at an amazing show this is, if to the extent that I've done a good show today, if I can recognize that, I can give myself the attention that I previously just thirsting for from others. All right, so three most prominent thinkers associated with the concept of post-traditionalism, and you're listing off Alastair McIntyre, Robert Beller, and Anthony Giddens, right? They all came to it pretty much through Marxism. So according to McIntyre, the desire for new moral order was an alternative to the barren opposition of moral individualism and amoral Stalinism. So all three thinkers probably saw on one hand, you've got Stalinism and on the other hand, you've got this individualism, we need a third way. So liberalism, not an option because Marxism revealed that liberalism is a deceiving and self-deceiving mask for certain social interests, which tends to dissolve traditional human ties and to impoverish social and cultural relationships. So the Declaration of Independence, right? All men are born with certain inalienable rights, including the right to become a woman, right? That kind of inalienable rights orientation tends to dissolve traditional human ties. Like you marry a bloke, you turn into a woman. Yeah, not so easy for maintaining a marriage and family and standing in a community, right? If people just keep realizing themselves as another sex or this or that, liberalism tends to dissolve traditional human ties. And Robert Beller also shared McIntyre's horror of moral individualism. So moral individualism means the individual decides what's moral and what's immoral. So Beller cited as an early motivation his ambivalence towards the Southern California culture in which I grew up and the chaotic society in which I live. So Beller became famous for his leadership of the team that wrote the bestselling habits of the heart, which was a condemnation of American individualism. So Giddens believed that the tradition of social theory dominated by Karl Marx was no longer important. So he rejected communism. He rejected liberalism. He sought a third way. So traditional societies and you see this in traditional societies today, they kind of suppress the self in a prison of duties, demands, restrictions usually with religious justifications. Now, this isn't being fully removed by modernity, but it has been watered down. Now, the concept of post-traditional is to be a radical break with that. It implies not only a break with particular traditions, but with tradition itself. So post-traditionalism means the end of traditional social roles and burdens and the possibility of self invention. You can become a member of the opposite sex. Maybe you can change your race, right? So modernity refers to modes of social life or organization which emerged in Europe from the 17th century on and which became worldwide in their influence. Modern social institutions are distinct from the traditional order. They've been rationalized. So we've got this sheer pace of change. We've got the global scope of change, but many of our modern social forms are simply not found in prior historical periods such as the political system, the nation state, wholesale dependence of production upon inanimate power sources and the thoroughgoing commodification of products of wage labor and even sites of apparent continuity such as cities now ordered according to quite different principles from those which set off the pre-modern city from the countryside. So these are largely changes external to the individual and the individual mind by contrast, right? So that's the difference between modernity and tradition. By contrast in post-traditional society, in late modernity, it's characterized by an internal change rather than external change. It's the rise of a new self, a reflexive self, reflexive understanding your own position, understanding yourself, seeing how other people are seeing you. So the reflexive self does not merely occupy social roles but creates for itself through its beliefs about the self a new kind of self based on a person's own reflexive understanding of their own life. They kind of therapeutic self which a person's self deception depends on monitoring and continually revising their self understanding. So modernity is characterized by a mixture of traditional and novel forms. Late modernity or post-traditional society is characterized by the reflexive self. Now, there are a lot of problems with this claim of novelty as a historical thesis. The historical religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam discovered the self. Early modern religion found a doctrinal basis to accept the self in all its empirical and ethical ambiguity. Modern religion, the beginning to understand the laws of the self's own existence and to help man take responsibility of his own fate. So how do we date the reflexive self and the modern self? Is it really a product of an internal or an external change? So the pressures of modernization just do not undermine idyllic societies of happy farmers whose lives would be perfectly happy if they're only left to learn, right? That's a takeaway that many would get from reading Kevin McDonald that Europeans would just be perfectly happy if they're only left to learn by the Jews. So modernization provides the concepts to express doubts and demands are already just below the surface of consciousness. Modernity provides an atmosphere of hope often unrealistic. The things will soon get better. Now, Robert Bella is concerned with the coexistence of modern and traditional elements at the same time. So he presents an account of the good kind of modernization, one that tempers liberalism and individualism with modern versions of traditional collectivizing institutions that are functional substitutes for traditional institutions but which support the autonomous individual without oppressing the individual. So this would apply to radical political movements like the alt-right. So according to Bella, modernization carries with it a conception of a relatively autonomous individual with a considerable capacity for adaptation to new situations and for innovation. So such an individual has a relatively high degree of self-consciousness and requires a family structure the support of your family, right? Which is independence and personal dignity will be recognized where he can relate to others not so much in terms of authority and obedience but in terms of companionship and emotional participation. That sounds like our chat room. Like, I am not up here just firing down commands at you. I am not talking at you. I'm talking with you. I'm not talking in terms of authority and obedience. I'm talking in terms of companionship and full emotional participation. This is a safe space for you and for me, right? This is a place of love and inclusion, right? An individual in 40 university, right?  Don't you yearn for that? You want a society whose goals you share and that you can meaningfully contribute to and you require a world view that is open to the future that gives a positive value to amelioration of conditions in this world. Am I not just reading your heart and your mind and can help to make sense of the disruptions and disturbances of the historical process? That's the whole reason you come here. So this vision of modernity kind of echoes Herbert Spencer with respect to the demise of priestly authority and the rise of the autonomous contract making individuals. Here we are. We're autonomous contracting making individuals. I have no priestly authority. I'm just an ordinary bloke who likes to read books. But here we create a feeling like we feel like we're a member of a group and we've got goals and we've got feelings and we have a progressive social vision of solid heuristic values like community cohesion that we're all in it together. Right. So this this community here at 40 University is a dramatic counterpoint to the excessive individualism of contemporary America. So the 1930s and the 1940s gave us the new socialist man man of the left with a collective orientation. But you know supposedly this orientation was a product of his maturity and autonomous choice distinct from economic man who's enslaved to acquisition. So there's a new relatively autonomous individual Robert Beller with his newfound self consciousness. But is it really distinguishable from the reflexive self of Giddens and the optimistic autonomous self of Herbert Spencer? This is what Herbert Spencer says. The thief takes another man's property. His act is determined by certain imagined approximate pleasures of relatively simple kinds rather than by less clearly imagined possible pains that are more remote and of relatively involved kinds. But in the conscientious man like the kind of man who watches this show there is an adequate restraining motive still more re representative in its nature including not only ideas of punishment not only ideas of lost reputation and ruin but including ideas of love and inclusion of the claims of the person owning the property of the pains which loss of it will entail on him. I mean, I would cry to think that I might take something from someone who owns it like or joined with a general aversion to acts injurious to others. Is there any phrase that best sums up the quality of you in this show right now? You have this general aversion to acts injurious to others. I mean, that's that's 40 university. No, is Robert Bella's post traditional autonomous individual? Is he acting differently from the liberal autonomous man? Okay, Herbert Spencer thinks this individual has morally desirable qualities resulting from experience and from experience congealed into tradition while Bella does not. Is it the Bella as his rejection of the chaotic society of Southern California from which he came suggests does not think that people raised under the influence of individualism have these qualities or that unlike Southern California it is a society in which he feels like a fully participating member is goals he shares and can meaningfully contribute to. You're listening this right now. I hope you feel like a fully participating member of this community. The the the goals that we have here you share and you also sense that you can meaningfully contribute to this society with you know amazing amazing rhetorical discourses and super traps. Right. Though there are on the one hand the language and the concepts of those people have continued to live within a tolerably well established moral framework. With a well established moral vocabulary right traditionalist people on the right though members of this social group have a list of what they take to be virtues and vices they have a concept of virtues and the authority which requires the practice of virtues is not conferred by the agents choice right choices are moral standards a judge correct or incorrect in the light of their understanding of the virtues of vices on the other hand there those individuals have an entirely different moral vocabulary they do not belong to a single homogeneous moral community with a shared language and shared concepts like here we belong to a homogeneous moral community with a shared language and a shared concepts of of love and inclusion radical love and inclusion but these other tosses they find themselves solicited from different standpoints they cannot avoid choice and what moral standards they adopt depend on their own choices so one day they may wake up and decide to become a Sheila so choice is the fundamental moral concept for these blokes and there are no objective and personal standards in the light of which ultimate choice can be criticized like I stand for objective and personal standards that that go to God and Mount Sinai though the greatest contemporary moral achievement perhaps is the creation of the type of community where shared ends and needs make possible the growth of a common life expressed in a common language isn't that what we're doing here now that there is no such moral achievement on the horizon is the post traditional condition so individuals who are autonomous are forced to choose between standpoints then provide them with moral standards but these are standards that conflict with these standards of others so the problem of the actual existence of different moral standards mostly driving from traditions coexisting within the same community and faced with a problem of accommodating one another that's not much of a community so this gives us a new problem of multiculturalism so either we accept something like a liberal framework of shared rules but few shared ends and we just treat individuals as autonomous bearers of culture who get along with one another under these rules or as traditionalist we can hope for a spiritual regeneration that overcomes differences or we can perhaps seek out you know new values that allow for a positive relationship between cultures the tradition once provided the basis for community but it was rigid and it was oppressive and a crushed individual autonomy a bloke couldn't get up in the morning decided to become a Sheila he couldn't get up in the morning decided to shag the sheep or another bloke right so so this this traditional community was based on exclusion rather than radical love and inclusion and these traditions of family and gender incredibly oppressive right you want to you want to act out and get in touch with your your female self not on mate now modernity has all these variety of cultures which makes a return to this traditional kind of community impossible so that's what we need is something different something cosmopolitan maybe we need to you know radically love and accept and include all this variety and just seek these different moral standards but by appealing to cosmopolitanism as a solution we're conceding that non-cosmopolitan meaning mutual intolerance between traditions is the root of the problem so you know the persistence of traditions in different cultural communities right incredibly oppressive but still powerful right but do we need to accommodate it and recognize it and accept it as a good thing so one solution according to Giddens is move past the mutually intolerant tradition and build a community based on active trust are you ready to join with me in creating an active trust community are you ready to join with me in building a positive spiral of trust building that creates a functional substitute for traditional community builds obligation at the level of personal relations based on the communication of difference right geared to an appreciation of integrity right this this will be tradition free integrity does not require adherence to particular traditions it transcends difference it can be recognized in spite of difference it can be understood in terms of the fulfillment of reciprocity such as that the other is someone on whom one can rely that the reliance has become a mutual obligation so perhaps we can have obligation without tradition perhaps this will stabilize relationships that once we just meet that condition for mutual integrity it's kind of an echo of Herbert Spencer's vision of society free from religion and based on trust between free contract makers pretty exciting stuff so reflexivity that's the distinctive characteristic of modern life according to these great thinkers about the post-traditional world so the reflexivity the modern life consists that social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information peer-reviewed studies mate what does the New York Times have to say what do the experts have to say so we're constantly act altering and adjusting the social practices that we follow so we've got the apparent continued role of tradition but this is just an illusion if tradition is justified reflexively by how I understand it it is no longer tradition justified tradition is tradition in sham clothing receives its identity only from the reflexivity of the modern so this way making distinction between mere modernity which social practices are questioned and post-traditionalism which the self is created reflexively kind of creates a model traditions persist in fact and in reality and need respect at least to enable dialogue between the adherents of different traditions the existence of difference as a result of these persistent traditions and their communities and this forces individuals into reflexivity and choice that one must choose right the fact that one must choose that itself marks a fundamental break with tradition I chose to convert to orthodox Judaism that is not a traditional thing to do you don't choose to convert to another religion right so you cannot wear a a head covering or a head scarf as a continuation of a traditional practice where's the autonomy in that traditional practice is not a choice but you can wear a head covering if you're making a choice based on your reflection on the practice availing if you're choosing to affirm your identity as a paradigmatic act of a post-traditional reflexive you know act of self-creation right so this kind of radical individualism is no longer merely an option we are condemned to it but what we condemn to it already by modernity isn't the justification of practices which is supposed to be fundamentally changing the nature of the traditions we continue accept precisely the altering that produces by definition the reflexive self so the general fact of reflexivity has turned all traditions into post traditions by definition that not only has any obligation of doctrinal orthodoxy being abandoned by the leading edge of modern culture but every fixed position has become open the question in the process of making sense out of man in this situation so we've got a profound commitment to process we've got historic religions rediscovering the self we found a doctrinal religious basis to accept the self in all its empirical ambiguity the modern religion is beginning to understand the laws of one's own existence and to help man take responsibility the fact been like on yours well I have three children they're in their 20s will actually one is now in her early 30s that happens yeah and they always say mom it's really lucky that we have a different last name than you because I kept my name I kept my name but my kids have been totally cool about it they are really yeah they are very strong and based and they've really been terrific are they proud of your bravery I hope I think so my husband I you know I don't want to say more about him but he's definitely been on my side but he has his own you know profession to worry about his own situation to worry about my youngest daughter Esther of who's now working in Philadelphia when she was at Penn as an undergrad she was on one of these discussion boards they're all on them online and some young woman went off about professor wax isn't she a witch isn't she a big it isn't she a bitch there's a lot of name calling I've known as a substitute for thought right which you know is sort of Gresham's law yes writ large and Esther finally just wrote you know you know that that's my mother you're talking about no way yeah it was funny and of course this young woman immediately says oh oh I'm so sorry I hope I didn't traumatize you and created unsafe space your words are violence answer oh well okay that that is a pretty good story right I'm building up to the climax of this Steven Turner essay so post traditionalism depends on this idea of rupture but our sense of rupture as well as our sense of continuity is subject to an important illusion that illusion is illustrated by Robert Putnam Spever's book of bowling alone which purports to show the decline in associational activities in the United States that necessarily this was concerned with associational activities popular in the past and their decline such as the bowling leagues which is referred to in the title but it did not address it could not address the development of novel forms of association such as what we have here right we've got internet-based forms of association that have increased radically got women's book clubs to become more important so if we do not take our eyes from the historical review mirror we are doomed to always seeing traditions recede think about the concept of honor on the one hand it is a relic of the past honor is relative to rank belongs to a society of ranks of the kind that Europe abolished and American never had it was governed by such sanctions as dueling which has declined that when we encounter the forms of honor and other culture they are alien and non-modern such as honor killings now in the 19th century honor had a large role in German law but the term is alien to Anglo-American law but we do have laws of defamation so did honor simply go away but is some of the external forms of honor change so we have Matthew joining the show how's it going Matthew Hey Luke how are you I'm a little a little waking up wiping the blood on my eyes so I won't use the camera if that's no worries no worries so are we on now yes we're live so do you have some thoughts on Amy Wax some thoughts on this so first of all I want on that plane just as a preamble I think I just start clearing that I fully respect your right to free speech and people who who feel afraid of having her in the same building you have if you're a lawyer you have to be around rapist murderers you can have all manner of clients and unpleasant people so that's just something you're going to have to cope with so I'm very strongly favorite for free speech rights her comments here I think are completely empirically baseless the the third world if you go to the third world generally speaking this is borne out by polling I'll actually send you a link from India United States quite popular well-liked people admire the productivity the freedom the innovation of the United States and for her to generalize from woke Cooke's at the University of Pennsylvania who I'm sure are just just anti-American if they're white or black or any color to is like this and thinking America is terrible and having this hypocrisy with with the cast system in India is just very unfair and has no empirical foundation and you can be irritated by individuals but her projecting at the whole ethnic group strikes me is deeply unfair yeah I totally agree and it's just it's incredibly reckless and stupid and self-destructive correct yeah do you think she'll get fired for and I I imagine you're with me that she shouldn't be fired or disciplined yeah but do you what do you think what in in terms of empirically what do you think will happen to her with this because the comments very I mean even even you and I who are not politically correct you know I'm it's on this to be very unfair to and just empirically wrong but also generalizing in a way that's not valid yeah so like how much how long does the university have to continue to employer her this is interesting as a 2019 Indians in India United States had a 56% favorability rating of Trump we beside the U.S. they like Trump right probably because of the affinity Trump had with Modi and you know there was some kind of charisma between him Indian nationalist community so it's just false and you never encounter this work and I've lived you know lived in the Middle East mother's Egyptian background immigrant immigrants actually people who just arrive and you I wonder if you have the same experience to from the third world nonwhite if you will immigrants I see very little anti-American and anti-white sentiment from these people and they seem to be very patriotic and my family and others I've met the where you get that is this next generation races where they're being propagandized with the woke and incentivized by woke that's my view but what do you think yeah I've never encountered anti-white hostility from Latinos or Asians I've encountered a lot of it from from blacks I've never encountered it from Latinos or Asians yeah I mean the Hispanic working class is also moving toward Republicans in terms of voting patterns if you look at the most recent polling data for the 2020 election we first of all we saw in the 2020 election one of the biggest surprises and the results was early in the night if you recall the betting markets and law Democrats thought Texas is either is a coin flip like because of how well they were doing in the urban centers in the suburbs but then came the Rio ground and Republicans are like getting you know working class Mexican communities essentially right overwhelmingly working class Mexicans and Trump was getting like 40 45% like winning some you know just other shop and that that sunk any Trans Biden had to in Texas which looked pretty good early in the night so there is there is this movement toward the right among working class Hispanics and you know her comments undermine the pushback against wealth which really needs to be to have any success even a pragmatic level multi ethnic multi racial you know yeah my number one critique is if you're going to say something incendiary and you have anything to lose it's self destructive because you can you can usually find ways of phrase framing and phrasing what you want to say in in a way that more people can hear so instead of just like burning a bridge now why not build a bridge to other people and say things in a way that people can can hear without just immediately hating you so she fails on that scale and then she provides no evidence like just these assertions that because for a super work in the University of Pennsylvania med school she was like a job requirement to work at the University of Pennsylvania I'm sure to be like she then generalizes it to all South Asians and blacks and non-Westerners without any that any empirical basis beyond her anecdotal observation which is just really bad reasoning correct yeah and it's not a productive it's just not a productive look the United States too has and I also disagree I like to I don't want to call her names you have them doing that either look so but I've many on Twitter that's a name that's a general response and in this case it's more understandable and almost any other case or usually it's a controversial opinion being said people say race space here she is I understand why people are saying that because she is making generalizations that are derogatory and false but nevertheless even these are citizens of the United States and they're going to be citizens of the United States going forward these immigrants from from around the world and you know you should we should try to all together promote a patriotic pro-American positive view of ourselves you know rather than I also would say this that you know while Asians aren't like attacked by the woke media they're not demean they are not beneficiaries of woke either I mean Indians if you check the Asian box on your application there's this object of a Harvard lawsuit brought by Adam Artar and other people actually knew that guy in law school vaguely I'm not convinced of that but the guy who brought this brought the lawsuit but these folks are not beneficiaries of the woke system particularly they might not be rhetorically attacked by the way whites are by woke but you know Indian immigrants from if they're uppercaster whatever the case may be they're coming and doing well academically intellectually and that's why they're getting positions and another disappointing thing is that this is the time that she comes alive in the interview so so the first 30 minutes or so it's just she's just droning because everything she's saying she said 40 times before but now she's saying something just comes alive so part of what people will react to is your words but also people react to your manner and she is so excited to be to be saying these things like she's suddenly like fully engaged fully awake fully alive fully emotionally attuned to the situation she's coming alive now to say these super self-destructive unnecessarily inflammatory things and again if you look at the racist Indians meaning that the people who believe in the caste system in India are probably supportive of Trump right right wing generally I mean if they're Modi voters and they like the United States not and you know liberal Indians don't like the cast it isn't as if the you know going back many I'm no expert in India at all but just as a historian haven't been a little bit about India you know it's not as if there has that every every every expression of opposition contempt for the caste system has come from you know whites in the west right I mean you have Gandhi you have many Indian governments with affirmative action programs I'm not saying that there isn't vast a vast legacy of institutional racism if you will in India but the people who are liberal in India aren't like an anti-racism in India aren't saying okay racism is good if we do it you know they're against this stuff too right and the people who are who have no problem with it they're happy exploited they're probably among the majority of Indians who like Trump yeah and let's say that there was some empirical basis you know let's say that there was a a survey that came out that they interviewed 5,000 South Asians in America and 80% of them said they hated America okay then then talk about that okay there's a survey and that would be shocking and disturbing and it's something we should talk about it's not true it's not after right you know right I mean I mean then then you'd have something like empirical to respond to rather than just gratuitously coming out and and saying this without also why are these people so I am sure that anti-American anti-white views are from white women and white men at Penn Medical School too right right so just woke horrible institutions that don't reflect views I might be people of any race and literally any race United States I think these institutions are unrepresentative of and kind of kooky frankly but why does she focus on the Indians who are doing this I'm sure they are at the people who need some Americans who need some at Penn Medical School and then project that on all Indians or most Indians in the United States are both pro-cast system and you know if frankly I'm sure that if you were to pull this most Indian Americans because first of all a lot of Indians in India against the caste system again it's not as if it's not as if this has there haven't been federal efforts that effort with big intellectuals and political figures to eradicate the system so there are a lot of Indians against in India but I would be overwhelmingly confident that Indian Americans namely people who have imbibed a liberal liberal values of the United States right are overwhelming against the cast system they probably don't think about that much because they're in America but you know I'm sure they're not for it right I mean they're responding to incentives that we have set up right there it's strongly incentivized to be morally outraged against white people because that's the system that we have created right yeah the United States has created this bizarre and all the Western nations mostly in the Anglicity really has created these bizarre and syndrome structures some of them are lying to they're not even they're not even genuine their beliefs you know if you look at the working class though I think being working class is slowly becoming a better predictor of how woke you are whether you're working class or bourgeois and of course the people in bourgeois positions are more woke I think and I am supported by the most recent polling day which shows a very strong working class versus college degree split in the midterm election voting that that is going to be the big predictor of wokeness are you a truck driver are you a janitor are you you know a plumber versus like some kind of blue collar occupation versus are you physician are you a lawyer you know and I think this is going to be the divide I think we'll see more interesting surprises of the kind we saw in the 2020 election with the working class Mexican vote in the Rio Grande and also people I don't buy essentialism people are not just woke I understand that but there are plenty of people who are woke and who are going to be doing amazing things for the country that they're going to be good neighbors they're going to volunteer and work with the homeless they're going to create jobs they're going to you know invent cures for diseases they're going to you know send rockets into space people aren't just one thing people aren't just work or anti-work and if you wanted to bet on who's more likely to come up with an important patent like three generations of the working class you know 1,000 people who don't graduate high school or you know one woke stir who went to Harvard or Yale you know I'd be betting that you're more likely to get important innovations from the person I said though I do think in the long run if you look at the trend line that this attack on meritocracy and assessments for intelligence that comes from woke will undermine the intelligentsia and stem fields I think I don't I don't think I can empirically measure that yet but I'm pretty confident it's the case that if we as schools are doing like eliminating you know intelligence testing like the SAT ACT I think that could spell trouble for our meritocracy and I'll say this to the working class I think the multiracial working class will be the body the political body that leads the push back to woke and also kind of like lower middle class like petty bourgeois people because people those people I think also can help because the problem is if you go to Yale or Harvard you are either like a dissident and hiding as if you're like a homosexual 1948 that's like how you behave if you are not woke in these institutions you just your whole life is a lie you run to the bathroom but instead of you're not running the bathroom to give a man a blow job you're running the bathroom to like say oh like I'm you know I'm going to vote for Trump or whatever it is you know woke start a permanent condition woke people have kids and when a woke person has kids and he starts seeing dramatic differences between his male kid and his female kid that that changes them when woke people are forced into a situation where let's say Russia cuts off energy to their to their state and you know there are no green energy sources that are going to be going to be have to be have to be the gap they're going to suddenly after confront reality and they're all sorts of situations where people are woke one moment they get into a different situation they start being woke and some people are right-wing activists their situation changes and they start being right-wing activists so people are not some immutable quality people respond to incentives 100% great and if you study history as as you have look and I certainly am you see that people's that we consider like an utterly different way than their contemporary stereotypes so the English the French are stereotyped as as sympathetic animals as cultured people and you know how medieval Frenchman behaviors utterly different like burning cats was a past time in heroes of medieval France so I just think that them empirically the idea that the behavior of people is essentially driven by ethnicity or race is just an empirically false thesis I think that there are many traits that are inherited but I don't think values are one of them I mean that there's just has been way too much differentiation values I mean you know white people in the United States 200 years 200 years ago defended slavery British people 110 years ago defended indentured servitude you know it's not that long ago even right and yet we find this all we call that human trafficking today indentured servitude and obviously slavery would condemn as well yet this has been like the hugest moral sins you could commit yet it's normalized just a few generations ago with genetically the same people so I really think that institutions far more the genetics affect social values I mean frankly frankly I'd even say something this provocative if you go to India today the average person certainly educate people but the average person I would even say is more liberal and believes more in human rights than the average American did in 1780 let's say or 1800 and again that just shows you that it's not about genetics it's about culture it's about liberalism right liberalism has emancipate us from ourselves just from our exploitative character and it has led us to indulge our compassionate side and our sense of concern for the other and liberalism is spreading and I'm very much in favor that he woke as a as a threat to it but not a huge threat to it really I think I think liberalism will win over woke in the long run and I don't understand why some people on the right are think woke is so horrible that we should give up on liberalism to fight it I mean first of all that's absurd because liberalism is what will be attractive regular people right a liberal outlook or we don't treat people by ethnicity etc. you know I could go through platitudes but you know a liberal outlook is what would appeal to regular people yet the well these national conservatives want this weird new movement that's has all this esoteric references is like vaguely theocratic you know now we just need liberalism liberalism is working it's been working for centuries it's making people around the world much better and Amy Wax uttered the phrase white values that's I don't think this is true like there's a ton of politically incorrect truth there's enough politically incorrect truth to go around without needing to make up politically incorrect false like white values was burning cats white value you know in medieval France or even right now you know let's say white values in America in 2022 what does I mean why people in in America right now have in common almost nothing right yeah I mean you can look at working class versus um what you mean look at America you know 300 years ago well not 300 years ago but 200 years ago let's say or even today compare like Russia predominantly white country the values of Russians are very different the values of Americans values of Moldovans are very different than those of French you know this isn't this isn't empirically true right it's not empirically true I mean I'd say the same thing for Christian Jewish and Muslim just saying Christian values it means nothing now if you want to say Lithuanian Jewish values you want to talk about I don't know some city in Nigeria if there's a big Christian community there you might start to get some some meaningful correlations with Christian values but but especially nothing that Jews are sharing common you know most American Jews don't care about Israel right or look at I mean even with Muslim like I do think that the plain language of religious texts has some power but I think it's very limited and here's how I defend that claim look at okay you can Islam is the is the one people like to to to pick on because there is high rates of support for criminalizing almost some for some things in more radical Heddy's like the sayings of the prophet that you you can find widespread support for the Muslim world but yet you go to like the North caucuses I mean leaving aside Cheshire which is obviously an extreme Muslim case if you go to like the North caucuses in the Russian Federation like Kibari Nabil Keria or or or you go you know to tartar sandwiches in the caucuses which is predominantly Muslim I mean these people are intermarrying with Russians they are drinking they're having premarital sex and it's not controversial and yet they're Muslim you know you go to Turkey nine the most of the religious conservatives don't want Sharia law they're against Sharia law according to the same bull Sam eras parades around like the 11% of Turks favor Sharia law so I think all of this that and even America like most Christians support gay marriage now so I think that the literal meaning of text isn't as has no no power but it's the power is much weaker than people think yeah it's situational it's contingent like everything else contingent meaning depending on other things so for example there is sometimes a dramatic difference between black value say with regard to the O.J. Simpson verdict 80% plus of whites were outraged by the verdict about 80% plus of blacks thought it was fantastic alright that's that's a black white values difference like at a particular time in a particular place you get a black white difference but generally speaking of white values it doesn't have any meaning right and again I would just reiterate that I think empirically if you study history the idea that one racial group was associated with a certain type of values is completely untenable and laughable now you can talk about other inherited traits and I'm not saying there aren't inherited traits that are relevant but in terms of values like is slavery wrong is indentured servitude wrong is sex with the fucking like 12-year-old wrong it wasn't wrong in medieval Christentum as bizarre as that may seem nowadays it's actually that's something I've been considering rang for tack although I don't think I'm going to because hearing all this debate about traditional values groomer all this I mean as somebody who who studies history you know in the 19th century child marriage to like I'm an older man was was legitimate if you had bled before the late 19th century you know generally speaking 12-13 this age was considered within the age of consent in European nations because then Napoleonic code it was 11 or 12 Catholic church was 12 most American states were 12 before and then the late 19th century you get liberalism saying this is wrong because of consent sexual morality should be based on consent because we're liberals it shouldn't be based on duty on the it shouldn't be based on the purity of the woman or virginity until marriage it should be based on consent so I don't know I guess I'm I'm sort of a a liberal chauvinist and I think that a lot of the claims that whether it's racialists I don't want to put words into waxes mouth but she does kind of sound like she's advocating these use whether it's racialists or radical traditionalist I think the claims they make about are just false empirically like liberalism has made us much better everybody so an extension of liberalism people even get the right to choose unfortunately I'm going to have to I'm going to have to take the coward's way I don't know that's fun that's very smart in my in my program I will say this I have compassion for people I don't think that if you feel that way you're you've harmed anybody but you know the rest of my opinion I'll keep to myself but I don't I will say this I don't think ridicule which is often the response is the right response but I don't nor do I agree with the idea of the ideas of the left on all of these issues let's say what what traditional societies would you be most comfortable in you know traditional opposed to liberal okay I don't want a little sorry I don't want a traditional society you don't want a little traditional most of traditional the people who call themselves traditional it's another thing that's funny so Rod Drayer thinks you know and I'm going to be I actually there's more free speech there than at university like I could bash him although I won't because he writes for the same magazine I do and he's a big dog and I'm just a random guy writes reviews every you know several months but Roger seems to think that the so-called traditional values he grew up within that 70s 80s that that's what was going on hundreds of years ago I mean basically the the new construction that the traditional values he grew up with sexual mores were an attempt to cope with feminism with the victories they applied chastity ethics to man instead of getting rid of chastity ethics they applied them to men even though traditionally they were not applied to men Augustin you know it was considered a sin under Islam or Christianity for men to have primarital sex it was also considered inevitable men will stray this is why Augustin for example support legal prostitution because he thought it's a natural thing for men to express themselves sexually and so you should have prostitution so you don't spoil virginity of women so women are to have a primarital sex because there needs to be a way for men to but Dreyer grew up with the values that chastity is for everyone including boys and this and this is really an attempt by traditional is to cope with feminism victories of first and second way feminism yet Dreyer thinks this is what like the church has stood for through the ages even though the church like with it as I meant earlier had the age of consent of consent of 12 was often took a casual view of prostitution when the papal states when the church had actually had state power I guess he's not Catholic anymore so I shouldn't associate him with Catholicism but I just think that even so-called traditionalists are liberals and many of their views as they should be right yeah I don't think that they're actually abiding by Christian theocracy right pre-liberal Christian theocracy I think they find grotesquely immoral yeah what happened to your upcoming space is Putin Hitler Mr. Bond sentence did you do anything with that? Oh yeah that didn't that didn't work out unfortunately I think the problem is what you wanted to say we didn't advertise it oh yeah I mean I think I was going to talk about where Putin lies in the Russian political spectrum I mean I was going to make a similar argument sadly on your stream before that it's irresponsible to call him Hitler although the war is obviously deeply immoral and I'm not I'm not defending the invasion obviously but I think I've said these views before yeah but the more interesting thing I think was talk about where Putin lies on the Russian political spectrum is there anything in that conflict Ukraine versus Russia since we spoke last that you found particularly I haven't been following it much I just find it very depressing first of all I feel sad for the Ukrainians I also think that we're not going to be able to sort out how many how much are the allegations are true what allegations are true until after the fight of war settles but certainly Ukrainians are being killed and and suffering terribly and I make it saddens me and you know the whole I have a personal a special distaste for this because of my of the Russians that I my my life and because I see this as interpreted in a very anti-Russian way not just an anti-Kudin way of course which I wouldn't object to but an anti-Russian way so the coverage of it rather depresses me and I I just have been checked out of it for the last couple of weeks although I'm thinking about writing an article about where Putin lies in the spectrum because of it's interesting how these far left and far right people in America have come to support him although you know it's still I was on the fringes have you ever thought about becoming a Baron maybe you can purchase one from Africa somewhere How does that work? I don't know you have to talk to Joseph Cotto I'm not saying he purchased his but he's Baron Joseph Cotto Wow that's a good idea Yeah how much are they going for? I know you all have to call me that like your audience has to I think that's they're legal yeah yeah first Baron Cotto would be a Lord Yeah or a Lord maybe you could maybe you could become you could be sir you know Matthew Gabriel yeah yeah yeah you're just sir you know I mean you'd have to remember in every like if you want to interrupt me you have to say pardon my pardons my Lord or something like my lady so I could get a Joseph Cotto actually get a Lordship or something he's a Baron Yeah he got one from Africa why I think he got scam but he it sounds like does he get like some kind of lamb he got a sash he's got a pretty stylish outfit out of it pretty cool so that was that like the cost of a of a steak dinner in in Texas or was that a serious investment now this is serious serious I mean this becoming a Baron it just totally changes your life I mean people just start treating Oh so he's like an aristocrat now he doesn't have to work he's a monochest an aristocrat he has like a household you know of maids oh yeah chef most writers gardeners he's got he's the big spiritual advisors yeah he's got a whole community that depends on is he a minor lord or a major which country is this by the way I don't know one of those African ones yeah so Sub-Saharan Africa or North Africa I don't know I don't see geography I don't see color and I don't see geography now I was wondering if he's um if Joseph is black I don't think he's black no but he's um he's a Baron you can buy if look if the law of the lands just if the law of America says immigrants in common as it does and frankly has worked for the United States is such a rich country our the stupidest thing about woke is like for all of our problems there's a lot going for us there's so many opportunities in this country and you know there there are people who are who would bend over backwards around the world to come here from you know all kinds of countries from the vast majority of countries really so we have so much going for us and it's we're we're kind of stabbing ourselves in the you know we're we're kind of um cutting off our nose despite our face with the woke stuff and also the kind of Amy wax racialist stuff I think too is it's just not productive just as woke isn't productive why not why not oppose both right and people say oh you're just cupping well you know they'll call you if you want to be criticized they will call you a neo-Nazi for simply saying anti-white stuff is bad so why would you if your goal is to be provocative you're already going to be considered provocative in this crazy woke culture you can be provocative without being racially hateful is my point so you can have both not like be able to sleep at night because you're not demeaning like millions of people globally based on who are objectively innocent right because you know um if you're demeaning people based on race you're not you're not you're not you're not you're not could have done or admitted to do that prevents there from being demeaned by you right you're you're demeaning innocent people whether they're white or black or whatever so you don't have to do that you can be a decent liberal moral person and still be edgy and be criticized if that's what you're into because the system will call you racist for saying anti-white stuff is bad that is sufficient so Amy Max also she called India a shit whole country do you think that's an objective fact I just you know I just think it's a narrow view I mean a lot of human innovation has come out of India you know the Buddhist religion for example came out of India which a lot of people a lot of Westerners have found spiritual insights in Buddhism in terms of the need to Chopin and philosophers as well Chopin hour Chopin hour wasn't some politically wasn't some politically correct man you know and he found great wisdom in in Eastern mysticism and so forth you know so I think it's ignorant and narrow and a little sad because someone with her platform and her she she's she's bright if she's willing to criticize you know she's willing to express views that are socially unacceptable but I just wish she'd be doing that in a way that's positive for the United States and is not demeaning huge groups of people right so no I don't agree with that I think I think that you lack a certain you're kind of viewing the world in very materialistic terms if you just arrived this entire country as a shithole and my is shithole a widely accepted academic category for different types of civilizations I wonder I actually emailed her I used like obviously a civil tone to try to differentiate myself from like screaming woke people but I didn't say that you're empirically wrong about this I didn't say you're racist or that right I just gave the data about how you know people all these developing third-world countries brown people as it were after and also people from Africa like the United States it's when people come here in a propaganda is by our system which is in which most of the powerful people are white by the way I'm not saying there aren't non-whites pushing this garbage there are but they're mostly whites are right in terms of the because they hold most the power positions then they get propagandized into here or they may not even believe it but they're incentivized as you say to pretend to believe it so I mean it isn't some intrinsic quality of like it just to say the third world is just motivated by resentment of the west it's such a narrow view which is so wrong I lived in the Middle East for two years America's quite popular Israel isn't popular but that's that's a different kettle of fish that's not about envy I choose white I mean Mizrahi Jews I think could be called non-white I don't really understand Ashkenazi saying they're not white but I don't really care if they want to say they're why you're not I mean Eric striker by the way on telegram has said ain't has implied that Amy Wax I'll send you the link has implied that Amy Wax is trying to lock is is trying to trick whites with this yeah with her can you saw this already no no about it just she's playing 3d chess yeah exactly she she looks Jewish and she is lying about the origins of political correctness and wokeism I don't even think did she even mentioned the origins these people are just so it's so obvious that they're trying to cram all the data in the world into their narrative so this is obviously a counter-example from the narrative that Jews are anti-white and that's the motivation of all this because she's like essentially espousing and again this is so overused but she's essentially espousing white nationalist views in my view I mean honest like you know you're not that those these the term she's just a meeting happening groups I'm sorry right like I don't want to call people that who aren't like I would never call Charles Murray a white nationalist right he doesn't express those views but wax seems to be a white nationalist I mean honestly maybe not maybe that's unfair but she certainly she's a fellow traveler she agrees with many of their views right and she kind of agrees with this denigration of of other ethnic groups you know what do you think about our government's reactions to COVID I'll say my opinion first so I think that our elites and our politicians did pretty much the best they could and I accept that there may be a wide range of policies that would be appropriate but I think generally speaking our academic elites our health elites and our our political elites did did the best they could with a difficult situation and I think they got overall more things right than wrong and I think that lockdowns were appropriate in in most instances that they instituted lockdowns that those that those those were good calls and I think getting vaccinated is is a good call and social distancing I think was appropriate for a time and wearing masks particularly when you're indoors around other people I think is is been a good idea so overall I think the elites and the politicians and the the people with power got more things right than they got wrong with regard to COVID and the lockdowns what say you well I have a strong view on one of these issues and I'm going to have to express acknowledges money others because I just haven't read enough to know my strongly think the vaccines people should get vaccinated you know in opulation say say protects yourself and others around you there's been this claim going around kind of anti-woke Twitter and I'm sympathetic obviously to anti-woke people but there's this claim going around Glenn Greenwell repeated this Jimmy Dore repeated this that you're actually not protecting others if you get inoculated because the chance that you transmit COVID assuming you have COVID the chance that you transmit it is no different according to some studies then for a vaccine or some vaccine but this is obviously a fallacy because if you're vaccinated your chance of getting so you need to get it to transmit it ergo since your chance of getting it is far lower and there's no difference between your chance of passing it on if you have it obviously getting vaccinated protects others and it protects oneself I mean the lethality of disease is decimated by inoculation so people should get vaccinated and the state should make it's I don't believe I don't believe in a law of applying people to get vaccinated because I think that forcible medical procedures I have a kind of libertarian I have enough of a libertarian streak not a very pronouncement but enough that that disturbs me even if it could be justified in some utilitarian basis but certainly we shouldn't incentivize getting inoculated and you know there was another there was a guy who died I have you read Lou Rockwell dot com a little bit okay it's like a libertarian website that's a lot of crank crackpot stuff on on scientific issues there was a guy who wrote for them for many years associated with Ron Paul incident there was a guy who wrote for them for many years Bill Sardi who who died last week he believed he said COVID is a hoax or it's exaggerated or the vaccine doesn't work and he died according the death certificate of COVID was one of the contributing factors so this does kill real people and the evidence is very strong inoculation so we should we should be getting vaccine now in terms of the lockdowns and other stuff I just haven't read enough to know how effective this was I think that the lockdowns were very grave infringements on liberty and I need to see a very compelling empirical basis for there being effective highly effective to justify them my intuition is to be against lockdowns for the lockdowns frankly but I haven't read enough to have an opinion that I'd be willing to stand by but very strongly support those vaccines and providing incentives to get them but not forcing it's interesting for for our different perspectives I think you're more of a you're more of a classical liberal I'm more of a nationalist and so I'm I'm not as wedded to rights I view rights as you know so heavily contingent and I understand that they can be ripped away at any time when there's when there's a when there's a situation that changes but for a liberal the the lockdowns and the social distancing policies must be yeah particularly hard to to handle because I don't right you know I think rights are nice but you know I don't don't view them with I don't believe and I don't believe in natural rights but I believe that rights and I also so I not only think that metaphysically the concept of natural rights is absurd first of all additionally I recognize that the notion of natural rights which implies a kind of human rights really because if you're if you're man or woman or whatever I'm not going to get into gender joke you know but it was tempting there to be honest um the you know if you're human being you had entitled these rights right so natural rights is implicit and that is adopted of human rights this is not the historical form sort of love of slavery served a fresh and exploitation you know exploitation of women child marriage very common history marring minors just the idea of that individuals are entitled to some level of autonomy is not character and then of course you have war and conquest murder by the state in this regard so these are not um as we sometimes talk about like people you know on the far right are certainly correct fascists are correct that this is not characteristic however I think it's a really good idea I also think that there's something in us even if it's been dormant for most of human history there is some capacity for compassion to the other and we need to create institutions that tap into that and I think human rights doctrine does and I think it's had an effect I mean people do even people like some racist fuck in Texas does not does not think like indentured servitude is right the way he would have before before before human rights became like a norm right he doesn't have any notion of human rights he probably would make fun of it and say it's stupid but he does have some implicit notion that you treat the other not so bad you know yeah I'm so yeah I I think we agree on the if you will the metaphysics of it I think we agree on the history of it that this is not how human history is proceeded but I think it's a good idea and I think it has efficacy and I think that since notions of and I they also think it's implicit in earlier liberalism the notion of human rights because natural rights doctrine the idea that which I I don't support obviously metaphysically but I I think is a is a good construction I like it as a social construction if you will that implicit and that is a notion of human rights because if you know if if one comes about this naturally by virtue of being human there's an egalitarianism regardless of nationality in liberalism so yeah I mean I'm rambling a bit but I think it's a great I think we have the facts but yeah I mean the covid was just a fascinating situation for I need to find good evidence but because I don't believe in natural rights and because I think this is just a highly useful and beneficial construction I am open to suspending rights in certain circumstances right because I don't believe they're like these you know inalienable things as the constitution says but I'd have to find very convincing evidence the efficacy of the measures that were taken so how bad is the situation in Australia I hear it's like a I haven't looked into this seriously but the kind of libertarian or right I found it a utopia I mean there are then about one fiftieth the per capita death rate of the United States and was with the price for that that you just had to check in on your iPhone every time you enter the store or had to show verification of vaccination I don't see that as a problem so very low death rate and yeah people in Australia have much more of a sense that the government's on their side have more trust of the government and the government does seem to work a little bit more efficiently and and effectively and overwhelmingly people went along with it like people also in the United States people supported tougher COVID measures than were actually enacted it wasn't that the government you know imposed lockdowns on people nearly as much as people wanted them and so too in Australia when you have a deadly disease that is is killing hundreds of thousands of people and you have you have ways of minimizing so the price of the the price of COVID measures in Australia that had to pay was just check in on my phone also when I got to Australia I had to I had to get a COVID test to even travel to Australia I could only go to Australia because I was an Australian citizen I had to I was I would get a text message from the government once I arrived in Australia after a few days mandating that I go get another test all paid for by the the government that each state in Australia had their own policies so you couldn't you couldn't travel to another state until about a month into my stay in Australia and then there's a whole you know bureaucratic process I just wondered you know what would 100 IQ people do to get through that like there are all these hoops that you had to jump through and then we got out for example we got our COVID test and then began the 12 hour drive to the Queensland border that we we could have been you know we could have driven a thousand kilometers you know found out we'd tested positive and not be able to get in but so there was things you have to do online you had to get a test then you had to show all that to the customers officers you're entering Queensland so I also had to get a special test to fly back so I was probably out I was out $400 total and I was probably out several hours of 12 12 hours of inconvenience or told but I think Australia's dealt with the in a fairly rational and effective manner so how punitive is the are the consequences for not because again well again based on most of the generally speaking it's it's fairly punitive like if you $5,000 like if you don't wow like so when there was a lockdown and there was series of Jews that insisted on holding Russia Shana services I think they all had to pay a fine of there was equivalent of 5,000 American each which was like 8,000 Australian. I'm laughing for a second my mind is on the I just remembered that so it's kind of funny the the right stuff guys striker and and the beginning of COVID they were said when they took COVID seriously they were they they actually unlike some folks in the conspiracy theory anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists community they actually were saying that this is real isn't fake but and then that they were claiming Jews because of this orthodox you know and so on Jews for spreading COVID and then they turned just seamlessly to Jews are pushing the lockdowns yeah it's just like obviously the obviously the first principle is Jews are to blame and you're not you're just trying to conform the facts that anyway let's get back and that's why I was giggling but let's get back on on the subject but what one incarcerated for not the blind I'm not sure I'm sure maybe approximately $5,000 that's that's that's that's a lot of money for yeah I mean but that's real I mean if you want to take it seriously that's that's what you need to do so true and the death rate this is way lower there that is interesting consideration again I I haven't studied this data these data you say technically I haven't say these data systematically but but you say that there really is there was it just was decimated the rate of death I mean the reason this is serious the arguments from the right wing have been very bad on this so the rate of death from covid isn't what is so horrifying what's horrifying is how quickly it spreads you know so if if everybody in the population could get something with the 2% and I don't know the exact figure but before the inoculation I think it was something like 2% 1.5% I don't know exactly don't hold me that but if everyone the population gets that that's millions of deaths you know and moreover there are certain groups where the risk is quite high if you're old or obese or what have you you know or have asthma so yeah I mean I don't agree with the right wing crackpot stuff on this but my inclination is also to be skeptical of policies like Australia but you know that's a relevant consideration if that's that's where just way lower in Australia way lower so there was one time the first time I went to synagogue I I didn't think about this so I didn't didn't bring my phone with me because it's coming up on Shabbat so I didn't have proof of my vaccination status so I couldn't couldn't go to synagogue one on Friday evening so you know that that's sucked and of course you know people in businesses that depended upon you know in-person traffic I mean they were devastated but I think governments did a really good job in the west by and large of cushioning some people starving and and people would be have to pay the rent and by and by and large we we miss that because the fed federal reserve got involved central banks got involved governments got involved they you know they subsidized people so you know we we dodged a bullet and of course there's a lot we don't know about COVID like what are the long-term implications for people who many of them will have you know long-term problems in the face of skepticism though I think we need to have liberty but what we do know is is frightening because as you say you know as I mentioned millions have died from this because of how it's just insanely contagious you know if the flu were this contagious the flu would be horrifying we'd kill huge numbers of people you know it's more much more lethal than the flu but the contagion factor I think is what is what scared people so much with this yeah and you know again so much we don't know we don't know what are the repercussions so to me it made sense it was a rational decision for individuals to take some measures to delay catching it because our therapeutics were going to improve our we would know more and more about what reminder is is that we had no effective as you're reminding them actually is beginning of this thing we had no effective treatment for that was another thing that freed people out well we got better as it went along initially people put on ventilators then we found out 90% of people have put on ventilators died so you you want to really not put people on ventilators like we we learned smarter ways of dealing with this and so when there's there's some unpredictable epidemic hitting yeah you want to try to to delay catching it of course you know everything's are weighing up of of various options so for me I did not get a synagogue for a year right that's how that's how seriously I took it I did not I did not I did not I did not Matthew you keep interrupting me man I'm just you got to let me remember a little fucked up today yeah yeah yeah so I basically didn't socialize for for approximately a year so to the extent I did it we we socially distance and war mass so that's how seriously I took it how seriously did you take it well I have I have a quick question for you first I'll tell you how I pressure so how did the orthodox you're orthodox Jewish right yes okay how did the orthodox Jewish community in general react to the lockdowns were they resentful of it were they skeptical of covid anecdotally and also empirically if you have any yeah the modern ones were were fine with it because the modern ones go to university the traditional ones who didn't go to university were much more opposed to the lockdowns but there was a trend that even many of the traditionalists came around to the importance of locking down when they saw more and more of their their their fellows dying of covid right so that that wonderfully wonderfully concentrated the mind yeah as for me I always and with no with no complaint or hesitation like any really internal agitation masked you know indoors obviously outdoors very different mask outdoors but indoors I masked because it seemed very logical that you know like the flu this this spreads through sneezing and coughing and so on so you to eat masking makes logical sense so I was happy to do then I thought that was the social a social thing to do I got to the accolation right when I was available when it was available I didn't have any hesitation of that either I read a little bit about like studies on defectiveness of the vaccine it's quite impressive so on the other hand I wasn't tying myself into knots to avoid any risk so for example I went to my so I went to Turkey recently but I went to Turkey before I went I traveled overseas before you vaccinated you traveled to correct yeah which was a risk now yeah which I suppose was a risk to myself and to others if I'm being honest I wanted to meet my girlfriend this was when we were flirting on the internet and I really wanted to meet her and I just thought she was special and still think that obviously by the way we're going to live together in Berlin I'm checking out apartments this morning after breakfast and then I'm going to go look at a couple apartments but that's either here or there I did go to Turkey though so I traveled and I obviously a sad and a plane I was wearing a mask by sad and a plane I walked to an airport and then that entailed risk for transmitting COVID right but I didn't get it I would have felt guilty if I got and spread it but I I was very selfish there I suppose not I love the I love the epistemic challenge of COVID and also the epistemic challenge of the voter fraud claim so with both of them my my reaction was fairly quickly to find what's the best book on this topic so early on in COVID I read the the best book on the Spanish flu so when I saw the severity of the Spanish flu where 40 60 million people around the world died I became much more open to government restriction measures to COVID and then when I read a book the myth the voter fraud I felt like I saw through these spacious claims of voter fraud so that's probably my primary epistemic approach to to topics I don't know anything about is to read say what's the number one book on this topic and then and then work work out from there yeah but you took it you took it seriously throughout the process only because I I read that book on the Spanish flu so I didn't have any opinion until in March 2020 and after I read that book after I read the descriptions of you know millions of people dying horrible deaths and how devastating this flu was and how that that seems to be like a devastating influencer about every century or so I yeah I took it seriously and I did not automatically dismiss government lockdown policies now I feel like I was kind of centrist I didn't automatically accept what medical authorities were saying and and political authorities I didn't automatically assume that they were doing the right thing but I did not follow the populace and automatically assume that they were doing the wrong thing yeah so what do you think of what do you think of the morality of COVID like like conduct regarding COVID so let's say you're unvaccinated and not wearing a mask you're just walking into like you know a place where you'd find elderly people like a casino let's say do you think that person is it's kind of I see what you think in terms of ethics yeah this was a big thing for me because most of my audience was I'm going to do what I like because I'm a man and I'm not a wimp and and my response was so it how many people would have to die as a result of your actions before you'd rethink what you're doing and nobody wanted to rethink it's like you know they were just weak and so I just found that that heinous that that that seemed that the dominant reaction I got from my audience was I'm going to go out there and do what I like and if what I does kills people I don't care it's all fake anyway so I found that that kind of populist reaction disgusting for me what do you think it is more so the two possibilities here that they actually like don't care about killing people through like you know so they're basically let's say they're not they're refusing to get vaccinated refusing to wear a mask indoors they're killing people are potentially endangering people just to get mild conveniences of not going to get the vaccine not wearing or not not wearing a mask do you think that said or do you think that they genuinely think it's a hopes in which case if you look at Oak The law like men's rate of state of mind matters 맏 month month month month so so So and I think that's the case so here too you if you if you if you honestly honestly believe it's gä good it's a think that this case here if you also too this case here too honestly believe it's a fraud would be a it would be a fool but you're not a fool but you're not a fool but you're It was so to started a big political issue in Australia. Was the light pretty similar to the left on COVID-19? No, no, because the right in Australia, like in Europe, is not anti-government. It doesn't have this instinctive rejection of government intervention. So there was a overwhelming consensus in Australia, whether you're on the right or the left or the center, that the government policies were probably of restriction and social distancing were a good idea. Interesting. How would you... Go ahead. So how would you care... So does Australia not have this, the same level of right wing? Is there a right wing populism in Australia? Is it much easier? Yes, but it's different. In America, the number one value is freedom. In Australia, the number one value is fairness. Interesting. So there's no freedom fixation and freedom fetishism in anywhere else in the world compared to the United States. Yeah, that's true. Because they're a product of the different enlightenment. So the United States was born by a revolution prior to the enlightenment. Then you get the enlightenment, you get this idea of universal values and a very different British empire that gave birth to Australia and New Zealand. So first enlightenment versus the enlightenment versus the pre-enlightenment, I think that's a lot of the difference. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I actually have lately been questioning how useful the term the West is as a broad characterization for societies that are developed but also supposedly share similar value. I mean, I think like France, for example, the values are vastly different than the United States, vastly different. Yeah, I mean, everything's relative. Like compare the United States, France and Japan, then France and probably France and the United States may seem more similar. I'd have to think about, but of course the West is a politically correct term for Christendom. Like the West is a term to make the Jews feel more included, like the West is Christendom. But I don't know if Christianity, I'm not saying that there's no rule. But Christendom, I understand what you're saying. It's different from Christianity. But maybe it's more about rich, because I don't think people mean Russia when they say the West. I don't think it's just white. I don't think that's right. But maybe it's rich whites. I mean, wealthy white countries that are perceived as having high standards of human rights and education and so on. I don't know though. I think the term is epistemically quite problematic because their cultures are so different. France is so different than the United States. Germany is very different than Austria. Here's how even though they were the same people just a couple of generations ago, they consider themselves the same ethnicity. So yeah, I think the term the West does obscure more than it sheds light. Yeah, like all these things are compromises with reality. French people are very nationalistic as you're seeing kind of with the Le Pen movement. Some of it does surprise me because France actually has a, they have a very emphatic colorblind ideology, such as it's politically incorrect in France to ask for like where are you from, what's your ethnicity? Because the idea is we're all French. It's kind of combined with the xenophobia though and a cultural chauvinism. Like the kind of rejection of racialism, you even see that in the Vichy regime, obviously the most racist regime since the French Revolution, really in the history of France. Even they, there was a, Leval had an African, a Frenchman of African descent in his cabinet of Vichy France. So they have just a different ideology. It's combined with like xenophobia, nationalism, a sense of superiority, if you will.  Like so kind of French chauvinism, but no like affinity to fascism or racialism. And like, skeptical of immigration, but on cultural assimilation. She's basically tried to, she's trying to conform her right-wing views to French norms on race and ethnicity, which is to say, as I said, they're culturally very homogeneous, they're nationalistic, they're proud to be French, in a way that certainly they wouldn't, like Germans aren't proud to be German in that sense. But they also reject, you know, normative French culture rejects like racial ideology. Like this person is defined as X, Y, Z and cannot be French because he's X, Y, Z. I don't think she'll win because I think her past will come out to buyer, but she has, it is interesting that she's moderating her views and has met some success with that. She certainly has more of a chance than she did last time. Anything you found interesting about the French election results? Well, I mean, Zemmour didn't do well. He's like a burp and he's kind of, he kind of is pushing a more explicitly, ethnically based view, which is ironic because he's Jewish and Berber, but nevertheless, I think he actually allowed Le Pen, I think, to present herself as more moderate because she's a shrewd, like open racial appeals, whereas he's talking about things like the great replacement, essentially, Zemmour, and she isn't talking like this. She's talking about assimilation, cultural homogeneity, but all those things are really, they may seem right-wing to Americans, but all those things, the idea of monoculture is very normative French identity. Like Macron isn't saying radically different things, you know? I mean, they're much less tolerant of religious freedom, for example, than we are, right? They believe in secularism in the public square. They believe Muslim, like take a high school, Muslim girls should go swimming with the boys. In French school, we go swimming, right? They're not going to, so it isn't, Macron would be considered illiberal from our point of view, in many ways. Also, most Frenchmen are very hostile to Macron, who's center-left, essentially. He and his government have condemned, well, I don't know if you've seen that. There's been like public condemnations of this stuff from the French government, the center-left French government, which reflects how different their culture is from ours, right? Because yeah, you can become French. France has all kinds of different ethnicities, right? But you have to become French though, right? You can't have dual identities. That's a normative view. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but that's a normative view in France, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's similar to America in that they believe that people can assimilate and that they believe in the power of ideas, like... Yes. Which seems naive. Sorry, go ahead. I'm interrupting way too much, so you're right. But I would say one big qualification though is they're much less tolerant of multiculturalism, even though they are, you can become French in the way you can become American, true, but they're much less tolerant of multiculturalism. They want you to be culturally French. Right, which is, they believe in the power of ideas to transform people, just like Americans do, that you become an American or you become French by taking on our ideals. Right. And Le Pen is presenting herself though as just believing that more emphatically than Macron. She's distanced, she like has condemned her father, for example, her father was a kind of nostalgic for Vichy. He finally had her party. I don't know if you know about... Yes. Yeah, you do. So I think he expressed either soft Holocaust denial or dog whistle at least to it.  But I just don't know if she can overcome the baggage from her past, you know? Okay, I'm gonna run off any final words, Matthew. No, thank you for having me on, Luke, and I'll try to end up less next time. No worries.  Take care, thanks.


My goodness guys, we got some massive news yesterday from TD Ameritrade that they are now offering $0 Commission trading, which is absolutely insane This is an absolute game changer that I think is going to take away market share from a lot of these companies like Robinhood Weeble and M1 finance that have been coming out over the past couple of years Offering that $0 Commission and I'm going to explain to you guys Why I think that TD Ameritrade is going to take away market share mainly due to their think or swim platform being a Supreme superior premium trading software charting software platform that I personally love and From their commissions before being 695 down to this $0 price I think that's going to bring in a lot of traders Especially traders into TD Ameritrade that are looking to use the think or swim platform because you can actually trade through the think or Swim platform which is going to make things very very easy. So let's just get into this guys Let's talk about the $0 Commission's we'll get into some specs, but right on their website You can see our award-winning investing experience is now commission free again That is absolutely insane. This is a 100% game changer announcing $0 Commission's on online stock ETF and option trades, which is actually it's 65 cents per contract We'll get into that in a couple of minutes, which is why there are two little stars here starting on Thursday, October 3rd Which is tomorrow the day after I'm recording this video get our best in-class platforms award-winning Servicing education yada yada yada now with commission free trading So if we go here to learn more we can see a lot of more, you know In-depth analysis of what is going on here. So $0 Commission on online equity trades US enlisted stocks Okay, $0 Commission on online exchange traded funds $0 Commission on online option trades Contract fees now only 65 cents plus no assignment or exercise fees, and I'm not sure what they were before I haven't done online options trading with TD Ameritrade, but that's kind of it, right guys They are now doing something that a lot of these new brokerages are Doing and I personally think because they've been in the game a lot longer than the Robin Hoods the wee bowls The M1 finances. I honestly think TD Ameritrade has a leg up on them I didn't think that they were going to drop it from 695 to zero That's pretty drastic and again This is going to bring in a lot of newbies a lot of new traders out there to the platform TD Ameritrade that now can start with $500 and use the thinkorswim platform and have commission free trading which will allow them to build up that account and thinkorswim for those of you guys that don't know is the charting software offered by TD Ameritrade, right? This is what it looks like you have your watch list I actually did a whole video on this yesterday. I'll link that down below But you have everything here, you know, you can trade if you do have money You can pull up active trader and you can literally buy and sell From this platform and again making it a lot easier for these beginners starting out because Robin Hood doesn't have a good charting software M1 finance sure does not have a good charting software. I've heard weeble is good. I've actually never used weeble I've heard theirs is decent, but I'm sure thinkorswim is better than weeble and just a side note I do have a lot of personal experience with Robin Hood and M1 finance and I know for a fact Their charting software is do-do. It is not good. So that's pretty much it, right? Let me know down below in the comments. What do you guys think about this again? I think it's a game changer for all of those reasons listed in this video I would love to know what you guys have to think about it down below in the comment section So if you enjoy this video, feel free to hit that like button Consider subscribing if you want to see further stock market content for me both trading and investing content Sometimes personal finance. This is the channel for you and join all of our What's it called guys join all of our social networks down below? I just blanked out there for a second the discord group chat the facebook group instagram twitter all that stuff's down below And by the way amtd this stock tanked guys, you know TD Ameritrade stock the holding corporation it tanked So that is interesting to see that investors holding the stock did not like this zero dollar commission Move that they made which is also interesting. So let me know what you guys think about that And that's it. I'll catch you all in the next video. Thanks again for watching. Peace out


Why exposure is important when learning a second language? Unlike learning a first language, learning a second language is a task that can sometimes seem frustrating and at times even impossible. There are many reasons for this is learning a second language is very different than learning your mother tongue. Firstly there are biological factors involved and the fact that normally children tend to assimilate things more easily than adults. Secondly it is often harder to get the same level of exposure to the language, than it is when learning a native language where repetition from parents etc is constant. That is why when you sign up for an English class or any other language for that matter, teachers will try to replicate that scenario with endless repetitions and fun games, because the most crucial thing is getting exposure to the new language. The importance of the learning environment. According to a well known study of second language exposure, the quality of the language environment that the student is surrounded by is crucial to success in learning a new language. On the other hand the same study points out that, if a student is only exposed to classroom drills and dialogues, they might acquire substantial mastery of classroom communication skills but still struggle to communicate in a natural language environment. Therefore exposure to the new language should not be the only focus when learning that language, or they risk failing to know the correct usage of language or when to use it. As a EFL student myself at one point, I experienced this first hand. The impact of genuine language exposure. Grammar and vocabulary are without a doubt an essential part of speaking and writing in any language. However it wasn't until I started getting exposure from the outside world, and comprehending the news and other TV shows that I really started to get a grasp of the language. I remember looking around my classroom, and realizing that the students that were surrounded by people, who spoke the same language were in a level far behind, those who were more exposed to the new language on a daily basis. It is important to note that living in a country where the spoken language is English, made it a lot easier to get the exposure outside of the classroom. However many people tend to make friends with people that speak the same language, or work at establishments owned by people from the same country, so they are never really challenged to improve their new language. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Obviously different languages have different levels of difficulty, but one thing that everyone that speaks more than one language, can agree on is that it is difficult and it can be stressful learning a new language, at least in the beginning. It is imperative that a student learning a new language is aware of the importance of genuine exposure, so when they are not in class they are still getting exposed to the language. It is also important for the student to understand that making a mistake on pronunciation or structure is part of the learning process, and those very mistakes are what essentially will make them stronger at mastering a new language. Are you ready to teach English abroad?