Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 This Tuesday's clubhouse chat. Uh, Rob is going to be reviewing some of the top stories of the year, uh, and taking your questions. So, um, feel free to tee them up. Just raise your hand. I want to let everyone know we will record so that we can make this available on our podcast platform. So, uh, Rob take it away.
Speaker 1 00:00:26 Okay. So I was just mentioning that this is the time of year. I typically sort of do a year end of year review or look at the, over the big stories of that year and, uh, how, and, you know, sort of wrapping up for that year, the big picture for that year and getting prepared for what's going to happen in the next year. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk about what were, you know, a few days away from the end of 2021. So what were the big stories of 2021? So let me, I'm just going to give you the brief overview to start. The conversation gives you a brief overview of my countdown. Um, and I just do a top five. So the at number five, I have what I call the great leap backward, which is the, uh, continued rise of authoritarianism and dictatorship around the world.
Speaker 1 00:01:17 Uh, you can see that in the fact that we're all kind of concerned right now about the possibility. I think it's almost an inevitability of a Russian invasion of Ukraine coming up by, you know, uh, a part of that, by the way, I came across with delightful. Well, the story of, uh, a lot of repute and talking about his time, uh, during, after the fall of the Soviet union. And he talks about how he was, you know, he had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB and he talks about how he was, you know, forced for a while to make ends meet, to work as a cat, as, as a private driver, I think a sort of limo driver or a cab driver, uh, in Moscow. And you get the idea of what, uh, what, uh, and he says, I'll stop pleasant to talk about.
Speaker 1 00:01:58 So you get an idea of what a humiliation that would be for him as a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB. He was one of the elites, the Norman Katurah, one of the people who was destined to be one of the rulers of the Soviet empire, and here he was reduced to driving a cab. So you can see how he has this sort of he's out for revenge for the fall of the Soviet union and wants to put the old Russian empire back together. And that's something that people don't realize is that the extent to which the Soviet union was just Russian imperialism under the guise or the cover of, of a communist ideology. Uh, so he's trying to bring that back together and also the big new development, the other big new development in this last year was the extent to which in China, you know, Haftar 20, 30 years of sort of, of, of opening up the economy and having less dictatorship and a greater, you know, a very still limited degree of freedom politically, but much more than they used to have.
Speaker 1 00:02:57 China is basically being carried by Xi. Jinping is being carried back to a Maoist, um, uh, approach. So the, the over the summing of that big story was that I said, this is something I wrote fairly recently in a column for discourse magazine. I said, it's been a while since the American system has faced a serious challenge from a global ideological rival, and that's going to be the problem that we're going to face. And I think it's, it's, uh, it's, it reminds me a lot of the cold war. And what other respect, which is that, um, the nationalism of somebody like Thunderbird Putin, I'm noticing it has a certain amount of sympathy among people here in the U S now back in the cold war days, the Russians had sympathy on the left these days because they're nationalists in their, in their ideology and religious and their ideology. They have sympathizers on the right. And, uh, Tucker Carlson has been going to bat for Vladimir Putin and the reasonableness of his claims in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 00:03:58 So that's another sort of deja VU that we're going to get out of that now to go to the fourth one is what I talked about here on clubhouse a while back with everyone, and that is I call it the antiwar vote, and this is the year. So I started do a little overview in this, in my vulgar overview for my newsletter. I did, I sort of tried to do the whole sort of history of the current round of the culture wars. And I won't try to get into that now, unless that discussion takes us that way, but it's really been going on. It sort of popped up in about 2014 is when this current wave of high, very intense culture, war discussion ever being, you know, accusing you of being a racist or accusing you of being a sexist. And that's sort of where the term woke started to be used, uh, as an everyday thing that really goes back to about 2014 as it were sort of became dominant.
Speaker 1 00:04:50 And so we're now seven years in on that. And I think what's happened is that anti wokeness has been something of an intellectual or cultural cause for awhile, but it has become in the last year more and more of a political cause and a popular political cause. And that was sort of heralded really by the, uh, the election here in Virginia, uh, where the governor, the democratic candidate for governor was defeated because people were upset about a number of different things for the schools, but they were upset specifically about, uh, political indoctrination in the schools and the idea that he was saying that, oh, parents shouldn't have any control over what gets taught in the schools. And so opposition to work, this has become a, uh, a political cause. Now I, I point out that that's a, uh, a nice new breakthrough, but also creates some dangerous because when it becomes a popular political, cause it becomes a bandwagon and everybody wants to jump on to it.
Speaker 1 00:05:48 And some people want to jump onto it because they believe in freedom of speech and not a doctorate in kids. And some people want to jump onto it. Um, opportunistically, they've got their own agenda, they want to impose on people. So I talked a little bit about the, the potential problems that arise from it becoming a popular political, political cost. Your politics is a highly parasitic field that whenever anybody sees something that's happening in politics, they want to grab a hold of it and profit from it and promote themselves with it and also push their own totally unrelated agenda onto it. So it's something you always have to watch out for. Number three in my countdown is the sort of second stage, the second year of the pandemic and the, uh, what I sort of see as the, the bifurcation of the pandemic. So the interesting thing is early in the pandemic, the only measures that could be really taken against the, uh, against the spread of the virus were by their nature collective in a sense, which is that, you know, you had to, um, have these measures be adopted sort of broadly by everyone and for them to be effective.
Speaker 1 00:06:56 So you had to have a lot of people, there was confusion about what was effective, but you had a lot of people practicing social distancing or using masks or doing one thing or another. They were, the pandemic was a collective phenomenon that you, as an individual, there's a limited amount that you could do personally, to protect yourself from it. And that the most effective things to prevent the spread of it were things you had to get everybody to do. Well, what happened this year is the de collectivization of the pandemic does some extent. And that is that, uh, with the development of effective vaccines, you could get a vaccine, you could protect yourself. And then the result of that, you sort of see the pandemic move into two tracks. There's the pandemic for the vaccinated, which has proven to be, um, because the vaccines are largely effective.
Speaker 1 00:07:49 It means that it's inconvenient for if you're vaccinated, it's inconvenient, you have to, you may get sick, but you're not likely, you know, you're much less likely to be hospitalized or to die. And that looks like the du Omicron variant is even a little milder. So your risks go down. Whereas for then there's a whole group of other people who are have is a sort of a quarter of the population that basically totally refuses to be vaccinated. And they go, and they've gone about basically not just refusing vaccination, but to a large, to a large extent refusing any other message, a measure against the pandemic. And they have been the ones who have been getting sick and dying in much larger numbers. So you just sort of seeing us, and, and unfortunately some of that goes along partisan lines. So you sort of seen a partisan pandemic where you have people who for ideological political reasons, as I have to put it, they'd rather die than admit that they were wrong about politics.
Speaker 1 00:08:44 And so they just have dug in and will refuse to get the vaccine and are dying in much larger numbers and experiencing a much greater crisis. You know, Dave, Dave Barry, the comic writer from, uh, uh, uh, from Florida does this, uh, oh, it just, it's very funny end of year review. And he summed up very nicely. So it's that this year, there were a bunch of people who were vaccinated, who went around acting as if they weren't vaccinated and a bunch of people who weren't vaccinated, who went around acting as if they were, and that's sort of how, how the pandemic has split apart in a second ear. Uh, so unfortunately I, you know, I've been sort of beaten down to the, uh, grim, uh, policy that I've adopted of. Uh, I think we have to adopt of live and let die, which is, you know, instead of live and let live, Hey, everybody can decide what they want to do.
Speaker 1 00:09:31 The more grim calculation here is, you know, those of us who get vaccinated and who take precautions, we're going to live, and we have to accept at some point that there's another group of people out there who won't take precautions. And we can't, we were really limited in how much we can force that on them. So it has to be live and let die. Uh, which Paul saw, I hope has a, uh, starts a Paul McCartney song, one of his better ones going through your head. Um, then let's see, number two in the pandemic, I'll just wrap up this little summary, number two in the pandemic, uh, is the, how would I put it if the failure and incompetence of the Biden administration, which I hope was not a big surprise to anybody? Um, uh, you know, I, I was, I'm very critical about the, about president Trump and we'll get to that as the number one story, but I had no illusions that Biden as the way I put it is Biden was the guy who returned us to normal and put a normal politician back in charge, which seems like a great thing until you remember what normal politicians are like.
Speaker 1 00:10:38 And that's sort of basically been what has happened. And the big, the big event is his incompetence as a manifest, a self in what, in a good way, in a bad way, the bad way is the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which turned out to be a disaster. And I think is what is, uh, emboldening, uh, dictatorships like the dictatorship of China or, or, or this invasion of Ukraine? I think they're emboldened by that what they saw with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that, that it makes America look weak. It makes Biden in particular look weak, uh, and unable to protect American interests. Uh, so that's the bad aspect of his incompetence. The good aspect of his incompetence is that after a few early things he did, his legislative agenda has basically fallen apart. His giant, you know, $3.9 trillion build back better. Uh, welfare state boondoggle, uh, is, is, is now dead in Congress.
Speaker 1 00:11:36 So it's the stolen out of his legislative agenda, which came partly from the fact that the agenda was badly designed in the first place. And also from the fact that he has not been an effective, uh, advocate for it. I mean, if you, if you go and look at his, uh, his record in the Senate, um, uh, Joe Biden was never, you know, a great, a great legislator or a great competent leader. So I don't think we should expect anything different. Now, now, number one, I think the story that really still overhangs the year is January 6th. It's the, uh, the riot at the U S Capitol, uh, last January, which I view as it was an attempt to overthrow when the election results is an attempt to, uh, force Congress to not certify the results of their free election, a free and fair election. And I, I, unfortunately what's happened since then, is that that Trump and his supporters have doubled down on that they will not give up the idea of, uh, uh, last of the 2020 election being stolen.
Speaker 1 00:12:38 They will not give up the idea that, uh, it's been coming out the details that have been coming out of the congressional inquiries on this as that they had a whole plan to basically declare the election results last year, no avoid, and to, uh, have the pressure of the state legislatures and a couple of key states to change the election results in their state, which they don't really have the power to do. And, uh, then just simply declare Donald Trump, the winner of the last election, uh, that was their actual plan. There's lots of evidence out about it now. And so I think this is, and the fact that they've gotten the Republican party basically to sign on to this, and the most dangerous thing I've seen in the last year is the fact that, uh, the, the, the, the attempt to overturn the election laughed and J and you know, between November, January of last year failed because the Republicans didn't have enough control over local auction officials.
Speaker 1 00:13:35 And you know what I mean by that is the local election officials, even when they were Republicans stood up and said, no, we can't do this. This isn't the proper procedure. We're not going to go along well over the last year, there have been efforts to target at a lot of those local elections and local officials and elect people who would go along, uh, and, you know, in defiance of the law would go along to overturn the results of an election. So it's like they're making a preparation to seal future elections by actually getting the people put into the local offices who would support them to do that. And I think that's, uh, that's the most alarming thing that has happened this year, because when you look at about it, you know, we talk about how America has a tradition of peaceful transition of power.
Speaker 1 00:14:18 Well, up until now, uh, in 2021, we did not have a peaceful transition of power. We had a riot that was, uh, at that invaded the U Capitol attempted to prevent the peaceful transition of power, you know, and, and we've had lots of bigger threats before, like, uh, I, in looking at this, I looked at, uh, Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, which he gave in March of 1861, after several of the Southern states had already officially declared their, um, their succession for the union. And the whole thing is a big long plead to say, Hey, let's not go to war over this. This is a really bad idea. Please let step back from the brink, which obviously didn't work. But even though that was under the shadow of succession, you know, the actual violence didn't occur until the next month. Uh, so this is the first time that you've had a, uh, a transition of power that was accompanied by violence, specifically directed to, uh, and which specific, which, which got within a Stone's throw essentially of actually disrupting the transfer of power. Uh, so that's, I think that has to be the, you know, a hundred years from now, that's going to be the one thing that people are going to remember about the, or 2021. So I think that has to be the top of the list.
Speaker 1 00:15:33 So I'm curious what everybody else thinks would be their top stories or what they, their, their perspectives on those things, this incident. So sometimes the most important thing is something that didn't happen. So on that note, I want to say, what I should have mentioned in talking about the pandemic is the really huge news. I guess it's the news of 2020, but it's also, the news is 2021, is that for the first time ever we've developed and deployed a vaccine during the middle of a pandemic. So typically what happens is, you know, is an outbreak of a new disease. And by the time that you get around, uh, to going through to D to finding out how to make a vaccine and going testing it and getting it produced and et cetera, the, the, the initial outbreak has already run its course. And, you know, the vaccines valuable because it presents prevents new outbreaks or re-infection, and that sort of thing. But the initial devastation of, of the, of the pandemic has already occurred. This is really the first time in history, to my knowledge that we have developed and deployed a vaccine with such rapidity because of the technological advances that we were able to make it extremely widely available before the pandemic had run its natural course. And that's a huge advance. I think that's something that we need to sort of celebrate as one of the good stories. One of the, the piece of good news from the last year.
Speaker 0 00:16:59 Yeah. And we are in dire need of good news. I'd also say that, um, maybe a story that hasn't been covered, um, and is less good news is, you know, we were hoping for a vaccine that would really function like a vaccine that we would take it. And, uh, we wouldn't get infected. We wouldn't spread the disease and that has not turned out to be the case. Um,
Speaker 1 00:17:25 Jennifer, I have to say, I've been fighting this for months. You were completely wrong on that. Uh, this is how a vaccine functions, a vaccine is never meant to prevent re prevents infection. That's supposed to prime the immune system against the disease. And this one does that. It, uh, it, it does actually, it, it deter, it prevents infection in the sense of you are less likely to become infected and to become infectious to others. If you have the vaccine, it is way. But the main thing is it is far, far, far less likely for you to become sick, to require hospitalization, to become seriously ill or to require hospitalization or even less likely to die. So the idea that this is somehow not effective as a vaccine is based on an unrealistic and unscientific idea of what a vaccine is supposed to accomplish. Um, if everybody were vaccinated, we would not be having it. It would be, it would be the common cold.
Speaker 0 00:18:22 Um, yeah. I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, I've gotten my measles vaccines, my tetanus vaccines, various other vaccines. I, I, I don't, I'm not required to get a booster every three or four months in order to maintain their effectiveness.
Speaker 1 00:18:39 Well, but if the question is it is effective. I mean, that is the story. It is effective explaining. Oh, uh, I guess the context for this historically is nobody has ever done this before nobody's ever developed a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic. So going around and complaining, oh, but I have to get a booster. Seems like, you know, it's like somebody gave me a million dollars, but oh, I have to, uh, uh, you know, I have to pay us a 10% tax on it. Well, okay. But you're still up $900 million, $900,000.
Speaker 0 00:19:12 Right. And I, you know, somebody who's in their eighties for my parents, um, is a, is a game changer. But for somebody in their twenties, in their thirties, in their forties, um, who, uh, you know, the, the other thing is with your analysis is, and just kind of separating, well, there are the un-vaccinated and this is now going to be, you know, that we, the vaccinated were live and they, the unvaccinated will die, uh, without taking into account. How many of the people who are foregoing vaccines have natural immunity and
Speaker 1 00:19:50 Yeah, the vaccine is actually good. Better. You have to go again. You have to look into dig into the science of this. The vaccines give better immunity, especially I guess, Omicron and the newer, various, they give better immunity than having had the disease before. That's something that wasn't clear first of course, because you know, the science works slowly. You kill you, don't, can't get big re you know, very firm results over generally speaking, you can't get very firm results over a period of two to three months. You have to get them over six months or a year. Usually it works a lot slower than this. Um, there aren't the most recent figures are that, um, the, the vaccine is actually better, especially for the newer variants. It is better immunity than, than natural immunity from having had COVID people having had a previous,
Speaker 2 00:20:37 If I'm a Chrome isn't deadly, uh, you know, in, in far in that's what the it's been shown so far compared to the other variants, then that re you know, does whether it makes sense for, you know, these kids to get boosters when they're even warnings for, for 20 something males not to use it. So, you know, there, there can be more risk than just letting, uh, then just getting home.
Speaker 1 00:21:04 Well, that's something that again, is still developing. So the early, I want to talk about this briefly, the early Omicron data came out of South Africa, and it was kind of hard to tell what that meant for, to re whether that apply to anywhere else, where for two reasons, one is that the average age in South Africa, something like 29. So these are people who are going to be more resilient against COVID to begin with, right. Uh, they're going to be hell younger and healthier and less likely to die. So if you don't see a big spike in deaths around micron, that might be part of the reason. The other reason is that, um, South Africa has already had a large number of infections from previous variants, which confers some degree of natural immunity. So it was a little unclear what that meant. Now we're starting to get some early results from, uh, I think New York and London.
Speaker 1 00:21:53 I just saw that this morning, New York and London indicating that as you see this, now that the signature of Omicron is extremely infectious. It's like, um, uh, basically somebody can give it to you just by looking at you funny, it's, it's the signature Omer monochrome. Would it arrive somewhere? Is that the case numbers basically go vertical? It's this huge increase in transmission. So it's extremely transmissible, but usually what happens is you get a modest increase in hospitalizations and deaths. So it D it doesn't match what happened in the Delta wave, for example, which was a much, a huge spike in, uh, an increase in hospitalizations, hospitalizations, and deaths. So what we were hoping for, I mean, th the best outcome is that Omicron is way more infectious, but less deathly. So it takes over from all the other variants. It also looked like it actually does that.
Speaker 1 00:22:43 It displaces all other variants, and then you have something that is more on the order of, of the Cecil flu, and that maybe what's happening. It's a little early to say, and I've, I've, I've been resisting taking it over optimistic depredation of it, because one of the things that will also happen is that the flu, the average flu season is less deadly than it would normally be because the flu has been around a lot. You know, this is actually the, the current flu that we get. The seasonal flu is actually the 1918 flu, the Spanish flu, as it developed into know less deadly variants. And, uh, hopefully that's where we're going now. But the thing is part of the reason the Spanish flu doesn't kill a lot of people every year is well because older people do take precautions. And also because it's been out there for a hundred years, uh, most of us have been, uh, exposed to one variant or another of it at some point.
Speaker 1 00:23:41 So that gives us some small degree of natural immunity. Whereas the coronavirus or COVID is still fairly new in the population. There's still a large reserve of people who have never gotten it. So I want to put the caution there that even if Omicron is less deadly, um, it, you know, something that's less deadly, but infects a very, very, very large number of people will still kill a lot of people in absolute numbers. So people have to remember that, but I, you know, the hope here and it's, again, I don't get over optimistic, but it's a possibility is that you get a much more infectious, but less deadly variant. And it becomes much easier to live with, but you're still seeing hospitalizations and deaths spike in a number of places. I'm seeing them in Wisconsin. We're seeing them in, uh, uh, where I am in Minnesota. It's been happening partly because the Delta variant and I think it hasn't changed that hasn't gotten any better with the Omicron. So I'm just going to say, you know, this, we're going to have to wait a little while to see what the results are and not just go with the thing that we hope was going to happen.
Speaker 0 00:24:50 Do you want to unmute yourself? There you go.
Speaker 3 00:24:53 Hi. Hi everyone. Uh, I just want to mention one thing that, uh, I found is quite enlightened regarding the vaccine. I just wanted to chipping is, uh, I listened to allegedly the Joe Rogan's, uh, interview with Peter McClow. Uh, I found that quite enlightening. I mean, I have, obviously, I don't know too much about it, but I found that two and a half hour interview. Quite sure. Thanks.
Speaker 0 00:25:18 Yeah. When we've had, um, some, some, uh, interesting guests, including Scott Atlas on our weekly webinar, you may want to check that out as well. Uh, I, Dale, I see you with your hand raised and sent you an invite. There we go. So excited.
Speaker 4 00:25:43 Well, can you hear me?
Speaker 0 00:25:45 Yes, we can. This, this guy very safe. So we'll take one of whatever you're having.
Speaker 4 00:25:57 Okay. I think that my, one of the big stories that we're set up, we're not talking about, which of course this is not really an area for philosophy, but it's certainly, it's a huge story, which is the highly negative, real interest rates. And the 13 years of our, of our federal reserve, uh, basically intervening in the bond market and just kind of holding the house of cards up. And it's kind of showing now with the, with the inflation rates that we have, and that's a huge, I think it's a huge problem. It's going to be huge for us going forward. Especially if we, you know, have an entanglement, a military entanglement, which will really force us to be spending more money that we don't have.
Speaker 1 00:26:42 Yeah. There's been this whole, uh, uh, school of thought, especially the modern monetary theory and among the Democrats about how well we can spend the train and spending another train and spend more Trojans because, Hey, we just print the money at the, at the federal reserve and no problem. And of course, we're starting to see the results of that. I also want to say, we're starting to see the results of it because we didn't start doing it now. We've been doing it continuously as Dale points out over a long period of time. And, um, you know, part of the problem is the response to the pandemic was, oh, no problem. People can all stay home and, and, and stay home from their jobs because we'll just pay the money. And we'll just, you know, spend shifts that triggered the dollars out, uh, and, and, uh, uh, federal money out to people.
Speaker 1 00:27:26 And that would be no problem. And we're really starting to see that, that show up. Um, and the biggest thing about it is the thing that terrifies me about inflation. And I don't make it the story of one of the stories that this year, I think it's a story that's building this year, and it could well be a big story for next year. Uh, and, and beyond is the fact that we have put this as the more people try to reassure me about inflation, the less reassured I become, which is that the more they reinsure me and say, oh, don't worry about inflation. It's not really happening as temporary. It's, uh, it's no big deal. Uh, we can go ahead and skip spending this money. That's not really causing the problem. The more they tell me that the more, I think nobody's worried about inflation and therefore nobody's going to do anything about it.
Speaker 1 00:28:11 And that makes me even more terrified that the problem's going to get much, much worse before people finally decide we have to stop this. Uh, so yeah, I think, you know, I I'm of the generation, that's just old enough to remember the 1970s and remember inflation, uh, you know, double digit inflation. The last time we had it. And my part of what's going on here, I said, I think there's a whole generation that doesn't remember that that takes this sort of mild 3% a year, inflation, that kind of chips away at your money, but doesn't really devalue it rapidly. They've taken that for granted. It's just the way things work. And I think they're going to have a, a rough wake-up call to see what life is really like when you have nine, 10, 12% inflation. Hopefully it doesn't get worse
Speaker 0 00:28:59 Think could be, um, you know, under appreciated this year and coming to a head in 2022.
Speaker 1 00:29:07 Well, okay. I, to, one thing I do want to say is that the negative stories tend to predominate, you know, if it bleeds, it leads and the bad things that are happening tend to take up most of our attention. So I'm going to say there's a couple of good things I've been seeing that, um, one of it is simply the continue it's, it's one that you don't really notice every year, cause it's been happening year over year for a long time. Uh, but somebody called it this year, the biggest I've quoted it from an article. Somebody else wrote the biggest and most important story in the world. And that is the continuing decline of global poverty. Uh, and that is the idea that, um, that, uh, uh, capitalism and T science and technology that was developed in the west has continued spreading, you know, long ago, it's spread decades ago, it's spread to, to Asia and made, you know, and, and the Chinese became wealthier.
Speaker 1 00:30:04 And the north South Korea is became north Koreans didn't, but the south Koreans became wealthier, uh, became one of the, uh, you know, basically a first world, uh, level of, of prosperity. And that was spreading throughout the whole world. And the number of people in absolute poverty has been decreasing by basically like millions a day for the last couple of decades. So it's one of those headlines that because it's happening every day, decade over decade, you don't really notice it, but it's an enormously positive story. Uh, so that's one thing that I need to think we need to always keep in our minds that, that, that that's always happening in the background is this amazingly positive thing. And it's not just positive from the perspective of people who are less poor, which is, you know, good enough as it is. But it's also for the fact that, you know, as Jennifer knows, uh, there, the spread of ideas and the spread of, uh, free market ideas, the awareness of Iran's ideas, all these things have also spread out around the world and become much more sort of widely available and widely known.
Speaker 1 00:31:07 And that is part of what's driving that, that, or supporting that progress, uh, against, against global poverty, uh, and the, the spread of science and technology and industrialism around the world. Uh, the other thing I would, uh, take as a, I don't know if it's going to be a good story or a bad story, but one that I, I sort of take as an interesting thing to watch. And one that I'm working on a lot is the fact that we have had sort of a stable set of ideological coalitions in the United States, really since the 1950s, since the emergence of modern of modern conservatism in the 1950s, where you had the fusion of the free marketers and the, uh, religious conservatives and the, um, and the, the, the foreign policy Hawks, all sort of joining together to form an ideological coalition of which Objectivists were sort of welcomed as welcomed more or less happily as a part, more or less happy on the conservative part, or more or less happy on our part.
Speaker 1 00:32:12 Um, and then on the left, you had a certain coalition, uh, sort of a pro welfare state coalition that was often divided amongst a cell phone, whether it'd be anti-communist or not. But the, the, one of the things I see happening with the rise of wokeness in the last seven years or so is the way in which we, I talked to recently a clubhouse about the rise of nationalism on the right and the rise of wokeness on the left. And it's sort of creating splinters within both of those ideological coalitions that you have, uh, like a growing number of people, sort of old fashioned 20th century liberals, the kind who would have been anti-communism in the early, in the mid 20th century, those people who are rebelling against an objecting to the, the, the, uh, conformity and lack of intellectual freedom being pushed by the woke people.
Speaker 1 00:33:05 And at the same time, you also have this split of between the nationalists and the libertarian more quote unquote libertarian end of, of the right. And I think it creates the possibility that, you know, these, these long ideological coalitions that, that lasts for 50 years, they last so long that a hurry takes them for granted. Those might be breaking apart and forming some interesting new combinations. So that's just something I want to really watch. It may happen in the next year. It may not, it may happen in a good way. It may happen in a bad way. I mean, I've always been personally in terror of the fact of, of the idea that some of the sort of far authoritary people in the authoritarian conservative types will discover how much they have in common with the people, some of the people on the left and vice versa, and that the luscious are working together. And that would be a very ominous development. Uh, so hopefully we can get those, some of the more appropriate and people on the left and pro-free and people on the right to work together more.
Speaker 0 00:34:04 That's a great point. I want to recognize also some other people who are in the room, uh, we have professor Steven Higgs, who is the leading expert on postmodernism. Uh, he's also a senior scholar at the outside city and Jay Lopez, who is chairman of the board of the Atlas society. So, uh, Jay, you missed Dale asked his first question, uh, or actually gave his own top story of the year. So we'd love to get, uh, others thoughts on what their top stories of the year should be. Roger.
Speaker 5 00:34:44 Yeah. So, uh, I just wanted to respond to what Rob saying, um, in terms of some of the concerns that come from the right, uh, in terms of, uh, the rise of nationalism, is there any way that you can conceive of it, that we can perhaps educate those circles that, uh, their fear of globalization, uh, and, and, and, and, and running in a hunkering down into this nationalism perspective is not necessarily the opposite of, uh, of, of the globalization movement that they oppose and that really localization and, and getting into, you know, the smallest, uh, you know, uh, governments that we can w that we can form in societies that we can form. And that, and that nationalism is, is, is really, has more in common with globalism than, uh, that I think they might realize, and that if they really wanted to beat off the, uh, the movement towards, uh, towards the types of fears that they have, uh, that really embracing, uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, really rejecting altruism completely and embracing individualism, which would pull them more into that libertarian state of mind and, and start thinking more locally, uh, is there, is there any way that you can think of framing these conversations because we have them a lot on clubhouse and off of the app.
Speaker 5 00:36:13 Um, but it seems to be the problem that I, that I've observed is that there's, there's a fear, and then there's a response to that fear and that response doesn't seem to be logical. And I'm just wondering if you can, if you can maybe, uh, spell out a scenario in which we can maybe, uh, help center those conversations on, uh, you know, getting people back to, uh, it embracement of enlightenment era ideals and the idea of, uh, you know, individual Liberty.
Speaker 1 00:36:46 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's sort of the whole, the whole game in a way is, is to take people, have how it fears. Is it one way of putting it? Sometimes the fears are rational, but some of them are rational and, you know, it's the whole problem that Iran dealt with in the Fountainhead where she has, was she goes to Ellsworth Toohey, the speech, where he talks about how, um, you know, we give you poisonous food poisoning as antidote that, you know, that he gives you an anti individualist creed on the left. And then as the answer to that gives you an anti individual anti individuals creed on the right now, I think two weeks. And I'm sure I, and Rand was talking not about that lesson in American context than in a European context where you had just seen, I mean, at the time she was writing this, you know, it was within a decade that you'd seen the, uh, the Nazis in Germany.
Speaker 1 00:37:40 So, you know, as time she was writing it, the Nazis were in power. And in the late twenties, early thirties, they had sold themselves. Everyone has the answer to these communists. So this terrible communist threat in Germany, you have to answer that to the, the, the original version of Antifa. That was, I mean, you know, like the current guy, the college kids who dress in black and, and, and, and throw rocks at the, at the police and call themselves Antifa, they took that name from to action, which was the, uh, sort of militant street brawling wing of, uh, one of the German communist parties, the Leonard, the Stalinist German communist party. And so the original Antifa had its original proud boys, uh, would the, the who, who eventually became the Nazis. So this idea of selling you, you know, you have a certain bogeyman of the communists and then you sell them something that is almost exactly the same ideology, uh, just with different uniforms in a different shape mustache, uh, and you sell them that as the alternative.
Speaker 1 00:38:43 And so that's been the whole game all along is how do you offer this other alternative to show people that look, all the things that you're afraid about, or the things you're dissatisfied with, here's a different and different and better and more fundamental answer to that. And that has basically just been, I don't see, I don't see now as being a fundamentally different situation that the details change. And so I think, for example, in the last, you know, since 2014, the, the culture war issue has become much bigger. And so you have to sell people on the idea that, look, we have a third alternative in the culture wars that is not embrace your religious obscurantism versus embrace the latest fads on the left, on the woke left that you have a pro reason alternative a pro individual alternative. So the biggest problem that we have as objectivist is the fact that there's a small number of us.
Speaker 1 00:39:42 So if people look out into the culture and say, well, what are the things on, what are the things being offered to us? They're going to look to the big movements and they're going to see, uh, I think, unfortunately right now the nationalists conservatives are sort of a fad they're, they're, they're benefiting from, uh, sort of a lot of publicity right now. And so people look out and they're going to see them. And these people are very loud and they're very strident, uh, and they're going to gravitate towards that. And so to some extent, I think we have to think about ourselves as going to young people on the right people who are repulsed by the left and saying, look, this is a, this is the real alternative. What they're selling you is not the real alternative. I don't know if a special way of doing it, but I think we have to adapt to the special circumstances of today.
Speaker 5 00:40:31 Is there any hope Rob for, um, uh, for Objectivists to, um, bite the bullet and help the, uh, LP, uh, the libertarian party? I know that Rand wasn't really a big fan, uh, but, uh, you know, in, in terms of saving, uh, a group that does fancy itself to be w Juul, uh, it's been hijacked by rock Barbadians. And I think that Randians, uh, would, uh, would at least be able to steer the ship in a more sensical direction.
Speaker 1 00:41:07 Yeah. And that's a great question. Um, the odd thing, so I I'm, I've been part of these libertarian wars Objectivists versus libertarians thing since 1986 or 80. Uh, no, probably 87 or 88, but so I've seen this develop over a very long period of time because, you know, I was, that was much closer to the inception of the libertarian party then than we are today with many more decades have gone past. So I think it's curious how the libertarian party actually worked out in practice. And I think the selling point to the libertarians was we're going to be a bigger, big tent, you know, not just you Objectivists, you objectivist will only accept people who agree with you on all these little details about art and psychology and all that. We're not going to do that. We're going to be a bigger tent. We're going to reach out and get a wider audience.
Speaker 1 00:41:51 And that that's true to some extent, but what happened for libertarian party is they became, they said, my experience is they, they actually, over time, they became more obsessed with purity and with, well, you're not a real libertarian if as, so you had these things where you had some, you know, uh, one of the debates they had where they're trying to choose a, a candidate for, to run for president. And they were picking the, you know, one of the, they had some main, fairly mainstream figures that would have wider appeal who are running and they got in trouble because they thought they, because they weren't against license plates or something like that, you know, have driver's license. If you're, do you remember this detail?
Speaker 5 00:42:35 Gary Johnson said, he thought it would be, it's not a bad idea to have a proper credentials to drive. And he got booed off the stage,
Speaker 1 00:42:43 Right? So this is like this tiny little inside baseball, irrelevant. I call it libertarian debate club, right. And libertarian debate called isn't always necessarily a bad thing because there are questions like how would you fund a free society without any course of taxation that are worth looking at, and they're interesting things to be said about it, but at the same time, you also have to recognize this is not a current political issue, and it's not going to be a current political issue probably within my lifetime. So it's kind of a theoretical thing. That's why I call it debate club. And so they take these little libertarian debate club issues. Like maybe we should not have driver's licenses. And they would make that like a major issue in the campaign that somebody like Gary Johnson would have to jump over. And I think that's part of the problem with, with libertarians. I mean, I get, I get, have had the experience of having libertarians. Tell me I'm not libertarian enough because I'm talk in foreign policy. So that's the problem is I think they sort of got themselves to the point where they were so oriented towards the inside of their own movement and policing the purity of their own movement, that they haven't spent enough time actually building that big tent they were supposed to build.
Speaker 6 00:43:56 Thank you. So, um, I have a question regarding Afghanistan, which I think is something of note for this year, perhaps not the biggest news of the year, but something worthy of note and sort of where we look forward when it comes to American foreign policy, based on that situation, do you see this as a sign that America might stop being, so interventionists be more conservative who are resend troops, keep them more home, or do you think there'll be a resurgence where restart sending more and more troops overseas in the coming years?
Speaker 1 00:44:32 I sort of call it, uh, 20th century light, uh, which is that we're sort of reliving the history of the 20th century in miniature. And if that's true, then, then the way I designate the current era is that it's 19, it's the 1970s. Right. And you think about it 1970s, we have a retreat in withdrawal in a w in a, in a, in a, in a, in a war overseas. Uh, you have inflation, you have, um, a sort of a Jimmy Carter type. Uh, I think, uh, um, Joe Biden is a pretty good, uh, uh, a pretty good, uh, sort of resurrection of Jimmy Carter, although he has the distinction of having already been in politics when Jimmy Carter was in office. So he's been around so long. It's like everything old is new again. Um, so you have a lot of parallels to the 1970s and this general funk of defeatism and self-doubt, I mean, the whole racial politics of the era is sort of a rehash of the, uh, the blame America, first internal criticism kind of politics of the 1970s.
Speaker 1 00:45:38 Uh, and I suppose maybe some of the, uh, uh, you could build up the parallels as far as, as, as far as you'd like to go. And if that's the case, then we're sort of waiting for Reagan to come along or we're waiting for the turn back to the right, which actually happened a little before Reagan. It happened in the late seventies with, you know, actually with the evasion Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was part of it that we started, the American people started sort of got tired of losing and tired of feeling like, you know, everything was going downhill and they were in and we were in retreat and got behind a more, I would say more American self-esteem is the way I would put it. I think that is, you know, what we're seeing now, even with the nationalists, right. You know, what they're trying to write on is that there's sort of a sense of people want to have America be proud of itself.
Speaker 1 00:46:29 Again, they want to have America be great, again, quote unquote. Uh, so, but specific lessons would be great again, but be proud of itself again, and to have self-esteem and to assert itself again and have the sense that, Hey, we're on the rise and we're doing great things. Uh, oftentimes when they turned to the nationalists, they turned to the people who do not have the answer for how to do that. What they have is the answer. Okay, let's withdraw more into ourselves and what's withdraw. Um, well, let's hunker down more, uh, and go back to, you know, the, uh, religious traditionalism and they have the wrong answers for how to make America be proud and, and self-assertive again. But I think that the, definitely the desire for that is there and is there in some places that the left is going to be very surprised by because one of the things that happened, uh, it came out in the election of Virginia and I think it's coming out other places is that Hispanic immigrants.
Speaker 1 00:47:27 And, uh, the rank and file black voter is way more pro-American and way more pro prosperity and wanting us to be great. And, and to be proud of America, again, they're way more in favor of that. Then the far left woke types who, who claimed to do to speak for them. So I think there's this great reason. It's in a way that reminds me of the Reagan Democrats, right? These were the sort of blue collar factory workers, uh, often union members who the left thought, you know, the Democrats thought, oh, these guys are, are for us all the way we can take their votes for granted. And they all voted for Reagan in 1980 because they wanted America, you know, because they were, they were Patriots and they wanted America to be growing and prosperous and proud of itself again. So I think we're have the sort of setup for that sort of Reagan constituency.
Speaker 1 00:48:19 You, unfortunately, I don't see any Reagans on, on the scene. And, um, I, I think that's sort of the problem that we have right now is that, uh, I think the, I think we are gonna put this weight. Um, if you look, people say, oh, this sort of assertive American and sort of this in the world, sending troops overseas, there's never going to be the public support for that again. But then you look at, um, at Joe Biden's poll numbers for this year, and you see that when in August, when we're doing the middle of the, as people are watching their televisions, the news from Afghanistan, he goes from being about about five points, positive, you know, 55, 45 approval rating, uh, in the polls doing pretty well. He crashes down and he hasn't really recovered since then. So, um, it's also clear that America constantly retreating and being on the losing end of everything is also not very popular.
Speaker 1 00:49:12 And I think that, you know, if, if you have a Russian invasion of Ukraine and if you have a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which is another big, who knows it might happen story from for next year, that if you see the dictatorship sort of marching forward, the way they did in the seventies marching forward, and we're always falling back, um, people are gonna say, wait a minute, we need, now, I'm not going to say that missed that. We need to send troops somewhere, but we need a more assertive policy, uh, the way that we did under Reagan in the eighties,
Speaker 0 00:49:48 Rob. So do you think that, uh, Biden's current low approval rating? Um, first of all, is, are you surprised by it and do you attribute it primarily to this kind of shock of what happened in Afghanistan and then just an inability to recover?
Speaker 1 00:50:07 I attributed to the fact that he's Joe Biden, uh, this is a guy who's, who'd lost his previous, his previous two presidential campaigns, like blew up on the launch pad. I think the last time he ran for president, uh, his, he, he ended his campaign before the year in which he was going to be running. I think he ran, it was in 2008 that he was going to run and he ended his campaign in like December of 2007. So he's just not that great a politician, he got elected. I think I'm going to draw from the Fountainhead here. There's a point at which, uh, uh, which, uh, uh, Peter King asked Ellsworth Toohey, how come I'm not the new, big thing anymore? Uh, how come I'm not on the top anymore. And, uh, too, we tells them, you should ask yourself, why were you over there in the first place?
Speaker 1 00:50:54 Right. Joe Biden is sort of I've compared him to, uh, uh, to, uh, there's another line read had about the, I think it was Wesley mulch being the meeting point the zero at the meeting point of opposing forces. And I think that's a really good example of what Joe Biden is. He's the guy who got elected basically because everybody else was more unacceptable than him. And there was nothing particularly great or good or talented about him to begin with. He is a mediocre glad-handing machine politician from Delaware. Uh, so I think it really comes from the fact that, uh, he, his popular has declined because people realize he was Joe people discovered again, the, oh yeah, this is Joe Biden. And he's never been that popular person. Now. It also comes to the fact that he's had to preside over a couple of, of he has not had to, but he, he has presided over a couple of notable failures.
Speaker 1 00:51:50 And is that drum beat? I think it's, it's a combination of Afghanistan. And then the supply chain crisis and inflation, I think inflation, as it became clear that this wasn't just something we were making up, that it was really happening. I think that gave people a lot of, you know, the economy is relatively good, but people know that inflation will make inflation, makes a good economy, see much worse than it really is. And so it's sort of a warning bell. People see that as like if, when inflation is returning, that means we're going back to the seventies is going to get bad again. So I think it's those two things. And it's really going to be a matter of if his legislative agenda stalls out and nothing really horribly bad happens for the next year, he could improve, but as he's going to be at the cause, he's the zero at the meeting point of opposing forces, he's going to be kind of at the mercy of events and at the mercy of, you know, does the other political, uh, when you look forward to 2024, you know, if he's still alive and kicking, he's, you know, one of the oldest presidents we've had, um, when you get there, it's going to be a matter of, is the other party shooting itself in the foot even more than yours is, which is how he got elected last year or the first 20 10,000 to 2020.
Speaker 1 00:53:03 That's how we got elected. The other party shot itself in the foot more than he did. And he got in. So it's really he's because he's a zero at the meeting point of opposing forces. He's very much at the mercy of outside of that. So that's my sort of sum up of, of who Joe Biden is.
Speaker 0 00:53:20 So, um, last question of the policies that his administration is, and just his kind of lack of appeal.
Speaker 1 00:53:29 It's lack of appeal on also the fact that his policies are always going to be the product of whatever he perceives as the political forces on him at any given moment, like the recent, he spent half this year trying to push this giant big government boom boondoggle thing that the American people really didn't want. The reason he did that is because he was trying to appease the far left wing of his party. They wanted the goods, they wanted the goodies after they helped to get them elected and he felt the need to, okay, I got a tack left and I think, you know, the best thing that could happen to them as if being the man in the middle of the sort of compromising politician, par exsalonce, if he sees this sort of anti woke vote and decides, okay, it's better for me to check.
Speaker 1 00:54:14 Right. And to do more things to appease, uh, you know, throw, basically throw the whoop kids and then the far and the far progressive types under the bus, but I'm not sure he's going to be smart enough to do that, but he's never. And you know, I say that people are like, oh yeah, he's, he's, he's senile. I, my, my question on that has always been, how could you tell Joe Biden has always been like this? Uh, he has a long track record of, of you opening his mouth and saying foolish and saying foolish or incomprehensible things and making bad decisions, so I can think about, oh, well, here's the, you know, what, here's how things could go well for him. But you also, he's a guy who just is not making great calculations about anything. He's not a political manipulator who makes a clever calculations. It's just a guy going with his sense of what are the forces outside forces on him and how it can EPS those. And that generally does not a theory of leadership that, that works out terribly well
Speaker 0 00:55:14 To that for him, I guess, too bad for the country as well, because, you know, historically he, he was, uh, more of a moderate and, and seen as kind of a centrist within his party or even sort of there on the right of his party. Um, yeah, so, well, thank you, Rob. This has been great. We have just a few more days left to the year. Um, I want to thank everybody for joining us today and, um, I want to let you guys know tomorrow at 2:00 PM my time, um, I've can east coast time, I'm going to be having a webinar discussion with how we rich on term limits. Uh, we're going to be back on clubhouse on Thursday, uh, with a different kind of chat, not with one of our scholars, um, but I hope they will join us. Uh, we're going to be talking to somebody who's been on the front lines, um, in Australia fighting some of the more repressive interventions in that country.
Speaker 0 00:56:22 And, um, and then next week, Rob is back. We'll be talking about enlightened, self-interests attacking more philosophical. And then on Wednesday of next week, uh, also, um, talking to a woman, Kara Adamski, she wrote the abolition of sex, how the transgender agenda harms women and girls, something that I had not previously known much about, um, and, uh, found a confused topic, very confusing. And that also might be a brewing story for next year. It's kind of a subset of, uh, the backlash against woke that Rob has identified in terms of, um, how the inclusion of, uh, male athletes and in women's sports teams or in women's facilities, uh, might be, um, something that people are not quite ready for, or haven't evaluated possibly some of the negative unintended consequences. So thanks everyone. And, um, see later in the week,
