Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, thank you for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff with Atlas Society Senior fellow Rob Tru Zinsky, doing, and ask me anything. Uh, I have lots of questions from our various channels, but we wanna encourage people to join in and ask your own live questions. Uh, we've also got our gala coming up October 6th in Malibu, where Rob and the other scholars will be discussing various aspects of Objectiveism. Uh, I encourage everyone to share the room. Rob. Uh, thanks for doing this. Um, so I don't know if you wanna ha start with an opening statement or you want me to jump right into questions.
Speaker 2 00:00:43 I say jump right into questions.
Speaker 0 00:00:47 Okay, good. Well, uh, we're actually, uh, Russell raised his hand, so, uh, we'll start with him cuz we wanna encourage live, uh, interaction.
Speaker 1 00:01:00 Thank you. And, uh, good evening. I've heard in this room and throughout my life that we have a democracy. And I haven't, haven't read that in the Constitution. It's not the democracy in in which we stand. It's, I, if, you know, if I'm not crazy, I think we have a republic. What's the difference between a republic and a democracy? And, and when both parties say, you know, this is a threat to democracy, a threat to democracy. Well, excuse me. It it, I don't see a democracy written in our, in in the Constitution. What would you say to that?
Speaker 2 00:01:43 All right. Well, so I'd say that is traveled back in time, about three weeks, and we did, I did two whole, uh, clubhouse sessions on democracy, sort of the case four, the case against. So we, we, we covered this extremely thoroughly. So I'll try to recap it in my view on this. And the recap here is that it depends on what you mean by democracy. So historically, there are two different versions of the word, and, and people mean different things depending on which, which, which tradition they're appealing to when they talk about it.
Speaker 2 00:02:18 So democracy can mean the idea, uh, democracy just did its original meeting, just means rule by the people. You know, it was as opposed to an aristocracy or a monarchy or a, an oligarchy, you know, where you had, um, different groups of people or different, uh, you know, So in a, in a, in a monarchy, you have one person, the king who rules in an aristocracy, you have a, a aristocratic class, a class of nobles who rule in an oligarchy. You have a not one person ruling, but a group of people like, uh, you know, it's the 30 tyrants of, of Athens, uh, who were installed in Athens after the pian war or something like, or in, in the, the Spartan system was an oligarchy where you had a certain select group of people who held all the power. And so democracy simply meant power.
Speaker 2 00:03:07 Political power is distributed amongst the people. Now, it's very vague though. What, what could that mean to distribute power among the people? So the two traditions I'm talking about that come out of that are one which has what I would call a collectivist view of democracy, which is the idea that d democracy by defining the will of the people through some electoral process, democracy, divines the will of the people, and that is the collective will of the people. It's the, uh, Russo, Jean Jacque Russo called it the, the general will. And so it's this sort of the, the, it's the will of the people asset collective, which, uh, um, takes precedence over and overrules the will of a specific individual. And so, you know, Russo conjure this crazy scheme where you're actually free if you're forced to do what the gen what is the general will, right?
Speaker 2 00:04:05 So even if your own will, if you're, if you're forced to do something that's against your own individual will, you're free in a larger sense because you are being forced to act according to the general will of the people as a whole. Now, this is obviously just a collectivist idea of democracy is the, and, and this is where you get the version of democracy that, as the old saying goes, is, is two walls in a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, right? So the other version of democracy though, is that the term has also been used. And I, I used to think, Oh, democracy to republic are totally different things. The founders never referred to it this way. While I did some more research recently and found out, you know, so you may know from history that the, the what is now the Democratic Party started out as the Republican Party under Jefferson, under Thomas Jefferson, and then became the Democratic Republican Party, and then just became the Democratic Party basically after, uh, um, Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 00:05:01 And so it went through this transformation from a Republican party to a Democratic party. And it seems like, oh yeah, that's a, a major difference in principles. Well, when you look into it, it's, it's not really, And I found out that even in the 1790s, the Jeffersonian Republicans accepted the mo the label of democracy. And that's where Democratic Republican first pops up is in the 1790s, you know, under, under the Jeffersonian version of, of the Republican Party, which was not democratic in the sense of being for mob rule or in the sense of being collectivist. So democratic in that sense, and it's an ordinary sense that people use it in, in today's world, simply means a system where we have elections. So when people say somethings they threat to democracy, what they usually mean today is it's a threat to free elections, or it's a threat to one of the things that enables free elections.
Speaker 2 00:05:53 So, like, for example, freedom of speech, your ability to go out and, and state your views on politics openly without fear, as, as we, as we are doing currently, and as we do all the time in, in, in our, in our society. Fortunately, uh, stating your opinions without, without fear is essential to have an actual, proper free elections, right? You can't have free elections if the press is completely controlled, if people can't advocate for what they want. Cause what you get is the way you have elections in Russia now, or in a couple, in many other countries around the world, where you get a choice among a bunch of people who are all clones of the ruling party. Uh, and now, uh, Scott, you stop your, I know you're thinking right now, you're gonna make some harsh comment about isn't that what we have right now, <laugh>? We'll get to that later. Scott, I'm just you off right now. I know where you're
Speaker 1 00:06:43 Going. Yeah. I'm, I'm looking forward to addressing the difference between a Republican and a democracy.
Speaker 2 00:06:51 Right? Okay. So I'm gonna get to that. So, um, that, that broader sense of that democracy, sometimes people, the way people use it just simply refers to a system that has free elections and representative government, All right? So in that, in that second sense, there's really no difference between a republican, a democracy. You know, a Republican is a system where you have free elections and representative government, a democracy is a system where you have free elections and representative government, uh, I, so, uh, and like I said, you know, in the 1790s, the Jeffersonian Republicans were accepting the label of being Democrats in that sense. So I, I used to think, Oh, this are really hard and fast difference between the two in actually the way people actually use the language is not so, so difficult, so different. But it's a difference when you get to the collectivist version of democracy, which is, you know, that, uh, the will of the people takes precedence over, uh, as divined somehow through elections takes precedence over the freedom of the individual.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 And, uh, so for example, that in the left, we'll use it in census, like they'll talk about industrial democracy. What industrial democracy means is that everything, yes, there is no private property. You have no control, no individual control over what you own, that everything's up for a vote amongst the workers, right? So this is this collectivist Marxist version where they use the word democracy, but what they really mean end up meaning, uh, what what they mean is mob rule. And what they actually end up meaning in practice is, you know, is ruled by the party apparatus that controls who gets to vote and what they get to vote on, which is how it always ends up working in, in, in practice. So I was just say that, you know, the, that that semantic, and now it might, you might say, Oh, but you know, the word republic will really protect you from having this idea abuse.
Speaker 2 00:08:46 Well, the word republic has been used over and over again by things that were not republics, that were dictatorships. You know, there's an old running joke from the Cold War. I think it still applies to some extent today, that if you see, um, something that had the, if a government has has the words Democratic peoples or republic in its title, it means that it's not democratic. The people have no power, and it's not a republic, right? So the people's Democratic Republic of North Korea, or, or that, you know, uh, was the North Korea is the Democratic people's Republic of Korea, d prk. Uh, so, you know, I think that the semantic difference is not a big deal because that could be a, a used and abused, whether their term is democracy or republic. The main thing is not so much the words you use, but the concepts that you keep in your mind.
Speaker 2 00:09:36 The idea that, you know, what you need to have is a system of free elections and representative government, but for the purpose of protecting individual rights, and that individual freedom is the goal of the system. And this is the, I did a whole hour, uh, two hours, really like in the last month or so, and basically came to the conclusion that, uh, the, the, uh, there, there's a strong case to be made for the necessity of elections and free elections, and having, having people be able to choose their rulers and get rid of them if they don't like them. But where you get in trouble with quote unquote democracy is when you think that voting and, uh, having majority rule is the end, isn't is that you're, that the, the goal of the process to is to have majority rule rather than the goal of the process is to protect our freedom. So that's the, uh, the bottom line I give to him.
Speaker 0 00:10:33 You know, Rand, uh, brought up people's states was the, uh, all over the world, people states, Mexico and Atlas Shrug. So it's that same kind of thing, even back then, you know, it's like the people Yeah. Republic of China, and they were calling themselves a republic.
Speaker 2 00:10:50 Yeah. And people's republic, you know, And, and of course the people had absolutely no power whatsoever in that system. So, uh, <laugh>, you know, one thing that I think that happens is though, that once you have the American revolution, you really, what you have is that, is that aristocracy and, and monarchy especially become a spent force, intellectually they become sort of discredited and into the 19th century, what happens is that the idea of a democracy in the American sense, or a republic in the American sense, sort of becomes the gold standard for a legitimate government. And so you had us this huge incentive for people to steal those words. And I think democracy has made, here's where I say the differences. Democracy, I think was more open to being stolen in that sense because of the history of, you know, if you look at Athenian democracy, right? There was not a lot of protection for individual rights in Athenian democracy. They could have a trial and they could put Socrates to death. Uh, it was much more of a sort of chaotic system of mob rule. So I think that's how democracy seems like it can be more easily appropriated for this sort of mob rule or, uh, anti, it's the illiberal anti individual rights version of quote unquote democracy.
Speaker 0 00:12:08 Yeah. I know there was a, uh, either ho or ma said that, you know, he was basic, he thought saw himself as following in the footsteps of Washington in terms of being a revolutionary.
Speaker 2 00:12:20 Yeah, Yeah. And some people make the case that, oh, Homan, you know, they would've had a much better government except, but because we rejected him, he had to turn to the communist. Well, you know, that's sort of like, look what you made me do. Um, but he didn't have to turn to the communist, uh, to, you know, to to, to the, maybe he had to turn as Soviets as a sponsor, but he didn't have to adopt a communist dictatorship. I think that he did that all on his own. Uh, and it's a standard thing. You, you, you're the revolutionary who's for freedom. And then the minute you overthrow the power you're rebelling against, uh, you replace it. Right. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:12:54 Right. Well,
Speaker 1 00:12:56 So what you think electoral college is, uh, more of a Republican former government or a Democratic formal government? Or, or is my question flawed somewhat?
Speaker 2 00:13:07 Well, yeah. I, I think that the, so I guess I used to, I used to make this argument, okay, this, uh, we're not a democracy. We're, we're a republic. I've come to, in doing more research, realized that the, the, the terminological part of the argument is not as strong as I thought that the, the, the differentiation, historical differentiation, meaning between the two things is not as strong. And historically both have been subject to equal, pretty much equal amounts of abuse, Right? And being stolen by somebody who doesn't <laugh> who's creating a dictatorship. Um, so what I would say is that, uh, I do think though that that the, the intellectual idea behind it of saying, you know, things like the electoral college, that you're not just trying to get the, the majority vote at, you know, at any given moment, you're trying to create a process that will be more orderly and will prevent the, um, prevent the majority from running rush sho over the rights of the minority.
Speaker 2 00:14:02 And that's really what the electoral college was about, right? Because it was about, uh, the fear, it was created outta fear that somebody who get a majority of the vote in the big populous states like New York. And at the time, Virginia was one of the biggest states in terms of population. If you could get a, if you could win the vote in New York or Virginia, you, you could, you could, you'd get elected president and Rhode Island and Delaware and all the smaller states, uh, would have no say that it'd be of no importance whatsoever. And I think today, if you were to, if you were to get rid of the electoral college, you know, you'd have a system where there'd be no incentive for any politician ever to, uh, uh, to, to campaign in one of the less popular states like Iowa or Nebraska or anything like that.
Speaker 2 00:14:46 They wouldn't, wouldn't care about it at all, because, well, you don't have enough votes. You know, you, you don't matter. I have to pander to the people in, in, in the big coastal cities. And so that's the concern there. That, and, and so I think that it's the principle behind it of saying that majority rule is just a means to the end. You know, the voting is a means to the end of creating a free society. It's the be it's the, it's the system of politics that's most compatible with a free society. But having a free society is the goal. And so, even though you put the people in charge and you give the majority power, you still want to limit the, even the majority of, even the majority has to have limits on it. And you still wanna find ways to keep them from totally, totally overpowering a minority. And the electoral college is one of the ways of doing that.
Speaker 1 00:15:33 Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. I'm, uh, somewhat close to Malibu and, and, um, how would I find out about your, uh, shin out there,
Speaker 0 00:15:45 Actually? Up a link?
Speaker 2 00:15:49 Yeah. Scott's gonna put, I'll be there and I'd like to talk
Speaker 1 00:15:52 To you. Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 0 00:15:55 Good. Um, yeah, you'll be participating in panels during the day as well, uh, which would be fun. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, um, you know, I mean, I could keep talking about, uh,
Speaker 2 00:16:05 It's not, it's not for us, for us Atlas intellectuals. It's not just all party. We have to work there,
Speaker 0 00:16:10 <laugh>. That's right. You, I mean, uh, you're actually, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going as staff, so, uh, you know, I, I still, uh, I, I look up to you guys, so, um, <laugh>, but, um, I didn't know if, um, you know, you, I I'm not sure if you're ready to talk about, uh, elitism or if you wanted,
Speaker 2 00:16:32 Uh, yeah. Okay. So, so I'm writing an article right now. I'm sort of past maybe a third of the way through it. Um, I'm writing an article with an audience of one <laugh>, and that audience is Scott. Well, it's, it's not exactly an audience of one. I think there's gonna be other people who are interested in this, but Scott's been banging the drum on this particular issue a lot. Uh, so I decided to use him as sort of as my, my target audience when I, as I'm thinking this through. So I wanted to grow you a little bit today on this. All right. So the articles about, I think my, my working title on it, we'll see what the editors think my working title is. Do the populace have a point? Cuz one of the things that, you know, the, the case is made by the sort of populous, uh, politicians and populist movements is the problem is these elites, we have all these problems because the elites are misguided, they're wrongheaded, they're corrupt.
Speaker 2 00:17:24 They follow fads and intellectual fads and, uh, group think. And so the real problems, everything's run by the elites. And so that's why we have to have this populous rebellion against the elites. So I kind of wanted to sort of throw out to you, Scott, and also to anybody else who's here, who has an opinion on this, what would your examples be? What would the primary examples in your mind be of where the elites, first of all, where they get it wrong intellectually, and also where the elites go wrong in terms of being corrupt or, or bad or evil or vicious and being so bad that we have to, uh, uh, to, to overrule them with this populist appeal to the people, uh, or to real America. And then the last thing is, who are the elites that you're talking about? Who do you have 'em in your mind as the people who qualify as quote unquote elites?
Speaker 0 00:18:18 Yeah, I mean, I sent a couple of examples, uh, earlier when
Speaker 2 00:18:22 Yeah, I got that. I got that. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:18:24 So I
Speaker 2 00:18:25 Spot I'm putting you on the spot to say it here too.
Speaker 0 00:18:27 That's right. That I, I picked, uh, Biden, uh, Fauci and, uh, Paul Pelosi for, uh, you know, him get, uh, skating on insider trading and dwi. Um, but, uh, beyond that, you know, I think that, um, some of this ties back to, um, this kind of, I don't know how much it ties directly to the open closed thing, but I think it, it's this kind of, um, orthodox bureaucracy that gets in there. And some of it is, yes, it, it's this moral crusade for Wil, but there's also just this kind of institutional, you know, this is the way it's going to be because I say, and now, you know, because this is the policy we've chosen, we now need to defend it. And that becomes more important than, you know, objectively what's best. And and that's part of how, uh, institutional corruption, you know, occurs over time.
Speaker 0 00:19:37 And so I, you know, I think that, uh, we've certainly seen that, the example I gave with Fauci was that, you know, they, um, they found emails of him and Collins talking about doing a devastating takedown of the Great Barrington Declaration. And it's just an example, you know, you can say that, Oh, he just thought it was wrong. And so he was, you know, doing that. But I mean, because they've got, you know, government science, uh, that they are basically representatives of, uh, that it ends up being this kind of hierarchy where they, they send this message that, you know, you need to agree with us, or, or we're going to, uh, you know, consider you anti-science or, you know, whatever the charge is to, to make people just go along with whatever the orthodoxy is saying at the moment.
Speaker 2 00:20:30 Okay. So let's, let's take those a couple times, a couple bits at a time. All right. So I don't share the, like, vicious hatred of Anthony Fauci that other people have. Okay. Cause he, he's a guy who's like, you know, the top infectious disease guy at the cdc. It's his job to go out there and give advice and, you know, come up with policy on what the response is gonna be to that pandemic, right? So you could say, Oh, he was wrong about this and he was wrong about that. Yeah. He was also right about a lot of things. He was also, a lot of his critics were also very wrong about things that they, they, they came up with. So, um, and, and this, so this, this scandal that you're talking about, where he was, uh, basically urging people to come out and discredit various, uh, views that he regarded as being wrong on the pandemic.
Speaker 2 00:21:22 That's kind of a, a borderline case because, you know, what's, what's, what's his big job? His big job is bringing message to the public on the pandemic, right? So it's kind of in his job description to sort of say if there's, if there's wrong information about the, about an infectious disease out there, it's his job to say, Yes, we need to do, have a takedown of this. And if he's, what he's saying by a deficit, sitting takedown is not, uh, you know, we need to have government censor this person, but is said, has said, Oh, we have to have somebody put out an argument or an article or something like that, that would refute it. I don't see that as being the end of the world. Okay. So I, it's not
Speaker 0 00:22:02 Necessarily, there's also the masking issue. You know, at the very beginning they were, uh, saying that masks didn't help. And I can believe that they were just doing that because they didn't have enough masks at the time. And then after everyone had masks, they said, Yes, everyone needs masks. And you know, that it to, to the extent that you're saying, you know, you need to do that for, uh, society, but it just, it, it also carries this force of just, uh, you know, there was a lot of kind of shaming going on and just, um, trying to, you know, get people to comply with sometimes contradictory instructions.
Speaker 2 00:22:46 Oh yeah. No, there was a lot of confusion there. And this is, you know, this is something being run by government, so it's never going to work very well. Uh, no, but also what I'd say is there's two issues there that, uh, you need to differentiate, which is, um, and I don't wanna do this whole thing on the pandemic, cuz I know that's opening all the can of worms. But so what you had there is, I think there were two issues. One is that there was a lot of legitimate uncertainty, right? So you had a new virus. We didn't really know how it worked. There was, uh, there's a whole fascinating story about how like, for decades, uh, everybody in the field of infectious disease had misinterpreted a study on aerosol on, on, on, on particles in the a and all old study done about tuberculosis, I think, and had thought, well, okay, you know, if particles, if the, if the particles you're rejecting in the air are a certain size, they can't get in the lungs and they can't make you sick.
Speaker 2 00:23:36 And it turned out the, the physics of it was completely wrong. It was a, the study had been misinterpreted for like 50 years to create a guideline that turned out to, to be incorrect. So there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of like science that, that you get wrong because it hasn't really been tested. We haven't had a major pandemic if, if in, in a hundred years. So that the, some of the science behind it has, has been sort of accepted, but not really tested in the real world. So a lot of this sort of just saying, Oh, there's confusing messaging. It's partly cuz there was a lot of legitimate uncertainty now that's combined with them that I think is worth complaining about, which is in the public health field, I've noticed, and this is not just fauci, this is like an endemic, if I can use that term to the, to the public health field.
Speaker 2 00:24:20 There is this idea that your messaging is to say not just what's true, but to, like you, you, um, you tailor your message based on how you think people are going to behave and how what you think you're, they're going to do wrong based on what you tell them. So like, you, you tell them something that isn't quite true, but you're trying to manipulate them into the behavior that you think will be best. Right? <laugh>, And this is something that has become, I i I, it's an idea I've encountered in public health, you know, before the pandemic. And, and it is this sort of bureaucrat bureaucratic approach of, you know, our job is to manipulate you the public. And it, it's based on a real thing, which is that, you know, if you tell people, try to give people instructions, they will totally misinterpret them or they'll ignore them, or they interpret them selectively and they'll do things wrong.
Speaker 2 00:25:10 But it doesn't take you into account the fact that when you make your own message inaccurate, in order to try to manipulate people, you undermine your credibility. Right. Which is much more important. But, so that one, I think that's a, that's sort of a mixed example because I think that it, it it's combined with a lot of people who just wanted some, a lot of the people who hate Fauci and who hate the CDC and the government messaging and the coronavirus, they themselves were in denial on the actual science behind it. You know, that they were, um, you know, the, the people who, who, uh, the ads, the, the people who think, oh, the vaccines are killing people. What's the latest one? I saw the guy saying, um, do you realize that, you know, a huge number of the people who they put on ventilators died so that, you know, how spooning can, could be held accountable for that.
Speaker 2 00:25:58 You know, that basically that the doctors were killing people by putting them on ventilators. You ignoring the fact you, I know doctors who have put people on ventilators because of Covid, and they didn't do it because they were recklessly experimenting with them. They did it because it was the last ditch thing you did when somebody was literally about to die any minute. You know, when they reached the point where their blood oxygen was so low, they were on the brink of death, that's when you put them on a ventilator. So if a lot of, you know, if the majority people put on ventilators died, it's because they, this was the last ditch thing you were trying because they were about to die anyway. So it's just really, you know, outrageous, the conspiracy theories and all that that have that sprung up around Covid. So that's to just to, to deal with that issue.
Speaker 2 00:26:41 Let me say, that's my sort of caution about the populous approach though, which is that sometimes saying, Oh, the elites get things wrong, leads you to throw out everything just simply because it's set by somebody with a credential and then to believe something that has even less basis in truth because it's set by somebody who tells you the elites are lying to you. Right? And there's a lot of that that went on in the pandemic. Uh, now the other ones, some of the other ones like Paul Pelosi getting off on insider trading, I, I, I found that kind of disappointingly penny because that's not what's destroying the system. Okay. People who are
Speaker 0 00:27:17 Wealthy, it's just a very frequent example and that it's becoming more blatant that they just don't, they're not going to prosecute someone that's part of the upper elite.
Speaker 2 00:27:28 Yeah. Like, you know, like, uh, not prosecuting Donald Trump's for, Oh, wait, wait, sorry,
Speaker 0 00:27:32 <laugh>, they are prosecuting him
Speaker 2 00:27:34 <laugh>. No, they're
Speaker 0 00:27:35 Trying to investigate him every way they can.
Speaker 2 00:27:38 Has he been charged with anything yet?
Speaker 0 00:27:40 Um, they're building their case. I mean, a lot of people said they must be ready to indict for them to have gone in there in the first place.
Speaker 2 00:27:47 Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, people, people will interpret a lot of stuff in there. Um, uh, no, I think there's been a lot of reticence to, to, uh, uh, to charge Donald Trump because he's a, he's a for ex-president. Um, uh, I think there should be a lot of l less reticence about, I
Speaker 0 00:28:02 Mean, I think that's why, uh, you know, they didn't investigate Hillary properly because she was the wife of a former president that was getting ready to run.
Speaker 2 00:28:13 Oh. But they, they, they, well, you could argue actually, they, they, uh, Comey, James Comey was kind of idiot. Uh, he came, comes like, what, four weeks, two weeks before the election says, Oh, actually we're still investigating her and <laugh> and really did a lot of no favors to her campaign. Well,
Speaker 0 00:28:30 I mean, no, but, but much before that he came out and, you know, he said that she did all these things wrong, but it was, in essence, it kind of big. I mean, it could be perceived as a cover because, you know, he, he said she did these things wrong, but yet they weren't gonna pursue it at all. And when he came out later, he was actually still trying to cover for her because, um, those, uh, you know, all that stuff from Anthony Wiener's laptop was just about to get released anyway.
Speaker 2 00:29:02 Oh, that's, yeah. Um, so, but, you know, at the same time, you know, it's sort of like, uh, I, I think that people overestimate how much can be, how, how much should have been done. It, it seems a lot of the Hillary stuff seems to be like a, a disappointment that the FBI didn't, uh, didn't prosecute somebody I don't like, you know? So, um, I was never convinced that they had a really strong criminal case there. I think that there was a negligence case, and maybe you could argue that back and forth. Um,
Speaker 0 00:29:32 Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't think, uh, you know, the way that they investigate Donald Trump, I mean, I, you know, I don't actually think that he was a Russian agent, and I, even if a Republican group paid for it, first, Hillary took it and ran with it and got intelligence agencies involved with what ultimately became like a two year investigation trying to, you know, tie him as a Russian asset, which many, uh, people actually still believe.
Speaker 2 00:30:02 Well, okay, so let me lemme talk about that. Actually, I think the Mueller report app, though, actually I think is a great example of the system working because what it produced. So it, it was an, it wasn't just an investigation of Donald Trump, it was an investigation of Russian attempts to cooperate with or to penetrate or to get involved with the Trump camp to interfere with our elections on behalf of the Trump campaign. So they actually produced a report that I think pro produced an objectively good result, which was, they gave a factual report, they find, ended up not finding definitive evidence. Any, any, any strong evidence of direct collus collusion between the two campaigns. Um, they, they sort of hinted, well, maybe it would, the, the campaign was open to it, but they basically said it didn't happen. So there was a case, we had a big investigation and they produced the, you know, a, a factual result, uh, that did not just conform to what, what somebody wanted to find, right? Cause there were a lot of people who wanted this, wanted to find the evidence, and they were gonna arrest Donald Trump any day now, and it never happened. Um, and what they did find is they found, you know, they found some, some, um, illegal stuff being done by Paul Manafort and some of his people, and the, but he
Speaker 0 00:31:19 Was invest those people, but mainly Paul Manafort had a Democrat partner. That guy didn't get investigated or not indicted anyway.
Speaker 2 00:31:28 Oh, I haven't heard that part of it. But, um, okay. So I thought that the, the, the, uh, the Mueller report was an example of somebody coming up with something. It was factually accurate and, uh, done without, without a, without any apparent bias towards one side or the other.
Speaker 0 00:31:45 I saw it as them trying to just handcuff him for two years. Uh, you know, and they jumped straight from that to the Ukraine impeachment once that was over.
Speaker 2 00:31:56 Well, the Ukraine impeachment, they had him dead to rights.
Speaker 0 00:31:59 Well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2 00:32:00 Oh, absolutely. They had him dead to rights. They had him, they had him admitting that what he'd done, that he'd asked for political favors from a, a foreign leader in exchange for the release of congressionally, uh, congressionally voted, um, uh, uh, funds. So, and that's, that's a clear case of corruption on the part of a, of a leader. So that's the problem I have with the
Speaker 0 00:32:20 Political, I don't think it, uh, represents corruption to ask for him to release the truth.
Speaker 2 00:32:26 Um, no, it was investigate the people I want to investigate, uh, for investigate my political rivals or else you won't get, because, you know, Zelensky wasn't buying it, it that there was anything to investigator that there was any reason why he had to investigate this. Right? So it was, you have to do me a favor if you want to me to release these funds. So I think that was a straight up, totally uncontroversial abuse of presidential power.
Speaker 0 00:32:52 I, you know, um, I think he just wanted information, but be that as it may, I mean, it was voted on, but I mean, the, the deeper issue is that there does seem to be a double standard. Yes, there may be a couple of low level politicians at the Justice Department goes after, but they, they seem to take a completely different attitude, uh, depending on which side of the political spectrum someone's on
Speaker 2 00:33:18 You, you could argue that. Now, I would say you could argue that, but you also have to be careful to look at your own bias there, which is, you know, I, I've met a lot of people who are, you know, uh, they chanted lock her up about Hillary Clinton because she had, uh, classified inf she was mishandling classified information. And then you asked them, Well, if Donald Trump was mishandling classified information, would you, should he be locked up? And they're like, Oh, no, that's totally different. So oftentimes you have a lot of wish fulfillment pro the wish fulfillment going on here with this sort of thing of, you know, anything that's improper, that's done by somebody on my side. Well, that's just a mistake. If they're blowing out a proportion, they really misinterpret it. Why shouldn't he ask for information? And they find excuses for it.
Speaker 2 00:34:03 Anything, anything improper done by the other side becomes a capital offense. Right. And, you know, she should be locked up. Well, even if, you know, I i, if Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted, typically for the sort of thing she did, the, the, the result of a prosecution is, you know, you pay a fine and you have, um, you know, a couple of years of probation. I mean, that's sort of what, that's what they did to David Petreus, right? Uh, he's a, a guy associated with the Republican party. Uh, he got a fine in a couple of years of probation. Now he lost, ended up losing a job, you know, and, and, uh, uh, in the government. But, uh, so, you know, there's this heb to say, there's this temptation that you really need to guard your sketching yourself to say everything that happens. Any scandal involving somebody from the other side, the other party that I don't like, that's a capital case, they really should throw the book at him. Any scandal involving a guy on my side? Well, there's reasons and excuses and it's not so bad. And why are they persecuting him? And that's what I see as sort of the weakness of the populist approach.
Speaker 0 00:35:06 I mean, it's, look, it's, I think one leads to the other. It's this sense of injustice. Uh, you know, you may not think this is a good example for my side, but the, the first scene in The Godfather, you know, it, it's this guy coming to the Godfather, and he didn't wanna go to him first, but he, he felt like he got this injustice in the court system mm-hmm. <affirmative> with the criminals laughing at him. And, and that's when he says, you know, for justice, we must go to Don Corleone. And I think it's when people feel like the rule of law is failing them, that that's what attracts people to populism. And we say, mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we just wanna fight her. I'm in survival mode now.
Speaker 2 00:35:44 Yeah. Well, and I, I think that now that gets to actually the deeper problem, and this is what I'm gonna be writing about, which is, are you gonna get justice if you go to Don Cor right now in The Godfather? They sort of say, Oh yes. You know, he was like, they sort of, the Godfather is, is well known, even notorious for being sort of a glamorized version of the mob, right? So the idea is say yes, you get this sort of rough justice from by going to Don Corleone. And he, he avenges, he gets the guy's daughter who was attacked. He, he beats has the, the guys who attacked his daughter are beaten to a pulp, and he gets revenge. He gets, he gets this rough justice, uh, for, for his daughter. But of course, in real life, you know, the, uh, I think the, an, the movie that was made as an answer to the Godfather was good fellas.
Speaker 2 00:36:28 And in real life, these guys are scumbags, right? And they, you can't trust them as sorry as you could throw them. And, and they, you know, uh, the, the, the Joe Peche character and, and good fellas who's based on a real guy by the way's, just a psycho, right? He just, he, he, he unleashes violence against whoever just, you know, happens to attract his attention at the moment. And that's a much more realistic version of it. And that's the problem with the idea of, you know, I'm gonna go to John Corleone, I want a fighter, I'm just in survival mode, is you end up getting somebody who is going to be just as arbitrary, just as unjust, just as corrupt, um, as, as the guy, as the people you were, you were, uh, you were incensed against. And so, I, I think that's the problem with populism as an answer to corruption, as opposed to reform or, you know, um, uh, trying to, trying to rely on the Amer on on the, the, the anti or the trying to rely on the institutions of justice that are provided for in a liberal, um, republican, uh, system of government.
Speaker 0 00:37:37 But at some point, those, uh, you know, systems of, of justice have to, I think, try to at least give the appearance of objectivity. That's the example I used earlier where they were acting as, uh, you know, Ashley Biden's diary retrieval service.
Speaker 2 00:37:56 I am, Okay, I'll have to look into the Ashley Ashley Biden by, uh, uh, diary thing. I, I don't know if there's anything in remotely politically interesting about that. I'll look it up. I'm skeptical, but I'll look it up. Um, alright, so the other thing, the other aspect of this I wanna bring up though, cuz I, I said that I found, I found your answers a little disappointed because here's what I have in mind when I think of the corruption of the elites, is it's much bigger larger scale stuff. So for example, one example I would look at is student loans, right? We have a whole student loan system that's been going on for up about 50 years now, and it's well known, the actual effect of the student loan system, you're supposed to make college more affordable. The actual effect of the student loan system is most of the, a good portion of that money got gobbled up by university administrations and they used it not to hire more professors and more, more people to teach it so they could take on more students.
Speaker 2 00:38:52 They used it primarily to create extremely bloated administrations, right? So the administrators get the money and they use it to hire more administrators. And they have numbers on this. Like there's, you know, if you look at, at, at the typical university employment, uh, you know, who's employed at a university over the same period that you have the student loan system, what you see is that basically the number of professors stays about, stays about the same or grows at a very small rate, slow rate and the number of administrators triples. So you have a whole system where basically it's built to provide with various guarantees and subsidies, it's built to encourage young people to go into debt so that universities can hire administration and pay lots of nice salaries to administrators vast a system I see as a corrupt on a really large scale and in a way that really affects and really hurts the average person.
Speaker 2 00:39:46 And, but it becomes something that, because there's a constituency out there that thinks, Oh great, I got these benefits because they're giving their, the government's helping me get student loans. I think Bill Clinton campaigned in 92 on making student loans more 1992 by making student on making student loans more available. And the students wildly cheered for him, uh, because they thought, Oh, look at this great favor he's doing us. Of course, you know, 30 years, 30, 40 years later, they're all saying, Where did all the, how did, how did, how did students get so much debt <laugh>? It's like, well cuz you tiered for it 30 years ago. Um, so the, uh, that's what I see as the big scale corruption, but it tends to hap happen just as often with a populous appeal. I mean, think of Bill Clinton, that was a populous appeal he was making when he just said, told people, I'm gonna expand student loans.
Speaker 0 00:40:39 It just was an easy, uh, way to spend some money and kind of, you know, expand
Speaker 2 00:40:46 Yeah. Buying votes. It was buying votes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a classic populous move though that you now, it's a big government program that will benefit a group of people that you expect to come out to the polls for you.
Speaker 0 00:40:56 Look, I, I can see that's a big problem, but it's more what happened when they went there and because these administrators maybe didn't have enough to do, they started becoming social justice warriors and now, you know, these kids go there. It's like, I see these parents and they're just like, Yeah, I accept that I'm about to lose my kids to, uh, you know, postmodernism when they go to college. It's just like, that's just expected now. And
Speaker 2 00:41:24 And I don't think it's nearly as common as you think though, but, um, well
Speaker 0 00:41:29 <laugh> maybe it's just my circle of friends. Yeah. Um, but, uh, but bosses, the,
Speaker 2 00:41:36 The woke thing wasn't created by college administrators. It was created by, it was created by college professors. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 00:41:42 Is
Speaker 2 00:41:42 That better? Well, I know, but I mean saying that it's, it's not, you can't say, Oh, the problem with the student loan system is that it created wokeness. It didn't create wokeness. Well, the problem is the student loan system is a whole other corruption into itself that has its own causes and origins.
Speaker 0 00:41:58 And
Speaker 2 00:41:59 I just, so what I'm seeing, Scott, is that you have this tendency to like, wanna connect everything to the political bugga booth that has you worked up right now, right? And not well, you
Speaker 0 00:42:08 Knows
Speaker 2 00:42:08 Own Cause
Speaker 0 00:42:09 I, um, I consider myself never woke. I see it as a new religion that can bring in into new dark ages. And I see it as the prevailing force and I'm trying to rally everyone else of, of the individualists to try to, you know, put aside their differences and, you know, let's try to mount some sort of, uh, defense or push things in a different direction.
Speaker 2 00:42:37 And I'm hundred percent with you on that. And but it also means if you're gonna do that, you gotta, you actually gotta put aside some of the differences. Cause you know, a lot of the people who are on our side are also, you know, basically a lot of never Trumpers are also never woke people. Right. So that's the problem you're gonna have.
Speaker 0 00:42:56 I mean, I want to bring the, you know, never Trumpers back, but, you know, it's like I'm, I'm past Trump myself, but I at least, you know, DeSantis is in that same spirit for me because he's at least someone that's, you know, standing up and, and taking a stand in the culture wars.
Speaker 2 00:43:16 Oh, but DeSantis the problem with him though is he's doing violence to the First Amendment by doing it. But I I, okay, we, we will have to do a whole other clubhouse of DeSantis as the, uh, as and, and why I don't like him as an alternative. Cause I think he, I'll just do a very quick thing and I think we should open the other questions cause we get spent too much on this. Sure. But the quick thing on that is I heard that the National Conservative Summit, that they had these nationalist conservatives who are, you know, anti basically anti individual rights conservatives who are saying we have to get more comfortable with using the power of the state to promote our ideas and promote our, and to promote our, and, and to promote our cultural, our cultural war goals. And that was the theme of it, getting more comfortable with it, with saying, instead of being for small government, we should be for using the power of government for our own ends. And that's not a solution. And you know, I'm, I'm a little afraid with somebody like, and I think the Santa is very in that spirit and I'm a little afraid that you end up saying, Oh, I hate this woke religion, this woke religion shouldn't be getting government support. And then you'll end up with the old time religion getting government support. Right. And that, that's what the na that's definitely what the national conservatives want. Uh, anyway, but I, I think I would cap this off cuz we can go hammer and talks on this. All right,
Speaker 3 00:44:32 <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:44:32 It's
Speaker 3 00:44:33 A long way to election the
Speaker 2 00:44:34 Last 15 minutes. Let's open up for if anybody else is something else,
Speaker 3 00:44:37 Say Roger, thanks so much
Speaker 2 00:44:39 For joining.
Speaker 3 00:44:41 Hey, what's up man? That was a good, I I joined at a good time. I see. Uh, so my question would be, uh, right along the lines of what you guys were talking about, uh, the national conservative, uh, had, they had a convention recently and they were talking about, um, you know, moving to more authoritarian measures to be able to, uh, uh, influence the culture. And obviously there's a lot of things that we could, I could frame this question in a lot of different directions, but I'm looking at pragmatic, uh, tools that we could use. And, uh, my, my question, uh, specifically, uh, and then more broadly, if you've got any other ideas, uh, I would like to know, is there, do you guys know of a list of liberty minded professors, whether they're teaching philosophy, whether they're teaching economics, civics, Um, I, I, is there a database of that? And if not, uh, you know, who's gonna volunteer to build that
Speaker 2 00:45:41 <laugh>? I love that idea by the way, of a database. Now, I think maybe part of the reason there isn't database is some of those people are leg low that don't necessarily wanna have a lot of attention draw to themselves. Uh, <laugh>, uh, I know a few people like that. Um, but you know, there, there's gotta be a, it'd be great to have a list of people who are actually willing to go out there and say stuff in public and to some greater or lesser degree. I don't know if one list out there, but I know of organizations you can look at who are they? You know, like Mercatus Mercatus Institute, um, up in, up in DC uh, um, who, who, uh, I've worked with on on some things. I mean, I write for Discourse, which is one of their publications. And they've got this whole network of sort of libertarian minded, uh, or pro free market, small government, uh, uh, professors or, or the Institute for Humane Studies, which is even more oriented towards academia, uh, has such a list.
Speaker 2 00:46:37 So there's organizations that do that. I'm not sure if there is any one list out there. Um, now the one thing I'm looking at because, so right now, so the personal angle on this is I'm, I'm, I'm, I graduated from the University of Chicago many an undisclosed number of years ago. And right now my son is reaching that age where they're starting to look at college stuff and they had a representative from the University of Chicago visit, uh, visit their high school. And so he, you know, he's thinking maybe University of Chicago. And one of the things that makes me think, you know, that's not such a bad idea. It's not just cause I went there cuz who knows if it's the same as it was when I went there. But it's the fact that University of Chicago has distinguished itself with, I think it's called like the Chicago principles or something like that, which are these set of rules that have to do with, you know, all with the, the administration committing to protecting freedom of speech and basically protecting people from being sort of bullied by woke mobs, uh, on campus.
Speaker 2 00:47:35 And, uh, so, you know, some of them have nice statements of principles that you have to wonder how well actually implemented that is. But at least Chicago has a nice statement, principles. I think MIT has a new one they've come up with that. I've, I haven't read it yet, but I just, in the last couple days I saw something and I've, I've got it set aside to, to read through that. So that's one thing too is to look at for institutions and there are some academic institutions that are doing a better job of that. Um, because, you know, there are some people who are left to center who are, uh, who are sort of old fashioned 20th century liberals who remember that, yeah, we're supposed to be in favor of free speech and academic freedom. And there's still, there's still a few people, some people out there standing up for that.
Speaker 3 00:48:17 That's
Speaker 2 00:48:17 Awesome. So like, you'd have to have a list of like libertarians and also a list of sort of anti woke or pro-free speech liberals.
Speaker 3 00:48:22 Yeah. And, and what I will say, uh, on the anti woke thing is, uh, in, in the culture, uh, there's a, uh, rapper by the name of, uh, Eric July who has created a comic book company. Uh, and he has presales of 3.6 million for his, uh, anti woke comic book, uh, for the first edition. So keep an eye on that. Uh, it's uh, it's called Rip Averse. And I think those are the kind of ideas that I think are gonna catch on.
Speaker 2 00:48:52 Yeah, well I think, you know, the way, the way having seen this sort of puritanism comes in waves in American culture, right? There's a long puritanical tradition in American culture. I saw a photo sock photos somewhere the other day, like just a Twitter feed with like history photos or something like that. And it was a police woman measuring the bathing suits of women at the beach. In, in, it was either LA or Chicago, I can't remember where. Um, and you know, it, it just shows you that you know, that that, my god, you know, the scandal of women wearing bath and these bathing suits are, you know, cover, cover immensely more of the body than the average bathing suit that you will see today at the beach. Uh, but you know, it was consider to scandalous that these women should wear bathing suits that are too short with skirts that are too short.
Speaker 2 00:49:39 And this, you know, and this had to be a law enforced by policemen. And there's this, there's this puritanical impulse that's been there from the very beginning in America, cuz you know, some of the people who settled here were, you know, literal Persians. And so it, it manifests itself in also to weird ways over the years. And it manifests itself in ways that are overtly sort of traditionally religious. And, you know, you occasionally have a gay panic or you know, member that Anita Bryant from back in the day, uh, God made Amny Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and they had laws, um, I think Reagan, uh, one of the things that distinguished him as governor of California is he, he opposed a law that was gonna outlaw that was gonna say, uh, anybody who was homosexual could not teach in the schools, in the public schools.
Speaker 2 00:50:25 And he came out against that law and the gra look, this is, this is ridiculous. This is a, a persecution of these people. Uh, it has no basis. But, you know, so you have various religious moral panics and puritanical things that are then, you know, swapped out occasionally <laugh>. And especially the, the unique distinguishing feature of today as we have our first real full on left wing puritanical, uh, maybe there's a very previous one that I don't know about. But this I think is our first real full on left wing puritanical, uh, uh, moral panic, right? And that's the, you know, you have, you can't use these words, you have to use these pronouns. You have to, you can't say this, you can't say that you can't do this, you can't do that. Uh, you have to see no difference between men and women, all this stuff that is, you know, if you strip away the actual content, which seems so different and non-traditional, you see it as another form of uh, sort of a moral panic and another form of purism.
Speaker 2 00:51:24 And so, um, that, and where I was getting going with this is religious purism in the past, I think the most effective way to dispel it has always been mockery, right? Has always been cuz it's inherently a ridiculous thing. So you just make fun of it. And I think that's how we're going to, you know, we're not gonna pass laws to get rid of oakness. I think it's already passing, its sell by date. You know, in some ways I think we're just gonna, you know, it's gonna become a, it's gonna become a, a running joke woke. This is gonna become a joke. And that's the way, that's the way you dispel it and it's way more effective than passing a law against it is you simply make it, make it seem as ridiculous as it really is.
Speaker 0 00:52:08 Thank you. Uh, real quick, I just wanted to add that, um, I did a little research and there is a heterodox academy, which Oh yeah,
Speaker 2 00:52:19 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:52:20 They, um, you know, they have one statement that I support open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in research and education. There's like 5,000 members, uh, and there's also a National Association of scholars. So, uh, that may be a good lead. Uh,
Speaker 2 00:52:38 Yeah. National Association of Scholars, as I remember, is more just sort of conservative academics. So you're probably gonna get a mixture of different things there. But, uh, Hetero Academy definitely I should have mentioned that one. They are the one that specifically meant to say, okay, we are for diversity of ideas in academia and freedom of speech in academia.
Speaker 0 00:52:57 And that's the John Jonathan hate one, Right?
Speaker 2 00:52:59 Right. Yeah, yeah. And he's, you know, he's a center left guy.
Speaker 0 00:53:04 Good. Uh, thanks for joining us. Go ahead.
Speaker 4 00:53:07 Hey, it's John, quick question for you, Rob. Um, so, um, I'm 52, so I remember back in the late eighties and early nineties, um, that the people in tech were like, they were, a lot of people were really into Anne Rand and her philosophy. <affirmative>, you can argue that that's kind of almost libertarian. But then yeah, you fast forward to today where it's almost 180 degree turn. Um, so can you, if you have any, um, understanding or explanation for that shift in, in, in, um, philosophy or mindset? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:53:44 That's a good question. I mean, I, I'm not gonna give, give you a super definitive answer cause I'm not a Silicon Valley guy, right? So I wasn't around in Silicon Valley in the eighties and then saw, you know, can give you ideas of how it happened. Um, I can give a couple of ideas on that. One is that Silicon Valley, I first started out, it wasn't Silicon Valley, right? You know, cuz the early Silicon Valley was this sort of neglected backwater where these guys were doing really technologically interesting things that were known only to other people who were really into technologically interesting things, right? So it, it attracted it different kind of person. It attracted somebody who was, um, entrepreneurial and somebody who was outside of the box, somebody who was very innovative and it was mostly small. It wasn't a bandwagon people had jumped onto yet.
Speaker 2 00:54:33 Then what happened in the nineties is it became, it went from being the scrappy upstart to being the big institutions really happened in the nineties into the two thousands, right? So it's like they went from being the tiny little startup companies that were taking down IBM to becoming ibm. And so now that coincided at the, so what happens is when you become ibm, when you become the big institution, when you become the place to be that everybody flock to you get a different kind of person. You're coming there who is not necessarily an outside the box innovator and independent thinker, but somebody who's more looking to climb onto the band way. And it's sort to the sort of person who used to go work for ibm, right? Yeah. They were the big, they were the big going concern. And if you wanted a good career, you jumped on there and you, you could, and you could make, and you could do well and you could rise up, uh, uh, to the top of the ladder or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:55:26 And so when you have that happen, you get much more of the conformist type of thinker who tends to, to, uh, to come into the institution because, you know, now you're the big institution. You are ibm and you get the, you know, back in the day of ibm, it was the guys all wearing their pinstripe suits. Uh, I joke about that because I, I knew some guys who used to work for IBM in Chicago. This is way back in the day. And the Chicago, the IBM building in Chicago was one of these, you know, Mees Van Dro buildings where it's all these little narrow little lines of steel going up and down. So they, they used to joke that even the building was wearing a pinstripe suit, uh, <laugh>. And, and it just sort of like, you know, you had, you had that sort of, you know, you wear your dull little corporate uniform and your, you plug yourself into the corporate machine and you get like a weirdly different style of that today, but it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker 2 00:56:16 You go off to work at Google and they've got an internal ch lister and everybody on the internal listserve went to the same kind of colleges, absorb the same kind of ideas at college, and they repeat it back to each other and it's all very social justicey. And you, you go along and you fit in and you, you, you sort of conform to that. So I think it's partly Silicon Valley and the tech world going from being the scrappy independent outsiders that nobody cared about to being the big institutions and centers of wealth. And then you get a much more sort of conformist version kind of person who goes to work there. And, you know, with the change in fashions and with the counter culture becoming the mainstream culture, the, the man in the gray flannel suit from 56, from 70 years ago has now become, you know, the guy in the hoodie who, uh, um, and, and the, you know, the purple hair and the, and, and whatever your other, your caricature of the sort of the, the woke type is, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 00:57:12 So that's my overall theory. Uh, and that, and you know, the, um, institutions tend to represent wider changes in the culture. And when Silicon Valley started up in the sixties, it was, I in the sixties into the eighties was a high point for, uh, pro-free market and small government ideas. Uh, I kind of remember that I'm old enough if you're 52, I'm 53, I'm old enough to kind of remember that, that, uh, like the welfare estate became uncool. And, you know, if, if somebody said, Oh, I was in the Peace Corps, you kinda like snicker at what a what a fullest diluted, you know, misguided idealist. This guy was that he really thought he was gonna change the world by being in the Peace Corps. And there was this, you know, there been, and it was a natural reaction that in the sixties and seventies, so all these sort of big government war on poverty and, and all these big government programs and all this hippie idealism, this sort of mud headed hippie idealism.
Speaker 2 00:58:09 And then by that time you got to the eighties, we'd seen the results and we saw that it didn't work and that it was, it was ki again, it had become kind of ridiculous. And so I think that, you know, Silicon Valley sort of came along at that point when those ideas had been discredited to a certain amount in the culture where they didn't have the cool or the cache or the, um, the credibility that they had. And then I remember seeing in the nineties, the beginnings of this backlash of, no, we wanna go back to being idealists like those people in the sixties and not, not remembering anything about how ridiculous all those washed up old hippies became, um, when they actually tried to implement their ideas. So there was this sort of, starting in the nineties, there was this, this push back towards what eventually became wokeness. And so, you know, Silicon Valley, like any other institution in the culture, is gonna get swept up in that
Speaker 0 00:59:04 And rand properly their arch enemy. So they couldn't let any employees. Uh,
Speaker 2 00:59:10 Now, now I, I would say though, there are still a lot of guys out there, you know, I know some of them, uh, a lot of guys out there who are influenced by Iron Rand, who are, you know, small government, pro free market. Uh, so, you know, it's not like they've been extinguished, it's just that, uh, it isn't so much that they're not, they don't represent as much the the overall culture that seems to come out of Silicon Valley to the extent that, you know, to the extent that we notice that.
Speaker 0 00:59:40 Well, uh, that is a great ending point. Thanks everyone for joining us. We talked about some good stuff, Rob. We can do that back and forth anytime. <laugh>, tomorrow at 4:00 PM uh, Professors Jason Hill and Steven Hicks will be discussing current events on Zoom, YouTube, Facebook, uh, Thursday at 4:00 PM back here on Clubhouse Atlas Society founder David Kelly will be talking about the cardinal virtues or cardinal values, I'm sorry. And then, uh, Friday at 5:30 PM Eastern on Clubhouse, Jason Hill will be back discussing in Rand versus ncha, which should be good. Uh, we've also got our gala coming up October 6th in Malibu honoring Michael Sailor, and we're going to have panels with the scholars on Objectiveism and the culture should be a lot of fun. Please join us if you can. Uh, Rob, thanks
Speaker 2 01:00:28 Again. Scott has a link up here for the gala. You can go there and I, we're gonna add a new, new event. Scott and I are gonna, our differences with a mixed martial arts cage match.
Speaker 0 01:00:38 Not that tough. Good. Thanks everyone for joining us. Have a good one.
Speaker 2 01:00:45 Thanks everyone.
