Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 All right. So this topic, um, I've been thinking about for a long time. I actually, um, it's part of a, it was part of a book project that I started about, well, I've been researching it 15 years ago and it was a, a book on foreign policy that took me 15 years to research and then seven years to write that outage actually canceled. When I wrote my infamous pro Israel piece in the Federalist three years ago, they promptly canceled my contract. And so 700 pages of 15 years of work got, uh, canceled, which is good, cuz it gives me a chance to cut it down to 300 pages. But this was actually a chapter 10 of a, of a chapter 10 of a title of the book called moral rogue nation states failed states and the destruction of political happiness. So I, I really began thinking about this connection between failed states and rogue states and how they manage to, um, really compromise people's capacity to achieve both personal happiness.
Speaker 0 00:01:07 And then I began thinking of political happiness, which was a term, I think Hannah Arran developed both. She, she, she toyed with it, but I'm not sure that she really developed it fully. So I thought it would be interesting to sort of develop this notion of political happiness, which I, I can't exhaust in a 20, I intend to take about 20 minutes to talk about it, but to sort of just like abstractly flesh, flesh it out. But first talk about why the idea of a rogue state is completely inimical. What is a rogue state and why a rogue state is inimical to any form of what I'm gonna say is political happiness. Um, so when we talk about a rogue state, we're really talking about a state that violates the foundational letter or spirit of the law that binds, you know, the moral league of, of moral nations of the world, uh, that is there.
Speaker 0 00:02:03 They are states that, uh, violate free trade and free markets, human rights and individual rights, gender and racial equality, bodily integrity, um, uh, either constitutional republics or democracies and transparent governance, freedom of association and a religious affiliation without persecution, the right to one's conscience and the judgments thereof, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, freedom of association, the right of each individual to cultivate a life plan that corresponds to his or her irrational choices and the values in the name of personal autonomy, that is the right to acquire property and the right to have one's property rights protected. So moral rogue states reify the spirit of among other things, the spirit of anarchy that characterizes the global commons by failing among other things, to ratify the international political sphere with treat this laws protocols proliferations referenda that would add law and order to it in a way that secures a lasting piece for all of us.
Speaker 0 00:03:10 So, um, we can make sense of the term even before president Clinton became the first I think to give it its first coinage in 1994 in Brussels, by reference to historical behavior of any state that behaved with belligerence and with, uh, without impunity towards other states. So the idea of a rogue state principles is some semblance of order and established customary law in the public imaginary and in, in the international public sphere. Now, traditionally there have been four transgressive criteria that have been used to determine the nature of a rogue state. In theory, a state had to one pursue a weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, severely abuse, its own citizens and virulently oppose or criticize United. Um, so throughout the history of us foreign policy, the latter has revised its conception of a rogue state, um, depending on political expediency and the shift in criteria that I used to determine who is, or is not an ally.
Speaker 0 00:04:17 Um, so Saudi Arabia, you know, which is the second largest sponsor of, of, of, of, of terrorism through its SW faith, um, is not classified, has not been classified as a, as a rogue state, but it's clear that rogue state, given that it kills more Americans than any other countries in the world, um, and routinely abuses citizens through beheadings trials without representation, absence of due process, et cetera. Um, what is clear is that the definition of a rogue state advanced by the United States under several administrations, uh, over the past decades fails to capture the subtlety of behaviors exhibited by several states and nations that ought to still render them consumable under the label rogue states. But a rogue state really is one that D ratifies the structural alignment of human moral personalities from their foundational access access. And the essence of its moral violence is divestiture of the entire juridical personality of persons by foisting a political system or, or morality that is antithetical to man's nature quo, man.
Speaker 0 00:05:24 So I just wanna talk about what I mean by moral violence and then go on to talk about the nature of political happiness. So when I talk about moral violence, I'm talking about the system systematization and politicization of Morice beliefs, attitudes, and schema that are codified into ways of legally dismantling the coherency of the self by legally prohibiting the individual from creating life plans in the free service of his or her life. It is the legal imposition of soul killing anti-life plan through authoritarianism, totalitarianism, dictatorship, Sharia law on individuals who have no choice, but to contest it and no opportunity to negotiate. And all right, so rogue states in some sense are antithetical to the rational construction of a life plan and are antithetical to what I'm gonna call, um, is political, um, political happiness. Okay. So, uh, onto political, a sketch of what I mean by political happiness.
Speaker 0 00:06:38 So what does it mean to say that one enjoys political happiness by living within the geographic demarcation and sovereign jurisdiction of a nation state or a nation or a state? I think at minimum, it means that one enjoys a certain degree of confidence in the state to execute its duties with regard to all citizens on some level, a thin conception of such duties would be the basic protection of the individual rights of each citizen. That is the unassailable and inviable protection of body integrity, right? That the, as I've said previously, the fail state does not protect bodily integrity. Um, the prohibition of any arbitrary use of force against an individual and any initiation of force by the state against others, the protection of his property and his right to pursue the private property ownership of property as a sort of metaphysical concomitant of the use in application of one's reason to what we've ran would call the problem of human survival, which a rogue state certainly does not protect.
Speaker 0 00:07:44 And the free exercise of one's consciousness of one's conscience, prop, sorry, and the right to hold, whatever ideas, one deems to result from the thinking one has done or in a free society from what one has failed to do in state cannot compel an individual to think in a free society. The state only can refuse to save individual from the consequences of not thinking, um, freedom of association, freedom of religious affiliation, worship freedom to marry whomever, one chooses to marry without state discrimination, based on race, ethnicity, gender nationality, or religious affiliation, and all inalienable rights enjoyed by citizens under the liberal states are those conditions which allow persons to interface with the state in a way that allows them to trust the state, to protect the basic conditions, social conditions that are required, um, for their survival as human beings. So political happiness, as I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 0 00:08:44 And as I was thinking about it 10 years ago, when I first started the book, uh, is a condition of experience wellbeing in the liberal politic and this wellbeing and eventual flourishing can only be guaranteed with the requirements of one's nature as a human being when they're politically secured by the state in the form of rights that are enshrined and protected constitutionally, which of course the fail state and the real state certainly does not do. And this enactment on the part of the state engenders confidence in the citizens. And we can say that this confidence is the first mark of a former political happiness. So when people talk about social cohesion and political trust, right, they're talking about expressions of political happiness, social cohesion and political trust are nothing more than the manifestations or the expressions or the forms that result as a result of people feeling political, political, happiness, you can't have social, you can't have political happiness unless there is social cohesion and political trust.
Speaker 0 00:09:59 So they're all parasitic on a negative conception also of Liberty that's rooted in a society. If I had time, I would go on to explain why a positive conception of Liberty like the right to basic income, the right to an education. All these positive rights are actually inimical to positive, to political happiness, but maybe I'll save that for another time. So the respect of, and the upholding of our rights create a, a space and the social conditions where citizens can literally enjoy each other as compat, as friends and allies and the space where the social conditions of rights are met, allow citizens to breathe and interact without an aura of suspicion and a spirit of resentment. And I'm gonna unpack this. Why is this the case? Because laws are objective and transparent and rights are notable and obvious, and each is deemed equal before the law, even if we're not meta physically equal, which we certainly are not.
Speaker 0 00:11:01 And even if we're not equal in terms of income distribution, which in a free society, that just simply cannot be the case, the constitutional liberal state, unlike the rogue state and the abysmal fail state allow for allows for play and a state of becoming and continued moral evolution among the citizenry in spite of the disparities that exist among individuals. So each becomes what I would call causally co implicated in the life plan of the other by means of a loose network of interated systems. And this is because of, you know, constitutional Republic, such as ours. We have a system of capitalist capitalism where I'm gonna use congen terms here. We will, the ends of others through free trade, through voluntary association. We will, what con would call, although con wouldn't be agreeing with what I'm saying here. A kingdom of ends of other people through voluntary association, voluntary trade.
Speaker 0 00:12:07 So each celebrates this sort of systemic relationality among the co implicated nature of life, because the nature of rights and objective laws create a separateness and distance among human beings for each to cultivate a degree of independence and individuation that all forms of mature lives are called to perform. So I think that political happiness is a, what I would call a dialectical relationship between a separateness board of individuality and the participation forged in capability of shared interests, common ties and bounded activities that constitute a common civic and public life, and also a shared PR and a distinct private life. And the result itself is a compound individual where agents have become constituted, not by closed ended communal relationship, but what I would call multitudeness relationships with relevant, significant others. That is those who pose, I think in Randy terms value relevance to one's life and one's existence.
Speaker 0 00:13:16 So political happiness on this account is an ability to achieve a degree of fluency between the self executing. The life plan one has called for oneself, and the relationship one has to the state because the state has fulfilled its role obligation of leaving the individual free to pursue his life plans or her life plans. And secondly, by actively providing the sociopolitical infrastructures and the juridical machinery to ensure that such issuances of life plans are not, not episodic, but systemic ways of life for each individual. So political happiness cannot be the state mandating a conception of the good for the individual and the attendant, good life emanating from such a conception, nor can it be individual and individual struggling to carve out a good life against suppressive, strictures, and mandates of a state that has configured a different version of the good for its citizens or in the case of failed states or rogue states cannot provide even a fair material state apparatus for the protection of cons of such conceptions of the good life, right?
Speaker 0 00:14:22 So paradoxically political happiness can't consist in the state protecting your conception of your good life because that's a violation of Liberty. Um, so political happiness is not simply a relationship one has with oneself and with one's comparate, it is no, it is simply an ability to cultivate among other things, a lifetime, not blocked by the state. So it is fundamentally a reciprocal give and take relationship with the state where the liberal state acting as an employee of the citizen, negotiates the terms of its employment through a series of contest activities that are ratified and endorsed by the citizens. And the citizen is ultimately mistress and master in, in her and his own house. And happiness comes from the degree of control and autonomy that has exercised in that house. And freedom in the house of the liberal state is not a luxury granted by the state, but a profound requirement of the nature of man, of the individual based on his indubitable, Sue generous nature.
Speaker 0 00:15:28 And I would say that freedom and its core Corolla is, is a metaphysical concomitant to life whose alternative as we see in fail states and rogue states is death. And I say this against the backdrop of accrued executive powers that we're seeing being exercised by governors and state legislators, whose, who same a case of abortion are now becoming not employees, but are becoming our bosses. Um, and defining for example, uh, issues that should be left at individual like conceptions of when personhood begins like governors and state legislators defining personhood as beginning in the embryonic state of fetal development. So the judgment of our servants cannot supersede ours in a way that compromises our ability to make sense of the good lives that we have carved out for ourselves. I'm almost done. So in a state, in which the act, the state actively discriminates against minorities like blacks or women, or any minority such as the individual, as Rand said, another condition, which makes it challenging for political happiness to get achieved is the fact that the moral reputation of citizens under Deju discriminatory state suffers in a way that undermines what I would call political self-esteem.
Speaker 0 00:17:00 So residents cannot enjoy a robust and healthy moral reputation because by association with a bigoted state, they also take on its, let's say racist identity and the promulgated ethos that comes from such an identity. So persons from a racially bigoted state, such as United States before I would say the passage of the 1964 civil rights act are thought to suffer along. Some are thought to suffer along with their representative political actors and are complicit as citizens from some sort of arrested political development. They're just congenitally incapable of getting their acts together, goes the reasoning and, uh, cognitively they have failed to achieve some semblance of moral standing in relation to the constitutional ideals, laid out in the govern, govern governing documents for all persons. So a confer of moral deficiencies imposed on them and concomitant, I believe that this Launa in their per perceived agency, leave them harass of the requisite recognition that shores up their political self-esteem and political happiness is thusly political. Happiness is thusly compromised. There is so much more, this is all abstract and there's so much more that I wanna say, but, um, it's four 19. And I said, I would see Jennifer, very punctual. I said, I would take no more than 20 minutes, um, because, and I'm one minute short of my, uh, my goal because I do want, um, more of this to come up, probably in the questions. So at exactly four 20, I have stopped.
Speaker 1 00:18:40 Okay. <laugh> wonderful. Very, very interesting. Um, I want to encourage all of you in the room, please share this discussion, share it on clubhouse, share it on social media and, uh, raise your hand. Let's uh, get a conversation going. This is a wonderful opportunity to ask your questions of our senior scholar, Jason Hill, uh, John, lovely to see you here,
Speaker 2 00:19:12 Professor hill again, that is profound. I mean, it, it's a tour to force. It's really good thinking. And I, I, it's a crime that your book was suppressed, man. That's really good. Um, the one thing that I was thinking about, which I think you, you, you touched on and I'm sure you have a good answer is the interface between the individual and other individuals, and then how that reconciles with the state that presumably somehow they give, uh, silence some kind of ascent to, or silent consent. It, it it's that's would be the area where I would need a little more fleshing out. Thank you.
Speaker 0 00:20:02 Right? Yeah. Thanks. Thanks John. So, um, this, this is interest. This is, this is very interesting because I think, um, capitalism as ran properly recognized and of course bond Mesis and, and uh, other thinkers, but Rand was the one who really gave a moral justification for, for capitalism and not, and not defended it based on some sort of social expediency or social utility value recognized that I don't think she would use the word socialization. In fact, I think she was against the term socialization. I, I would take disagreement with her here, but, but let's just use another term. You know, that it's through our interaction with our, our compatriots, our fellow human beings that we, we morally grow that we, that we develop, we matriculate, we ex we share our values. I would say also that we not only share our values, that we sometimes, um, acquire new values by emotionally changing in ways.
Speaker 0 00:21:08 Um, and I'll give you an example. Um, we hold certain attitudes. We hold certain beliefs and through our exchange with our friends or through our exchange with associates, we come to have a change of heart about something, right. Um, we come to, um, have our ideas contested in a civil manner, and we have a change of view, um, separate and apart from intrusion by the state. Um, so left to our own devices so long as we're not violating each other's rights. I think I wanna say that our political happiness is really, really dependent. And I guess ran would say something, cuz I'm, now that I'm trying to give a purely objective reading of political happiness, but I'm trying to, to have it be done in the spirit of what I think would be an objectives idea of political happiness is that, um, that something like benevolence arises when we are free without reprisals from the state or without some sort of, you know, what's really going on in cancer culture and more supremacist culture where, um, if we contest each other's feelings, uh, where we lose our jobs or we're canceled, or we, we each other that there's a healthy dose of growth and a healthy dose of, um, of, of, of maturity that takes place without an interference on the part of the state.
Speaker 0 00:22:45 And, um, you know, I think something like loving versus Virginia in 1967, where anti MIS nation laws where the Supreme court universally unanimous, I should say struck down, um, um, that case, it was one of the few cases in us history where you had a unanimous ruling by the Supreme court, um, where people could really form conceptions of the good life for themselves without any interference on the part of the state, uh, was a really, really good thing. And here we saw was a, was a, was a case where political happiness was increased because people were barred by, I think, I don't remember the name of the term was sort of something, the racially racial integrity act that that was used in Virginia to prevent people from different races from getting married. So, um, and I know objective is disagree with me here because I am a defender of the 1964 civil rights act, although I'm fully aware that it was a violation of property rights, but in my latest book, I really, really go out on a limb to argue why I think it was given the, um, collusion between the state and the citizenry, um, and the, how the state managed to produce racists out of non-racist.
Speaker 0 00:24:12 Um, it was strategically, uh, justified. I'm really going out on limb here violation, um, that played a particular role, um, in making non-racist out of, um, there, there are, there are times when the state has a, has a proper job of interfering, um, when something is so egregiously wrong and evil, but those cases are quite rare. Um, so I think the state should basically stay out of private affairs of people and allow people to have disputes, allow people to interface with each other as they would like interface with each other. And, um, that is very, very that freedom and that radical freedom is very, very conducive, I think, to what I'm taking to be a former political happiness. Thanks, Jason
Speaker 2 00:25:11 At
Speaker 0 00:25:12 You have something else
Speaker 2 00:25:15 SOIC, uh, knowledge of Rand. Um, my impression generally is that she doesn't really pound the drum of property rights and self ownership as much as I would like, or, um, the non-aggression principle, both of which both principles seem like they're central to your thinking. Is that true?
Speaker 0 00:25:48 Oh, I think she, I think, and David can chip in here. I think Ron pounds, the issue of property rights more than I do. I mean, I think she was completely against the 1964 civil rights act. She thought in that essay on racism, that it was the most egregious violation of property rights that the country would, would witness, um,
Speaker 2 00:26:08 Allow me to backtrack. I, I, let me back up. I, I, she it's, it's self ownership is what I'm really talking about.
Speaker 0 00:26:17 Oh, self ownership. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:26:19 That's what I mean, that's what I should have said.
Speaker 0 00:26:23 Um,
Speaker 2 00:26:24 She was pretty big on self ownership too.
Speaker 0 00:26:29 Yeah. I mean, David, you wanna chime in? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:26:33 Yeah. I, I don't think ran used the concept of self ownership. She talked, uh, about the right to life, which in many ways to the same thing, but the self ownership, um, idea goes back to Locke who combined the rights of life, Liberty, and property into a single concept of property we own ourselves. And, you know, I think that's a great metaphor, but ownership, literally ownership means I have something, um, to think for myself that I own control, um, have the right to use and dispose of you can apply some of those terms to, uh, uh, uh, you know, to individuals. But I think it's at best kind of metaphor. It's a very powerful and useful one. And I, I use it all the time, but it's strictly speaking. I don't think it's, uh, the best way philosophically of making the point that individuals have the right to life. Um, and which entails all the things that Jason was talking about, um, under the heading of political happiness
Speaker 4 00:27:46 At, at risk of talking too much. Um, I, I, and I do
Speaker 1 00:27:50 Wanna get our chairman in here. Of course. So if you wouldn't mind, I'm gonna, um, ask, ask our chairman Jayla to, uh, thank you for joining us, Jay.
Speaker 4 00:28:02 That's great to be here as always Jason fabulous. Uh, I did have a, a, a question reading your book. I became convinced of your position on the civil rights act, but it was also tied to the idea that after that many years of government mandated segregated segregation, that they needed to be kind of a jump start for lack of using my language and not, not yours. And it would've then seemed to me to be proper, to put a sunset on those requirements or the application of that law. Is that something you would've said? Yeah. That makes sense. Meaning after, you know, a hundred years or some period of time, that would have to then say we've done it.
Speaker 0 00:28:55 Thanks Jay. Yes, absolutely. And I, and I sort of hinted at that when I talked about the affirmative, although sort of amendments and all the, the, the, um, auxiliary measures that emanated from the 64 civil rights act, that there has to be an expiration. It's such an, it's such a violation of property rights. That one would have to be really, really cynical and almost, um, misanthropic vis Avi one S compatriots for it not to have an expiration date on it. That is one has to say in good faith, look, we are beyond, uh, the pale of that sort of racism and bigotry in this country that, um, without calling for an outright repeal of the 64 act that we, we, we, we need to scale back on some of the, uh, what's entailed in there. And a, a prime example of this is, um, religious Liberty in the sense, um, L G B T advocates who claim that they have a right to have their, their cakes baked by a religious owner.
Speaker 0 00:30:11 Surprisingly I've, I've come down on the, well, not so, so surprising on the, on the part of, of cake of, of, of, of the, the, the bakery owners and said that no, um, they do have a right to, um, to make those decisions on behalf, by exercising their conscience, and that you're free to go to somewhere else, um, to have your cake big. So, Jay, I, I, I agree with you. I think that as I call it in my book, it was a radical, radical Eugen moment in the history of, of, of America where, you know, the, the state had manufactured racist, even out of non-racist. There were, there were whites who wanted to rent rooms, hotels who wanted to rent rooms to blacks who just saw money, who saw green and the state mandated these laws. I interstate laws that says you can't do this.
Speaker 0 00:31:09 Um, so yes, there, there has to be some sort of exploration date on how far, um, the, the trespassing on private property or on property rights can, can go. And, and I, yeah, I, yeah, I personally think that we are, we, are we quite the opposite, Jay? I think if you look no at our diversity and inclusion programs that are not just in academia, but in corporations, um, and having worked in academia for 25 years, I can tell you that, you know, if you're a black person, especially a male and you have a C plus average, or a B minus average, there's no college, there's no college that will not send a jet plan for you. The progressivism that has taken over in this country, uh, is more pro trans more probl, uh, which is not to say discrimination doesn't exist, but it is not exist on the systemic level that, uh, existed prior to 1964, where we did have systemic systemic institutional racism.
Speaker 4 00:32:12 Yeah. And I think, I think that the advantage of having a sunset would've also made clear that we're preserving the principle that government has no general right. To interfere in, in the private sector and free choice among, you know, individual actors. So. Agreed, thank you.
Speaker 0 00:32:34 Yes, Jay, thank you.
Speaker 1 00:32:37 Yes. And Jason mentioned, uh, D diversity equity and inclusion. I want to encourage everyone who is in the, in California, uh, in the Southwest, and maybe even a few, um, who might wanna travel from afar. We have added, uh, to the programming of our sixth annual gala, which is coming up on October 6th in Malibu. Um, we're going to have a discussion between Jason Hill and Camille foster. That'll be, uh, moderated by professor Steven Hicks. So, um, you won't want to miss that in addition, of course, to our, uh, program of, um, having Peter D present the lifetime achievement award to Michael sailor. So, um, maybe we'll, we'll put a link up, uh, for discussion, um, towards the end of the conversation, but, uh, and again, I wanna encourage others, please raise your hand and join, um, in the discussion, but, uh, Jason, maybe you could also, as we're waiting for others to, um, to, to raise our hand, uh, share a little bit about what you've been going through at the university. Uh, the, the link that we previously had up there was about this, this controversy efforts to cancel you, um, what happened and where does it stand now?
Speaker 0 00:34:06 Right. Well, there was an article that was published today. Um, I reported a story on me. Um, I have a lawsuit against Paul as, um, is probably well known cuz it's been going on for two years based on a, uh, a, a very radically pro Israel article that I wrote in the Federalist in 2019 defending minister, Netanyahu's right. Israel's right. To defend its property. Judian Samira, which is quite often referred to as the west bank. Uh, and I was CED in an illegal way. I was, um, uh, subjected to a lot of harassment and hostile work environment and a, a faculty led boycott against my classes among other things, just a great deal of, there were four lawsuits that were filed. The judge wrote through and kept the hostile work environment. Anyway, this woman, um, that was ginger Hoffman who, um, uh, circulated an email to about scores and scores of my colleagues saying that I came from a shithole country <laugh> so that was the article that was published today.
Speaker 0 00:35:12 And, um, um, she found my defensive Israel, um, um, horrific, and I can't remember the adjectives that she used that they're probably not worth repeating, cuz they're probably not fit for discussion, but, um, anyway, they were horrific and atrocious and she said, Jason Hill himself comes from a shithole country. Um, and so the article was, was, was just outlining how hypocritical, you know, people on the radical left. Well, not so radical. She's just a leftist, uh, professor who identified feminist leftwing professor can be, she actually told a lie cuz Donald Trump, she tried to say that Donald Trump would have said that Jamaica was a shithole country. He never ever identified Jamaica a shithole country. So she's lying on the former president just to sort of sneak across her viewpoint or just to really harass me and to create a hostile work environment. Um, because I'm a, I'm an advocate of a support of Israel as, as you know, a light in that region of the world as the only democracy in that region of the world as a really the only defender of individual rights in that region of, of, of the world. I continue to support Israel and, um, as, just as an alter ego of America actually. And, um, so that's, that's, that's what the article is, is about. I encourage people to read it. It's on, it's on Twitter, it's all over Twitter. And
Speaker 1 00:36:43 Um, yeah, we, we put it up, uh, it's the pen link right now. So, um, anybody interested can read it there. Yeah. So, uh, again, wanna encourage you to raise your pen. There we go. Once, do you have a question or comment?
Speaker 5 00:37:05 I do. Uh, hi Jason. So nature of political happiness. One thing that I've been, uh, trying to revisit as of late has been sort of other definitions that we see of political societies and through, you know, rereading Russo, he's very much returned to the primitive. Uh, there, there can be no form of political happiness it's entirely unnatural. And at the same time you have the utilitarians arguing that there's no individual, right. We have to do the happiness for the most, for the most, in the many, and just reading all these different views. What I'm, I guess, considering how you would call the woke supremacist act on the one hand there is this, at least they seem to say, we need to care for the many and that collectives definition, but at the same time, the, through their actions that they actually have, it seems to be more of just pure destruction reversion sort of like the Jacobs, uh, back to a far more primitive state. And I I'm curious if there's any central political thought aside from everyone always saying, you know, cultural Marxism, are there other snippets from other thinkers, like you can identify that are really pushing, uh, the woke supremacist today.
Speaker 0 00:38:29 Um, you mean his historically speaking or contemp from the contemporaries from the contemporary team?
Speaker 5 00:38:38 Uh, sorry. Uh, like do you, because everyone seems to cite that cultural Marxism is what's influencing people today. Do you believe that more people are being influenced by utilitarian thinkers? Or do you think it's more people sort of appealing a bit to more Russo's ideas?
Speaker 0 00:38:58 No, actually, you know, I, I, I, I don't know that this little man who was writing on behalf of a Swiss Canton, um, had that all that much influence, I, I would actually put Hale before Russo, um, because I think that haggles, reification and idealization of a state, um, occupies much more of the global imaginary in the following way that is Wil supremacists really in some sense, are attempting among other things to inject a set of Orthodox beliefs, have them codified and have them be representative of some kind of a set of nationalistic tropes around which we should organize our lives and around which the state will sanction and the state will, will stamp it with it IM premature of its, its its authority. And the last resort of appeal will be the state. Um, I find that I find more of that coming out ofond idealism Andeon um, the, the extent to which Haal really sort of idolizes the state and prioritizes where the state supersedes or precedes the individual, um, much, much more than Russo.
Speaker 0 00:40:35 I mean, when I read Russo and I teach teaches the, not just the social contract theory, but the discourse on inequality, um, I just always shake Matt and says, you know, I, I say, well, he's just, he's just righted with this little tiny Swiss Canon, and there's no real application to a large heterogeneous society. So I, I place it more in line of Theon, conception of the state and all that's entailed by the ratification of the state and the secondary role, the extent to which the individual gains his or her identity through identification with the state. If you look at the work supremacists, um, they operate on that assumption, uh, that is, they're not just private individuals who, um, so I'll give you an example and then I'll, I'll move it on to other people who might, who, who wanna say something. Um, when I get emails from the administration saying, have you decolonize your syllabi?
Speaker 0 00:41:44 Have you, have you removed all? And by that, they mean, have you removed all dead white European males from your syllabi? I get, I get this from the administration, all of us get this from the administration. When the Wil supremacists tell me professor hill, we like you as a professor, but we're not studying John Stewart mail cuz he, you know, he was, um, he used to work for the east India company. We're not studying law cuz he wrote the constitution for the south Carolinas and we're not really going to read Aris stock because he was a defender of slavery. Um, this is really coming from the administration. This is coming from the pro provost office. Um, and when you look at the stuff coming through K through 12, these are all state sanctioned, um, imperatives. Um, these are not, I mean the walk schools, the private schools are not as well as ever because one thing about idea pathogens is that they're very, very infectious. They're very contagious, but they really are emanating from the state. And um, I think this is, this is more in line with the Hial conception of the state than from Russo or from a, a utilitarian notion of maximization of happiness. I, I just, I mean, I see that as pretty benign compared to what Hael had in mind. I dunno if Richard, I know Richard wanted something to say something if Richard wants to comment on that.
Speaker 6 00:43:11 Well, I didn't wanna comment, Jason. I just wanted to ask you a question, um, about political happiness and uh, I'm, I'm thinking of a gap between personal happiness and political happiness. If, if happiness is, we typically call the moral purpose of our life by a gap, I think of does your conception allow for the following? What about a case where some person or a group of people are fundamentally unhappy in their personal lives yet they live in a culture and a state that is that renders political happiness. It's a good state. It protects individual rights. So that would be a gap between the two, but the other one you can think of today, maybe we all might be personally happy in our lives, but very disturbed about the surrounding political authoritarianism. So there's a gap there as well. And in the first case, I'm wondering whether you think the unhappy people or group could be helped by just living in a healthier, uh, society, you know, with a responsible behaving state that's question one and question two in the today's context is the, is there a kind of stoicism that the happy people today can choose to live to immunize themselves from the broader deterioration?
Speaker 6 00:44:37 You know, that there's not political happiness, but rather angst and antagonism being spread. And yet we want to create a little universe for ourselves and be happy. I don't know if that makes any sense, but see what I mean about the gap between the personal and political happiness? I don't know if your concept capture that or whether that's meaningful or not.
Speaker 0 00:44:57 No, just very, very meaningful. I mean, I think to answer the second question, it would take what Rand would say, you know, intellectual or not intellectual, spiritual giants. Um, and I think that, you know, I wake up every day and I feel, I, I mean, I'm one who's I, I suffer from hypomania. So I'm just, you know, I I'm just moving, moving, working and take great joy from my vocational calling, which is to be a teacher and to be a writer. And, but, but periodically I do feel politically depressed. I feel like this country's going to the, the, to the dogs and that we're we're in the last days of the Roman empire. Um, and I really feel that we're a decline is register and I feel politically depressed my personal life. I'm happy with my professional life. Parts of my professional life are going well.
Speaker 0 00:45:46 Um, but I do think that it takes a kind of, um, spiritual heft to really maintain that kind of <inaudible> and that kind of sustain happiness because the, the social goods, so to speak, to use a role in terms I not a role, you know, but the social goods that I need to not let this kind of compartmentalized life, but to just feel a sense of attunement and flow, uh, in my life is missing. But I do think that, um, there is a, I do think that in order to be happy in one's personal life, um, one really needs to be ensconced in a political male, which gives us social goods to matriculate. Um, and here I'm thinking about something like engagement attunement. So when I think about attunement, I think of that as like the, my foundation in life. It occurs when the, when the world appears as a secure, rather than a hostile place.
Speaker 0 00:46:57 So when I, when I feel like I'm attuned in my world, it feels like I'm, it, it to be attuned is to be at home in my life. When I feel like I'm engaged in the world, it's engagement is built upon attunement. It's it's to be in the flow I'm in the flow to be engaged, is to be consumed by the task at hand and to be absorbed by it, to become lost in, in activity because my energy levels rise and my self consciousness sort of melts away because the institutions and the, and the, and the, and the, and everything's everything is working together. And I, so I, I kind of have a absence of a self-consciousness about what I'm doing, because everything is, is in harmony. And, um, to endorse my engagement with life is to affirm it, it is to say I yes, to a life that I'm leading.
Speaker 0 00:47:45 Um, and I feel just sort of contentment with things as they are, right. So it involves according a sense of success in the process, if not the outcome with how things are going. And so it's hard for me to imagine how someone can be personally happy when, like, I don't see how in the body in Iran or Saudi Arabia, like a woman could be personally happy. Um, maybe they're maybe, maybe, maybe with a certain kind of consciousness that one has been socialized to live by, but I don't know how anybody can be personally happy if the political conditions under which you matriculate are despotic are invasive, are EVIS of your dignity. Um, but I do see where in a situation such as ours, where we are living in a semi we're, basically, we're still free. Uh, we can say what we want. Uh, the first amendment is still alive and well, thank God.
Speaker 0 00:48:54 Um, um, you can still call out a conception of a good life for oneself without, although with Roe V Wade, you know, that's changing, um, with if, if Contra contraception gets becomes illegal. And if sodomy laws get, uh, you know, back on the books and all sorts of intrusive ways that the government privacy, you know, the, in other words, the li the pursuit of life, Liberty, life, Liberty in the pursuit of happiness, I think are dependent on happy on, on privacy. And if that, if those things go out the window, then our ability to conceive a conception of the good life for ourselves become compromised. Um, so I do think that the more, as I said, that our servants are damn servants, our elected officials, these people are maids current servants, start acting like our bosses and start dictating to us and cults develop around them.
Speaker 0 00:49:58 Um, it becomes just a lot more difficult for us to create both political, happiness and personal happiness, because I don't see how I can be personally happy when there are going to be laws on the books that affect my first amendment rights. I don't see how I can be personally happy if the government has the, to affect how I conduct what I do in my bedroom with my partner, if I can end up in being arrested. I don't know how a woman can be personally happy. You know, Richard, if yeah, she gets pregnant and some government decides that at four weeks, that piece of protoplasm, excuse my French. Yeah. That's make, that's developing as a person.
Speaker 6 00:50:52 Yeah. I I'm noticing that we've already long ago lost economic liberties and now people are starting to see what it's like to lose. What's called civil liberties. That'll pinch more, I think, I think. Totally agree. Thank you so much. Uh, Jason, excellent. Very helpful. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:51:11 Can I jump in for a second? I just, I wanna agree with, with Richard and, uh, you know, Jason and Richard, uh, as intellectuals, we have still have a lot more freedom to follow our, uh, ideas, express our ideas, uh, engage with those, uh, freedom of assembly and so forth and people in business do and industry, because we're still living under a dichotomy between, um, economic regulation and social, uh, that's eroding. And that's been a, you know, a problem over the last, certainly the last, uh, couple years, but it goes back ways. And I just think, you know, I just wanna put in a word for the, uh, business people whose dreams and, and ability to make their own decisions about, I mean, their goals, like your goal in writing an essay or my goal in writing an essay, um, are part of their life plan and part of their, um, their dream of what they want to do with their lives is being suspended by the state to a much more radical degree than, um, than ours. So, but just a thought, uh, just a, a observation, um, on the degree of, um, the intersection between personal happiness and political freedom,
Speaker 0 00:52:39 That is true, David. I mean, that is so true because, um, I think as intellectuals, you have to remember that, um, we just have a lot more leverage in that way, but business people who, for whom their creativity is no less artistic and no less instrumental in their conception of a good life and that good life, uh, bears on how they make sense of not just the thematic construct of their lives, more or less speaking, but an ability to carve out, uh, a sense of happiness is really, really compromise. I mean, if you just look at all the laws that George W. Bush created under his administration, their regulatory laws that constrain businesses, I'm not a business person. Jay can speak to this, cuz Jay was in business with George W. Bush. And I, you know, I'm not an enemy of George W. Bush, but I just, I was aware of all the regulatory laws, I think that he created for business people, um, that that must have had a da defect on their capacity to enhance their businesses and, and, and, and therefore forward to your eye, uh, to, to, to, to, to lead a life of flourishing.
Speaker 4 00:53:57 Just an add to that point. Um, Jason and David, cause it, it, it really is a case when business gets large enough, then they start using all of that as part of what they do to protect their, their turf. And it becomes, you know, the whole cronyism that Richard has, uh, spent a lot of time, you know, explaining, but the, the, the biggest cost of, of the cancel culture and the inability to speak truth and all of that, that's in big business, but in small business, it's really where the regulations simply inhibit any kind of, you know, sort of startup development. That's not backed with really serious money. Uh, but the small guy really, you know, can't live to the thousands of laws I'd have to live to so fully agree with the points made. Thanks,
Speaker 1 00:54:52 Jason, would you say that, um, the, would you categorize, or what would be the relationship between the phenomenon we observed during the lockdowns and, and mandates of, um, rise in alcohol abuse, substance abuse, um, suicide self-harming freshen, uh, it would, is that political unhappiness because it, um, was, you know, I mean, you could say it's was happening at the same time, but I would say it's caused by lack of social connection, feeling of powerlessness, hysteria, fear, uh, out of proportion to actual risks.
Speaker 0 00:55:45 Absolutely. Jennifer that's what got me, the lockdowns and the, and the, and the, the mandates and, and all those things got me to, you know, it got me thinking about this project again about, about the interface, about political happiness and the interface between private individuals and how they choose to interact among themselves as private individuals. And this, this, this, well, I can only think of the government in terms of negatives in a negative sense, but this is this gas, the phenomenon called the state and how it intruded in the private sphere, in the private lives of individuals through lockdowns, through all kinds of measures that then led, you know, um, to horrific consequences, you know, an epidemic of world already suffering from sort of epidemic of loneliness, but a further epidemic of loneliness of social isolation. Um, not all of us are in, are spiritual giants.
Speaker 0 00:56:47 You know, some people take to the Les, some people take the drugs. So I do think that I'm glad you raised that point. I forgot to mention it, but, but, but, but the, the mandates and the, the lockdowns and, and just the arbitrary and sometimes not so arbitrary ways, the very, very thought out ways in which the government has chosen to, again, uh, disrupt the interface between how private citizens make choices on their behalf to deal with each other, um, definitely affected what I would call the, the sense of just not personal happiness, but the preconditions for something that we are gonna call that I'm gonna call a political happiness of individuals, which I wanna make the stronger case later on that the political happiness is a precondition for personal happiness. If you don't enjoy some se semblance of political happiness, it's gonna be very, very difficult. Um, that is that the state makes it very, very difficult for social conditions to be right for you to enjoy political happiness. It's gonna be very difficult to carve out something like personal happiness in your life. It's gonna take a very, very strong spiritual, giant, and a lot of com compartmentalization. Um, you're not gonna be an attunement and you're not gonna be in flow. You're not gonna be in engagement as I talked about, um, to experience that kind of personal happiness. So yeah, thank you for bringing up the mandates and, and the lockdowns
Speaker 1 00:58:19 Well, and, and, you know, in light of them, of course, <laugh>, I, it's very easy to, to fall into having a gas leak perspective on government. Um, but a government that w was as our founders originally envisioned, uh, securing our rights, securing our contracts and securing our personal Liberty, um, would provide that foundation for political happiness. So I'm gonna toss it to Scott who can tell us a bit about what we have in store. And thank you, Jason. Thank you very much. Uh, David Richard and John Lawrence, um, Jay, lapper quite an honor to have you here and everybody who, who joined our room,
Speaker 0 00:59:03 Thank you very much.
Speaker 7 00:59:05 Great. Uh, quickly Tuesday at 4:00 PM, Eastern Lawrence, and I will be here on clubhouse for a happy hour on the increasing double standards. We see all around us then at 7:00 PM Eastern also on Tuesday, Rob Kosinski will be discussing pathological altruism in the age of trauma. Uh, Wednesday at 5:00 PM, Eastern Rob Tru Zinsky and TAs founder, David Kelly will be discussing current events. Uh, then Thursday back on clubhouse at 4:00 PM. Eastern Richard Salman's topic will be presumed guilty regulations versus rights, uh, great topics I'm looking forward to next week. Uh, thanks to everyone that joined us. We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
