.
02:38:46 You know, marriage is work.
02:38:47 Like all values, it’s work.
02:38:49 It’s something you have to reignite every day.
02:38:51 You have to, the challenges, the real disagreements, the things you fight about, you disagree
02:38:59 about and there’s real, if it’s a value, you work it out, you struggle through it.
02:39:07 And sometimes you struggle through it and you come to a conclusion, no, this is not
02:39:10 going to work and you dissolve a marriage and I’m all for dissolving after really, really
02:39:16 fighting for it because if it’s an important value and if you fell in love with this person
02:39:20 for a reason, then that’s something worth fighting for.
02:39:23 I have a feeling that Hollywood goes the other way, but it’s not this cruising along and
02:39:27 everything is easy, no human relationship is like that.
02:39:30 Not friendship, not love, not raising children, not being a child.
02:39:36 You know, they require work and they require thinking and they require creating the conditions
02:39:43 to thrive and that’s the sense in which it’s conditional.
02:39:46 You have to work at it and it’s very easy not to do the work and it’s very easy to drift
02:39:55 away and I think most people don’t do the work, most people take it and generally in
02:39:59 life.
02:40:00 The only place people seem to work is at work and then they take the rest of their life
02:40:05 as I’m going to cruise and yet every aspect of your life, the art you choose, the friends
02:40:10 you choose, the lovers you choose, all require real thinking and real work to be successful
02:40:17 at them.
02:40:18 None of them are just there because there is no such thing as just the intrinsic.
02:40:23 Right, I agree with all of that.
02:40:25 I was going to say before that the rabbis have this sort of shocking expression, tzargidul
02:40:32 banim, the pain of raising children.
02:40:38 And I find when I speak to audiences about relationships, I find that in general and
02:40:45 this is cross cultural, it’s different countries, different religious backgrounds, that in general
02:40:52 young people do not know that the only way to make a marriage work is through a lot of
02:40:58 pain and overcoming.
02:41:00 They don’t know that raising children involves a great deal of pain.
02:41:05 They don’t know that caring for and helping your parents approach the end of their lives
02:41:11 causes a great deal of pain and everything is kind of this sketchy, very sketchy, glimpsy
02:41:17 kind of, and I mentioned Hollywood just because everything is made to look easy except there’s
02:41:24 kind of a funny breakdown of something but then maybe there’s a divorce, they shoot
02:41:29 one another so then they should get divorced.
02:41:32 But the reality of how hard it is to do and how heroic it is to do it and then overcome
02:41:42 and then actually in the end achieve something, create something that was really, it’s almost
02:41:51 not discussed and so to me it’s just not surprising that if there’s no parallel to
02:41:58 Ayn Rand about the heroic saving of a marriage that was on the rocks, how does it actually
02:42:05 happen?
02:42:06 So…
02:42:07 So it’s a good point you’re making but something just came to me that I’ve never
02:42:12 thought of before so that’s always good.
02:42:14 This is where conversation is good.
02:42:16 Look, take the Talmud and I can’t remember how many years after the Bible the Talmud
02:42:22 is written, over how long of a period it’s written, how many people participating in
02:42:27 writing it.
02:42:28 Ayn Rand was one individual.
02:42:30 She wrote a series of books on philosophy which I think are true but they’re the beginning.
02:42:36 There is a lot of work to be done to apply this.
02:42:40 So hopefully there will be one of her students who writes a book on relationships and there’ll
02:42:45 be somebody who writes a book on developing a political theory in greater detail and develop
02:42:51 her ethics.
02:42:52 She’s got a few writings on ethics and it’s in the novels but there’s a lot of work
02:42:57 to be done, fleshing it out, what does it mean, how do you…
02:43:00 So to say Ayn Rand didn’t do everything is a truism.
02:43:04 She didn’t do everything.
02:43:05 Okay, so what?
02:43:07 But she laid this amazing philosophical foundation that allows us to take those principles and
02:43:13 to apply them to all these realms of human life and she does it on a scope that few philosophers
02:43:18 in human history have done because she goes from metaphysics all the way to aesthetics,
02:43:22 hitting the key, and she’s an original thinker on each one of those things.
02:43:26 And she might be right, she might be wrong on certain aspects of it, always happy to
02:43:31 have a debate about where she’s wrong or where she’s not, but there’s a lot of
02:43:35 work to be done, right?
02:43:37 It’s not like – and if there were objectivists out there who present it as, okay, human knowledge
02:43:42 is over because Ayn Rand wrote these books, that’s absurd, right?
02:43:45 This huge amount of work to be done in applying these particular ideas just like there was
02:43:50 for any philosophy, take these ideas and now apply them to all these realms in human experience
02:43:56 that flesh it out and make it – and one of the reasons I don’t think objectivism
02:44:00 is taken off is because there’s all this work still to be done that allows it to be
02:44:05 relatable to people in every aspect of them.
02:44:08 Let me ask a hard question here.
02:44:10 We’ve got –
02:44:11 Can I say what I agreed with you, Omar?
02:44:12 Sure, sure.
02:44:13 This is good.
02:44:14 This will be a good transition.
02:44:15 Here, this is the clip.
02:44:17 This is the clip.
02:44:19 I agree about nations.
02:44:20 So I don’t like the term nationalism because I fear what happens when you put an ism at
02:44:25 the end of any word.
02:44:27 Anything, yes.
02:44:28 But the nation is a good thing.
02:44:32 And having a diversity of nations in a sense is a good thing.
02:44:35 And in this sense, I don’t think one can come up – so look, I said and I hold that
02:44:42 the ideal nation is a nation that protects individual rights.
02:44:46 How do you do that?
02:44:48 What are the details?
02:44:49 How do we define property rights exactly in an internet world?
02:44:52 There’s going to be disagreement, rational, reasonable disagreement.
02:44:56 They’re going to be – in my future, in the 300 years from now, in my ideas of one
02:45:02 finally, right, there will be multiple nations trying to apply the principle of applying
02:45:06 individual rights, and they’ll do it differently.
02:45:09 One of the benefits of federalism is that while you have a national government, there
02:45:13 are certain issues that you relegate to states, and they can try different things and learn
02:45:19 because there is a huge value in empirical knowledge comes there.
02:45:23 You can’t just deduce it all and figure it all out.
02:45:26 You have to experiment.
02:45:27 So I do – I hate the idea of a one world government because experimentation is gone,
02:45:34 and if you make a mistake, everybody suffers.
02:45:37 I like the idea, and then I like the idea of people being able to choose where they
02:45:42 live.
02:45:43 But this notion of experimentation I think is crucial, but you need a principle.
02:45:50 So I don’t like the idea of nations if all the nations are going to be bad, right?
02:45:54 If all the nations are going to be horrible, then I don’t like it.
02:45:58 What I like is a variety of nations all practicing basically good ideas, and then we try to
02:46:04 figure out, okay, what works better than other things, and what is sustainable and what is
02:46:09 not.
02:46:10 Given how many difficult aspects of history and society we talked about, let me ask a
02:46:15 hard question of both of you.
02:46:17 I’m going to breeze up until now.
02:46:22 What gives you hope about the future?
02:46:25 So we’ve been describing reasons to maybe not have hope.
02:46:31 What gives you hope?
02:46:33 When you look at the world, what gives you hope that in 200 years, in 300 years, in 500
02:46:39 years, like the founders look into the future, that human civilization will be all right,
02:46:45 and more than that, it will flourish?
02:46:47 Two things for me.
02:46:49 One is history.
02:46:50 So in the very long run, good ideas win out.
02:46:54 I think in the very long run, you can go through a dark ages, but you come out of a dark ages.
02:47:03 The good and the just does win in the end, even if it is bloody and difficult and hard
02:47:08 to get there.
02:47:10 So while I am quite pessimistic, unfortunately, about the short run, I’m ultimately optimistic
02:47:14 that in the long run, good ideas win and they’re justified.
02:47:19 And I think the fundamental behind that is I think is that I’m fundamentally positive
02:47:26 about human nature.
02:47:27 I think human beings can think, they’re capable of reasoning, they’re capable of figuring
02:47:35 out the truth, they’re capable of learning from experience.
02:47:38 They don’t always do it.
02:47:40 It’s an achievement to do it, but over time, they do.
02:47:45 If you create the right circumstances, they will, and when things get bad enough, they
02:47:50 look for a way out.
02:47:52 They look maybe at history, if the history is available to them, maybe at just learning
02:47:57 from what’s around them to find better ways of doing things, and that reinforces itself.
02:48:05 But human beings are an amazing creature.
02:48:10 We’re just amazing in our capacity to be creative, in our capacity to think, in our capacity
02:48:14 to love, in our capacity to change our environment to fit our needs and to fit our requirements
02:48:19 for survival and to learn and to grow and to progress.
02:48:26 So again, long term, I think all that wins out.
02:48:29 Short term, in any point in history, short term, right now, it doesn’t look too good.
02:48:36 What about you, Yaron?
02:48:48 The source for Yaron’s hope is the book of Exodus, which is the first place in human
02:48:58 history where we are presented with the possibility that an enslaved people that’s being persecuted
02:49:07 and murdered and living under the worst possible regime can free itself and have a shot at
02:49:14 a life of independence and worth, and it’s another inherited Jewish idea in the tradition.
02:49:24 The way that we express this is by saying that there is a God who judges.
02:49:32 The Israelis in Egypt were enslaved for hundreds of years, according to the Exodus story, hundreds
02:49:38 of years before God wakes up and hears them.
02:49:42 And he doesn’t do anything until Moses kills the oppressor and goes out into the desert.
02:49:51 So I think it’s pretty realistic that there is a God that God judges and acts, but probably
02:49:59 often not for a very, very long time and not until there’s a human being who gets up and
02:50:05 says enough.
02:50:06 I know that today people don’t want to read the Bible.
02:50:09 They don’t like reading the Bible.
02:50:11 But I always hear in my ear this cry of the prophet Jeremiah who saw his nation destroyed
02:50:21 and his people exiled.
02:50:24 And he says, in God’s name, he says, he’s not my word like fire, like the hammer that
02:50:33 shatters rock, a petition, a petzela.
02:50:38 My word is like fire, like the hammer that shatters rock.
02:50:41 And this is actually the traditional way of saying something like what Yaron is saying
02:50:46 that it may take a long, long time, but there is a truth and it has its own strength and
02:50:53 it will, in the end, shatter the things that are opposing it.
02:50:59 That’s our traditional hope.
02:51:01 We grow up like that.
02:51:05 So I do have hope.
02:51:07 I see the trends.
02:51:08 The trends are terrible right now and it’s frightening and it’s hard, but we are terrible
02:51:16 at seeing the future.
02:51:17 And it is very possible that an unexpected turn of events is going to appear maybe soon,
02:51:25 maybe much later, and the possibility of a redemption is there.
02:51:33 Let me ask, given that long arc of history, given that you do study the Bible, what is
02:51:40 the meaning of this whole thing?
02:51:42 What’s the meaning of life?
02:51:44 Wow, that’s beautiful.
02:51:46 I think that the meaning of life is in part what Yaron touches on when he says that productive
02:51:59 work, labor, creativity is at the heart of what it is to be human.
02:52:03 I just think that there are some more arenas and maybe we even agree on a lot of them.
02:52:12 To be human is to inherit a world which is imperfect, terribly imperfect, imperfect in
02:52:20 many ways.
02:52:23 And God created it that way.
02:52:26 He created a world which is terribly lacking and he created us with the ability to stand
02:52:34 up and to say, I can change the direction of this.
02:52:38 I can do something to change the direction of this.
02:52:41 I can take the time and the abilities that are given to me to be a partner with God in
02:52:46 creating the world.
02:52:47 It’s not going to stay the way it was before me.
02:52:50 It’ll be something different, maybe a little bit, maybe a lot.
02:52:56 But that is the heart.
02:52:59 That is the key.
02:53:00 That is the meaningful life is to be a partner with God in creating the world so that it
02:53:06 is moving that much more in the right direction rather than the way we found it.
02:53:12 So nudge, even if a little bit, the direction of the world.
02:53:16 Well, Yaron, you’ve actually been talking in your program about life quite a bit.
02:53:24 So let me ask the same question and I never tire you of asking this question.
02:53:32 What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
02:53:34 Well, I mean, I don’t believe in God, so God doesn’t play a role in my view of the meaning
02:53:41 of life.
02:53:42 I think the meaning of life is to live.
02:53:44 I like to say to live with a capital L. It’s to embrace it and I agree with you on in a
02:53:52 sense we’re born into a world and as human beings, one of the things that makes us very
02:53:57 different than other animals is our capacity to change that world.
02:54:01 We can actually go out there and change the world around us.
02:54:04 We can change it materially through production and through, we can change it spiritually
02:54:09 through changing the ideas of people.
02:54:12 We can change the direction to which humanity works.
02:54:17 We can create a little universe.
02:54:20 I think part of the joy of creating a family is to create a little universe.
02:54:23 We’re creating a little world around us that’s part of the joy.
02:54:29 And there is joy in family, let’s not make it all about difficulty and hard work.
02:54:32 I agree.
02:54:33 I agree.
02:54:34 Part of the idea of getting married is to create a little world in which you and your
02:54:39 spouse are creating something that didn’t exist before and building something, building
02:54:45 a universe.
02:54:46 But it’s really to live.
02:54:47 And one of the things that I see and it saddens me is wasted lives, is people who just cruise
02:54:55 through life.
02:54:56 They get born in a particular place, they never challenge it, they never question.
02:55:01 They just, you know, they live, die and nothing really happened.
02:55:05 Nothing really changed.
02:55:06 They didn’t produce, they didn’t make anything of their life.
02:55:09 And produce here, again, in the largest sense.
02:55:12 So to me it’s, in every aspect of life, as you know because you’ve listened to my show,
02:55:17 I love art, I love aesthetics, I love the experience of great art.
02:55:22 I love relationships, I love producing, I like business, I like that aspect of it.
02:55:31 And I think people are shallow in so many parts of their lives, which saddens me.
02:55:38 If you had eight billion people on this planet, even if it never grew, even if we just stayed
02:55:42 at eight billion, but the eight billion all lived fully, wow.
02:55:47 I mean, what an amazing place this would be, what an amazing experience we would have.
02:55:52 So to me that is, the meaning is just make the most that you have a short period of time
02:55:57 on earth.
02:55:58 And that’s it.
02:55:59 This is it.
02:56:00 And live it, experience it fully and challenge yourself and push yourself.
02:56:05 And let me just say something about optimism.
02:56:08 One source of hope for me in the world in which we live right now is that there are
02:56:13 people who do that, at least in certain realms of their lives.
02:56:18 And I’m inspired, and I know a lot of people don’t like me for this, but I’m inspired for
02:56:23 example by Silicon Valley, in spite of all the political disagreements I have with them
02:56:26 and all of that.
02:56:27 I’m inspired by people inventing new technologies and building, I’m inspired by the people you
02:56:33 talk to about artificial intelligence and about new ideas and about pushing the boundaries
02:56:38 of science.
02:56:39 Those things are exciting and it’s terrific to see a world that I think generally is in
02:56:43 decline.
02:56:44 Yet there are these pockets in which people are still creating new ventures and new ideas
02:56:50 and new things.
02:56:52 That inspires me and it gives me hope that that is not dead, that in spite of the decay
02:56:56 that’s in our culture, there’s still pockets where that spirit of being human is still
02:57:02 alive and well.
02:57:03 Yeah, they inspire me as well.
02:57:05 Yeah, and they truly live with a capital L, and maybe I can do a star, maybe you can also
02:57:12 put a little bit of love with a capital L out there as well.
02:57:17 Yaron, you knew I would end it that way, wouldn’t you?
02:57:21 Yaron, thank you so much, this is a huge honor.
02:57:23 I really enjoyed the debate yesterday, I really enjoyed the conversation today that you spent
02:57:28 your valuable time with me, it just means a lot.
02:57:30 Thank you so much, this was amazing.
02:57:33 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Yaron Brook and Yaron Hosoni.
02:57:37 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
02:57:42 And now, let me leave you with some words from Edmund Burke.
02:57:46 The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
02:57:53 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.