The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to the Iran Brookshow on this Saturday, December 17th. Hopefully everybody is having a fantastic weekend. Yeah, looking forward to Christmas just around the corner. It's pretty, pretty amazing how fast time flies. All right, so today we're going to talk about, you know, maybe do a kind of thorough kind of look at Twitter and Musk and everything that's going on over there. I've kind of done little bits and pieces here and there. We'll kind of do it all together. Get at least my point of view on this out there. We'll also talk about, we'll talk about a topic we talk about kind of periodically. I don't know, every couple of years or something. It seems like this topic comes up. It's coming up in a couple of contexts. And that is this issue of revolution. When should we have a revolution? What's it about? And so on. Two contexts. One is an article in the American Greatness, which I think basically suggests that that's all that's left. This is American Greatness is a website or journal, I guess, dedicated to the American Great.  Agenda, so Trump is the agenda. But interesting if scary article published there. So we'll talk about that. But also, Iran, Iran is really interesting. It's interesting what continues to go on there. It's interesting what this is leading towards a little bit of thinking about what happened in 1979 in terms of the revolution there. So revolutions is obviously China's not in revolutionary mode. Iran probably is. So just talking about that, we'll see where that takes us. It should be, it should be hopefully it'll be interesting. And of course, of course, you guys can chime in. And no, evolution is not always better. Revolution is fabulous. I'm all four revolutions. All right. Let's ones that are winnable and where the good guys win, assuming they're good guys, right? So I'm not four revolutions where they're no good guys. So we're going to be talking about that. This has been a weird week, crazy week, crazy few weeks maybe. I've kind of hit everybody's buttons. It looks like I'm just reading comments on videos and comments on Facebook. And it's, it's, wow, I don't think I've ever been this unpopular. It's kind of fun.  It wasn't a movie of you. I didn't give any reasons. I didn't analyze it. I can, I can defend everything I said there and, you know, I'd have to watch the movie again, I think, because, because I can't remember enough of it. But, but it would be, that would be, I wish I could recall it because I actually don't want to watch it again, unless somebody pays me in order to, in order to do a proper review of it. But everything I said, I stand by. So people, people hate what I said about Avatar because I was like this great movie about, about these, you know, amazing people who forget it. I criticized the Santas. Not supposed to do that. Not supposed to do that. You know, he is now the chosen one. So you can't criticize the Santas. I criticize vaccines. No, I didn't criticize vaccines. I actually said positive things about vaccines. I criticized the Santas about the vaccines. Can do that. I obviously don't know science. I know nothing about COVID. I know nothing about data analysis. I know nothing about the data. And there are these great, fantastic, amazing scientists out there who know much better than I. And if I really, I really shouldn't talk about vaccines, I'm completely ignorant about them. And then finally, and plus what's interesting, both vaccines and elsewhere is I get accused of saying things I never said. Like I've said all along that young people probably shouldn't get vaccines if you're young and healthy. You probably don't need it. Certainly I've been against vaccines for kids. It doesn't matter. I'm blamed for lockdowns. I'm blamed for vaccines for everyone. Vaccine mandates. I was for vaccine mandates, lockdowns and mask mandates. Everything under the book. Nobody listens. And then finally, of course, I did criticize Alon Musk and his management of Twitter. And that is like God, that's worse than criticizing God. You can't do that. So anyway, so let's at least get the record straight in terms of how what I'm saying about Alon Musk. Straight because it was a Twitter stuff. I used to get her ranked about stuff that I never actually said. And so we can get that straight and my whole view of Twitter. So let's let's jump in. Let us jump into Twitter because I think there's a lot going on here and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff. So let me first say with regard to Twitter, Twitter is a private company. It's always been a private company.  They can and this they can they can block you. They can kick you off as long as it's within the terms of the contract we all have with Twitter, which it always is because the contracts are so vague. They can do whatever they want, including they can invite the FBI in and do what the FBI tells them to do. They're a private company. They can cooperate with the government or they cannot cooperate with the government. That is completely within their right to do. It's their company in our mind, not yours. Now, if they provide information about all of us that we have not granted the permission to grant to the government, then that's wrong. And that's bad, but that's not what they were doing. They were supposedly listening to the government and doing as the government asked in terms of blocking certain people and labeling stuff as misinformation. They have every right to do that. The government doesn't to the extent that the government did this. And there's plenty of evidence that did not just here, not just not just here, but with Facebook and other social media. There's plenty of evidence that suggests that the government has squeezed these companies threatened these companies, but often just in a friendly kind of manner suggested to these companies. What is misinformation? What is now what they should print and what they shouldn't. That is absolutely unequivocally wrong in a violation of the First Amendment. The government is wrong here completely from beginning to end. Twitter can do what they want. They can list the government. They can fight the government. They, you know, it's a private company, but the government is wrong to threaten them. The government is wrong to suggest to them. The government is wrong to get into the business of ideas. Now, it's hard for the government not to get into the business of ideas. It's hard for the government not to violate the First Amendment because we've given them so much power. We've given them power over our health care. So as such, the government has opinions about our health care. And it's not far from having opinions about our health care to try to force doctors to do what the government tells them vis-a-vis health care, particularly given that the government is often the one paying for that health care. You can't give government unlimited economic power and expect to preserve the First Amendment. It's just not going to happen. You can't give government control of education and health care and expect the government to live up to the First Amendment. This is why we need an assault, an intellectual assault on unlimited government. On the fact that the government today is unlimited. Now, we can say we don't like it that Twitter listened to the government. We can say that we don't like Facebook taking posts off because the government told them to take it off. But it's there, right? And what we should be doing if we're going to, if we're going to get all excited, if we're going to get foaming in the mouth, if we're going to get real passionate about this, if we're going to get accusatory, if we're going to go demonstrate, if we're going to attack, if we're going to ridicule, then we should do it to the government. Now, of course, why don't we? Why particularly conservatives? Why do they not blame the government for censorship? Why do they not blame the government for infringing on rights? Why do they not blame the government for requesting, suggesting, demanding that Twitter and Facebook do what they do? Why do they just go after Twitter and Facebook? Why are Twitter and Facebook the scapegoats for what is clearly a violation of the First Amendment by our government? And by the way, this isn't new. The government has put in, in the past, the government has tried to strong arm the New York Times. Donald Trump tried to strong arm the Washington Post. And the Washington Post could have said, you know what?  And of course, any request that the government makes of you is really a demand, and every demand is really, you know, has a gun behind it. I mean, I know because I know that Fox News decided not to have certain people on Fox News before elections. This was before Trump even. So they were colluding with the Republican National Party to exclude certain people that they usually had on, that Fox News used because they were not loyal enough to the Republican Party. Now I know this because I was one of the people they canceled. Fox News canceled me in 2012 and then again in 2016. Why? Because Fox News didn't like me. No, Fox News had always used me. They were quite enthusiastic about having me on. But when I asked people who I knew at Fox, three different people, they all said the same thing. Before the election, you're too critical of Republican candidates, and the word has come from the top that you and there's a whole list of people should not be on. After the election, we'll have you back on. So this goes on. This goes on in every single media company. Every single media company today is associated to some extent or another with the political parties. Every one of them get quote guidance from those political parties in terms of what they should and shouldn't say do. And again, they have every way to pursue that political party. It's the political party, particularly when it's elected officials, it's government, which is violating our rights, which is wrong here. Yeah, 2018 was not an election year. And I was on Fox Business with Maria Bartolomou in 2018 because of my hedge fund. She landed up talking to me about Iran because she knew I would be a good interviewee about Iran. But the reason I was there was because of the hedge fund. But under my INRAN Institute title, they would not have me on. You know, in 2012, they banned me and then finally, Kavuta had me back on in 2014. And when I came back on after the first episode, you know, the first segment ended and we went to commercial break. He said, you're on. You do great television. We should have you on more often. And I said, yeah. And they had me on for a little while. And then the next election cycle happened. Presidential election cycle happened and I wouldn't endorse a Republican candidate and I wouldn't support Trump and they bumped me. So I was canceled. You know, imagine if I was doing the Iran Book Show and I was on Fox regularly, we would have a lot more subscribers, a lot more subscribers, also a lot more haters, but a lot more subscribers. I mean, even Stasso didn't have me on Fox during election year, in the six months before the 2012 election. He told me he couldn't have me on. Stasso literally.  We had dinner and he said, look, you're on. Before the election, they told us we can't have you on. So no, I got confirmation, a number of different sources. We triangulated this. This is not, I'm not making this up. So other people, other people were on Fox. I'm not talking about other people.  I'm talking about me. I'm giving you an example of direct evidence that there is political influence over every single. Wall Street Journal even. The Wall Street Journal had a video channel and I forget the name of the woman. She saw me speak somewhere. She saw me speak in Colorado and she said, you're on. We have to have you on. Every time you're in New York, you'll come on. And every time I went to New York, she had me on two, three times. I met John Bolton at one of those before he took the job. But every time that I was on, Trump would come up and I would land up criticizing Trump. This is 2017, 18, 17, I think.  I think the third time or the fourth time was going to be in New York and said, no, no, no. We've decided we can't interview you. Yeah, I mean, and it's completely right. And did somebody from the top tell them? I mean, it's no accident that where they land politically. And it's not transparent and doesn't have to be transparent. You as a customer, if you see them not being transparent, you can leave. You can abandon them. You can stop using that network because you know what, they weren't transparent with me. And they're not objective because some people, they take some people, they don't. Nobody knows what the standard is. And they won't even transparent with me. Never mind transparent with other people. I had a dig and search and have people tell me off the record stuff. And they're responding to the advertisers. They're responding to the audience. They're absolutely. So I'm not. That's my point. My point is that private companies, they can do what they want and they can decide whether to abide by what the government tells them or not. That's why this is not censorship by proxy. This is a private company deciding to do what they do. Now, to the extent that they threatened, then the sensor is the government. There is no proxy here. There is a direct sensor and that is the government and the blame and our energy and our condemnation should be laser focused, laser focused on the fact that the government is censoring and that that is evil, that is wrong. And that is true for Elon Musk. He can do whatever he wants. He can run the company based on whatever standards he wants. And one of those standards could be his whim or something else. And just like I criticize Fox and I criticize CNN and MSNBC and I criticize Twitter and I criticize Facebook. I'm going to criticize Musk when I don't think those standards are good standards. He doesn't have to be moral. He doesn't have to be rational. He doesn't have to be objective.  It's his company. I mean, his other investors might be concerned but it's not in my business. My business is only commentary on what he's doing. So people should be free to follow their whims. Yes, free politically. The government shouldn't stop them. We, you know, we can't stop them. But can we criticize them for following their whims? Absolutely. And I think we must criticize them for following their whims. We must uphold, at least I, I don't know about you guys. I uphold a rational standard for things. I might be wrong in some of my evaluations. I'm sure I am. And I'm sure you guys will point out to me when I am. I can be wrong about my evaluations but I have to evaluate. You have to judge. I'm not saying it never has said that, ooh, we need to stop a lawn musk from following his whims. No, I mean, it's his company. But I think it's wrong for him to follow his whims. It's wrong for him morally. It's wrong. It's not good business. It's not good business practices. Now, it might be super entertaining. So for a while, traffic on Twitter might rise significantly. I don't think it's good practices in the long run. So Twitter has certain business practices. They can have whatever business practices they want, whether they're under, what's his name, musk's guidance or anybody else's. I can criticize them and will when I think they're doing something. The silly, I criticized original Twitter. Same, for the same basic thing I'm criticizing musk. That they don't have objective guidelines. That they haven't told us what is acceptable and what is not. They haven't said, here is, I don't know, the speech code that we want to have. Here is what you get banned from Twitter for. Here is the timeframe you get banned for minor offenses, severe offenses. Here is the appeals process. Here is how long it will take us to review and appeal and answer you. All I am asking for from a business perspective and as a user, not from a perspective where I want to force him to do it, is for objective standards so that when we enter the universe of Twitter, we know exactly what we're getting and we know exactly what the penalty will be. I mean, part of the problem in our culture today is, we have, and this is a real problem, we have so many laws. So many of them are written in non-objective ways. So many of them are written in legalese. The many of us enter the world, let's say in finance or in other realms, not actually knowing exactly what's legal and what's not legal. Now that's much, much worse when the government does it. It's horrific. It's a violation of our rights to have non-objective laws. So I don't think that what Twitter is doing is violating our rights. It's just not good, I think, business practices. It makes me want to criticize them. So guess what? I'm criticizing him. Now take this latest episode. I completely agree that doxing is bad. I don't know if it's illegal. I don't know even if it should be illegal. It should be illegal. It's certainly under circumstances. It should be illegal. It's certainly immoral and wrong. And I see every objective reason for Twitter to ban doxing, D-O-X-S-I-N-G, doxing. But that's not exactly what happened. Something happened in Elon Musk's personal life. He suddenly got very upset. He came into the office, banned a person who was doxing him by tracking his plane, and then banned a whole series of journalists and another website for linking to this person who'd already been banned and excluded from Twitter. So these other journalists were not doxing Elon Musk, certainly not directly. They were reporting on a story. It reminds me of the Danish cartoons, right? If you're put on the story of the Danish cartoons, you better show a cartoon, I think. But if you're writing a story about a kid who was giving all the information about a jet, the location of a jet that Elon Musk's jet, then you've got to name him and you've got to tell the story. That's what journalists do. But they all got banned, a whole series of them. Something got reinstated. Now, some of them have not. The reason they got reinstated because Elon Musk ran a poll, none of that is objective. Legal, permissible, fine, no problem, not objective. What should have happened is, Elon Musk said, okay, I now see the doxing. I should have had a restriction on doxing. Here are the new rules. If you doxed, this happens to you. And by the way, since this person is systematically doxing, location of jets, he is now banned. Anybody who continues to dox will have these penalties. And this is the way to appeal, just in case you think you weren't doxed, here's the appeal. And that's it. And by the way, within six months, we'll have a whole charter with do's and don'ts on Twitter and what gets you banned and what doesn't get you banned. Things that you can read and then know what to do and what not to do when you go on Twitter. All I'm asking for. All right, but it would be great. It would be great if we just stopped talking about Twitter censoring. I just got doxed, by the way. Steven on the chat says, I live in Puerto Rico. Yes, I do live in Puerto Rico, but it's not a secret, so I don't think it's doxing. I think it's doxing only when the person doesn't want you to tell people where you are. I guess, right? You guys even have my email address. It's all online. You can find almost everything about me online. So it doesn't matter. All right. And by the way, and I've said this often, I completely get that Elon Musk is going to try things and dump them and try something else and fail and succeed and experiment and so on. And I'm fine with that, but when he does something that I think is wrong, I will criticize it. Again, doesn't mean I'm going to put Elon Musk in jail.  He's out there. He's making himself a public figure. He's going to be judged. So I don't get this. You can't judge. You can't judge Elon Musk. He's a hero. Therefore, you can't do anything wrong. No, I mean, he does amazing good things. He's generally brilliant. He's amazing, but I can criticize him and I will and I'll criticize anybody. So anything else I'm missing on Musk, Twitter, doxing censorship. I mean, my valuation of Elon Musk was very positive about a year ago. Yeah, about a year ago, I think I did a whole show about Elon Musk being a hero and how amazing he was. It took a real beating. I'd say, I thought the way he handled the whole Twitter thing was for a successful businessman like him was very amateurish. He overbid for it and then he tried to get out of the deal and then he discovered, ooh, my contract doesn't allow me to get out of the deal. So I have to buy it anyway. So then he bought it. All of that was, I don't know, it was impulsive and it wasn't professional and I don't know how the banks allowed it to happen. You think they have some kind of a clause there would give them an exit, but they didn't. Once they announced the deal, they signed the deal. They kind of stuck with it. So the whole way in which the deal was structured and the deal happened was ridiculous. And this idea, yeah. And no, there's no, he was going to get it no matter what. He decided that the price was too steep and I think it was. NASDAQ had come down, Twitter stock had come down a lot and suddenly he had committed to paying a price that was just not a market price anymore and he wanted out. But he had a contract and the contract didn't allow him to go out and that's why when he went out, he was sued. In the beginning, he thought he could get out of it. There were certain provisions in the contract that might have allowed him to get out of it, but then it turned out that no, that a judge was not going to rule in his sight. So at the last minute, he said, fine, rather than go to court and spend a million dollars on court, on lawyers, I'll just buy Twitter. So that was the first sign of, you know, an impulsive character and whim, a little bit of whim. Then I think the next negative, real negative thing, the two real negative things that I got, was his comment on Russian Ukraine and his comment, even worse, it was his comment in Taiwan. And that really knocked him down a notch in my mind. I mean, he was way up here. He was like, there were a number of things that he did during COVID. There were things that he did afterwards, the way he run SpaceX in particular. I mean, just phenomenal. So he was way up there and particularly some of his comments. And then the deal kind of notched him down a half-notch. His comment on Ukraine and China and Taiwan, notched him down another serious notch. And then the way he's run Twitter is just not, I've not been impressed. Nobody needs to impress me. It's not like Elon Musk needs me or trying to impress me. I know he's not. I'm just saying my opinion, my judgment, since you're listening to my show, I assume you care. All right, let's see. Any questions on this stuff? No. Okay. Nobody's actually asking anything about Musk or Twitter or censorship. So again, I think if you want to get angry about censorship, I do. Get angry at its source and the only source of censorship is government. And don't get angry with Twitter. You can judge Twitter. You can say Twitter's badly managed. You can say they're doing something wrong, but Twitter's not censoring. And, you know, but the government is. The government is, I think, all the time. And I think, you know, I've been a huge critic of the NSA. The NSA is listening. The NSA has much more information than they're willing to tell us about all of us. There's a ton of stuff the NSA is doing that is violating our rights, that is giving them information that they should not have and do not deserve to have, and that we have not agreed to provide them. So the government, whether under Trump or under Biden or under anybody in the future, the government, given its size, given its scope, and given how much data it collects on all of us, it is what you should be worried about. And it is, it is the one, you know, we should be condemning nonstop. All right. Let's start with, and by the way, if you're saying somebody's doing wrong, you have to provide evidence. You have to show the facts. Let's do a couple of $50 questions. I see a couple of $50 super chat questions here. And then we'll jump to the issue of revolution. All right. Michael says, Obama wasn't wrong when he said, Middle America clings to religion, guns and anti-immigrant sentiment. Much of the base of the right are knuckle-draggers. I don't see how that group is going to morph into an objectors-grabs-root force. It's not. It's not. I mean, objectors-grass-roots is like decades in the future. And it's not necessarily going to come from the right. It's going to come from young people who are, I think, need the right and the left, or just starting on their road on the right, or starting on their road on the left, and get, and then realize that they're wrong and jump over to objectivism. It's not going to be converting, you know, converting the existing right or converting the existing left to objectivism. That will not happen. There is, you know, it's hard enough. It's hard enough, I think, to get a grassroots movement of people who actually like Ayn Rand going, given how much disagreement among them there is, and given how many people who like Ayn Rand don't even understand her philosophy. So, and it's hard enough to explain and to argue, and people still don't get it. So it's way too early. It's way, way too early. Wes says, thanks for the show. Did you hear that Sony is using antitrust influence to prevent Microsoft from buying a video game company? Video games are now the business of the government. Give me a break. Well, yes. At this time, you know, a company has the potential to, quote, dominate, i.e., have monopoly power over a particular segment of the economy. It's the government's business. That is the antitrust. That is the Sherman Act of 1892, 1890? Something like that, early 1890s. The Republicans, by the way, passed. It was the first real assault on American business was Republican. So, of course, it doesn't matter if it's a video game business. It could be a cement business. It could be any business. Literally any business that seems to have pricing power is, from the government's perspective, a potential monopoly, and therefore it's the business of the government. It's not like tariffs and stuff where the government, at least if it doesn't want to violate the trade organization standards, it's not like the government is only concerned with national security or things like that. No, the government is concerned about everything. This is what I said early on about as long as we have unlimited government, there is no protection for freedom of speech. There is no meaning to the First Amendment in that context because the government is one way or another going to stop from speaking. And indeed, there's no such thing as commercial speech. I can't act on information that I have. They could deem it inside a trading. There's so many ways in which they're restricting my actions, my speech, all over. And we don't care, but we get super excited if somebody criticizes Elon Musk. You cannot do that. Don't do that. The government can violate our rights left and right and the people on the right don't give one iota. But go after some sacred cow that they have instituted and they will flip out. And go after big business, they love it. They love it. So the villain is for the left and the right business. The villain is for the left and the right big business. And the government gets a pass from everybody. And the last criticism of government, Qua government, was the Tea Party and it was shallow, superficial, meaningless in the end because they didn't quite understand what limiting government meant. All right. Thank you, Wes. Thank you, Michael. That's between you. That was $100. That's a lot of money. Thank you. We really appreciate the support. Catherine's here to help and encourage you to get us to our goal of $650. We're almost at $200 already, so we're doing okay. And Catherine just showed up, so she's got some work to do. She's got her work cut out for her to inspire you to provide support for the Iran Book Show as we go into this weekend and as we go into next week. Next week we'll have five, what do you call it? News Roundup will have a show on Tuesday. Thursdays into the future are going to be interview shows. So every Thursday I will be interviewing somebody else. So I'm not sure who the first person is, maybe Don Watkins, but we will be doing interviews every Thursday. There'll be a general show on Tuesday and usually on Saturday or Sunday, not both, but Saturday or Sunday. And then five days a week there will be the news roundup. So you've got that to look forward to as we move into the rest of December and then we'll see in January how we shift and change that as I start traveling. But that is the plan. And so far Super Chats have been great this month, so hopefully we can keep that going and hopefully you guys won't disappoint Catherine. Let's talk about a revolution. So I'm reading this article in American Greatness Magazine. Is it called? It's called exactly. It's on a website. I think it's a publication of the American Greatness movement, which is, I think, a Trumpist movement. They have a series called First Principles, which is, like, they're more philosophical, if you will. And this is by Glenn Elmes. I don't know who Glenn Elmes is. Maybe you guys do, but I don't. And Glenn is basically, this is the point he's making. You can look this up. It's called Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities. Hard Truths and Radical Possibilities. I doubt this is a patriotic movement, because as I've always said, to be patriotic, you have to know. I mean, patriotic in my sense, they might be patriotic, but in the sense of to be a true patriot, you have to know what America stands for. And I have a strong sense that these people don't know what it stands for. Anyway, Glenn is actually makes the following argument. He basically says, look, at this point, elections are no longer meaningful. They don't mean anything. And he says, put aside, fought and ballotempering. Put all that aside. He's not rejecting that that happens. I'm sure he thinks it does. But for the sake of this argument, he's saying, put it aside. He's saying the fact is that it doesn't matter who you elect. It doesn't matter who gets into power. They can't do the will of the people. They can't do it. There's too much of a bureaucracy. The deep state is too prevalent. The alphabet agencies are too powerful. And you can't dismantle them. There's nothing a politician can actually do to dismantle them. He says, you know, you can take issue after issue after issue where there is a consensus among Americans that we need some kind of significant reform. And you can't get it through, even though a majority of Americans want it. You can't get it through because you need supermajorities in the Senate in order to get anything done. And because the deep state will prevent you and will fight it and will fight it. So he says, I mean, this is the title of the section of the article, he says elections and therefore consent and populist sovereignty, consent and populist sovereignty are no longer meaningful, right? He says the steady growth of the administrative state since the 1960s means that bureaucracy has become increasingly indifferent to, even openly hostile to, the will of the people over the last half century. So it doesn't matter. So what difference does it make? Who gets elected? It doesn't matter, he says. I mean, the elites simply ignore the American people, people's will on the things that the American people view as important. So the country is not really run by the people we elect.  And then, of course, the whole system is rigged. The Democrats have rigged it. You know, mail-in ballots and bringing in immigrants and having immigrants dominate the cities.  So what he's really saying, and I think he mentions it, he says, look, and this is a point I actually agree with him. He says, the reality is that if you believe in the founding fathers, if you believe in the founding principles of this country, if you believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then, you know, there is no ability to put them into place. There's no ability to make them real. The people are so ignorant today and they're so beaten down by the welfare state and by the regulatory state. You know, he puts it as the moral habits of self-governance have been crippled. They can't take care of themselves. They don't know personal responsibility even is. And you want to give them liberty and freedom and a constitution, a declaration, you want to give them all these things and they're not going to, they don't want it. They don't know they want it. They don't know it's good for them. So you're not going to win in retail politics because American people don't know what's good for them. They don't know what the Constitution says. They don't know the Constitution is true. They don't know that the Constitution suggests a very different America than what we have today. And I agree, that's all true. So he says, look, forget it. Forget about politics in a normal sense. Now, he doesn't quite tell us what he's suggested. But the only alternative I can see is that what he's suggesting is we need to take control of government by force. We need a revolution. We need to impose the Constitution and declaration on people. We, you know, maybe we'll keep out, we'll negate for a while as I think Donald Trump suggested. We'll negate for a while those sections of the Constitution that relate to elections. And of course, we'll have to fire the Supreme Court and maybe elect a new one or choose a new one that is more tuned to our interpretation of the Constitution. And we'll have to go through a generation or so. This is me interpreting his article, not him. Where we basically, you know, through authoritarianism guide the country to the right place. And then maybe then, maybe once the people have regained the moral habit of self-government, maybe then we can re-institute, like voting and representation of governance and so on, but not until then. In other words, what he's saying is what we need is revolution. But what we need is revolution, not towards, you know, more individual liberty, but we need a revolution towards Republican or conservative or make America great again, governance, which will then impose their view of the Constitution on all of us until we become worthy of it. And then when we become worthy of it, then they will allow us political freedoms, like voting and having political parties and doing stuff like that. This is an article from Glenn Elmer's in American Greatness, in American Greatness. He says, look, I mean, it doesn't matter. You can elect Trump. He's too incompetent, he says, to actually change stuff. He says you can elect DeSantis, and DeSantis is smarter and more organized, but even DeSantis can't really bring about the change that our country desperately needs. There is absolutely no way to change the world within the current system. What we need to do is take the political regime over and start from scratch. And we can't do that democratically. We'll never convince the people. And we cannot do that with, you know, the consent of the government because they won't consent because they've lost the morality of self-governance. So we have to impose it on them. We have to impose it on them. And will that entail, you know, again, I'm not speaking for him. I'm just, this is not what he wrote because he's purposely leaving him because will that entail a greater individual freedoms? Well, think about who these people are. Is the new right about greater individual freedom? No. There's nothing about the new right that is about greater individual liberty and individual freedom. There's nothing about the new right that is actually supportive of or promoting of liberty, freedom, individualism.  Now, they also want to kill off the regulatory state, which is fine. By the way, he's going to have a fight over that because, you know, Vermeul and Danine and Soha Bamaari, but certainly Vermeul because he's written extensively about this, they want the regulatory state. They love the administrative state. They believe that the only way we will get right wing values in our country is if they're imposed on us by the regulatory state. If they're imposed on us by the administrative state. So Vermeul, who has a completely different view of, he's one of these new right Catholics, thinks, no, no, no, don't break up the bureaucracy. Keep it because we can use it. And I think in the end, once people like this get power, they're not going to give it up. They're going to dismantle the levers of power. They're going to use the levers of power to get more power and to use them to control all of us. So you might want to join because, you know what, they're doing stuff. Objectives just talk. These people do stuff. Isn't it cool? They're doing, I don't know exactly what they're doing, but they're planning the revolution. But guess who the first people are going to be on the chopping block once the revolution happens? Guess who the first people who are going to be eliminated once the revolution actually succeeds? It's anybody who stands up for individual liberty. Anybody who actually wants, really believes in freedom economically and or personally. So yeah, join forces with them, but recognize that you're not doing it in the name of liberty. You're doing it in the name of power and or hatred. Hatred of the left. That's it. You're not doing it for freedom, liberty, right? I mean, one thing this reminds me of, I mean, one of the reasons I was, I mean there was this article and then the other thing is I've been looking into what's going into Iran more deeply, which is interesting. And then also thinking about what happened in, in Chile, you know, Chile got capitalism by force. In Chile, economic freedom, economic liberty was imposed on the people. They didn't want it. Nobody asked them. They had no context for wanting it. They were fearful of it. They rejected it. They resented it, but there was a dictator. He imposed it on them and they benefited from it because they got much, much richer. But that, but they never bought it. They never bought into it, even though they got richer.  And even ultimately, once Pinochet was off the stage, they were in every respect politically, in every other respect, they were freer than it had ever been before. And richer than they ever been before. They always associated freedom and capitalism, economic freedom with the dictator, with soccer fields where people shot, killed, murdered, imprisoned, tortured. That and capitalism were the same category for them. So they want it gone because they think by getting rid of capitalism, they're sticking it to the dictator. You cannot impose liberty on people. You cannot have a revolution where ultimately the people don't want what you're giving them, even if it's, quote, good for them. Now, that doesn't mean the minorities don't change the world. Minorities do change the world. It doesn't mean you cannot have a revolution. You can. But when the ground is ready, when people start believing in liberty, people start believing in freedom, not little modifications, not little changes, but they want liberty and they want freedom and they're frustrated because they can't get it through because the government just won't do it under no circumstances where the people are ready for freedom and liberty. And then, which means that you've done the intellectual work to prep them. When you've done the intellectual work so that now they're calling for it, they don't know exactly what it is. They're not ready to write a constitution. They might not even acknowledge the American Constitution, but they know they want more freedom. That's the direction they want to head in. And then a group can take control of a government, change it, impose, if you will, liberty and freedom, and then, of course, immediately liberate. And then you can impose liberty, imposing liberty, right? But if some people don't want what you impose, it's true. The founding fathers launched a revolution. They were the minority. They wrote a constitution that representatives approved. The people didn't vote on it. The people's representatives voted on it. The Bill of Rights, in a sense, even though voted on by the people's representatives state by state by state, most people probably didn't even know what it was. It was imposed on them. But it was imposed in the context of the people wanting liberty. It was imposed in the context of objectively providing for liberty. And you have to create that context. You have to create the context of an enlightenment to be able to have a revolution of the enlightenment. Or at least you have to have a people wanting freedom, wanting liberty, which many people do not. So it's interesting what's happening. So Chile, they're going against capitalism, against freedom, against liberty. Partially, I mean, for many reasons, they're Catholic, they've got guilt, inequality, they view as immoral. They've never changed their socialist moral beliefs. Never changed. By the way, you can't impose liberty, right? Liberty is the negation of imposition. Liberty just is the turning the barrel of the gun away from the people. You don't impose the Bill of Rights on people, right? The Bill of Rights just says, I can't do these things to you. Otherwise, you can do your free to pursue your life using your judgment. So revolutions for liberty need to be... The people need to want at least something approximating it. The people need to be in a position where they're favorable towards it. They have to have the morality, and I think to some extent the psychology, of a free people. And part of the challenge we have today is we don't have that. And the only time you're going to get a revolution in America is after people regain that. And to regain that is an educational mission. The only mission that counts right now, the only mission that counts right now is the educational mission. The only thing that will matter long term is teaching people about the value of their own life and their own liberty. Political activism at best buys us a little bit of time.  So I was going to say something about Iran. So Iran, Iranian revolution is interesting. Iran era revolution in 1979. It was a revolution that was basically a combination of two elements within Iranian society. A conservative religious movement that wanted to bring back and impose Islam on the country. But the reality is that in the Iran of 1979, that was a minority. That was a minority. Most people did not support ethiocracy. Most people did not support Islam. Iran was a relatively secular country. But it had real radical religious forces in it. What really allowed Aitul Khomeini to take control of Iran and if you listen to his sermons, his lectures which would distribute a lot of Iran during the 1970s by audio cassette, he was one of the first to use technology to get his ideas out there and dominate a country. And on those audio cassettes what you'll find is an interesting combination of Islam and socialism. He was using all the right terms for modern socialist thinkers. He was channeling Foucault and Diderot and many of the thinkers of the 50s and 60s and 70s from France. He was indeed exiled in Paris. He was even channeling Marx. And he even gave lip service to certain freedoms that people could expect in his future theocracy. But the primary thing he was pushing was what we often call social justice, equality, equality of outcome. And what really got him the revolution, what really got him the revolution, was not only his ability to gather the conservative religionists in Iran, but to gather the left, to gather the young, to gather the socialists, to gather the communists, there were a lot of communists in Iran in those days. And then of course to gather those people just opposed the Shah and hoped for something better. But when there was a referendum in Iran to make Iran a theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini that won by a large majority of the population, it wasn't because the majority of the population were theocratic, it wasn't because the majority of the population were even religious. It was because they believed that there was going to be some kind of symbiosis between, oh, they'll get their religion over here and we'll get our socialism over here.  And outlaw all the personal liberties that people thought that they would have, outlaw all the personal liberties that he had suggested in those cassette tapes that he would provide.  And then he had a war with Iraq which only entrenched him because then he got to round up, he got to associate that theocracy with patriotism and nationalism and Persian history. But there is no question that over the last 30 years Iran in spite of the theocracy has become indeed more secular, probably more secular than it was in 1979 or at least as secular as it was back then. The Iranian people through the internet, through traveling, through television have seen what is possible in the West. They've read, they're educated. Indeed, one of the things that is such a failure of the theocracy, one of the things that is most symbolic of the fact that the theocracy has failed is the number of women who are educated, the number of women who go to college, which far exceeds men, it's true in the United States now too, far exceeds men which is the exact opposite of what Iranians want, the theocrats. It's a male-centered system. But women are finding themselves going to school in order to find ways to express themselves. They get good jobs so they get, so they can't get good jobs so they go and educate themselves at least. They try to do something with their time. Iranians do travel. There is some travel. They're not very rich, but there is there is Iranian travel all over the world. A lot of Iranians leave and don't come back. There are large Iranian communities all over the world particularly in Toronto and in Los Angeles but there are large Iranian communities. So Iranians can't leave and they do travel and they do go back and they do see the world. That's of course a risk to any totalitarian regime and the internet is accessed. They use VPNs, they use the technologies they need to use. So the Iranian people are now rising up and they're not rising up to get rid of hijabs. They're not rising up to get rid of the morality police. They're rising up for freedom. Now they don't have a full conception of what that means. They don't have a full conception of what liberty means. But they're not socialists anymore either. I mean one of the, I think, the advantages but also a major disadvantage of what's going on in Iran right now is they're non-ideological. They don't have a positive ideology of freedom and liberty. Luckily they're not infested with the evil ideology that pretends to be for freedom. Socialism or certainly communism does. So it's much healthier than it was in 1979. They're not a lot of communists in Iran anymore. What they're rising up for is personal liberty, is freedom. They want to be have to rule their own lives. They want to make judgments about their own lives. And this is a revolution. Because what they're demanding is not a tinkering here, a tinkering there. This is not reform. This is why I think many are taking it back and maybe don't understand because I think people in the West think oh we can just reform the Mullahs. And who are we to tell them how to govern? I mean both the right and the left believe that. They're sovereign. They've got their own. They can decide for themselves. And by demonstration all they want is a nuclear deal with Iran. They don't care about the Iranian people. So nobody seems to really care because nobody seems to know what to do with this because it's pretty rare over the last 40 years since the Berlin Wall came down to have revolutions for personal liberty, personal freedom. So I'm very hopeful, as I've said before, of this particular revolution. I'm not very hopeful for other revolutions. Certainly not. I mean China I think they just don't have a chance and it's just not clear what they're actually fighting for. And it's just, it's much bigger challenge I think. What is going on here? My phone is speaking to me. Clubhouse somehow came onto my phone without me doing anything. All right, let's see. All right, I think, I mean there's a lot more you can say about revolution. You know, I think in terms of a revolution in America, a revolution for liberty, for freedom, for lazific capitalism. It's way too early. When enough people value freedom, when enough people actually see it as a value and know what they're fighting for, I think if it becomes super authoritarian, if the whole system collapses into authoritarian, then you'll want a revolution. But then the revolution is just to reestablish some semblance of freedom. It's not a revolution for lazific capitalism. A revolution for lazific capitalism, which might be necessary one day, requires real knowledge of it, real understanding of it. And it requires at least that some people believe in it. The only reason to do a revolution is when you have given up on everything else. As long as, I mean, Iran's viewers, as long as you had free speech, as long as there was some kind of competition for government, as long as there were no political prisoners, you could fight, then there was still a reason to fight and there was still a reason not to resolve, start resolving disputes by using weapons. So we're still at the point where education is still possible. As long as education is still possible, the revolution has to be in a revolution of education, a revolution in thinking. And how educate, educate, educate. Ultimately, maybe we'll have to take up guns, but that's way down the road, way down the road, when we actually have a decent number of people who agree with us. I mean, how many people actually agree with us today? And I'm saying, us, I don't think you guys necessarily agree with me today, even on the principles. Never mind on the details. All right, we're going to go to the super chat. We have like 130 people watching live at only 66 likes. So I don't know, if you like the show, if you get value from the show, if there's any benefit to show, please like the show. It's pretty easy. It's not like money. It's much easier than money. So I'd really appreciate that because it helps with the algorithm, you know, the horrible algorithm, which has clearly changed on me recently. But so please, please like the show before you leave. Anytime before you leave, the sooner you do it, the better, because then you won't forget. Of course, if you don't like the show, that's fine. You can not like it, or you can actually put a thumbs down. That's fine too. But those of you who like the show, please give it a thumbs up so we can kind of somewhat mitigate the thumbs down that I'm sure I'm getting. All right, let's take a look at the super chat. We're still way off. So Catherine has who is valiantly trying to get you guys excited and motivated. She's going to need real help. She's going to need some people to jump in like Michael and Wes with some $50 questions so we can get to our goal. So we're going to need a lot of $20 questions at this rate. So we're going to need $18, $20 questions, which is doable. Do it. I prefer PayPal or Patreon. I probably prefer Patreon right now. Patreon just seems more stable right now. PayPal, I mean, both don't take a lot off the top. So both are pretty good. So please, if you want to support the show, you can go to Patreon. You can go to PayPal. You can support the show there. Ideally, you do it monthly. That's the best way because then it's predictable. I know what's coming in every month. But Super Chat is also great. All right. Here's my big announcement.  I've got a big announcement for you guys. I'm launching a series of NTFs. No, I'm not. I've actually got as a topic for a show to do a show on authoritarian art and how authoritarians use art and how Trump's NTFs fit perfectly into the tradition of authoritarian art. So that would be a lot of fun. All right. Shazba, thank you. Thank you for the $20. Really appreciate that. Helps us get a little closer to our goal. We now only need 17. $20 Super Chat questions. What did I want to say? Yes. Big news. On December 31st, which is a Saturday, I will be doing a show which will be both a year in review. Cook, thank you. Wow. That's amazing. Cook just interviewed me on his show. So that'll be out. I'm not sure when. Cook will let you know. And now he's contributing $100 on this show. That's amazing, Cook. Thank you. Really appreciate that. I guess that's, I'll take that as payment for my interview. Anyway, December 31st, there will be a year in review show looking forward to 2023. So my 2023 predictions. So you can write them down and then call me on them in all the ones that I get wrong. So that'll be on December 31st. We'll start it at 2 p.m. East Coast time. It'll be a long show. It'll be a long show. And the reason it's going to be a long show is we've got a match. We've got a super chat match. Catherine, I hope you can join us for that show because I surely am going to need your help. This is going to be a challenging one. For the December 31st show, the match is going to be $10,000. So if we can raise $10,000 during the show for the Iran book show, every dollar will be matched up to $10,000, which means I need Catherine there. I'll need everybody else. So 2 p.m. Eastern time. Please consider just jumping in even if you're busy and just making a small contribution so that it gets matched. Every dollar will get matched, dollar for dollar, up to $10,000. We've never raised, I think where most we've raised in one show was $6,000. I think that was in December 31st last time. But we've never raised $10,000. That is an enormous amount of money. And this year, I think we've raised the most is like $1,313. I think $1,300 is the most we've raised. So please consider it. It'll be an awesome, fun show. We'll try to make it lighthearted. And hopefully some of you guys who have a little bit of money and can help us get to $10,000 will come and participate in the New Year's Eve party. I'm looking forward to 2023. I think 2022, in a number of different respects, it's time to get it over with. Turn a new leaf. It's always good to turn a new leaf. All right, let's check out our super chats for today. So I'll keep reminding you as we go forward of that. And I'll remind you of it as we move forward and hopefully get you enthused and motivated to listen to the show and to join the show and to make a contribution during the show. All right. And I'm going to have to go... Well, we don't have an infinite number of time today. Liam says, do most people in the West want to keep their selfishness implicit? They don't want to eliminate it entirely, but making selfishness explicit is too ugly for them. Pretending to be altruistic is crucial for people's identities. Yeah. It's pretending it to themselves more than anything else. It's convincing themselves, rationalizing to themselves, evading their own actions to themselves, which is the key. They still hold altruism and they want to pretend that their selfishness is not a problem with that. So, yes, I think that's absolutely right. They have to be compartmentalized. Otherwise they couldn't live with one another. They have to somehow integrate it. They have to somehow pretend that it's okay or that it's not really selfish or that you have to do it, or what can you do? Humans are imperfect. After all, there is such a thing as original sin. What can you do? I'll say sorry that I'm selfish, but... So they are in aspects of their lives. They exhibit pseudo-selfish attributes. I wouldn't say they're even selfish because much of it is not true selfishness in the sense of being rational. It's pseudo-selfish in terms of being motivated by some form, usually an irrational one, of self-gradification. I'd say it's much more self-gradification than selfishness. All right. James asks, how evil is it to raise kids to never be sure of yourself? You can never be certain about anything. That is the perfect recipe for cultivating neurotic anxiety-ridden adults. Pure torture. But that is the norm. Yes, I agree. I think it's horrible. It's exactly the way... That's why you get cynicism, skepticism in the culture and in our kids. And it's why... It's how you crush idealism and it's how you crush... Ultimately, you crush reason. It's how you denounce reason. What's reason? You can't know anything. Okay. Harper Campbell, how are so many teachers okay with the level of great inflation? Do they not care about educating and will do whatever it takes to secure a pension? Or do they take seriously the egalitarian idea a merit is an illusion? I don't think they take it seriously. I think they are... Teaching is hard. It's a lot of work. Being egalitarian makes it a lot easier, simpler. It's also... Why rock the boat? There's so much going on. It's so hard to be a teacher anyway. I mean, it's a lot of work. And the kids are difficult. I think it's mostly laziness. It's much easier to give everybody good grades.   This isn't the beginning. This isn't the 90s, late 90s when it started to be, you know, students accusing professors of sexual harassment or whatever. And some of it was motivated by retribution against professors. So I think it's a combination of things, but I think a lot of it is just laziness and wanting just to get along, wanting to just go with the flow. All right, Troy has just showed up from Australia. Thank you, Troy, and got us over the top of our goal today. So thank you, Troy. Really, really appreciate it. Appreciate all your support every month. Every month Troy shows up pretty systematically on one of these shows and comes in with 500 Australian dollars. So that is fantastic. Thank you. All right, let's see. Next question. No more $5, $10 questions, because I can't go very late tonight. I've got something I need to do. So $20 questions if you want to ask. Wasn't a partial constitutional of a public imposed on Japan after World War II. If so, that seemed to work. Yes, I think it did work. It's a good exception to the rule, but I think the only way it worked is because Japan was so crushed after the war that it had been so defeated. It had been so stomped on that it had completely made the Japanese willing to reset expectations about the future. Reset everything. So, yeah, I think it can be done, but in that sense it can only happen after whatever culture you're coming out of has been completely shattered and eviscerated and shown to be a loser and incompetent and destructive. All right, why it's... Mainly to clarify this later question for someone else. This is a question from... Where is it? From Harper Campbell who says, did you see Andrew Bernstein as working with the Atlas Society now? And Wyatt says... So many need to clarify that. Both Mark Pellegrino and Andrew Bernstein were interviewed by the Atlas Society recently, but that does not mean they're joining by any means. I don't know that it doesn't mean that. It certainly means that they're sanctioning that organization. It certainly means that they're giving that organization legitimacy. They view it as a legitimate organization, which I do not. I think it's wrong of them to have been interviewed. I won't be surprised if... I wouldn't be shocked if Andrew joined. Obviously, the Atlas Society is doing significant... making significant effort to try to recruit intellectuals that might feel like they're... I don't know, that might feel alienated right now from ERI. I don't know if Andrew does or doesn't, but I wouldn't be surprised. And they're doing an effort to do that, and to some extent it's working. So I'm disappointed. That's all I can really say. I'm disappointed. Even if they just did an interview, they're not joining. But an interview is a sanction. An interview is legitimizing that organization. That organization does not deserve legitimacy. Richard, could a confiscatory U.S. tax hike spark a revolution between taxpayers refusing to pay versus government constituents including the military? I just don't see that happening. I don't see who would be the taxpayers refusing to pay. I don't see them taking up arms over taxes. I don't see... Yeah, I don't see any of that. I don't see any of that happening. And yeah, I mean, it could happen. I mean, there are lots of ways in which kind of a civil war would start. I don't think we'll have a civil war, and partially because, you know, who pays taxes? It's mainly the wealthy and the upper middle class that paid the taxes. And they're not going to rise up in a revolution. In a sense, they're too comfortable. So I just don't... I don't see how that comes together. I mean, a lot of people who out there yelling about taxes don't pay very high taxes. The fact is that 50% of America I think receives more money than it pays in taxes to the government. So the other 50% of them pay very little taxes. Some of them pay a lot, but the people who pay a lot are the people least likely to revolt. All right, Adam. If one of today's business leaders was brought before Congress and gave something resembling weird and speech, would society today applaud it? Would we be... Would we as a country care within the news cycle? I think some people in the country would. I think it would awaken the better people in the country. I think he'd get enough that it would... it could have a real impact on the way some people thought. So I think it would resonate with a certain percentage of the country, certainly not all the country, certainly not a majority, certainly not a... I mean, both left and right love to bring CEOs in front of Congress and land blast them. So it's certainly a minority of the country, maybe a small minority of the country, but it would be without question. It would be without question an amazing thing to happen and it would awaken the sense of life of those Americans who still have it. John says, some far news services report that Iranian footballer Amir Reza Nassar Azandi has been sent to death for supporting the protest, except for Fox News, U.S. media is now reporting this. Any idea why? I mean, generally nobody's reports... they're reporting very little out of Iran. There's almost nothing. Why they're now reporting this particular? I don't know, but generally the attitude... you know, it shocks me that people who claim to be for liberty are not taking up the Iranian cause. You're not seeing it anyway. You're not seeing it on libertarian sites. You're not seeing it on conservative sites. The only place I see it somewhat is in, again, center left places like persuasion. I don't know, a place like that. So why it's far away? Why... who are we to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries? Why? Because we don't believe liberty and freedom are universal values anymore. You know, why? Because we're much more concerned about the latest woke, calmer thing that happens in some place than anything like this. If we're on the right and if we're on the left, we're more concerned about the fact that there's inequality in Iran than we are about bookers. And I think the right also has a problem with... I mean, particularly the new right has a problem with, look, Iran is doing a theocracy. There's nothing wrong with theocracy. It's part of their tradition. They're Muslims. And they don't think there should be a revolution. For what? I mean, again, it's... this is the chosen path of the Iranian people. Who are we to intervene? But I mainly think that American people don't care. So this is also... so here's the point. Newspapers won't report stuff if their readers don't really care. And I have... I think there's significant reason for me to stop talking about Iran because the reality is that you guys don't care because when I put up videos on Iran, the least watched videos I have put up videos on Iran and in China, nobody wants to watch them. Nobody cares. I mean, even on my listeners, nobody seems to care. Americans are very focused on themselves, their area. The rest of the world is misty. They don't really know much about it. Andrew, can you articulate the evil and the position that Putin should be given some of what he wants to establish peace?  Evil should never be appeased. I mean, sure. If you want to avoid Armageddon, but there's no reason to believe we're in and going, heading towards Armageddon.  We appeased Hitler. We appeased... We even appeased Popat. We appeased the North Vietnamese. Every time you appease evil, worse stuff happens. It tells evil it is efficacious. It tells evil you are weak. It tells evil you can be run over. It tells evil it can be victorious. It emboldens evil. That's what's so evil. It makes evil efficacious in the world. Evil cannot survive without the sanction of the good. By sanctioning it, you make it a power in the world.   Not because of Ukraine, but because of you, because you live in a free country.   Those people you want to weaken at every opportunity you can. And if Ukraine is the way in which we weaken them, so be it. Michael says, what hot evidence of trends are you observing that make you so confident that objective ideas will be actual contenders 20, 30 years from now? I don't have... I'm projecting from, I guess, my success to gain audiences, other people's success to gain audiences. I'm projecting forward the number of intellectuals that we're training and how many of them there will be and how many audiences, how much audience they could potentially attract. I'm projecting forward the power of ideas as things get worse in the United States, people will look and be willing to consider more and more radical solutions. But there's no, you know, project online. I project the growing familiarity and the growing number of people associated with INRAN. But before the exponential growth, everything looks flat. But the exponential growth, I believe, is coming. And you can see that it's just a number of intellectuals and just the exposure that we have today, the number of people we're talking to today as compared to 10, 20 years ago. Harper Campbell does rage, have to necessarily be nihilistic. No, you can rage against the authoritarians, and that's not nihilistic. I mean, because you have to be careful, you have to control it, you have to not act irrationally, but you could rage. James asks, do you think your memory is bad because you're constantly doing new things and filling your focus with new information? Yes. I think that's why, and my memory is bad for specific types of things. I mean, look how I spout history. You know, 1979, Iran could just come out like that. So things I remember, names I don't remember, and I think that's some weakness in my brain. I also don't remember certain things about my history. I don't remember my past. I remember history, more than I remember Iran's history. My history I don't remember. I think psychologically, the reason for that is, this is pure speculation, I don't know. My general orientation is life is always to the future. I am constantly thinking about the future, planning for the future, you know, thinking about what will happen in the future. In my future and what I will do and what I will be like and what I'm gonna, all of that, I don't think about the past. The past is the past. It's gone. It's finished. I want to know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. What I did yesterday is gone. So I forget about it because I give it very low importance in my cognition. I give the future the bulk of the importance. Now that can be a weakness because you want to learn from the past. I think I tried, but my orientation is future oriented and therefore the brain space, the time and space is devoted to that, not devoted to remembering what happened yesterday. I don't know. I don't care. Unreal. All right. Harper Campbell. Is national conservatism just national socialism? These guys are floating with watered down forms of Nazism. That's why credents like Nick Forentus feel their time is right to come out of the woodwork. Yes, I think national conservatism ultimately is opening the door to national socialism. It's ultimately opening the door to fascism of one form or another and it opens the door to the Nick Forentus. I mean, clearly somebody like John Khazoni would denounce Nick Forentus from here until forever. But his ideology, John Khazoni's ideology, is making it possible for the Nick Forentus, I think, to thrive in this environment. Michael says, did Trump make the nutty left show its hand a little sooner than they intended? No, I don't think that that planned. I don't think there's intentionality. I don't think there's a plan that they're playing through a plan. No, they respond. They're reactive. They take advantage of opportunities. So, no, I don't think it's sooner or later or whatever. There is no grand plan to take over the universe. There's no conspiracy theory of the left. It's not happening. It's not the KGB running all this. Or the Jews. Or the Rothschilds. Or the whatever. Benderbilts, whatever the other conspiracy theories is. Is there an underlying connection between Christian pro-Israel Zionists and Christian alt-right anti-Semites? Both movements are pathologically obsessed with Jews. Yeah, I mean, I think Christianity generally is obsessed with Jews. They don't know what to make of Jews. They don't have to hate it or to love them. It's not a Jew, but he rejected, took it a step forward. Jews have rejected Christianity. What does that make Jews?   So, we should hate. So, on the other hand, they're the chosen people. They're the people of the Bible. They're the people of the chosen land. But all those people in Israel who are the pro-Israel Zionist Christians love, they also think are going to hell, all of them. God, it's confusing. All right, Sean, thank you for all the hard work. Appreciate it, Sean, really. Thanks for that. Mark, oh, God. Wish to ask if you ever interacted with Craig Biddle in an objective standard as well as how you came to know so much about Iranian history. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not going to give you the whole history of the objective standard here, but let me say, I don't think there would have been an objective standard without me. It was my idea. Craig wanted to do something completely different. I convinced him to do this. It was my idea to have book reviews. I wrote some of the leading, some of the essays, the first essays in the objective standard. If you look at the old editions of the objective standard, pre-2010, I think it is, you will find a number of articles by me. So, to the extent that the objective standard got off the ground and succeeded and developed the way that it did at least in the early years, I had a massive amount of input into that. All of that ended in 2010 for a variety of reasons I'm not going to go into. All right? Oh, how do I know so much about Iranian history? I don't know. I read books. I read articles. I listen to interviews. I talk to people. I know a lot about a lot of history. Don't forget, I also give a course. Two courses relevant to Iran. I did a course on the history of the Middle East, a short history of the Middle East, which you can find on YouTube. I can't remember. It's five lectures, which Iran obviously plays a major role in the history of the Middle East. And I did a course on the history of Islamic totalitarianism, Islamic terrorism. But the authoritarianism, the Islamist ideology that's behind the terrorism, and that you will find a lot of information about. So I did a course on that as well. So I have read a lot about the Middle East. I've studied a lot about the Middle East. I've spoken a lot about it. I've interacted with a lot of people about the Middle East. So I'm not an expert on any of this by any means. So I don't know the fine green detail of Iranian history, but I know the big sweep of history with regard to Iran going back to biblical times. Not in detail, but in the grand scheme of things. And remember that if you look at that history, you will discover that the Persians, the people of Iran, have always been particularly intellectual, and they've always been a dominant force in the Middle East. They've always led. So even when Islam first came to the Middle East, and it was Arabs, it was very quickly that even though the king in a sense, the king in a sense, the ruler in a sense was an Arab, his number two was always a Persian, and the number two was the one who ruled. So, yeah. Yeah, Mark, I was there at the beginning, not at the beginning, and from the beginning, absolutely. So I know something of what I speak when I speak. My decisions are not as whimsical, I think, as Elon Musk's. Jennifer, can't past experience be used to support and build future sometimes? Yes, absolutely. It has to be, right? You have to use the past. You have to know what worked and what didn't work. And I probably underestimate the past or don't spend enough time thinking about the past to learn about the future. It's just my orientation. But I completely understand people who focus more on the past, because there's a lot to learn from it. And some people are just, there's a sense in which it's wired that way, not wired, I think, by nature, but wired psychologically. And it's very difficult to change. They become much more focused and obsessive about the past. And I'm focused and obsessive about the future. And not because I have a bad past, just because I am what I am. But I'm not here claiming I'm better in any sense. I'm just saying that's how I am. And I'm also not claiming that I do it optimally. I don't think I do. There's probably more I could learn from the past that would help me for the future than I do because I don't remember it. Or don't focus on it, don't think about it as much. I think on a number of occasions, I could have made better decisions if I'd understood the past better. If I'd had a better understanding of what was going on. All right, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, guys. Great super chat evening.  Thank you, Troy, again. Thank you, Coke. Those are our two biggest contributors today. And thank you to everybody, all the other supercharacters, particularly Michael, who I think asked a number of questions, and Andrew, and others. I will see you all no show tomorrow. Sunday is a day of rest. I'm picking up the Christian Sabbath. But Sunday is tomorrow is, and I hope many of you are going to watch with me, the football soccer world championship between Argentina and France. I'm looking forward to it. It should be a great game. I'm particularly excited about the possibility of Argentina winning, of Messi getting a World Cup. I think he deserves one. I think he's played brilliantly so far. I hope his brilliant play continues. So I am excited and looking forward to the game tomorrow. It's 11 a.m. 11 a.m. Puerto Rican time, 10 a.m. East Coast time, very early in the morning Pacific time. But it only happens once every four years. You get a final of the World Cup. Enjoy. Go, Messi. And go, Argentina. And I'll talk to you all on Monday.


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She has made online learning more enjoyable for everyone. She takes the information that we as students give her in order to create a more supportive environment during a tough time. She understands the difficulty with focusing online, which she attracts our focus and creates a positive environment in the way she engages us in online learning. Not only is she an incredible lecturer, she is an extremely positive person and it brightens up everyone's day by just going into her class, whether it's online or in person. She has managed to make a nationwide video called Feel as Personal as a small classroom. Her passion and sheer will to not only make students understand the module, but practically teaching to make us value our relevance to the world is immense. She resonates with everyone and is calm in explaining situations to the finest details, adding her own experiences to show up anywhere in the learning process. He encouraged me to think outside of my boundaries and has made me think of the most profound thoughts I've ever had. He was also unrelenting in getting to know his students and make sure they're managing college life well. He was brilliant at communicating with us throughout the online learning experience. He was so supportive of everyone and made every lesson as enjoyable as possible. He teaches with such passion, which makes learning the subject so much easier and enjoyable. He always makes sure everyone can understand the material and really helps throughout the lockdown and online learning any way possible. She's been nothing but understanding with deadlines and work. She has always been so helpful. College has been so hard. I'm so grateful to have her as a lecturer. She teaches with such passion that makes us as students thoroughly enjoy our work. She has made all of us as first year feel very involved in her classes. It has been a strange year to start and she has made the transition easy and comfortable. She is very understanding of any problems. She is also very good at teaching, helping us understand the subjects in the way that is interesting. We all like getting involved in her classes. He was really outstanding when he came to his class both online and on campus. He tried to help in any way he could even outside his subject in terms of our individual research projects in which he always offered if we needed help or if we were stuck. We could always turn to him for advice. He always had a way of keeping you interested in the subject and that's why he was a teacher hero. He adapted extremely well to the current pandemic situation making great mix of short videos and live lectures in which he was very reassuring, encouraging and helpful. Answering all the students questions comprehensively and quickly. As a brand new university student, he made the course enjoyable and made a very fun motivational and interesting module. Considering how difficult this year has been due to COVID, she brings a very positive and friendly environment life to our lives. She creates a wonderful, safe and productive online environment for all of us while also teaching us so much at the same time. I couldn't think of a more deserving person. She is just a wonderful person. She is a hugely knowledgeable, friendly and kind lecturer. She checks in with us regularly asking how we each are in ourselves and if we need any help with anything, even not relating to her module. She's the type of person who will put her own personal touch into every one of her classes, emails or any interactions with everyone. She has a way of making you feel welcome and makes an effort to get to know each student. Even though she is extremely knowledgeable in her chosen field, she always took the time to let us know that she won't store where we stand there. This left us feeling that with practice and obviously learning through lectures that we too can achieve our goals in the end. She represents everything I want to be as a teacher. She is kind, funny and enthusiastic in her teaching. She makes every effort to create a warm and welcoming environment in her lectures. With COVID-19 this year, she has really tried to help us and make sure we're coping okay. Her classes are always amongst my favourites with her quirky jokes and words of wisdom never failing to inspire. She was so supportive, kind and helpful when it came to our assignments, questions and labs. She was always making sure we really understood our content and work and she would spend extra time with us even if that meant going over class errors. She has a great sense of humour and it's always refreshing to have such a bright and open conversation with lecture. He connects with his students like no other lecture I've had in third-level education. After every lecture, he gives students the opportunity to talk to him whether it be about the module material or the daily news. Throughout the pandemic, he has been very understanding and repeatedly stressed that students would come to him for help. He is a great credit to himself and deserves the recognition for his outstanding teaching. During stressful and busy academic periods, she ensures everyone is calm and I'm yet to meet a lecturer who puts students at ease so well. Despite teaching one of the trickier modules in my course with heavy and complicated content, I never find myself reluctant to engage in any of her lessons. Owing to her pleasant and friendly manner, her passion is contagious making you want to do your best for her all the time. Her positive approach motivates students to engage. She's approachable, very hardworking and is so enthusiastic that not only do students want to do the work well for her but we also take extra care in our work to make her proud. Such a ray of sunshine in such gloomy times brought on by the current COVID-19 pandemic. She is intelligent, kind, funny and inclusive. She works so hard to support us and make us all feel welcome. She is an inspirational teacher and lecturer. This year has been difficult so it's easy to imagine that coming back to college during these difficult times is beyond confusing and complex. But she has done nothing but make this semester seem as though everything is going to be okay and us as students are going to succeed. During these uncertain times, finding true joy can be difficult but never have I seen such passion and determination towards teaching and towards the students. He brought joy to students on a daily basis by continuously helping them and making them laugh. He treated every student with respect and care. He is not just a teacher but a leader, a friend and a hero. She has been a main inspiration to us during college. She has become a role model for me and has helped me both academically and personally. She is great with everyone in the class but I especially enjoy learning from her as she really has become my role model. He's always motivated and prepared to teach. He has been innovative in the way he teaches from the beginning of the pandemic and ever since. He always has such a positive spirit which is infectious. He makes the lecturers interesting and fun relating them back to real-world topics. The most patient lecturer who is passionate about what they teach. He is the most approachable and understanding lecturer. He has worked so hard over the pandemic to teach at the highest standard possible with the resources he has and always has time for all of his students. He includes all of his students in participating in what he is teaching. Her teaching has had a really positive impact on me. She makes everything really interesting and creates a real sense of engagement. Any student that has had her will tell you that they enjoyed every minute because she makes lectures fun. She has been a wonderful support through a difficult semester of getting acquainted with online learning. She was able to portray her passion for education as well as inspiring us to acquire the same passion. The learning was incredibly interactive and collaborative particularly given the absence of on-campus face-to-face time. She never came into a lecture without a smile on her face. She created positive and inclusive environment in lecture where everyone was valued. I don't think I've had a single class with her where we all didn't smile or laugh. She makes learning very enjoyable and relatable. She has really taken her time this semester to ensure that we have all the material we need and that we are happy. Constantly asking for feedback and action in the feedback. She really listens and engages with us in all aspects. She has been very understanding of the pressures and difficulties and she is always looking to help and ensure that we are all on board. When COVID-19 first started to affect us with the colleges closing down, he was the role model. There was no panic and he was in complete control or learning staying on track. He assured students that we would work in conjunction with one another throughout the crisis which we did. But before the pandemic ever started his lectures were inspiring to me. Particularly at the start of the pandemic he was always without fail, upbeat and positive. Making us laugh and joking with us in his lectures. He taught with such precision and understanding and was so knowledgeable in the material. Yet he talked his way through each slide carefully. Making sure we understood everything. He always offered his support through the tough times. He always applause us for our accomplishments and our valid approaches to solving problems. I mean the challenging course is enjoyable and he is one of the lecturers that I know a lot of people aspire to be more. He was extremely kind and understanding. Very friendly. He really made the first semester of first year a good one. He encouraged us, motivated us and was always there for us. He truly invested in your success.


We are following breaking news on this Friday. Amazon agreeing to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. Let's talk about it now with Jim Kramer on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. All right, Jim, take it away. It's disruption of society, not just disruption. This is what I regard as being a move by Amazon to destroy the margins and own the business of food and groceries in this country. You can't compete with Amazon on price. But the big rap against Amazon was the food could spoil. Okay, they needed this level of distribution. They remember what they can do. They are a technology master. They can charge what they want and no one will mind. They could lose money for years and no one will mind. They can wipe out a whole industry. Everyone's in this industry, but no one has been able to successfully compete with Amazon when Amazon wants to dominate an industry. And I don't think this is gonna be any different. Walmart will put up a fight. That's what Walmart will do. Everybody else has to think, do I surrender? Do I get out of food? How do I make money in food? Is now the food section of my business really terrible? And let's overlay yesterday's got what happened with Kroger. Where Kroger told you, listen, we've got competition coming in from every side. You know, thatality, they got LIDL coming in. They've got, obviously, you always have the dollar stores. I mean, we own that for action alerts. We own Walgreens.  Walgreens has emphasized food of late. Maybe that's a mistake. So people who have tried to get food in order to be able to compete with the busy mother on the way home, you know, busy parent, but that's how they view it, have suddenly had a wake up call. And the wake up call is Amazon's in our business. And what they can do, even if you listen to Kroger, they were concerned before, what Amazon can do is lose money. They can lose money. Now remember, if you're an Amazon Prime, what would happen? So how about if they say Amazon Prime, today eggs are free. Amazon Prime, today we're giving away milk.  Amazon Prime is the ultimate club. Now you take Costco, Costco's a club. Absolutely, it's a great club and you get very good prices. Costco is the one that I think is, I mean, if I, I don't want to buy any of these right now, I want the dust to settle because we've got to downgrade these industries. But Costco is the one that can compete because they do it on a club basis and they pass the long prices. But food deflation is bad for them. They've given you an excellent, if you go back to Costco's, you have a great disposition on food deflation. But this is what I call the most ultimate disruption that I have seen in an industry. One company coming in, now there's only 400 plus stores of Whole Foods, okay? But they had a roadmap to do 1200. Activists came in, one of the things that Whole Foods products itself is they make the most money per square foot of any retailer. Now, Amazon doesn't need to do that, obviously. Now, Whole Foods has a great prep, prepared foods. Prepared foods was something that obviously Amazon couldn't do, right? I mean, remember, think about what Amazon couldn't and couldn't do. They could not do prepared foods. So they could not offer the virtual supermarket online. They could only offer, you know, maybe they were really paper towel time. Let's think about it as paper towel time. They were in the dry goods portion of the grocery business. They were struggling about how to do the fresh. Well, we know how to do fresh. Now, what does it do for Uber? Do they use Uber? Does someone else use Uber to deliver? You can no longer be just, you've got to be able to deliver against Amazon. That's another problem. See, if Amazon can deliver to your house, why do you want to stop at the store? Now, Amazon's got another thing. What Amazon's able to do, they already have the biggest problem with supermarkets is checkout. But Amazon has been perfecting, and by the way, Debold Nick's store is on TBT. They also have it. But they have been able to perfect this notion of shopping with this so you could go to a Whole Foods, breeze right through because you've done, you've checked everything, and then you're out. So they've got no, I mean, one of the big problems against Whole Foods has been the lines. Well, we just eliminated the lines. Technology has eluded Whole Foods. One of the things that Whole Foods underspend on for a long time was point of sale. Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore because Amazon's the king of point of sale. So you've got a club membership that now includes everything. It's a consumption driven company. Amazon is a country, and it's a country that offers everything that you need to eat, to feed and clothe the family. This is a feed and clothe a family situation. Just incredible. And what does this all mean for John Mackey? Well, John Mackey, they say he's gonna stay. You know, I don't know. John Mackey is what I regard as a mercurial man. Walter Robb is a steady man. Walter Robb is a great man. Walter Robb is a good man. I would love to see Walter Robb as the former co-CEO. I'd love to see him come back. I'd love to see him come back. Now, could Amazon do a two class employment situation? The Mackey people get paid more and then a new level comes in and gets paid less because the Whole Foods people are paid more than anybody. But remember, Amazon's non-union. So they could open a whole new group of Whole Foods that I believe are non-union and cheaper. Again, you're dealing with a competitor that has scale, that has cheap labor, that has supply chain management. That's the best we've ever seen. And they are somebody who if you compete with, you can only compete on price and no one has that balance sheet except for Walmart, maybe Costco. To compete on price against Amazon is to say I'm going to lose money on food for now until the eyes can see. So think about it at Target. Think about it at the dollar store. It's gonna be very challenging here. Now the dollar stores will say, well, wait a second. Our people are not generally Amazon shoppers because they can't afford the crime. But I still don't want to be in food anywhere. And that's what this did. I mean, remember the mall, what Amazon did to the mall? Amazon's now gonna do to the grocery store. And remember, there's no given lifespan to a grocery store. When I was growing up, it was the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, okay? And Sears. Well, hey, great Italian Pacific, uh-uh. Sears, I don't know. I think that Sears, they are a chunk of real estate that Amazon now needs. But not in any way that's gonna benefit Sears. It's just incredible. And the other M&A deal that's, you know, on a much smaller scale, Walmart buying bonobos. Yeah, you know, I mean, look, Walmart wants to have an apparel to run through a jet.com. And that's fine. They've been on my show with mad money. And you know, that's fine.  It's like a flea. You know, it's the day of the night of the flea. Okay, Anna. All right. Moving on to some other stocks. There's a note out from Morgan Stanley saying that the Apple pullback is due to overall tech- At Katie Ubrity, who's really fabulous and I like her stuff, it's not gonna necessarily change things right now because we have, these stocks are heavy. I've been saying that, you know, we downgraded Apple to a two because we knew that there was just too much price. There's too many people talking about a supercycle. You know, when you have these sellers that come in, all you gotta do is wait them out. And one of the things I learned as a hedge fund manager, patience is better, patience is a true virtue. Wait out the sellers. Just wait them out. You'll be fine. Trying to figure out right now whether, I just mentioned Costco one squawk of the ship. Costco's intriguing to me. Costco, but Costco can compete. It's intriguing to me. Not yet, not yet, because they, you know, Costco's a lot of, they can make a lot of deals. And they can, they have food deflation right now for the food that they have, but it's perishables. They can come down. They might, I don't know whether Costco compete with Amazon and getting food, but remember, because they make their money on the card, I'm just noodling about Costco. I'm noodling, I'm noodling. Not sure yet, not sure yet. Amazon should go through a thousand. All right, something to watch. Yeah, definitely. Also, credit squeeze downgraded square? Yeah, Sarah Friar's doing such an amazing job there. CFO, but really kind of runs the place. She's just monster good. She's out of Goldman. She's just one of my absolute favorites. I think she does that. We use Caviar at Bar San Miguel. It's a terrific product. Should we switch to the point of sale product? I don't know. But I do think that Square has moved up from 14 to 24 very fast. And that was because there were a lot of shorts in Square thinking that their business model, which was to lend to small business, was dangerous. But I've gone over this. David Vineyer's on the board. Now he used to be the CFO of Goldman. And what I look at when I think about that situation is that Square has a very good call on the cash that comes out of the register, because that's what they say. So it turned out to be that their model wasn't nearly as dicey, so the shorts had to come in and cover just the way it was.  I give it a speeding ticket, but it comes back to 20. Bye-bye-bye. All right, and then yesterday we had layoff announcements at Nike, and now the stock has been downgraded by Drake. I'm struggling with Nike. I'm struggling with Nike because I think that the moves are gonna be right, but the industry is so competitive. It's not like Nike and nobody else. Adidas came back to life, big balance sheet there. Under Armour, obviously. Kevin Pine's part of the mix and paying up for endorsements. But Nike, Europe had been slowing. United States is bad. The wholesale chain's bad. Is Nike finished? No, but Nike's gonna have to, it's a Nike reset. And I tend not to wanna play the resets for a couple of quarters. Hey, Jim, what did you make of these snapshares getting slammed yesterday? Well, you know, Snap has got 900 million shares that are gonna come off, kind of off-pat. And so to speak, if you wanna look at it, like it's gonna become a generic stock. I never liked the two classes that no vote. I don't like situations with no vote. We did a fabulous corporate governance conference for the street and deal. I just think that what's happened with Squares is that there's going to be tremendous pressure on the stock when that comes in. And then we have to rethink. I know that DJ Khaled loves, he loves Snap, he loves Snap. But my problem with Snap is Instagram. Instagram is so on its game right here, so on its game. And Mark Zuckerberg is such a laser-like focused guy. He's Amazon to Kroger, okay? They're Kroger. Actually, they wish they were Kroger. Kroger's a great American company, but there's nothing you can do in the end. Because Amazon is the army, navy, the Marines, okay? They're coming in and they're the Air Force. And you are cavalry. You're cavalry. I mean, these guys are cavalry. I mean, you're coming in with cavalry. These guys, Amazon's mechanized in their cavalry. It just doesn't work. My grandfather was in the cavalry, served with Pershing. No go, man. No go against mechanized. Amazon's world, we just live in it. Exactly right. That's why this guy should go one through 1000, should have been below. But it's, you know, it's sui generis. It's sui, that's why they learned that a little sui generis. No one is like going to come up with something like this again. And what can I say? I do love Amazon. We all love Amazon. You got that button, you can press it, the tide comes. Now I want the stakes to come. I press the button, I want the stake. And I want the stake, what I really want, I want the t-bone, okay? And I want the t-bone in time because the barbecue is on, and I want some charcoal, and then boom, and it's there. I mean, it's what we've always wanted. It's kind of like the Jetsons. I mean, it's not even worth talking about this, but Facebook is now going to be using artificial intelligence. Love Facebook. Love Facebook. But you know, Facebook, so I remember it's Fang. Whoever created that Fang, I want to just demolish it. Hey, you did. What can you do? She and Kramer created Fang. What can you do? Always imitated, never, yo, always duplicated, but never been able to be beaten. I saw someone come up with Fang. I said, Fang doesn't stand for anything. You at least got to be a literate. I mean, the people who try to come in against me, there's a big mode on this stuff. No, we got Fang and Jim also created Candies. I created Candies and those socks are doing incredibly well. They've crushed the market. Even though the D was Deckers, I'm being incredible. And you go to realmoney.com for more on Candies. And then a big day for Action Learns Plus. We have the Dow, DuPont Merge are getting through. Oh my God, this is so big. Now look, it's not going to be three different companies. We are relaxed. They're going to spin off as they spin off. There's going to be a lot being done. Ed Breen is one of the great value creators. I'm here to spend time studying Breen this weekend. He's a remarkable guy and he's a scrappy guy.  He knows. He knows not to press too hard on Ed Breen. Because, you know, Ed Breen brings a gun to a knife fight. All right, Jim, so much for a quiet Friday. Thank you so much. Yeah, I was going to go to the Hampton. Screw that. Talk to you later. All right, thanks so much, Jim. For more on Amazon and Whole Foods, stay with The Street.