Robert Tracinski - Which Way Western Man?

Speaker 0 00:00:00 We'll go ahead and get started. Thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff hosting the Atlas society's senior fellow Rob truns on which way, Western man, we encourage questions. So as, uh, Rob is offering his take, uh, feel free to raise your hand and we'll bring you up. Uh, Rob, it's a provocative title. I, uh, took the Liberty of linking to the piece I found, uh, about it. So, uh, Speaker 1 00:00:33 Th this is the discourse piece, right? Yes, yes. Thank you. Speaker 0 00:00:38 Sure. Uh, which way Western man. Speaker 1 00:00:41 All right. So I'm riffing here at the title, which way Western mana, I'm kind of doing a riff on a longstanding meme, often used by nationalist, conservatives or religious traditionalists with the idea that they'll put up. Usually they'll put up some version where it's, um, let's see, uh, it's a, on the one side is a picture of a, a, a polyamorous, a a, you know, a really pathetic cringe inducing, like totally non-glamorous, you know, polyamorous, uh, modern, um, uh, sort of woke, uh, relationship. And on the other side will be a traditional family with these, you know, smiling, happy blonde kids, uh, or, uh, there's a arch, there's a, uh, a Twitter feed called architectural revival, which focuses on this idea of really pushing the idea that traditional architecture is better than modern architecture. And they'll put on one side, they'll put the, the Absolut worst ugliest, most bizarre and weird examples of modern architecture. Speaker 1 00:01:47 Often, usually it's actually postmodern architecture. It's not even modernism, but they call it modernist architecture. And on the other side, and on the other side, they'll put stuff that is basically lovely restored, uh, uh, you know, old buildings that, that make you want to take up permanent residents in a G Austin novel. And, uh, so it's sort of, they're stacking the deck, obviously with these images of saying traditional society was so much better and modern society is so much worse. I mean, the, the it's led some sort of ironic uses of it, the funniest version I saw it, and which was posted as far as I can tell in all sincerity, but during the riots, we had the, the black lives matter riots a couple years back. Um, the summer two summer of was it summer of 2000, Speaker 2 00:02:32 2017? Speaker 1 00:02:34 No, the black lives matter was, oh, uh, I think it's 2000. Was it 2020 or 2021? It all, it's all blurred me now Speaker 0 00:02:42 When the, uh, tests were happening. Speaker 1 00:02:45 Yeah. The, the black lives matter protest, the George Floyd. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:02:47 It was 20, 20 the summer. Speaker 1 00:02:48 Yeah, that was 2020 that's right. It, it only seems like it was longer ago. Uh <laugh> anyway, uh, when they had those riots, somebody posted this picture of some qua picturesque medieval village and saying, well, you don't see any riots here. Now, if you've write your history books, you know, that there were, there were plenty of riots and disturbances and witch burnings and uprisings against the local futile Lords, et cetera, that happened all throughout the middle ages. But it's this idea of stacking the decks traditional society. And now by they mean traditional, I mean, they mean society. That's based on tradition, that's justified by an appeal to tradition, traditional religion, you know, traditional social arrangements, traditional architecture, everything, uh, that this is, this is better than anything that's being done in the modern age. And tip is done with the dead, with under the heading, which way Western man. Speaker 1 00:03:44 Now the actual origin of which way Western man is somewhat uglier because it actually comes from this's the title of a book written by a white supremacist, uh, basically saying that you have to go, you know, his version of traditionalism is, you know, white people should, should Dr. And, um, have dominance of the culture and all minorities should be second class citizens or removed entirely, but it it's, it became this meme that it it's used not necessarily by white supremacist, but by these sort of conservative traditionalists to say that traditional society was so much better and a society based on religious traditionalism and, uh, with government promoting religious traditionalism is so much better. And everything modern is everything modern and everything new in society is terrible. Now I applied this though to the question of, I think the, the war in Ukraine has been clarifying in that respect, because for a lot of these people, Vladimir Putin was a sort of a hero. Speaker 1 00:04:44 He was a representative of somebody, a, a political leader who would stand up and fight for traditionalism and fight for this traditional society against all the corruption of this, all of all those modern, uh, all these modern changes and, uh, and, and the modern sensibility, and specifically the idea that he build himself as using the power of the state to promote the power of the church. Uh, he has this sort of a till on the witch doctor symbiosis with, uh, patriarch Carol who's the, he's the patriarch of the, um, Eastern Orthodox church that that's based in is the, the patriarch of Moscow, the, the head of the Eastern Orthodox church, the Russian Orthodox church that BA that's based in Moscow. And he gave the beating of the OV of Ukraine, gave this huge, uh, speech about how important it was that we had to fight this. Speaker 1 00:05:40 And the reason was we were fighting against the west and the, uh, imperialism of the west, the oppression of the west was summed up in one demand that they always make, which is you have to have a gay parade. He put it as a gay parade, meaning like a gay pride parade. And so, you know, allowing the homosexuals to be out and open and not, um, uh, uh, uh, not sort of regarded to second class citizens, this is the oppression that the west forces on other people, he, he, that it's clear that, that, that takes up a lot of head space and cures mind, uh, sort of the way that, um, and it's sort of the way that, uh, drag Queen's story hour takes up a lot of head space in, in the minds of a lot of the nationalist conservatives here in the us. Speaker 1 00:06:25 So it was sort of regarded as this is a Putin was sort of regarded as a model for what if we had a society where you had a strong man leader who was not afraid to use the power of government to support Trinity values and traditional religion. And wouldn't that be so much better? And my argument in this, in this article I posted, um, is, and I think it's the, it's the thing that I see a lot of nationals concerns grappling with right now is that the Russian innovations Ukraine sort of shows the reality of what this means, that shows the reality of what does this, um, use of the state in the service of traditional values and then nationalist values, uh, what does it mean in practice and what it means is, you know, wholesale destruction, indiscriminate killing of civilians, uh, a whole bunch of obviously sort of PRI imoral things that are being done under the justification of we're fighting for the glory of our nation. Speaker 1 00:07:27 We're fighting for the, um, uh, for the IM we're fighting for the imposition of religious values. And by the way, there, we can get to this into this, in the discussion, but there is a definite religious dimension to the war in Ukraine that there's this whole, um, long standing thing where, uh, uh, the Russian Orthodox church has been using the power of government to persecute non-Orthodox religions, Christian religions, and also as part of a power struggle within the Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox church, uh, which, which I can get into later. But, um, uh, so this it's, it's showing that the actual reality of this is not some superior moral society, but is actually, you know, depravity and, and mass killing and is something deeply imoral. But the other thing that I find most interesting about this is it punctures the idea of Russia being a super powerful country. Speaker 1 00:08:27 And what I mean by that is the fact that, you know, as I put the fact that we're still talking about this a little over two months, it's, it's just like two months. And two days since the, uh, Russian invasion created the fact that we're still talking about this is proof that this supposedly stronger, more powerful Russian society, that's stronger, more powerful because they returned to traditional values and religion. And because they, because they persecuted the gay people, they're so much stronger that has really been punctured by the fact that they've, they've been losing this war at every stage, uh, against a smaller country that, you know, ought to be less, uh, a smaller country that didn't really have much of an army, uh, uh, eight years ago, uh, when this whole began, uh, it didn't have a big army by design. It was kept with a small army because the guy who was in charge in Ukraine, uh, his whole goal was to be a, sort of a, a puppet or satellite of Russia. Speaker 1 00:09:27 So his, he, he avoided building up any kind of AR army. Their Army's been built up almost entirely in the last eight years and has proved to at every point stronger, more powerful than the Russian army, uh, which initially tried to take Ukraine and, and completely failed. And now is trying to take some areas in, in Southern, uh, uh, in Southern Ukraine and is, is not doing well. And the point is that this punctures, the illusion of religious and strong man rule being more powerful and stronger, and the stronger creed than, uh, Western liberal, Western style, liberalism and intolerance. And, you know, it's, it's an old, uh, sort of pretension that goes back. I mean, you know, goes back a hundred years, goes back to, uh, and I actually argued, um, in a podcast recently, I argued that it goes back 2,500 years to the, the, uh, the contest between the Athenians and the Spartans, right? Speaker 1 00:10:26 That, that, that idea that has been sort of floating around in the culture since then, is the idea that the Spartan style culture, the one's more authoritarian. The one that's more regimented, the one where all men are trained for nothing but war, and they don't care about, uh, art and they don't care about philosophy and they, they're not, you know, they're not sought, they're not, they're not devoted to the soft pursuits of the mind. They're gonna be so much more powerful than the free, vibrant, uh, diverse Heidi like the Athenians. Uh, so if you go back to, um, the examples I would direct you to these are really easily, the great thing of this is all easily available on the web right now. So go look up, uh, the, the funeral or Pericles funeral oration. So this is the great Athen leader. Perles the great Athenians statesman, uh, the leader during most of the, uh, war with Sparta who gave a Fu ation at the funeral of a large number of men who Athenian men who died during the war. Speaker 1 00:11:27 And he gives this sort of defense of Athenian values against spar against Spartan values. And then contrast that to another one. I'd have you look up, which is, uh, Pluto, tars, uh, essay, the life of like Urus, like Urus is the sort of legendary founder of the Spartan Spartan society, the distinctive Spartan system, this regimented authoritarian war centered society. Um, and if you look there, uh, I really Pluto talks a later Roman historian, but he's writing, looking back on this. And there are people argue that, oh, well, this isn't really an accurate representation of, of what smart and organization was. And maybe it wasn't, but it shows that this dialogue has been on for 2,500 years of this idea of this sort of the love of the Spartan system for being regimented and a, and authoritarian and decisive and warlike, and therefore being stronger versus the defense of the athe of the more Athenian style, the more liberal Democrat, uh, diverse and, uh, less warlike society. Speaker 1 00:12:39 Uh, and Perles making the defense that they, they actually are as strong as the Spartans and capable of defeating the Spartans. So this, this has been going on for hundreds of years for, for thousands of years. And I, you know, you see it in this sort of attitude of the, the, the Japanese, especially in the Germans, the beginning of world war II, the idea that these liberal societies in America, uh, are decadent and they're corrupt and they're weak, and all you have to do is attack them and they will collapse. And at the very beginning of world war II, it kind of looked like maybe that's the case to some early successes that they had. And then of course, by the end, they discovered that, you know, um, uh, that basically Ohio without producing the, the, uh, the industrial production of Ohio was greater than that. Speaker 1 00:13:25 The, the entirety of Germany. And we basically buried them, uh, with, with the might of our civilization, uh, at, by the end of the war. And so it basically, you know, it was this, this demonstration of the superiority of the liberal and diverse values of a free society over the regimented top down sort of more Spartan system. And I think in Ukraine, we're seeing another, uh, puncturing of that pretension. Uh, and it, it sort of raises the question of which way Western man, but raises it in a different way of showing that maybe the liberal model is actually the one that is not only morally superior and more inspiring, but is also actually stronger, uh, in, in actual, in the actual contest of, uh, civilizations being matched against one another. Uh, so that's the overall sort of topic I wanna bring up and then let's, let's open the discussion. Speaker 0 00:14:21 Okay, good. Um, yeah, we wanna invite anyone that wants to come up to the stage. Uh, I'll try to kick things off a little bit. Um, I think, um, you know, what you're saying is not a strong man. It AC definitely exists on the right, but I think it may be just a little bit of a broad brush. I, I looked up before the show, yoru, Hazon the head of the national conservatives, you know, was talking about how, you know, nationalists know Ukraine is fighting for the nation, which, I mean, isn't necessarily our message, but there is, there can be a conservative nationalism that is not pro Putin. Speaker 1 00:15:03 Uh, yeah. And I think that's good to, to notice. Um, I, I've seen sort of, there's been a, a variation in response on the N so there, you know, one of the things I do point out is that there's some of them who seem to have forgotten that nationalism, if, if there is a country fighting for national sovereignty and national independence, it's clearly Ukraine, I'm glad to see your arm Hoon, uh, acknowledging that some of the other nationalists have not AC acknowledged that, uh, you, you know, the interesting thing about this is that, you know, Russia, I, I think they have a certain sympathy for Putin because he talks to talk and he, you know, he was it early in the couple, first couple weeks in the war, he starts talking about how he starts going on this riff, you know, they're the middle of the, country's in the middle of a war. Speaker 1 00:15:47 He starts going on this riff about Harry Potter and cans, JK Rowling. And of course she has, you know, JK Rowling, what nothing to do with any of this, because she, you know, she doesn't, uh, back Putin in any way. Uh, but this, you know, this idea of sort presenting himself as an opponent of cancel culture. So he is definitely trying to make an appeal to, and, uh, um, sort of, uh, recruit or appeal to the, the Western anti cancell culture, people on the right. And I think that has created this sort of sympathy for him, but Russia is actually an imperialist power. It's not a nationalist power. It's imperialist. It's about Russia having dominion over all these countries that are not Russia <laugh>, um, that are, you know, not just Ukraine. Ukraine is, is so close to Russia. That there's almost a, a bit of plausibility to the idea that, well, really they're part of Russia, even though it has a distinctive identity, but there's this long history of, oh, we also have to control Kazakhstan and we have to control, uh, Lithuania Lavian stone. Speaker 1 00:16:53 We have, you know, we have to control Poland. So it, you know, Russia has a long history as an imperialist power where there's a, a Russian ethnic, uh, state that dominates a bunch of other non-US states around it. And so, yeah, I do think that, you know, you could make the case that the consistent nationalist should be of, should be backing Ukraine as, as they're the ones fighting for their nation and their national sovereignty. But I think that for a lot of the people who call themselves nationalist conservatives, it's not necessarily just about nationalism. Okay, serious. The argument on that, I put on forth, forth on this, which is nationalism. It, maybe this is a good thing to bring up and discuss nationalism is an equivocal term, cuz it can mean dedication to a particular nation can be this, you know, you can use this being the same thing as patriotism, you know, I'm, I, I love America. Speaker 1 00:17:48 Therefore I am, I am in favor of the American nation and I am a nationalist. I think it's a very narrow and selective definition of it or nationalism convene a belief in the nation state as a political organization and maybe dedication to one nation in particular. Um, but nationalism could also mean the idea that the, the individual needs to be subordinated to the greater good of the, of, of the nation as a whole. And this is more sort of fashionist style nationalism, right? The idea of it's the collectivism it's nationalism as collectivism nationalism as the idea that individual and his and desires and, and decisions must be subordinate to the greater good of the state, uh, sorry, the greater good of the nation as determined by the state and oftentimes as determined by the leader of the state. And so nationalism in that sense comes to actually mean authoritarianism. It comes, it's sort of a polite euphemism for what they really are in favor of is authoritarianism. And so I think that's sort of the dividing line that causes some people to become more sympathetic to, uh, Putin, uh, to Putin and to Putin's cause in Ukraine, uh, among the nationalist conservatives, uh, because they're attracted what they're really attracted to is the authoritarianism of it. So, but it's good to knowledge that there are some people who are taking the opposite approach. Speaker 0 00:19:14 Good. All right. Um, well, good. Uh, well, let's go to, uh, Roger one, Roger Hunt. Thank you for joining us. Speaker 3 00:19:23 Sure. This is awesome. Uh, thanks Rob. I actually agree with everything you said. I'm very excited. Um, uh, this is wonderful. I, I, I was actually wanted to give you some more space to talk about, uh, Athens and Sparta, because if anything was a Bo broad brush, I think that might have, that might have been it certainly Athens, wasn't all unicorns and D and flowers and Sparta. Wasn't all just punching each other in the stomach all day. Um, but I get, I get, I get the metaphor, uh, and, and, you know, I can appreciate that, but I'm wondering if you, I, I don't know, or maybe that's the way you think it, it was, but, uh, but if you wanna, if you wanna double down on that view of those two, or maybe dive in a little deeper or, or just say it was just the metaphor and I don't wanna talk about it anymore. That's Speaker 1 00:20:08 Fine. <laugh> well, I get do a, uh, <laugh> so I'm, I'll set. I add a little more detail. So I'm not the, I'm not, I, I was at one point, uh, studying classics. So I, I immersed myself in some of this pretty deeply, but I am not the world's greatest expert. So I'll acknowledge there is a difference between the sort of mythology that's built up over or Athens versus Sparta versus the reality. And that's always the case, right? That, that, so there it became, it, it became, there was the reality of how the systems works and, and, and the, the Spartan system was not actually in practice quite as fully authoritarian. It had, you know, distinctively Greek elements to it. It was, you know, a, a society. It was a, an oligarchy, but a society in which citizens had a certain amount of, uh, you know, they had, it was also a slave society, but its one in which citizens had a certain degree of, of autonomy and they, you know, had limits on the powers of the Kings and things like that. Speaker 1 00:21:12 So it wasn't as authoritarianism authoritarian as some of the mythology, um, that built, built up around it might have you believe. And the Athenians, of course, they also were a slave society. They held slaves. They also limited, uh, uh, the democracy to, uh, to a certain, a small number of a small subset of citizens. And there were many people who were not allowed to vote and, uh, you know, they were not a free society, a fully free society in the way we would recognize it. And of course they, you know, famously did things like, you know, putting Socrates to death and, you know, and of course today, of course, you know, when you say Spartans, I liked you saying suing themselves to the stomach every, uh, all the time. Uh, you know, when you say the Spartans, everybody thinks, oh yeah, that movie 300. I saw that, which is like, you know, literally it is a comic book version of Sparta. Speaker 1 00:22:09 Uh, it, it was based on a comic book, uh, by the same guy who I tried drawing a blank at his name, the same guy who did the dark night Batman comics and who clearly has this big thing for this, this Spartan, uh, sense of life. Um, but that, that verse, that comic book version we get in the movie comes from what was done. You know, this, this mythologizing of it happened in the agent world. And it happened in this sense of trying to create these two different models for a, for how you'd organize a society of a more authoritarian and Marshall militar, uh, uh, and stoic and, uh, a self-sacrifice based model for a society that your goal is to serve the state by, you know, enduring hardship and, you know, engaging in constant military training and pledging each other in the subject all day. Speaker 1 00:23:04 Um, and, and, and engaging and, and focusing on nothing but war that's, what will make the state great to will make you so wrong versus that, uh, uh, Athenian approach, which is that, well, you know, we're gonna have a much more diverse, so much more free society. People are allowed to do whatever they want, and yes, when the crisis comes and an emergency happens, we will prove to be as strong or if not stronger than the other guys. And I really recommend, I mean, one of my, one of the great joys of reading, uh, acidities for, for, for those of us who are inclined to do so, one of the joy, great joys of reading the ancient Greek, uh, uh, Greek historian acidities is coming across the oration by per, which is this sort of example of a, of historian giving a great speech delivered by a great man defending the values of his society. Speaker 1 00:23:56 And it defends the idea of this, this, this more, what we would call liberal and diverse and, uh, non Spartan athe in society and defending how that is that actually makes them strong and how they're able to, to, uh, uh, basically defending the superior superiority of his society. So that all said, I'm gonna then end with your last option, which is, this is called kind of a metaphor, you know, the, the, the ancient Greek essences versus Spara of, as it survives today, is all sort of a metaphor for what in more recent times is this idea that, you know, fascism or communism, you know, in various incarnations, it's been claimed that they are more powerful because they teach the individual to SAC he's own interests and to be, you know, stoical and to endure hardship and endure suffering. And that's, what's going to make them strong and powerful, uh, versus the liberal societies, the Western, the democratic societies, where we allow our people, you know, where, where it's people are allowed and even encouraged to go off and pursue their own interests and pursue their own pleasures and, and, um, uh, express themselves. And yet at the same time, you know, it's been proved numerous times in the past that when we go off to war and when the emergency calls and we have to rise to the occasion, we are actually capable of being not just strong and powerful hope is stronger, more stronger, and, and more powerful than our, than our adversaries. Um, and, and I think that's, that's the thing to look at in, in the context Speaker 3 00:25:37 I'm you mentioned andwhenever somebody mentions. I always ask if they read them and if they haven't, I just Speaker 0 00:25:47 Good stuff. Uh, I wanna encourage everyone to share the room. Also, raise your hand, if you wanna join the conversation. I have a question for Rob on the topic. Um, but, uh, Roger, uh, thank you for joining us, Roger too. I believe you're there, but, uh, actually, why don't we go to Daniel and then we'll come back to Roger. Speaker 5 00:26:14 Hey, hi guys. I'm enjoying a lot the room. Thank you very much. Um, regarding what drives, uh, Western society, um, yeah, on the one hand we can argue individualism, uh, but like following hago this idea that we are always, uh, in the pursuit of a more agency, more freedom, um, seems to also explain and match what we are going, uh, through. Um, so yeah, that, that, that, that will be the, the, the inside the question. And, um, anything that you can say, uh, on the relation of, uh, libertarianism and, um, Speaker 1 00:27:03 And Hael yes. Speaker 5 00:27:04 Mm-hmm, <affirmative> Speaker 1 00:27:05 Okay. I am not a great expert on Hael, but I know enough to know. I, I do not regard Hael as being a great friend of libertarianism, cause I think what he means, or a great friend of, of, you know, pro freedom ideas, because I think what he means by freedom is not what we mean. Uh, Hagle is most, most famous Ashley for being one of the guys who laid the philosophical foundations for collectivism. And for the idea that the individual is really just a fragment of some larger group, uh, some larger power powerful force Hael was the guy who came up with the idea of, uh, I think he described it as the spirit of the age and actually behind that is the idea of the spirit per se, spirit with the capital S which is this idea, this sort of, this sort of great collective consciousness that we're all part of and this great collective consciousness is evolved in a quest to know itself. Speaker 1 00:28:07 So when he talks about spirit, he's not talking about the individual human spirit, he's talking about this sort of collective world spirit, and that this world spirit is going on a great quest to know itself and to gain full freedom, but it's full freedom for the collective world spirit, right? So it's freedom for the collective rather than freedom for the individual. And so he tends to have this idea that the individual is actually shaped by the, uh, one of the phrases uses the spirit of the age that every era and every nationality has its own sort of national spirit. And it's, uh, a spirit that's representative of that particular age, which is this sort of collective consciousness that's working through his current Sage of development of which the individual is just a reflection and that's how he comes up with. So how he's used and that how he ends up being used in, in historically I know, uh, in terms of political consequences is along with, um, he sort of developed an idea that began with, with Jean Jacque Russo, which is the idea of a great leader as being, as representing the collective will or the general will of, of the people. Speaker 1 00:29:27 And that was how definitely how Hael was used. I'm not, like I said, I'm not a super expert on Hael, so I'm not sure how much of this is actually in Hael himself versus how much it was drawn out by the subsequent ha aliens. But I know that there was a, a foundation laid there, especially in Germany for the idea of that, a great leader would come along, who would embody this great collective spirit and give it voice and give it, uh, and, and, and express its will. And everybody would find quote, unquote freedom by their submission to the greater will of this great leader who represents the collective. And you can see how in, in, in Germany within a hundred years or so of Hael, that would lead to a lot of trouble, um, that you would have a guy who would say yes, here I am. Speaker 1 00:30:14 I'm the, I'm the voice, the embodiment of the collective will. Uh, so the problem with I see with haggle is that that aspect of, of, of, of metaphysical collectivism that he introduced and which was of course then adopted by one of his students, one of his followers was, uh, was Carl Marks who had adopted the same general idea of the, the collectivist, the collectivist approach to, to viewing the individual as just the cell within a, a greater hole, uh, which he then developed in, in a different direction, but to very much the same end, which is eventually we're gonna have, you know, um, a great leader who come along, who will represent the will of the collective. So that's the, the problem I would have with, you know, everybody's really a sort of a post enlightenment thing is that everybody said to say the, the, the cause of freedom, the cause of Liberty had so much moral authority to it, that everybody who came along had to say, yes, I'm for freedom. And then what they did is they kind of redefined what freedom meant in various ways to allow them to do something that's not pro freedom. And one of the ways that that happened was that idea of defining freedom as the freedom of the collective will, rather than the individual well, that Speaker 1 00:31:34 More into the weeds than we wanna go. Speaker 5 00:31:36 Yeah. Pretty, um, interesting take, um, yeah, the way I see it is that that applies, but mostly to the people who came after Hael, uh, marks and others, and also to know that there is like a left and right. Uh, Speaker 1 00:31:51 Yes, the left Tagal is on the right Hial I know those guys. Speaker 5 00:31:55 Yeah, yeah. Go goes both ways, but just by going the, the, the first principle that he seems to, to, to manage that was freedom. I don't know how we can understand freedom other than, uh, in the individual. Um, I mean, of course we, we can try, uh, but, um, for what I have read, um, about him, um, from him, um, he's talking about more agency, uh, more, more of the freedom that has to be as he presents it on the individual level. Um, but yeah, yeah. I'm getting ation. Speaker 1 00:32:31 Yeah. And one of the problems talking about Hael and the reason why I Dira, that the I'm not the great world's greatest expert at Hael is I kind of gave up reading him a little bit because he's famously obscure. He, his work is really heavy and in this very, Speaker 2 00:32:47 Um, Speaker 1 00:32:48 Obscure academic style, and it is sometimes a little hard to figure out exactly what the heck he's saying. And so I recognize that people brought out different things out of it. I mean, one of the most surreal experiences I've had in the last couple of years as they to have a, a Twitter exchange about Hagle with MC hammer. Now, some of you younger people may not realize how deeply weird this is <laugh>, but MC hammer was like a, sort of a hip hop performer in the 1980s. You know, you can't touch this, that kind of thing, hammer time, if you're old enough, you'll, you'll recognize that if you're not, you'll be scrunching your brow at me and wondering what the heck I'm talking about, but the idea that somehow I would end up, you know, 30 years later having a Twitter exchange with him about Hagle is, is sort of not, it was not what I was expecting. Speaker 1 00:33:35 Let's put it that way, but apparently he's been studying Hael and he did it because, uh, Martin Luther king, right. Hael was influenced by him in this way. So that's what I, my, my roundabout and slightly bizarre way of saying that I recognize that, that people are capable of drawing different and, and sometimes better things out of Hael. Uh, but that he did also establish the set, the seeds for this collectivist approach. And like you said, there's the, I didn't wanna get into this, but there's the left Alians and the right Alians the, the generation that came after him and the left Alians basically become produced Marxism and the right Alians produce fascism and <laugh> and you get these two collective ideologies that come out of that. Speaker 2 00:34:18 Yeah. That's Speaker 0 00:34:21 Danielle, do you wanna give Roger just a chance to, uh, pop in here? Um, Roger, are you back yet? Speaker 2 00:34:28 Yeah, absolutely. Enjoying the conversation. Speaker 0 00:34:31 Good. Speaker 2 00:34:32 Um, yeah, Rob, glad you're doing this room. It's, uh, it's timely. Um, I, I get these arguments with people. Um, <laugh> about, uh, when, when, when there's an opposition to globalism, which I stand in opposition to, uh, I'm quite certain you do as well. And there seems to be this, this knee jerk reaction that like, well, if you're opposed to globalism, well, then you, the, the way to do that is to be a strong nationalist. And, and, and so basically, uh, it, it's okay to be an authoritarian, uh, you know, for some folks, as long as they localize their authority. Um, and, and my question for you is, um, do you see a way out of the, these, these fixed mindsets that I didn't get a chance to read your entire article? I was reading some of it, um, but is there, it feels to me like the philosophers of the past, um, drew upon like real world experience and, and, and up with, you know, uh, they developed philosophies, uh, through trial and error. Speaker 2 00:35:41 Something would go wrong, they would say, okay, well, there's the flaw on that? And then new philosophies would, would emerge. And now we've, we've kind of gotten stuck in these really weak mind, like, you know, like American conservatism, uh, uh, uh, you know, neoliberalism. No, thank you. And I'm just wondering, like, do you see a way out of this? Uh, you know, when, when, when I read, you know, which way Western man, uh, I, I'm guessing that you <laugh>, you might be an advocate of, Hey, go read Rand and, and objective might, uh, lead the way, but how do we even get people to understand that the philosophies that we are adhering to, or maybe even the lack of paying attention to any philosophy has kind of gotten us into a lot of trouble. And, and, and we need to find a way, uh, because the one, the roads that we're on are, are, are dangerous. Speaker 1 00:36:32 Right. Okay. So two things I wanna talk about that one is that I am a globalist at least some one sense, which is that I, you know, I, I believe in free trade, I believe in, uh, uh, having a global of global capitalism and a global economy and the, the demonization of free trade is being responsible for, and, and the global economy is being responsible for our, all of our ills is I think sort of a, a, a ridiculous sort of overexaggeration is become a grad bag that you blame on everything. Um, but the other aspect of the globalism too, is I think globalism is just fine. Uh, as long as this globalism on liberal terms and by liberal, I mean, not in the domestic, we have a weird domestic sense of liberalism where it means, you know, big government stateism, whereas the actual, you know, across the world and, and, and throughout history, liberalism has always meant. Speaker 1 00:37:30 And, and for the political philosopher, liberalism still means the idea of a free society, a society based on individual rights, the rule of law, uh, limited government guarantees for individual right. Individual freedoms, that sort of thing. So I would like to see global liberalism, right? So, uh, but global globalism and liberalism, not in the sense that are used by, uh, global, not in the, that are used by the, the, by the, by the, as, as terms of, uh, of, of, uh, disapproval, but also not in the sense necessarily used by the people who in America who call themselves liberals or the people who sometimes call themselves globalists here. Uh, so, but, but moving on from that, the other issue was how do I, I really like your idea of the, this, uh, about philosophy being an attempt to deal with real world, the real world with a response to real things that have happened. Speaker 1 00:38:29 Now, I would say that historically, there's always been two different approaches to philosophy. One is an attempt to try to that, that I sort of refer to it. I would think of as in the fundamental sense, as a conservative approach, which I think is the wrong approach, which is there's an existing set of presumptions as assumptions and social arrangements that you are cling to, that you want to preserve. And so you rationalize. And so anything new that's happened that disrupts that old approach. You try to explain it away. And I view Plato, for example, as being an example of that, where you have a sort of a nascent, uh, uh, beginnings of a scientific world view happening in ancient Athens, and he come up with what is essentially a, a, a philosophical rationalization for mysticism. The idea that no, no, no. Don't look at reality. Speaker 1 00:39:22 Don't look at facts, don't engage in scientific exploration, look inward and try to Intuit the realm of pure forms. It's this return to sort of a, a religious mystical, uh, style of thinking epistemology rather than the more, you know, of course his, his student Aristotle would come along and say, no, let's, let's go all in on this scientific worldview. And let's, you know, go gather all these facts and, and induce new ideas and new concepts from these facts. So I think you have in Plato and Aristotle, the real fundamental there is you have an approach to philosophy that is, let's try to justify all the old traditional existing systems versus one that says let's react to the new things that are being done. I mentioned acidities earlier, right? So th acidities comes along about 50 years or so before Aristotle and basically develop, um, with, with he has a few precursors, but he basically develops modern the modern science of history, the idea of an evidence based, uh, approach to history where you, you go investigate and you get eyewitness testimony of physical evidence, and you pair all the different accounts and try to figure out what happened. Speaker 1 00:40:36 Basically all the rules that, uh, that for modern sci scientific approach to history, uh, uh, acidities develops well. And then 50 years on, later on Aristotle comes along, seeing all that happening in, in science, in history, in literature, all these new ideas coming along and comes along and develops new philoso, ethical ideas in reaction to that, or, or, or to trying to, trying to, to capture these new things that are being done intellectually. And I think that's the exact right approach to philosophy. And I think too much of what we have right now is there's a bunch of categories people have in their head about here are the alternatives you have. You're either a, an American liberal moving your big government to pro welfare state, or you're an American conservative, which is your religious and traditionalists. And those are just the alternatives. And we can't think about anything new or different that might be pot be possible. And I think that's the, the mindset we have to break people out of is this idea of let's look at reality, you know, and see what's actually happening and that there are other alternatives. Speaker 0 00:41:41 All right. Good stuff. Uh, see, welcome, Chris. Speaker 6 00:41:49 Yeah. Sorry. Um, that's alright. Yeah, wasn't trying to cut across, uh, Scott, um, uh, the point that Roger made about, um, globalism or globalists. Um, I remember Yaron Brook saying last year that, um, that's a myth. It, it, it shouldn't be, uh, Glo, um, globalism it's globalization, uh, as it's like, uh, Rob said, um, it's kind of like a dirty word globalism. Um, I don't, uh, about, about free trade across the world kind of thing. Um, the, the, the proper term should be globalization, not globalism. So therefore you, you, you can eliminate eliminate the term globalist as well. Um, Speaker 1 00:42:54 Yeah. Yeah. My response to that is I think globalism or globalist, or even globalization to a certain extent is sort of a definition by non-essentials. Right. So, because it's about the idea of something being global, as opposed to, well, what is it that's being global, right. So if it's global capitalism great. If it's global communism bad, right. <laugh> uh, so it's, it's, it's like an attempt could to, to denounce something because it's it's worldwide or global, or it's spreading outside it it's somehow evolving something that's outside of national boundaries without first asking, well, what is that thing that's outside of national boundaries. So I think it would be fabulous. It'd be terrific. And I think it's actually happening to some extent if our values American values, uh, uh, values of individualism and individual rights and individual freedom and, and the use of reason if those became more global values. Speaker 1 00:43:54 And I think that's actually already happening. I actually made an argument a while. Uh, back I wrote an article called, um, uh, an article, uh, called the key against the Western civilization. And of course I did this, knowing that my readers, at least the people who know me would know that I'm not saying Western, you know, that, that the things we associate with Western civilization was, are bad. Uh, so I'm not against reason. I'm not against individual rights. I'm not against et cetera, all these distinctively Western values, but RA I think I've, I've, I've come out against the idea of describing them as Western. I actually prefer to them as enlightenment values because I think they're the values that came out of the intellectual ferment of the 18th century enlightenment and which I think developed to a higher stage and a higher, uh, more exact and, uh, a stronger foundation, uh, developed to a, a, a higher level of de of, of intellectual de definition by I Rand. Speaker 1 00:44:52 Uh, but those value, those enlightenment values are I think what defines our what's the best parts of our civilization. And I also see plenty of evidence that those have spread beyond nutritional west, uh, that, you know, they've made inroads, uh, in Asia and especially among the sort of Asian tiger country, the, the relatively free societies, uh, and, and even some of those that are, uh, under attack right now, like, um, like in Hong Kong where the Chinese are cracking down, you know, one of the most, some of the most, uh, bravest and most courageous things done in, in favor of quote unquote Western values have been done by, by Chinese people in Hong Kong in the last few years. Uh, so it's clear that these have are no longer distinctively Western in that strictly geographic sense. So that's what I would like to see is, and you could call it globalization, globalization of enlightenment values, but I think it's already happening. I'd like to see it happen more is the idea that, that these values that have their origin in the west are of such universal value and of such universal, um, appeal that they eventually take hold everywhere. Uh, uh, someday they'll take, hold in Russia. Speaker 0 00:46:03 Good. Uh, thank you for that. Uh, Jimmy, do you have a question for Rob? Thank you for joining Speaker 8 00:46:11 Us. No, I'm pretty much, no, I'm pretty much just listening in a airport waiting to I'll fly to Vegas. So I'm just gonna listen to Speaker 0 00:46:17 Nice. Hey, you're going the right way. Speaker 1 00:46:20 They say pursuit of happiness flying to Vegas. <laugh> Speaker 0 00:46:23 It's the flight back. Speaker 8 00:46:24 No, I'm my way to, so yeah, not very good. Speaker 0 00:46:29 I see. Well, uh, we have a treat. We have, uh, Richard Salman, uh, to C a S uh, senior scholars. So, uh, Richard, uh, do you have a question for Rob? Speaker 9 00:46:41 I do Rob great, uh, conversation. Great topic. I, I just, what, what do you think about going on the globalization versus globalism? There's a, uh, a kind of Jeffersonian notion that the, or government is to the individual. The more it's gonna be respectable of individual rights. So if you expand that out to, you know, county, federal mm-hmm, <affirmative> global, I, I, I do agree with Chris who said, you know, globalization really is universal free trade. We shouldn't be against that, but this notion of one world government or the UN, or these alliances like NATO, it does worry people that there are forms of governance that are too removed from the individual. But I heard you also to say, well, if you knew that world government was free, government was capitalists. Why wouldn't you go for that? If we, if we, if we could be as short of that. So what do you think of just whole idea of whether, you know, locate say state as the locus of power, really what it is today? Is it worth going more global with government or shrink it down to as Grover Norco, used to say, shrink it down, shrink it down to the bathtub till you can strangle it, but you know, what I'm getting at Rob levels of levels of governance is my, Speaker 1 00:48:10 I think go Norquist Quinn, I think goes to government, should be small enough that you can drown it in the bathtub. Uh, <laugh>, that's sort of a famous or infamous phrase, depending Speaker 9 00:48:18 On, and, and, you know, and, you know, Rob, I'm a, I'm a, actually, I'm a Hamiltonian who thinks as long as it behaves more constitutional, wider scope government is if you can do, if you can do that, but I don't think most people don't think it can be done. Speaker 1 00:48:34 Right. So I, I'm not a Hamiltonian so much as I'm a Madisonian. And, uh, I, I like his position in, uh, uh, I, I, I, I like a broker record about Federalist number 10, which is my favorite of the Federalist papers, where he talks about the, this idea of the problem. A faction says, how do you keep, you know, a faction from gaining power and, and using the power of government, harnessing the power of government to, uh, to basically promote its own goals or interests, or, you know, its narrow interests at the expense of everybody else. Uh, how, how do you keep a faction for hijacking government? And the idea for, to him had been that, well, the best way to do it is to say, keep the government closer, to keep the government smaller, closer to the local level. And this was the argument in favor of having a very, very weak, uh, federal government and having all, most of the power really be in the state governments and or, and the idea that there, and this idea goes all the way back to ancient Greece of the idea that us small Republic would be better than a large Republic. Speaker 1 00:49:35 And he made the argument that no, actually it's the opposite that if you expand the sphere of activity, that, that the more di the larger and more diverse the society, the less power any one particular faction would have, cuz it would be harder to find a, a majority of other are people who agree, you know, who have the same interest and who agree with you. So think in terms of, you know, tariffs, right? Yeah. If, if tariffs, uh, benefit a particular industry, that's very strong in a few states, it, the, the larger you have the country, the, the harder it is to get a majority of people to impose tariffs, to support that one industry, because most people will not have that same interest or you could apply it to slavery. You know, one of the reasons why, um, the civil war happened is because the government America was expanding westward. Speaker 1 00:50:25 We were bringing in more and more states that didn't have slavery that didn't have that vested interest in maintaining the system. And the, the Southern states basically panicked cuz they realized they were about to be out voted and that's why they fired a Fort subter. Um, so there's that argument now I would say, um, you know, my ideal is probably something more like the nation state as the fundamental unit of government, uh, uh, including in some case large diverse nation states like America with though a series of alliances or larger unions between them that don't have a lot of power, but which I'm mainly exist to, um, to, to reduce the barriers and to reduce the animosities and to reduce, you know, uh, to, to have an orderly international system and reduce military conflict, et cetera. And eventually you settle into not a one world government, but rather a, you know, a national government with a series of, in international treaties or organizations or institutions that basically, you know, increasingly prevent them from being in co resolve the conflicts between them and prevent those conflicts, but from, from getting out of, and um, so that's sort of the ideal, but I think had, I think that, you know, we're are so far from that, that we don't know what it's going to look like when it eventually arise. Speaker 1 00:51:52 Right. <laugh> uh, that, you know, uh, but I do see that there's a value to something like what the, I, I think the everything you're talking about here is sort of is, is encapsulated in the European union cuz the European union began with for the kind of union I was talking about, which is, you know, the, the common market, this idea of like we're all gonna get together and we're going to reduce the barriers to trade and we're going to make it easier to trade goods across international borders amongst these, you know, these free countries. And then it became also though this, over this bloated bureau, bureaucratic, uh, a bunch of guys in Brussels deciding what to do and imposing it on everybody else. Uh, um, and, and this, you know, 500 page European constitution, this thing, something so ridiculously bloated and complicated that it becomes a preserve for all this unaccountable power, uh, which is why I, you know, um, I, I supported, uh, Brexit. Speaker 1 00:52:52 I supported Bri Britain removing itself from the European union. So on the one hand you, it, I think it's good to be pursuing these larger international treaties or, or unions or free trade zones, et cetera, where you're reducing the military and, uh, economic conflict between countries and, and making it easier for those countries to, to work together. But at the same time, you know, we are doing this in a context where, uh, the, the, the pro individualist pro free market liberal values are not accepted by a lot of people where there's, you know, every time you create a, an international union, somebody sees it as, oh, great. This is a chance for us to wield all this power out of Brussels, uh, uh, as, as, as these faceless bureaucrats pulling the strings. So, you know, I think what we have to have is we have, have to have international organizations and international cooperation, but on the basis of everyone having the shared value of we wanna have free societies and you know, how that's implemented in terms of you have a parliamentary system, or, you know, what kind of voting that's different to different societies, but we have to have that shared value would then allow us to have wider international unions that would not be oppressive or over centralized. Speaker 9 00:54:12 Yeah. Good thoughts. And, and one thing I have always thought, Rob, and I wonder what you think of this. I, I I've come to believe I'm not really against the United nations, but can you imagine if it was crafted as such the, the United did civilized nations and, and this is a, and this is a club that's not easy to get into. And if you're not in our club, we are not gonna allow any international shenanigans or invasions or anything like that. But, but you know, if you said that today, they would say, what, what do you mean United nations has to include every nation, including the Barb barbaric ones. And so that gets back to your point about Western. It would be nice to have a United nations, an Alliance of civilized, capitalist nations. Um, you agree? You agree with that? Yeah. Speaker 1 00:54:57 Well, I mean, yeah, the idea of a union of free countries or something like that, that's what floated a bunch of times. I think, I think, yeah, Biden tried to do something with that, uh, of a, a year or so ago, you know, and the idea has been around and people have been, uh, puttering around at it. Now the, the thing is that the United nations came up in a specific context of post world war II and the cold war context where you had Speaker 9 00:55:21 Yeah. It Speaker 1 00:55:22 Really, it, there was no way for it to be a reunion of free nations, what it had. It ended up being a way for the, the main rivals in, in the cold war to be able to sort of talk to each other. Yeah. And it was an attempt to try to have some form of cooperation where they wouldn't, we wouldn't all blow each other up <laugh>. Speaker 9 00:55:42 Yeah, but you could, but you could, you could reasonably ask what is, what it, where, why are we United between USA and USSR? There's no uniting, we're Mor we're mortal enemies. You, you can't be in the same club, but anyway, great stuff, Rob. Thank you. Thank Speaker 0 00:55:58 Thank you. I, I do wanna give Daniel a chance to get a question in here. Thank you for your patience, Daniel. Speaker 5 00:56:04 Hey, thank you. No, Joey, I know, uh, the, the conversation, I probably I'm gonna go to meta, but, um, if it's possible, um, hope you can consider the, the question. The, there is a problem that I see with all ideologies, um, from a, their, um, left or right. Um, they always fall short, um, when meeting, uh, reality and that becomes, uh, their main fault. Um, they are not able to, uh, actualize themselves, uh, quickly enough or even consider things that happen that are beyond what the ideology, uh, is trying to, to explain and do. Um, is there something that can help libertarianism to fall into that? Um, somehow, Speaker 1 00:56:56 Um, well, yeah, so I wanna make a case for ideology though. Uh, I think if ideas are based on observation of reality, they can, they, they can actually capture, uh, uh, all they can actually capture the real world. Uh, they can be appropriate to the world real world. And I think one of the great examples I would point to that is America's founding fathers, right? Who not only adopted these sort of Locke ideas of individual rights, because they read them in a book by John Locke, but who also then went out and said, okay, we have to totally remake the government of, you know, the United States. We have to, uh, uh, they, they first went out and rewrote all the state constitutions, uh, in order to reflect this new, more, to more perfectly and more accurately reflect this, this ideology of individual rights. But then they said, end, furthermore, our national government isn't working very well. Speaker 1 00:57:49 We have to scrap that whole thing and sit down already a new national constitution. And then they hashed it out in all sorts of different ways. And they're bitter oftentimes very bitter political conflicts between, uh, uh, uh, the, the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians. Now, by the way, I know Richard, the I'm a Jeffersonian, um, uh, I'm working on my musical to try to, to try to, uh, <laugh>. Um, actually I, I wanna do what I'm, I'm a big fan of, of, of, of Jefferson's secretary of the treasury, uh, Albert Gallatin. So I'm working on Gallatin, the musical that'll be coming out soon. So look, look for that, Speaker 1 00:58:26 But, but, you know, I think that the idea of that you had a group of people who were both extremely plugged into and following and influenced by the ideas of the enlightenment PSOs, but at the same time, we're also practical statesmen, creating a government and creating political parties, engaging in debates over how that government was, you know, not just how the constitution was going to be written, but then in the Jefferson versus Madison thing or Jefferson versus Hamilton thing, uh, how, how we're actually gonna implement that and how we're gonna interpret that. So I think there's a great example there of people who can bridge that the both sides that are they're in contact with reality enough that they have not only the, the, they have the enlightenment ideals, but they also have the approach of let's figure out how these are actually implemented in the context of, of this nation we have, and, and the existing political organizations and the, the balance of forces and how we create something that can last for almost 250 years now, uh, uh, that will embody those values. Speaker 0 00:59:36 Great, uh, great way to wrap it up. Good topic. We Rob tomorrow, uh, the Atlas society asks Robert Bryce at 5:00 PM Eastern on the myth of green energy, Thursday back here on clubhouse at 4:00 PM. Eastern TAs founder, David Kelly will be, uh, talking about cognitive bias. Uh, Thursday at 8:00 PM. Richard Salman will be doing, uh, morals and markets. And then Friday at five 30, uh, PM Eastern professor, Jason Hill will be doing part two on clubhouse of why defeating Russia and defending Ukraine is in our national interest. So we hope you join us for those, uh, in the meantime, Rob and everyone. Thanks for doing this, uh, who participated and, uh, we'll see you soon. Take care. Speaker 1 01:00:20 Thanks everyone.