Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 That Scott is here because I'm at a hotel where the evacuation. So Scott, give me a hand here.
Speaker 1 00:00:18 Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you, Jennifer. Good luck with the declaration. Uh, thank you everyone for joining us for access to the pill. And we are very pleased to have him here also. Uh, David Kelly, he's the founder of the audience St. Regulars. Dale. Let's see everyone. Um, we're going to start things off with some basic questions, and then I'm gonna invite anyone that wants to ask a question to come up on stage. So, um, we look forward to this patient.
Speaker 0 00:00:48 Well, then we can do the interface with the audience.
Speaker 2 00:00:52 Thank you for that. I appreciate it. So, um, yeah, let's, uh, let's get started. Um, you know, I, I think, uh, I'm going to be a, we're going to be having you on our show on Monday. So I just, uh, just to some basic background, I know that, uh, you know, you're originally from Jamaica and you came here, uh, at age 20. Uh, you may have shared this story with others, but I'm just curious of just some of the circumstances that, uh, you know, that brought you here and just what some of your, uh, you know, your, what was going on during that time.
Speaker 3 00:01:34 Sure. Um, so I came here, uh, to the states that in my 21st year I had just turned 20. And, uh, I mean, I, I decided I wanted to be an American a long time ago, uh, from, I was a child as far back as I can remember myself and grad did high school there and did also what's called it. And I went to a British school and Jamaica is based on the British model. So we did a levels which is kind of like advanced high school. And then I worked as a, uh, investigative journalist for two years. And during which time I discovered I was reading a lot of philosophy for my book. It was about 14 content Nicha and brush and Russel, but, uh, they didn't really penetrate my soul until I found, um, the works of Iran had written some bad poetry and a friend of mine said, you know, use the word ego and high.
Speaker 3 00:02:26 So she gave me I Enron's books and I started with believe it or not. Um, the romantic manifesto and introduction to objectivist epistemology first, because I didn't like the fountain head. I disliked it enormous when I first started it. I of course fell in love with it, but I started with the non-fiction and that gripped me intellectually. And I turned to the Fountainhead and then, and route to America, I discovered I, I started reading and finished up a shrug, uh, but it was really iron rant who I decided I was going to get a PhD. Um, I wasn't sure whether it was going to be one in literature or philosophy, but after I read the Atlas shrugged, I decided it felt like a vocational calling. Like I really have to be this philosopher and I want to be a writer. I want, I'd always planned to write books as a child growing up.
Speaker 3 00:03:15 I had always writing, it was always taking notes on future books that I would write, but I thought I would be a novelist and get a PhD in literature or something like that. And, um, and write general nonfiction books. But Ron was really the one who changed my mind, her her works, I should say, and finding a vocational calling and becoming a philosopher. And then of course, going on to write several books. Um, but she was, her works were very instrumental in penetrating my soul because they gave me a method of cognition. They gave me a sort of integrated, comprehensive way of looking at things in terms of principles, which I had not caught from Bertrand Russell or nature, or even contrary. Um, and some of the philosophers that I read,
Speaker 2 00:04:01 I'm curious just about, uh, you may be more than most people had an experience of, you know, coming over here and, you know, like ground, I think seeing that, that maybe things were moving in the wrong direction a little bit. I mean, did you identify with that with her?
Speaker 3 00:04:21 Well, when I first came to America, which was in 1985, I must say that I was so enormous of the country. I know the culture that I just soaked up. Everything I lived in this land of eight years, uh, did my undergraduate at Georgia state while working four jobs before I got a scholarship to do my PhD. But I must say that in college, I did, I did see the antecedents of what today we would call cancer culture, woke ism. I mean, I was in college in 1988 where Jesse Jackson formed alliances with a whole bunch of black, black student organizations chanting, chanting, you know, whole, whole, whole Western SIF has got to go. And I remember saying, oh, dear Lord, please give me at least 20 years to become a professor so I can, I can really have a go at it. And I've been a professor for 25 years now.
Speaker 3 00:05:09 It's all come crashing down. It's all over. Um, the education, the university is dead, but I did see signs. I did, you know, th this was back in the ear of Dwayne's dead white European males, which was being banded about, um, so I saw the early signs and I, without being anything of a prognosticator, I was able to sort of project how the proselytization of the classroom that I witnessed in the eight is also the burdening, um, and not so Bergen and proselytization of the classroom and politicization of the classroom. I knew I could see that in about 20 years times the chickens would come home to roost, but I, I didn't share her virulent attack on the culture as being completely bankrupt because I saw so many vectors and avenues for rejoinders and for, um, you know, um, counterfactuals and, and just to dissent. And, and, and it seemed like as if people were still reading books, important books were being written. You could turn on, um, Dick Cavett and you could turn on, um, Charlie rose and even Phil Donahue, uh, was still hosting serious and serious thinkers on their programs. So I still had a lot of hope that the tide would turn and that the country that I had adopted as my own would not fall into the kind of disrepair and complete bankruptcy and nihilism that I think, I think I, in my view, we are now ensconced in.
Speaker 2 00:06:42 Sure. And, uh, I do want to encourage other people to raise your hands. They don't want to have to come from us, but, uh, Jennifer was kind enough to provide me with a list of questions. Um, Demetrius asks, uh, thoughts on, do you have thoughts on Metta modernism? I, I'm not sure what that,
Speaker 3 00:07:04 Well, I don't like when people ask questions without defining their terms and say by modern modernism, I mean, I have no idea what the term Metta modernism mean. I know what postmodernism mean. And I think Steven Hicks and other people have done a tremendous job at defining what postmodernism is, but I wouldn't dare to advance an answer to a question, the definition of which a, of a term of which I have no understanding of what it means. I've never even heard the term. I mean, I've heard the term Mehta modernism banded about by people, but I've never heard a proper definition, uh, give them to it. And I could, I don't want to conjure up what I think it could mean, or it might mean
Speaker 2 00:07:50 That's fair. Uh, Dr. Kelly, thank you for joining the stage. Do you have a question for a professor? You can unmute yourself if you do.
Speaker 4 00:08:08 Okay. Thank you. Uh, thank you, Scott and adjacent. I, uh, it was nice to hear your voice. Um, I wonder if we just go back to your, your narrative a bit, how did you, uh, once you had your PhD, um, and can you tell us a little bit about your academic career since then, um, and getting to the position you're in now?
Speaker 3 00:08:35 Right. So I actually did my PhD in four and a half years because I took a lot. I took, and I started college when I was 22, cause I came to America 20 and I, I took two years off after I got my undergraduate degree to read as widely as I could in everything I could put my fingers on from induction physics, to economics, to anthropology, depth, psychology, all of the collected works of young and Freud, um, military history. And I, I really spent those two years paying off student loans and, and reading voraciously. So it took me four years to do my PhD. And, um, during that time I was also teaching once I got my own class, um, the first thing I did was make up a syllabus and I taught, um, iron rounds. It was the first time I was teaching her epistemology, a very audacious moves to put it in conversation with parts of the organization, especially the posterior analytics by Aristotle.
Speaker 3 00:09:28 And, uh, so I, I, I always, I thought that was always rans, revolutionary and completely original contribution. And I say this, no, no. You know, having had a PhD for almost 30 years, that her contributions in the field of epistemology are enormous, the unique and original cause I've read the organ on, I've taught it. Um, so, and then I started teaching the virtue of selfishness and, and some of her, uh, assets and aesthetics. And I, I got a job at Southern Illinois university, which I had in Edwardsville, which I didn't like. So I wrote my first book, which was called becoming a cosmopolitan, what it means to be a human being in a new millennium, dealing with what it means to be a world citizen. And what's entailed by this. Uh, if it's a rating from one psyche strong, what round would call remnants of biological collectivism, tribal identities that is racial, ethnic national identities that form a constitutive part of yourself.
Speaker 3 00:10:26 And that got me the job at DePaul. And I subsequently wrote another book, um, beyond blood identities, which got me tenure. Uh, and then I wrote a third book, um, civil disobedience, um, and the politics of identity when they should not get along. That made me become along with articles that was writing scholarly articles along the way to that third, third book got me, um, full professorship quite early on in my forties. I was, I think the youngest person in my department to become a full professor and, um, and continue teaching ran, and then subsequently wrote two more books after that, which I think most people who read my Bible will know. Um, I ventured into commercial publishing, um, and have been writing commercial books and a few books in a few articles in the field of philosophy literature, uh, the connection between bipolarity Madeline's poetry and creativity, more specifically Sylvia Plath, and then Sexton's works.
Speaker 3 00:11:23 So it's been, uh, it's been, uh, uh, a sweet ride, although it's been a bumpy ride. I had a NASA tenure battle, and I know I have a lawsuit against my department because I wrote an article in favor of, um, radically pro Israel and wrote an article in favor of families, the Netanyahu annex in Judea and Samaria, which led to the students taking over the several buildings and leading, uh, uh, calls for my resignation. And that was censured by the faculty formally as a genocidal racist and a war criminal and narrow painter. I was, uh, there was a boy caught. That was that against my class. I know I have a lawsuit against my, my university, but, um, so it's been, it's been terribly difficult in one, it's been terribly easy professionally to write the books and the articles and to, and to gain ascendance in the profession.
Speaker 3 00:12:12 I'm a senior as they come. It's been quite lonely as an outlier, both as someone who, um, identifies as an independent conservative and someone who is a great advocate of Rand's philosophy and teaches her philosophy quite regularly. In most of my classes, I find a way of sneaking her in, um, just being an outlier for capitalism, for individualism, for, for the free market enterprise, um, has made me an outlier in not just the university, but I think in the academy as a whole, um, I'm not a leftist, I'm not a collectivist and the exact opposite of those gas, the phenomena. And, um, so I paid a price, uh, sort of ostracism in some sense, but I don't really care. I mean, I have a very thick spine and spine of Steve and I, I do what I think is right. And I continue to, to write my books and I write for a number of magazines.
Speaker 3 00:13:07 I'm a columnist for about five magazines and write these three articles a week or two articles a week. So, um, in some sense, the academy has been good to me. In some sense, it's been quite inhospitable to ideas that lie outside the orthodoxy of received wisdom, um, as defined by, you know, the sentinels and the Vanguards of academia. But, um, I'm very inspired by Rand's essay, how to lead a rational life in an international society or something like that. And so I, I just continued to speak the truth as I find it as I discover it and not to compromise. Um, but that's a little bit of my background in terms of becoming an academic and, and staying sane as an academic.
Speaker 4 00:13:58 Yeah. Um, but I just want to say, and then I'll turn it back to Scott that, um, you know, you are, um, uh, are, I think in any way should be a beacon to the many students I've talked with over the years who dropped out of grad school or got so indoctrinated. Um, and, and so, um, you know, brow beaten over the interesting Rand that they either brought down or, or, you know, just moved away from old Jackie visits. So, you know, your courage and resistance on that score and as well as productivity, I'd love to, you know, have you, you know, be more, uh, or send some of these students that I've dealt with over the years that hear your, uh, your, your story. Cause it's great. So
Speaker 0 00:14:51 Thank
Speaker 3 00:14:51 You. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:14:55 Great. And, uh, yeah, we do encourage everyone to raise your hands. If you have any questions for professor hill, um, I have another one here. They, they say other than objectivism, uh, where is the strongest, uh, kind of pushback to, uh, postmodernism coming from today?
Speaker 3 00:15:18 Interesting question. I mean, I think that outside of objectivism, you've got people like Helen pluck rose and James Lindsey who identify with being on the left, but, uh, they're independent thinkers who see the kind of Matt arcade and the sort of unsubstantiated claims that are made on behalf of postmodernism. Um, I think you're going to find it, but those individuals and Jonathan height is also one, who's not an advocate of postmodernism and has in his own way sort of shown that the antecedents of today's cancer culture, um, and today's woke what we'd call the bulk, the woke culture, um, in his coddling of the American mind. I mean, he sort of lays the groundwork for how much of that has arisen in our society. And, um, but I think the, in my experience as twenty-five years of being a college educator is that the biggest pushback comes from this people in the sciences who will have no truck with the idea that there isn't an objective reality.
Speaker 3 00:16:21 That is not a, that, that there are meaning tests that we, um, we use to appraise the truth or falsity of claims, um, that there are various criteria, uh, logical and empirical criteria for testing hypotheses before they become theories. And so I find it coming from the heart sciences, not from law surprising, which is as woke as they come, the illegal legal or law schools are bastions of disasters. I mean, I don't know what sort of lawyers we're going to then, what sort of perversions of justice we're going to have. But I find outside of objectivism, it's coming from two sources, independent liberals, like height and like clock rolls and Lindsey and others who are all fashioned liberals in the sense that they believe in truth. They believe that there are ways to adjudicate among truth claims. Um, but most of the liberals, the old fashioned liberals are terribly afraid. It's the scientists I have found who are more likely to sort of push back on the postmodern rot. And, um, and just through the production of the methodologies that they employ are the very antithesis of, um, what's advanced by postmodernism.
Speaker 0 00:17:43 I'm very grateful that very annoying, uh, speaker message has ceased. So, uh, JP, do you have a question for professor health?
Speaker 5 00:17:58 Um, not, not at the moment because I just came into the room, but I would love to, um, I would love to participate at, at some point.
Speaker 6 00:18:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was having a little problems there. Um, yeah. I wanted to ask professor hill since you've been a target of your students. Um, speaking of, um, I believe it was, you were mentioning Jonathan height. Um, he mentioned that, you know, his book, the coddling of the American mind and the way students attitudes have changed. I was reminded the other day. Um, well, before I say that he, he pinpoints the change to the mid nineties and being the first generation of students to grow up with social media. But I was reminded the other day, my mother was Dean of business at a college back east. And I remember during the nineties, so this would be the generation before Jonathan Heights', um, group of students talking about the change in students' attitudes even then. So, um, have you, I mean, even before the protest, the students took against you, had you noticed a change in students' attitudes and to education in general, or, um, was it, I mean, I don't think it could have been a complete surprise to you, but if, if you would like to comment on that, because certainly with Jonathan height was talking about, I think came even earlier, if my mother's representations were
Speaker 3 00:20:02 Right, thank you for that, Alan. I mean, I, I saw more than vestiges. I saw the sort of wholesale way in which, um, we were completely ensconced in a paradigm of cultural and moral relativism as a student, myself, which I, in my current book, what do white Americans own black hole, black people? I really talk about Atlanta because even as an undergraduate, I, you know, I did my research and I traced it back because I have a lot of thinkers to the 1960s where you have the rise of the victim studies or revolutionary studies, whether it be black studies, queer studies who gender and women's studies, post-colonial studies. These studies had a couple of things in common. One was to, um, criminalize reason and logic as being the constructs of waste as to why the European, uh, thinkers and one was to the second was to function as units of advocacy and activism and not learning and what they did.
Speaker 3 00:21:03 When you look at the methodologies of black black studies of women's studies, it was a complete attempt to undermine the traditional epistemological criteria that we had always had at her disposal for adjudicating among truth claims for verifiability, for, um, although the, the, the ways that we painfully arrive at discovering truth, those studies, those victim's studies, those revolutionary studies were very, very pivotal in engaging in what's called standpoint epistemology also in saying that, you know, unless you're a woman or unless you're a black or unless you're gay, um, there are two things. One is you can't have access to truth because all truth, very prac very much like the pragmatist, all truths are experientially located. You know, that is through my experience and my interest of my radical subjectivity. I have a truth that you can access. Um, and the old fashioned ways of caging truth were just racist and meant to keep minorities outside the domain of the ethical or the Pantheon of the human community.
Speaker 3 00:22:09 So I, I, I traced it back to the sixties. This is what I said. I said, oh Lord, just give me 20 years to sort of, uh, matriculate as a professor before, you know, the crap hits the roof. And, um, so I don't, I think I liked Heights book a lot, but I think it doesn't go far enough in, um, explaining how the self esteem movement and the touchy feely, you know, rewarding effort and then prioritizing that over, um, results, um, stemmed from something in critical theory. Um, and then in post the post-modern rise up the postmodern victims and revolutionary studies programs and the 1960s, which sent an ominous message. It sent a message that the universities exist primarily as bastions of activism and advocacy, and not as, um, centers where something like objective knowledge can be disseminated and imparted to students. The whole idea of objectivity the whole idea of, um, disinterested scholarship and dispassionate scholarship. And the idea that history itself could be taught objectively was completely discredited by these revolutionary studies programs. So that's where I would put that's where at least in my book and in my research, I have found, um, the biggest locator of this kind of, um, or the, the, the explanatory model for the kind of relativism and sense of entitlement and everything that hype wonderfully describes in his books as being entailed by the calling of the American mind.
Speaker 2 00:23:53 Thank you. Great. Uh, and anyone that wants to raise their hands can, uh, participate. Uh, we'll be glad to bring you up on the stage, um, price did you have,
Speaker 7 00:24:06 Oh, yeah. Um, yes, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. Um, interesting points, interesting conversation. Um, thanks for the thought provoking ideas, um, on that idea of like, you know, the attack on reason, objective truth, et cetera, what's your take on the vaccine controversies and the way that I would say an anti-scientific attitude seems to take hold amongst large segments or a significant factions of the population primarily on the right, but certainly not exclusively by any means. And I wonder how, what you're describing feeds into a distrust of science, a turning of the scientific revolution into scientism, which I get that critique. But to me, I'm just wondering what your take is my personal take is that a lot of the anti-vax, um, disinformation and exploitation is in fact, a betrayal of the scientific revolution and exactly what you're talking about when you get the pushback from scientists, hard scientists, biologists, public health, people, et cetera.
Speaker 3 00:25:09 I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, as a, this is the caveat. Let me just say, coming from a third world country where I received my first smallpox vaccination at seven, my vaccine for tuberculosis, my vaccine for malaria, I am so, so much of a vaccine that I'm crazy. I mean, I am fascinated against shingles and vaccine infants, um, uh, meningitis, because I've had meningitis and it's not pretty, uh, so, you know, and I based my information on, um, well, when you're a child, you just, you don't think about these things rationally, your parents, I think in terms of survival, you don't, you know, my mother had the vaccine drunk and his polio cause she was born in 1946. I think that the radical skepticism and the radical way in which people live in their own curated silos in which they self-select what counts as scientific and they self-select in terms of what they're going to subject to any kind of appraisal is very, very limited.
Speaker 3 00:26:11 And I've just been very dismayed at the extent to which the whole vaccination of in COVID has been politicized by both the left and the right. Um, I personally think that, you know, the evidence is there to suggest that if you are vaccinated, um, you're much less likely to die or end up in the hospital. And I think this is empirically unfolding over and over again, more the most, the majority of people who die from COVID are not vaccinated. No, um, that's their, that's their issue. And that's, you know, um, but I'm equally surprised at the reasons that are advanced for not wanting to be vaccinated. It's not, it has very little to do with actual scientific citing the site, the wonderful scientist, a lot of them coming out of Israel and the Netherlands, um, who speak within the realm of knowledge that they currently possess on which we have to make our decisions.
Speaker 3 00:27:12 It's not even based on that. It's just based on something that is so visceral, that is, um, it's a political response, not a scientific or a medical response that is, that is fueling a lot of the anti-vaxxers. Um, and I think that's, that's, you know, that's quite speaking apart from whether there should be mandates or that's a different issue, just the decisions, the criteria, the criteria that people use when they make these decisions about whether or not to get a vaccination around COVID it seems to have little to do with actual scientific evidence and is informed more by a kind of radical skepticism. That almost seems pathological to me in certain cases when the skepticism is taken to such a high degree of lunacy, that conspiratorial fear is that advancing themselves, that themselves are not backed by anything evidence. So, you know, I, I am vaccinated, I've got my booster and, um, and I use the same kind of judgment that I would use if I were going to get what I got my shingles shot.
Speaker 3 00:28:18 And I think there are a couple of other things I'm going to get vaccinated. I can say pneumonia. Um, so I love being stuck. I love needles. I love vaccinations. Um, and S as someone who travels a lot, who's been all over Asia, you know, uh, Vietnam, Indonesia, um, China, all of, uh, so all of the south America where I've lived for four or five months where you have to get vaccinated against, uh, inoculated against certain diseases. Um, I, I tend to worry a little bit at the subject subjectivity and the, the, the political motives that people have as opposed to being sort of parsing through various scientific poop viewpoints, and then making a rational decision. I wouldn't be able to fault someone if they said, look, I've parsed through a lot of what the scientists in Israel are saying. A lot of what the scientists in the UK are saying a lot about the science they're saying in America and my informed decision is that I don't think I should get the vaccine very, very little of that you hear from people who are radical. Anti-vax
Speaker 2 00:29:23 Great. Thank you. Uh, we're going to, yeah, we're going to go to JP and then we'll get to Jorge and Liberty, uh, Shamrock or, uh, right after that.
Speaker 5 00:29:35 Thank you, Jason. Can I ask, um, can I take the Liberty to ask a more of a question?
Speaker 3 00:29:43 Sure. Of course. Yes.
Speaker 5 00:29:46 So has, how did, how did the peer review start in science and has it become corrupted and turned into a democracy far more than it should? And the scientific method relegated adjust to mere paperwork?
Speaker 3 00:30:14 Well, you're asking me a question that's outside my sphere of knowledge. Um, I, I'm not in the heart senses and I, but I, I have sat on committees, um, in which I've reviewed, um, into disciplinary works between philosophy and, and say philosophy of science and philosophy of physics. And, uh, my understanding is that the peer review process in science, I can't speak to its origins, historical origins, but as it's, as it operates today is still much more objective and much more based on a consensus that itself is predicated on, agreed upon norms and protocols for judging what counts as proper science. Then you will find in the humanities, where has Peter Boghossian and Helen block rose and James incident in their unmasking of the chicanery. That's involved in peer review humanities when they wrote a bunch of mumble jumble papers and postmodernism, uh, informed by postmodern theory, and they got accepted.
Speaker 3 00:31:23 You will not, you'll be hard pressed to find something like that in the highest sciences. I, I, my experience has been because one has to produce empirical data. One has to, um, show that that data is replicable, um, in repeated settings. Um, and the reality itself demands that science and the peer review method be a lot more objective because there are certain results that are produced that must correspond with reality in the humanities. Unfortunately, you can spew any kind of conjectural nonsense, any kind of rubbish back it up with yeah. And get away with it. Um, so I can't answer the first part of your question cause I'm not in the science field of science and I have not taken it as my business to research how the history of the peer review in science operates. I will say having had experience with chemists and physicists and, and having reviewed, um, interdisciplinary papers in which physics and chemistry to a lesser extent biology, um, I'm reading a paper actually, right?
Speaker 3 00:32:30 No, by about just, um, for, um, an interdisciplinary journal and, um, just the precision, the lucidity of flawed the, the, the ex the sort of calendrical exactitude with which people pay detailed to empirical evidence and, and it, and it's amazing. I'm still hopeful that it's the hard sciences, um, that should be really, really protected. I think we've lost the humanities. They're just, they're just, they're gone. But the hard sciences are a little bit more, a lot more, um, scrupulous in, um, making sure that its peer review process, um, remains very, very robust and, um, is immune to the kind of, it's not entirely immune, but immune to the kind of politicization or politicized criteria that you find informing, let's say a paper in 19th century, um, 19th century novel, which I teach the Victoria novel or something like that.
Speaker 4 00:33:39 Um, this is David. Um, Jason is drawing a contrast between the humanities and the physical sciences, essentially the hard sciences, the social sciences are in between. Most of them are hopeless, but psychology is interesting. Um, because I, I I've worked with other people, uh, in cognitive science, which involve psychology as well as philosophy and other, other fields. And there's still, uh, among some people, a high degree of, uh, uh, concern with truth. Um, I most recently read a lot of stuff on cognitive bias literature, uh, for a project I was doing. And, you know, they're, they're very careful, a lot of, um, I don't know about the peer review exactly, but I read a lot of common galleries on other other thinkers who are engaged in the field and, you know, the methodology seemed pretty sound and the concern was getting the truth out, seemed pretty sound.
Speaker 4 00:34:47 Uh, on the other hand, I have to say that, um, heterodox academy was formed by John and Nate and several other people, um, as a result of a paper that was written actually my, um, graduate student, uh, was a Duarte and with hae about how the predominance of liberals and leftists in psychology blinded them, um, often to, um, you know, assumptions, they were building into their experimental, um, protocols and the calling for, you know, better, um, more diversity in that field. And that was, as I understand it, one of the origins of heterodox academy, so it's a mixed case, but there was some, some people in social science because is social science who are, you know, more like the hard scientists you described then like the, uh, the people in the postmodern lubricate.
Speaker 8 00:35:51 Uh, I'm sorry. Uh, Jorge, do you have, uh, uh, no, I was invited on stage. Um, it's more, uh, well, I guess I do, um, professor hill, nice to meet you. Um, I was interested in hearing, you know, the comments that you made were sounded like you were somewhat ostracized for, you know, taking the philosophical stances that you take. And this is, I guess it's more to, maybe it is a question, but it's also an inquiry to see if you're kind of aware of this, you know, Iran, you know, as a staunch capitalist. And I learned a great deal of my, um, you know, the premises that I have now about capitalism. I, I learned a great deal from her and, you know, in following and learning, you know, her, her philosophy, you know, it was interesting how that all led to, um, you know, economics and sound money and those things.
Speaker 8 00:36:58 And I think that one of the things that, you know, the socialism or the socialists have done is they've taken the upper, they've gotten somehow the upper moral ground, um, with the public at large, in terms of like capitalism is about greed versus we all know it's rational self-interest and, you know, the, the, the concept of money, they, people don't have this concept of money. So it was through this trail of philosophy that I discovered Bitcoin. And I was wondering how much Bitcoin is in your radar, or maybe the radar of other Objectivists or Atlas society. Uh, what I've discovered is that it very much is the, almost like the ultimate expression of capitalism in that it respects individual rights and, uh, you know, property rights. And it's very, very much private it's out of the hands of government. And, you know, we're basically everybody is a self sovereign and, um, it, it, it all the checklists of everything, you know, that Iran would define as, you know, what would the criteria for sound money now, United States, China, um, central banks have tried to destroy it and they cannot, um, because it's run by a code it's outside of you.
Speaker 8 00:38:35 There's no human that owns it or runs it. It's very decentralized. And lately it's as if the talking points are now with the socialists, you know, who very much want, you know, a modern monetary theory and, and to on steroids where the destroying the U S dollar through inflation, um, the, the way that it seems like they're wanting to attack Bitcoin is by, you know, associating it with extreme right-wing conspiracy types and, and so forth. And so the talking points are out there, and I'm noticing it's starting to hit the mainstream media, but I was wondering, I mean, certainly you have to be a capitalist to embrace Bitcoin. If you're a socialist who buys Bitcoin, you either don't know what you're doing, or you're a hypocrite. How much is this on your radar? Have you guys explored this at all? Because I just think that this is, you know, we're, we're, we're missing a great opportunity here. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are, what you know about it.
Speaker 0 00:39:45 I can also jump in Jason, unless you want to take that.
Speaker 0 00:39:53 Yeah. Sorry about this. Um, it is on our radar. Uh, we did an interview with Michael sailor, of course, he's one of the leading proponents of Bitcoin. Um, we also have coming up on January 27th. You can check the events section of our website. Um, professor Richard Salzman is a duke. Um, economist is going to be holding a seminar on the economics and politics of cryptocurrency. Um, I would say from our perspective, I like to think of Bitcoin as the Rearden metal of currency. It's, uh, it's a human invention and achievement. It's something that's, um, that's lighter, more portable, more secure than, uh, than conventional. And, um, and I do agree with you that it is something which is closer to what Iran saw as a proper currency, which should have been backed by gold or something that could not be inflated at when.
Speaker 8 00:41:08 Great. The go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:41:11 No, I just want to say I'm a student of it and I'm the biggest endorsement I could give is to say that I've just started buying. I won't say tons, but I'm investing in it and, uh, I can't speak authoritatively, but I'm learning through, um, a mentor, a Bitcoin, uh, someone who earns money while he's taking a shower and went from being a tennis coach to know just being a full-time dad. Cause that's how he makes us money. So, um, I, I'm learning as I go along by making my purchases and, and, um, I completely agree with Jennifer that it's, you know, it's just a, non-perishable durable, um, commodity that's outside the sphere of government intrusion. And it's probably the closest thing that we might have to something like a gold standard today. Jennifer is a term metal standard. I would, I would concur with that, but, um, but I I'm, I'm learning a lot about it. I'm, I'm very optimistic about it. It's status in our society. Uh, and, and I guess that's about as much as I can say, I'm not an expert on it. I'm learning and putting my actions where my mind is by actually making purchases and that sort of thing.
Speaker 8 00:42:29 Well, I highly recommend that you, um, read a book called the Bitcoin standard. It'll take the history of money back from, you know, caveman days, let's say through the evolution of society till now. Um, I also want to say one more thing. Um, there is a big the, the crypto world. Okay. It's split up between Bitcoin and everything else. Right. And so it really is almost like Palestine versus Israel, real Madrid versus Barcelona or Yankees red Sox. I mean, um, to a big coiner, anything that's not Bitcoin, they call it shitcoin excuse my French, but just to illustrate the difference there, there are fundamental differences between the two, some of it being a proof of work versus a proof of stake system, um, decentralization versus centralization.
Speaker 8 00:43:24 Right, right, correct. Right. Yeah. Let me finish this price. So, um, and please, then we do want to get onto, yeah, I just, I just wanted to say this and I think this is important. Okay. So, because they can't kill it, the central banks have decided to take a portion of the Bitcoin technology. Okay. Um, and they're creating their own digital currencies would call this a CBDC a central bank, digital currency, and this is going to sound really great. I'll just bring it up to you. So everybody here can look up, look up, look into it, the seat I'll land it. Give you 60 seconds on Landis. This the CBD seas are going to sound great. They're going to try and position is for universal basic income. They're going to, if you have a flood, you'll have money at the speed of light, but what they won't tell you is that within two to six months you will have, if you don't spend it, it'll go to zero. It'll kill savings. And it opens up the door for social engineering. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I just think it's a, it's an existential threat. I view it to individual rights and property.
Speaker 0 00:44:38 Hey, can we get to, uh, Liberty,
Speaker 2 00:44:44 Go ahead. Uh, Liberty sham, rocker. Thank you for your patience.
Speaker 9 00:44:51 Oh, not a problem at all. Not a problem. And, um, I just wanna make sure Jorge, uh, it feels like it got his question answered. Um,
Speaker 8 00:45:01 Yeah, I just wanted to bring the awareness. Thank you. You have the,
Speaker 9 00:45:05 Thank you so much. Um, my question actually, uh, could be for Jason or, um, for Jennifer for that matter. And, uh, my question is, um,
Speaker 9 00:45:21 I need an elevator pitch basically to describe how altruism, um, basically I have between my husband and I, we have five daughters and how could I elevator pitch twice explained to them that taking care of themselves is not selfish. And as it allows them to be able to give back more so you could still be altruistic, but, but have the selfishness to know that you've got to replenish yourself and you don't have to be a, um, to be like a martyr. And I was just curious as to a quick pitch from both of you to, uh, explain that to our girls.
Speaker 3 00:46:13 Well, I don't think, I don't think that they're being altruistic. I think they're being properly selfish in the way that Ron would define selfishness that is in taking care of yourself, who esteem yourself as your highest value. First of all, you have to steam yourself as a high, as a highest as your highest value in this life. And that whether it pertains to a proper diet, proper nutrition, exercise, choosing the right kinds of friends, rational, choosing the right kind of career, that one is being properly selfish in that respect, in the sense that one is pursuing actions, activities, values that are in one's self-interest that leads to longevity of life. That leads to a life of flourishing that leads to a life of rational happiness. So I don't know that they can have it. So that's not being altruistic. I mean, what would be altruistic is if they were to, in some sense, subordinate their own self-interest to the interest of other people that is to give away, to start making friends with that's just his friendship to start making friends with someone who's quite evil, but as lonely.
Speaker 3 00:47:24 And if one of your daughters said something like, well, there's nothing in it for me. I want to relieve you of your loneliness knowing full well that this is a malignant narcissist is going to attack her. And that's altruistic because she's subordinating herself as her rational self-interest and what's in herself interest to the interest of another person that is relieving their loneliness at her expense. So that's my take is that it is properly selfish, not in a sense, the colloquial understanding of selfishness, which means somehow, um, subordinating, uh, evaluating other people's rights in order to advance one's own self-interest, but properly selfish in the sense of pursuing values, pursuing the means that are required, that are conducive that are not an amical Tuan self-interest, but that are required for one's continued life as a rational being, and just going beyond mere survival, that will lead to a life of flourishing and thriving.
Speaker 3 00:48:26 Um, then if one wants to make the decision to help other people, um, that's, that's proper, but notice that you cannot help other people, I would argue unless you first act attend to the values that make you be the best, be rational being that you can possibly be. If you are, if you were to pursue values or pursue activities or actions that undermined your wellbeing, then you couldn't really, really give, give back. So so-called give back to society or be of service to anyone because you would have been compromised. You'd have had a compromised agency, a compromised psyche that would stymie your efforts to sort of help other people.
Speaker 4 00:49:13 Thank you. I just add, uh, Scott and Jennifer, um, there's an argument to be made. I've made it that, um, benevolence, um, including helping other people under certain circumstances is a legitimate part of an egoistic ethic. Um, it's in your self interest to forge good relationships with people. And that's what I mean by benevolence. And that is something that, um, can involve in certain circumstances, um, being charitable, helping others, um, with no immediate knowledge of what you're going to gain from it. Um, but still it is profitable and rational in the longterm.
Speaker 2 00:50:05 Great. Um, Roger and George, you're a forum on capitalism, the other,
Speaker 10 00:50:12 Yeah, no, I, first of all, I should thank Jennifer and David for showing up for that. That was amazing. Uh, brought a tremendous amount of value to that room. And, uh, the feedback that I got was, uh, overwhelming. And so, um, if we do something similar, I'd love to get you back, uh, to do something like that. Again, uh, do a question for Jason though, uh, professor hill, um, on this app and you've participated in some of these conversations around CRT. Um, I wanted to get your, uh, your thoughts on outside of CRT, these derivatives that are being taught and being relabeled as, as other things, but, but under the scope of bringing, uh, Frankfurt school thinking, um, and, and this, uh, critical theory into, uh, into the classroom, uh, like what advice would you have for parents? Um, you know, that, that are in a school district where some of these things are being taught, um, you know, aside from going to the school board and talking to the teachers, it like, would you recommend the nuclear option of, uh, you know, uh, pulling children out and looking at school choice? Like what, what practical tools do parents have if they're concerned about these things?
Speaker 3 00:51:33 That's a great question. Um, and, um, I'm really glad that you asked it because I am actually meeting with the mayor of Irvine, Texas through zoom, uh, by the invitation of a parent who is objecting to certain pornographic novels being taught to seventh, sixth, and seventh graders, um, with everything from the best way to perform oral sex, having anal sex, it's explicit in the novel called things called Jack of hearts. And she reached out to me and she's raising ruckus and Irvine by getting other parents involved. Um, I'm meeting with the mayor as, as an academic, as an expert on CRT. I've written about it extensively, uh, to talk to the mirror. So I think I kind of radical activism on the part of parents who can understand what in the name of CRT, which is an umbrella term, which is used to justify a bunch of egregious, um, actions that are that to me, see my child abuse against children who do not have the skills to, to, to contest them.
Speaker 3 00:52:37 I kind of radical activism on the part of parents to sort of get really involved in their children's education. I'm surprised at the extent to which parents will call me or have called me if I, if their child has gotten a, B or a C on a test in a nice way. Like, I just want to know what, why they got a C, but have no interest in the content of the material. And the primary objective is some Objectivists, don't like this term socialization. I will use it anyway, but the primary way in which we induct students into civility and civic behavior and being part of a individual, but nevertheless, part of the community is primarily through the parents, not the school I would say. And so, um, what I know is that superintendents and union leaders and, um, principals do not like confrontation. They sort of rely on the silence.
Speaker 3 00:53:36 Um, the recalcitrance of these parents and the minute parents start raking, uh, rockers, um, by demanding something like Amir, a meeting with the mayor of a tone, um, meeting with the supe calling for the resignation of superintendents, but having the facts to back up what you're saying, right. Not just being some sort of loud mouth, but showing actual excerpts from various books and articles that are being shoved down the throats of these students. Um, and then, uh, you know, I think that's the best way first. Um, I'm not an advocate of public education. I must say, you know, I think people's procreative choices. They're fiscally responsible for their procreative choices, but we do have a system of education, public education, and once it exists, um, the full, because the reason I I'm a little reluctant is because the charter schools are as woke as they come, there's growing, uh, uh, evidence to show that, especially on the east coast, in New York, in Boston, that these charter schools are mimicking and aping the curricular, uh, that we find in the public schools. So I'm not even optimistic about the charter schools, I think a more, a revel, a more do you call it nuclear revolutionary role has to be played by parents who really, really take the task, those policy makers that, um, make the decision as to what students are being taught in the classroom and become vigilant vigilantes and warriors on behalf of the, the rational minds of their children.
Speaker 2 00:55:13 Good stuff. Uh, I think we can squeeze in Jimmy I co-host of Liberty Shamrock.
Speaker 11 00:55:21 Yeah. Thanks for having me up there. Um, yeah, I too was part of that, that room that Roger had, and that's what kind of struck my interest in the house society. I liked a lot of things I heard there, um, was more people would have stuck around for the duration, but it wasn't very long room. But anyways, my, my question here is I wanna take what Jorge was saying about Bitcoin would take it a step farther. Um, this is just my kind of theory, but I don't believe we live in a capitalistic society. I believe it's more of a corporatist or corruption of some corrupt form of capitalism, but it's definitely not true for free market capitalism. So what would you, would you be in favor of in 1913, they created a federal reserve, which centralized our monetary system. Would you be in favor of just abolishing the fed and just getting rid of that?
Speaker 3 00:56:19 Yeah, I've gone on record as saying abolishing the IRA, IRA, IRA, the IRS about an income tax. Uh, I think I stand here with rent, uh, and for the complete separation of state and economics, um, that the government functions as an arbiter and the holder of contracts and, and, um, that the federal government, the federal, the feds encroachment on private property and the, uh, sort of the very circuitous ways, um, and seemingly inconspicuous ways in which private property is really talk about inheritance tax is one of my favorite things, um, functions as what Graham would call illegal legalize legalize, um, conmen lists, legalized theft, really. Um, so yes, the answer to your question is absolutely. Yes. Um, if the government provided the services that it's really supposed to provide, and don't go beyond that, then I see no reason for a blow totalitarian, um, regime that we're fast approaching.
Speaker 3 00:57:35 I would say one thing, I, I still think that this is a capitalist society in the sense that, you know, there are, there are constituent of definitions of capitalism and we're approx. We haven't we're, we have, we approximate pure capitalism, but we haven't gotten there. I don't think we've ever had anything like really, really pure capitalism. Um, but I think there's still necessary conditions that give the definition it's intact. It's conceptual heft that are in place that still allows us to say predominantly speaking, America is still basically a capitalist society. People might disagree with me on that one.
Speaker 0 00:58:12 Thank you, Jason. Uh, that takes us right up to the top of the hour. So, um, want to thank everybody for coming for your great questions? Thank my buddy Scott for helping me out here, uh, as I'm, uh, undergoing these various emergencies here in Austin. Um, and, uh, I want to invite all of you to come and join us back on Tuesday. We're going to have a clubhouse with Rob . He's actually going to be talking about, um, education and looking for some of these solutions to the intensifying acrimony and, and, um, struggle that we're having over these curricula and the kind of content that's been. Uh, that's being teaching, uh, having been taught and he's looking to some European models of school choice. And then on Tuesday, uh, we're going to have another clubhouse with another one of our senior scholars, Richard Salzman, again, he's the economist on our staff. So, um, perhaps we can talk a little bit more about Bitcoin, although the topic of that particular clubhouse is going to be our price controls coming. So, um, thanks everyone. And, uh,
