Nationalism Debate: Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony.

00:00:04.000 | This is Yaron's third time on this podcast and Yoram's first time.

00:00:09.160 | Yaron Brook is an objectivist philosopher, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute,

00:00:14.520 | host of the Yaron Brook Show and the co-author of Free Market Revolution

00:00:19.640 | and Equal is Unfair.

00:00:22.360 | Yoram Hazony is a national conservatism thinker,

00:00:25.960 | chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation that hosted the National Conservatism Conference.

00:00:31.800 | He is also the host of the NatCon Talk

00:00:35.160 | and author of The Virtue of Nationalism

00:00:38.440 | and an upcoming book called Conservatism, A Rediscovery.

00:00:43.400 | Allow me to say a few words about each part of the two word title

00:00:48.800 | of this episode, Nationalism Debate.

00:00:51.920 | First, debate.

00:00:54.320 | I would like to have a few conversations this year that are a kind of debate

00:00:58.520 | with two or three people that hold differing views on a particular topic,

00:01:02.320 | but come to the table with respect for each other and a desire to learn

00:01:07.400 | and discover something interesting together through the empathetic

00:01:10.680 | exploration of the tension between their ideas.

00:01:13.560 | This is not strictly a debate.

00:01:16.040 | It is simply a conversation.

00:01:17.840 | There is no structure.

00:01:19.600 | There's no winners, except, of course, just a bit of trash talking to keep it fun.

00:01:24.640 | Some of these topics will be very difficult,

00:01:26.760 | and I hope you can keep an open mind and have patience with me

00:01:30.040 | as kind of moderator who tries to bring out the best in each person

00:01:34.880 | and the ideas discussed.

00:01:36.960 | OK, that's my comment on the word debate.

00:01:39.280 | Now onto the word nationalism.

00:01:41.880 | This debate could have been called nationalism versus individualism

00:01:45.640 | or national conservatism versus individualism

00:01:49.280 | or just conservatism versus individualism.

00:01:53.920 | As we discuss in this episode,

00:01:56.200 | these words have slightly different meanings depending on who you ask.

00:01:59.200 | This is especially true, I think, for any word that ends in -ism.

00:02:03.400 | I personally enjoy the discussion of the meaning of such philosophical words.

00:02:07.960 | I don't think it's possible to arrive at a perfect definition

00:02:11.160 | that everybody agrees with, but the process of trying to do so

00:02:15.680 | for a bit is interesting and productive, at least to me.

00:02:19.760 | As long as we don't get stuck there, some folks sometimes do.

00:02:23.960 | In these conversations.

00:02:26.040 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:02:27.920 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:02:31.160 | And now here's my conversation with Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony.

00:02:36.200 | I attended the excellent debate between the two of you yesterday at UT Austin.

00:02:41.360 | The debate was between ideas of conservatism represented by Yoram Hazony

00:02:45.640 | and ideas of individualism represented by Yaron Brook.

00:02:50.000 | Let's start with the topics of the debate.

00:02:52.760 | Yoram, how do you define conservatism?

00:02:55.360 | Maybe in the way you were thinking about it yesterday.

00:02:58.000 | What to you are some principles of conservatism?

00:03:01.440 | Let me define it and then we can we can get into principles if you want.

00:03:06.920 | When I talk about political conservatism, I'm talking about a political standpoint

00:03:12.840 | that regards the recovery, elaboration and restoration of tradition

00:03:19.960 | as the key to maintaining a nation and strengthening it through time.

00:03:23.240 | OK, so this is something that if you have time to talk about it,

00:03:28.040 | like we do on the show, it's worth emphasizing that conservatism

00:03:31.680 | is is not like liberalism or Marxism.

00:03:35.560 | Liberalism and Marxism are both kind of universal theories,

00:03:39.600 | and they claim to be able to tell you

00:03:42.560 | what's good for human beings at all times, in all places.

00:03:46.760 | And conservatism is a little bit different because it's going to carry

00:03:50.440 | different values in every nation, in every tribe.

00:03:54.080 | You know, even every family, you can say, has somewhat different values.

00:03:59.000 | And the these loyalty groups, they compete with one another.

00:04:02.640 | That's the way human beings work.

00:04:04.600 | So it's deeply rooted in history of that particular area of land.

00:04:08.560 | Well, I wouldn't necessarily say land.

00:04:10.640 | You're right that many forms of conservatism are tied to a particular place.

00:04:16.160 | So how does the implementation of conservatism to you differ

00:04:19.280 | from the ideal of conservatism, the implementations you've seen

00:04:23.560 | of political conservatism in the United States and the rest of the world?

00:04:26.760 | Just to give some context, because it's a loaded term,

00:04:30.120 | like most political terms.

00:04:32.360 | So when people think about conservative in the United States,

00:04:35.200 | they think about the Republican Party.

00:04:37.800 | What can you kind of disambiguate some of this?

00:04:40.640 | What are we supposed to think?

00:04:41.920 | Yeah, that's a really important question.

00:04:44.240 | Usually the word conservative is associated with Edmund Burke

00:04:49.040 | and with the English common law tradition.

00:04:53.720 | Going back, you know, centuries and centuries,

00:04:57.040 | there's kind of a classical English conservative tradition

00:05:00.120 | that goes Fortescue, Hooker,

00:05:03.120 | Coke, Selden, Hale, Burke, Blackstone before Burke.

00:05:11.000 | If you take that kind of as a benchmark and you compare it,

00:05:15.960 | then you can compare it to things like the American Federalist Party

00:05:20.240 | at the time of the American founding is in many respects very much

00:05:24.520 | very much in keeping with that tradition.

00:05:26.880 | As you go forward, there's an increasing mix of liberalism into conservatism.

00:05:35.720 | And I think by the time you get to the 1960s

00:05:40.360 | with William Buckley and Frank Meyer,

00:05:43.400 | you know, the jargon term is fusionism.

00:05:45.560 | By the time you get there,

00:05:46.760 | it's arguable that their conservatism isn't very conservative anymore,

00:05:52.520 | that it's kind of a public liberalism mixed with a private conservatism.

00:05:57.760 | So a lot of the debate that we have today about,

00:06:01.360 | you know, what does the word conservatism actually mean?

00:06:04.280 | A lot of the confusion comes from that, comes from the fact that

00:06:08.320 | that on the one hand, we have people who use the term,

00:06:11.840 | I think, properly historically to refer to this

00:06:15.920 | this common law tradition of which Burke was a spokesman.

00:06:19.200 | But there are lots of other people who when they say conservative,

00:06:23.640 | they just mean liberal.

00:06:25.520 | And I think that that's a big problem.

00:06:28.960 | I mean, it's a problem just to have an intelligent debate is difficult

00:06:33.360 | when when people are using the the word almost in too antithetical.

00:06:39.120 | What would you say the essential idea of conservatism is time?

00:06:42.320 | You mentioned your father's a physicist.

00:06:44.200 | So a lot of physicists, when they form models of the universe,

00:06:47.560 | they don't consider time.

00:06:50.320 | So everything is dealt with instantaneously.

00:06:53.280 | A particle is represented fully by its current state, velocity and position.

00:06:58.200 | You're saying so you're arguing

00:07:02.400 | with all of physics and your father, as we always do,

00:07:05.800 | that their time matters in conservators.

00:07:10.000 | That's the fundamental element is the full history matters.

00:07:12.960 | And you cannot separate the individual from the history,

00:07:16.640 | from the roots that they come from.

00:07:18.880 | The parallel in political theory is is what's called rationalism.

00:07:24.600 | I guess we'll probably talk about that some.

00:07:27.440 | Rationalism is kind of an instantaneous, timeless thing.

00:07:31.160 | Before I mentioned that liberalism and various enlightenment theories,

00:07:35.280 | they don't include time at all.

00:07:37.400 | Their goal is to say, look, there's such a thing as universal human reason.

00:07:42.120 | All human beings, if they reason properly, will come to the same conclusions.

00:07:46.320 | If that's true, then it removes the time consideration.

00:07:51.440 | It removes tradition and context, because everywhere where you are at any time,

00:07:56.920 | you ought to be able to use reason and come to the same conclusions

00:08:01.680 | about politics or morals.

00:08:03.400 | So that's a that's a theory like

00:08:05.720 | Immanuel Kant or John Locke is an example.

00:08:09.560 | Hobbes is an example.

00:08:11.760 | That kind of political theorizing

00:08:13.920 | really does say at a given instant,

00:08:17.760 | we can know pretty much everything that we need to know,

00:08:21.040 | at least the big things.

00:08:22.200 | And conservatism is the opposite.

00:08:25.800 | It's a it's a it's a traditionalist view, exactly as you say,

00:08:29.360 | that that says that history is crucial.

00:08:32.200 | So, Yaron, you say that history is interesting,

00:08:37.840 | but perhaps not crucial if in the context of individualism.

00:08:42.160 | No, I mean, I think I think there's a false dichotomy he presented here.

00:08:45.640 | And that is that one view holds that

00:08:48.080 | you can derive any anything from a particular historical path

00:08:52.440 | and kind of an empirical view.

00:08:54.600 | And if we know the history, we know where we should be tomorrow.

00:08:57.280 | We know what what where we should stand today.

00:08:59.480 | And the other path is we ignore history.

00:09:02.720 | We ignore facts. We know what's going on.

00:09:04.560 | We can derive from some a priori axioms.

00:09:08.040 | We can derive a truth right now.

00:09:10.240 | And both are false.

00:09:11.440 | Both of those views, in my view, are false.

00:09:13.520 | And, you know, I and Rand and I, I reject

00:09:16.920 | both of those views.

00:09:19.320 | And I think the better thinkers of the Enlightenment did as well,

00:09:22.400 | although they sometimes fall into the trap of appearing like rationalists.

00:09:25.800 | And, you know, I mean, I agree on one thing, and that is that Kant is is is one of,

00:09:31.640 | you know, we've we've we've talked about this in the past, Alex.

00:09:35.160 | But we both hate Kant.

00:09:36.760 | We both think Kant is is I at least think Kant is probably

00:09:40.960 | the most destructive philosopher since Plato,

00:09:45.120 | who was pretty destructive himself.

00:09:47.680 | But and part of the problem is that Kant divorces reason from reality.

00:09:52.760 | That is, he divorces reason from history.

00:09:54.960 | He divorces reason from experience

00:09:57.200 | because we don't have direct experience of reality, according to Kant, right?

00:10:00.360 | We're removed from that direct experience.

00:10:03.160 | But I view Kant as the anti-Enlightenment.

00:10:06.360 | That is, I view Kant as the destroyer of good Enlightenment thinking.

00:10:10.880 | And and I acknowledge a lot of history of philosophy.

00:10:16.240 | The people who do history of philosophy view Kant as the embodiment of the Enlightenment.

00:10:20.200 | That is the ultimate.

00:10:21.440 | But but I think that's a mistake.

00:10:22.920 | I think both Rousseau and Kant are fundamentally the goal.

00:10:27.480 | The mission in life is to destroy the Enlightenment.

00:10:29.480 | So my view is neither of those options are the right option.

00:10:33.600 | That is the true reason based reason is not divorced from reality.

00:10:38.920 | It's quite the opposite. Reason is a tool.

00:10:40.880 | It's a faculty of identifying and integrating what it's identifying,

00:10:46.360 | integrating the facts of reality as we know them through sense perception

00:10:52.160 | or through the study of history, through what actually happened.

00:10:55.160 | So it's the integration of those facts.

00:10:57.960 | It's the knowledge of that history.

00:10:59.640 | And then what we do is we abstract away principles based on what's worked in the past,

00:11:05.560 | what hasn't worked in the past, the consequences of different ideas,

00:11:08.560 | different paths, different actions.

00:11:10.440 | We abstract away principles that then can be universal.

00:11:13.960 | Not always. We make mistakes, right?

00:11:16.080 | We can come up with a universal principle.

00:11:17.840 | It turns out that it's not.

00:11:19.360 | But if we have the whole scope of human history,

00:11:21.880 | we can derive principles as we do in life as individuals.

00:11:25.840 | We derive principles that are then truths that we can live by.

00:11:30.120 | But you don't do that by ignoring history.

00:11:31.960 | You do that by learning history, by understanding history,

00:11:35.240 | by understanding, in a sense, tradition and where it leads to,

00:11:38.320 | and then trying to do better.

00:11:39.800 | And I think good thinkers are constantly trying to do better

00:11:42.520 | based on what they know about the past and what they know about the present.

00:11:45.880 | - What's the difference between studying history

00:11:48.440 | on a journey of reason and tradition?

00:11:53.520 | So you mentioned that Burke understood that reason

00:11:56.120 | begins with inherited tradition yesterday.

00:11:58.960 | So what's the difference between studying history

00:12:01.520 | but then being free to go any way you want

00:12:04.840 | and tradition where it feels more,

00:12:08.600 | not, I don't wanna say a negative term like burden,

00:12:12.400 | but there's more of a momentum

00:12:15.800 | that forces you to go the same way as your ancestors?

00:12:18.760 | - It's the recognition that people are wrong, often are wrong.

00:12:23.120 | - Including your parents?

00:12:24.600 | - Including your parents, including your teachers,

00:12:27.040 | including everybody.

00:12:28.280 | Everybody is potentially wrong.

00:12:30.240 | And that you can't accept anybody

00:12:32.760 | just because they happen to come before you.

00:12:35.680 | That is, you have to evaluate and judge,

00:12:37.680 | and you have to have a standard by which to evaluate and judge

00:12:39.920 | the actions of those who came before you,

00:12:41.920 | whether they are your parents,

00:12:43.880 | whether they are the state in which you happen to be born,

00:12:47.280 | whether they are somebody on the other side

00:12:49.560 | of planet Earth.

00:12:50.680 | You can judge them if you have a standard.

00:12:52.960 | Now my standard, and I think the right standard is,

00:12:55.440 | human well-being.

00:12:56.360 | That is, that which is good for human beings,

00:12:59.320 | qua human beings, is the standard by which we judge.

00:13:03.520 | So I can say that certain periods of history were bad.

00:13:07.880 | They happened, it's important to study them,

00:13:09.560 | it's important to understand what they did

00:13:11.520 | that made them bad, so we cannot do that again.

00:13:14.200 | And I can say certain cultures,

00:13:15.920 | certain periods in time were good.

00:13:17.480 | Why?

00:13:18.320 | Because they promoted human well-being

00:13:19.920 | and human flourishing.

00:13:21.160 | That's the standard.

00:13:22.000 | And then derive from that,

00:13:23.120 | okay, what is it that made a particular culture good?

00:13:26.040 | What is it that made that particular culture positive

00:13:28.960 | in terms of human well-being and human flourishing?

00:13:31.160 | What made this bad?

00:13:32.240 | And hopefully from that, I can derive a principle.

00:13:34.840 | Okay, if I want human flourishing

00:13:37.080 | and human well-being in the future,

00:13:38.680 | I wanna be more like these guys and less like those guys.

00:13:41.280 | I wanna derive what is the principle

00:13:43.360 | that will guide me in the future.

00:13:45.080 | That's, I think, how human knowledge ultimately develops.

00:13:47.680 | - I think people often make a mistake,

00:13:49.840 | just, I'm not saying your own,

00:13:51.800 | but lots of people don't actually read the original sources.

00:13:54.840 | And so what happens is people will attack conservatives

00:13:58.600 | assuming that conservatives think

00:14:00.520 | that whatever comes from the past is right.

00:14:02.680 | And actually, it's very difficult to find a thinker

00:14:05.840 | who actually says something like that.

00:14:08.680 | Seldon or Burke, the big conservative theorists,

00:14:12.400 | Hooker, they're all people who understand

00:14:15.640 | that the tradition carries with it

00:14:18.760 | mistakes that were made in the past.

00:14:20.840 | And this is actually, I think,

00:14:23.280 | an important part of their empiricism

00:14:26.040 | is that they see the search for truth

00:14:28.160 | as something a society does by trial and error.

00:14:31.160 | And what that means is that in any given moment,

00:14:34.000 | you have to be aware of the possibility

00:14:36.560 | that things that you've inherited

00:14:38.200 | are actually false.

00:14:39.640 | And the job of the political thinker

00:14:42.080 | or the jurist or the philosopher

00:14:45.320 | is not to dig in and say,

00:14:47.160 | whatever it is that we've inherited is right.

00:14:50.000 | The job is to look at the society as a whole

00:14:53.480 | and say, look, we have this job of,

00:14:56.080 | first of all, conservation,

00:14:58.040 | just making sure that we don't lose good things

00:15:00.160 | that we've had, and second,

00:15:01.760 | seeing if we can repair things

00:15:03.040 | in order to improve them where it's necessary

00:15:06.160 | or where it's possible.

00:15:07.760 | And that process is actually a creative process.

00:15:10.760 | This is a way in which I think

00:15:12.120 | it is similar to Joran's philosophy,

00:15:14.000 | that you take the inherited tradition

00:15:18.000 | and you look for a way that you can shape it

00:15:20.380 | in order to make it something better than it was.

00:15:24.320 | That's a baseline for what we call conservatism.

00:15:28.920 | - Just a comment.

00:15:29.760 | So the trial and error,

00:15:31.720 | the errors is, you're proud of the errors.

00:15:35.040 | It's a feature, not a bug.

00:15:36.920 | So you mentioned trial and error a few times yesterday.

00:15:39.400 | It's a really interesting kind of idea.

00:15:41.400 | It's basically accepting that the journey

00:15:44.200 | is going to have flaws,

00:15:46.600 | as opposed to saying,

00:15:48.160 | I mean, the conclusion there is the current system is flawed

00:15:53.000 | and it will always be flawed.

00:15:54.720 | - It will always be flawed.

00:15:55.560 | - And you try to improve it.

00:15:57.280 | When you listen to your own talk,

00:16:00.000 | there's much more of a optimism

00:16:02.400 | for the system being perfect now

00:16:06.560 | or potentially soon, or it could be perfect.

00:16:09.520 | And to me, the way I heard it is almost like

00:16:12.320 | accepting that the system is flawed

00:16:15.040 | and through trial and error will improve.

00:16:17.800 | And Joran says, no, we can have a perfection now.

00:16:22.800 | - That's the way it sounds to me.

00:16:27.320 | - Yeah, and I think that's right.

00:16:29.040 | I think the difference is that at some point,

00:16:32.240 | just like in science, I think,

00:16:34.160 | one can stop the trial and error

00:16:36.200 | and say, I can now see a pattern here.

00:16:40.160 | I can see that certain actions lead to bad consequences,

00:16:45.040 | certain actions lead to good consequences.

00:16:47.080 | Let me try to abstract away what is it that is good

00:16:51.440 | and what is it that are bad

00:16:53.520 | and build a system around what is good

00:16:55.480 | and reject what is bad.

00:16:56.920 | I think ultimately, if you read the founding fathers

00:16:59.600 | and whether we call them conservatives or individuals,

00:17:02.120 | what the founding fathers actually did,

00:17:03.600 | all of them, I think, is study history.

00:17:05.120 | They all did.

00:17:06.000 | They all talk about history.

00:17:07.120 | They all talk about examples of other cultures,

00:17:09.360 | whether they go back to the Republic in Venice

00:17:14.360 | or back to the ancient Greeks.

00:17:16.360 | So they studied these.

00:17:18.680 | They learned lessons from them.

00:17:20.400 | They tried to figure out what has worked in the past

00:17:23.000 | and what hasn't and tried to do our principles.

00:17:24.640 | Now, in my view, they got pretty close

00:17:27.960 | to what I would consider kind of an ideal,

00:17:31.240 | but they didn't get it completely right.

00:17:33.160 | And here we sit 200 and something years

00:17:35.320 | after the Declaration and after the Constitution.

00:17:38.400 | I think we can look back and say,

00:17:39.440 | okay, well, what did they get right?

00:17:41.280 | What did they get wrong based on how is it done

00:17:44.120 | and where are the flaws and we can improve on it?

00:17:48.360 | I think we can get closer to perfection

00:17:50.560 | and based on those kind of observations,

00:17:55.600 | based on that kind of abstraction,

00:17:57.760 | that kind of discovery of what is true,

00:18:00.400 | just like at some point you do the experiments,

00:18:03.480 | you do the trial and error,

00:18:04.400 | and now you come up with a scientific principle.

00:18:06.800 | It is true that 100 years later,

00:18:09.000 | you might discover that, hey, I missed something.

00:18:11.360 | There's something, but to not take the full lesson,

00:18:16.360 | to insist on incrementalism,

00:18:18.920 | to insist on we're just gonna tinker with the system

00:18:21.320 | instead of saying, no, there's something really wrong

00:18:24.360 | with having a king.

00:18:25.600 | There's something really wrong

00:18:26.760 | with not having any representation,

00:18:29.880 | whatever the standard needs to be.

00:18:33.520 | In the name of we don't wanna move too fast,

00:18:36.520 | I think is a mistake.

00:18:37.440 | And the problem with trial and error in politics

00:18:40.920 | is that we're talking about human life, right?

00:18:44.640 | So there was a big trial around communism

00:18:49.120 | and 100 million people paid the price for the trial.

00:18:52.720 | I could have told them in advance, as did many people,

00:18:54.880 | that it would not work.

00:18:56.400 | There are principles of human nature,

00:18:58.000 | principles that we can study from history,

00:19:00.840 | principles about economics and other aspects.

00:19:04.040 | Well, we know it's not gonna work.

00:19:05.080 | You don't need to try it again.

00:19:06.560 | We've had communal arrangements throughout history.

00:19:09.880 | There was an experiment with fascism,

00:19:11.880 | and there've been experiments

00:19:13.240 | with all kinds of political systems.

00:19:15.760 | Okay, we've done them.

00:19:17.360 | Sad that we did them

00:19:18.320 | 'cause many of us knew they wouldn't work.

00:19:20.600 | We should learn the lesson.

00:19:21.840 | And I think that all of history now converges

00:19:25.200 | on one lesson,

00:19:26.440 | and that is what we need to do

00:19:28.200 | is build systems that protect individual freedom.

00:19:30.760 | That is the core.

00:19:31.880 | That's what ultimately leads to human flourishing

00:19:33.880 | and human success and human achievement.

00:19:36.800 | And to the extent that we place anything

00:19:39.080 | above that individual,

00:19:40.000 | whether it's the state,

00:19:40.920 | whether it's the ethnicity,

00:19:42.080 | whether it's the race,

00:19:43.160 | whether it's the bourgeois,

00:19:44.360 | whether it's whatever it happens to be,

00:19:46.480 | a class or whatever,

00:19:47.560 | whenever we place something above the individual,

00:19:49.480 | the consequence, the negative,

00:19:50.520 | that's one of these principles

00:19:52.440 | that I think we can derive from studying

00:19:55.880 | two, you know, 3,000 years of civilization.

00:19:59.080 | And it's tragic, I think,

00:20:01.680 | 'cause we're gonna keep experimenting.

00:20:03.240 | Sadly, I see it, right?

00:20:04.880 | I'm not winning this battle.

00:20:07.000 | I'm losing the battle.

00:20:08.320 | We're gonna keep experimenting

00:20:09.560 | with different forms of collectivism,

00:20:11.040 | and we're gonna keep paying the price in human life

00:20:14.080 | and in missed opportunities for human flourishing

00:20:17.080 | and human success and human wealth and prosperity.

00:20:20.120 | - Well, look, if we, let's take communism

00:20:21.960 | as a good example.

00:20:23.320 | None of the major conservative thinkers would say,

00:20:26.280 | "You know what's a good idea?

00:20:27.360 | "A good idea would be to experiment

00:20:30.080 | "by raising everything that we've inherited

00:20:33.040 | "and starting from scratch."

00:20:34.520 | I mean, that's the conservative complaint

00:20:36.520 | or accusation against rationalists,

00:20:40.040 | I mean, as opposed to empiricists.

00:20:41.200 | I mean, using rationalism,

00:20:43.000 | let's take, you know,

00:20:45.040 | let's take Descartes kind of as a benchmark.

00:20:47.440 | - Can you also maybe define rationalism?

00:20:49.400 | - Yeah, these are two terms that are in philosophy,

00:20:52.840 | especially in epistemology.

00:20:54.720 | They're often compared to one another.

00:20:58.000 | You're on, said that it's a false dichotomy,

00:21:01.840 | and maybe it is a bit exaggerated,

00:21:03.480 | but that doesn't mean it's not useful

00:21:05.280 | for conceptualizing the domain.

00:21:07.880 | So rationalist is somebody like Descartes,

00:21:11.760 | who says, "I'm going to set aside,

00:21:15.720 | "I'm gonna try to set aside everything I know,

00:21:18.040 | "everything I've inherited.

00:21:19.140 | "I'm gonna start from scratch."

00:21:20.880 | And he explicitly says,

00:21:22.360 | you know, in evaluating the inheritance of the past,

00:21:25.760 | he explicitly says,

00:21:27.640 | "You take a look at the histories that we have.

00:21:29.600 | "They're not reliable.

00:21:30.480 | "You take a look at the moral

00:21:31.780 | "and the scientific writings that we receive.

00:21:33.720 | "They're not very good."

00:21:35.160 | His baseline is to look very critically at the past

00:21:39.080 | and say, "Look, I'm evaluating it.

00:21:41.360 | "I think all in all, it's just not worth very much.

00:21:44.440 | "And so whatever I do, beginning from scratch,

00:21:48.440 | "is gonna be better as long as,"

00:21:50.240 | and here's his caveat,

00:21:51.480 | he says, "As long as I'm proceeding

00:21:54.040 | "from self-evident assumptions,

00:21:58.200 | "from self-evident premises,

00:21:59.640 | "things that you can't argue against."

00:22:01.200 | - I think, therefore I am.

00:22:02.680 | - Right, and then from there,

00:22:03.880 | deducing what he calls infallible conclusions.

00:22:07.320 | So that model of self-evident premises

00:22:10.560 | to infallible conclusions,

00:22:12.520 | I'm calling that rationalism.

00:22:14.200 | I think that's kind of a standard academic jargon term.

00:22:19.320 | And it's opposed to empiricism,

00:22:22.520 | which is a thinker, I think in universities,

00:22:26.120 | usually the empiricist is David Hume.

00:22:30.060 | And David Hume will say,

00:22:33.220 | "We can't learn anything the way that Descartes said."

00:22:36.160 | I mean, there is nothing that's that self-evident

00:22:38.520 | and that infallible.

00:22:39.800 | So Hume proposes, based on Newton and Boyle

00:22:46.480 | and the new physical sciences,

00:22:50.000 | so Hume proposes a science of man.

00:22:53.000 | And the science of man sounds an awful lot

00:22:54.720 | like what Jeroen just said,

00:22:55.720 | which is we're gonna take a look at human nature,

00:22:59.240 | at the nature of societies.

00:23:01.320 | Human nature, we're gonna try to abstract

00:23:03.400 | towards fixed principles for describing it.

00:23:06.240 | Human societies, we're gonna try to do the same thing.

00:23:08.880 | And from there we get, for example, contemporary economics,

00:23:13.640 | but we also get sociology and anthropology,

00:23:16.480 | which cut in a different direction.

00:23:19.200 | So that's rationalism versus empiricism.

00:23:23.960 | - Can I just say-- - Yeah, go ahead, please.

00:23:25.640 | - I agree with that.

00:23:26.480 | I think empiricism, the one thing I disagree is

00:23:30.480 | I think empiricism rarely comes to these abstractions.

00:23:34.700 | I mean, they want more facts.

00:23:36.400 | It's always about collecting more evidence.

00:23:39.720 | But this is where I think Ayn Rand is so unusual

00:23:44.040 | and where I think there's something new here, right?

00:23:47.480 | And that's a bold statement,

00:23:49.200 | given the history of philosophy,

00:23:50.280 | but I think Ayn Rand is something new.

00:23:52.920 | And so she says, yes, we agree about rationalism

00:23:56.720 | and that it's inherently wrong.

00:23:58.860 | Empiricism has the problem of, okay, where does it lead?

00:24:02.840 | You never come to a conclusion.

00:24:04.360 | You're just accumulating evidence.

00:24:06.160 | There's something in addition.

00:24:07.680 | There's a third alternative, which she is positing,

00:24:10.760 | which is using empirical evidence,

00:24:14.200 | not denying empirical evidence,

00:24:16.520 | recognizing that there are some axioms.

00:24:18.440 | There's some axioms that we all,

00:24:20.520 | at the base of all of our knowledge,

00:24:22.240 | that are starting points.

00:24:24.360 | We're not rejecting axiomatic knowledge.

00:24:27.180 | And integrating those two and identifying the fact

00:24:30.240 | that based on these axioms

00:24:31.720 | and based on these empirical evidence,

00:24:33.920 | we can come to truths.

00:24:36.640 | Just again, like we do in science,

00:24:38.280 | we have certain axioms, scientific axioms,

00:24:39.880 | we have certain experiments that we run,

00:24:41.640 | and then we can come to some identification of a truth.

00:24:44.480 | And that truth is always gonna be challenged

00:24:46.440 | by new information, by new knowledge.

00:24:48.600 | But as long as that's what we know,

00:24:51.040 | that is what truth.

00:24:52.760 | So truth is contextual in the sense that it's contextual,

00:24:55.560 | it's based on that knowledge that surrounds it.

00:24:59.440 | - And it's a for to change if you get new facts.

00:25:02.080 | - Absolutely, it's always available to change

00:25:04.320 | if the facts that you get, and they really are.

00:25:06.600 | I mean, the burden of changing what you've come to,

00:25:10.560 | a conclusion of truth is high,

00:25:11.920 | so you'd have to have real evidence that it's not true.

00:25:14.180 | But that happens all the time.

00:25:16.160 | So it happens in science, right?

00:25:17.680 | We discover that what we thought was true is not true.

00:25:19.680 | And it can happen in politics and ethics,

00:25:22.720 | even more so than in science,

00:25:23.920 | 'cause they're much messier fields.

00:25:27.240 | But the idea is that you can come to a truth,

00:25:31.440 | but it's not just deductive.

00:25:33.440 | Most truths are inductive.

00:25:35.640 | We learn from observing reality,

00:25:38.960 | and again, coming to principles

00:25:40.960 | about what works and what's not.

00:25:42.640 | And here I think this is, Ayn Rand is different.

00:25:45.800 | She doesn't fall into the,

00:25:47.400 | and she's different in her politics,

00:25:48.880 | and she's different in her epistemology.

00:25:50.400 | She doesn't fall into the conventional view.

00:25:53.480 | She's an opponent of Hume,

00:25:55.360 | and she's an opponent of Descartes.

00:25:57.400 | She's certainly an opponent of Kant.

00:25:59.960 | And I think she's right.

00:26:04.040 | - If it's okay, can we walk back to criticism of communism?

00:26:09.040 | You're both critics of communism, socialism.

00:26:12.320 | Why did communism fail?

00:26:14.040 | You started to say that conservatives criticize it

00:26:18.280 | on the basis of rationalism,

00:26:21.160 | that you're throwing away the past.

00:26:22.560 | You're starting from scratch.

00:26:24.560 | Is that the fundamental description

00:26:26.000 | of why communism failed?

00:26:27.440 | - I think the fundamental difference

00:26:30.200 | between rationalists and empiricists

00:26:33.320 | is the question of whether you're throwing away the past.

00:26:35.840 | That's the argument.

00:26:37.520 | And it caches out as a distinction

00:26:39.960 | between abstract, universal, rationalist, political theories

00:26:44.960 | and empirical political theories.

00:26:47.920 | Empirical political theories are,

00:26:50.760 | they're always going to say something like,

00:26:54.360 | look, there are many different societies.

00:26:59.280 | We can say that some are better and some are worse,

00:27:01.720 | but the problem is that there are many different ways

00:27:06.720 | in which a society can be better or worse.

00:27:10.560 | There's an ongoing competition,

00:27:12.720 | and we're learning on an ongoing basis

00:27:14.720 | what are the ways in which societies

00:27:16.120 | can be better and worse.

00:27:17.520 | That creates a kind of, I'd say, a mild skepticism,

00:27:21.200 | a moderate skepticism among conservatives.

00:27:24.560 | I don't think too many conservatives

00:27:26.000 | have a problem looking at the Soviet Union,

00:27:29.000 | which is brutal and murderous, ineffective in its economics,

00:27:33.360 | totally ineffective spiritually, and then collapsed.

00:27:37.960 | Okay, so I think it's easier for us

00:27:41.240 | to look at a system like that and say,

00:27:44.400 | what on earth, what should we learn from that?

00:27:47.280 | But the main conservative tradition

00:27:49.800 | is pretty tolerant of a diversity

00:27:52.760 | of different kinds of society,

00:27:54.640 | and is slow to insist that France is so tyrannical

00:27:59.000 | it just needs a revolution

00:28:00.120 | because what's gonna come after the revolution

00:28:01.720 | is gonna be much better.

00:28:03.040 | The assumption is that there's lots of things

00:28:05.280 | that are good about most societies,

00:28:08.880 | and that a clean slate leads you

00:28:11.800 | to throw out all of the inherited things

00:28:14.920 | that you don't even know how to notice until they're gone.

00:28:18.120 | - Could I actually play devil's advocate here

00:28:20.040 | and address something you also said?

00:28:21.920 | Can we, as opposed to knowing the empirical data

00:28:26.200 | of the 20th century that communism presented,

00:28:29.120 | can we go back to the beginning of the 20th century?

00:28:32.720 | Can you empathize or steel man

00:28:35.320 | or put yourself in a place of the Soviet Union

00:28:38.800 | where the workers are being disrespected?

00:28:41.360 | And can you not see that the conservatives

00:28:44.540 | could be pro-communism?

00:28:47.080 | - Like communism is such a strongly negative word

00:28:50.480 | in modern day political discourse

00:28:52.640 | that you can't, like you have to put yourself

00:28:55.000 | in the mind of people who like red colors,

00:29:00.000 | who like-- - That's what it was.

00:29:02.680 | - It was, it's all about the branding, I think.

00:29:05.800 | Just, but also like the ideas of solidarity,

00:29:10.280 | of nation, of togetherness, of respect for fellow man.

00:29:16.740 | I mean, all of these things that communism represents,

00:29:19.280 | can you not see that this idea

00:29:23.080 | is actually going along with conservatism?

00:29:26.640 | It is in some ways respecting the deep ideals of the past,

00:29:31.480 | but proposing a new way to raise those ideals,

00:29:35.680 | implement those ideals in the system.

00:29:38.000 | - Yes, I'm gonna try to do what you're suggesting,

00:29:40.480 | but historically we actually have a more useful option,

00:29:44.000 | I think, for both of our positions.

00:29:45.620 | Instead of pretending that we like the actual communists,

00:29:50.280 | we have conservative statesmen like Disraeli and Bismarck

00:29:55.160 | who initiated social legislation, right?

00:29:59.840 | The first step towards saying,

00:30:04.440 | "Look, we're one nation,

00:30:06.160 | we're undergoing industrialization."

00:30:08.600 | That industrialization is important and positive,

00:30:12.120 | but it's also doing a lot of damage to a lot of people.

00:30:15.600 | And in particular, it's doing damage

00:30:17.260 | not just to individuals and families,

00:30:19.360 | but it's doing damage to the social fabric,

00:30:22.920 | the capacity of Britain or German

00:30:25.260 | to remain cohesive societies is being harmed.

00:30:28.320 | And so it's these two conservative statesmen,

00:30:31.040 | Disraeli and Bismarck, who actually take the first steps

00:30:35.580 | in order to legislate for what today we would consider

00:30:38.720 | to be minimal social programs,

00:30:41.260 | pensions and disability insurance and those kinds of things.

00:30:44.880 | So for sure, conservatives do look at industrialization

00:30:49.700 | as a rapid change, and they say,

00:30:52.240 | "We do have to care about the nation as a whole,

00:30:54.920 | and we have to care about it as a unity."

00:30:57.280 | And I assume that your own will say,

00:30:59.560 | "Look, that's the first step

00:31:00.800 | towards the catastrophe of communism."

00:31:04.300 | But before your own drives that nail into the coffin,

00:31:09.080 | let me try to make a distinction.

00:31:10.960 | Because when you read Marx,

00:31:13.400 | you're reading an intellectual descendant of Descartes.

00:31:17.160 | You're reading somebody who says,

00:31:18.900 | "Look, every society consists of oppressors and oppressed."

00:31:24.880 | And that's an improvement in some ways over liberal thinking

00:31:30.040 | because at least he's seeing groups

00:31:32.200 | as a real social phenomenon.

00:31:35.120 | But he says, "Every society has an oppressor class

00:31:37.480 | and oppressed class.

00:31:38.820 | There are different classes, there are different groups,

00:31:40.520 | and whenever one is stronger,

00:31:42.040 | it exploits the ones that are weaker."

00:31:44.560 | All right, that is the foundation

00:31:47.800 | of a revolutionary political theory.

00:31:50.840 | Why?

00:31:51.680 | Because the moment that you say

00:31:53.080 | that the only relationship between the stronger

00:31:56.080 | and the weaker is exploitation,

00:31:58.480 | the moment that you say that,

00:32:00.280 | then you're pushed into the position,

00:32:02.200 | and Marx and Engels say this explicitly.

00:32:03.840 | You're pushed into the position where you're saying,

00:32:05.560 | "When will the exploitation end?

00:32:07.560 | Never until there's a revolution.

00:32:09.220 | What happens when there's a revolution?

00:32:10.600 | You eliminate the oppressor class.

00:32:12.800 | It's annihilationist."

00:32:14.200 | I mean, you can immediately, when you read it,

00:32:17.400 | see why it's different from Descartes or Bismarck

00:32:21.040 | because they're trying to keep everybody

00:32:23.760 | somehow at peace with one another,

00:32:25.240 | and Marx is saying, "There is no peace.

00:32:27.620 | That oppressor class has to be annihilated."

00:32:30.080 | And then they go ahead and do it,

00:32:31.720 | and they kill 100 million people.

00:32:34.320 | So I do think that despite the fact

00:32:37.400 | your question is good and right,

00:32:39.100 | there are certain similarities in concern,

00:32:41.520 | but still, I think you can tell the difference between those.

00:32:43.240 | - That extra step of revolution to you

00:32:46.120 | is where the problem comes.

00:32:47.760 | Like that extra step of let's kill all the oppressors,

00:32:51.260 | that's the problem.

00:32:52.760 | And then to you, you're on,

00:32:54.680 | the whole step one is the problem.

00:32:56.400 | - Well, it's all a problem.

00:32:57.920 | First, I don't view communism as something that radical

00:33:02.920 | in a sense that I think it comes

00:33:05.560 | from a tradition of collectivism.

00:33:08.080 | I think it comes from a tradition of looking at groups

00:33:10.640 | and measuring things in terms of groups.

00:33:13.100 | It comes from a tradition where you expect

00:33:15.180 | some people to be sacrificed

00:33:16.520 | for the greater good of the whole.

00:33:18.880 | I think it comes from a tradition

00:33:21.020 | where mysticism or revelation

00:33:24.720 | as the source of truth is accepted.

00:33:28.880 | I view Marx as, in some sense, very Christian.

00:33:31.860 | I don't think he's this radical rejecting,

00:33:35.600 | I think he's just reformatting.

00:33:38.220 | Christianity in a sense,

00:33:39.180 | he's replacing God with the proletarian.

00:33:42.200 | Knowledge, you have to get knowledge from somewhere.

00:33:46.100 | So you need the dictatorship of the proletarian,

00:33:48.420 | you need somebody, the Stalin, the Lenin,

00:33:50.460 | who somehow communes with the spirit,

00:33:53.140 | the spirit of the proletarian.

00:33:54.860 | There's no rationality, not rationalism,

00:33:57.360 | there's no rationality in Marx.

00:33:59.540 | There is a lot of mysticism

00:34:01.060 | and there is a lot of hand-waving

00:34:03.540 | and there's a lot of sacrifice

00:34:04.940 | and a lot of original sin

00:34:06.220 | in the way he views humanity.

00:34:08.660 | So I view Marx as one more collectivist

00:34:12.220 | in a whole string of collectivists.

00:34:14.860 | And I think the Bismarckian response,

00:34:18.900 | which Bismarck, I mean, I know less about the Israelis,

00:34:22.500 | so I'll focus on Bismarck.

00:34:23.860 | I mean, Bismarck is really responding

00:34:25.380 | to political pressures from the left

00:34:27.420 | and he's responding to the rise of communism, socialism.

00:34:33.340 | But what Bismarck is doing,

00:34:34.740 | he's putting something alternative,

00:34:37.540 | he's presenting an alternative to the proletarian

00:34:40.780 | as the standard by which we should matter the good.

00:34:44.980 | And what he's replacing it as the state,

00:34:47.300 | he's replacing the proletarian with the state.

00:34:49.820 | And that has exactly the same problems.

00:34:52.300 | That is, first, it requires sacrificing some to others,

00:34:54.760 | which is what the welfare state basically legitimizes.

00:34:57.840 | It places the state above all,

00:35:00.580 | so the state now becomes, I think,

00:35:01.860 | the biggest evil of Bismarck.

00:35:03.380 | And I definitely view him as a negative force in history.

00:35:06.740 | Is public education.

00:35:08.540 | I mean, the Germans really dig in on public education

00:35:12.620 | and really develop it.

00:35:13.780 | And really, the American model of public education

00:35:16.020 | is copying the German, the Prussian,

00:35:20.140 | Bismarckian public education.

00:35:20.980 | - Can you speak to that real quick,

00:35:22.620 | why the public education is such a root

00:35:26.060 | of moral evil for you?

00:35:27.820 | - Well, because it now says that there's one standard,

00:35:32.180 | and that standard is determined by government,

00:35:34.540 | by a bureaucracy, by whatever the government deems

00:35:38.140 | as in the national interest.

00:35:39.620 | And Bismarck's very explicit about this.

00:35:41.140 | He's training the workers of the future.

00:35:43.140 | They need to catch up with England and other places,

00:35:47.540 | and they need to train the workers.

00:35:48.660 | And there's gonna be a,

00:35:49.820 | he's gonna train some people to be the managerial class,

00:35:52.060 | he's gonna train other people to be,

00:35:53.500 | and he decides, right, the government,

00:35:55.420 | the bureaucracy is gonna decide who's who,

00:35:57.580 | and where they go.

00:35:58.420 | There's no individual choice.

00:35:59.580 | There's no individual showing an ability to break out

00:36:03.020 | of what the government has decided is their little box.

00:36:06.540 | There's very little freedom.

00:36:08.020 | There's very little, you know,

00:36:10.060 | ultimately there's very little competition.

00:36:12.020 | There's very little innovation.

00:36:13.740 | And this is the problem we have today in American education,

00:36:15.900 | which we can get to,

00:36:16.940 | is there's no competition and no innovation.

00:36:18.700 | We have one standard fit all,

00:36:21.220 | and then we have conflicts about what should be taught.

00:36:23.220 | And the conflicts now are not pedagogical.

00:36:25.540 | They're not about what works and what doesn't.

00:36:28.220 | Nobody cares about that.

00:36:29.740 | It's about political agendas, right?

00:36:31.340 | It's about what my group wants to be taught

00:36:33.820 | and what that group wants to be taught,

00:36:35.420 | rather than actually discovering,

00:36:37.740 | how do we get kids to read?

00:36:38.940 | I mean, we all know how to get kids to read,

00:36:40.460 | but there's a political agenda

00:36:41.980 | about not teaching phonics, for example.

00:36:44.020 | So a lot of schools don't teach phonics,

00:36:46.380 | even though the kids will never learn how to read properly.

00:36:49.140 | So it becomes politics,

00:36:50.860 | and I don't believe politics belongs in education.

00:36:53.420 | I think education is a product, it's a service,

00:36:56.020 | and we know how to deliver products and services

00:36:58.180 | really, really efficiently at a really, really low price

00:37:00.940 | at a really, really high quality,

00:37:02.340 | and that's leaving it to the market to do.

00:37:04.660 | - But your fundamental criticism

00:37:06.220 | is that the state can use education

00:37:09.780 | to further its authoritarian aims.

00:37:13.420 | - Well, or whatever the aims.

00:37:14.980 | I mean, think about the conservative today

00:37:16.980 | critique of American educational system, right?

00:37:18.820 | It's dominated by the left.

00:37:20.140 | Yeah, what did you expect, right?

00:37:22.860 | If you leave it up to the state to fund,

00:37:25.820 | they're gonna fund the things that promote state growth

00:37:29.180 | and state intervention, and the left is better at that.

00:37:31.580 | It has been better at that than the right,

00:37:33.620 | and they now dominate our educational institutions.

00:37:36.740 | But look, if we go back to Bismarck,

00:37:38.420 | my problem is placing the state above the individual.

00:37:41.500 | So if communism places the class above the individual,

00:37:45.700 | what matters is class, individuals are nothing,

00:37:47.420 | they're cogs in a machine.

00:37:49.180 | Bismarck, certainly the German tradition,

00:37:51.660 | much more than the British tradition

00:37:52.900 | or the American tradition,

00:37:53.820 | the German tradition is to place the state

00:37:56.020 | above the individual.

00:37:57.020 | I think that's equally evil, and the outcome is fascism,

00:37:59.780 | and the outcome is the same.

00:38:01.020 | The outcome is the deaths of tens of millions of people

00:38:03.580 | when taken to its ultimate conclusion,

00:38:05.940 | just like socialism, the ultimate conclusion of it

00:38:08.100 | is communism, you know, nationalism,

00:38:12.540 | in that form, kind of the Bismarckian form,

00:38:14.740 | the ultimate conclusion is Nazism or some form of fascism.

00:38:20.180 | Because you don't care about the individual,

00:38:22.660 | the individual doesn't matter.

00:38:23.860 | I think this is one of the differences

00:38:25.820 | in the Anglo-American tradition,

00:38:29.820 | where the Anglo-American tradition,

00:38:31.660 | even the conservatives have always acknowledged,

00:38:34.780 | and it goes back to--

00:38:36.700 | - Especially the conservatives.

00:38:38.180 | The conservatives were there first.

00:38:39.700 | - They acknowledged.

00:38:41.180 | Well, you've defined conservatives

00:38:42.820 | to include all the good thinkers of the distant past,

00:38:45.260 | and they're all good thinkers, we agree on that.

00:38:47.620 | I'm defining conservatism the way that Burke does.

00:38:51.420 | Look, this is a very simple observation.

00:38:54.700 | Burke thinks, when you open Burke and you actually read him,

00:38:57.660 | he starts naming all of these people who he's defending,

00:39:00.260 | and it's bizarre, I'm sorry,

00:39:01.660 | it's just intellectual sloppiness

00:39:03.660 | for people to be publishing books called

00:39:05.620 | Burke, the first conservative, the founding conservative.

00:39:08.860 | I mean, this is nonstop.

00:39:10.620 | It's a view that says Burke reacts to the French Revolution,

00:39:15.020 | so conservatism has no prior tradition,

00:39:16.820 | it's just reacting to the French Revolution,

00:39:18.700 | and this is just absurd.

00:39:21.060 | - Can I ask a quick question on conservatism?

00:39:23.580 | Are there any conservatives

00:39:24.980 | that are embracing of revolutions?

00:39:27.380 | So are they ultimately against the concept of revolution?

00:39:30.780 | - Yes, Burke himself embraces the Polish Revolution,

00:39:34.740 | which takes place almost exactly at the same time

00:39:36.860 | as the French Revolution,

00:39:38.460 | and the argument's really interesting,

00:39:39.820 | because a common mistake is assuming

00:39:42.540 | that Burke and conservative thinkers

00:39:44.260 | are always in favor of slow change.

00:39:46.820 | I think that's also just factually mistaken.

00:39:49.980 | Burke is against the French Revolution

00:39:53.340 | because he thinks that there are actually

00:39:56.740 | tried and true things that work,

00:39:59.580 | things that work for human flourishing,

00:40:02.140 | and freedom included as a very important part

00:40:05.460 | of human flourishing.

00:40:06.540 | He, like many others, takes the English Constitution

00:40:13.540 | to be a model of something that works.

00:40:17.100 | So it has a king, it has various other things

00:40:18.820 | that maybe your own will say, "Well, that's a mistake,"

00:40:22.380 | but still, for centuries, it's the leader

00:40:25.180 | in many things that I think we can easily agree

00:40:27.740 | are human flourishing.

00:40:29.140 | And Burke says, "Look, what's wrong

00:40:31.900 | "with the French Revolution?

00:40:32.880 | "What's wrong with the French Revolution

00:40:34.160 | "is that they have a system that has all sorts of problems,

00:40:38.160 | "but they could be repairing it,

00:40:40.780 | "and instead what they're doing by overthrowing everything

00:40:44.100 | "is they're moving away from what we know

00:40:46.360 | "is good for human beings."

00:40:48.300 | Then he looks at the Polish Revolution,

00:40:50.460 | and he says, "The Poles do the opposite.

00:40:52.040 | "The Poles have a non-functioning traditional constitution.

00:40:54.900 | "It's too democratic.

00:40:56.820 | "It's impossible to raise armies and to defend the country

00:41:01.820 | "because of the fact that every nobleman has a veto."

00:41:05.580 | So the Polish Revolution moves in the direction

00:41:08.940 | of the British Constitution.

00:41:11.300 | They repair their constitution

00:41:13.500 | through a quick, a rapid revolution.

00:41:16.340 | They install a king along the model

00:41:18.620 | that looks a lot like Britain, and Burke supports this.

00:41:21.140 | He says, "This is a good revolution."

00:41:23.860 | So it's not the need to quickly make a change

00:41:28.860 | in order to save yourself.

00:41:30.940 | That's not what conservatives are objecting to.

00:41:33.140 | What they're objecting to is instead of looking at experience

00:41:37.840 | in order to try to make a slow or quick improvement,

00:41:41.900 | a measured improvement to achieve a particular goal,

00:41:45.160 | instead of doing that, you say,

00:41:46.100 | "Look, the whole thing has just been wrong,

00:41:48.400 | "and what we've really got to do is annihilate

00:41:50.380 | "a certain part of the population

00:41:51.700 | "and then make completely new laws

00:41:53.180 | "and a completely new theory."

00:41:55.020 | That's what he's objecting to.

00:41:56.340 | That's the French Revolution, and that then becomes

00:41:59.100 | the model for communist revolutions.

00:42:01.540 | - And for me, I mean, the French Revolution

00:42:03.220 | is clearly a real evil and wrong,

00:42:06.140 | but it's not that it was a revolution,

00:42:08.000 | and it's not that it tried to change everything.

00:42:09.800 | I mean, let's remember what was going on

00:42:11.140 | in France at the time, and people were starving,

00:42:13.420 | and the monarchy in particular was completely detached,

00:42:16.340 | completely detached from the suffering of the people,

00:42:19.220 | and something needed to change.

00:42:21.400 | The unfortunate thing is that the change was motivated

00:42:26.400 | by an egalitarian philosophy, not egalitarian in the sense

00:42:31.460 | that I think the founding fathers talked about it,

00:42:33.260 | but egalitarian in the sense of real equality,

00:42:35.020 | equality of outcome, motivated by a philosophy,

00:42:39.100 | by Rousseau's philosophy, and inevitably,

00:42:42.380 | you could tell that the ideas were going to lead to this,

00:42:44.500 | to massive destruction and death

00:42:46.420 | and the annihilation of a class.

00:42:48.620 | You can't, annihilation is never an option.

00:42:51.440 | That is, it's not true that a good revolution

00:42:54.940 | never leads to mass death of just whole groups of people

00:42:59.060 | because a good revolution is about the sanctity

00:43:01.340 | of the individual, it's about preservation

00:43:02.700 | of liberty of the individual.

00:43:04.540 | And again, that goes back to,

00:43:06.540 | and the French Revolution denies,

00:43:08.700 | and Rousseau denies really, that in civilization,

00:43:11.260 | there is a value and a thing called the individual.

00:43:13.620 | - I think this is a good place to have this discussion.

00:43:18.020 | The founding fathers of the United States,

00:43:21.220 | are they individualists or are they conservatives?

00:43:26.100 | So in this particular revolution that founded this country,

00:43:30.020 | at the core of which are some fascinating,

00:43:33.020 | some powerful ideas, were those founding fathers,

00:43:36.980 | were those ideas coming from a place of conservatism

00:43:40.420 | or did they put primary value into the freedom

00:43:44.900 | and the power of the individual?

00:43:46.420 | What do you think?

00:43:47.500 | - They were both.

00:43:48.540 | I mean, this is something that's a little bit difficult

00:43:51.860 | sometimes for Americans, I mean,

00:43:54.180 | even very educated Americans,

00:43:55.700 | they talk about the founding fathers

00:43:58.100 | as though it's kind of like this--

00:43:59.420 | - On with.

00:44:00.500 | - This collective entity with a single brain

00:44:04.780 | and a single value system,

00:44:06.460 | but I think at the time, that's not the way they,

00:44:09.340 | not the way any of them saw it.

00:44:12.340 | So roughly there's two camps,

00:44:14.260 | and they map onto the rationalist

00:44:17.220 | versus traditionalist empiricist dichotomy

00:44:20.220 | that I proposed earlier.

00:44:21.860 | And so on the one hand,

00:44:24.620 | you have real revolutionaries like Jefferson and Paine.

00:44:28.820 | These are the people who Burke was writing against.

00:44:31.260 | These are the people who supported the French Revolution.

00:44:33.620 | - So when you say real, so when you say Paine,

00:44:36.580 | you're referring to revolutionaries in a bad way,

00:44:39.020 | like this is a problem.

00:44:40.220 | - These are people who will say,

00:44:42.100 | history up until now has been,

00:44:46.740 | with Descartes, but applied to politics,

00:44:48.740 | history up until now has been just a story

00:44:52.260 | of ugliness, foolishness, stupidity, and evil.

00:44:56.380 | And if you apply reason,

00:44:59.460 | we'll all come to roughly,

00:45:01.740 | we'll all come to the same conclusions.

00:45:03.380 | You know, and Paine writes a book called "The Age of Reason,"

00:45:06.620 | and "The Age of Reason" is a manifesto for,

00:45:10.020 | here is the answer to political and moral problems

00:45:13.260 | throughout history.

00:45:14.140 | We have the answers.

00:45:15.540 | And it's in the same school as Rousseau's "The Social Continent."

00:45:18.940 | No, you don't like that?

00:45:20.620 | - Not at all.

00:45:21.460 | - Oh, I thought it was opposite.

00:45:22.300 | - I think they're the opposite.

00:45:23.140 | - Okay, so let me--

00:45:23.980 | Just to throw in a question on Jefferson and Paine,

00:45:28.260 | do you think America would exist without those two figures?

00:45:32.700 | So like, how important is spice

00:45:35.820 | in the flavor of the dish you're making?

00:45:38.940 | - I don't wanna try to run the counterfactual.

00:45:41.060 | I don't have confidence

00:45:42.620 | that I know the answer to the question.

00:45:44.220 | - But it's so much fun.

00:45:45.940 | - You know what, I'm gonna offer something

00:45:47.860 | that I think is more fun.

00:45:49.020 | More fun than the counterfactual is,

00:45:51.580 | America had two revolutions,

00:45:53.820 | not one, okay?

00:45:55.340 | At first, there is a revolution

00:45:58.540 | that is strongly spiced with this kind of rationalism.

00:46:03.540 | And then there's a 10-year period

00:46:07.060 | after the Declaration of Independence.

00:46:09.260 | There's a 10-year period

00:46:10.420 | under which America has a constitution,

00:46:12.740 | its first constitution,

00:46:14.060 | which today they call the Articles of the Confederation.

00:46:16.220 | But there's a constitution from 1777.

00:46:19.260 | And that constitution is based on,

00:46:22.620 | in a lot of ways, on the hottest new ideas.

00:46:25.700 | It has, instead of the traditional British system

00:46:28.660 | with a division of powers

00:46:30.340 | between an executive and a bicameral legislature,

00:46:35.260 | instead of that traditional English model,

00:46:38.140 | which most of the states had as their governments,

00:46:40.380 | instead of that, they say,

00:46:41.660 | "No, we're gonna have one elected body, okay?

00:46:46.660 | And that body, that Congress,

00:46:48.740 | it's going to be the executive.

00:46:50.300 | It's going to be the legislative.

00:46:51.780 | It's going to be everything,

00:46:53.740 | and it's gonna run as a big committee."

00:46:55.180 | These are the ideas of the French Revolution.

00:46:57.500 | You get to actually see them implemented in Pennsylvania,

00:47:02.060 | in the Pennsylvania Constitution,

00:47:03.860 | and then later in the National Assembly in France.

00:47:06.620 | It's a disaster.

00:47:07.780 | The thing doesn't work.

00:47:09.020 | It's completely made up.

00:47:10.180 | It's not based on any kind.

00:47:11.580 | It's neither based on historical experience,

00:47:13.660 | nor is it based on historical custom,

00:47:15.420 | on what people are used to.

00:47:17.060 | And what they succeed in creating

00:47:19.060 | with this first constitution

00:47:20.780 | is it's wonderfully rational,

00:47:23.220 | but it's a complete disaster.

00:47:24.740 | It doesn't allow the raising of taxes.

00:47:27.340 | It doesn't allow the mustering of troops.

00:47:29.180 | It doesn't allow giving orders to soldiers to fight a war.

00:47:33.500 | And if that had continued,

00:47:36.860 | if that had continued to be the American Constitution,

00:47:40.780 | America never would have been an independent country.

00:47:42.580 | They aren't willing to do that counterfactual.

00:47:45.020 | What happens during those years

00:47:48.460 | where Washington and Jay and Knox

00:47:53.460 | and Hamilton and Morris,

00:47:55.740 | there's like this group of conservatives.

00:47:58.780 | They're mostly soldiers and lawyers.

00:48:02.300 | Other than Washington,

00:48:03.220 | most of them are from Northern cities.

00:48:06.340 | And this group is much more conservative

00:48:09.020 | than the Tom Paine and Jefferson School.

00:48:16.780 | Some historians call them the Nationalist Party.

00:48:19.780 | Historically, they give up the word nationalism

00:48:22.700 | and they call themselves the Federalists,

00:48:24.260 | but they're basically the Nationalist Party.

00:48:26.220 | What does that mean?

00:48:27.260 | It means on the one hand,

00:48:28.940 | that their goal is to create an independent nation,

00:48:32.060 | independent from Britain.

00:48:33.220 | But on the other hand,

00:48:34.700 | they believe that they already have

00:48:37.500 | national legal traditions,

00:48:40.820 | the common law,

00:48:41.980 | the forms of government that have been imported from Britain

00:48:46.300 | and of course, Christianity,

00:48:47.740 | which they consider to be part of their inheritance.

00:48:50.980 | This Federalist Party is the conservative party.

00:48:55.980 | These are people who are extremely close in ideas to Burke.

00:49:00.140 | And these are people who wrote

00:49:01.620 | the Constitution of the United States,

00:49:03.060 | the second constitution,

00:49:04.340 | the second revolution in 1787,

00:49:07.100 | when Washington leads the establishment

00:49:09.580 | of a new constitution,

00:49:11.620 | which maybe technically, legally,

00:49:14.140 | it wasn't even legal under the old constitution,

00:49:16.820 | but it was democratic.

00:49:18.380 | And what it did is it said,

00:49:19.980 | we're going to take what we know about English government,

00:49:24.060 | what we've learned by applying English government

00:49:26.740 | in the States,

00:49:27.580 | we're gonna create a national government,

00:49:29.100 | a unified national government

00:49:30.860 | that's going to muster power in its hands,

00:49:32.700 | enough power to be able to do things

00:49:34.660 | like fighting wars to defend a unified people.

00:49:38.540 | Those are conservatives.

00:49:40.100 | Now, it's reasonable to say,

00:49:43.740 | well, look, there was no king,

00:49:44.900 | so how conservative could they be?

00:49:46.260 | But I think that's a reasonable question.

00:49:48.900 | But don't forget that the American colonies,

00:49:51.180 | the English colonies in America,

00:49:52.740 | by that point had been around for 150 years.

00:49:55.580 | They had written constitutions.

00:49:57.420 | They had already adapted for an entire century,

00:50:00.620 | adapted the English constitution to local conditions

00:50:03.420 | where there's no aristocracy and there's no king.

00:50:06.140 | I think you can see that as a positive thing.

00:50:08.620 | On the other hand, they have slavery.

00:50:09.940 | That's an innovation.

00:50:11.340 | That's not English.

00:50:12.860 | So it's a little bit different

00:50:14.060 | from the English constitution,

00:50:15.140 | but those men are conservatives.

00:50:17.180 | They make the minimum changes that they need

00:50:19.780 | to the English constitution,

00:50:21.900 | and they largely replicate it,

00:50:24.960 | which is why the Jeffersonians hated them so much.

00:50:28.600 | They called them apostates.

00:50:30.140 | They say they've betrayed equality and liberty

00:50:34.180 | and fraternity by adopting an English-style constitution.

00:50:38.300 | - So I would imagine, Aaron,

00:50:39.980 | you would put emphasis of the success of the key ideas

00:50:43.260 | at the founding of this country elsewhere,

00:50:45.540 | at the freedom of the individual,

00:50:47.380 | so as opposed to the tradition of the British Empire.

00:50:50.500 | - I mean, the one thing I agree with you on

00:50:52.260 | is the fact that, yes,

00:50:53.900 | the founding fathers were not a monolith.

00:50:55.700 | I mean, they argued, they debated, they disagreed,

00:50:58.100 | they wrote against each other.

00:50:59.820 | I mean, Jefferson and Adams for decades

00:51:02.300 | didn't even speak to each other,

00:51:03.380 | though they did make up

00:51:04.940 | and had a fascinating relationship.

00:51:07.980 | - You and I are making up, too.

00:51:09.260 | (both laughing)

00:51:10.660 | It's like the founding fathers.

00:51:12.220 | - There's massive debate and discussion,

00:51:17.220 | but I don't agree with the characterization

00:51:19.180 | of Paine and Jefferson.

00:51:20.940 | I don't think it's just to call them rationalists,

00:51:23.180 | 'cause I don't think they're rationalists.

00:51:25.020 | People who've looked at history,

00:51:26.620 | at the problems in history,

00:51:27.740 | and remember, this is the 18th century,

00:51:30.300 | and we're coming out of 100 years earlier,

00:51:34.060 | some of the bloodiest wars in all of human history

00:51:36.180 | were happening in Europe.

00:51:39.140 | Many of them over religion.

00:51:40.580 | They'd seen what was going on in France

00:51:44.580 | and other countries where people were starving

00:51:48.700 | and where kings were frolicking in palaces in spite of that.

00:51:53.140 | They were very aware of the relative freedom

00:51:57.940 | that the British tradition had given Englishmen.

00:52:01.740 | I think they knew that, they understood that,

00:52:04.780 | and I think they were building on that.

00:52:06.300 | They were taking the observation of the past

00:52:09.220 | and trying to come up with a more perfect system,

00:52:12.460 | and I think they did.

00:52:13.820 | In that sense, I'm a huge fan of Jefferson.

00:52:16.620 | There are two things that I think

00:52:18.500 | are unfortunate about Jefferson.

00:52:19.860 | One is that he continued to hold slaves,

00:52:23.100 | which is very unfortunate,

00:52:25.940 | and the second is early support

00:52:28.100 | for the French Revolution,

00:52:28.980 | which I think is a massive mistake,

00:52:31.220 | and I wouldn't be surprised if he regretted it

00:52:34.140 | later in life given the consequences.

00:52:36.500 | But they were trying to derive principles

00:52:39.460 | by which they could establish a new state,

00:52:41.740 | and yes, there was pushback by some,

00:52:45.620 | and there was disagreement,

00:52:46.620 | and the Constitution in the end

00:52:48.980 | is to some extent a form of compromise.

00:52:51.980 | It's still one of the great documents

00:52:53.220 | of all of human history, political documents,

00:52:55.660 | the Constitution, although I think

00:52:57.540 | it's inferior to the Declaration.

00:52:58.940 | I'm a huge fan of the Declaration,

00:53:00.980 | and I think one of the mistakes the Conservatives makes,

00:53:03.340 | one of the mistakes the Supreme Court makes

00:53:05.620 | and American judiciary makes

00:53:07.660 | is assuming the two documents are separate.

00:53:10.340 | I think Lincoln is absolutely right.

00:53:11.820 | You can't understand the Constitution

00:53:13.420 | without understanding the Declaration,

00:53:15.340 | the Declaration, what set the context

00:53:17.180 | and what sets everything up for the Constitution.

00:53:19.900 | Individual rights are the key concept there,

00:53:22.780 | and one of the challenges was

00:53:24.940 | that some of the compromises,

00:53:26.420 | and compromises not necessarily between groups,

00:53:29.700 | but compromises that even Jefferson made

00:53:31.500 | and others made regarding individual rights

00:53:34.940 | set America on a path that we're suffering from today,

00:53:38.860 | and I mentioned three last night.

00:53:41.780 | One was slavery.

00:53:43.140 | Obviously, that was a horrific compromise,

00:53:46.420 | one that America not just paid for with the Civil War,

00:53:50.460 | 600,000 young men died because of it,

00:53:54.260 | but the suffering of black slaves for all those years,

00:53:57.900 | but then the whole issue of racial tensions

00:54:00.660 | in this country for a century,

00:54:04.180 | and to this day really,

00:54:05.940 | is a consequence of that initial compromise.

00:54:08.180 | Who knows what the counterfactual is in America

00:54:11.540 | if there's a Civil War right at the founding,

00:54:14.260 | 'cause there would have been a war no matter what,

00:54:16.420 | but if it had happened in the late 18th century,

00:54:18.380 | early 19th century, rather than waiting 'til 1860s,

00:54:21.820 | but then second was Jefferson's embrace of public education,

00:54:26.820 | his founding of the University of Virginia,

00:54:30.420 | which I think is a great tragedy,

00:54:32.540 | which nobody agrees with me on,

00:54:35.740 | so that's one of the areas where I'm pretty radical,

00:54:38.900 | and then the embrace, both by Jefferson and by Hamilton,

00:54:43.060 | for different reasons, but an embrace by both of them

00:54:46.660 | of government role in the economy,

00:54:49.060 | and I do finance, so I know a little bit about finance,

00:54:52.500 | and the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton

00:54:54.580 | about banking is fascinating,

00:54:56.700 | but at the end of the day,

00:54:57.700 | both wanted a role for government in banking.

00:54:59.700 | They both didn't trust.

00:55:01.700 | Jefferson didn't trust big financial interests.

00:55:04.780 | Hamilton wanted to capture some of those financial interests

00:55:07.060 | for the state, and as a consequence,

00:55:09.220 | we set America on a path where, in my view,

00:55:13.180 | regulation always leads to more regulation.

00:55:14.900 | There's never a case where regulation decreases,

00:55:17.220 | and we started out with a certain regulatory body

00:55:20.220 | around banks and a recognition

00:55:21.660 | that it was okay to regulate the economy,

00:55:23.540 | so once we get into the late 19th century,

00:55:25.300 | it's fine to regulate the railroads,

00:55:27.140 | it's fine to pass antitrust laws,

00:55:29.340 | it's fine to then continue on the path

00:55:31.620 | of where we are today, which is heavy, heavy, heavy,

00:55:34.580 | massive involvement of government in every aspect

00:55:37.740 | of our economy and really in every aspect of our life

00:55:39.740 | because of education, so I think the country

00:55:43.500 | was founded on certain mistakes,

00:55:44.940 | and we haven't been willing to question those mistakes,

00:55:48.260 | and in a sense, we've only moved in the opposite direction,

00:55:52.060 | and now America's become, whereas I think it was founded

00:55:56.740 | on the idea of the primacy of the individual,

00:55:58.500 | the sanctity of the individual,

00:56:00.300 | at least as an idea, even if not fully implemented,

00:56:02.900 | I think now that's completely lost.

00:56:04.460 | I don't think anybody really is an advocate out there

00:56:08.740 | for individualism in politics

00:56:10.940 | or for true freedom in politics.

00:56:12.820 | - We'll get to individualism, but let me ask the Beatles

00:56:15.420 | and the Rolling Stones question about the Declaration

00:56:17.580 | of Independence and the Constitution.

00:56:19.340 | - Who's the Stone?

00:56:20.180 | - Well, 'cause it's like which document,

00:56:21.980 | Beatles or Rolling, which document is more important?

00:56:24.580 | - It's obviously the Beatles, right?

00:56:25.660 | - Okay. - Is the question?

00:56:27.340 | Is there even a question?

00:56:28.500 | But let me then even zoom in further

00:56:30.260 | and ask you to pick your favorite song.

00:56:32.940 | So what ideas in the Constitution

00:56:35.700 | or the Declaration of Independence do you think

00:56:38.020 | are the most important to the success

00:56:41.340 | of the United States of America?

00:56:43.100 | - I'll answer the question,

00:56:44.180 | but before answering the question,

00:56:46.100 | I wanna dissent from, register a dissent from your own.

00:56:49.100 | - Is it the public education?

00:56:50.580 | Is it which?

00:56:51.540 | - No, no, no, actually, look, we're not so far apart

00:56:56.020 | on public education.

00:56:56.860 | I'm actually kind of surprised that you're so anti-Bismarck

00:57:00.700 | because his public school system,

00:57:02.860 | his national public school system was created

00:57:04.700 | in order to stick it to the church.

00:57:07.100 | It was the church that ran the schools before then.

00:57:09.580 | And okay, but so that's a different--

00:57:11.100 | - I'm all for sticking it to the church.

00:57:12.300 | - You're right, I know.

00:57:13.140 | - If there's any opportunity,

00:57:13.980 | but not when the alternative is the nation.

00:57:15.980 | - Right, I see.

00:57:16.820 | - I'd rather see a free educational system

00:57:19.700 | where freedom is in education.

00:57:21.180 | - Okay, so I wanna register a dissent

00:57:24.100 | about Lincoln.

00:57:25.700 | Look, Lincoln is an important figure and a great man,

00:57:28.820 | and he was presiding over a country

00:57:30.740 | which at that point was pretty Jeffersonian

00:57:33.300 | in terms of its self-perception.

00:57:35.780 | He said what he needed to say.

00:57:37.060 | I'm not gonna criticize him,

00:57:38.500 | but I don't accept the idea

00:57:40.540 | that the Declaration of Independence,

00:57:43.900 | which starts one revolution,

00:57:46.220 | is of a piece with the second constitution,

00:57:50.580 | the Constitution of 1787,

00:57:52.620 | the Nationalist Constitution,

00:57:54.660 | which is effectively a counter-revolution.

00:57:57.820 | What happens is there is a revolution.

00:58:00.180 | It's based on certain principles.

00:58:01.820 | There are a lot, not exactly,

00:58:03.540 | but in many ways resemble the later ideas

00:58:07.420 | of the French Revolution.

00:58:08.980 | And what the Federalist Party does,

00:58:10.620 | the Nationalist Conservative Party does,

00:58:13.460 | is a counter-revolution to reinstate

00:58:16.220 | the old English Constitution.

00:58:18.020 | So these documents are,

00:58:20.220 | if you're willing to accept the evidence of history,

00:58:22.580 | they are in many respects contrary to one another.

00:58:27.060 | And so if I'm asked what's the most important values

00:58:31.620 | that are handed down by these documents,

00:58:34.100 | I don't have an objection to life, liberty, and property,

00:58:39.100 | all of which are really important things.

00:58:41.220 | I do have an objection to the pompous overreach

00:58:46.220 | of these are self-evident, which is absurd.

00:58:50.340 | They can't be self-evident.

00:58:51.420 | If they were self-evident,

00:58:52.420 | then somebody would have come up with them

00:58:54.220 | like 2,000 years before.

00:58:56.220 | It's not self-evident.

00:58:57.860 | And so that's damaging.

00:58:59.700 | I like the conservative preamble of the Constitution,

00:59:04.580 | which describes the purposes of the national government

00:59:08.660 | that's being established.

00:59:10.100 | There are seven purposes, a more perfect union,

00:59:14.780 | which is the principle of cohesion, justice,

00:59:19.300 | domestic peace, common defense, the general welfare,

00:59:24.020 | which is the welfare of the public

00:59:26.740 | as a thing that's not only individuals,

00:59:29.020 | but there is such a thing as a general welfare,

00:59:31.500 | liberty, which we agree is absolutely crucial,

00:59:35.060 | and posterity, the idea that the purpose of the government

00:59:38.540 | is to be able to sustain and grow this independent nation,

00:59:42.740 | and not only to guarantee rights no matter what happens.

00:59:45.780 | - But you don't like the,

00:59:46.980 | we hold these truths to be self-evident,

00:59:49.820 | so you're definitely a Beatles guy.

00:59:51.220 | You don't want the pompous,

00:59:54.660 | you don't need that revolutionary strength.

00:59:56.340 | - Look, I just, I think that that expression,

00:59:59.460 | self-evident truths, it does tremendous damage

01:00:02.820 | because instead of a moderate skepticism,

01:00:07.100 | which says, look, we may not know everything,

01:00:10.060 | it says, look, we know everything.

01:00:12.500 | Here it is, here's what we know, we know.

01:00:14.100 | - We don't know everything,

01:00:14.940 | but we think. - No, we, we.

01:00:17.540 | - So I'll agree with you on, I don't like self-evident.

01:00:20.500 | I don't like self-evident because he's absolutely right.

01:00:22.660 | It's not self-evident.

01:00:23.980 | These are massive achievements.

01:00:26.820 | These are massive achievements of enlightened thinking,

01:00:30.620 | of studying history, of understanding human nature,

01:00:33.980 | of deriving a truth from 3,000 years of historical knowledge

01:00:38.980 | and a better understanding of human nature and capacity.

01:00:43.340 | It's using reason in some ways better

01:00:46.900 | than any human beings have.

01:00:49.060 | I mean, the founding fathers, giants historically,

01:00:51.580 | in my view, because they came up with these truths.

01:00:54.900 | I do think they're truths,

01:00:56.060 | but they're certainly not self-evident.

01:00:57.620 | I mean, if they were, you're almost right.

01:00:59.820 | They would have discovered them thousands of years earlier

01:01:01.620 | or everybody would accept them, right?

01:01:03.460 | I mean, how many people today think that those,

01:01:05.820 | what they state in that document is true?

01:01:08.780 | Pretty much, you know, five people, I don't know.

01:01:11.660 | It's very--

01:01:13.540 | - That's your criticism of modern society.

01:01:15.700 | Yes, we'll get there.

01:01:16.540 | - It's very, very few people recognize it.

01:01:18.820 | If they were self-evident, bam, everybody would have become,

01:01:22.340 | you know, would have accepted the American Revolution

01:01:25.220 | as truth and that was it.

01:01:27.260 | A lot of work has to go into understanding and describing

01:01:31.060 | and convincing people about this truth.

01:01:32.900 | But I completely disagree with you all about this idea,

01:01:37.180 | or I'll voice my dissent, as we said, about--

01:01:40.100 | - Register your official dissent.

01:01:42.620 | - About A, that this being two different revolutions

01:01:45.180 | and B, that the American Revolution was at any similarity

01:01:48.140 | to the French Revolution.

01:01:49.540 | - You know that Jefferson and Paine, they were in France.

01:01:53.780 | - Oh, I know, I know.

01:01:54.700 | - Running a different revolution.

01:01:55.540 | - I know, but they were writing constantly.

01:01:58.300 | I mean, they were in communication with Madison.

01:02:00.060 | There was a lot of input going on.

01:02:01.860 | - I know, and Jefferson's sitting there in Paris

01:02:03.900 | pulling his hair out because Madison has come

01:02:06.540 | under the influence of these nationalists

01:02:08.260 | and he can't believe it.

01:02:09.740 | - The reality is that the difference

01:02:11.420 | between the French Revolution and the American Revolution

01:02:15.100 | is vast and it is a deep philosophical difference.

01:02:19.860 | And it's a difference that expressed, I think,

01:02:22.980 | between the differences.

01:02:24.020 | You know, Yoram, in his writings, lumps Rousseau

01:02:27.420 | with Locke and with Voltaire and with others.

01:02:29.780 | And I think that's wrong.

01:02:32.260 | I think Rousseau is very different than the others.

01:02:34.300 | I think, again, Rousseau is an anti-Enlightenment figure.

01:02:37.260 | Rousseau is, in many respects, harkening back to a past,

01:02:42.020 | an ancient past, and I think a completely distorted view

01:02:46.420 | of human nature, of human mind.

01:02:48.300 | He rejects reason.

01:02:49.940 | I mean, Rousseau is on the premise

01:02:51.780 | that reason is the end of humanity.

01:02:54.180 | Reason is the destruction of humanity.

01:02:56.540 | Reason is how we get civilization,

01:02:58.540 | and civilization is awful because--

01:03:01.300 | - I don't disagree.

01:03:02.140 | We're only talking about different texts.

01:03:04.580 | When I say, I'm just talking about the social contract.

01:03:06.900 | - Yeah, but the social contract,

01:03:08.140 | there's similarity between others,

01:03:09.940 | but he takes it in a completely different direction.

01:03:11.900 | And we agree, a social contract is a bad idea.

01:03:14.580 | But you can't have a contract

01:03:16.780 | that you don't actually voluntarily accept.

01:03:19.340 | But Rousseau is the French Revolution.

01:03:21.340 | Rousseau is about destruction and mayhem

01:03:24.300 | and chaos and anarchy.

01:03:26.620 | He is the spirit behind the French Revolution.

01:03:29.020 | I think the American Revolution

01:03:30.140 | is a complete rejection of Rousseau.

01:03:32.020 | I think Jefferson is a complete rejection of Rousseau.

01:03:34.380 | I don't think Jefferson is a fan of Rousseau.

01:03:36.220 | He is a Voltaire, and he certainly is a Montesquieu.

01:03:38.700 | If you look at the Federalist Papers,

01:03:41.180 | the intellectual most cited in the Federalist Papers,

01:03:43.580 | I think, in terms of just the number of times it's cited,

01:03:46.180 | is Montesquieu.

01:03:47.900 | So I think that the American Revolution

01:03:49.460 | is an individualistic revolution.

01:03:51.740 | It is a revolution about the rights of the individual.

01:03:55.340 | The French Revolution is a negation

01:03:57.220 | of the rights of the individual.

01:03:58.220 | It's a collectivistic revolution.

01:04:00.060 | It's not quite the Marxist revolution of the proletarian,

01:04:03.780 | but it's defining people in classes,

01:04:06.740 | and it's a rebellion against a certain class,

01:04:09.380 | and yeah, kill 'em all, right?

01:04:11.980 | Off with their heads.

01:04:13.420 | And it is a negation.

01:04:15.220 | It's about egalitarianism in the sense of equality

01:04:17.780 | of outcome, not in a sense of equality before the law

01:04:20.700 | or equality of rights, which is the Jeffersonian sense.

01:04:23.620 | So I think it's wrong to lump Jefferson

01:04:26.860 | into the fraternity, you know,

01:04:30.500 | egalitarian notion of the French,

01:04:33.220 | which is far more similar to what ultimately

01:04:36.500 | became socialism and Marxism,

01:04:38.180 | and kind of that tradition.

01:04:42.060 | It's anti-individualistic, the French Revolution is,

01:04:44.780 | whereas the American Revolution, the first one,

01:04:47.260 | is individualistic.

01:04:48.660 | It's all about individual rights.

01:04:50.220 | And while there's certain phrases

01:04:52.300 | in the Declaration of Independence

01:04:53.500 | that I don't agree with, you know,

01:04:55.860 | it's beautifully written, and it's a magnificent document,

01:04:58.340 | so it's hard for me to say I don't agree, who am I, right?

01:05:01.740 | These were giants.

01:05:03.740 | Self-evident is one of them.

01:05:05.220 | You know, I'm not particularly crazy about

01:05:09.500 | Endowed by the Creator, but I like the fact

01:05:12.620 | that it's creator and not God, or not a specific creator,

01:05:15.740 | but just kind of a more general thing.

01:05:17.940 | But putting those two ashes aside,

01:05:20.140 | it's the greatest political document

01:05:21.740 | in all of human history, in my view, by far.

01:05:23.860 | Nothing comes close.

01:05:25.020 | It is a document that identifies the core principles

01:05:30.020 | of political truism, of truth.

01:05:33.940 | That is, the role of government is to preserve

01:05:35.940 | and to protect these rights, these inalienable rights.

01:05:38.980 | And that is so crucial, that these rights are inalienable.

01:05:42.140 | That is, a majority can't vote them out,

01:05:44.500 | Revelation can't vote them out.

01:05:47.420 | This is what is required for human liberty

01:05:51.020 | and human freedom.

01:05:51.980 | The right, that is, the sanction, the freedom

01:05:55.980 | to act on your own behalf, to act based on your own judgment.

01:05:58.940 | And as long as you're not interfering

01:06:01.340 | with other people's rights, you are free to do so.

01:06:04.140 | That is such a profound truth.

01:06:06.500 | And that, to me, is the essence of political philosophy.

01:06:09.940 | That's the beginning.

01:06:10.940 | And it's based on, just not to fall into,

01:06:15.660 | you know, I'm just gonna say it's irrational.

01:06:17.900 | It's based on a whole history of what happens

01:06:20.260 | when we negate that.

01:06:21.180 | It's based on looking at England and seeing to the extent

01:06:25.060 | that they practiced a respect for individual liberty,

01:06:28.100 | a property of freedom.

01:06:30.780 | Good things happened.

01:06:32.380 | So let's take that all the way.

01:06:34.260 | Let's not compromise on that.

01:06:35.940 | Let's be consistent with the good and reject the bad.

01:06:40.300 | And when England goes away, distance itself

01:06:43.140 | from the rights of man, from the idea of a right

01:06:45.820 | to property and so on, bad things happen.

01:06:48.220 | And when they go to, let's go all in.

01:06:50.460 | And I'm all in on the right to life, liberty, property,

01:06:54.180 | and the pursuit of happiness.

01:06:55.500 | And I think the idea of pursuit of happiness is profound

01:06:57.940 | because it's a moral statement.

01:06:59.780 | It's a statement that says that sanctions

01:07:02.540 | and says that ultimately people should be allowed

01:07:06.580 | to make their own judgments and live their lives

01:07:09.620 | as they see fit based on how they view happiness.

01:07:13.380 | They might be right, they might be wrong,

01:07:14.540 | but we're not gonna dictate what happiness entails

01:07:18.180 | and dictate to people how they should live their lives.

01:07:20.660 | We're gonna let them figure that out.

01:07:23.660 | So it has this self-interested moral code

01:07:28.020 | kind of embedded in it.

01:07:29.380 | So I think it's a beautiful statement.

01:07:31.140 | So I think the declaration is key.

01:07:32.540 | And I think there was an experiment,

01:07:35.140 | and the experiment was post in that period

01:07:38.580 | of before the constitution, where the experiment was,

01:07:42.020 | let's let the states,

01:07:43.260 | let's have a kind of a loose confederation.

01:07:46.420 | Let's let the states experiment

01:07:48.340 | with setting up their own constitutions

01:07:50.580 | and role of government,

01:07:51.580 | and we won't have any kind of unity.

01:07:53.940 | And I think what they realized,

01:07:55.820 | and I think even Jefferson realized,

01:07:57.460 | is that that was not workable

01:07:58.740 | because many of the states were starting

01:08:02.820 | to significantly violate rights.

01:08:05.080 | There was nothing to unify.

01:08:06.980 | There was nothing to really protect

01:08:08.860 | the vision of the declaration.

01:08:11.460 | You needed to establish a nation,

01:08:13.740 | which is what the constitution does.

01:08:15.380 | It establishes a nation.

01:08:17.100 | But the purpose of that was to put everybody

01:08:21.340 | under one set of laws that protected rights.

01:08:25.260 | The focus was still on the protection of rights.

01:08:27.860 | And I agree with six of the seven of the principles.

01:08:31.180 | - Which did disagree with?

01:08:34.300 | - The common welfare, which the general welfare,

01:08:36.420 | which I worry about.

01:08:37.620 | I think in the way the founders understood it,

01:08:40.460 | I think I probably agreed with it.

01:08:42.040 | But it's such an ambiguous--

01:08:43.580 | - I'm sure you don't agree.

01:08:44.420 | - Maybe I don't.

01:08:45.260 | Maybe I don't.

01:08:46.080 | - Can you state the general welfare principle?

01:08:48.380 | - Well, the idea that part of the role of government

01:08:50.180 | is to secure the general welfare is something--

01:08:53.380 | - Look, this is something,

01:08:54.460 | we didn't get to it in the debate.

01:08:55.900 | We really should have.

01:08:56.940 | Is the question of whether there is such a thing

01:09:00.660 | as a common good or a public interest

01:09:03.600 | or a national interest or a general welfare.

01:09:06.340 | Do these words, do these terms mean anything

01:09:09.900 | other than the good of all of the individuals

01:09:12.460 | in the country?

01:09:13.300 | - That's an important, sorry, let me interrupt you.

01:09:14.620 | - Yeah, so that's right.

01:09:16.100 | So that's why, so I object to it

01:09:17.820 | because I think it's too easy to interpret it as.

01:09:20.660 | So I interpret it as, well, what's good for a general,

01:09:24.580 | a group, a common, a people,

01:09:26.980 | or just a collection of individuals.

01:09:28.180 | So what's good for the individual

01:09:29.100 | is good for the common welfare.

01:09:30.540 | But I understand that that is a,

01:09:32.540 | that's something that is hard for people to grasp

01:09:35.180 | and not the common understanding.

01:09:37.160 | So I would have skipped the general welfare

01:09:40.140 | in order to avoid the fact that now

01:09:41.980 | the general welfare includes the government telling you

01:09:45.100 | what gender you should be assigned.

01:09:47.380 | So I would have wanted to have skipped that completely.

01:09:50.980 | So I think the Constitution is completely consistent

01:09:53.460 | with the Declaration with a few exceptions,

01:09:55.460 | the general welfare, but perfection

01:09:58.220 | is a difficult thing to find,

01:10:00.620 | particularly for me, right, politically.

01:10:02.820 | But it's a magnificent document, the Constitution.

01:10:05.500 | It doesn't quite rise to the level, I think,

01:10:07.180 | of the Declaration, but it's a magnificent document.

01:10:09.700 | Because, you know, and this is the difference, I think,

01:10:12.660 | between the English Constitution.

01:10:13.860 | Here's what I see as the difference.

01:10:15.660 | The difference is that the Constitution

01:10:19.500 | is written in the context of,

01:10:21.740 | why do we have a separation of powers, for example?

01:10:24.440 | We have a separation of powers in order to make sure

01:10:27.020 | that the government only does

01:10:27.860 | what the government is supposed to do.

01:10:28.940 | And what is the government supposed to do?

01:10:30.300 | Well, fundamentally, it's supposed to protect rights.

01:10:33.040 | I mean, all of those seven, or at least six of the seven,

01:10:35.820 | are about protecting rights.

01:10:37.820 | They're about protecting us from foreign invaders.

01:10:39.660 | They're about protecting, you know,

01:10:41.300 | peace within the country.

01:10:42.900 | They're about preserving this protection of rights.

01:10:46.380 | And why do we have this separation?

01:10:48.580 | So that we make sure that no one of those entities,

01:10:51.540 | the executive, or the legislature, judicial,

01:10:53.580 | can violate rights, 'cause there's always somebody

01:10:55.420 | looking over their shoulder.

01:10:56.580 | There's always somebody who can veto their power.

01:10:58.980 | But there's a purpose to it,

01:11:00.300 | and that purpose is clearly signified and characterized.

01:11:04.140 | And that's why I think the Bill of Rights was written,

01:11:05.860 | in order to add to the clarification

01:11:08.580 | of what exactly we mean, what is the purpose?

01:11:10.620 | The purpose is to preserve rights.

01:11:12.740 | And that's why we need to elaborate with those rights.

01:11:16.100 | And Madison's objection to the Bill of Rights

01:11:18.620 | was to say, not that he objected

01:11:20.620 | to having protection of rights,

01:11:24.140 | but to listing them, because he was worried

01:11:26.160 | that other rights that were not listed would not be.

01:11:28.060 | And his worry was completely justified,

01:11:29.980 | 'cause it's exactly what's happened.

01:11:31.340 | It's like, the only reason we have free speech

01:11:33.380 | in America is 'cause we've got it in writing

01:11:34.940 | as a First Amendment.

01:11:36.180 | If we didn't have it in writing,

01:11:37.180 | it would have been gone a long time ago.

01:11:38.740 | And the reason we don't have, for example,

01:11:40.500 | the freedom to negotiate a contract,

01:11:44.680 | independent government regulation,

01:11:47.060 | is that was not listed as a right in the bill,

01:11:50.340 | even though I think it's clearly covered

01:11:52.220 | under the Constitution, and certainly under the Declaration.

01:11:54.580 | So there was a massive mistake done in the Bill of Rights.

01:11:56.980 | They tried to cover it with the Ninth Amendment,

01:11:59.780 | but it never really stuck, this idea that,

01:12:03.180 | non-enumerated rights that are still in place.

01:12:06.820 | So I don't see it as a second revolution.

01:12:08.620 | I think it's a fix to a flaw that happened.

01:12:13.420 | It's a fix that allowed the expansion

01:12:17.540 | of the protection of rights to all states

01:12:21.340 | by creating a national entity to protect those rights.

01:12:24.140 | And that's what ultimately led to slavery going away.

01:12:30.140 | Under the initial agreement,

01:12:33.860 | slavery would have been there in perpetuity

01:12:35.920 | because states were sovereign in a way

01:12:38.540 | that under the new Constitution, they were not.

01:12:40.720 | And in a sense, the Constitution sets in motion,

01:12:43.340 | the Declaration and then the Constitution set in motion,

01:12:46.180 | the Civil War.

01:12:47.340 | The Civil War has to happen because at the end of the day,

01:12:49.500 | you cannot have some states

01:12:51.540 | with a massive violation of rights,

01:12:53.100 | what's more of a violation of rights than slavery,

01:12:55.500 | and some states that recognize it's not,

01:12:58.100 | it inevitably leads to the Civil War.

01:13:01.060 | - Jaron was just saying that,

01:13:02.700 | other than the general welfare,

01:13:04.500 | these principles are about individual liberties.

01:13:06.500 | I just don't think you can read it that way.

01:13:09.460 | The first stated purpose of the Constitution of 1787

01:13:13.140 | is in order to form a more perfect union.

01:13:15.860 | A more perfect union,

01:13:17.140 | it's describing a characteristic of the whole.

01:13:21.140 | It is not a characteristic of any individual.

01:13:24.380 | If you look at how the individuals are doing,

01:13:25.980 | you don't know whether their union is more or less perfect.

01:13:30.100 | So what they're doing is they're looking at the condition

01:13:33.500 | in which in order to be able to fight

01:13:36.100 | the Battle of Yorktown,

01:13:37.380 | they have to, somebody has to write a personal check

01:13:39.940 | in order to be able to move armies.

01:13:41.580 | A more perfect union is a more cohesive union.

01:13:44.660 | It's the ability to get all of these different individuals

01:13:48.100 | to do one focused thing when it's necessary to do it.

01:13:52.560 | - Well, it's more than that, right?

01:13:54.060 | So I agree with that.

01:13:55.620 | But for what purpose?

01:13:57.700 | That is, and this is why,

01:14:00.420 | this is why it's so hard with these historical documents

01:14:02.620 | 'cause there's a context and there's a thinking

01:14:05.060 | that they can't write everything down, right?

01:14:07.060 | Which is sad because I wish they had.

01:14:09.140 | What's the purpose of a more perfect union?

01:14:11.300 | The purpose of the more perfect union

01:14:13.540 | is to preserve the liberty of the individuals

01:14:15.640 | within that union.

01:14:16.480 | - But how do you know?

01:14:18.140 | - Because if you look, what's the rest?

01:14:19.920 | So what is the common defense?

01:14:21.220 | The common defense is to protect us from foreign invaders

01:14:24.500 | who would now disrupt what the rest of the constitution

01:14:27.480 | is all about.

01:14:28.320 | All of the constitution is written in a way

01:14:30.340 | as to preserve, find ways to limit the ability of government

01:14:34.760 | to violate the rights of individuals.

01:14:36.660 | That the beauty of this constitution,

01:14:39.500 | and again, it's connection to the declaration

01:14:41.960 | and tradition, right?

01:14:43.740 | What came before it?

01:14:44.780 | What came before it was a document which they all respected,

01:14:47.800 | which was the declaration, which set the context for this.

01:14:50.700 | And now the union is there in order to provide

01:14:53.380 | for the common defense, great, because we know

01:14:56.020 | that foreign invaders can violate our rights.

01:14:58.000 | That's what war is about.

01:14:59.540 | To protect us from peace, to establish peace and justice

01:15:02.580 | within the country, that's based on law, the rule of law,

01:15:06.060 | and again, individual liberty.

01:15:09.380 | So to me, when you read the founders,

01:15:12.100 | when you read the federalist papers,

01:15:13.280 | when you read what they wrote, what they're trying to do

01:15:16.580 | is figure out the right kind of political system,

01:15:19.500 | the right kind of structure to be able

01:15:23.060 | to preserve these liberties.

01:15:24.740 | And not all of them had, from my perspective,

01:15:28.340 | a perfect understanding what those liberties entailed,

01:15:30.540 | but they were all, even the conservatives

01:15:32.760 | that you call conservatives, were all in generally

01:15:35.240 | in agreement about the importance of individual liberty

01:15:38.340 | and the importance of individual rights.

01:15:39.180 | - Of course, because almost all of these rights

01:15:42.300 | are traditional English rights.

01:15:43.920 | They exist in the English Bill of Rights

01:15:45.700 | and the English Petition of Rights.

01:15:47.500 | They exist in-- - Of course, of course.

01:15:48.620 | - All of these are traditional--

01:15:49.540 | - And what they're trying to do is perfect that.

01:15:50.780 | They're trying to take the British system and perfect it.

01:15:53.900 | - But you keep leaving out that they wanna be like England

01:15:58.740 | in that they wanna have an independent nation.

01:16:01.100 | An independent nation is not a collection

01:16:03.660 | of individual liberties.

01:16:04.660 | An independent nation, the first sentence

01:16:06.940 | of the Declaration of Independence is the declaration

01:16:09.740 | that there is a collective right,

01:16:11.140 | that we as a people are breaking the bonds

01:16:13.220 | within other people, and we're gonna take our place,

01:16:15.900 | our equal station among the nations of the earth.

01:16:18.980 | - For what purpose?

01:16:20.220 | The purpose is to protect individual rights,

01:16:22.140 | and there's no collective rights.

01:16:23.180 | - No, your argument is completely circular.

01:16:25.740 | You're not allowing the possibility that there could be

01:16:30.380 | great and decent men that you and I both admire

01:16:34.180 | who wanted the independence of their nation,

01:16:37.300 | not because that would give individuals liberty,

01:16:40.860 | but because the independence of their nation

01:16:43.220 | was itself a great good.

01:16:45.140 | So we clearly disagree on this,

01:16:46.780 | because I don't think the independence of the nation

01:16:48.980 | is a good in and of itself, because it's--

01:16:51.060 | - But did they think it was?

01:16:52.740 | - I don't think they did, and this is why they tried

01:16:55.340 | so hard not to break from England,

01:16:57.380 | and why many of them struggled, really, really struggled

01:17:02.380 | with having a revolution, because England was pretty good.

01:17:06.260 | England was the best, and this is where we should get

01:17:09.980 | to the universality of these things,

01:17:11.400 | because I do think England was the best,

01:17:13.540 | and universally and absolutely was the best system out there

01:17:17.980 | and what they were, they struggled to break from England

01:17:20.660 | because they didn't view the value of having a nation

01:17:23.860 | as the priming, but what they identified in England

01:17:26.660 | is certain flaws in the system that created situations

01:17:30.380 | in which their rights were being violated.

01:17:32.400 | So they figured the only option in order to secure

01:17:35.820 | these rights is to break away from England

01:17:38.500 | and secure a nation.

01:17:39.340 | Now, I am not an anarchist as--

01:17:41.860 | - Michael Malik is.

01:17:43.100 | - Because we've discussed it.

01:17:44.420 | I believe you need nations.

01:17:46.260 | You need nations to secure those rights.

01:17:48.860 | That is, the rights are not, you can't secure those rights

01:17:51.620 | without having a nation, but the nation is just a means

01:17:54.580 | to an end, the end is the rights, and I think that's how

01:17:57.380 | the founders understood it, and that's why they created

01:18:00.020 | this kind of country.

01:18:01.580 | - I think this is a good place to ask about

01:18:03.740 | common welfare and cohesion.

01:18:05.700 | Let me say what John Donne wrote, that, quote,

01:18:11.460 | "No man is an island entire of itself.

01:18:14.260 | "Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

01:18:18.340 | He went on, "Any man's death diminishes me

01:18:21.740 | "because I am involved in mankind, and therefore,

01:18:25.660 | "never send to know for whom the bell tolls.

01:18:28.860 | "It tolls for thee."

01:18:30.560 | So, let's talk about individualism and cohesion,

01:18:36.940 | not just at the political level, but at a philosophical

01:18:40.860 | level for the human condition.

01:18:43.380 | What is central?

01:18:44.980 | What is the role of other humans in our lives?

01:18:49.620 | What's the importance of cohesion?

01:18:51.100 | This is something you've talked about.

01:18:52.900 | So, Eron said that the beauty of the founding documents

01:18:57.520 | is that they create a cohesive union that protects

01:19:01.660 | the individual freedoms, but you have spoken about

01:19:05.480 | the value of the union, the common welfare,

01:19:10.220 | the cohesion in itself.

01:19:13.140 | So, can you maybe elaborate on what is the role of cohesion

01:19:18.140 | and the collective, not to use that term,

01:19:20.620 | but multiple humans together connected

01:19:23.820 | in the human condition?

01:19:25.300 | - Sure, I keep getting the feeling that Eron and I

01:19:27.900 | are actually having a disagreement about empirical reality

01:19:32.140 | because I think that Enlightenment rationalist

01:19:34.100 | political thought features the individual,

01:19:38.000 | it features the state.

01:19:40.800 | There isn't really a nation other than the nation,

01:19:44.220 | the people as a collective is created by the state,

01:19:48.340 | and when the state disappears,

01:19:49.780 | then the collective disappears.

01:19:51.660 | Now, I think that when conservatives of all stripes

01:19:56.220 | look at this kind of thinking,

01:19:58.580 | that there's the individuals and then there's the state,

01:20:01.580 | and there really isn't anything else.

01:20:03.820 | When they look at that, they say,

01:20:06.500 | even before you get to consequences,

01:20:08.960 | it's a terrible theory because when we try to understand

01:20:12.660 | any field of inquiry, any domain, any subject area,

01:20:16.020 | when you try to understand it,

01:20:18.220 | we try to come up with a small number of concepts

01:20:22.820 | and of relations among the concepts,

01:20:27.300 | which is supposed to be able to explain,

01:20:30.580 | to illuminate as much as possible

01:20:34.260 | the important things that are taking place in the domain.

01:20:37.260 | And conservatives look at this individuals and the state,

01:20:40.780 | and they say, you're missing most of what's going on

01:20:44.340 | in politics, also in personal human relations as well,

01:20:49.340 | but it just doesn't look like a description

01:20:52.740 | of human beings.

01:20:53.580 | It looks like a completely artificial thing,

01:20:55.460 | and then conservatives say, well, look,

01:20:57.100 | once you adopt this artificial thing,

01:20:58.980 | then the consequences are horrific

01:21:00.500 | because you're not describing reality.

01:21:02.640 | So a conservative reality begins with an empirical view

01:21:07.640 | of what are human beings like,

01:21:11.260 | and the first thing you notice about human beings,

01:21:14.120 | or at least the first thing I think conservatives notice,

01:21:17.140 | is that they're sticky, is that they clump,

01:21:19.580 | they turn into groups.

01:21:20.620 | And you take any arbitrary collection of human beings

01:21:25.120 | and set them to a task, or even just leave them alone,

01:21:28.800 | and they quickly form into groups,

01:21:32.140 | and those groups are always structured as hierarchies.

01:21:34.780 | It's this competition within the hierarchy,

01:21:36.620 | who's gonna be the leader, who's gonna be number two,

01:21:39.100 | but everywhere you look in human societies,

01:21:43.440 | universally, there are groups, the groups compete,

01:21:47.880 | and they're structured internally as hierarchies,

01:21:50.460 | and then there are internal competitions

01:21:52.440 | for who leads the different groups.

01:21:54.860 | And when we think about scientific explanation,

01:21:57.640 | we allow that there are different levels of explanation,

01:22:01.600 | that a macroscopic object like a table,

01:22:04.620 | it doesn't have properties that can be directly derived

01:22:08.720 | from the properties of the atoms, or the molecules,

01:22:11.300 | or the microfibers that make up the table.

01:22:14.660 | And that's understood, that there's what

01:22:17.280 | academic philosophers call emergent properties,

01:22:20.960 | that when you get up to the level of the table,

01:22:23.200 | it has properties like that you can't put your fist

01:22:25.820 | through it, which you can't necessarily know

01:22:28.280 | just by looking at the atoms alone.

01:22:30.880 | And I think conservatives say the same thing is true

01:22:33.340 | for political theory, for social theory,

01:22:35.980 | that looking at an individual human being

01:22:39.380 | and thinking about what does that individual human being

01:22:42.220 | need, which Jeroen does very eloquently in his writings,

01:22:46.180 | but that doesn't tell you what the characteristics are

01:22:49.700 | of this hierarchically structured group.

01:22:53.300 | As soon as you have that, it has its own qualities.

01:22:56.540 | So an example, the question of what holds

01:22:59.280 | these groups together, and we need to answer that question.

01:23:02.500 | I try to answer it by saying there's such a thing

01:23:06.100 | as mutual loyalty.

01:23:07.060 | Mutual loyalty is shorthand for human beings.

01:23:11.060 | Individuals have the capacity to include another individual

01:23:15.340 | within their self, within their conception of their self.

01:23:19.120 | When two people do it, it creates a bond,

01:23:23.460 | like a bond between two atoms creates a molecule.

01:23:27.560 | That doesn't mean that they lose their individuality.

01:23:30.100 | Within the group, they may still continue competing

01:23:32.940 | with one another, but that doesn't mean

01:23:34.720 | that there isn't in reality a bond,

01:23:37.500 | and that real bond is the stuff of which political events

01:23:42.500 | and political history are made, is the coming together,

01:23:46.400 | the cohesion, and the dissolution

01:23:48.820 | of these bonded loyalty groups.

01:23:51.100 | That's the reality of politics.

01:23:54.420 | So when I hear these discussions

01:23:57.620 | about individuals in the state,

01:23:59.720 | I feel like we're missing most of the reality.

01:24:02.700 | And in order to understand the political reality,

01:24:05.620 | we need to understand what makes human beings

01:24:08.840 | coherent to groups, what makes them dissolve,

01:24:11.860 | what makes the groups come apart

01:24:13.680 | and end up creating civil wars and that kind of thing.

01:24:16.520 | I think we also need to know,

01:24:21.040 | in practice, rival groups do come together and bond.

01:24:25.680 | I mean, basically, when we think about democratic society,

01:24:30.320 | we're talking about different groups.

01:24:33.520 | We can call them tribes,

01:24:34.840 | or you can come up with a different name,

01:24:36.120 | but different tribal groupings with different views,

01:24:39.680 | they come together to form a nation,

01:24:42.360 | and they're able to do that,

01:24:44.200 | even though often they hate each other,

01:24:46.640 | like we were talking about the American Revolution,

01:24:49.400 | often they hate each other.

01:24:51.160 | And nevertheless, they're able to come together.

01:24:53.140 | Why? How?

01:24:54.720 | And that leads us into questions like,

01:24:57.320 | how does honor, the giving of honor by one group to another,

01:25:02.080 | how does that increase the mutual loyalty

01:25:06.560 | between groups that are still competing with one another?

01:25:10.160 | All of these questions, I think we have to answer them

01:25:13.600 | in order to be able to talk about politics.

01:25:16.260 | And I think the reason, the first reason

01:25:20.580 | why one should approach politics as a conservative

01:25:23.820 | rather than as an individualist

01:25:25.580 | is because it gives us these theoretical tools

01:25:28.900 | to be able to talk about reality,

01:25:30.560 | which we don't have as long as we keep

01:25:32.540 | within the individualist framework.

01:25:34.340 | - As you're talking,

01:25:35.540 | the metaphor that's popping up into my mind,

01:25:38.220 | and this is also something that bothers me

01:25:41.420 | with theoretical physics,

01:25:43.180 | the metaphor is there's some sense

01:25:45.740 | in which there's things called theories of everything,

01:25:48.900 | where you try to describe the basic laws of physics,

01:25:52.100 | how they interact together,

01:25:53.540 | and once you do, you have a sense

01:25:55.140 | that you understand all of reality.

01:25:57.380 | In a sense, you do.

01:25:59.100 | And that to me is understanding the individual,

01:26:03.220 | like how the individual behaves in this world.

01:26:06.180 | But then you're saying that, hey, hey,

01:26:08.980 | you're also forgetting chemistry, biology,

01:26:12.260 | how all of that actually comes together,

01:26:14.300 | the stickiness, the stickiness of molecules,

01:26:17.820 | and how they build different systems,

01:26:19.460 | and some systems can kill each other,

01:26:21.500 | some systems can flourish,

01:26:23.580 | some can make pancakes and bananas,

01:26:26.260 | and some can make poison, and all those kinds of things,

01:26:29.020 | and we need to be able to,

01:26:30.380 | we need to consider the full stack

01:26:34.500 | of things that are constructed from the fundamental basics.

01:26:40.380 | And I guess, Yaron, you're saying that, no,

01:26:43.340 | (laughs)

01:26:45.380 | you're just like the theoretical physicist.

01:26:47.300 | It all starts at the bottom.

01:26:48.980 | Like if you need to preserve the fundamentals of reality,

01:26:53.580 | which is the individual,

01:26:55.260 | like the basic atom of human society

01:26:59.540 | is the individual to you.

01:27:01.100 | - So yes, so the basic unit, the basic model unit,

01:27:04.620 | the basic ethical unit in society is the individual.

01:27:07.940 | And yeah, of course we form groups.

01:27:10.180 | And you can't understand history

01:27:12.060 | unless you understand group formation and group motivation.

01:27:15.220 | And I have a view about what kind of groups

01:27:18.260 | should be formed,

01:27:19.140 | and politically, from a political perspective,

01:27:22.620 | voluntary ones, ones in which we join when we want to join,

01:27:27.020 | and we can leave when we want to leave,

01:27:28.620 | and ones that help us, and clearly groups help us,

01:27:33.620 | pursue whatever it is our goal is ultimately.

01:27:38.700 | So in the pursuit of happiness,

01:27:40.500 | there are lots of groups that one wants to form,

01:27:43.340 | whether it's marriage, whether it's businesses,

01:27:46.100 | whether it's sports teams, whether it's lots of,

01:27:48.820 | there are lots of different groups one wants to form.

01:27:50.940 | But the question is, what is the standard of well-being?

01:27:54.100 | Is it the standard well-being some algorithm

01:27:58.740 | that maximizes the well-being of a group,

01:28:00.980 | some utilitarian function?

01:28:02.540 | Is it something that's inherent in the group

01:28:08.820 | that we can measure as goodness,

01:28:11.020 | and to help with individuals within,

01:28:12.580 | as long as we can get the group to function well?

01:28:15.860 | We don't really care about where the individuals are.

01:28:17.860 | So to me, the goal of creating groups

01:28:22.060 | is the well-being of the individual,

01:28:23.340 | and that's why it needs to be voluntary,

01:28:24.780 | and that's why there has to be a way out of those.

01:28:27.380 | Sometimes it's costly.

01:28:28.780 | It's not a cheap out.

01:28:29.980 | That's why you should really think about what groups you,

01:28:32.500 | and this, on an issue that's very controversial,

01:28:35.740 | maybe we can discuss, maybe not.

01:28:36.980 | This is why, to me, immigration is so important, right?

01:28:39.660 | Open immigration or free immigration

01:28:41.980 | is because that's another group

01:28:43.340 | that I would like people to be able to voluntarily choose,

01:28:45.900 | both in and out.

01:28:47.580 | And I'd like to see people be able to go and join

01:28:50.820 | that group that they believe

01:28:53.180 | will allow for the pursuit of happiness.

01:28:55.260 | But let me say that that's a description of an ideal,

01:28:59.020 | what I'm just saying, right?

01:29:00.260 | I recognize that that's not the reality in which we live.

01:29:03.460 | I recognize that that's not the reality in which history,

01:29:06.500 | you know, recognizing that such a,

01:29:08.740 | that the individual exists in a sense, philosophically,

01:29:11.580 | is a massive achievement, right?

01:29:13.580 | You know, human beings, however they evolved,

01:29:16.620 | clearly we started out in a tribal context

01:29:20.300 | in which individual didn't matter.

01:29:21.980 | We followed the leader.

01:29:23.420 | The competition was for power, power over the group,

01:29:26.460 | and dictates how the group should work.

01:29:29.020 | You know, the history of human beings

01:29:32.500 | is a history of gaining knowledge,

01:29:34.380 | and part of the knowledge is the value of an individual.

01:29:38.380 | And you can see that in religion.

01:29:40.420 | You can see that in philosophy.

01:29:41.980 | You can see that through the evolution.

01:29:44.180 | And then, you know, we evolved from tribes into nations,

01:29:48.540 | and then empires and conflicts between nations

01:29:51.420 | and conflict within empires.

01:29:52.740 | And we tried a lot of different things, if you will.

01:29:55.220 | I don't think we always did it on purpose,

01:29:56.740 | but we kind of did different philosophies,

01:29:59.620 | different sets of ideas drove us

01:30:01.380 | towards different collectives, different groupings,

01:30:05.140 | and different ways in which to structure.

01:30:07.940 | And after, I don't know, 3,000 years of kind of known history,

01:30:12.340 | it's history before that,

01:30:13.300 | but we don't know much about it,

01:30:14.420 | 3,000 years of known history,

01:30:16.100 | you can sit back and evaluate.

01:30:18.300 | And I think that's what is done in the Enlightenment.

01:30:21.260 | And you sit back, and certainly we can do it today.

01:30:24.180 | We can sit back and evaluate.

01:30:25.900 | What promotes human flourishing and what doesn't?

01:30:28.340 | And what do we mean by human flourishing?

01:30:30.100 | Who's flourishing?

01:30:31.900 | Well, individual human beings.

01:30:33.340 | Now, since I don't believe in a zero-sum world,

01:30:36.020 | and the world is not zero-sum, we can see that.

01:30:38.420 | It's empirically possible to show

01:30:40.540 | that the world is not a zero-sum game.

01:30:41.940 | My flourishing doesn't come at your expense.

01:30:44.580 | So, you know, I can show that a system

01:30:47.140 | that promotes my flourishing

01:30:48.140 | probably promotes your flourishing as well

01:30:49.620 | and promotes the general welfare in that sense,

01:30:52.020 | because it promotes individuals flourishing.

01:30:55.900 | And we can look at all these examples of how we evolved

01:31:00.900 | and what leads to bloodshed and what doesn't

01:31:02.980 | and what promotes this ability to flourish as an individual.

01:31:06.580 | Again, an achievement, the idea of individual flourishing.

01:31:09.780 | And then we can think about

01:31:11.260 | how to create a political system around that,

01:31:14.100 | a political system that recognizes

01:31:17.180 | and allows for the formation of groups,

01:31:19.900 | but just under the principle of voluntary.

01:31:22.580 | So you can't be forced to join a group.

01:31:24.220 | You can't be cursed into forming a group

01:31:26.900 | other than the fact that you're born in a particular place

01:31:30.300 | and a particular, you know, that in a sense,

01:31:32.380 | but that's not forced.

01:31:34.060 | There's a difference between metaphysics

01:31:35.780 | and between choices.

01:31:36.620 | - So this is something that came up in the debate

01:31:38.460 | that Yoram said that not all human relations are voluntary,

01:31:42.100 | and you kind of emphasized that a lot of where we are

01:31:45.780 | is not voluntary.

01:31:47.020 | We're grounded, we're connected in so much.

01:31:50.500 | So how can a human be free

01:31:53.220 | in the way you're describing,

01:31:55.180 | individual be free if some part of who we are

01:32:00.180 | is not voluntary, some part of who we are is other people?

01:32:03.300 | - Well, because what do we mean by freedom?

01:32:05.540 | Freedom doesn't mean the negation of the laws of physics.

01:32:09.700 | Freedom doesn't mean ignoring.

01:32:12.420 | Freedom means the ability within the scope

01:32:16.860 | of what's available for you to choose,

01:32:18.540 | being able to choose those things.

01:32:22.060 | So in a political context, freedom means,

01:32:26.060 | you know, the absence of coercion.

01:32:30.700 | So once you're an adult, you know, Yoram says,

01:32:33.620 | you're born into a particular religious context.

01:32:36.380 | Absolutely, but once you're an adult,

01:32:37.780 | I think it's incumbent on you

01:32:38.860 | to evaluate that religious context

01:32:40.940 | and look at different religions or non-religion or whatever

01:32:44.860 | and choose your philosophy of life, choose your values,

01:32:48.380 | choose how you wanna live your life.

01:32:50.180 | That's the freedom.

01:32:51.100 | The freedom is, one system says,

01:32:53.940 | you're either coerced by the state

01:32:57.500 | or coerced by the group or coerced by society around you

01:33:00.500 | to follow a particular path,

01:33:02.380 | or the expectation is, the demand is,

01:33:07.100 | the pressure is to conform to a particular path.

01:33:10.860 | And my view is, no, you should be in a position

01:33:13.540 | to be able to choose your path.

01:33:15.060 | And that choice means you look around,

01:33:18.300 | you evaluate, you evaluate the history based on knowledge,

01:33:22.500 | based on all of these things,

01:33:24.180 | and you choose what that path would be.

01:33:25.740 | That's fundamentally what freedom means.

01:33:28.620 | Yes, you cannot choose your parents, but of course not.

01:33:31.740 | Nobody would claim that that's within the scope

01:33:34.100 | of what is possible.

01:33:34.940 | - I think the coercion-freedom dichotomy,

01:33:39.940 | these are too few concepts, coercion and freedom.

01:33:43.420 | It's too simplistic to be able to describe

01:33:45.860 | what we're actually dealing with.

01:33:47.540 | The traditional Anglo-conservative view

01:33:51.300 | is that society has to be, it has to be ordered,

01:33:56.300 | it has to be disciplined.

01:33:58.580 | And there are two choices for how it can be ordered.

01:34:03.220 | One is that a people is, by its own traditions,

01:34:08.220 | you would say voluntarily,

01:34:10.140 | but these are mostly inherited traditions,

01:34:12.300 | by its own traditions, it is ordered.

01:34:16.580 | For example, people just in general

01:34:19.620 | will not go into somebody else's yard

01:34:22.340 | because that's the custom here,

01:34:24.180 | is we don't go into somebody else's yard

01:34:25.980 | without their permission.

01:34:27.300 | And so Fortescue, we're talking about 500 years ago already,

01:34:31.220 | so Fortescue says that the genius of the English people

01:34:35.600 | is that our government can be mild

01:34:37.700 | and apply very little coercion

01:34:40.340 | because the people are so disciplined.

01:34:42.820 | Now when he says the people are so disciplined,

01:34:44.620 | what he's saying is that our nation, our tribes,

01:34:49.620 | we have strong traditions which channel people

01:34:54.620 | through tools of being honored and dishonored.

01:34:59.020 | Now that's a reality that exists in every society,

01:35:02.900 | and it's not captured by your distinction

01:35:05.300 | between coercion and lack of coercion.

01:35:07.220 | When I'm gonna be dishonored if I don't care

01:35:12.820 | for my aging mother, I'm not being coerced

01:35:16.580 | like the state comes and puts a gun to my head,

01:35:19.020 | but I am being pressured, I'm being given guidelines.

01:35:22.900 | - But I'm saying that's wrong,

01:35:24.100 | and I'm saying that's dangerous

01:35:25.700 | because that could easily be used for bad traditions.

01:35:30.700 | - No, of course it is.

01:35:33.060 | - But what's the standard by which we evaluate

01:35:35.820 | what a good tradition is a bad tradition?

01:35:37.500 | So the English--

01:35:38.380 | - You're getting to the standard too,

01:35:39.900 | wait, wait, you're getting to the standard too fast.

01:35:42.180 | First I wanna know factually is it true

01:35:45.340 | that all societies work like this?

01:35:46.900 | Because if it's true that all societies work like this,

01:35:48.780 | then saying we should be free from it is just a fantasy.

01:35:51.980 | - No, so A, I don't think all societies work like this.

01:35:54.420 | I think much of what happened in America post-founding

01:35:57.700 | in the 19th century didn't work like that.

01:35:59.340 | I think that's the genius of America.

01:36:01.180 | And I think what happened during the 19th century

01:36:03.300 | in the Industrial Revolution,

01:36:04.620 | what happened in the 19th century,

01:36:07.340 | to some extent globally, but certainly in the United States,

01:36:09.620 | didn't work that way.

01:36:10.860 | It broke tradition.

01:36:12.380 | I think all innovation breaks tradition.

01:36:14.300 | And I think that's what the genius of this country is

01:36:17.180 | and the post-Enlightenment world is.

01:36:21.380 | I think pre that tradition, they worked that way.

01:36:24.420 | And then the question is,

01:36:25.740 | did people understand why they do what they do?

01:36:28.100 | That is, I don't want people doing what I think is right,

01:36:33.100 | just because I think it's right

01:36:35.060 | and I've created a society in which,

01:36:38.460 | yeah, okay, somebody founded this country

01:36:42.180 | in a particular way, so we're just gonna follow.

01:36:43.660 | I want people to understand what they're doing.

01:36:45.340 | So I want people to have a respect for property,

01:36:47.060 | not because it's a tradition,

01:36:48.540 | but because they understand the value

01:36:50.900 | of a respect for property.

01:36:53.020 | I want people not to murder one another,

01:36:54.900 | not because there's a commandment, thou shall not murder,

01:36:57.700 | but because they have an understanding

01:36:59.620 | of why murdering is bad and wrong and bad for them

01:37:03.740 | and bad for the kind of world that they want to live in.

01:37:06.740 | And I think that's what we achieve through enlightenment,

01:37:09.740 | through education,

01:37:11.300 | through where we don't treat people just as a blob,

01:37:16.300 | tribe that just follows orders,

01:37:18.860 | but we now treat individuals

01:37:20.220 | as capable of thinking for themselves,

01:37:21.940 | capable for discovering truth,

01:37:24.180 | capable of figuring out their own values.

01:37:27.540 | And that's the big break between,

01:37:30.740 | and this is why, this is the break, I think,

01:37:33.100 | that the Declaration represents,

01:37:34.860 | the break between society that is based on tradition,

01:37:37.860 | following commandments, following rules,

01:37:40.220 | because they are the rules,

01:37:41.380 | because they are the commandments,

01:37:42.420 | and a society where individuals understand those rules,

01:37:46.140 | understand, yes, it's now become a tradition, let's say,

01:37:49.500 | to respect individual rights, to respect property rights.

01:37:52.300 | But they're not following it because it's a tradition.

01:37:54.700 | They're following it because they understand

01:37:56.700 | what it is about it that makes it good.

01:37:59.940 | So that's the world I think that we were on the process

01:38:03.780 | of evolving towards,

01:38:05.620 | and that is what got destroyed in the 20th century

01:38:08.260 | and has certainly disappeared today.

01:38:10.860 | And I think that's the great tragedy,

01:38:12.300 | is that we're evolving to a place

01:38:13.900 | where people understood the values that represent.

01:38:18.300 | Of course, the danger with tradition is,

01:38:20.260 | I mean, we'll agree, right?

01:38:23.740 | Yeah, it's okay to kill the Jew, right?

01:38:25.620 | Or it's okay to steal people's property

01:38:27.780 | if they're of a certain color,

01:38:29.300 | or it's okay to enslave.

01:38:30.420 | Those are all traditions.

01:38:31.940 | And yet, once you stop and say,

01:38:34.260 | "But what are they based on?

01:38:36.100 | "Is this right?

01:38:37.040 | "Is this just, based on some moral law?"

01:38:41.340 | No, it's not.

01:38:42.340 | There's something wrong here.

01:38:43.340 | We can't achieve happiness and success if we follow these.

01:38:46.020 | - You're talking about reason and tradition,

01:38:48.340 | but I think I would love to sort of linger

01:38:50.300 | on the stickiness of humans that you described.

01:38:53.580 | So you kind of said that it's primary,

01:38:56.380 | the individuals, it's primary, no, it's a great invention.

01:38:59.860 | But to me, it's not at all obvious that somehow,

01:39:04.180 | that the invention that humans have been practicing

01:39:09.180 | for a very long time of the stickiness,

01:39:13.220 | of community, of family, of love,

01:39:18.220 | that's not obvious to me.

01:39:21.980 | That's not also fundamental to human flourishing,

01:39:25.940 | and should be celebrated and protected.

01:39:29.780 | - Of course it is.

01:39:30.620 | - Now, I suppose the argument you're making

01:39:33.740 | is when you start to let the state define

01:39:38.620 | what the stickiness, how the stickiness looks

01:39:40.780 | between humans, so you're really like the voluntary aspect.

01:39:44.500 | But I just want to sort of, the observation is,

01:39:48.540 | humans seem to be pretty happy when they form communities,

01:39:53.540 | however you define that.

01:39:56.500 | So romantic partnership, family--

01:39:58.500 | - Some communities.

01:39:59.620 | - Some communities, people are miserable in other communities

01:40:02.780 | so the nature of the community matters, right?

01:40:04.820 | We know this, we know that some bondings are not healthy

01:40:08.660 | and not good for the individuals involved

01:40:10.540 | and they don't thrive.

01:40:11.960 | So I absolutely, I mean, I'm a lover, not a fighter, right?

01:40:16.700 | So I'm a huge believer in love,

01:40:18.780 | the whole philosophy, I think, is a love-based philosophy.

01:40:22.060 | I fight in order to love, right?

01:40:23.780 | So it's, love is at the core of all of this,

01:40:27.140 | and it's a love of life, it's a love of the world out there,

01:40:32.140 | and it's a love of other people

01:40:33.900 | because they represent a value to you.

01:40:35.960 | So the stickiness is there, it's, you know,

01:40:40.900 | my point is, A, it should be chosen,

01:40:43.240 | it should be consciously chosen.

01:40:44.660 | And this is, put aside the state,

01:40:46.460 | forget the state for a minute, forget coercion,

01:40:49.140 | forget all that.

01:40:49.980 | What I would encourage individuals to do,

01:40:53.420 | and this is where, you know,

01:40:55.500 | I'm not primarily a political, you know,

01:40:57.620 | interested in politics,

01:40:58.780 | although I tend to talk most about that.

01:41:01.500 | I'm primarily interested in human beings

01:41:03.180 | and how they live, in a sense, in morality.

01:41:05.660 | And what I would urge individuals to do

01:41:08.520 | is to think about their relationships,

01:41:10.720 | to choose the best relationships possible,

01:41:13.540 | but to seek out great relationships

01:41:16.060 | because other human beings are an immense value to us.

01:41:19.580 | And, you know, when I write, you know,

01:41:23.480 | maybe you uncoded this or not,

01:41:24.820 | but when I write that, you know,

01:41:26.380 | about the trader principle and trading,

01:41:28.340 | you know, it's easy and obvious to think of it

01:41:32.420 | as a materialistic kind of thing.

01:41:34.020 | You know, I get, you know, I do the chores this day

01:41:37.220 | and my wife does the chores the other day and we're trading.

01:41:39.420 | But trading is much more subtle than that

01:41:41.380 | and much more, can be much more spiritual than that.

01:41:43.580 | It's about the trading in emotions,

01:41:48.140 | it's about the way one sees each other,

01:41:51.220 | it's what one gets from one another.

01:41:53.780 | I think friendship is a form of trade.

01:41:55.700 | Now, I know that that seems to make it material,

01:41:58.500 | but I don't think of trade as a material thing.

01:42:01.620 | But friendship is incredibly important in life.

01:42:04.180 | Love is incredibly important in life.

01:42:06.060 | You know, having a group of friends

01:42:08.900 | is incredibly important in life.

01:42:10.180 | All of these are sticky and important.

01:42:11.620 | - Okay, how can I try to be eloquent on this?

01:42:14.620 | So, if you give people freedom, if you give people--

01:42:19.060 | - Politics, yeah.

01:42:19.940 | - Well, not politics, relations, relations.

01:42:23.740 | Relationships.

01:42:24.860 | So, this is interesting 'cause we have

01:42:27.100 | an interesting dynamic going on here

01:42:28.700 | in terms of beliefs, they're differing

01:42:30.580 | and there's interesting overlaps.

01:42:33.020 | But there's a worry, if you look at human history

01:42:37.460 | and you study the lessons of history

01:42:38.980 | and you look at modern society,

01:42:41.340 | if you give people freedom in terms of stickiness

01:42:44.300 | and human relations and so on, full,

01:42:46.540 | like, if you not give people freedom,

01:42:48.820 | emphasize freedom as the highest ideal,

01:42:53.520 | you start getting more tender, online dating,

01:42:57.340 | the stickiness dissolves, just like in chemistry.

01:43:00.100 | You start to have a gas versus a liquid, right?

01:43:03.380 | That's the worry.

01:43:04.580 | So, you have to study what actually happens.

01:43:08.420 | If you emphasize that the stickiness,

01:43:13.100 | the bonds of humans is holding you back,

01:43:16.820 | the exercise of voluntary choice is the highest ideal,

01:43:21.740 | the danger of that is for that to be implemented

01:43:25.680 | or interpreted in certain kinds of ways

01:43:28.240 | by us flawed humans that are not,

01:43:31.320 | I mean, you could say we're perfectly reasonable

01:43:33.600 | and rational, we can think through all of our decisions,

01:43:35.520 | but really, I mean, especially you're young,

01:43:38.660 | you get horny and you make decisions

01:43:40.160 | that are suboptimal, perhaps.

01:43:42.520 | So, the point is you have to look at reality

01:43:46.440 | of when you emphasize different things.

01:43:49.280 | So, when you talk about what is the ideal life,

01:43:53.340 | what is the ideal relations, you have to also think like,

01:43:56.060 | what are you emphasizing?

01:43:57.340 | I think you both agree on what's important,

01:44:00.020 | that community can be important, that freedom is important,

01:44:03.620 | but what are you emphasizing?

01:44:04.980 | And you're really emphasizing the individual

01:44:06.980 | and you're emphasizing, Yoram, you're emphasizing

01:44:11.660 | more of the community, of the family,

01:44:16.500 | of the stickiness of the nation.

01:44:18.620 | - Well, look, I don't wanna deny the place of the individual.

01:44:22.280 | I think that there really is a very great change

01:44:27.280 | in civilization when the books of Moses

01:44:33.200 | announce that the individual is created in the image of God.

01:44:37.540 | That's a step that's, as far as we know,

01:44:41.600 | without precedent before that in history.

01:44:44.960 | And to a very large degree, I mean,

01:44:47.920 | one of the kind of unspoken things going on

01:44:51.280 | is that Yoram and I really do agree on all sorts of things,

01:44:55.340 | I think in part because we're both Jewish.

01:44:59.140 | - You did say Yoram is basically Moses yesterday.

01:45:04.940 | - No, I said he was channeling Moses,

01:45:06.760 | but that's still, in my book, that's still pretty--

01:45:10.180 | - No, that's a compliment, I took it as one.

01:45:13.560 | - For me, that's a compliment.

01:45:14.600 | - And we'll talk about this a little bit

01:45:16.000 | just for the listener, just so they know,

01:45:18.760 | Yoram, amongst many things,

01:45:20.920 | we'll talk about the virtue of nationalism,

01:45:22.980 | but you're also a religious scholar of sorts,

01:45:26.520 | or at least leverage the Bible for much,

01:45:30.840 | not much, but some of the wisdom in your life.

01:45:33.880 | - Look, the way that Yoram looks at enlightenment,

01:45:36.560 | or maybe at Ayn Rand, that's the way that I see

01:45:40.560 | the Hebrew scripture and the tradition that comes from it.

01:45:45.420 | It has the same kind of place in my life.

01:45:47.480 | And I just, I don't know how much we want to explore it,

01:45:52.400 | but I think that the agreement that we do have

01:45:57.400 | about the positive value of the creative individual,

01:46:03.000 | the positive value of the individual's desire

01:46:07.160 | to improve the world, and in my book,

01:46:11.480 | that means including his or her desire to improve

01:46:16.220 | his family, his tribe, his congregation, his nation.

01:46:21.060 | But it still comes from this kind of,

01:46:23.100 | from what Yoram calls selfishness,

01:46:25.940 | the desire to make things better for yourself.

01:46:29.060 | In Hebrew Bible and in Judaism,

01:46:32.420 | that just is a positive thing.

01:46:34.420 | Of course, it can be taken too far,

01:46:35.980 | but it just is positive, and it doesn't carry

01:46:39.180 | these kinds of, you should turn the other cheek,

01:46:42.720 | you should give away your cloak, you should love your enemy.

01:46:45.140 | These kinds of Christian tropes do not exist in Judaism.

01:46:48.420 | And so it just, I like listening to Yoram's,

01:46:52.220 | I do feel like he goes too far on various things,

01:46:54.500 | but I also hear underneath it, I can sort of,

01:46:57.700 | hear the Jewish current and the resistance

01:47:01.100 | to things about Christianity that Jews often find.

01:47:06.100 | - Can I ask you a question there?

01:47:09.460 | Can you make an argument for turn the other cheek?

01:47:13.060 | - No.

01:47:13.900 | - I tend to, I guess you would equate that with altruism.

01:47:17.180 | I tend to--

01:47:20.220 | - Injustice.

01:47:21.460 | It's unjust to turn the other cheek.

01:47:23.020 | - I agree.

01:47:23.860 | - Okay.

01:47:26.020 | - You don't love yourself if you're turning the other cheek.

01:47:27.540 | It's a lack of love, lack of self-respect.

01:47:30.180 | - Well, let me push back on that,

01:47:31.660 | because I like turn the other cheek,

01:47:35.860 | especially on Twitter.

01:47:38.380 | So--

01:47:39.220 | - I like block the offender on Twitter.

01:47:42.100 | (laughing)

01:47:44.340 | - No, what I,

01:47:45.180 | so Twitter aside is more like you're,

01:47:49.300 | you're investing in the long-term version of yourself

01:47:53.940 | versus the short-term.

01:47:55.660 | So that's the way I think about it,

01:47:57.620 | is like the energy you put onto the world.

01:47:59.740 | The turning of the cheek philosophy

01:48:01.780 | allows you to walk through the fire gracefully.

01:48:04.320 | It's some sense.

01:48:06.180 | I mean, perhaps you would reframe that

01:48:07.780 | as not a,

01:48:08.620 | then that's not being altruistic or whatever,

01:48:12.820 | but there is something pragmatic

01:48:15.620 | about that kind of approach to life.

01:48:18.340 | - Disciplining yourself

01:48:19.820 | so that you become a better version of yourself.

01:48:22.300 | I mean, I, not only do we agree,

01:48:24.940 | but I think every religious and philosophical tradition

01:48:29.020 | probably has a version of that,

01:48:30.860 | even Kant, who we join together in finding to be terrible.

01:48:35.060 | Even Kant makes that distinction

01:48:36.660 | between the short-term interest and the long-term interest.

01:48:39.140 | So I think that's a universal,

01:48:41.700 | I don't know of anybody who's really disagreeing about that.

01:48:44.300 | The thing that we were talking about a couple of minutes ago

01:48:47.860 | before we got onto this tangent

01:48:49.320 | is the relationship between the individual

01:48:53.340 | who is in the image of God

01:48:55.260 | and is of value as an individual.

01:49:00.260 | Nevertheless, there's this question about what,

01:49:03.300 | what is good for that person?

01:49:06.740 | And also what makes him happy?

01:49:08.580 | I'm not sure that those are exactly the same things,

01:49:10.300 | but they're both certainly relevant and important.

01:49:15.300 | And I feel like, I mean,

01:49:18.660 | I think we're beginning to uncover

01:49:20.340 | this empirical disagreement

01:49:21.840 | about what it is that's good for the individual

01:49:24.100 | and what it is that makes him happy.

01:49:25.380 | And I'll go back to something I raised in the debate,

01:49:29.300 | which is this theory of Durkheim

01:49:32.540 | that now has been popularized by Jordan Peterson.

01:49:37.540 | But Durkheim argues that the,

01:49:42.580 | he's writing a book on suicide.

01:49:47.060 | He's trying to understand

01:49:47.900 | what brings individuals to suicide.

01:49:50.260 | And he coins this term anomie, lack of law.

01:49:54.740 | And the argument is that individuals

01:49:59.140 | basically are healthy and happy

01:50:03.080 | when they find their place in a hierarchy,

01:50:06.740 | within a loyalty group, in a certain place in a hierarchy.

01:50:09.540 | They compete and struggle in order to rise in the hierarchy,

01:50:13.340 | but they know where they are.

01:50:15.240 | They know who they are.

01:50:16.180 | The kids today like to say

01:50:17.540 | they know what their identity is

01:50:19.580 | because they associate themselves,

01:50:22.500 | their self expands to take on the leadership,

01:50:25.940 | the different layers, the past and the future

01:50:28.100 | of this particular hierarchy.

01:50:29.940 | And I completely agree with Yaron

01:50:31.900 | that some of these hierarchies are pernicious

01:50:35.500 | and oppressive and terrible,

01:50:38.620 | and some of them are better.

01:50:40.160 | What we might disagree about

01:50:42.940 | is that you can find human beings

01:50:47.060 | who are capable of becoming healthy and happy

01:50:51.740 | off by themselves without participating

01:50:54.180 | in this kind of structure.

01:50:55.820 | The minute that you accept, if you accept,

01:50:59.020 | that this is empirical reality about human beings,

01:51:02.260 | it's an iron law, you can't do anything.

01:51:06.620 | You can tell human beings that they can be free

01:51:09.500 | of all constraints, all you want,

01:51:11.620 | and you can get them to do things that,

01:51:14.940 | as you say, dissolve their,

01:51:17.700 | that they can have contempt for hierarchies.

01:51:19.460 | They can say, "I'm not gonna serve the man.

01:51:21.740 | I'm going to, you know, I'm just gonna burn them all down."

01:51:25.020 | You can get them to say all,

01:51:27.620 | get kids to say all of these things.

01:51:29.180 | You can get them either to be Marxists

01:51:31.260 | who are actively trying to overthrow

01:51:34.460 | and destroy the existing hierarchies,

01:51:36.340 | or you can make them some kind of liberal

01:51:38.060 | where they basically pretend the hierarchies don't exist.

01:51:40.220 | They just act like they're not there.

01:51:43.500 | In both cases, and it's not a coincidence

01:51:45.940 | that that's what universities teach,

01:51:47.380 | is your choice is either Marxist revolution

01:51:49.980 | or liberal ignoring of the hierarchies.

01:51:53.580 | In both cases, what you've done

01:51:55.780 | is you've eliminated the possibility

01:51:58.260 | that the young person will be able to find his or her place

01:52:03.260 | in a way that allows them to grow and exercise

01:52:06.940 | their love, their drive, their creativity

01:52:10.380 | in order to advance something constructive.

01:52:13.580 | You've eliminated it, and you've put the burden on them,

01:52:17.620 | you know, kind of a Nietzschean burden,

01:52:20.060 | to just be the fountain of all values yourself,

01:52:25.060 | which, you know, maybe some people can do it,

01:52:28.940 | but almost no one can do it,

01:52:30.580 | and I think that's empirically true.

01:52:32.340 | And so I think by telling them about their freedom

01:52:36.340 | rather than telling them about the need

01:52:40.020 | to join into some traditionalist hierarchy

01:52:43.640 | that can be good and healthy for them,

01:52:45.640 | I think we're destroying them.

01:52:47.260 | I think we're destroying this generation

01:52:49.140 | and the last one and the next.

01:52:51.420 | - Yaron, is the burden of freedom destroying mankind?

01:52:56.420 | - What freedom?

01:52:58.380 | I mean, how many people are indeed free?

01:53:01.740 | Look, the problem is that we're caught up

01:53:04.320 | on political concepts, and we're moving into ethical issues,

01:53:09.320 | and I don't think it's right to tell people,

01:53:14.620 | you're free, go do whatever the hell you want.

01:53:17.620 | Just use your emotions, you know,

01:53:20.060 | just go where you wanna go, you know,

01:53:22.500 | in the spur of the moment.

01:53:23.380 | Think short term, don't think long term,

01:53:25.100 | or don't think, why think?

01:53:27.340 | One has to provide moral guidance,

01:53:29.980 | and morality here is crucial and crucially important.

01:53:34.300 | And part of taking responsibility for your own life

01:53:37.140 | is establishing a moral framework for your life,

01:53:41.380 | and what does it mean to live a good life?

01:53:44.460 | I mean, that's much more important in the sense

01:53:46.580 | of a question, and it is my belief

01:53:49.900 | that people can do that.

01:53:51.420 | They can find and choose the values necessary

01:53:55.340 | to achieve a good life, but they need guidance.

01:53:57.340 | They need guidance.

01:53:58.560 | This is why religion evolved, in my view,

01:54:00.520 | because people need guidance.

01:54:01.580 | So, you know, I had called religion

01:54:04.580 | a primitive form of philosophy.

01:54:06.040 | It was the original philosophy that provided people

01:54:08.740 | with some guidance about what to do and what not to do,

01:54:11.380 | and secular philosophy is supposed to do the same,

01:54:14.360 | and the problem is that I think religion

01:54:17.820 | and 99% of secular philosophy give people bad advice

01:54:22.620 | about what to do, and therefore, they do bad stuff.

01:54:25.300 | And some of that, sometimes, you know,

01:54:29.340 | because when they do good stuff, it gets reinforced

01:54:32.560 | that we survive in spite of that,

01:54:33.940 | but ideas like Kant and Hegel and Marx and so on

01:54:38.100 | give young people awful advice about how to live

01:54:40.940 | and what to do, and as a consequence,

01:54:42.580 | really bad stuff happens.

01:54:43.820 | And the world in which we exist today,

01:54:45.820 | which we agree there are a lot of pathologies to it,

01:54:50.060 | there are a lot of bad stuff going on,

01:54:51.820 | in my view is going the wrong way.

01:54:53.260 | In my view, a product of a set of ideas,

01:54:57.680 | on the one hand, I think Christian ideas,

01:55:01.980 | on the other hand, I think secular philosophical ideas

01:55:04.700 | that have driven this country and the world more generally

01:55:07.700 | in a really, really bad direction,

01:55:09.580 | and this is why I do what I do,

01:55:12.860 | because I think at the core of it,

01:55:15.100 | the only way to change it is not to impose

01:55:18.200 | a new set of ideas from the top,

01:55:19.700 | because I worry about who's gonna be doing the imposition,

01:55:22.460 | plus I don't believe you can force people to be good,

01:55:25.920 | it's to challenge the ideas, it's to question the ideas,

01:55:29.060 | it's to present an alternative view of morality,

01:55:32.140 | an alternative set of moral principles,

01:55:34.900 | an alternative, ultimately,

01:55:36.220 | an alternative view of political principles.

01:55:38.140 | But it has to start with morality.

01:55:39.700 | If you don't, and my morality's centered on the individual

01:55:43.140 | and what the individual should do with his life

01:55:44.660 | in order to attain a good life,

01:55:46.880 | I believe that leads to happiness,

01:55:49.540 | but the good life, that's why it's good, right?

01:55:52.620 | The goal is survival and thriving and flourishing

01:55:56.100 | and happiness, ultimately.

01:55:57.820 | But politics is a servant of that in the end.

01:56:01.860 | It's not an end in itself.

01:56:04.240 | So the real issue is, you asked before,

01:56:06.660 | what is the value of relationship?

01:56:08.340 | There's an enormous value in relationship

01:56:09.780 | because we get values from other people.

01:56:11.140 | We don't produce all our values.

01:56:12.540 | We don't produce all our spiritual values,

01:56:14.580 | and we don't produce all our material values.

01:56:16.860 | Other people are a massive benefit to us

01:56:20.580 | because they produce values we can't.

01:56:22.100 | There's a massive division of labor in terms of values,

01:56:24.980 | not just in economics, but also in philosophy and elsewhere.

01:56:28.600 | It's why we have teachers, it's why we have moral teachers.

01:56:30.900 | Moral teachers are important to help guide us

01:56:33.300 | towards a good life.

01:56:34.400 | Not all of us are philosophers.

01:56:36.020 | But what I do demand, if you will, of individuals,

01:56:39.540 | this is where I put a burden on people, right?

01:56:41.980 | Understand what you're doing, right?

01:56:44.500 | You know, don't embrace a moral teaching

01:56:47.900 | because it was tradition.

01:56:49.900 | Don't embrace a moral teaching

01:56:51.500 | because your parents embraced it.

01:56:53.020 | Don't embrace a moral teaching

01:56:54.340 | just because your teachers are teaching it.

01:56:57.300 | Challenge it, think about it.

01:56:59.060 | Embrace it because you embrace it.

01:57:01.780 | You might be wrong, you might embrace the wrong one,

01:57:04.500 | but take moral responsibility.

01:57:06.180 | Take responsibility over your life by evaluating,

01:57:09.940 | testing, challenging what you have received

01:57:13.940 | and choosing what you're gonna pursue.

01:57:18.540 | And I acknowledge empirically that most people don't do that

01:57:22.220 | and this is why intellectual leadership is so important.

01:57:27.020 | This is why you want the voices in a culture

01:57:31.460 | to be good voices so that those people

01:57:34.300 | who don't think for themselves land up being followers,

01:57:37.340 | but they end up being followers of somebody good

01:57:39.060 | versus followers of somebody bad.

01:57:41.260 | But for the thinkers in the world out there,

01:57:43.940 | who I think are the people who count,

01:57:45.620 | who the people who shape society.

01:57:47.140 | - Oh boy.

01:57:47.980 | No, no, shape society.

01:57:49.340 | - Wait a minute, not count in a sense

01:57:51.020 | that you can dismiss the lives of others

01:57:52.700 | and you know, because I'm, you know,

01:57:54.500 | obviously I'm anti-coercion and anti-violence.

01:57:56.380 | - You sound like Plato.

01:57:57.820 | - Yes, I don't wanna sound like Plato.

01:58:00.380 | But in a sense that they're the ones

01:58:02.180 | who land up shaping the world.

01:58:03.940 | They're the ones who land up shaping how the world is.

01:58:06.820 | I want those people to make choices about their values

01:58:10.340 | and not to just accept them based on tradition

01:58:12.940 | or based on commandment or based on

01:58:15.100 | where they happen to grow up.

01:58:16.740 | And in that sense, again, you know, I do,

01:58:20.260 | and this is an interesting point where we disagree,

01:58:24.020 | but I'm not exactly sure what your position is.

01:58:26.420 | I do believe in universal values.

01:58:27.980 | That is, there are things that are good

01:58:30.060 | and there are things that are evil.

01:58:31.340 | And I think we'd agree on that.

01:58:32.700 | And there are systems, we agree that communism

01:58:35.540 | and fascism are evil.

01:58:36.940 | Well, I think we should be able to agree

01:58:38.700 | that some political systems are good.

01:58:41.020 | And maybe there's this middle ground

01:58:42.860 | where we both think that they're not particularly bad,

01:58:47.020 | but not particularly good.

01:58:47.900 | And you all might think that better than I think they are.

01:58:50.380 | But if we can agree on this is good and this is evil, right?

01:58:54.420 | Then the systems that tend towards the good are good

01:58:57.060 | and the systems that tend towards the evil are evil.

01:59:00.100 | But that's universal, right?

01:59:02.340 | I look at places like South Korea, Japan, Asia,

01:59:07.340 | cultures that are very, very different

01:59:09.020 | in many respects in the West.

01:59:10.700 | And yet when they adopt certain Western ideas, right,

01:59:15.700 | about freedom, about liberty, about individualism,

01:59:19.180 | I mean, the Japanese constitution,

01:59:20.380 | because MacArthur forced it in there,

01:59:21.820 | has the pursuit of happiness in the constitution,

01:59:24.180 | not because they chose it because he put it in there,

01:59:26.300 | but they, to some extent, adopted that

01:59:28.660 | and they're successful places today.

01:59:32.620 | Those societies in Asia that didn't adopt these values

01:59:35.820 | are not successful societies today.

01:59:37.500 | - Yaron, Japan has a birth rate of, what is it?

01:59:42.500 | 1.1, 1.2 children per woman.

01:59:47.420 | I mean, look, there are some things,

01:59:52.100 | there are some places where you give people freedom.

01:59:55.180 | This is also biblical, right?

01:59:57.460 | The idea that everyone did what's right in his own eyes.

02:00:01.140 | Okay, right?

02:00:01.980 | This is a refrain in the book of Judges.

02:00:05.460 | And the Bible is not an anti-freedom book.

02:00:09.060 | I mean, there's many, many, look, I--

02:00:11.300 | - Well, let's talk--

02:00:12.380 | - No, we're not, fine.

02:00:13.620 | - We'll get there.

02:00:14.620 | - Okay, look-- - Oh, he's gonna guide us in.

02:00:16.300 | - Okay, look, just as an asterisk,

02:00:18.260 | I'm not asking you because the Bible

02:00:21.060 | is such a great authoritarian book.

02:00:22.980 | It's not that at all.

02:00:24.540 | In my view, if you wanna know where this,

02:00:29.540 | what you call the sanctity of property,

02:00:33.100 | where does the sanctity of property comes from?

02:00:35.220 | It comes from the 10 Commandments.

02:00:36.540 | It comes from Moses saying,

02:00:38.620 | "I haven't taken anything from anyone."

02:00:40.220 | It comes from Samuel saying,

02:00:41.140 | "I haven't taken anything from anyone."

02:00:42.780 | It's the condemnation of Ahab, of the unjust kings

02:00:45.700 | who steal the property of their subjects.

02:00:49.340 | So I'm not, so property and freedom,

02:00:53.180 | I think there's great basis for it in the Bible.

02:00:57.100 | But right now, I'm focusing on this other question,

02:01:01.060 | which is what happens when everyone does

02:01:04.220 | what's right in his own eyes?

02:01:05.420 | That's the book of Judges,

02:01:06.580 | and that's this civil war, moral corruption,

02:01:10.620 | theft, idolatry, murder, rape.

02:01:14.260 | I mean, that's what happens when everyone does

02:01:17.460 | whatever's right in his own eyes.

02:01:19.260 | Well, no, that's what it says in the text.

02:01:21.740 | I'm not, okay, so when I look at, you're right,

02:01:25.420 | there are things that I think are objectively true.

02:01:28.340 | I think it's really hard to get people to agree to them,

02:01:32.420 | almost impossible.

02:01:33.820 | But when I look at a country which is approaching

02:01:38.820 | one birth per woman, in other words,

02:01:44.140 | half of the minimum necessary for replacement,

02:01:48.300 | you can say whatever you want,

02:01:49.700 | whatever you want about immigration,

02:01:51.420 | we can have that discussion.

02:01:52.780 | But the point is that when your values are such

02:01:57.740 | that you're not even capable of doing

02:02:00.180 | the most basic techniques that human beings need

02:02:02.860 | in order to be able to propagate themselves

02:02:04.860 | and their values and the way they see things,

02:02:07.740 | then, look, you're finished.

02:02:09.820 | You can't say that, you can't--

02:02:11.660 | - So if I implied that Japan is an ideal society,

02:02:13.820 | I take that back.

02:02:15.380 | But let's think about Japan for a minute.

02:02:17.940 | - I just think we're in trouble,

02:02:19.340 | and we're in trouble--

02:02:20.540 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, give me a second, hold you to that.

02:02:23.660 | - Being the tutorial.

02:02:24.660 | - No, I'm sorry.

02:02:26.100 | - It's his show, man.

02:02:27.420 | We enter into his hierarchy, and that's it.

02:02:31.020 | - We should talk about hierarchy.

02:02:32.660 | - Just to clarify, how do you explain

02:02:38.380 | the situation in Japan?

02:02:39.420 | Is it the decrease in value in family?

02:02:41.580 | Like some of the, just expand on that.

02:02:44.860 | How do you explain that situation?

02:02:46.660 | You're saying that society is in trouble

02:02:49.540 | in a certain way.

02:02:50.620 | Can you kind of describe the nature of that trouble?

02:02:53.380 | - I'm saying that when the individual

02:02:57.380 | is part of a social group, this can be a family,

02:03:02.020 | a congregation, a community, a tribe, a nation,

02:03:05.580 | when the individual feels that the things

02:03:08.740 | that are happening to the society

02:03:10.380 | are things that are happening to him or to her,

02:03:13.540 | and I wanna emphasize, this is not the standard view

02:03:17.100 | of collectivism that Mussolini will say,

02:03:21.820 | the glory of the individual is in totally immersing himself

02:03:24.620 | in the organic whole.

02:03:27.060 | That's not what I'm saying.

02:03:28.260 | I'm saying that human beings have and are both.

02:03:32.300 | They enter into a society to which they are loyal,

02:03:36.060 | and they compete with one another

02:03:38.900 | in the terms that that society allows competition,

02:03:43.420 | but also sometimes by bending the rules

02:03:45.340 | and by shaping them and by changing them.

02:03:48.380 | What you see in many societies,

02:03:51.540 | certainly throughout the liberal West,

02:03:53.780 | but also in countries that have been affected

02:03:56.140 | by the liberal West, by industrialization

02:03:58.340 | and ideas of individualism,

02:04:00.580 | what you see is a collapse of a willingness

02:04:04.460 | of the individual to look at what is needed by the whole

02:04:10.820 | and to make choices that are,

02:04:14.340 | Jorn would call them selfish,

02:04:17.420 | because the purpose of them is self-expression,

02:04:21.300 | competition, self-assertion, moving up in the hierarchy,

02:04:24.600 | achieving honor or wealth in order to do those things,

02:04:31.460 | but when you stop being able to look at the framework

02:04:36.500 | of a particular society and identify with it,

02:04:39.260 | you lose, you cease to understand

02:04:42.700 | what it is that you need to do.

02:04:44.460 | Not every single person,

02:04:46.180 | but I'm talking about society-wide.

02:04:48.020 | So there are few individuals who are just gonna have

02:04:50.140 | a fantastic time and live the kind of life

02:04:52.260 | that Jorn is describing,

02:04:53.580 | and the great majority, they stop being willing

02:04:56.940 | to take risks, they stop being willing to get married,

02:04:59.740 | they stop being willing to have children,

02:05:01.380 | they stop being willing to start companies,

02:05:03.260 | they stop being willing to put themselves out

02:05:05.380 | to do great things, because the guide rails

02:05:09.260 | that told them what kinds of things,

02:05:11.660 | and the social feedback that honored them

02:05:14.820 | when they did things like getting married

02:05:16.820 | and having children, they've been crushed.

02:05:18.900 | And what have they been crushed by?

02:05:20.300 | They've been crushed by the false view

02:05:23.340 | that if you tell the individual,

02:05:24.740 | be free, make all your own decisions,

02:05:27.300 | that they will then be free

02:05:28.260 | and make all their own decisions.

02:05:29.320 | They don't, they just stop, they stop being human.

02:05:33.580 | - That's powerful, so do you wanna respond to that?

02:05:36.020 | - Yes. (laughs)

02:05:38.100 | So I don't think anybody should have children.

02:05:40.780 | If the goal, there's a good tweet.

02:05:45.620 | - Clip that out.

02:05:46.460 | - A tweet clip that you could make.

02:05:48.020 | (laughing)

02:05:50.060 | I don't think anybody should have children

02:05:51.740 | for the goal of perpetuating their nation

02:05:55.980 | or expanding their society, or for some,

02:05:59.700 | I think they'd make horrible parents

02:06:03.060 | if that was the goal, the purpose of doing it.

02:06:06.060 | I think people should have children

02:06:07.900 | because they wanna embrace that challenge,

02:06:09.900 | that beauty, that experience,

02:06:14.300 | that amazing, very, very hard,

02:06:16.580 | very, very difficult experience in life.

02:06:19.140 | It's about being able to project the long-term,

02:06:21.940 | but also being able to enjoy and love

02:06:24.700 | the creation of another human being,

02:06:26.500 | that process of creation.

02:06:27.940 | It is a beautiful, self-interested thing.

02:06:30.100 | And by the way, not everybody should have children.

02:06:32.220 | I think way too many people have children.

02:06:34.700 | There's some awful parents out there

02:06:36.060 | that I wish would stop.

02:06:38.380 | I mean, there are.

02:06:39.460 | Life is precious, and life of suffering is sad.

02:06:43.620 | It's sad to see people suffering.

02:06:45.220 | A lot of people are born into situations

02:06:46.980 | and born into parents that destroy their capacity

02:06:51.140 | to ever live a good life,

02:06:52.220 | and that's a tragic and sad thing.

02:06:54.940 | So I don't measure the health of a society

02:07:02.020 | in how many children they're having,

02:07:03.660 | or a health of a couple,

02:07:05.060 | of whether they have children or not.

02:07:06.580 | Those are individual choices.

02:07:07.700 | Some people make a choice not to have children,

02:07:10.780 | which is completely rational and consistent

02:07:12.420 | with their values.

02:07:13.820 | Now, when you look at a society overall,

02:07:15.820 | I do think having children or not having children

02:07:18.420 | is a reflection of something.

02:07:20.260 | I think it's a reflection of a certain optimism

02:07:22.140 | about the future.

02:07:22.980 | I think it's a reflection of thinking

02:07:24.540 | long-term versus short-term.

02:07:26.220 | I think a short-term society doesn't have children.

02:07:28.180 | People don't have children there

02:07:29.500 | because children are a long-term investment.

02:07:32.100 | They require real planning and real effort

02:07:35.860 | and real thinking about the long-term,

02:07:37.900 | but those are moral issues.

02:07:39.620 | And again, we're confusing or mixing.

02:07:43.300 | When I say Japan, look how well Japan has done.

02:07:45.740 | I don't mean the specific Japanese people

02:07:48.500 | and how many kids they're having

02:07:49.500 | and what kind of life they're having

02:07:51.420 | in terms of these kind of particulars,

02:07:53.820 | but think about the alternatives Japan faces.

02:07:56.260 | If you look around, the options, right,

02:07:59.260 | that they face, they tried empire,

02:08:02.580 | they tried nationalistic empire.

02:08:04.140 | It didn't turn out too well for them

02:08:05.660 | or anybody who they interacted with.

02:08:08.220 | They could have become North Korea.

02:08:10.700 | We know how that turned out.

02:08:12.020 | We know what that is.

02:08:12.860 | They could have been Cambodia.

02:08:13.780 | If you've ever been to Cambodia

02:08:14.820 | and seen the kind of poverty,

02:08:16.300 | and yes, maybe Cambodians have lots of children,

02:08:18.900 | but God, I'd rather be in Japan any day

02:08:21.940 | than have children in the kind of poverty

02:08:24.460 | and horrific circumstances they have.

02:08:27.140 | But in the context of the available regimes

02:08:31.340 | that were possible post-World War II

02:08:34.220 | for the Japanese to embrace,

02:08:35.700 | they embraced one that generally led to prosperity,

02:08:39.180 | to freedom, to individuals pursuing values,

02:08:41.620 | not perfectly because they didn't implement

02:08:44.340 | the philosophical foundation,

02:08:45.980 | the moral foundation that I would like them to have.

02:08:48.820 | They're still being impacted by Kantian, Hegelian,

02:08:52.580 | whatever philosophy that's out there in the West

02:08:55.020 | that's destroying the better part.

02:08:57.380 | So you give people freedom.

02:08:59.100 | Now, what do they do with it?

02:09:00.620 | And if they have a bad philosophy,

02:09:02.620 | they're gonna do bad things with that freedom, right?

02:09:05.340 | You tell people to do whatever they choose to do,

02:09:08.580 | but if they have bad ideas,

02:09:10.020 | they will choose to do bad things.

02:09:12.820 | So it is true that the primacy of morality

02:09:15.820 | and the primacy of philosophy has to be recognized.

02:09:19.220 | It's not the primacy of politics.

02:09:21.540 | And indeed, you don't get free societies

02:09:24.220 | unless you have some elements of decent philosophy,

02:09:29.020 | but you can get free societies with a rotten philosophy,

02:09:32.020 | but they don't stay free for very long.

02:09:33.980 | - I don't understand how can it be a decent philosophy

02:09:36.780 | if it doesn't care about posterity?

02:09:39.580 | If you're willing to say, "I'm offering guidance.

02:09:44.580 | "I think you should live as a trader.

02:09:46.580 | "All relationships should be voluntary."

02:09:48.540 | Those are interesting things,

02:09:50.420 | but the moment that it comes to posterity,

02:09:53.180 | to the future, to there being a future,

02:09:55.580 | let's say that there were a society that lived the way,

02:09:58.100 | you know, in general, according to your view,

02:09:59.980 | let's say there was such a society.

02:10:01.860 | How can you not care whether that society's capable

02:10:04.860 | of passing it on to the next generation or not?

02:10:06.980 | - But the way to pass it on to the next generation

02:10:08.740 | is through ideas and not through having children.

02:10:11.700 | Having children is an individual choice

02:10:13.620 | that some people are going to make and some people are not,

02:10:15.660 | but the fundamental that preserves the good life.

02:10:19.460 | - What does that even mean?

02:10:20.780 | - There's a sense in which.

02:10:22.860 | If every generation from now on,

02:10:25.060 | your society that was good at a certain point

02:10:28.100 | has half as many people in it,

02:10:29.860 | it's going to very quickly, it's just going to be overrun.

02:10:33.580 | - Overrun by whom?

02:10:34.660 | - What do you mean overrun by whom?

02:10:36.180 | Are we just totally ahistorical?

02:10:38.220 | If you're the Spartans and you have all of these,

02:10:40.580 | you know, like warrior values,

02:10:42.860 | but you stop having children, you get overrun.

02:10:45.300 | You get defeated.

02:10:46.140 | - In the case of Sparta, that's a good thing,

02:10:47.140 | not a bad thing, but I get it.

02:10:47.980 | - That's not my point.

02:10:49.220 | You have to have the ability to have enough children

02:10:52.780 | to create enough wealth and enough power, enough strength.

02:10:55.820 | - Who makes these kind of conclusions and decisions

02:10:58.740 | about how many you make it as an individual

02:11:01.140 | and you decide that in order to.

02:11:03.380 | - No, we're not talking about,

02:11:04.740 | we're talking about what kind of intellectual,

02:11:06.900 | cultural, religious inheritance you give your children.

02:11:10.300 | - Yes, and those are the ideas that I give my children

02:11:13.380 | and those ideas are going to perpetuate

02:11:15.140 | because they're good ideas.

02:11:16.100 | If they're bad ideas.

02:11:16.940 | - No, they're not going to perpetuate.

02:11:19.180 | They can't be good ideas

02:11:20.780 | if they don't produce future generations.

02:11:23.060 | What are you talking about?

02:11:23.900 | - Why would they not produce future generations?

02:11:25.980 | I mean, as I said.

02:11:26.820 | - Because look at every liberal society on earth

02:11:29.940 | is in democratic collapse.

02:11:32.220 | - There's not a single liberal society on earth today

02:11:34.900 | that I'm willing to defend

02:11:36.700 | because they're not living by my philosophy.

02:11:38.900 | They do not accept my ideas.

02:11:40.780 | They have a semblance.

02:11:42.300 | They have a semblance of a political system

02:11:45.540 | that is a little bit like what I would like,

02:11:47.540 | far from what I would ideal.

02:11:48.860 | - I know all of this.

02:11:49.700 | - I certainly don't have a moral foundation.

02:11:51.700 | I believe that people who have the right moral foundation,

02:11:54.220 | most of them, not all of them,

02:11:55.780 | but most of them will have children.

02:11:57.260 | Most of them will continue into the future.

02:12:00.060 | Most of them will fight for a future,

02:12:02.020 | but not because they care what happens in 200 years,

02:12:06.180 | but because they care about their lifetime

02:12:07.860 | and part of having fun and enjoying one's lifetime

02:12:11.100 | is having kids, is projecting into the future.

02:12:15.060 | - Are you really going to tell me

02:12:16.380 | that people have children because it's fun?

02:12:19.020 | They're fun when they're four years old.

02:12:20.500 | They're not fun when they're 15.

02:12:22.780 | - When they're 15, they're not fun.

02:12:24.460 | I agree with that.

02:12:25.300 | - No, they're just not fun.

02:12:26.140 | Look, you don't do this.

02:12:26.980 | - I'm learning so much today.

02:12:27.820 | - Look, you don't do this for fun.

02:12:31.060 | Marriage also you don't do for fun.

02:12:32.540 | There are times that are fun

02:12:33.580 | and there are times that are not fun.

02:12:35.260 | Look, the Talmud--

02:12:36.100 | - Fun is not exactly the right word,

02:12:37.700 | but you certainly do it for happiness.

02:12:40.220 | You do it for fulfillment.

02:12:41.940 | You do it as a challenge.

02:12:43.700 | You do it for making your life better,

02:12:47.860 | for making your life interesting,

02:12:49.340 | for making your life challenging, for embracing.

02:12:52.100 | Part of it is fun, part of it is hard work,

02:12:56.140 | but you do it because it makes your life a better life.

02:13:01.140 | - That's very interesting.

02:13:02.740 | So empirically speaking,

02:13:04.020 | if you dissolve the cultural backbone

02:13:07.140 | where everybody comes up,

02:13:08.140 | like the background, the moral ideas

02:13:11.180 | that everybody is raised with,

02:13:12.340 | if you dissolve that

02:13:13.300 | and if you truly emphasize the individual,

02:13:16.100 | I think Yoram is saying it's going to naturally lead

02:13:21.060 | to the dissolution of marriage and all of these concepts.

02:13:23.820 | - I think that's not true.

02:13:25.980 | - Well, basically saying you're not going

02:13:27.620 | to choose some of these things.

02:13:30.020 | You're going to more and more choose

02:13:32.780 | the short-term optimization

02:13:34.900 | versus the long-term optimization

02:13:37.460 | beyond your own life, like posterity.

02:13:40.540 | - So I don't think about posterity.

02:13:42.060 | I don't know what posterity means.

02:13:43.660 | I can project into my children's life,

02:13:45.900 | maybe when I have grandchildren

02:13:47.740 | into the grandchildren's life, but it ends there.

02:13:49.860 | I can't project 300 years into the future.

02:13:51.780 | It's ridiculous to try to think

02:13:53.420 | about 300 years into the future.

02:13:54.660 | Things change so much.

02:13:55.860 | - But that's the founding fathers.

02:13:58.420 | That's the conservative founding fathers.

02:14:00.020 | - Well, no, I don't think.

02:14:01.180 | I think they set up a system.

02:14:02.540 | I think the whole idea was to set up a system

02:14:04.660 | that was self-perpetuating

02:14:06.300 | that would if people lived up to it, right?

02:14:10.140 | - No, no.

02:14:10.980 | - Would perpetuate the self-interference.

02:14:11.940 | - No systems are self-perpetuating.

02:14:13.980 | Things rise and fall and it's--

02:14:15.660 | - They don't necessarily rise and fall.

02:14:17.100 | I don't believe in that.

02:14:17.940 | - Let me speak to your heart for a second.

02:14:20.660 | The great individuals in societies

02:14:24.500 | are the people who have seen the decline,

02:14:26.820 | understood it, and provided resources

02:14:29.620 | in order to redirect and bring it back up.

02:14:32.060 | You can't agree to that?

02:14:33.300 | - I don't see it that way at all.

02:14:36.140 | Yes, I want people out there

02:14:39.300 | to rebel against conventional morality.

02:14:41.460 | I think conventional morality is destructive

02:14:43.220 | to their own lives and broadly to posterity

02:14:46.060 | because I think it's unsustainable, it's not good,

02:14:48.100 | and this goes to, I think, conventional morality.

02:14:50.460 | It's Christian morality.

02:14:51.380 | It's a morality that's been secularized

02:14:53.380 | through Christian lens, and I think it's destructive.

02:14:55.780 | But I don't want them to dump that

02:14:57.300 | and not replace it with something.

02:14:59.500 | I want, and I think it's necessary and essential

02:15:03.260 | for people to have a moral code

02:15:05.140 | and to have a moral quote.

02:15:07.620 | Morality is a set of guidelines to live your life.

02:15:10.980 | It is a set of values to guide you,

02:15:14.180 | to help you identify what is good for you

02:15:15.500 | and what is bad for you.

02:15:16.340 | - Here's the thing.

02:15:17.180 | Let me argue against you.

02:15:18.260 | Let me, hold on a second.

02:15:19.860 | You're saying central to this morality

02:15:23.500 | that people should have is reason.

02:15:25.540 | - Yes.

02:15:26.380 | - Okay.

02:15:27.220 | You're not saying other things.

02:15:28.300 | You're basically saying reason will arrive

02:15:31.460 | at a lot of things.

02:15:32.580 | Why are you so sure that reason is so important?

02:15:35.980 | - There's nothing else.

02:15:37.180 | - No, hold on a second.

02:15:38.020 | But it seems obvious to you.

02:15:40.620 | So first of all, humans have limited cognitive capacity.

02:15:43.340 | So even to assume the reason can actually function that well

02:15:46.940 | from an artificial intelligence researcher perspective,

02:15:50.980 | this seems--

02:15:52.660 | - There's a whole discussion about whether there is

02:15:54.180 | such a thing as artificial intelligence,

02:15:55.860 | whether that is what it is.

02:15:57.780 | - But see, here's the thing.

02:15:59.740 | I mean, you're very confident about this particular thing,

02:16:02.180 | but not about other aspects of human nature

02:16:04.300 | that seems to be obviously present.

02:16:06.260 | So yes, almost human relations, love,

02:16:11.260 | connection between us.

02:16:12.780 | So it's very possible to argue

02:16:14.940 | that all of the accomplishments of reason would not exist

02:16:17.820 | without the connection of other humans.

02:16:19.580 | That it's very--

02:16:20.420 | - Of course that's true.

02:16:21.260 | - It's not obvious though.

02:16:22.220 | It's possible that reason is a property of the collective

02:16:26.660 | of multiple people interacting with each other.

02:16:29.020 | When you look at the greatest inventions of human history,

02:16:31.620 | some people tell that story by individual inventors.

02:16:34.900 | You could argue that's true.

02:16:36.300 | Some people say that it's a bunch of people

02:16:39.900 | in the room together.

02:16:41.100 | The idea is bubbling.

02:16:42.380 | And if you're saying individual is primary

02:16:46.220 | and they have the full power and the capacity

02:16:48.740 | to make choices, I don't know if that's necessarily

02:16:51.900 | obviously true.

02:16:52.740 | - So there's a straw manning going on here

02:16:54.620 | of my position, right?

02:16:56.020 | - Yep.

02:16:56.860 | - Of course--

02:16:57.700 | - My favorite thing to do.

02:16:58.540 | (laughing)

02:17:00.220 | - You don't do it and you do it more politely

02:17:02.180 | than anybody else I know when you do it.

02:17:04.020 | Of course we all stand on the shoulders of giants.

02:17:06.380 | Of course invention and science is collaborative.

02:17:10.580 | Not always, not 100%.

02:17:13.740 | Newton stood on the shoulders of giants.

02:17:16.020 | I don't know how collaborative he was.

02:17:17.660 | He wasn't exactly known as a bubbling up

02:17:20.140 | and testing ideas out with other people.

02:17:22.820 | But this is a metaphysical fact.

02:17:24.780 | You can't eat for me.

02:17:26.060 | There's no collective stomach.

02:17:28.260 | You can't eat for me.

02:17:29.980 | You know, you can provide me with food,

02:17:31.980 | but I need to do the eating.

02:17:33.260 | You can't think for me.

02:17:35.140 | You can help stimulate my thought.

02:17:37.340 | You can challenge my thinking.

02:17:39.100 | You can add to it.

02:17:40.940 | But in the end of the day, only I can either do my thinking

02:17:43.420 | or not do my thinking, but I need to think.

02:17:45.500 | - But you can think all by yourself alone.

02:17:48.060 | - What does that mean, all by yourself, right?

02:17:50.220 | Can I think on a desert island?

02:17:51.940 | Yes, I can think on a desert island.

02:17:53.980 | Can I think as big and as broad and as deep as I can

02:18:00.220 | in Aristotle's Lyceum?

02:18:03.460 | Of course not.

02:18:04.300 | I'm a much better thinker in Aristotle's Lyceum

02:18:06.740 | or in any kind of situation like this

02:18:09.420 | where you're gonna challenge me and I have to come back

02:18:11.540 | and I have to think deeply about what it is you said

02:18:14.140 | and why I'm not communicating very effectively

02:18:15.980 | and why you're not understanding me.

02:18:18.420 | Of course, now you're causing me to think much more deeply

02:18:21.300 | and to challenge me, but it's still true

02:18:23.020 | that I have to think.

02:18:24.540 | And if I don't think for myself,

02:18:26.020 | who's gonna think for me, right?

02:18:27.740 | So this is why I'm not a philosopher.

02:18:32.220 | I'm certainly not an original thinker in that sense.

02:18:35.100 | I recognize the fact that there are geniuses

02:18:38.460 | that are much smarter than me,

02:18:39.980 | whether it's Aristotle or Ayn Rand

02:18:41.500 | or people that inspire me.

02:18:43.340 | I study their work.

02:18:44.740 | I try to understand it to the best of my ability,

02:18:46.700 | but I don't take it as gospel.

02:18:49.300 | I take it as this is something I need to figure out.

02:18:53.180 | I need to learn it.

02:18:54.220 | I need to understand it because it's good for my life.

02:18:56.580 | It's important to me, but I have to do the thinking.

02:18:59.780 | It won't be mine.

02:19:01.860 | It'll be Ayn Rand's, but it won't be mine

02:19:03.540 | unless I've done the thinking to integrate it

02:19:05.660 | into my soul, into my consciousness, into my mind.

02:19:10.220 | But it's still true that I have to think for myself,

02:19:12.700 | not on a desert island.

02:19:13.860 | I now regret ever using a desert island in the book

02:19:18.860 | as an example because-

02:19:20.780 | - We've achieved something.

02:19:23.340 | - We've achieved something.

02:19:24.180 | - You're all masterfully fired up.

02:19:25.020 | - Progress, we're moving, progress towards truth

02:19:27.340 | is taking place.

02:19:28.180 | - Because clearly it was misunderstood.

02:19:30.740 | I didn't make myself clear enough in the book

02:19:32.780 | in terms of what I meant.

02:19:33.940 | But I do not advocate for thinking alone in a dark room,

02:19:38.940 | not engaging with reality, not studying history,

02:19:43.460 | not knowing about the world, or on a desert island,

02:19:46.020 | not interacting with other people.

02:19:46.860 | - So you're a collectivist?

02:19:47.900 | - No, I'm a trader.

02:19:49.580 | So I enjoy what we're doing right now

02:19:51.860 | because you're challenging me.

02:19:53.340 | You make me a better thinker.

02:19:55.340 | It's interesting, the fact that a lot of people

02:19:58.660 | are gonna watch this plays into it as well.

02:20:01.340 | But I would probably enjoy engaging with you

02:20:03.820 | in conversation.

02:20:04.660 | - It's not even recording, so.

02:20:05.500 | - Yeah, there you go.

02:20:06.540 | I would enjoy engaging with you in conversation

02:20:09.860 | even if it wasn't being recorded.

02:20:11.580 | And even if it was because that kind of conversation

02:20:15.340 | makes me better.

02:20:16.180 | There's some people who I wouldn't.

02:20:17.260 | There's some people who make it worse, right?

02:20:19.580 | That you walk away from the conversation

02:20:22.140 | because they're harmful to you.

02:20:23.700 | And this is where choice comes in.

02:20:26.060 | I want to be able to choose who I engage with.

02:20:28.540 | I don't always have that choice

02:20:29.860 | because as a public intellectual,

02:20:31.660 | you go in front of audiences,

02:20:32.660 | you don't always choose who it is.

02:20:34.540 | But you wanna choose who you engage with and who you don't.

02:20:37.540 | You wanna choose the forum in which you engage

02:20:40.420 | and how you engage.

02:20:41.340 | And the standard for me is reason.

02:20:43.180 | There is no other standard.

02:20:44.020 | So you asked a deep question to start off.

02:20:46.220 | Why reason, right?

02:20:47.780 | Because that's where the values come from.

02:20:50.580 | That's the only tool we have to discover truth.

02:20:53.300 | Yes, reason is something that it doesn't guarantee truth.

02:20:57.540 | It doesn't guarantee the world is right.

02:20:59.700 | It's fallible.

02:21:01.020 | But it's all we have.

02:21:01.980 | It's the tool in which we evaluate the world around us

02:21:05.260 | and we come to conclusions about it.

02:21:07.020 | There just isn't other tool.

02:21:09.060 | Emotions are not tools of cognition.

02:21:13.820 | - Consciousness is a tool.

02:21:16.220 | Emotion, like love, all of these things

02:21:19.220 | are ways to experience the world.

02:21:21.340 | To say that reason is the best tool--

02:21:23.900 | - But there's a difference between experiencing the world

02:21:26.660 | and evaluating the world in terms of what is truth

02:21:29.700 | or what is not.

02:21:30.540 | - As a scientist, I appreciate the value of reason.

02:21:32.780 | - And emotions and love are consequences.

02:21:36.140 | They're not primary.

02:21:37.420 | Emotions are consequences of conclusions you've come to.

02:21:40.620 | Your emotions will change very quickly, relatively speaking,

02:21:44.580 | when your evaluations of a situation will change.

02:21:47.540 | Different people can see exactly the same scene

02:21:49.700 | and have completely different emotions

02:21:51.580 | because they're bringing different value systems

02:21:53.900 | and they're bringing different thoughts to the process.

02:21:56.340 | - Maybe love is primary, but let me ask--

02:21:59.060 | - Love is the same thing.

02:21:59.900 | You can fall out of love with somebody.

02:22:01.160 | Why?

02:22:02.000 | 'Cause you learn something new

02:22:02.820 | because you've discovered something new about the person.

02:22:05.180 | Now you don't love them anymore.

02:22:06.020 | - This is the wrong podcast to bring up love.

02:22:07.620 | We'll talk forever about it.

02:22:09.060 | So, Yoram, you wrote the book "The Virtue of Nationalism,"

02:22:13.580 | contrasting nation states with empires

02:22:16.220 | and with global governance like United Nations and so on.

02:22:18.820 | So, you argue that nationalism uniquely provides the,

02:22:23.740 | quote, "The collective right of a free people

02:22:26.660 | "to rule themselves."

02:22:28.020 | So, continuing our conversation,

02:22:30.460 | why is this particular collection of humans

02:22:35.340 | we call a nation a uniquely powerful way

02:22:39.340 | to preserve the freedom of a people

02:22:41.360 | to have people rule themselves?

02:22:43.740 | - Before I say anything on the subject,

02:22:45.340 | I should emphasize that I'm not a rationalist.

02:22:49.060 | I'm an empiricist, and I'm offering

02:22:52.020 | what I think is a valid observation of human history.

02:22:57.020 | I don't have some kind of deductive framework

02:23:00.220 | for proving that the nation is the best.

02:23:03.300 | And empirically, we know something

02:23:05.140 | about the way systems of national states work

02:23:07.380 | and about the way empires work

02:23:08.660 | and the way tribal societies work.

02:23:11.540 | What we don't know is, you know,

02:23:14.300 | is it possible to invent something else?

02:23:16.380 | Or, I mean, there's a lot of things we don't know here.

02:23:18.540 | So, with the caveat that I'm making an empirical observation,

02:23:22.900 | the basic argument is human beings form collectives naturally

02:23:27.900 | loyalty groups, and for most of human history

02:23:32.020 | and prehistory, as far as we know,

02:23:34.580 | human beings lived in tribal societies.

02:23:36.500 | Tribal societies are societies

02:23:39.740 | in which there's constant friction

02:23:43.980 | and constant warfare among very small groups,

02:23:47.260 | among families and clans.

02:23:49.780 | And we reach a turning point in human history

02:23:52.580 | with the invention of large-scale agriculture,

02:23:55.180 | which allows the creation of vast wealth.

02:23:57.180 | It allows the establishment of standing armies

02:24:00.460 | instead of militias.

02:24:01.580 | You know, Sargon of Akkad says,

02:24:04.540 | "I can pay 5,000 men to do nothing other

02:24:07.780 | "than to drill in the arts of war,

02:24:09.380 | "and then I'm gonna send them out

02:24:10.220 | "to conquer the neighboring city-states,

02:24:12.020 | "and there you have empire."

02:24:13.780 | The Bible, which is the source of our image,

02:24:18.260 | our conception of a world of independent nations

02:24:21.860 | that are not constantly trying to conquer one another,

02:24:24.740 | the source of that is the Bible.

02:24:27.180 | And the biblical world is one in which

02:24:31.620 | Israel and various other small nations

02:24:38.100 | are trying to fight for their independence

02:24:41.780 | against world empires, against empires, Babylonian,

02:24:45.940 | Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian,

02:24:47.460 | which aspire to rule the world.

02:24:49.660 | My claim is fundamentally twofold.

02:24:54.900 | It's moral that whenever you conquer a foreign nation,

02:24:59.900 | you're murdering and you're stealing, you're destroying.

02:25:03.620 | As your own would say, you're using force

02:25:06.180 | to cause people to submit.

02:25:10.220 | So there is something in the prophets

02:25:14.420 | that rebels against this ongoing atrocity and carnage

02:25:19.100 | of trying to take over the whole world.

02:25:21.100 | And there's a prudential, practical argument,

02:25:26.380 | which is that the world is governed best

02:25:29.740 | when there are multiple nations,

02:25:31.620 | when they're free to experiment and chart their own courses.

02:25:34.860 | That means they have their own route to God,

02:25:38.660 | they have their own moralities,

02:25:41.380 | they have their own forms of economy and government.

02:25:44.460 | And what tends to happen in history

02:25:46.540 | is that when something is successful,

02:25:49.580 | when something looks like,

02:25:50.740 | when a different nation looks at it and say,

02:25:52.860 | wow, those people, they're flourishing, they're succeeding,

02:25:55.860 | then it's imitated.

02:25:58.180 | And in the way that the Dutch invented the stock market

02:26:01.940 | and the English said, look, that makes them powerful,

02:26:04.860 | so we'll adopt it.

02:26:06.780 | So there's endless examples of that.

02:26:09.620 | So that's the argument for it.

02:26:10.780 | The argument is since we don't know a priori,

02:26:15.780 | deductively from self-evident principles, what is best,

02:26:21.420 | it's best to have a world

02:26:22.980 | in which people are trying different things.

02:26:25.100 | - So quick question, because the word nationalism

02:26:28.020 | sometimes is presented in a negative light

02:26:30.660 | in connection to the nationalism of Nazi Germany,

02:26:35.060 | for example. - Right, yeah.

02:26:36.820 | - So you're looking empirically at a world of nations

02:26:41.820 | that respect each other.

02:26:44.020 | - I use the word nationalism

02:26:45.420 | the way that I inherited it in my tradition,

02:26:48.540 | which is it's a principled standpoint

02:26:50.980 | that says that the world is governed best

02:26:53.620 | when many nations are able to be independent

02:26:57.780 | and chart their own course.

02:26:58.780 | That's nationalism.

02:26:59.620 | As far as the Nazis, Hitler's an imperialist.

02:27:02.660 | He hated nation states.

02:27:04.180 | His whole theory, if you pick up,

02:27:06.340 | I don't recommend doing this, but if you do--

02:27:08.940 | - Actually reading it right now, "Mein Kampf."

02:27:10.460 | - Right, if you do read "Mein Kampf,"

02:27:11.940 | then you'll see that he says explicitly

02:27:14.180 | that the goal is for Germany to be the lord of the earth

02:27:19.020 | and mistress of the globe,

02:27:20.580 | and he detests the idea of the independent nation state

02:27:24.460 | because he sees it as weak and effete.

02:27:27.100 | He might as well have said it's Jewish.

02:27:28.540 | So let me ask from the individual perspective,

02:27:32.180 | for nationalism, what do you make of the value

02:27:35.540 | of the love of country?

02:27:37.340 | The reason I connect that, so I personally,

02:27:43.060 | what would you say, a patriot?

02:27:45.700 | I love the love of country, or I am,

02:27:49.740 | or how should, in a Randian way, I enjoy, I--

02:27:54.740 | - Love is good, love is a good word.

02:27:58.220 | Don't run away from it.

02:27:59.420 | - Well, I love a lot of things, but I'm saying

02:28:01.260 | this particular love is a little bit contentious,

02:28:04.060 | which is loving your country.

02:28:06.460 | That's an interesting love that some people

02:28:08.700 | are a little uncomfortable with,

02:28:10.300 | especially when that love, I grew up in the Soviet Union,

02:28:14.740 | to say you just love the country.

02:28:18.100 | It represents a certain thing to you,

02:28:20.100 | and you don't think philosophically,

02:28:21.900 | like I was marching around with marks under my arm

02:28:25.980 | or something like that.

02:28:26.820 | It's just loving community at the level of nation.

02:28:31.820 | It's very interesting.

02:28:34.060 | I don't know if that's an artifact of the past

02:28:36.700 | that we're going to have to strip away.

02:28:39.460 | I don't know if I was just raised in that kind of community,

02:28:42.420 | but I appreciate that.

02:28:43.520 | I guess the thing I'm torn about is that love of country

02:28:49.580 | that I have in my heart, that I now love America,

02:28:52.660 | and I consider myself an American,

02:28:55.100 | that would have easily, if I was born earlier,

02:28:58.260 | been used by Stalin, and I would have proudly died

02:29:01.860 | on the battlefield.

02:29:03.220 | I would have proudly died if I was in Nazi Germany

02:29:06.280 | as a German, and I would proudly die as an American.

02:29:09.900 | - Are you sure about these things?

02:29:11.060 | - Yes.

02:29:12.340 | - That's interesting.

02:29:13.260 | - No, I think about this a lot.

02:29:14.660 | - It's interesting to run a radical counterfactual

02:29:17.620 | and be sure of the answer.

02:29:18.860 | - I'm not sure, but I think about this a lot,

02:29:21.860 | because obviously I'm really interested in history,

02:29:24.820 | and this is the way I think about most situations,

02:29:28.860 | is I empathize, I really try to do hard work

02:29:31.760 | of placing myself in that moment and thinking through it.

02:29:35.220 | I'm just, okay, I just know myself psychologically.

02:29:38.020 | What I'm susceptible to, that's a negative way

02:29:42.420 | to phrase it, but what I would love doing.

02:29:45.260 | And so I'm just saying, my question is,

02:29:48.300 | is the love of nation a useful or a powerful moment

02:29:54.340 | or a powerful moral, sort of from a moral philosophy

02:29:58.500 | perspective, a good thing?

02:30:01.140 | - I think it is a good thing, but before we ask

02:30:03.020 | whether it's a good thing, I think it's worth asking

02:30:05.580 | whether there's any way to live without it.

02:30:07.860 | The idea of national independence, of a world

02:30:11.580 | or a continent which politically is governed

02:30:14.360 | by multiple independent national states,

02:30:17.180 | that is a political theory.

02:30:19.060 | Somebody came up with that.

02:30:21.140 | In the Bible or elsewhere, someone came up with this idea

02:30:25.100 | and sold it and a lot of people like it.

02:30:27.300 | But the nation is not an invention.

02:30:31.540 | Every place in human history that we have any record of,

02:30:36.180 | there are nations.

02:30:37.540 | And so the fact of people creating families,

02:30:42.540 | families creating an alliance of clans,

02:30:50.640 | clans creating alliances of tribes,

02:30:52.500 | tribes creating alliances of,

02:30:54.720 | an alliance that becomes the nation,

02:30:58.780 | we see that everywhere in human history,

02:31:01.420 | everywhere we look.

02:31:03.140 | And the love of a group of tribes that have come together

02:31:08.060 | in order to fight opponents that are trying to destroy

02:31:11.100 | your way of life and steal your land

02:31:14.780 | and harm your women and children,

02:31:18.820 | the love of the leadership that brings it together.

02:31:23.820 | Here, this is a George Washington-type figure

02:31:28.680 | or an Alfred the Great-type figure

02:31:30.700 | or Saul, the biblical Saul,

02:31:33.620 | somebody who has the wisdom, the daring

02:31:36.940 | to unite the tribes, overcome their internal

02:31:39.940 | mutual hatreds and grievances and rally them around

02:31:47.100 | a set of ideas, a language, a tradition,

02:31:49.720 | an identity, as people say today.

02:31:53.640 | That love is eradicable from human beings.

02:31:57.080 | Maybe we'll have brave new world people

02:31:58.500 | who'll take drugs in order to get rid of it.

02:32:00.060 | - The problem is that could be leveraged

02:32:01.980 | by authoritarian regimes.

02:32:03.420 | - Yes, but that's true of everything.

02:32:05.140 | It's like saying, you can have children

02:32:07.220 | and you can teach them to be evil.

02:32:08.380 | You can make a lot of money and can use it for evil.

02:32:11.140 | You can have a gun for self-defense,

02:32:12.880 | but you can use it for evil.

02:32:14.240 | Come on, that's human, that's being human.

02:32:17.020 | - But you guys are making love this primary,

02:32:19.460 | which I don't think it is.

02:32:20.740 | There are lots of people--

02:32:21.580 | - How dare you, Yaron.

02:32:22.460 | - I know, there are lots of people in the world out there

02:32:24.260 | who don't love their nation

02:32:25.460 | because their nation is not worth loving.

02:32:27.440 | That is, love is conditional.

02:32:29.040 | It's not unconditional.

02:32:30.340 | Love is conditioned on the value that's presented to you.

02:32:33.980 | So I lived through this experience in my own life.

02:32:37.780 | I grew up in Israel at a time of everything

02:32:43.380 | was geared towards patriotism and the state.

02:32:47.100 | I would say I was trained to,

02:32:51.220 | when I saw a grenade to jump on it,

02:32:52.820 | because that was, you know, every song and every story

02:32:57.100 | and everything was about the state is everything

02:33:01.460 | and you should sacrifice.

02:33:02.300 | And you know, when the flag went up, I got teary-eyed.

02:33:05.980 | I mean, I bought into it completely.

02:33:08.640 | And at some point I rejected that.

02:33:11.900 | And I changed and I changed my alliance

02:33:14.060 | and I rejected my love of Israel.

02:33:16.260 | It's not that I don't love it anymore,

02:33:17.540 | but it's certainly not my top love.

02:33:19.260 | And it's certainly, I'm certainly not looking

02:33:20.740 | for the grenade to jump on

02:33:21.820 | and I'm not volunteering to go fight the war there.

02:33:24.620 | And I fell in love from a distance with the idea of America.

02:33:29.620 | I love the idea of America more than I love America.

02:33:33.500 | And I could see myself falling in love,

02:33:35.220 | out of love with America, given where it's heading.

02:33:37.780 | It's not automatic.

02:33:39.620 | It's conditioned on what it is that it represent

02:33:42.580 | and what it is, what value it represents for me.

02:33:47.100 | You know, and I think that's always the case with love.

02:33:50.420 | You know, it's not true

02:33:52.300 | that children have to love their parents.

02:33:54.580 | That's the ideal.

02:33:56.580 | And hopefully most children love their parents

02:33:58.660 | 'cause their parents, but some children fall out of love

02:34:01.020 | with their parents because their parents

02:34:02.500 | don't deserve their love.

02:34:04.580 | And the same with the other way around.

02:34:06.980 | I think parents are capable of not loving their children.

02:34:09.940 | So love is a conditional thing.

02:34:12.620 | It's not automatic.

02:34:13.460 | But let me point out an agreement with,

02:34:16.140 | let me say something about an agreement with you all.

02:34:17.340 | - You're trying to bribe me with an agreement.

02:34:19.300 | - Okay, to soften the blow.

02:34:21.180 | - To soften the blow, right?

02:34:22.380 | Mostly I like to talk to your own about his ideas

02:34:24.940 | and I don't want to talk about Ayn Rand,

02:34:26.460 | but I want to say something.

02:34:27.820 | Just one thing about Ayn Rand.

02:34:31.260 | All my kids read Ayn Rand's books.

02:34:34.740 | My father read "The Fountainhead."

02:34:36.300 | I don't know, like, you know, we know Ayn Rand.

02:34:40.420 | And I'll tell you, it is incredibly difficult

02:34:45.420 | reading for me.

02:34:46.900 | It's painful, it's painful to read.

02:34:49.700 | Why is it painful?

02:34:51.180 | Not because I disagree with the view of trading and business

02:34:56.180 | and the creativity of it and, you know, and Reardon Metal.

02:35:00.940 | I mean, you know, that stuff moves me.

02:35:04.340 | And I do admire it.

02:35:07.780 | But to read, you know, a book that's a thousand pages long

02:35:12.340 | in which nobody, nobody is having children.

02:35:16.620 | Nobody is having a stable marriage.

02:35:19.100 | No one is running an admirable government

02:35:23.540 | that's fighting for a just cause.

02:35:25.220 | Anywhere, anywhere, you're on, I feel, I just,

02:35:29.260 | I feel like, like, it's focusing on one aspect

02:35:34.180 | of what it is to be human and to flourish.

02:35:36.780 | And that everything else is just erased and thrown out

02:35:40.340 | as though it's just not part of reality.

02:35:42.020 | And I'm scared, I'm scared of what happens to teenagers

02:35:46.220 | who hormonally are in any case,

02:35:48.580 | no, that's, they're programmed to pull away from their parents

02:35:53.580 | and experiment with things.

02:35:54.700 | They're biologically programmed to do that.

02:35:58.540 | And you give them a book which says,

02:36:00.980 | look, you don't have to have a family.

02:36:04.180 | You don't have to raise children.

02:36:05.380 | You don't have to have a country.

02:36:06.540 | You don't have to fight for anything.

02:36:08.020 | All you have to do is assert yourself in trade.

02:36:12.380 | I think it's destructive because it's not realistic.

02:36:16.140 | It's just not real.

02:36:17.460 | - But I got none of that from Ayn Rand.

02:36:19.620 | I got none of that from Ayn Rand.

02:36:21.020 | You know, the books were not about a family.

02:36:24.820 | You could write a book in Ayn Rand style

02:36:27.660 | about where people have a family,

02:36:30.220 | but the goal, the purpose, it's a novel.

02:36:33.380 | It's not, it's a novel which is delimited

02:36:35.980 | with a particular story.

02:36:37.380 | There's one family in "Galt's Gulch"

02:36:39.220 | and there's a little passage about raising children

02:36:41.700 | and the value of that because it's not core

02:36:44.900 | to what she is writing about, but that doesn't exclude it.

02:36:49.100 | When I read Ayn Rand, I read "Atlas Shrugged" when I was 16

02:36:51.460 | and I read it over the years several times more.

02:36:54.900 | It never occurred to me, oh, Ayn Rand's anti-family.

02:36:57.260 | I shouldn't have a family.

02:36:58.900 | That thought never came into my mind.

02:37:00.980 | I always wanted to have children.

02:37:02.620 | I continue to want to have children.

02:37:04.780 | I thought of it a little differently.

02:37:06.780 | I thought of how I would find a partner

02:37:08.420 | a little bit differently.

02:37:09.380 | I thought about what I would look for in a partner

02:37:12.620 | differently, but not that I wouldn't want to get married.

02:37:15.860 | - One question I have is what effect it has on society,

02:37:19.340 | so outside of you.

02:37:20.900 | So for example, you mentioned love should be conditional.

02:37:23.140 | I think-- - Well, it is.

02:37:23.980 | Whether you like it or not, it is.

02:37:25.620 | You might pretend that it isn't,

02:37:26.980 | but it's always conditional.

02:37:27.900 | - Well, let me try to say something

02:37:29.300 | and see if it makes any sense.

02:37:31.340 | So could there be things that are true,

02:37:35.240 | like love is conditional, is always conditional,

02:37:38.260 | that if you say it often,

02:37:41.140 | it has a negative effect on society?

02:37:43.120 | So for example, I mean, so maybe I'm just a romantic,

02:37:47.900 | but good luck saying love is conditional

02:37:50.100 | to a romantic partner.

02:37:52.220 | I mean, you could, I would argue, en masse,

02:37:56.120 | that would deteriorate the quality of relationships

02:37:59.940 | if you remind the partner of that truth that is universal.

02:38:06.140 | Like you have to, I mean, okay, maybe it's just me.

02:38:11.220 | I'll just speak to myself.

02:38:12.420 | It's like there is a certain romantic notion

02:38:14.540 | of unconditional love.

02:38:15.880 | - It's part of why you have so many destructive marriages.

02:38:19.900 | It's part of why-- - So you would say

02:38:21.420 | that's a problem.

02:38:22.260 | - Yes, it's a real problem,

02:38:23.940 | because yes, there is,

02:38:27.380 | you all talked about honoring your spouse,

02:38:29.620 | and there's a real truth there, and I respect that.

02:38:32.860 | Yes, you have to do certain things.

02:38:35.260 | Love is not, you marry somebody,

02:38:37.140 | and there's a real attitude out there in the culture.

02:38:39.200 | You marry somebody, and okay, now we're gonna,

02:38:41.180 | we're just gonna cruise.

02:38:42.460 | It's just-- - Right, Hollywood.

02:38:44.060 | That's the Hollywood marriage.

02:38:44.900 | - You know, marriage is work.

02:38:46.420 | Like all values, it's work.

02:38:49.540 | It's something you have to reignite every day.

02:38:51.700 | You have to, there are challenges.

02:38:53.440 | There are real disagreements.

02:38:55.340 | There are things you fight about, you disagree about,

02:39:00.140 | and there's real, if it's a value, you work it out.

02:39:03.500 | You struggle through it,

02:39:05.700 | and sometimes you struggle through it,

02:39:08.580 | and you come to a conclusion,

02:39:09.820 | nah, this is not gonna work,

02:39:11.740 | and you dissolve a marriage,

02:39:13.020 | and I'm all for dissolving after really,

02:39:16.100 | really fighting for it,

02:39:16.980 | because if it's an important value,

02:39:18.540 | and if you fell in love with this person for a reason,

02:39:21.440 | then that's something worth fighting for.

02:39:23.460 | I have a feeling that Hollywood goes the other way,

02:39:25.340 | but it's not this cruising along, and everything's easy.

02:39:29.160 | No human relationship is like that.

02:39:30.620 | Not friendship, not love, not raising children,

02:39:34.340 | not being a child.

02:39:35.600 | They require work, and they require thinking,

02:39:39.780 | and they require creating the conditions to thrive,

02:39:43.940 | and that's the sense in which it's conditional.

02:39:46.140 | You have to work at it,

02:39:48.220 | and it's very easy not to do the work,

02:39:53.220 | and it's very easy to drift away,

02:39:55.940 | and I think most people don't do the work.

02:39:57.320 | Most people take it, and generally in life.

02:39:59.960 | The only place people seem to work is at work,

02:40:03.520 | and then they take the rest of their life

02:40:05.200 | as I'm gonna cruise,

02:40:06.600 | and yet every aspect of your life,

02:40:08.640 | the art you choose, the friends you choose,

02:40:11.560 | the lovers you choose,

02:40:13.240 | all require real thinking and real work

02:40:16.940 | to be successful at them.

02:40:18.280 | None of them are just there,

02:40:21.680 | because there is no such thing as just the intrinsic.

02:40:24.360 | - Right, I agree with all of that.

02:40:25.960 | I was gonna say before that the rabbis

02:40:27.760 | have this sort of shocking expression,

02:40:31.360 | tzal gidul banim,

02:40:33.420 | the pain of raising children,

02:40:38.420 | and I find when I speak to audiences about relationships,

02:40:43.200 | I find that in general,

02:40:45.660 | and this is cross-cultural,

02:40:47.760 | it's different countries, different religious backgrounds,

02:40:50.560 | that in general, young people do not know

02:40:54.800 | that the only way to make a marriage work

02:40:57.420 | is through a lot of pain and overcoming.

02:41:00.640 | They don't know that raising children

02:41:03.540 | involves a great deal of pain.

02:41:05.060 | They don't know that caring for and helping your parents

02:41:09.620 | approach the end of their lives

02:41:11.400 | causes a great deal of pain,

02:41:13.280 | and everything is kind of this sketchy,

02:41:16.900 | very sketchy, glimpsy kind of,

02:41:18.700 | and I mention Hollywood just because

02:41:20.500 | everything is made to look easy,

02:41:24.000 | except there's kind of a funny breakdown of something,

02:41:26.300 | but then maybe there's a divorce,

02:41:29.060 | they shoot one another,

02:41:29.900 | so then they should get divorced,

02:41:31.660 | but the reality of how hard it is to do

02:41:36.660 | and how heroic it is to do it and then overcome

02:41:42.980 | and then actually in the end achieve something,

02:41:45.920 | create something,

02:41:47.100 | it's almost not discussed,

02:41:52.260 | and so to me, it's just not surprising

02:41:55.260 | that if there's no parallel to Ayn Rand

02:41:59.600 | about the heroic saving of a marriage

02:42:03.300 | that was on the rocks,

02:42:04.140 | how does it actually happen?

02:42:05.380 | - It's a good point you're making,

02:42:09.700 | but it's something that just came to me

02:42:11.660 | that I've never thought of before,

02:42:12.740 | so that's always good.

02:42:13.980 | This is where conversation is good.

02:42:16.420 | Look, take the Talmud,

02:42:19.220 | I can't remember how many years after the Bible,

02:42:22.220 | the Talmud is written,

02:42:23.420 | how many over how long of a period it's written,

02:42:25.900 | how many people participating in writing it.

02:42:28.420 | Ayn Rand was one individual.

02:42:30.360 | She wrote a series of books on philosophy,

02:42:32.060 | which I think are true,

02:42:34.820 | but they're the beginning.

02:42:36.460 | There is a lot of work to be done to apply this,

02:42:39.900 | so hopefully there will be one of her students

02:42:42.980 | who writes a book on relationships,

02:42:45.420 | and there'll be somebody who writes a book

02:42:47.860 | on developing a political theory in greater detail,

02:42:50.780 | and develop her ethics.

02:42:52.300 | She's got a few writings on ethics,

02:42:55.220 | and it's in the novels,

02:42:56.200 | but there's a lot of work to be done,

02:42:58.420 | fleshing it out,

02:42:59.260 | what does it mean, how do you,

02:43:00.740 | so to say Ayn Rand didn't do everything is a truism.

02:43:04.780 | She didn't do everything.

02:43:06.420 | Okay, so what?

02:43:07.260 | But she laid this amazing philosophical foundation

02:43:10.060 | that allows us to take those principles

02:43:12.900 | and to apply them to all these realms of human life,

02:43:16.060 | and she does it on a scope

02:43:17.780 | that few philosophers in human history have done,

02:43:19.580 | 'cause she goes from metaphysics all the way to aesthetics,

02:43:22.620 | hitting the key,

02:43:23.460 | and she's an original thinker on each one of those things,

02:43:26.620 | and she might be right,

02:43:28.260 | she might be wrong on certain aspects of it,

02:43:30.980 | always happy to have a debate

02:43:32.220 | about where she's wrong or where she's not,

02:43:34.760 | but there's a lot of work to be done, right?

02:43:37.060 | It's not like,

02:43:38.060 | and if there were objectivists out there

02:43:40.260 | who presented as,

02:43:41.700 | okay, human knowledge is over

02:43:43.140 | 'cause Ayn Rand wrote these books,

02:43:44.320 | that's absurd, right?

02:43:45.620 | There's huge amount of work to be done

02:43:48.180 | in applying these particular ideas

02:43:50.020 | just like there was for any philosophy,

02:43:52.340 | take these ideas and now apply them

02:43:53.900 | to all these realms in human experience

02:43:56.460 | that flesh it out and make it,

02:43:58.340 | and one of the reasons

02:43:59.340 | I don't think objectivism has taken off

02:44:01.480 | is because there's all this work still to be done

02:44:03.820 | that allows it to be relatable to people

02:44:06.900 | in every aspect of it.

02:44:08.260 | - Let me ask a hard question here.

02:44:10.140 | We've taken--

02:44:10.980 | - Can I say what I agreed with you, Omar?

02:44:12.820 | - Sure, sure, please.

02:44:13.860 | This is good, it's a bigger transition.

02:44:16.060 | - Here, this is the clip.

02:44:17.500 | This is the clip.

02:44:19.500 | - I agree about nations,

02:44:20.700 | so I don't like the term nationalism

02:44:23.040 | because I fear what happens

02:44:25.100 | when you put an -ism at the end of any word.

02:44:27.740 | - Anything, yes.

02:44:28.620 | - But the nation is a good thing,

02:44:31.940 | and having a diversity of nations,

02:44:34.300 | in a sense, is a good thing,

02:44:35.580 | and in a sense, I don't think one can come up,

02:44:38.860 | so look, I said, I hold,

02:44:42.020 | that the ideal nation is a nation

02:44:44.260 | that protects individual rights.

02:44:46.660 | How do you do that?

02:44:48.300 | What are the details?

02:44:49.340 | How do we define property rights

02:44:50.580 | exactly in an internet world?

02:44:52.780 | There's gonna be disagreement,

02:44:54.060 | rational, reasonable disagreement.

02:44:56.540 | There're gonna be, in my future,

02:44:59.740 | in the 300 years from now,

02:45:00.940 | when my ideas have won finally,

02:45:03.180 | there will be multiple nations

02:45:04.540 | trying to apply the principle

02:45:06.060 | of applying individual rights,

02:45:07.300 | and they'll do it differently.

02:45:08.780 | One of the benefits of federalism

02:45:11.740 | is that while you have a national government,

02:45:13.800 | there are certain issues that you relegate to states,

02:45:16.020 | and they can try different things and learn

02:45:18.820 | because there is a huge value

02:45:21.340 | in the empirical knowledge comes there.

02:45:23.180 | You can't just deduce it all and figure it all out.

02:45:26.060 | You have to experiment,

02:45:27.380 | so I do, I hate the idea of a one-world nation.

02:45:30.580 | One-world government because experimentation is gone,

02:45:34.260 | and if you make a mistake, everybody suffers.

02:45:37.300 | I like the idea, and then I like the idea

02:45:39.220 | of people being able to choose where they live,

02:45:42.980 | but this notion of experimentation, I think, is crucial,

02:45:47.060 | but you need a principle.

02:45:48.740 | This is, you need a principle,

02:45:50.340 | so I don't like the idea of nations

02:45:51.820 | if all the nations are gonna be bad, right?

02:45:54.860 | If all the nations are gonna be horrible,

02:45:56.860 | then I don't like it.

02:45:57.980 | What I like is a variety of nations,

02:46:00.220 | all practicing basically good ideas,

02:46:03.860 | and then we try to figure out,

02:46:05.140 | okay, what works better than other things,

02:46:06.900 | and what is sustainable and what is not.

02:46:09.660 | - Given how many difficult aspects of history

02:46:13.980 | and society we've talked about,

02:46:15.300 | let me ask a hard question of both of you.

02:46:17.400 | - Breeze up until now.

02:46:19.620 | - Yeah. (laughing)

02:46:21.740 | What gives you hope about the future?

02:46:25.260 | So we've been describing reasons

02:46:28.860 | to maybe not have hope.

02:46:31.460 | What gives you hope?

02:46:32.940 | When you look at the world,

02:46:35.220 | what gives you hope that in 200 years,

02:46:37.420 | and 300 years, and 500 years,

02:46:39.180 | like the founders look into the future,

02:46:41.660 | that human civilization will be all right,

02:46:45.360 | and more than that, it will flourish?

02:46:47.700 | - Two things for me.

02:46:49.500 | One is history.

02:46:50.660 | So in the very long run, good ideas win out.

02:46:53.700 | I think in the very long run,

02:46:56.380 | you can go through a dark ages,

02:46:57.980 | but you come out of a dark ages.

02:46:59.580 | You know, the good and the just does win in the end,

02:47:06.060 | even if it is bloody, and difficult, and hard to get there.

02:47:09.840 | So while I am quite pessimistic, unfortunately,

02:47:12.220 | about the short run, I'm ultimately optimistic

02:47:14.900 | that in the long run, good ideas win,

02:47:17.660 | and they're justified.

02:47:18.940 | And I think the fundamental behind that is,

02:47:23.140 | I think is that I'm fundamentally positive

02:47:26.780 | about human nature.

02:47:27.900 | I think human beings can think,

02:47:31.820 | they're capable of reasoning,

02:47:33.820 | they're capable of figuring out the truth,

02:47:36.420 | they're capable of learning from experience.

02:47:38.540 | They don't always do it.

02:47:39.940 | It's an achievement to do it, but over time, they do.

02:47:43.820 | And if you create the right circumstances, they will.

02:47:48.100 | And when things get bad enough, they look for a way out.

02:47:51.980 | They look at maybe at history,

02:47:54.140 | if the history is available to them,

02:47:55.540 | maybe at just learning from what's around them

02:48:00.540 | to find better ways of doing things,

02:48:03.140 | and that reinforces itself.

02:48:04.940 | But human beings are an amazing creature.

02:48:09.860 | We're just amazing in our capacity to be creative,

02:48:12.660 | in our capacity to think, in our capacity to love,

02:48:15.260 | in our capacity to change our environment,

02:48:17.220 | to fit our needs, and to fit our requirements for survival,

02:48:20.360 | and to learn, and to grow, and to progress.

02:48:23.540 | And so again, long-term, I think all that wins out.

02:48:28.540 | Short-term, in any point in history, short-term,

02:48:32.320 | it doesn't, right now, it doesn't look too good.

02:48:36.500 | - What about you, Jaron?

02:48:39.620 | - Well, as usual, I'm moved by what Jaron says,

02:48:44.060 | and I hear scripture.

02:48:47.220 | And the source for Jaron's hope

02:48:52.820 | is the book of Exodus,

02:48:56.900 | which is the first place in human history

02:48:59.660 | where we are presented with the possibility

02:49:03.780 | that an enslaved people that's being persecuted,

02:49:07.340 | and murdered, and living under the worst possible regime

02:49:10.820 | can free itself and have a shot

02:49:14.460 | at a life of independence and worth.

02:49:16.900 | And it's another inherited Jewish ideal

02:49:20.300 | in the tradition.

02:49:22.520 | The way that we express this is by saying

02:49:27.100 | that there is a God who judges.

02:49:30.140 | The Israelites in Egypt were enslaved for hundreds of years,

02:49:36.300 | according to the Exodus story,

02:49:38.060 | hundreds of years before God wakes up and hears them.

02:49:42.180 | And He doesn't do anything until Moses kills the oppressor

02:49:47.180 | and goes out into the desert.

02:49:49.660 | So I think it's pretty realistic

02:49:53.820 | that there is a God, that God judges and acts,

02:49:57.620 | but probably often not for a very, very long time

02:50:02.260 | and not until there's a human being

02:50:04.380 | who gets up and says enough.

02:50:06.820 | I know that today people don't wanna read the Bible.

02:50:09.300 | They don't like reading the Bible.

02:50:11.120 | But I always hear in my ear this cry of the prophet Jeremiah

02:50:17.460 | who saw his nation destroyed and his people exiled.

02:50:22.460 | And he says, in God's name, he says,

02:50:28.380 | "Is not my word like fire,

02:50:32.380 | "like the hammer that shatters rock?"

02:50:34.620 | Apetitim et petzela.

02:50:36.980 | The hammer, my word is like fire,

02:50:39.260 | like the hammer that shatters rock.

02:50:41.740 | And this is actually, this is the traditional way

02:50:44.220 | of saying something like what Joran is saying,

02:50:46.060 | that it may take a long, long time,

02:50:48.780 | but there is a truth and it has its own strength

02:50:52.940 | and it will, in the end,

02:50:55.620 | shatter the things that are opposing it.

02:50:58.500 | That's our traditional hope.

02:51:00.580 | We grow up like that.

02:51:02.980 | And so I do have hope.

02:51:07.580 | I see the trends.

02:51:08.720 | The trends are terrible right now.

02:51:10.460 | And it's frightening and it's hard.

02:51:14.740 | But we are terrible at seeing the future.

02:51:17.180 | And it is very possible that an unexpected turn of events

02:51:21.580 | is going to appear maybe soon, maybe much later.

02:51:26.300 | And the possibility of a redemption is there.

02:51:31.300 | - Let me ask, given that long arc of history,

02:51:36.020 | given that you do study the Bible,

02:51:38.120 | what is the meaning of this whole thing?

02:51:42.620 | What's the meaning of life?

02:51:44.860 | - Wow, that's beautiful.

02:51:46.340 | I think that the meaning of life is,

02:51:49.220 | is in part what Joran touches on

02:51:54.100 | when he says that productive work, labor, creativity,

02:51:59.100 | is at the heart of what it is to be human.

02:52:02.860 | I just think that there are some more arenas,

02:52:07.900 | and maybe we even agree with a lot of them,

02:52:10.060 | and on a lot of them.

02:52:12.380 | To be human is to inherit a world which is imperfect,

02:52:17.380 | terribly imperfect, imperfect in many ways.

02:52:21.980 | And God created it that way.

02:52:26.860 | He created a world which is terribly lacking.

02:52:30.620 | And he created us with the ability to stand up

02:52:34.740 | and to say, I can change the direction of this.

02:52:38.620 | I can do something to change the direction of this.

02:52:40.980 | I can take the time and the abilities

02:52:43.540 | that are given to me to be a partner with God

02:52:46.060 | in creating the world.

02:52:47.300 | It's not gonna stay the way it was before me.

02:52:50.540 | It'll be something different.

02:52:52.900 | Maybe a little bit, maybe a lot.

02:52:56.300 | But that is the heart, that is the key,

02:52:59.940 | that is the meaningful life,

02:53:02.060 | is to be a partner with God in creating the world

02:53:05.460 | so that it is moving that much more in the right direction

02:53:10.220 | rather than the way we found it.

02:53:12.100 | - So nudge, even if a little bit,

02:53:14.300 | the direction of the world.

02:53:16.460 | Well, you've actually been talking

02:53:21.180 | in your program about life quite a bit.

02:53:23.180 | So let me ask the same question.

02:53:26.740 | And I never tire of you asking this question.

02:53:29.340 | (laughing)

02:53:31.580 | What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?

02:53:34.660 | - Well, I mean, I don't believe in God,

02:53:36.380 | so God doesn't play a role in my view of the meaning of life.

02:53:41.380 | I think the meaning of life is to live.

02:53:44.620 | I like to say to live with a capital L.

02:53:46.860 | It's to embrace it, and I agree with you on this sense.

02:53:52.700 | We're born into a world, and as human beings,

02:53:55.940 | one of the things that makes us very different

02:53:58.100 | than other animals is our capacity to change that world.

02:54:01.220 | We can actually go out there

02:54:02.500 | and change the world around us.

02:54:04.060 | We can change it materially through production,

02:54:07.180 | and we can change it spiritually

02:54:09.780 | through changing the ideas of people.

02:54:11.900 | We can change the direction to which humanity works.

02:54:15.740 | We can create a little universe.

02:54:19.020 | I think part of the joy of creating a family

02:54:21.900 | is to create a little universe, right?

02:54:23.740 | We're creating a little world around us.

02:54:26.540 | That's part of the joy.

02:54:28.940 | And there is joy in family.

02:54:30.060 | It's not make it all about difficulty and hard work.

02:54:32.700 | - I agree, I agree.

02:54:33.940 | - You know, part of the idea of getting married

02:54:36.900 | is to create a little world in which you and your spouse

02:54:40.100 | are creating something that didn't exist before

02:54:42.900 | and building something, building a universe.

02:54:46.020 | But it's really to live.

02:54:46.940 | I mean, one of the things that I see

02:54:49.620 | and that saddens me is wasted lives,

02:54:52.940 | is people who just cruise through life.

02:54:55.780 | They get born in a particular place.

02:54:59.500 | They never challenge it.

02:55:00.420 | They never question.

02:55:01.820 | They just, you know, they live, die,

02:55:04.420 | and nothing really happened.

02:55:05.700 | Nothing really changed.

02:55:06.620 | They didn't produce.

02:55:07.460 | They didn't make anything of their life

02:55:09.060 | and produce here, again, in the largest sense.

02:55:12.620 | So to me, it's, and every aspect of life,

02:55:15.260 | you know, as you know, 'cause you've listened to my show,

02:55:17.140 | I love art, I love aesthetics.

02:55:18.820 | I love the experience of great art.

02:55:21.460 | You know, I love relationships.

02:55:23.620 | I, you know, I love producing.

02:55:26.420 | You know, I like business.

02:55:28.100 | I like that, that aspect of it.

02:55:30.740 | And I think people are shallow

02:55:34.220 | in so many parts of their lives, which saddens me.

02:55:37.180 | I mean, if we, if you had 8 billion people in this planet,

02:55:41.300 | even if it never grew, even if we just stated 8 billion,

02:55:43.980 | but the 8 billion all lived fully.

02:55:47.100 | Wow, I mean, what an amazing place this would be.

02:55:50.740 | What an amazing experience we would have.

02:55:52.540 | So to me, that is, the meaning is just make the most,

02:55:55.820 | that you have a short period of time on Earth.

02:55:58.540 | And that's it.

02:55:59.460 | This is it, and live it, experience it fully,

02:56:02.340 | and challenge yourself and push yourself.

02:56:04.660 | And let me just say something about optimism.

02:56:07.700 | You know, one source of hope for me

02:56:10.100 | in the world in which we live right now

02:56:12.420 | is that there are people who do that,

02:56:14.140 | at least in certain realms of their lives, right?

02:56:17.700 | And I'm inspired, and I know a lot of people

02:56:21.420 | don't like me for this, but I'm inspired, for example,

02:56:23.660 | by Silicon Valley, in spite of all

02:56:25.060 | the political disagreements I have with them

02:56:26.900 | and all of that, I'm inspired by people

02:56:29.580 | inventing new technologies and building,

02:56:31.380 | I'm inspired by the people you talk to

02:56:33.620 | about artificial intelligence and about new ideas

02:56:36.980 | and about pushing the boundaries of science.

02:56:39.180 | Those things are exciting, and it's terrific

02:56:41.780 | to see a world that I think generally is in decline,

02:56:44.180 | yet there are these pockets in which people

02:56:46.460 | are still creating new ventures and new ideas

02:56:50.420 | and new things, that inspires me and it gives me hope

02:56:53.800 | that that is not dead, that in spite of the decay

02:56:56.700 | that's in our culture, there's still pockets

02:56:58.580 | where that spirit of being human is still alive and well.

02:57:03.460 | - Yeah, they inspire me as well.

02:57:05.340 | Yeah, and they truly live with a capital L,

02:57:08.140 | and maybe I can do a star, maybe we can also put

02:57:12.520 | a little bit of love with a capital L out there as well.

02:57:16.140 | Yaron, you knew I would end it that way, wouldn't you?

02:57:20.860 | Yaron, Yaron, thank you so much, this is a huge honor.

02:57:23.820 | I really enjoyed the debate yesterday,

02:57:25.420 | I really enjoyed the conversation today

02:57:26.940 | that you will spend your valuable time with me,

02:57:29.620 | it just means a lot, thank you so much, this was amazing.

02:57:33.280 | Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:57:35.300 | with Yaron Brook and Yaron Hozony.

02:57:37.780 | To support this podcast, please check out

02:57:39.820 | our sponsors in the description.

02:57:42.060 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Edmund Burke.

02:57:46.300 | The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil

02:57:49.380 | is for good men to do nothing.

02:57:51.700 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you

02:57:55.380 | next time.

02:57:56.220 | (upbeat music)

02:57:58.800 | (upbeat music)

02:58:01.380 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Nationalism Debate: Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony | Lex Fridman Podcast #256

Chapters