Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, thank you to everyone for joining our clubhouse room today. I'm Scott Schiff hosting the Atlas society, senior scholar, Robert . Uh, I think that Rob and the other scholars are very brave to do these. Ask me anythings. We want to encourage people, uh, here in the room to ask questions. If you raise your hand, we'll bring you up. But I have questions that will come in through, uh, you know, that come in through Instagram as well. Um, if I can ask everyone willing to share the room with the share button at the bottom of the screen, or the three dots up top, uh, to increase engagement for these, we are recording this for educational purposes. Rob thinks as always, um, any opening thoughts with things that current events or would you prefer? I just jump right into the questions.
Speaker 1 00:00:51 Well, I, uh, I'm the, one of the big things I was thinking of course is what's going on in Ukraine. Um, I don't know how much of general interest it says, but, uh, the iron Rand Institute just put a statement about the various schisms over the year that I found to be I've I've given a quick ones over and found to be interesting, but I don't know if that's too much inside baseball. So I really just want to let people in the audience, uh, steer the questions wherever they want to go.
Speaker 0 00:01:15 Oh, sure. Well, uh, I have been to ice ball stuff, but uh, we'll at least divert to, uh, some of the, uh, Instagram people. I thought this one was interesting right off the bat. Um, from hand sanitizer hoarder was their screen name. Who would you have the president after by?
Speaker 1 00:01:41 Oh, dear goodness. Um, okay, so one thing I would put in here is I have a low bar for presidents because there's really not been a single one in my lifetime. That was really outstanding. I mean, we got Reagan was the best, but, uh, uh, he even had, you know, so he looks great in retrospect, compared to all the directors we've had since then. But, uh, and you know, if you talk to conservatives for awhile there, I used to refer to say Ronald Reagan, because there was a sort of age geographic memory of him, but he, he had his flaws yet has downsides. He was the best we've had. Usually they're pretty terrible people. Um, now, so this goes to a thesis I've had for a while, which is that what we're living through in the last 10 or 15 years is what I call 20th century light, which is we, we relive all the same mistakes of the 20th century, just in a shorter and shallower recap.
Speaker 1 00:02:34 And, uh, if, if that's, if we're doing a recap of the 20th century, I think where we are right now is probably more like the 1970s trending into the 1980s. And, you know, cause we had inflation already. Uh, I saw something that the love boat is back for something. Oh, I thought one of the cruise lines is having a cruise. We had some of it, some of the old, some of the old cast members, I mean, old cast members from love boat on the cruise. It was like this 20 30th anniversary or 40th anniversary thing for the love boat. Uh, so it was like, it got the love boat back. You've got inflation, you've got America retreating in a war. I mean the withdrawal from Afghanistan. So you all these sort of 1970s feeling kind of things happening. Uh, and one of them is of course Russia launching an aggressive war.
Speaker 1 00:03:23 Uh, so hopefully we're heading into the eighties. But the big question there is, you know, in, in night, in the late seventies, early seventies, everything was really terrible, but we had Reynolds Reagan waiting in the wings ready to come and, and be present and, and be one of the better presidents. So who's, I guess the question in my mind that question will boil down to then who is the Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings? And the answer is, I wish I knew, uh, I mean, I've been sort of joking that, that Mitt Romney should run again because he, uh, uh, he's the one who got this issue of, of Russia as our geopolitical ally. So incredibly right. I mean that, that favorite infamous exchange that he had with Obama in the 2012 election, that during one of the debates where he said, uh, uh, he, he said, Russia is our number one geopolitical enemy and, uh, uh, Ababa scoffed and said, look, the 1980s, we're calling them.
Speaker 1 00:04:17 They, they want their foreign policy back. Uh, and you know, the 1980s are calling and we probably do want their foreign policy back. So the question, so Mitt Romney is the person I would look to, but I don't think that's going to happen. And he's not that aspiring outside of foreign policy, uh, of the younger people. I mean, there are a couple like maybe Ben Sasse, uh, that I would like, but, uh, you know, their problem is they're all politicians and I don't see anybody who's waiting in the wings to come save us. And I think that looking for the right person to get elected president, it'd be nice to have somebody who's not a complete idiot elected president. Uh, hasn't happened in awhile. Uh, but, uh, you know, that, that does make a difference. But I think instead of looking for the right person to get elected president, we need to the big lesson I've taken out of, uh, the last, you know, five or six years.
Speaker 1 00:05:11 And, and, and, and it's a lesson that I think we got out of the seventies is what happened in the 1970s that made that I see these possible is there was a kind of intellectual revolution on the right. There was an intellectual revival that happened. And I think it was primarily led by, it was partly the influence of iron ranch who was out there and whose books had become very popular. It had a big impact on a lot of people. And it was also, it was that combined with, I think Richard Saltzman, the theory wants that it was the, uh, uh, I mean, putting words in his mouth. But as I recall, it was that the bicentennial made a big difference, you know, 1976 to 200th anniversary of the founding of America. There had been, there was this tremendous revival of study of an interest in the founding fathers that also had this incredibly beneficial impact on the culture and specifically on intellectual within the right.
Speaker 1 00:06:02 They went back to study Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and, and, uh, all you know, and James Madison and John Locke and all of the people who were the intellectual influences in the American revolution. And that is sort of the revolution that proceeded the Reagan revolution, right? So, you know, who became president was less important than the fact that there was a, an intellectual revival of the right. And I think that's what we need today to make, you know, to create the environment, which first of all, that somebody better can get elected president and that being an elected president, she can actually do the things we would like somebody to do. And what we need is to have that intellectual revival, uh, which I think has sort of, you know, the, the ancestral revival that happened in the sixties and seventies and eighties with the conservative and libertarian movement has sort of petered out by the, by the 2000 teens. And I think we're experiencing the consequences of that loss of momentum. We need to have a revival of the revival. So that's my long answer to a short question. It's good stuff. Um, Lawrence, so you have a question,
Speaker 2 00:07:08 Uh, Rob, thank you for this. Oh, is it exciting to hear your opinions? Um, I want to just get your take on, it just happened this morning, but Biden gave a press sort of conference regarding the security brain and the, um, blocking of import of brushing oil. But in that same skew, he made sort of this, uh, you know, not threat, but definitely sort of, he's going to come after, you know, oil produces here and the state sort of accusing them of price gouging and other such, uh, efforts. And as someone who is from Texas and Houston, which is a very big in oil and gas, this kinda raises some alarm bells in my head. And I'm curious if you think anything serious would be done by Biden to our, uh, oil industry or more of the same old, same old.
Speaker 1 00:08:02 Oh, okay. So yeah, that's a great question. Um, yeah, so th this reflects the fact that the, the big picture here is that, you know, the dependence of the world on Russian oil and gas and it's, it's not America really that's dependent on it. It's it's Europe, that's dependent on, I mean, the Germans, the term has had one of the things where like for 20 years, everybody was warning them. Look, you're pursuing policies is going to make you totally dependent on natural gas from Germany, from Russia, and everybody's warning them and warning them a warning to them. And then in the last, you know, a couple of months, they suddenly wake up and say, oh my God, we're dependent on natural gas from Russia. Like this is like nobody ever warned them that this would happen. Uh, so they sort of went to it. They just couldn't help themselves.
Speaker 1 00:08:46 And this is going to be the pattern we're going to see, which is this current crisis sort of makes it clear that everybody else should be doing the maximum they can to extract oil and gas so that we don't have to get any of it from Russia, right? The more we're competing Memorial we're producing in America, the more the Western Europe has its own reserves. They used to be that exporters', uh, Britain has the reserves. There's all sorts of places. They can get oil and gas without going to Russia, but they've been restricting their own ability to, to, to produce it. And, uh, we have been restricting it to some extent, a lesser extent here in the U S I mean, we've had the fracking revolution and we have become, you know, net exporters' by a good margin and despite some complaints. So there's a bit of misinformation going out.
Speaker 1 00:09:32 There were some people in the writer saying, you know, we're, we're, uh, that, that Biden has stopped us from being from producing gas. Well, he acts actually hasn't, he's only been in office for a certain period of time. He hasn't achieved that much legislatively. There's all sorts of limits to what he can do. So we actually have not decreased our production of oil and gas in the U S it's actually up in, in, in the last year or two. Uh, so, you know, it's, but, but if he had his way, the policy's Biden is beholden to, would restrict our predictability produce guests. So it's, it's presented people, this very stark choice, uh, where it's like, you either have to accept being dependent or accept having, you know, Russia have this source of wealth that they can use to basically a steep the consequences of their dictatorship, or we can, we can encourage our own production of, of, of gas and oil.
Speaker 1 00:10:28 And also, you know, things like Germans should not shut down their nuclear power plants. So they're not dependent on, uh, gas for, for heating and energy. Uh, but because it presents such a stark choice, the problem is this presenting this choice to people who are absolutely beholden to the green religion, to the environmentalist doc dog's dogmas that says, no, fracking is horrible. It's evil, uh, nuclear power is horrible. It's evil. And if you want to plumb the rationality of that, you really can't. It really is. It's like your religious creed. You know, so I mean, if the big bogeyman we're concerned about is global warming, this is something I pointed out recently that if you look at what's happened in America in the last 20 years, uh, 20 to 30 years, we've actually decreased our carbon dioxide emissions. And we didn't do it the main way we did it.
Speaker 1 00:11:17 It wasn't because of solar. It wasn't because of wind. It wasn't because of nuclear. Cause we have adult nuclear. If you look at how we did it, it's because we moved a lot of our electricity production from coal to natural gas and natural gas for various reasons produces less carbon dioxide emissions per amount of energy produced than, than coal does. So it's primarily by moving over to natural gas, which we could do because we have this giant fracking revolution. But you know, if, if global warming was your big concern, then you think people, you know, the top party would be say, Leah, let's have more fracking. Let's do more stuff with natural gas and let's do more with nuclear. But if you look at the environmentalist, fracking and nuclear power are the two things they will never ever, ever over their dead bodies allow. So this is, you know, it's precisely because this war in Ukraine presents us with such a choice about what we're going to do.
Speaker 1 00:12:08 An energy that the people who are beholden to this green religion and Biden, it's definitely one of them, not that he personally believes it, but you know, he's a politician. He answers to the base of his party at the base of his party is committed to this. So they have to come up with some other explanation for why gas is so expensive. They have to come up with some other explanation for how we're going to power our economy. If we don't have, uh, if we're not using Russian oil and gas. So the two things I see them doing is they are, uh, doubling down on the green, new deal fantasies, which has this idea that somehow we're going to turn on a dime and power, everything with solar and wind, which, you know, Germany's been trying this and that's how they got where they are right now.
Speaker 1 00:12:54 They've been trying to pour this enormous amount of effort into using wind and solar power and shutting down all the nuclear plants shut down all the coal plants. Uh, and what ends up happening is that that wind does solar are not reliable and cannot be reliable sources of energy. You know, the, depending on the wind blowing and the sunshiny, which is not a predictable and regular thing. So, but, but the one big thing is that the hope that fuels so doubling down on the idea that no, if we just try harder, this failed policy will work. Uh, it's, it's, uh, it's a very popular position. If we just try harder, this failed policy will work. Um, and then the second thing you see them doing is what Biden's doing, which is rising prices are a conspiracy by greedy corporations as if corporations were never greedy.
Speaker 1 00:13:40 When the prices were going down, uh, somebody did a great graph on making fun of this, about the, uh, the greed versus generosity cycle and showing a graph of, of, uh, some other commodity, a graph of prices and rocking out well, you know, where their prices are going down. That's when corporations were greedy and mean the prices were going down and that's when corporations were generous. So now we've understood the whole situation, which is, you know, taking it to the re reduction to absurdity. Uh, but again, it's people falling back as politicians tend to do falling back on whatever, whatever their comfort zone is, whatever their, uh, sort of comfortable preexisting ideology is. So if your preexisting ideology is, uh, environmental ism, you, you say, oh, we have to do more renewable energy. If your preexisting ideology is anti-capitalist and you say, oh, if prices are going up, it's green, the big corporations. Uh, so it's, it's people trying to deal with the new situation by falling back on, uh, on old dogmas. Interesting. Thank you. Great. Thanks for that. And again, if
Speaker 0 00:14:50 Anyone to come up, just raise your hand. We'll be glad to bring you up. Uh, next is Roger. Roger. I haven't seen you since you were on the podcast last week. I meant to tell you it was fun. Uh, go ahead with your, uh, question for Rob
Speaker 3 00:15:05 And thanks for having me on there. That was great. And, uh, Rob, uh, my question is right along the lines of, uh, what Laura Lawrence is talking about. Uh, but more specifically, um, aside from just oil, are we headed towards price controls? And is there anybody in Congress that could, uh, step up and, and provide a, uh, a wall against price controls? It, it, it, it feels like that's where we're.
Speaker 1 00:15:37 Yeah, well, I think there's definitely a push for it. I mean, there's w we were, I talked about living through 20th century light, and it sort of feels that has that sort of feeling like all the old dogmas that you thought were discredited suddenly pop back into life, like zombies coming up out of the grave, right. Uh, so you thought price controls were an old discredited idea, and then suddenly have a bunch of people walking around saying, oh, no, press controls would totally work. Let me give you this, you know, economics flimflam about, about how it would work. Um, it's one of these ideas that you thought had been rejected. Didn't sort of, uh, I mean, you know, the canonical example of the failure of price controls was rent control in New York city in the seventies. And, you know, because you had re roaring inflation rents were going up, uh, uncontrollably as though they had rent control, you had rent controlled apartments.
Speaker 1 00:16:27 And what happened of course, is that owners who had rent control departments, uh, who had to basically charge the same rent they were charging in like 1958. Uh, even when that made no economic sense, they had no incentive between taking the apartment buildings. They had no money, no profits with which to do repairs. And so you had these rent control departments and buildings that were falling apart that had poor security during the great crime wave in the seventies, uh, buildings that were, you know, in bad repair that were falling apart. And you had this great example of how, when you impose rent control, uh, price controls, you know, the quality of the product goes down. If you had whole apartment buildings that were abandoned by their owners, essentially because there was no way profitably to rent them out. Um, and, and so you had all sorts of one example after another of price controls being imposed, leading to shortages, leading to poor quality products, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:17:23 So you thought this whole thing was, you know, totally refuted as somebody just did a, uh, a poll of economists. It's something like, you know, 85% of economists say no for God's sake, price controls is a terrible idea. Uh, my favorite is university of Chicago. This is where I went to school. There was somebody in the economics department put on an economics, 1 0 1, uh, quiz, a question of like, you know, such and such a person has proposed price controls. Uh, how would a real economist respond to this? I love that phrase really caught of it's like a really caught us though, that this is a bad idea. All right. So, um, but is there anybody can stop it? Uh, it just, you know, it just shows the power of these sort of undead ideas that people will not eat, how they can be thoroughly refuted and people will not want to give up on it now, is there anybody can stop it?
Speaker 1 00:18:11 Well, I think there's a lot of people who could stop it. I mean, we just had the great big, uh, giant free spending, uh, uh, Biden agenda come crashing against two democratic senators, uh, uh, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema from Arizona, uh, Joe Manchin from West Virginia and all the indications are that this fall is not going to be a good election for Democrats, uh, because, you know, they did what Democrats always w they did what everybody always does, which is they assume that because you won one election by the skin of your teeth, that you have the mandate of heaven and, and the people are on your side and you can pursue your ultimate, uh, most extreme fantasy agenda. And that's basically what Democrats tried to do. And it all, it, it never works. It always fails, but they always try it. Um, so, uh, they're going to get a backlash for that.
Speaker 1 00:19:05 And of course, you know, inflation being up, I mean, th the economy is actually doing very well. Employment is up because of the strong bounce back from the pandemic. So all the kind of conditions are good, but they're thinking about inflation that they've been in denial on is that inflation takes a good economy and makes it look bad. So, you know, the, with inflation, with the disruption, from the war, it looks like it's going to be a bad, uh, fall bad November this year for, for the Democrats. So I, I'm not too worried that they're going to come up with a giant scheme for, for price controls and then impose that, but it, but they are going to draw a bone. The idea, they're going to talk about it a lot. And the reason they're going to do it is because there is this tremendous audience for it on the base of the democratic party.
Speaker 1 00:19:52 You know, the, the base, the core supporters, that democratic party, the idea of blaming everything on corporate greed goes over really well. And the basic problem that both parties have right now is basically assuming that they assume that Twitter is real life, right? That the most fanatical based members of your party represents the, the, the majority of the American people as who you're talking to the fanatical base, and you're not talking to the independent voters. Uh, so that's why they're going to keep talking about it a lot. I also think for the same reason, that's why they're not actually going to be able to implement it.
Speaker 0 00:20:26 All right. Good stuff. Well, uh, you know, you alluded to, uh, inside baseball and, and the article, one of the things that came up is who has the right to speak for Ryan ran. This is tangentially related dementias, um, says, do you think iron Rand would advocate intervening in
Speaker 1 00:20:46 Ukraine? Okay. So wha okay. So first thing, that's an interesting question. I want to talk about Ukraine a little, but I want to talk about the form of the question, because I think it's a sort of a mistaken, the question is they asked it a mistaken form, which is, I have absolutely no idea what Iran would advocate doing about Ukraine. Uh, I, I shouldn't say absolutely no idea. I've kind of, I can sort of project where she might've had the sympathies for, but, you know, she hasn't commented on anything in, in, in modern politics since, you know, since her death at 40, I guess it's oh, so one of the things that happened is a couple of articles that popped up recently about iron random. Like, why is this happening? Well, I guess, uh, we're right around the 40th anniversary of her death. I don't think objec yeah.
Speaker 1 00:21:35 This week. So I think Objectivists, we're celebrating this cause you know, the anniversary of her death is not the thing we're interested in. We're interested in the anniversary. We occasionally celebrate the anniversary of her birth or the anniversary of one of her novels coming out. But apparently some people out there, including some, some of the usual suspects, the critics of mine, Rand decided that the 40th anniversary of her death was something to write about. Um, actually the only good one I've seen so far is Kathy young. Who's a friend of mine. Who's, uh, she just has something to the bulwark, a long article where she's somewhat critical of Iran, but it's one of the best, it's one of the best responses I've seen it versus somebody who's not an objectivist. Uh, but who, you know, has some knowledge of it too, speaks about it intelligently who doesn't repeat a lot of the same old smears.
Speaker 1 00:22:22 Um, so I re recommended that it just came out, I think this morning in the bulwark from Cathy young anyway. So, but the point of all this is that it's been 40 years since I went Iran was around. And since she commented on anything, any, when she wasn't around, you know, some of the things I think she was wrong about, you know, she was very critical of Ronald Reagan and his presidency turned out tremendously well, uh, despite the flaws that it had. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, I think I, if you personally think, you know, this is very, very minor things, but I think she was at her weakest when commenting about war. Uh, some of the things she said about world war II, because it wasn't this topic she understood really well or was all that interested in, you know, she wasn't somebody who was interested in war.
Speaker 1 00:23:03 She was interested in, you know, people building steel mills and, and, and running a transcontinental railroad. Um, but so I, I just want to put that proviso of, you know, was it to say, what would Iran think of, and then put some very, very specific contemporary thing. You know, I think it's a wrong outlook to say who to try to project what she would say exactly about it. Now I'll hit a couple of things off that though, which is, I think she would have understand Vladimir understood Vladimir Putin thoroughly backwards and forwards, uh, having come out of the Soviet union. Oh, thanks for somebody. Somebody put up the link to Kathy's piece here. Thanks for doing that. Um, so I entered would've understood Vladimir Putin totally thoroughly. He was exactly the sort thing he was Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB. He's exactly the sort of person that she saw rising to power in the Soviet union, uh, in the early days when she was there.
Speaker 1 00:23:54 So she would understand that that kind of power lusting personality thoroughly. Now she was not, I hate to say this. He was something he had some sympathies with with what in her day was the quote, unquote America, first outlook and foreign policy. Now I hesitate to say that because a lot of what passes for America first today is very different than some of it is. You know, I've seen this the last couple of weeks. It it's just outright sympathy for Vladimir Putin because there are certain conservatives American conservatives who see Putin in his more recent incarnations, his post KGB incarnation, they see have a set, an offender of sort of Christian nationalism. All right. So the fact that he has basically made this Attila, the witch doctor Alliance with the, uh, uh, with, with cure-all the, the, uh, the patriarch of the, uh, Russian Orthodox church, they've got the sort of a tell of the witchdoctor, uh, partnership going on.
Speaker 1 00:24:51 There's a bunch of, of American conservatives who loves that and they think that's great. That's the model for what America should do as, so some of the, the very sympathetic to Putin and they've given the, and they've done this under a sort of America first, uh, rubric, which I think is completely backwards, uh, uh, because it's so un-American, but so, but I'd rented her day was very much sympathetic to sort of the America first approach, which was against, against, uh, large scale American intervention abroad. And in this case, I mean, one sympathy for that is I think we absolutely have an interest in seeing voter recruitment lose in, in, in, in Ukraine, because he represents an attempt to spread a sort of kleptocratic, uh, quasi sort of Neo totalitarian dictatorship, and just spread that throughout Europe. And he also represents an attempt to spread warfare and conquest and rule by force a sort of might makes right approach to, to, um, to, to geopolitics.
Speaker 1 00:25:52 He's bringing that back to Europe, given the history of Europe. That's absolutely terrible. The one thing I will say though, is that it's, it's in our interest to see him fail, but it's way more in the interest of the Europeans to see them fail. And, uh, the one thing I think is most positive development coming out, and it's absolutely a shock to me because I didn't think they had it in them is that Europe has really grasped this and they have shown a way more leadership than I expected them to show. Uh, in terms of, you know, having Europe unite and impose their proposed sanctions. I never thought the Germans would be willing to impose the, the Swiss are, are, um, freezing the bank accounts of, uh, of Putin cronies of the so-called oligarchs in Russia. And, you know, if I say, put it out recently, if the supervillains can't hide their money in a Swiss bank account, where can they hide it?
Speaker 1 00:26:42 Uh, so these sort of unprecedented, th th the, the Swedes have, uh, uh, Sweden has been neutral, officially neutral in, in every conflict since 1939, when they helped the, uh, um, help defense against Russia. Uh, they've been neutral on every conflict since then. They just broke that neutrality to support Ukraine. So the Europeans have really stepped up to the plate. And so the great thing is I think what America should be doing is it should be basically supporting and encouraging, and backstopping the Europeans. So one, one example for example, is the, the, the polls have, uh, Poland has considered, uh, giving some of its old fighter jets to Ukraine. And this is, it's a total sense because what's happening is that the polls, uh, our newest, our newer NATO allies in Eastern Europe have a whole bunch of old Soviet era hardware. They've been solely replacing it with NATO hardware, with Western, with F 30 fives and F sixteens.
Speaker 1 00:27:40 And so it makes perfect sense for them to say, well, look, all these old MIGS that we have, that we're going to be getting rid of, we're moving away from, we should send those. We can send those to Ukraine, but what they want to have is a guarantee that if we get rid of a bunch of our fleet, America will give us F sixteens that we can then use to. So we don't, we're not weakening our own defenses. So that's the perfect thing that we should be doing. And there's the work being done on this, and maybe it's going to happen to say, okay, the polls give a bunch of their MIGS to Ukraine. We give a bunch of F sixteens to the polls, and that's what we, one of the things we can do to help the Europeans help the Ukrainians. And I think that's exactly the approach we should be taking.
Speaker 1 00:28:19 Uh, you know, we there's, and it's the old post-war rules too, that we can't, uh, send American troops have boots on the ground. We can't send the American planes to do a no fly zone, cause that would involve a direct one-on-one conflict with, uh, between nuclear powers that rift nuclear war nobody's has an interest in risky nuclear war. So I think what we, what we should do and what we're probably going to do is we're going to stay there in the background. We're going to be the support for the Europeans, the Europeans who have the really direct interest in this are going to take center stage. And that's, I think, as it should be.
Speaker 0 00:28:55 That's interesting. I, I'm curious if, uh, you know, the Ukrainians have the, uh, pilot, if it's a plausible deniability that it's not really the west flying them as well.
Speaker 1 00:29:06 Um, well also one thing that's happening though, is there are a lot of, there's been like 40,000 military veterans from the U S some from the us, some from Britain, some from Canada, uh, and a lot of checks and poles who have been volunteering to go fight. So you're going to have these sort of volunteer brigades where they're not efficient. They're not serving under the, they're not serving onto the NATO flag or under the British flag or under the Polish flag, but they're going to be pouring into the battlefield. So you're going to have, it's going to get messy. Uh, but again, the old cold war rules worked in the day back in the day. And they still, again, which is so long as you are not official, you know, as NATO power is not officially doing anything, you hate that plausible deniability and the, you know, you push the rules where you can, we can make this work. We did it in Afghanistan. We could, we can do it here.
Speaker 0 00:29:56 Thank you for that. Well, uh, I want to, again, encourage people, uh, to raise your hand. If you have any kind of questions for Rob, we still have a treasure trove of questions from, uh, Instagram. Uh, this one is interesting. It's, uh, from Sonia, what can objectivism offer young men who seem to be drawn to scholars like Jordan Peterson can this philosophy he offers be considered objectivist.
Speaker 1 00:30:28 Okay. So Jordan Peterson want me to think about this? Um, I, I'm not a big Jordan Peterson, apple, uh, not a big Jordan Peterson expert. I haven't really looked into them too much. What I have looked in, I think kind of unimpressed. I just don't think there's that much there, there. Um, and I know I probably tick people off by saying that, cause I know he has this very strong supporters. I think the Jordan Pearson phenomenon is definitely though somebody that's about young men. It's definitely, uh, has this tremendous appeal to young people in general. And I think especially to young men who are, you know, what were you doing in your youth? These are trying to figure out what am I going to do with my life? What is it that gives meaning and purpose to my life? And he's been somebody, I think the whole key to his success is he has an answer to that.
Speaker 1 00:31:15 Or at least he claims to have an answer to that. Um, now my impression of it, like I said, I'm not a big Jordan Peterson expert, but my impression is it's a more traditional conservative uh self-sacrifice and, and religion kind of, uh, in the background at least, you know, he gets, uh, from what I understand, if, if he gives some solid advice about, you know, basically get your life in order, find a purpose for your life, uh, uh, pull yourself together, sort of, uh, uh, kind of advice that he gives to young, young men that they need to hear. Um, but, uh, I think that philosophically, I don't think he has something that is consistent with objectivism. And I think, yes, I don't think he has something that's really sufficient for, um, uh, for being an answer to that question about what should I do with my life, what gives meaning to my life.
Speaker 1 00:32:09 Uh, and, uh, I've also found him to be a bit of the there's this whole sort of, they called it the intellectual dark web a while back. And Peterson was considered one of the members of that. Um, and there's this whole sort of contrarion media ecosystem, right? Of guys who have podcasts or YouTube things, or, or what have you, who are outside of academia or outside of the, uh, the mainstream media who are offering these sort of contrarian views on things. And oftentimes I think that contrarianism just becomes sort of reflexive and they're they're against whatever everybody else is for. And I seen that with, you know, certain topics where they'll just sort of go off the rails, uh, uh, and you know, some and into conspiracy theories and things like that. I know Jordan Peterson, isn't one of those, but he has some slightly goofy ideas.
Speaker 1 00:33:01 And he said he has fad diets that he keeps, uh, talking about. Um, so I think there's a little bit of that sort of reflexive con contrarianism to, to him that, that I don't particularly care for. But what I would say is this, I think that it does show and where this question is are right on target is it does show this tremendous need, uh, for somebody to give an alternative answer, I've got a piece coming up. I might be doing it for one of these clubhouses. I know I've got an article in the works on this, about the fact that, you know, one of the startling thing this happened in the last 30 years is that, uh, religiosity in America has declined. We're becoming a secular country. Uh, that church attendance is way down, uh, the number of people who declare this house, nothing in particular when it comes to religion is way up, uh, I think the number, nothing in particulars, right.
Speaker 1 00:33:54 Currently outnumber the evangelical Christians for the first time. So, uh, there's a tremendous sort of collapse of intellectual, uh, of, of religious belief and also of religious communities, even people who still nominally believe in God, don't go to church anymore. So that creates this tremendous gap, but I think there's a lot of what we're dealing with. There's a tremendous gap of people saying, well, if religion, isn't there to provide an explanation and provide a sense of meaning and purpose for your life, then what do we have? And the answer is that the secular answers have been actually pretty terrible on the whole. Uh, so, you know, if a lot of people who have, especially on the left, what you see in the modern left in the sort of the woke left is a bunch of people who have basically say, well, we don't have religion.
Speaker 1 00:34:41 So let's look to identity politics to provide meaning and purpose to my life in the same way that religion did or let's look to, um, environmentalism or less let's look to political left-wing political activism in general is their version of going to church, right? Is the thing that gives you a sense of community, a sense of meaning, a sense of belonging, a sense of having some purpose to your life. And when you look at what the other secular alternatives are, there's not a lot offered there. And I think guys like Jordan Peterson has have risen up as a way to try to provide some answer to that. I don't think his answer from what I understand it is, is really sufficient. I think Iran has a terrific answer. So I've written about this a couple of times I've been doing, I'll be doing more on this in the future, which is, uh, one of the things that jumps out for me is, is in the Fountainhead.
Speaker 1 00:35:33 There's a scene where, uh, uh, Howard work explains to you the meaning of life. And it's really interesting because it's not really quite iron Rand that uses everywhere else where somebody actually says, here's the meaning of life and how it comes out. He's talking to Gale why, and then he says, here's the meaning of life. And he pulls, I think, a branch down for a treat. He bends it. And he says, now, you know, I've taken this down from the tree. I can do what I can make, what I wanted, but I can make a bowl out of it. I can make a, uh, a railing. I could make a, a, a cane. I could make a, you know, a weapon, a tool I could do whatever I can make. I can take the whatever's given to me in nature. I can take it and I can make something of it, uh, that serves the needs of human life.
Speaker 1 00:36:12 And since I that's the meaning of life, your work and what you can achieve with the material given to you by nature, that's the meaning of life. And that scene has always stuck with me. And it's really is. I think it is, is the answer that iron ranch has to offer, which is I call what I call a culture of achievement, the idea where, you know, you should be looking at the world the way Howard work does in that moment, where you look around at what is the material available to me out here on the world and how can I go create something and build something and achieve something that will make human life that will improve my life and make human life in general better. And so the idea of having a secular source of meaning in life of meaning, and especially a purpose in life, I think is really desperately needed. And it's going to be more and more desperately needed as we become a secular country. And we need something other than, you know, religion, uh, and, and, uh, religious ethics and, or some water diversion of that to, to sustain, uh, to give people that, that sense of meaning of life.
Speaker 0 00:37:19 Good stuff. Thank you. Uh, bill, do you have a question for Rob? You can, if you want to unmute yourself,
Speaker 4 00:37:31 There we go. Um, okay. Uh, I managed to be late to the discussion about, uh, protests the other week. Um, but that, uh, and that meant that I did not get to put in my point of view there. So I will try to, uh, phrase a prior question, which, which informs my thinking about this, which is what do you look to in a society, a mixed society like ours, to determine the legitimacy, uh, of that society. And the answer that I personally have is that you look to the nature of the courts. Do they provide essentially the services that ran says that you've got to have an, a government that is to say dispensing of justice in a reasonably timely way, in a, in a just way. Um, and so the, to me, the answer to that question is a precondition to the questions about protests and the like, so you have my answer in very brief, but what would your answer be?
Speaker 1 00:38:42 Oh, okay. So, um, yeah, the question of what the, I guess you said the legitimacy of a society, basically the legitimacy of a former government, uh, that the, I think the, the court, the way you said about the courts, I think is terrific because, you know, we're all dealing right now with the concept, with the consequences of, of Vladimir Putin, basically recreating a dictatorship in Russia, uh, sort of lapsing back into its like the Soviet it's like, you know, Ashley, I mentioned Kathy Young's piece earlier and she had a really interesting illustration on that, about how iron Rand, you know, uh, came out of the Soviet union Creo criticizing the, the Soviet, uh, the secular dictatorship of the Soviets, but also, but without, but also opposing the religious traditionalism of, you know, the old Russian system. And she, Kathy makes the point that now we're dealing with, uh, uh, Vida repute and somebody who has combined all the birth qualities of both systems, right?
Speaker 1 00:39:40 He has, he's bringing back to the old sort of Soviet style dictatorship combined with the religious traditionalism of, of this RST era. Um, so one of the key steps in that, and one of the key warning signs that I saw very early on was there were a number of politically motivated prosecutions of his F his political enemies. So there's getting Khodorkovsky who was, I think, 2003, I think it was 2003, 2004, somewhere in there it's been a while. So I'm trying to get the exact dates here, but this is early in the two thousands, there was Mikelle quarter Kowski who was one of these quote unquote oligarchs, but he was one of the better ones. He was somebody who had made, who had risen up in the post Soviet system had become a billionaire running an oil company, and he was trying to move things he was known for trying to move things more towards the rule of law and having, you know, the, the, having the cleaning up the books of, of the oil company and making sure that they were, uh, the books were kept according to sort of Western standards where you could actually tell where the money was going and who was getting it, uh, as opposed to everything just being a slush fund for, for the political insiders.
Speaker 1 00:40:47 Um, and because of that, he was proven, considered him a rival and then started this sort of politically motivated prosecution of him. And basically every step of that prosecution, it was clear that, that the courts were controlled by the regime or that the regime was starting to was really clamping down on the independence of the courts. That if you went into a courtroom, you could not get a fair hearing. The verdict was determined ahead of time by the, by the, by the people in power. And, uh, so that was one of the key indications. So I think definitely the courts are there. Uh, I would also say freedom of speech because, you know, they're all, there are also systems where, uh, things are very bad, but you can be improving them. You know, there's a room to improve them. There's the ability to change and reform them.
Speaker 1 00:41:37 And there's, here's where I think Ukraine comes in as a great example because, uh, I had an interesting discussion a while back with, uh, just the last week with, um, uh, w with Steven, uh, about, uh, about Ukraine and, and, and, uh, the, uh, and the Russian invasion. And one of the things he pointed out is that on indexes of official corruption and things like that, Ukraine and Russia are pretty much at the same level. So how can you tell between them? And I said, the big difference is that in Ukraine, the current president of Ukraine, Zelensky, Volodymyr, Zelensky got elected because he basically was out ranting and raving about proficial corruption and vowing to improve it. And he had the freedom to do so. He had the freedom he actually had, you know, it's funny, he came president because he, he created a TV show in which he was the fictional president of Ukraine.
Speaker 1 00:42:29 And the whole point of the TV show was railing against official corruption and trying to, you know, uh, root out official corruption and improve it. And it was on the basis of that, that people said, yes, we want that. So what's elected to be the real president of Ukraine. So Ukraine had enough, the difference in Ukraine and Russia is Ukrainian had enough freedom of speech that somebody could become famous by railing against official corruption and promising to clean it up and then get elected into office by doing that. So I think freedom of speech free elections and the courts are the sort of the three as who wants to be what the high ground of a free society. Those are the three things that, that you have to have. Um, and of those having freedom of speeches, I always signal out because of course I'm a writer, right?
Speaker 1 00:43:15 Uh, I, the fact that freedom of speech is the thing that allows me to operate, but of course it exists. It could only really freedom of speech only really happen to the extent that you have also, um, uh, you know, the courts being objective that somebody can't bring a, a bogus prosecution against me for some non crime that where the, where the verdict is decided ahead of time. And also, you know, it can only free speech can, can, can only have its impact to the extent that, uh, also that we have free elections and are, are able to elect our, our rulers. So those are the three things that are very closely connected, and those, I would describe as the high ground of a free society. And as you have those, then you have the ability to have peaceful process, make a difference, um, and, and have an impact and be able to, you know, to influence you, you can use those, those, those mechanisms to influence, uh, other voters and hopefully, you know, get them to make the right decisions. All right. Uh, we'll try to get as many of the last five questionnaires as possible. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:44:24 Go ahead and unmute yourself if you have a question for Rob Phillip. Yeah. Uh, just, just
Speaker 5 00:44:30 Briefly, it's, it's a big question, but, uh, uh, Rob, what I'm thoroughly interested in objectivism, uh, but also seeking to understand how it can co-exist, if you will, with faith, uh, specifically I'm a Catholic and I appreciate my faith, but also, uh, see a lot of great merits in objectivism. And so could you speak to that just briefly?
Speaker 1 00:45:10 Oh, okay. That's a great question. Um, I'll try to be brief because I know we get a lot of callers, uh, a lot of going back to the talk radio format, a lot of callers waiting in the line, uh, right. Got you. The host. Um, anyway, the, uh, uh, the quick thing is the quick answer is objectivism is not compatible with faith objectivism, per se, as a philosophy is not compatible with faith, uh, because Iran argued that, you know, the only way to understand the world is through reason that faith always implies a certain, you know, a certain degree of willful blindness. They're basically saying, and I've observed this. I, the long before I became an objectivist, I became an atheist. Um, you know, when I was very young and I noticed that I had friends who were brought up in strongly religious backgrounds, and they have like little walls that there were certain things they couldn't, they, they couldn't bring themselves to think about certain questions.
Speaker 1 00:46:08 They couldn't bring themselves to ask because that went against the thing that they were supposed to have faith in. Uh, you know, and, and they were specifically not just the idea of they had faith, but they were taught, and this is a particular version of religion. They were taught essentially that it was a sin to doubt. And so if it's a sin to doubt, there's certain questions you can't even ask because, uh, uh, because, uh, that would lead you in to doubting and you you're supposed to have faith. Now, I will also say that is not every version of religion. And there is an older they're older traditions that I think objectivism is closely related to, uh, uh, one of the things I think you have, there's been a lot of discussion recently about the enlightenment and the intellectual legacy of the enlightenment. And I think that you could definitely view objectivism as an outgrowth of the philosophical trends and philosophical aspirations of the enlightenment.
Speaker 1 00:47:03 We're very much in that objectivism is very much in that tradition. And I've been doing a lot of reading recently about, uh, among the founding fathers, especially there was a particular version of religion. It was called Nat the general term for it was natural religion. And it was the idea. And it, this comes out of John Locke who wrote a book called the reasonableness of Christianity. Uh, it came from a friend of mine is a historian who has done some great on a guy named Jonathan Mayhew, who is a Boston preacher, who is hugely influential on John Adams. And a couple of the other revolutionaries in Boston who was an advocate of the same sort of outlook. And it's the idea that, that the precepts of religion should be developed from observation of nature and reasoning, and basically secular philosophical reasoning. So it was this very enlightenment sort of thing that you hear you've maintained something that was nominally religious, but the idea was that, well, God implanted us with a faculty for reason.
Speaker 1 00:48:00 So therefore he expected that we should use it, and therefore reasons should decide all issues having to do with our religious beliefs. So it was this sort of combination of sec secular enlightenment rationality under the heading of religion, but it was a very enlightened version of religion. And I think, you know, the founding fathers all very much came out of that tradition. So it's something that's much closer to objectivism. It's, it's almost like a halfway house, uh, to, to objective as a board, as a stepping stone in this direction. So I do think there are versions of religion that are less clashing with objectivism, but it all comes down to that issue of, are you putting up, are you, does the, does the reliance of faith caused you to put up walls that say, I can't ask these questions. I can't, uh, that it's a sin to doubt. I can't ask these questions. I can't entertain these certain ideas because I, because of the importance of faith where it's cutting you off from, from thinking about things and inducing that kind of blindness, and I think that's the real objective is case against, uh, against faith. Thanks for that answer, Robert, appreciate it very much.
Speaker 6 00:49:14 Hey, Philip, uh, this is JAG. I'm the CEO of the Atlas society. I just want to jump in on that real briefly. I pinned a link to an op-ed that I wrote in the wall street journal. Can you love God nine Rand? It's also reprinted on the Atlas society site in which I make the point that, um, some of the most passionate fans of round of Atlas, shrugged of the Fountainhead are also, uh, some of the most religious people. I know. So, you know, I, I don't think the fact that Rand, um, her metaphysics and epistemology was one of the natural world and reason not faith, um, should be a bar to further exploring the ideas, certainly enjoying the F the F um, the F the fiction. And, um, and then also, you know, just when you examine your own, uh, kind of religious commitments, I mean, I'm somebody I go to Hubud, um, here in Malibu, uh, several times a year. And, um, even though I'm an atheist, but I really enjoy the, the religious, uh, community and, and the, the experience. Um, so just
Speaker 1 00:50:26 A little bit of food. And from my experience, there's nothing more common than a Jew. Who's an atheist. I had, I had a college, I knew a guy who was the son of a rabbi, and it was always going off to temple and I was shocked to discover. He said, well, I don't really believe in God. And I was like, well, wait a minute, this, I don't understand this, but I've just got, it is a huge phenomenon of all these people that they'll, you know, that, that, uh, they will still go to the ceremonies and the rituals and the sense of the being part of the Jewish, uh, community. But at the same time, you know, belief in God is kind of optional in, in certain congregations.
Speaker 0 00:51:06 Yeah. I, uh, grew up Jewish myself so I can relate. Um, Clark, thank you for your patience. Do you have a question from Rob? If you can unmute yourself Clark. All right. Well, we're going to go to Alan then.
Speaker 7 00:51:27 Yeah. Uh, yeah. Hi, thanks. I think there's enough problems that one has to face in life. That one can, uh, be both, uh, objective and be religious and never have to confront those two things. Um, so mine right now is why even after telling myself not to hit myself in the thumb with the hammer and be careful, I still manage to do that, but that's, that's, that's another subject. Um, I, I wanted to ask when you talked about those, the three things that you thought were most important, Rob, um, I'm wondering how much of that is the result of one's culture and where one lives in the work world and how it's maybe in other parts of the world it's not so important. And I think we see that at least, and maybe this is a fair comparison when the United States, for example, tries to import democracy to other parts of the world. So maybe that's a good question. I don't know, but that's all I could think of it.
Speaker 1 00:52:46 All right. Okay. That's an interesting angle. So one thing I would say about this is I would say, say that to tell us people Hong Kong, right? So Hong Kong is, I mean, the, the thing that strikes me. So the thing that strikes me as a ref as an answer to this idea that, well, maybe our version of liberal quote unquote liberal democracy, it's a somewhat in precise term, but it's the most universally accepted one, you know, some version of representative, government, free speech rule of law. Maybe that's just a Western thing. Maybe it's just a European thing, but you know, I look out there and I see that some of the bravest and most, uh, uh, passionate struggles for those ideals right now are happening outside of Europe, outside of what we consider Western or north American context. So one of the biggest ones is Hong Kong, where unfortunately, I think they're not going to succeed.
Speaker 1 00:53:39 They're just so outnumbered. Uh, but you know, now that the, the, the shisha Bing, uh, regime has decided to crack down on freedom in Hong Kong, I don't think they're going to be able to stop them, but there has been this tremendously courageous resistance in Hong Kong to try to say, we want to, you know, these, these, uh, you know, Hong Kong is a place that benefited from, you know, a hundred years, basically of British rule and of the British bringing the best part of British rule there, which is, you know, uh, courts, courts that acted according to, you know, uh, this get to this point about courts being important. They brought the British court system and the British common law and it objective, uh, uh, uh, neutral, uh, what's the term I'm looking for, basically, non-corrupt impartial determining for impartial, uh, administration of law in the courts, the recognition of property rights, all that is being swept away.
Speaker 1 00:54:34 They've been fighting for it tooth and nail in Hong Kong because they realize how important that is. And some of my observations about, you know, the importance of, uh, uh, aspirations of the importance of free speech is that Tyna was a place where for about 20 years there, there was an attempt to use the relatively increased amount of freedom that they had in order to create a system that had more rule of law, more representation, uh, not just in Hong Kong, but in mainland China. And, uh, what happened is that they couldn't create a non-corrupt system of government, primarily because they didn't have freedom of speech that the minute you started exposing corruption, you were criticizing prominent government officials, and then you be clamped down on, right. And, uh, because they didn't have the rule of law because they didn't have freedom of speech, they could not get rid of the endemic corruption of, of the system.
Speaker 1 00:55:33 And I think it's going to, it's, it's taking them to some very, some very bad places right now. So I think that the, uh, you know, one of the things I've seen over the last, uh, especially over the last 50, 60 years since world war II has been that you've seen the quote unquote Western style of government become less and less exclusively Western that there's all sorts of countries on the Pacific rim who have adopted it. Um, there are, you know, all the bunch of countries in Eastern Europe that adopted it after the fall of the Soviet union. Um, so you've, you've, you've seen it stir bread out of, and it's sort of refute the idea of it being purely a, a Western phenomenon. I think you're starting to see some of it, some, a little bit of it happened to south America. I think you're starting to see some of it happen in Africa is very slow and torturous there, uh, because they're coming out of the period of dictatorship they had after the PO, after the closure, they went from colonialism to dictatorship, and they're basically trying to establish these institutions for the very first time ever in their history.
Speaker 1 00:56:36 Um, but I think that, that the actual experience of the world has sort of goes against the idea that somehow this does not have universal appeal. Now, the one thing I will say though, is that you cannot go straight, you know, things like our attempt to do this in Afghanistan, uh, indicate that you cannot go straight from basically what is practically a stone-age society. I mean, Afghanistan was extremely primitive. The, one of the most isolated places in the world where the cultural preconditions, uh, the cultural foundations of a free society, it had not ever really been established. It was this sort of, uh, tribal society based on primitive codes of, of tribal vengeance, uh, over and over laid on top of that was an overlaid on top of that was a particularly primitive version of Islam, uh, a purely unreformed version of Islam. So you had a situation where you're not going to go into Afghanistan and, and, you know, 20 years later, have it be a, uh, um, a Jeffersonian democracy as they like to say, as people like to say.
Speaker 1 00:57:41 Uh, so, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything at all. It gives something, you can't have an outcome there. That's better both for the people who live there and better for us in terms of the consequences for us. But it also is indicating that, you know, there is a long, you know, we're the inheritors of a long cultural road of thousands of years of development that, that brought these, the basic ideas and, uh, uh, worked out how a free society works in practice and develop all the ideas that it required to, to create it. And that can be achieved in an astonishingly short period of time by the people who were coming afterwards. And so you've seen places like South Korea become free societies, uh, in very short periods of time, but it's still a very, very difficult thing to do. And it's not going to, it's going to be very hard to implant everywhere.
Speaker 0 00:58:35 Good stuff. We'll uh, I don't think we're going to have time for, uh, another question, but, um, thanks to everyone who participated. Uh, TAs has two good events tomorrow, Jack. I believe we'll be interviewing Kenny zoo tomorrow at 5:00 PM Eastern on the fight for meritocracy, and then at 8:00 PM. Uh, Steven Hicks will host the discussion of elitist versus working man socialism from George Orwell. Uh, and he's very good about taking questions. Uh, Rob JAG, any final thoughts?
Speaker 1 00:59:11 I just want to thank,
Speaker 6 00:59:14 Uh, I think we also have a clubhouse with Jason tomorrow.
Speaker 0 00:59:19 Oh, thank you. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Speaker 6 00:59:24 Yeah, I know. It's I recommend people, um, try to, to join. He's doing a two-part series on objectivism and sexuality, so it should be really interesting. Oh,
Speaker 1 00:59:36 I don't know what to tune in for that, that can, that could really be interesting when you get people asking you about that.
Speaker 0 00:59:43 Exactly. Well, Rob, thank you for answering these questions today. And again, thanks to everyone.
