All right, so with us next speaker here is a Stefan Kinsella. He is the author of again Which is a fantastic book. I recommend you all read He is a former adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute and also the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom And without any further ado Mr. Kinsella, hey, I'm totally I'm glad to be here. I assume we're slightly behind. Oh, no, this is on time Okay, I had my clock real here. So good. We're on time Hello, everyone glad to be here. This is a great opportunity to speak this way Without having trouble I'm Stefan Kinsella. I'm an attorney in Houston I'm a longtime Austrian and Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist have been associated Mises for long the Mises Institute for a long time and have written on a variety of basically legal theory topics a Lot of rights theory contract theory intellectual property, which is my specialty in law. I'm a patent attorney But back in 19, I think I want to say 95 or so I wrote a long article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies on Legislation that arose from my studies into the topic from a libertarian and economic point of view and as a lawyer Studying the civil law in Louisiana, which is my home state Which is unlike the other 49 US states that which have a common law-based system The Louisiana has a Roman and European civil law type system So I've been long interested in the civil law and the common law and also libertarian theory So some of these thoughts grew out of my studies in that regard Basically what I learned and what has been fascinating you for a long time is that The way law is perceived now is perverted Okay, most people even let even libertarians tend now to accept a more legal positivist understanding of law Which is that law is basically something written down by some lawgiver now the anarchists Understand that can't be a legislature of a government, but it's a little bit confusing when they think of law as being written down in a law code Because there's no lawgiver exactly But most people that are menarchists or just regular people that are not anarchists They imagine law is what the government issues or decrees as the law Now this is basically what has happened to the law, but that is not the classical understanding of law and not its origins any more than Government's domination of say roads and health care and education Means that these things are essentially something the government can provide well or necessarily has to provide You know roads roads makes sense without the government and but the government co-ops it same thing with money And with health care and with other institutions defense police things like that To go back to law so you can think of the term law as a general term that we use in many contexts And society and in social theory and in thinking so we say law We're lost something that's regular something that repeats something that governs things One type of law would be say moral law So we mean that when we talk about what's right and wrong like what's immoral what's immoral or ethical rules? We think of the laws of the natural sciences like the law of gravity physical laws. That is the laws of cause and effect then you have Economic law like the law of supply and demand. These are all different types of laws distinct in their own domains When we took but most of the time the word law means what you can call juristic or legal law That's the law enforced by some law Enforcing mechanism in society, which is typically in today's world the state So law is the are the set of binding interpersonal rules that are enforced by physical force in an institutional way That is generally in a given community or society So they're enforced by the courts and they're they're they're they're made by the legislature This is how they're conceived of now. This is not the origin of law So the origin of law is basically the response to The fact that we are human beings We're individual human actors who live in a world of scarcity and in this world of scarcity. What that means is we We're actors as Mises calls us so we envision a future that's coming Something about it dissatisfies us and we have some understanding of the way the world is and what's available to us And what we could do to change it so we act to change it So this is what all human action is human action means Having some idea about the future that's coming without our intervention that we don't like Some idea of how we can change things so we choose an end or a goal and to do that We try to interfere with the course of events by causally manipulating Scarce resources or means of action to achieve that so that's what humans do But when we act we employ these scarce resources that is we control our bodies with our will and we use our bodies to Grapple and interface with other things in the world that you can think of as tools or scarce means of action to intervene And they have to be causally efficacious. So you have to have under some understanding of cause and effect What's possible to achieve an end and what ends are possible to act? So all these things are the background of human action But because because of the nature of the world that it's a world of scarcity That is these scarce means of action these resources that we want to use to achieve our ends or Scarce or rivalrous in the economic sense, which means that there can be conflict over their use. Okay, so We need to use resources which we sometimes Informally call property now, but we need to use or employ resources to get things done and The problem is that these resources have the nature that only one person can employ them for that use at a time So my use excludes your use and so on Which means that someone else can interfere with my use of this resource Now we like to live in society with each other because we have certain advantages We like work we're a social species We get enjoyment out of living with other people and we're immensely richer for that because we get to learn from each other And we get to trade with each other. So people develop develop specializations So you have the specialization and division of labor and you have trade and we're all better off for that reason And we get to live among other people which is in coherent Consistent with our with our humans our social human nature So those are the advantages of living in society with other people But the disadvantages that you can be disturbed in your possession and use of these resources these means these tools by other people Because of the nature of scarce resources so the possibility of conflict exists because the universe is scared has scarce resources and Because people have free will and they can choose to try to take the things from us So because most of us are civilized and we prefer to live in peace and harmony and cooperation with others We prefer to live in a society where everyone can benefit We want to benefit ourselves, but we want others to benefit too because most of us are not sociopaths And we have some degree of empathy for others We tend to favor the creation of rules that assign Exclusive rights to use these these things that otherwise could be conflicted over and that is what property rights are That is what all rights are and that is what law is law basic always the use of force to to or other or other social controls to set To identify the owner to to identify an owner of a resource and to help protect them In their ability to use it so to enforce their rights So this is what law is and the rules that developed in this way from early From early negotiation from primitive man and then from settlement of disputes You know when two people would have a dispute if they wanted to avoid All-out conflict and violence and war and fighting they would go to a wise man the so-called king or some arbitrator To just to decide the case This is not a state. This is not legislation This is just an attempt at people to work together to find reasonable fair rules among each other as to how resources can be used In a way that we can all go about our business and productively live in the world and then trade with each other So this is how rights emerge and they're going to have to emerge in the basic core way that libertarians believe to think of as rights The rights to private property and to self-ownership to own your body and to own other things in the world That you either are the first one to use which we call homesteading or appropriation original appropriation Something that had no owner, but that you start using or something like that that someone else owned But that you got it from by contract like they sold it to you or they gave it to you So those are the core rules of what the so-called private law is that developed in this way So the private law is basically rules of property allocation and property determination which are based upon self-ownership everyone owns themselves and for an unknown resource in the world That was previously unknown when there's a dispute over it the person who had it first wins Unless he made a contract to give it to someone else it was contract wins. So you have contract contractual title transfer Original appropriation or homesteading and body ownership. Those are the core principles of the law Now the way this developed in practice In the great legal systems of the world was first in the roman law which lasted for hundreds of years In the roman republic and then later the empire Um and the roman law was developed in this way Uh, it was developed in a decentralized way, which means that Uh, it resulted the law developed as the result of the outcome of many Many thousands of disputes actual cases brought before people that could decide a case And the goal of the law finder there was to do justice to try to come up with a fair result in this case Based upon the core principles I mentioned and based upon the elaborations of those principles that were developed Um over past decades by previous so by previous uh Tribunals so in this way the law gradually develops and gets more sophisticated and you have a body of law that develops Now on occasion these these scattered rulings and principles need to be consolidated and streamlined so that people can understand them So the judges can understand So the merchants can understand and so the average person can understand and so There emerges a role for codification that is someone to sit down and Write a code which codifies this now. This can just be a private code written by a scholar saying okay I've summarized all the law Um, and this is what happened in history. Um now the second great system was the common law of of england Which came later and which also lasted uh for centuries and also developed in a decentralized fashion Um by courts deciding cases and and and using previous decisions, which we call precedent or stereoses stereoses Um and gradually building the law that way and because the common law came later It often borrowed from and relied upon to some extent the the old roman law as well So these are the two great private law systems of the world. They're not the only ones There were more ancient one. Uh, there were crude ones. There were there were there's also a roman I'm sorry a church uh canon law. There was the law merchant among merchants in italy in the in the 1415 hundreds um and there's also jew uh jewish law and there's uh, um The sharia law islamic law. So you have different legal systems and structures But the two great ones of the world have been the western systems of the roman law and the english common law In today's world. This has largely been forgotten By most people because we are used now to thinking of law as Whatever's written down on paper by a legislature In both systems in both in both the continental european countries and in other countries and in in the in the common law countries in the us And so what happened was in in europe, um Um After the roman law was sort of rediscovered it was rediscovered because it was lost for a time After the fall of roam, but it was preserved because the emperor justinian Had thought to preserve the bulk of the roman law in terms of of code the just the the digest of justinian Which preserved the law and it was rediscovered and so we now know what we know roughly what the roman law was And that was rediscovered and used in europe and developed in It was added to with customs and things like this and finally in the late 1700s 1800 Modern codification effort was started by napoleon and then others um, so you have the french code civil or the code the Civil code of france and then others the italian the german the swiss the greek other civil codes And louisiana civil code in the u.s. Which borrowed upon the spanish And the and the and the french law These were basically modern codifications of the combination of the law that had evolved and developed in europe the customary law And also the some some church canon law plus the roman law vestiges And the legal the private the body of private law is beautiful and um Very very consistent with libertarian principles um By and large the one problem was that The this was a legislative codification effort In other words, it was a committee of experts that codified the law a bunch of scholars And then the legislature took that and enacted it as a law as a statute So that set in that set in motion the idea that of legislative Supremacy or legislative positivism the idea that law comes from the legislature So even though the the substance of the law that the legislature enacted In this statute called the civil codes Was based upon decentralized private law principles that had been developed previously It was it established a principle that law comes from the legislature Now in the common law countries um The common law lasted longer But over time more and more statutes were enacted by parliament and then by the legislatures in um in the us and the congress and the federal system And these statutes over time have invaded the province of the core of the common the common law Various codification efforts like the uniform commercial code and things like this Now Aside from the from the codes which are basically codifications of previous private law principles Which were enacted by the legislature and thus put in motion the principle of legislative supremacy or legal positivism um, they're uh, there were also private codes like there was Lord coke and then there was blackstone, which many people have heard of and then in the us today there are the Restatements of the law by the american law institute, which are basically systematic treatises which Summarize what the common law is without being a legislative announcement. They're just authoritative guides So this kind of codification is perfectly expectable and would exist without the state But it wouldn't be legislation So the problem is now that people are so used to this The law being whatever is written down in statutes And the problem also is that most of the statutes that have been written lately in the last 100 or so years Are not mere restatements and refinements of private law that was developed in a centralized way in the common law Roman law Or in the in the european continental law merchant or something like that But they are just artificial arbitrary statutory schemes that have nothing to do with natural law or with natural rights or private law You know, like tax statutes administrative law Environmental regulations things like this So and even the even the constitution like in america, we have a written constitution And everyone thinks of that as some kind of great natural law thing But it's really just another form of legislation It's just a committee of people wrote it and then the congress enacted it as legislation Now it is fairly general and It borrows a lot of concepts that did evolve In a roughly decentralized way in the in the in the english common law system like the magna carta and the forest charter and things like this But it also has just artificial provisions in there, you know, like the president has to be 35 years old and things like this So these are simply decrees written by a committee Which has nothing to do with justice necessarily. So as james carter wrote Um He was a new york lawyer in the late 1800s and there was an effort in the u.s To codify lots of the private common law of many of the american states As as louisiana had already done because it was a civil law state which had the which had a civil code So there was an effort in several states to take the common law Write it down into a code and then had the legislature enacted and that would basically Move us away from the common law of decentralized way of finding and making law that we have Borrowed from the english common law And this never really succeeded to any large extent in any of the major states And one reason was there was an outcry by the common law one of them James carter who opposed this and he wrote this amazing tract Fighting against it and he has some some kind of great quote where he says that um, you know Under the earlier private law It was always a dispute where every party was represented by a lawyer and the the goal of the of the of the Of the court of the judge was to try to do justice He would listen to the facts He would listen to the evidence try to determine the facts and then consult previously established principles of justice And try to do the right thing. He didn't always get it right But that was the goal and over time that's how the law developed and got you know got better and better because Um as new as new Techniques were found to solve a problem Then those rules were adopted more or less by other judges if they were successful And then the bad ones were tended to be ignored or overridden Overruled by other cases so over at least you can have an improvement of the law in that way But when law is thought of as statutory law then The concept of justice is lost. Um, and so the goal of the judge is not to do justice anymore is simply to read and interpret the words written down by a committee Which we call a statute or legislation and to apply it even if the result is unjust Like his job is to do that. This is what the supreme court in the u.s. Does they're interpreting the constitution and federal law Which is statutory Um, and this is what judges do when they have to interpret a statute instead of interpreting the common law their job now becomes Not a judicial job of trying to do justice But to try to interpret words and apply them no matter what the results Um, so this is the problem with thinking of law as being Decreed by a sovereign instead of being natural and discovered by a decentralized fact-finding process um So this is where we are now Now there is international law, which is another type of law which in a sense and there's been a lot of hostility towards natural law by Libertarians in the last several decades partly because they associated with the united nations and there's a hostility towards united nations either by conspiracy type thinking Or by people that are leery of centralization So they're they're worried about a one world government which a concern which I share Although I think it's pretty clear that that is not a real danger anymore Uh, if anything the united states combined possibly with the european union and NATO that kind of thing but basically the u.s. Is the world hegemon? And they're never going to give up seed power to the united nations in any meaningful way So the real danger is is the super states Not the not the united nations the united nations has no taxing power It's its mission is basically to be a forum for dispute resolution among the 200 nation states in the world Even though it's socialist leaning and its outlook because most of the states that are members of it are socialistic and their outlook It has very little power and its rulings are basically general and tentative And the core aspect of international law is that nations should maintain their own borders So it's sort of a roughly anti-war type ideology And pacta soon savanna, which means agreements Are to are to be respected, which is what treaties are based upon So in a sense the core of the international law Is less legislation dominated because there is no really real legislature. There's the union can issue resolutions But it's hard to enforce them like regular statutes can be in state in state legal systems So it's it's actually closer to the model we have as libertarians of a decentralized Justice-based legal system, although its subjects are nation states not individuals So it's not perfect, but it's it's closer actually than today's modern legal systems So that is where we are and that's what I put in detail about now There are many problems that emerge and rise when we think of law as being Written by the government now and and by the way this this this modern practice of of law the shift in the impression of law from being imminent Natural rules of justice that that are fair or that attempt to be fair Into whatever the government decrees Roughly started with the the birth of Of the with the industrial revolution and then really it sped up after the fall of the monarchies after world war one So with the 20th century really so you have had a radical exponential increase in the amount of legislation Basically, what's happened is Hans Harman hop a democracy book You have an increase in democratic lawmaking, which is what legislation is an exception So there's no because of all of Hans Harman hopper's criticisms of democracy There's no surprise that the quality of law has declined and by quality we mean Several things number one. It's not truly law anymore because it's just the decrees of some of some state Um There's no reason to believe that these laws would tend to be Correlative with what justice would be because the state is not trying to do justice They're trying to basically redistribute wealth and transfer power around To prohibit things they don't like like, you know, the drug war or taxation or antitrust law things like that So that's that's kind of the feel we have now that's where we are now in the world Um And Let's see here. What what else I can add before I open the floor up to questions. Let me check my time here six I guess I've gone for about 40 minutes now Let me do this Let me stop now and open the floor for any questions And I'd be happy to take any any further questions and point anyone who's interested in this topic You can search this further. Just go to my site stephan consala dot com slash l l w And you'll see my legislation article and other things Related to this if you just search for legislation Thank you All right. Thank you very much. We have a few questions here for you So the first one here comes from ie you read nes. Do you have an estimate for when law in a libertarian world is going to come out? uh This year Say I'd say within but before pfs this year, which is a property freedom society in september So before september hopefully within six to eight months Next question here comes from gary. One two three He asks what do you think of the legal theory of david freedman parentheses private law firms setting laws and small domains across territories Um, there's a lot of value in david freedman's work. Um He is more of a david has less of an adherence to Sort of the natural law. I mean i'm not a clinical natural law thinker But I I am sympathetic to natural law and the and the principles But I do think that you can have Reasoned arguments by libertarians that demonstrate what what our rights are our basic abstract rights And that is what that's what the standard of justice would be it's not Just whatever the market process happens to result in in a given community So if a given community chooses to have intellectual property law, let's say or chooses to have slavery I would say that's unjust and unlibertarian Even if they do it you can't just sit back and wait and see what they do But give that said I do agree with him that there would be and necessarily would be wide diversity Of the approach different legal systems would take in a private law society in a libertarian anarchist You would have different regions with different customs different cutoff points different legal defaults Lots of variation so What law can do is law can deduce or what what libertarian legal theory can do is deduce Only certain abstract or general legal principles what Randy bernett talks about that's in the structure of liberty, but the concrete implementation of those rules Can vary from from from society to society or from culture to culture A lot All right next question when we have here comes from bay He asks as you know the law as described by frijek bastia is a spontaneous order However, in your opinion, what are the prerequisites for such a spontaneous order to appear? Oh, yeah, that's that's a good point. Um, so it's spontaneous. I mean as as a mizizi in australian. I don't really Have much sympathy or use for that term spontaneous, which I think is more of a hayaki thing I do believe in human action I think people people do things for reasons and there are things that happen in society Generally that are not the result of one person's choice but result of You know the negotiating of the market or impersonal forces and things like that But I do think that law True law can only develop organically so you some might some might call us spontaneously But I would call organically and by that I mean decentralized So law develops from the desire of relatively civilized people coming together in a community in society In in a civilized peaceful attempt to solve a problem to solve the problem of conflict So when you do that you're constrained by the nature of things which is the nature Of the scarcity of the resources at an issue right and then how they can be How how these disputes can be solved in a way that it seemed to be fair by people in society And by the by the participants in the discourse itself, which kind of harks back to Hans Herman Hoppe's argumentation ethic So I think the prerequisite would be you have to have enough people Which are willing to be civilized which means they prefer peace to conflict Now I think that the human race happens to be like that and we're we're like that for various Natural reasons because of our social because of our evolution our social nature Most people that are not sociopaths tend to have some degree of empathy for others So they value themselves they value others and they have enough rationality and reason to understand That if you can avoid violent physical conflict and you can have peaceful trade and cooperation Then that is better for basically everyone involved most people understand that rationally So I think you have you need to have a certain degree of rationality of people to understand that And and a and a relative benevolence among people and a willingness to try to find Rule property rules that allow them to get along with each other Once you have that I think You all start to have a proto-libertarian set of private law rules that will that will emerge and then over time they will be developed Um, I won't say that private property has to be respected for this to happen I would say in a way private property flows from this Once people do that then private property rules are the result of that, but they go hand in hand Next question here comes from veto. He asks, why do you not consider yourself a natural law theorist? well, I'm I'm very much in line with most of Hans Hermann Hoppe's social theory and uh, the standard argument for rights would be kind of the The the the the um the deontological or natural law approach um Or the or the consequentialist or utilitarian approach um And there are problems with both The problem with well Consequentialism, I think is fine as far as it goes. It simply means if you prefer Say peace and prosperity among humans To violence and chaos and destruction and death Then if you have a modicum of understanding of markets free market economics and and just history and A little bit of social theory and political theory You'll understand that you have to have roughly libertarian private law rules to achieve this So that's consequentialism. That's fine as far as it goes Um utilitarianism as a subset of that is flawed methodologically because you can't sum up utilities You can't compare them interpersonally So you can't think of it in that kind of numerical way that some utilitarians do the chicago school But consequentialism is fine as far as it goes because it just means that You know, we want a just system because it leads to better results for everyone There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't mean you can't have a principled approach Which is what the natural law approach is the problem with the natural law approach as hapa points out is that number one There are logical problems going from an is to an ought which is what some natural law Thinking arguably does it tries to say because our nature is this Therefore we should do this or because our nature is this therefore we should have these These types of laws in force But logically as hume pointed out as hapa agrees you can't go from an is to an ought um And the second problem is that human nature is very very wide and broad and diffuse So it's hard to get specific prescriptions out of it You know, like you could argue like like robert robert and wilson and his And one of his books he he he ridicules or criticizes natural law doctrine Now he equates it with the roman catholic church and like their prescription on using a condom He says like it's just ridiculous if you think natural law means look at him come up with the rule Contraceptives are Illegal or immoral that's obviously absurd because you can't go from something so Human nature to something like that now. I think that's slightly an unfair criticism But the point is you can only get so much out of broad human nature So hapa instead roots his theory of rights in the nature Not the nature of human action but a subset called the nature of communication or argumentation or discourse When people come together as rational people In in a in a in a dispute resolution attempt in an attempt to find a rule that can allow them to live together In that context they they are people with scarce resources like their bodies and other things they need to survive And they have a a peaceful predisposition because that's what it means to have a rational discourse with some So they're already looking for peace They're trying to find a rule that makes sense and that is practical and fair and that lets everyone live together in You know peace cooperation and prosperity and harmony together when you have those constraints Then you can start getting the libertarian court norms out of it Now han says that you could think of this approach as natural law rightly conceived and I agree with that So I would say I agree with natural law If it's if it's hapa's version of it But the general version is slightly problematic because of the is-aught problem now some some are near Aristotelian libertarians like roger long argue that You're not going from an is to an ought which is analogous to the if then or hypothetical hypothetical construct If if something then something Which would just be consequentialist or or not really it wouldn't be It wouldn't be an absolute categorical imperative. It would just be hypothetical He says you're not going from an if then you're going from a sense then like since you agree with peace and prosperity Or whatever these values are then you should favor the libertarian norms Which I think is roughly similar to what hapa does in his argumentation ethics So if you think of the natural law is not being an if then like going from is to ought But but being a sense then which is really going from an ought to an ought Like since you believe in these lower level or base level norms or odds or values Then higher level ones follow. So that's the reason for that Next question here comes from castor trey. He asks are there any areas in the united states that common law is flourishing Well, I do think that I mean most states outside Louisiana have common law and it it's it's There might be one or two where it's been codified like Montana or something I can't recall but most states have have a vibrant common law sector It's just that they're they're always under siege from the encroachment of statutory regimes So every time a judge wants to decide a case Yeah, he can rely upon the way the common law in that state has handled it before But he has to always be aware that it's possible the legislature has has ruled and changed it or past us A comprehensive legislative scheme which governs that instead Like in tort law this happened quite often for example, so I mean the private law like even the private law area and property law And criminal law Often there is the model penal code has been adopted as a statute Even though the principles in there were developed in a decentralized fashion More and more often There's a statute the judges have to look at now to their credit in the common law in england and the other commonwealth countries The judges of the common law, they're said to be jealous of their domain, which means They're not going to give up resorting to their common law unless you force them to with a very very explicit detailed statute Which is one reason that in the common law countries Statutes tend to be extremely detailed and redundant and long And not elegant and abstract in general like the european statutes At least the european civil codes tend to be because in the european system the judges are used to being mere functionaries They're not really as high and mighty and powerful They don't really make the law like in the common law the judges are used their their job is more like a bureaucrat They're they're supposed to read the code and apply it to this case in front of them and just apply it Now let me say one other thing here i mentioned meant to mention earlier One comment i've had before This is a us centric point and in the united states system the united states federal government Is one of the most unique governments in the history of the world for several reasons not only its size and reach and power and and and wealth Um, but also it's the most powerful government and yet it's the as far as i'm aware it's the only sovereign state On the earth Which doesn't have general powers general legislative Or police power it's called plenary powers most states are said to have plenary or complete legislative power Which means the legislature like say australia or germany or um or texas These states can just issue a law based upon whatever topic that they want or or or their law can cover So their laws can cover murder and their laws can cover theft The united states because we have this federal the constitution which grants them enumerated powers Doesn't have general legislative power now The courts have twisted that to find it more or less in the in the commerce clause and in other clauses By by bending it but still it's theoretically technically a government of enumerated powers Which means the congress and the us could not enact the law um Saying murder is illegal Not because such a law is unjust, but just because they don't have the power to do it So they have some laws making murder illegal, but it's only like where there's a the person crosses the interst Interstate borders. So it's a it's just a or they kill a federal agent Like it's just a narrow case but not in general. So that's one interesting thing and so because of this system um In my view in in in the united states in the federal system, which is dominant Excuse me except in the private law the private law is still roughly governed by the private laws of the states like marriage law and property law tort law things like that um Because of this there is no such thing as federal common law In in the in the federal government the federal law in the united states consists only of two things It consists of the constitution which is arbitrary law written down by a committee of bureaucrats It's a statute and federal statutes which are all arbitrary and written down And they're not private law that was developed in decentralized form in roam or in the common law They're just arbitrary decrees And the job of federal judges the supreme court included is primarily to interpret The constitution or federal statutes So their job is almost never to do justice There's a one one rare exception that is when they hear a diversity case Distribute between two private parties between two states That's on a private law matter that court will apply under the eerie doctrine They will look to the state's private law and apply that law So in that case the judge is pretending to be a state judge state court judge and applying private law So in that case, they're doing real real real judging. They're trying to find a fair result based upon Organically developed private law principles, but for the most part federal judge's job is simply to read the words written down on paper Which have nothing to do with justice. They're just what a committee Issued and apply them This is why we have people in jail for long sentences that make no sense and that are totally unfair copyright infringement and all kinds of things Um, so I made the comment I don't know a few weeks or months ago. I've made it many times before Federal judges are not really judges, you know, the supreme court judges. They're just guys in robes They're employees of the federal government and and Nick Sarwark who used to be the head of the libertarian party here Who I know You know told me oh, that's a stupid comment just saying you don't think someone's a judge because you don't agree with them It's like no, I'm not saying it's because I don't agree with them It's because their job is not to be judges their job is not to do justice in a given case Their job is just to interpret words and apply them No matter what the result is so A state court judge, I wouldn't say the same thing a state judge in in um in australia or germany or texas or new york At least if it's a matter governed by the common law They are they actually are trying to do justice in those cases because that is their their mission their remit Uh, anyway, that's a little bit of a tangent, but go ahead. I'll take another question All right next question here comes from Murray Rothbard He asks what is review on the death penalty and retributive justice in general Do you believe that a tort system might be a good replacement? Um Well, I wrote an article around the time of that legislation article I went earlier On my theory of rights, which is complementary to builds upon hoppa's argumentation of mine is based on principle called a stop-all And I do think that In general, there's a right to retribution. I know a lot of libertarians don't think that there is I think they're wrong. I think um I think they're confusing motivation and purpose of the victim With the nature of what he has the right to do So basically if someone commits an act of aggression, they're invading the borders of your resource, which could be your body Which would be, you know assault and battery or rape or murder Something like that kidnapping um, or it could be the invasion of the or the Unconsent to use of which is called conversion sometimes of a resource that you own So in both cases the aggressor is acting upon the the rule. He's laying down, which is Someone can use other people's resources without their consent or someone can use someone's resources even if they object to it So he's laid down that law So I believe you can argue you can show that it's just for the victim or his agents If they if they catch the criminal later to do the same thing to him because he can't object to his property being used Without his over his objection because he's already laid down that law. He's already in effect pre-consented to it. Um, so What that means is that the victim has the right to inflict force Or to use the resources of his aggressor Even though the guy is objecting Now how he uses it is up to him. He can use it to punish, which we can call retribution So that's just his motivation, but he has the right to do it He can use it to bargain with the guy to get a payment, which you could call restitution Uh, he could use it He could forgive the guy if you wanted to or he could use it to imprison the guy for a while hoping to rehabilitate So then his purpose would be rehabilitation Or he could use it to send a message to other people in which case his purpose is deterrence So the purpose is you might use your right to punish Or up to you, but you have the right to do it now That is a theoretical thing And I do think in in primitive systems or in systems where you don't have time to do others You you you could have rough justice like that if someone steals your horse West and that could basically kill you because you need your horse to survive You could see the capital punishment being inflicted for crimes like that Like having harsh punishment and rough justice, but I think as the legal system develops as we become more modern society I think that over time what would happen and what has happened and what would happen in a private law society Is that retribution would be would be used very very rarely Or incarceration Execution And even punishment and the reasons are manyfold randy barnett goes into some of the structure of liberty, but one is that um There's always a possibility of mistake and If you punish someone and it turns out that you punish an innocent person now you've committed a crime Okay, and so who's going to take that risk?  I mean Hiring, you know abc corp to put people in prison Uh, number one would be very expensive and number two They they would incur possible lots of liability if they incarcerated innocent person So because the standard of proof would be so high be beyond a reasonable doubt to justify imprisoning someone And because the cost is high and who's going to pay the the victim? you know The incarceration is expensive and so would be execution and the proceedings surrounding it So I believe what would happen in society is that you would tend to have a restitution based system But it would ultimately be based upon the right to punish So right now if someone commits a tort against someone Um The jury is simply told if you decide the tort was committed You have to decide what the damages are. So if someone is harmed The jury just randomly arbitrarily makes up a number of 300 thousand dollars for you know loss of loss of a finger or something like that But if you told him instead Imagine that the defendant had the right to punish this guy Proportionately and do on to him what he did to the victim how much would this victim how much would this aggressor? Be willing to pay to buy his way out of the punishment And that kind of construct can give a more narrow Way to confine what the jury can imagine it would tend to make the results more predictable and more more related to justice And it would also saw the millionaire It's just this idea that well if if a life is worth three million dollars Then bill gates can go murder as many people as he wants and just buy it and just pay the pay the fine No, if you imagine that the victim's family has the right to catch and kill you in return Then a billionaire would be willing to pay, you know Nine tenths of his estate as a fine right to to get out of being killed So The rich guy would pay more in terms of restitution. So that way of looking at it would handle this I discuss a lot of this by the way in detail in my punishment proportionality article from 1995 or six Okay, well in closing you have to say thank you very much, mr. Consola for being here with us tonight We appreciate it very much answering all of our questions and everything So, uh, before we wrap up our time with you here, do you have anything to plug or anywhere where people can follow you at? No, just stay tuned first at stuff in consola slash llw for my upcoming book Which will be edited selection of my legal theory articles and uh, I am behind the The new podcast feed for the property freedom society. We're releasing all of our old episodes Of speeches given at property freedom society means that's a property So you might want to subscribe to that podcast feed and we will be caught up To 2021 by the time this coming meeting starts in september and then we will start releasing All the current speeches every year on that podcast feed. So just in case anyone's interested in that


But it is kind of interesting that the image of the alien changes, that there are things in the wider culture, in popular culture, we'll just use that term because that's the one we throw around today. But literate people, again of a bygone era, and it could be horror literature, it could be science fiction, that sort of thing. There have actually been people, again, who, academics, who look into this sort of thing, who study pop culture, where they've noticed that the way these things sort of get described align, tend to align with, again, what is being circulated in the worlds of horror literature and science fiction and things like that. And in the case of the grays, I mean, there is sort of a early 20th century kind of development of this particular image that we've all sort of become accustomed to, where that eventually gets picked up on and then it gets churned out in science fiction literature. And then when you get into the era of television, of course, you're going to see it instead of just read it and imagine it and see sketches and illustrations and books and things like that. So I actually think that it's a really good indication that, again, what we're not dealing here with an actual extraterrestrial biological entity, these are, again, in academia people would refer to these things as archetypes, or now we use words like memes, this is what they are. They are just things that sort of catch on and they work their way into the popular consciousness. And then people store that information away and then out comes XYZ experience or whatever response to trauma or something like that. And then they just, either the brain incidentally fills in the gaps or they just do it sort of intentionally. But think of the way I just said that, archetypes, collective consciousness, again, these are all areas that in sort of the academic community, again, the scholars who don't have any sort of particular theological or confessional bent, they're going to be dipping into these terms in these areas of psychology. I was going to say it's very Jungian. Right, it is. But why is that more coherent than to suggest, well, maybe what we have here is a supernatural influence. We don't necessarily know how it works, we don't necessarily know how the interaction takes place. But again, as Christians, it's not that we have to deny any good observations of a psychologist or a Jungian researcher or whatever, they might come on to some idea that's really useful. But why is it that it's okay to parse these things in really, honestly, a secularist, materialist way? And all we're suggesting is, well, maybe we ought to sort of parse these things in a spiritual way. So what tends to sort of sound bizarre, you know, talking about UFOs and the occult and, you know, the supernatural forces, that can sound really silly and crazy and bizarre. What we're saying is, well, we're not materialists, okay, we're not materialists. So we don't believe that there are aliens actually coming here, but we're not going to default to Jungian systems. We're going to ask ourselves, well, you know, could there be something in a Christian worldview that might have some overlap, you know, with this kind of thing? And for me, it's really about messaging. It's about what people are asked to believe. It's about what they're asked to redefine, okay, in terms of their faith. The messaging to me is just overtly sinister. And when you get down into the literature, you know, I agree, you see overlaps with old occult systems. You see overlaps with horror literature. You see overlaps with ancient, you know, religion. Again, is that a coincidence? Again, I don't think so. I think that there's some intelligence here that as a Christian, we would speak in supernatural terms about it. We wouldn't just talk about Jungian psychology, that sort of thing. I would say how would we expect a modern person that's used to technology and things that fly around and mysteries like that? How would we expect them to talk about ancient ideas? We would expect them to talk about it with spaceships and aliens. We would talk about the same thing, but we would do it with the trappings of what we think of as power. So I would say this is what to expect. You recently did a documentary with Faithlife TV, which is all about angels and demons, aliens. Can you explain to us the difference between demons and angels? Sure. The documentary itself really tries to, again, take a look at the UFO subject and try to inject some biblical thinking into it. So we sort of go through what the options are, like how could various things be explained, and it's more than just one bucket. It's more than one angel or demon bucket. We go through all the buckets, but eventually, again, we land on this area because of things like the abduction phenomenon and some of the real sinister aspects to what people report or claim they see or witness or experience themselves. So when you get into that, you naturally, this whole talk about angels and demons surfaces, I don't think we can draw a one-to-one equation with a lot of these things in terms of angels, demons. Those are good aliens and bad aliens or things like that. So that's kind of a simplistic approach. So we don't go down that road. But you have a situation where, especially in the more sinister aspects, where a lot of the messaging is, for lack of a better term, demonic. It's just sort of a demonstrable fact that when you get into abductee and contactee testimony that not coincidentally, a lot of what is targeted in what they tell people tends to be very anti-Christian, very anti-gospel. And again, is that a coincidence? I don't think so. And so in that sense, we've got something sort of running in the background, kind of like a computer program running in the background of these experiences. And so it can take on kind of a sinister flavor there. And what people experience in terms of abductions, there are a lot of good explanations for that. I think some of them, at least a few of them, are explainable by demonic oppression. For me, that's on the table. I believe in the supernatural, and I think there is some overlap there. But I don't think that we can say angels and demons are extraterrestrials. The Bible doesn't really portray them that way. They're not finite life forms. They're not biological life forms. They don't have determined lifespans. They don't have to reproduce. They don't have to eat and drink and all that sort of thing. It's very natural for people to think of a spiritual being when they think of the UFO phenomenon. And that presents a lot of opportunity for conversation as a Christian in this community. And so what I try to do is I try to get people to think about biblical overlaps with these things and how to sort of process them maybe in a way that doesn't undermine the message of Scripture. Can you tell me why you decided to use fiction to teach? Yeah, fiction, faction, it's sort of that kind of thing. I like to use fiction to sort of piggyback theology on fiction. So some of my non-fiction material, like divine counsel stuff, is going to work its way into fiction in these books. I also think it's really, it's not only useful to sort of get people to the table for a spiritual discussion. But in this case, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take lots of factual material. It's not just sort of marketing shtick. I'm really serious that everything in the book, every data point, every government document, every ancient text, everything in the book is actually real. What's fiction about the book is how I connect those dots and then, of course, the characters. But I'll confess, even some of the characters are sort of people I know or composites, that kind of thing. If a historical figure in the book says something, they actually said that. And so I think it's useful to present not just sort of interesting material to people, but also to alert them to the fact that even though this is kind of a fringe, you know, crazy subject, there is actually a lot to think about here. And in the course of what I do in the book, I'm trying to get people to, again, say, hey, there's something to this, and there are spiritual components to this as well. And so the characters have to struggle through spiritual implications of a variety of things, in this case, related to the UFO subject and all the alien talk that goes out there. So it's a good vehicle for, you know, what might be, again, how do we connect the dots? Because the dots are real, what might be, and then what are the implications of all that? Your novels, the facade and the portent, do you, at any point in there, explain what the delusion is all about and how it connects to Gnosticism and the New Age movement and all that? The facade, just think of the title. The facade really is about messaging and deception. And the portent, you know, picks up those threads and just think about it.  Even something as innocuous like that, people are going to extrapolate. They're going to mentally fill in the gap. Now we've got alien races everywhere and we've been visited. I mean, the culture is prepped for that sort of thing. But you've got really a fundamental decision to make. There's sort of can serious Christianity comment intelligently and in that sense frame the discussion in light of or in the wake of disclosure. Or are we going to get sort of somebody else's version of this that's going to fill that gap? And what I do in the facade and the portent is I really focus on, I focus on both. In the facade, the centerpiece question is what would the impact of a genuine disclosure be? Something incontrovertible, what would that be to the faith? But then the reader, again, and to some degree, the characters, the reader always knows more than what the characters know. You're suddenly hit by this notion of, OK, there's something going on here. There's a greater intelligence here that is going to target people of faith. And essentially the game plan is we're going to give you exactly what you expect. We're going to give you everything you need to keep your Bible, to interpret it literally, to continue to have faith in it, to confirm it. But what's being confirmed isn't what you think is being confirmed. And so it's really about the control of a narrative so that we can capture the imagination of, in this case, the believing community. And then when we have them thinking a certain thought, we move the herd from A to B. And then when they're at B, we'll move them to C. But in so doing, again, since I'm the author of this, again, I put, this is like writing a dissertation for me. Writing a novel is like writing a dissertation, just thousands and thousands of pages. You have a novel with footnotes. Yes, peer-reviewed stuff. It's no different a project for me in terms of research than nonfiction is. And I get to put myself into the seat of the evil mastermind, OK? And for me, when I get asked questions about, well, how does the supernatural world really affect us? Again, I don't gravitate to the bizarre. I don't gravitate to the weird, it's kind of spooky contact event. What I gravitate toward, and this is how I think the spirit world actually works, is that you need to move the herd, you need to capture thinking. You need to control thought because a divine being isn't going to work hard. He's going to work smart. The more people I can get to embrace what I want them to think, I don't have to work because it'll spread through media or conversation, those sorts of things. And so the evil mastermind, this is what it's really about. How do I use this thing that, again, that the villain is entrenched in this world of UFO stuff and the military and paramilitary and all this? How do I use this environment to change thinking, to move the herd? And so deceptively that you really believe that you're embracing the right thing. What's really disturbing is there are people in the Christian community, even among researchers, that what they're saying is really a baptizing of ancient alien theory. And that in turn, you wouldn't have ancient aliens if the 19th century had never happened. Because all of that, the whole narrative comes out of occult literature, theosophical literature, again, this other kind of speculative literature, pan-Babylonianism, all of that. All of that feeds and creates and propels the ancient alien narrative. And when you come along and you say, well, we need to accept a lot of this stuff, but we're going to sort of baptize it now and make it biblical, again, people don't really realize what they're doing with that. Sanctified bad ideas are still bad ideas. That's really what you're dealing with. But that's the thing that kind of alarms me the most. So I wanted the narrative and the novels to sort of drop into that. Again, confirm expectations. I mean, you're going to get to keep your Bible. It's not really what you think. I mean, even when you get to like ancient Egypt where there are things you can read there that sort of feel like an uncreated creator somewhere along the line, it's like, well, we don't really know how he got here. Or that the primeval elements had something to do with this. And even the elements themselves, pre-existed, well, who made them?  I would say ontologically coherent package like you get with Israelite thinking. Yeah. I'm kind of interested in what they're going to do with the guardians. Yeah. And marrying that with Avengers now. Again, I did read a lot of comic books when I was younger, and it was Avengers and Spider-Man and it was Hulk and all this kind of stuff. The thing, I never got into guardians, but for those of you who saw the movie, at the end, you know, the alien, for lack of a better term, the alien enemies, again, who are chasing the guardians around. The leader, she gets mad, and then they create this other thing, this other entity. And at the very end, she says, well, I think I'll call him Adam. This is going to be Adam Warlock. You know, if you're familiar with the Ark, again, in the guardian story, with the Infinity Stones and whatnot, Adam Warlock is very clearly a Christ figure in the comic books. So I'm kind of interested to see what they're going to do with that. Because, you know, right there, you have this backstory of, you have an extraterrestrial creation of this Christ figure. So this is what you run into in comic books a lot. On the surface, I think most people, when you sort of alert them to the fact that, hey, a superhero is either a modified human or a deity, or an extraterrestrial. This is what you're playing with. This is the playing field. And then how you can either retell old, you know, religious, you know, epic narratives, or you can play with them and modify them to create some sort of modern form of those things. But they transmit worldview. They transmit belief. And when they filter over into touching Judeo-Christianity, again, that's where it gets really interesting if you're Christians. What's the messaging there? It's the truth.  And so it's sort of a natural playground, you know, for creators. But in terms of the biblical literacy thing, the real problem there, as I see it, is when you're not sort of taught to think well about biblical theology, but you have a pretty deep knowledge of, we'll just say, you know, cartoon, you know, sorts of presentations of theology, comic books, okay? When you have a pretty deep knowledge of that, it's very understandable that when you get into a conversation with someone who that's their knowledge base and you start to talk about the nature of God and you try to talk about things like Trinity or the deity of Christ or how Jesus can be God and man at the same time, they're naturally gonna filter those questions through the categories they know. In other words, how those sorts of ideas were presented to them in a comic book or in a movie. And, you know, it's not that they never hit anything right, but typically it just veers off somewhere, theologically. And so the person might wanna have the conversation, you know, because it's interesting. But the way they're able to process points of biblical theology, it really creates sort of a barrier to thinking well about some of these things.  But if your touch point are these imprecise analogies, that affects the way you're able to comprehend theology and that makes you susceptible to any number of aberrant theological systems. So I think there's a real problem here, you know, other than the fact that maybe they, you know, it would be great if this would help us think better about truth, okay, that would be wonderful. But at best, it helps people think in imprecise ways about truth and then they wind up in untruth. And in some cases it's very antagonistic to truth. It's a deliberate inversion or perversion of some point. So it's an important thing to be thinking about as Christians, you know, pop culture in these areas because you just get into all these big picture theological questions. You just almost can't help but do it. Well, you know, the propensity is going to be on the one part, it's going to, there's going to be this generated interest. The adults of course are going to say, oh well that, you know, none of that's real, none of that's real. And unfortunately that notion that, well, if it's not, this is going to sound really kind of awkward, but if it's not scientific, then we know it's not real. And to have someone who supposedly, again, embraces a supernatural worldview like a Christian, that's actually where they're at, that these things are impossible, these things can't be. If I can't quantify it, then it's not real. If I can't put on their microscope, use empirical data, then it's not going to be real. And so, you know, that can really cut both ways. It can sort of say, you know, to the child or to the teenager, well, you know, well then, okay, I know this isn't real, I can sort of process that, I get it, but I like it. And now you're, you know, it cuts them off from perceiving what's in scripture as real. And since it's not pyrotechnic, you know, if I can use sort of an antiquated term like that, okay, if it's not that, then it's even less interesting. And so you're asking me to get into something that's less interesting and still not real, like this other stuff, it just, it really works against, you know, trying to generate interest in the reality of scripture.  Okay, if that isn't real, if it's not a real victory, if he doesn't have a real enemy and a real conquest, okay, then what have we got there? And he calls them the gods of Egypt. God's just sort of putting on a show or, you know, he's winking at the same time, but you can't have a wink, you know. If it's just idols that they invented and they weren't anything real behind it. Then the claim is a sham. So, you know, I think we need to get our young people really better theology and then talk about, okay, here's why your comic books similar to this story over here from ancient Egypt or this thing over here from Mesopotamia, there's a reason why the people you like to watch now drew on those stories. They're not only cool stories, but those stories are the ones that the biblical writers are interacting with. And to them, these characters were real. This was a real spiritual warfare kind of issue.  I think as Christians, we need to realize that we have the truth of scripture. If there was a genuine extraterrestrial disclosure, again, that doesn't need to harm our faith in any way. We need to be thinking more intelligently about what it would mean, but it's not gonna change the fundamental points of, you know, theism or our faith as Christians. So we need to be prepared for that. And again, what I'm trying to do in the facade and the portent is to get people to think seriously about it to kind of frame the issue again and then also, you know, take people's minds over, well, we would have an answer, but what if we're being given this information by an intelligence that just frankly doesn't like us a whole lot? And we're sort of being led to conclusions that are not convenient for us in any way, but are sinister.


James, how'd you feel about the the flow second half of back to back? How'd you feel about the flow of the game overall? A lot of ups and downs second half we just had a meltdown and They capitalized they made shots. We got fortunate that they they missed a lot of open shots in that first half second half they made a lot of them so Good thing is we come away with the win and We just got to continue to keep keep keep improving No excuses.  What was working? What's been was been going good for us and continue to do that to the best of our ability This careless turnovers and Miss communications will lead to you know open shots for them and attacks at a rim so Like I said, it's it's a It wasn't a good showing for four quarters, but we come away with the win and we just got to keep pushing forward Talk about the offense getting stagnant last I mean this first half it was like I think was 17 assists on your first 20 makes some like that Just what was working for you guys flow wise early with that our pace Now touching the paint knocking down shots a little bit everything things that we preach and we Try to continue to do for four quarters James I feel like last season there was more rest set aside for you or for Kevin And this year you guys are playing him back to backs and played every game straight and tonight you guys played What 37 36 minutes? Was that a conscious change that you guys made or the performance that I've made and I don't think it was a change other thing. You know if I don't play or Kevin on play It's like we're already down numbers You know me So we just got to Like I continue to keep saying we just got to keep fighting man Just find ways to come away with wins find ways to keep improving on both ends of the ball And you know some long seasons gonna be a lot of ups and downs But I feel like we're we're in a little bit in the funk right now in the sense of just everything But we win we keep going you ready for Friday Do you I guess worry that you know you say it's a long season that the minutes are gonna add up and at the end Of the season, I mean we'll deal with that later, but right now we just be just open James talked about kind of grinding through when it's a back-to-back. It's been eight games in 13 nights I mean is is the bigger challenge mental or physical? I mean, I knew we were playing a lot, but So I guess this is what they gave us, you know, we just got a I mean obviously Joe you know going down with the English Marine, you know and in sap, you know with this family You know has it been difficult just because you know, we're limited on bodies, but That's all when we do Get really good starts and going really good won't runs It's more important for us to finish games off the right way so we can get our proper rest when needed Tonight was an example that and we didn't capitalize on it. So Another learning experience for us


Hey everybody, this is East Side Steve from East Side Show SCP channel, and today we're going to have an SCP discussion. Today's topic is, What kind of pizza would you get from SCP-458? The never-ending pizza box. For those of you who are unfamiliar with SCP-458, I will put a link in the description and also the end screen will also have a link to go watch SCP-458. First story is this, basically it's a pizza box from Little Cedars that when you touch it, it instantly replicates your favorite kind of pizza. So when you open it up, it'll get your favorite kind of pizza. So here's the thing, what kind of toppings and such would you get on your pizza when you open the box? Mine would probably be meat lovers, like Canadian bacon, Italian sausage, chicken, etc. So leave a comment down in the comments section below, and tell us what your favorite kind of pizza would be from the box.


Hello, and welcome to this virtual tour of the Barnes Foundation. My name is Penny Hansen and I'm a docent at the Barnes. I am coming to you today, not from the galleries, but from my living room to yours during this time of staying safe at home. In this highlights collection, in this highlights tour of the collection, for those of you who have not yet visited the Barnes, and perhaps to refresh the memories of those of you who have, I will take you into some of the rooms, talk about the arrangements of the wall ensembles, and look at some of the many masterpieces we have here. Dr. Albert Barnes, born in Philadelphia in 1872, into a family of very modest means, was a self-made man who used his fortune to amass one of the most outstanding collections of 19th and early 20th century art, along with sub-Saharan African sculpture, folk art, metalworks, furniture, and much, much more. Dr. Barnes began collecting paintings in early 1912 when he sent his good friend, the artist William Glackens, to Paris with $20,000 to, as he said, buy me some good examples of this modern art I have been reading about. Glackens returned three weeks later with 33 paintings, some of which were by Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse, Pizarro, Degas, and so on, many of which are still on the walls today. These rather strange paintings piqued Dr. Barnes' curiosity, so he travelled to Paris himself later that year and met with artists including Picasso, many art dealers, and befriended the collectors, Leo and Gertrude Stein, who were closely tied to the Parisian avant-garde artistic community. In the process, Barnes bought more paintings, and from that time on, no one else bought paintings on his behalf. He continued to buy trade cell paintings up until his death in 1951 at the age of 79. As we walk into the main gallery, the largest of the 23 rooms here, those of you who have yet to visit the collection will see immediately what makes the Barnes so very different from any other museum you have visited before, the way the paintings are hung. Dr. Barnes displayed his collection by stacking the paintings salon style, arranging them very symmetrically on burlap-covered walls, alongside disparate objects, mixing up artists, styles, traditions, cultures, and time periods. Note also the absence of any didactic text. Dr. Barnes believed that anyone could learn to appreciate art by looking for themselves, not learning by road, by analysing works in terms of elements of design, line, light, colour, and space, to see as the artist sees, that all artists connected across traditions, time, and cultures, that art is all around us in our daily lives. Think of his walls, his ensembles, as blackboards, each one perhaps a work of installation art. In this room are many paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir. The Barnes has 181 Renoirs, the largest collection of any museum, as well as an impressive collection of 69 works by Paul Cézanne. In fact, this entire wall, the north wall, is hung with nothing but Renoir and Cézanne. These two artists, two of the major artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, with two very different styles, their influence on later generations reverberates throughout this collection. Immediately in front of us as we walk in, on the south wall are two large paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as well as the huge mural, The Dance, which spans the entire length of the south wall, painted specifically for this room in 1931-33 by the artist Henri Matisse and commissioned by Dr. Barnes for $30,000, when Matisse visited the foundation in 1930. These giant female nudes tumble across the entire wall, dancing across the treetops we see outside the windows, seemingly part of the architecture, and an integral part of the wall, as was intended by Matisse, even though they are indeed three huge unframed canvases. Notice how the hinges here, which are actually German and American barn door hinges, draw our eye upwards to the pendentives between the arches containing these tumbling curved dancers. Upon the 1933 installation of this piece, under Matisse's watchful eye, Barnes exclaimed he now had his own rose window, like in a cathedral. To the left of the window is Matisse's seated rifian, painted in 1912 after a visit to Morocco. Remarkable for its size and presence, this rift tribesman is almost bursting out of the frame. This painting is based in the dusty hazy light, typical of Matisse's Moroccan paintings. It is composed of pinks, yellows, soft blues and greens. This painting is flat but spatial at the same time. Notice how this blue rectangle takes our eye back into space and seemingly pushes the figure forward at the same time. Matisse's contribution to modern art was his development of a monumental decorative art, innovative in both its treatment of the human figure and in the constructive and expressive role he accorded to color. Barnes bought this painting in 1925 and he moved it around a lot before hanging it here. There are 59 Matisse's in the collection. To the right of the window, we see Pablo Picasso's composition, The Peasants. Barnes purchased this painting in 1913 from the dealer Volard for just $100. This scene and use of color inspired by his visit that summer to the village of Gosol in the Spanish Pyrenees shows a flower seller and a young girl on the way to market. It is painted in the soft terracottas, beiges, pinks and reds of his rose period of 1905-06 when he was still a young struggling artist. These mask-like faces show his growing interest in African tribal sculpture he had recently seen in Paris. These elongated figures, we see here the influence of the old master, El Greco. Notice the geometric shapes, particularly in the dress and in the shirt. These foreshadow cubism, which he would develop along with Georges Braque just a few years later. Matisse and Picasso were both friends and great rivals, propelling each other forward in their artistic explorations. Matisse was all about color and decoration, painting what he saw in front of him, Picasso all about line and form, painting from his imagination. Each one had a huge impact on modern art. Let us remain in the main gallery just a little longer and we're turning now to the East Wall. This wall ensemble offers perhaps one of the most striking contrasts in the collection. We have two monumental but very different canvases dominating the wall, which is also hung with two Venetian old masters from the 16th century. The large canvas at the top is the large bathers by Paul Cézanne, which Barnes acquired in 1933. All his life, Cézanne's ambition was to tackle the Renaissance theme of nudes in the landscape. He made around 200 works on this theme, but three stand out for their size and ambition and are often regarded as the culminating works of his career. Let's just zoom in on this. The large bathers here is one of them. Cézanne worked on this canvas for the last decade of his life. He died in 1906 and this canvas shows the evidence of a long labored working process. The subject is perfectly conventional, but there is nothing conventional in the way this scene is painted. Here, nine women gather by a stream to bays, but these are not the voluptuous nymphs and beautiful pagan goddesses of Western painting tradition. Nature seems menacing with the heavy weighted clouds and thundering blue sky. The figures themselves are arranged in classical postures. Cézanne, by the way, did not paint from the live nude model, but they are at once beautiful, unsightly, ambiguous, strange. The bathers seem to blend with the luminous landscape. They echo the strength of the trees as if merging into them. Cézanne's brushwork creates a sense of volume, which emphasizes the bathers' extraordinary monumentality, as it is as if almost they were carved out of mountain rock themselves. Notice how the large hinges on either side of the large bathers seem to echo the shape of the women on the edges of the painting. In contrast, beneath it hangs Renoir's The Family. Painted in 1896, shown a group of cheerful, rosy-cheeked figures. His wife, two sons and a maid and a neighborhood girl, arranged with very stable and reassuring geometry. Those Renoir and Cézanne drew heavily on past traditions, and this all highlights those influences.  Flanking the Renoir on the left and on the right is a painting here by Tintoretto and a painting here by Valonese, two 16th-century Venetian old masters. Both these figures in these paintings display figures closed in deep red tones that are echoed again within the Renoir. The Chardon still life to the right references, if we can go across, references the Cézanne still life over here to the left. Cézanne admired the work of Chardon. And the landscape here on the right by the door is by Renoir. And it has soft, flickering veil of light in contrast with the solid materiality of the Cézanne. Above the doors, we can see, remove a little bit here, above each of the doors are works by Barnes's friend William Glackens, who was a great admirer of Renoir. Barnes is paying his friend a huge compliment here by hanging his work alongside some of the great old masters, some of the great masters. Now let's go to room eight. Here we are in room eight. To look at a very tightly composed ensemble on the south wall. Let me just zoom in a little bit. There we are. This is the ensemble I use in many of my tours to demonstrate Dr. Barnes's ideas of line, light, colour and space. Here we have a V shape of paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir interlocked with an upside down V of paintings by Paul Cézanne. In fact, the wall is nothing but Renoir and Cézanne. Along with furniture, objects. So if we think about line, for example, if we look at the front of the 18th century chest, it is carved with these very soft undulating curves that reflect the light. And if we look up into the Renoir five bathers, we have soft undulating curves that reflect the light also in this painting, as well as in the curves of the pot and the light reflecting off the candlesticks and the curves of the candlestick tables on either side of the chest. The two landscapes by Cézanne, however, with their geometric angular forms offer a sharp contrast to these soft curves. Notice the colour of the wood in the chest. This is echoed again in the redware pot and then that same colour becomes fleshy, tangible flesh in the Renoir. And then that same colour again becomes rocks and soil in the Cézanne landscapes on either side. In fact, this whole wall is a colour web of this orange tone held together also with blues and greens, so the entire wall is held together by colour. The two central beta paintings, one by Cézanne, one by Renoir, offer a lesson in contrast of Renoir and Cézanne's style in painting the nude figure. Renoir is all about soft, tangible flesh with feathery brushstrokes, Cézanne's figures are solid, sculptural, monumental, while reflecting Cézanne saying, I can distill everything in nature down to the cone, the sphere and the cube. The Cézanne landscape to the left, perhaps we can see that closer, yes we can, is rocks and trees of 1904. It is a wonderful example of his late work with his signature brushstrokes. They are almost dynamic, flickering vibrations of colour, seemingly floating in front of the surface of the work. Picasso and Matisse both said, Cézanne, he is the father of us all, without Cézanne, there would be no modern art. We're still in Room 8, and now we're just turning to the west wall. And here we have a still life by Paul Cézanne, painted in around 1892. Cézanne is known as the painter of apples. He is famous for his still lives. The Barnes has a wonderful collection of these. We have one of his masterpieces hanging right here. Cézanne's painting technique astounded his contemporaries. His hatched brushstrokes and way of building form completely out of subtle gradations of colour tones. He said, I want to do with colour, what others do with black and white. His unique perspective, he did away with the Renaissance single point perspective. He influenced artists and modern art that came after him. Notice how weighted his fruits are. The longer one looks at these apples, these oranges, these limes perhaps, the heavier they become. The whole arrangement looks absolutely haphazard, but was in fact carefully arranged by the artists using coins and wooden shims to position the fruits exactly where he wanted them. Different tones are played against each other. We have reds against greens. We have blues against oranges, making the painting vibrate with a harmony of colour. This white cloth is carefully arranged almost in a landscape-like way, providing depth and contrast. Look at the diagonal tilt of the chest, making the fruits look as if they are all about to move, to roll off the chest onto the floor. This diagonal line gives tension and drama to what usually would be a static, still life. Cézanne used the same humble Provençal objects in all his still lifes. He had a deep respect for the traditions of Provence. His fruits and objects seem to have it in a life all of their own. Cézanne once said, very poetically, People think a sugar bowl has no physiognomy or soul, but that changes around here every day. You have to take them. Cajole them, these little fellows. These glasses, these dishes, they all talk among themselves. They whisper interminable secrets. I gave up on flowers they fade too soon. Fruits, however, are more faithful. They love to have their portraits painted. They sit there and apologise for changing colour. Their essence breathes with their perfume. They come to you with all their aromas, and they tell you about the fields they have left, about the rains that nourished them, about the dawns they have watched. Here we are, upstairs on the balcony, in front of Matisse's Joy of Life, or Le Bonheur de Bivre, painted in 1905-06. This is the only painting Matisse sent to show in the salon of the autumn of 1906. It was a major statement, a masterpiece, and it is a major shift in Matisse's style. It was the largest, it is six feet by eight feet, and the most ambitious painting he had ever painted up to this point. He worked on it for over six months and made numerous studies for it. Here Matisse has taken the grand tradition of pastoral painting, but has undermined it with a looseness, a simplicity, and the use of these brilliant, non-naturalistic colours. He depicts an earthly paradise devoted to the sensual pleasures of music, dance, and love. People were absolutely shocked when they saw this in the salon of 1906. This is a wildly eclectic painting, full of illusions to different kinds of art. Greek vase painting perhaps, Persian miniatures, medieval tapestries, cave painting even, and of course referencing the works of Titian and Poussin. This competition is radically new, based on sweeping curves, not on stable architectural elements, and of course the astonishing use of non-representational colour. The figures and the landscape have this pulsating energy. We see all these arabesque lines, almost a musical energy. There are two focal points. The two large reclining figures here, one with orange hair, one with contrasting blue hair. The ring of dances here forms the other focal point, spinning us around the painting. The dance is a motif that Matisse returns to many times in his later works. This is the first time the dance appears in any of his paintings. When you are in the barn standing here in person, as I hope you will be very soon, you can see both this painting and Matisse's huge mural, the dance, at the same time across the balcony. And you can see how they relate to each other, how they engage with each other. This painting is one of the groundbreaking paintings in modern art at the beginning of the 20th century. When Picasso saw this, he was shocked and jolted into changing his style of painting, shutting himself away for almost a year to paint his response to this painting. And that was the Des Moines d'Avignon of 1907, which is now in the Museum of Modern Art. The Joy of Life hung for many years in the collection of Leo and Gertrude Stein. Dr. Barnes acquired it from a Danish collector in 1923. And here we're just going to see, we're standing on the balcony. The Joy of Life would be to your right and across the balcony and through the archways you can see the monumental, the dance. And here you can see how the walls relate to each other, as do so many walls here at the barns. Now, here we are. We are still upstairs and we are in Room 19 looking at the North Wall. This large wall here, Dr. Barnes gives us the opportunity to look at spatial complexity in paintings, meaning how do artists convey spatial depth on a flat, two-dimensional piece of canvas? The landscapes and cityscapes, we have landscapes and cityscapes here by Utrillo, by Rousseau, by De Chirico, and by Utrillo again. Show us some of the compositional strategies that artists use to convey depth or deep space within a painting. Some are sophisticated, such as the Utrillo and the De Chirico, and some are very simple, such as, or simplified, like the Rousseau, painting in his naive style, and he simply stacks lines horizontal bands. This painting here, we're going to look at this a little more closely. Let's see. This painting here on this wall is called The Arrival, painted in 1912 by Giorgio De Chirico. Shows one of his dream-like crystalline scenes of Italian piazzas. De Chirico presents a mysterious and unsettling collision of antiquity and modernity. This monumental sculpture in modern dress, with his back to us, presides over an eerily deserted square, casting this strange shadow, which is pointing to an open door. The evenly spaced arches here and on the right-hand side establish a rhythmic, deep recession in space. While everything in the foreground is so still, though in the far distance is a zone of energy with a speeding train and the penance flapping in the wind. Dr. Barnes became an early and important American supporter of De Chirico, acquiring 13 works, which includes Dr. Barnes' own portrait, which you see on the right-hand side. The two huge portraits on each end of the wall, this one here, are by Chaim Sutin and along with the Modigliani portrait of a boy in a sailor suit right here, all show flattened and compressed space. Let's just see if we can zoom into this a little bit. Here we are. Barnes has even placed 19th century New Mexican retablos above this Modigliani portrait. These are wooden folk art pieces from New Mexico from the 19th century. These simple pieces echo the frontally oriented and simplified portraits below. Here Barnes is placing folk art alongside a great European artist. The metal spatulas above these two portraits very wittingly reinforce that this is in fact flattened compressed space. Chaim Sutin let's just see if we can go across to a Sutin. Here we go. Let's put him up here. Here is a portrait of a man by Chaim Sutin. Chaim Sutin was an impoverished Russian artist living in Paris and Barnes is credited with discovering him in 1923. Barnes sought out the new and the avant-garde and he said he loved Sutin's deep rich, juicy and variegated colour. Sutin who died in Paris in 1943 influenced many American expressionist painters such as Willem de Koerning. Barnes was the first collector to buy Sutin, Modigliani and Picasso. Now we are in room 14 still upstairs and we're going to focus just on the painting in the centre of this large wall. This painting is called Scouts attacked by a tiger painted in 1904 by the French artist Henri Rousseau. This is one of the jungle scenes that made Rousseau famous. You can see again how the wall is tied together with colour and with design as well on this wall. Dr. Barnes has an extensive collection of Rousseau's work and this painting was exhibited in the salon of 1904. Rousseau's jungle paintings are fascinating. Here we are, I've got to sorry we've got to zoom out of this a little bit. Here we go. His jungle paintings are fascinating. They are almost like theatrical backdrops. Notice how there's a great silence here and how the narrative is really open to interpretation with no resolution. What is happening and to whom? His perspective is always odd. This is all part of his magic that draws us in. He is placing the characters at the centre of the composition, really like performers before an audience. The wildness of the animals is diminished perhaps by each of them seeming more like an outline. Rousseau painted in a very careful, meticulous manner. It is said he started at the top of the canvas and carefully worked his way down sort of like painting by numbers almost. If you look at the exquisite detail in the foliage and the multiple shades of green he is using here. The painting has an almost collage like quality to it perhaps. Something which fascinated Pablo Picasso who befriended the older Rousseau and bought several of his canvases. Rousseau is known as a primitive, a naive painter, which means he didn't have any formal art training and he did not start painting seriously until he was in his forties. He was charmingly convinced he would be a very famous artist one day and hang in the loo. But he had died in extreme poverty in 1910. He did of course eventually become famous and had a big influence on the surrealists who came a few decades later. Here we are in room 22 looking at the south wall. Dr. Barnes collection of West African masks and sculpture are mostly in three rooms upstairs. Dr. Barnes was among the first collectors to display African tribal art as works of art alongside great European artists. As we look at this wall we can immediately see the connection the influence that African art had on such artists as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amadeo Medigliade for example. The two portraits by Picasso, we have one here and one here painted in 1907 are actually studies for the Demoiselles d'Avignon, the head of a man and the head of a woman. The man actually never appeared in the Demoiselles d'Avignon eventually. This portrait here of Jean Ebutin by Medigliani in 1918 is one of many he made of Jean, his companion and mother of his young daughter. Let's see if we can just zoom in just a little bit here.  He had the ability though to still convey a sense of how the sitter actually looked. He was intrigued with ancient Egyptian art and sculpture as well. With Jean we get the sense of her gentle, calm grace, her blank eyes, another feature of his portraits. She is seemingly looking inward perhaps. Her hair is arranged in this conical style which actually echoes this mask down here in the case down here. The colour palette is a lovely balance of pinks and trusset tones against the cool blue tones of the overall painting. Medigliani died tragically at the age of 35 in 1920 and Jean equally tragically pregnant with their second child committed suicide the following day. If we just move across we can note also the incredible symmetry of this wall. We could draw a line all the way down from the centre of the wall down through the case. The African masks and sculpture in the collection come mainly from West Africa the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mali and date mostly from the 19th century. Barnes bought all these African pieces from the Parisian dealer Paul Guillaume who was instrumental in showing these as works of art and introducing them to the French art world in the early 1900s. Well I hope you have enjoyed the virtual tour of just a small portion of the rich varied and deep collection of the Barnes Foundation we have only actually skimmed the surface together. I do hope you are able to visit the Barnes sometime in the very near future to explore and discover its riches for yourselves when the Barnes and the world have opened back up to us again. Thank you very much goodbye.


K, I would say this. There's two things that stood out to me this weekend. One, the way he threw the ball. There's no more discussion for me. I'm not debating it. I'm not arguing with anyone else in the sports world. He is the best throw of the football.  I saw this guy, K, drop back, throw a no-look pass. I've never seen a quarterback drop back and throw a 45, 50-yard bomb looking left and throw it right. I've never seen it before. It was magical. It was like watching a ballerina. The second thing that stood out to me was how chill and how poised he is, K.  He doesn't say much. He cracks jokes here and there, so he's definitely different. So I love his personality.


India has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with high numbers of cases and deaths. However, there have been issues with the accuracy and transparency of reporting on the virus, as many states and regions have not provided detailed information about the virus. This includes incomplete or inconsistent data on age, gender, comorbidities, and vaccinations. Additionally, there is no reporting of adverse reactions to the vaccines. These gaps in reporting make it difficult to accurately assess the situation and plan effective responses. This article was authored by Veran Vasudevan, Abhinayan Nanasekharan, Bhavik Bansal, and others.