fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual wants. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon. Hopefully, everybody's having a fantastic weekend. And why have I got an echo going on? I think I know where that is. Here we go. You did it. OK. We got rid of the echo. All right, so a lot has happened since our last show. Not much on the ground has happened, but it seems like generally in the world. I apologize for not being available for shows on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but with travel and everything, couldn't really get it organized. I was up in the Bay Area and back and forth and busy all day. So we'll do a show today. We'll do a show tomorrow. And I will also try to do a show on Monday to kind of catch everybody up and get everything I want to cover done. I mean, today I really want to talk about the morality of war, what it means, how to think about it. And also I want to address the issue of emotions and getting emotional and having passion about something and what wins that's appropriate or not. I've got a list of questions that somebody sent me about moral issues and then also some strategic issues about kind of long-term consequences of what's going on in Israel and Gaza. So I want to do that today. I'm also happy to, of course, take your questions. Super Chat is on. I put on a big ambitious goal of trying to get $1,000 today. And that would be great. Just because I know that starting Monday I'm going to be gone for the rest of October, it's going to be difficult to do shows. Although I'll try to do as many as I can. I'm highly motivated to do shows right now given what's going on in Israel and the world more broadly. And I will be in Europe and it's going to be interesting to see Europe close up. I don't know if you saw yesterday or today. Maybe it was today. 50,000 anti-Israeli marches in London. 50,000. So it's going to be interesting to see what's going on in Europe. But yeah, so we'll do a show today. Tomorrow I want to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian kind of history framing the topic. Is they right and wrong? Is they good and evil? I've been criticized for all mixed bags. Israel has done bad things as well. So we'll talk about good and evil when it comes to Israel. And the Palestinians will do that tomorrow. So I'll do a big kind of Israeli-Palestinian history morality kind of show to give you some of the concrete historically but also some of the ways I think you should think about morality as it applies to a country which is obviously mixed and complex with good and bad elements in it. But how do you want to compare one country to another country? Is there any way to compare it? Are they all just evil because they're states which is kind of the anarchist position? And both today and tomorrow I'm open to talking about some of the criticisms of the libertarians that have made of me and of the videos I've done. If you'd like to ask about that, I'm happy to answer. I've watched half of Dave Smith's so-called takedown of me.  And basically we enforced everything I said about him right there. So I can talk a little bit about that although I didn't watch the whole thing. I don't know if the patients watched the whole thing. I did watch it at one and a half speed so I went by fairly quickly but I'm happy to... I might watch the whole thing and comment on it tomorrow but I certainly will comment on the first half. Probably tomorrow, maybe today depending on how time goes particularly if you ask me questions about it I'm happy to address it. I will say this. There are some libertarians out there including people who ultimately hold an anarchist view who are really good on this issue on Israel. So I just want to give a shout out here because I think he's been excellent and good for him. I mean I've always respected this guy's mind as a legal scholar but he's been particularly good on the Israeli-Palestinian things. I didn't expect that. And that's Randy Barnett from George Washington University or Georgetown University. Law school, really, really, you know, super smart guy, written a lot about the Constitution is I think when you push him an anarchist but on this particular issue I've been following him toward an excellent. I don't want to say all libertarians more relativists and evaders. There are few who are not. And Randy Barnett is one of the few. All right. Remo said he sent me an email with three questions. Let me see if I can find it. Okay, Remo. Questions. Questions, yeah. Oh, there it is. He just sent it now or a little while ago. Okay. Okay, I'm copying and pasting these questions. Remo did put a hundred and something dollars behind us so I'm not playing favorites. Legit, legit questions. Yeah, I mean, the first question is more it's related to history. I might cover it tomorrow. What about the actually made by Zionist movement? Again, history, which would be Israel's policy regarding settlements in the West Bank. Okay. All right. We will get to all of that today tomorrow. There's a lot, a lot to talk about a lot. We can't talk about a lot. We'll talk about. Let's see where to start. I want to start really with the morality of war. How to approach thinking about morality when it comes to war and how to think about morality when it comes to the state, when it comes to government. And, you know, the objective is perspective, which is very different than the libertarian perspective. The objective perspective is that government is a necessary good. The objective perspective is that government is, you know, that individual rights are a way to subordinate society to moral law, to morality. That individual rights is the concept of applying morality in a social context. How do we live together in a society? Not as a collective, but in a society. Individual rights are the way in which we live. And government is the only way in which we can apply the principle of individual rights consistently as a government. Now, few governments do that. Certainly few governments do it consistently. But that is the purpose of government, to apply the principle of individual rights to make it manifest in the world, to bring it to the society in which a government is responsible for. It requires that the government have a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. You know, morality requires that. Because individual rights require that. This only way to protect individual rights is not to have a bunch of people running around with guns defending their property, shooting at one another because they think other people are violated, but to have an objective system of law that regulates how force is used in retaliation, how justice is manifest in the world. That's why good governments have rules of procedure, rules of evidence, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty. All of these things are ways to bring objectivity to the issue of figuring out who violated rights and then dealing with them appropriately. But these questions are complicated. It's not easy to figure out who violated rights. It's not easy to figure out how to build a case and to objectively show that they violated rights, murder, theft, or any kind of violation of rights. The world is complex. If it was always obvious exactly who violated rights, exactly how they did it, exactly who were the bad guys, then, you know, justice and the legal system and the police, policing would be super simple, super easy, super straightforward, but they're not. And that whole process of chasing down the criminals, of figuring out who the bad guys are and figuring out what the appropriate, you know, where they are bad guys and their inappropriate sentence and how to deal with them. All of that needs to be done in an objective manner. In order to do it in an objective manner, you need to have a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. That is required. So morality requires that governments exist. Good governments exist. Not bad governments. But then, what is a good government? Are there any good governments? Can there be any good governments? Well, a few things here. Because I wrote in a tweet somewhere, I said, or in my article, and just with you, I wrote a proper government does this, and people say, well, there are no proper governments. Therefore, it's completely out. But what do you mean by a proper government?  Put aside the ideal. There certainly is an ideal government. We don't have that. We've come close a few times in a few places. But even today, there are big differences between governments out there. And there's generally governments that generally strive to protect individual rights. They do it very poorly. They do it very inconsistently. And you could say this dramatically flawed government. But they generally, you know, they're trying to have a rule of law again as weakly and as badly as and as consistently as they do. But there's a certain process. They call it democracy, call it republicanism. They call it constitutionalism that is tried in some way to protect at least some rights.  And that's a majority of governments in the world, or at least used to be, and to some extent probably still is today. And it's suddenly the overwhelming majority of governments in human history. And there's a difference between the two. There is a difference between the United States and Russia today. Russia is basically one man rule. It's completely at his request. It's completely arbitrary. There's no attempted objectivity. There's no attempt at a process. There's no attempt at a rule of law. There's whatever Putin wants Putin gets. In the United States, as far as it is, not a bad place to live. Your rights are, at least to some extent, protected. Not fully, no money as much as I'd like. Huge critic of the U.S. government. But to compare it to Iran, North Korea, Soviet Union, Russia, I mean, it's just bizarre. As by the way, you know, Rothbard and other libertarians have done. That's just bizarre. I'd much rather live in the United States than in any of those other countries. So would almost everybody in the world. That's why you have such an inflow of migrants coming to the United States. Not because the United States is worse, but because the United States is better. Israel versus any other country in the Middle East. Israel protects rights. Indeed, even for Arabs who live in Israel, they have a better life than they would in any other Arab country. Generally, property right protection, to the extent that Western countries have rights, not fully, as we would like, still taxed, true. But fundamentally, it's a Western country. It's got a government that's elected by the people. The government is primarily dedicated to trying to create an environment in which human beings can flourish and be successful. It does so very poorly, but that's its focus, compared to Hamas or compared to any other government in the Middle East. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon doesn't matter. Where the governments are dedicated to basically robbing their own people, controlling them, oppressing them, killing them. So Israel's not an ideal government, far, far more. But in a competition between Israel and Hamas, or Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or Israel and Syria, I mean, there's no competition. One is good and one is evil. And all you have to do is go to Israel and see and go to Syria and see. Go to the Gaza Strip and see. But go to Syria, forget the Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip is the way it is because of Israel's evil, they tell us, to go to Syria. And you can see. You can see just by walking around. You can see how people behave. You can see how the violence. You can see this quality of life, the standard of living. Where is the human flourishing? Alex Epstein has this great idea based on what is supportive of human flourishing and what is anti-human flourishing.  And you can see it in the fact that Israel is flourishing. So to conflate the two, to view them as equal somehow, is disgusting. It's disgusting. It was disgusting when Marie-Rapha did it with the Soviet Union in the United States. And it's disgusting when Samit does it between Israel and Hamas. And don't tell me he doesn't do it because he did it. Not only did he do it in the tweet that he posted, but he did it in his critique of me saying that he did it. He denied it. But then he went on to do it again. He says, what Hamas did is evil. It's horrible. It's terrible. It's disgusting. It's immoral. And then he says, but don't forget Israel is let's not forget, Israel's evil and horrible and all the stuff Israel. What is that if not moral equivocation? Dave is being objective. Dave is not being objective at all. Dave is morally equivocating. So, no, there is no equality between Hamas and Israel. In a challenge between these two, one is good and one is evil. You want to criticize Israel on certain things? Okay, but not in the context with Hamas, in a separate context. In a context where you're criticizing basically a good country, a good government. And I know the idea for an alcocapolis of a good government is offensive. I know that. But if you can't tell the difference between the government of Hamas and the government of Israel, the government of Israel and the government of Syria, or the government of Israel, even in the government of Jordan or Egypt, then you have no clue.  You're basically taking out your eyes on purpose. And you're letting your dogma, your anarchism drive your views rather than reality, rather than observation, rather than seeing what's going on in the world. So, yeah, I mean, so we can apply morality to countries. We can apply morality to governments in a sense to the extent a country defends individual rights to the extent that a government creates the environment in which human beings can flourish, which is an environment of freedom. To that extent it's a good country. To the extent that they oppress it and repress it, to that extent a country is evil. Hamas is evil. The Hamas government is evil. The Palestinian authority government is evil. The Syrian government is evil. The Israeli government is good. I mean, we're not going to get excited about how wonderful they are, but they're good. And if you can't, again, see that, then you're blind or purposefully purposefully evasive. Purposefully evasive. And that's what I think they are. I think they're purposefully evasive. Because again, even though they deny it, they reject any government. To say a government is good is anathema to everything they believe in. All right, so governments can be good. They can be moral. The rally does apply to government. That is our collectivism. Now, when is it a... So how does one decide about what is moral to do and when it is moral to engage in war? War is horrific. It's horrific for everybody. It's horrific for people defending themselves. It's horrific for innocents caught in the middle. It's horrific. It's an unmitigated evil. So when should you engage in war? You engage in war when you're being attacked. Or when attack is inevitable. When you're threatened. No problem with preemptive war. You engage in war when attack is inevitable. Or when you've actually been attacked. And then what is your responsibility as a government, as a military? What is your responsibility? What is your responsibility? It's the same responsibility it is in every other realm of government activity. It's to protect the individual rights of your citizens. Your citizens. The people you're responsible for. The people over whom you have established the rule of law. So your responsibility in war is to protect your citizens. And then includes your soldiers. The citizens too. They don't give up their rights. So it's to defend your citizens from the initiation of force by somebody else. If force is initiated by a state actor or by a proxy of a state actor then it is your responsibility to go to war to defend them and to prevent it from happening again. And in doing so your concern should be only one. To be moral. To protect the individual rights of your citizens which requires you to win. And it requires you to suffer the fewest casualties possible. It requires you to win while minimizing your own casualties. And that really is it? That's the responsibility. Everything else is you know, tactics. It's a question of okay how do I win? What is required for me to win? How do I take out this enemy? There is the issue of innocence is irrelevant. The fact that there are innocence on the other side well of course there are innocence on the other side. There are children. In every war there are children. So I can't fight a war because the other side, the side that attacked me has children and they might be killed in the process. I mean that is insanity. That means you can never defend yourself.  That is unbelievable altruistic that is unbelievable rejection of the value of your own life and for a government to do that that is immoral because it is defaulting on its responsibility to defend its own citizens.  I mean that would end it. If that were the standard, evil would win but you not engaging in self-defense that's like some kind of neutral thing and this is again this anti-war libertarian BS they think that if Israel doesn't defend itself then peace will come if Israel doesn't engage in violence then peace will come but it's exactly the opposite.   I mean it's truly stunning. It's truly stunning that if you don't fight in self-defense then you lose. So the fact that Hamas half the population of Gaza is under 18 so the fact that half the population of Gaza is children can't fight okay well Hamas will surrender and have them just kill all my kids or I'll just stay behind my borders and protective and just wait for the next attack and I'll never strike them because God forbid I might kill one of their innocents. I mean that is collectivistic it's valuing the enemy's collective above the lives of you your own life I would never think that way if my self-defense requires me going in there and some children will die then it's sad that they die but they will die and the blood of those kids the blood of those innocents always is on the person who initiated it first in this case it's easy the blood of anybody who dies in Gaza everybody who dies in Gaza is on Hamas so you know morality of war states that you have to pursue your life you have to pursue your self-defense and if innocents are in the way of innocents inevitably going to die if there's going to be collateral damage then there's going to be collateral damage and indeed more than that sometimes in order to win you have to eviscerate the will of the other side to fight when a man understood this when he attacked the south when he burnt their crops when he burnt Atlanta America understood this during World War II Churchill understood this when they flattened the resident and Truman understood this when they bombed the Ushima Nagasaki sometimes in order to win and to win quickly and again your responsibility is not to them your responsibility is to you to yourself after completely and utterly demoralize the other side that's why war sucks war sucks war is horrible it's evil it's barbaric but if you start it then you are unleashing hell on yourself at least that's how it should be you should be unleashing hell on yourself and you've got nobody to blame Hamas has nobody to blame but themselves Hamas said the other day Hamas had complete control of the Gaza Strip they could have turned it into Singapore and the Israelis investors were willing to invest in the Gaza Strip Egyptians Arabs were willing to invest in the Gaza Strip built casinos, built hotels they've got a beautiful beach there they could have built a financial center who stopped them? Israel? Come on anybody who thinks that just has no clue of the history completely ignorant of the history of the whole conflict the Gaza Strip is the way it is because of choices that Palestinians are making for themselves electing Hamas but it's not like the Palestinian Authority was a freedom loving organization dedicated to individual rights they have chosen political leaders who are evil and horrible and they get the consequences of their choices Hamas but the Palestinian Authority as well it's an open air prison because they built the fences they built the walls of course it's an open air prison when what you do is harbor criminals what you do is that every opportunity you cross the border and inflict as many casualties as possible on the other side open air prison is disgusting it's an open air prison created by Hamas it's an open air prison created by the Palestinians it's an open air prison created by them nobody, nobody forced them to embrace their ideology and embrace the policies and embrace the violence that they have for the last 20 years since the Gaza Strip became quote independent to blame this on Israel is again it's evasive it's ignorant but it's evasive and therefore it's just immoral the Gaza Strip is a consequence the conditions in the Gaza Strip are a consequence of the choices Palestinians have made for themselves and the Arab world has made for themselves because many of those Palestinians would have loved to leave but the Egyptians won't take them I wonder why, I wonder why the Egyptians won't take their Palestinian brothers and most other countries won't take them why didn't they just leave they fought a war, they lost they lost go find a life somewhere but no nobody wants them nobody will let them leave and the last people who wants to let them leave are Hamas and you see that now giving them an evacuation notice to go south to spare civilian lives God to spare civilian lives, to spare innocents and of course they've been criticized for it for those trying to stop the Gazans from getting out of the way of bullets Hamas, Hamas wants civilians to die it wants children to die it wants innocents to die it wants their own children to die and this is the evil so many out there want to protect this is the evil so many out there want to create a moral equivalence around of course they can leave, they've always been able to leave they can leave through Egypt but why doesn't Egypt let them out they could leave through Egypt they used to be a long time ago as I've said many times they used to work regularly in Israel million Palestinians used to sleep every night in Israel why did that stop did it stop because Israel decided to be mean and create an outdoor prison God you guys, some of you guys are so ignorant it stopped because those Palestinians those people from Gaza started to sell buses and coffee shops and just slaughtered people left and right Israel used to allow them complete free travel and the reward was violence you have to defend yourself I mean hundreds of people dying thousands of people dying but you know many Palestinians left and they went to Lebanon and what did the Lebanese do to them they put them into camps refugee camps 50 years later they're still in refugee camps the Arab world restricts Palestinian movement restricts Palestinian advancement restricts the Palestinians much more than the Israelis do but yes ignore that pretend it doesn't exist pretend these Israelis are the meanies and the Palestinians are just wonderful human beings that Israel has just been nasty to I mean that's just a complete rewriting of history a complete revisionist view of the historical fact of the historical evidence alright I've got a bunch of questions around I'm just going to go through these because I've got some questions before the show on the morality so I'm just going to go through this what is the role of emotional response to the horrors of Hamas attacks should we use them as motivation or should we just let them calm down and put them aside as we plan a fully rational plan well I mean both emotions are crucial emotions are experience life feeling you are so absolutely use them for motivation don't let them cloud your thinking so at the same time you've got to set back and come up with a rational plan of action for the future the two don't contradict each other unless you're so emotional that you can't think anymore but you know I am up you know I respond emotionally and passionately to evil and I think that's the appropriate response to evil but that doesn't prevent me from having you know and I've written I don't have to write anymore because I've written long articles explaining in great detail what the morality of war should be I encourage you to read you know Just War Theory vs America which I wrote with a long time ago with Alex Epstein it doesn't prevent me from analyzing the situation rationally so you need a rational plan but to divorce yourself in a sense to pretend like oh no nothing's happened let's just be calm let's pretend you know that's ridiculous not me anyway so I am a moralizer absolutely and I believe in good and evil and I believe evil you should get mad at you should get angry at and then devise a plan to destroy rationally calmly alright morally speaking does Israel need to make an effort to avoid killing civilians if it has the technology to do so what is the moral justification for killing innocent little children as part of the military operation there is no technology that allows you to avoid killing civilians without putting your own troops at risk if you can do it without putting your own troops at risk sure of course you would any military would any decent military would and suddenly the Israeli military doing that more than I think they should to the extent that you don't give up your strategic objectives or your tactical objectives yes don't don't kill civilians in this context just for the sake of killing them I don't think that's necessary in this conflict but how do you are there bullets that say you know bombs that go if there's an innocent in the building only kill the guilty I mean how do you do that particularly how do you do that if Hamas has a headquarters underneath schools hospitals mosques apartment buildings now Israel is doing the ridiculous in that it is letting people know that it's going to bomb a building before it bombs it so that they can leave but then Hamas leaves as well what's the point what Israel needs to do is defend itself that's the standard how many people die I don't know it depends on how Hamas behaves I mean look the whole situation in the Gaza Strip could end tomorrow Hamas just has to surrender hand over the hostages and Israel will stop if Israel by the way surrenders then Hamas will just slaughter everybody in Israel but if Hamas surrenders Israel will not slaughter anybody in Gaza there's a lot about the morality of each side just by that if one side lays down their arms what will the other side do and we know exactly what will happen in that context Israel Hamas so morally speaking the only job of the military, of the government is to protect the individual rights of Israelis in this context and it should not be concerned about the damage it does on the other side there's no reason to kill civilians and innocents gratuitously but neither is there any reason to risk the lives of your own people your own people which are being risked every moment that the Israelis are not over there flattening the place and going in it's immoral to risk your own people in order to avoid hurting civilians on the other side again the civilians on the other side have the possibility of the other side they started the war they took their own innocents their blood their lives into their own hands they are the ones that are morally responsible for their deaths so the moral justification for killing innocent little children as part of military oppression is self defense self defense if it's not required for self defense it shouldn't be done obviously it shouldn't do it there's no foundation for crush your enemy strategy what makes it moral to destroy the memory why is it a right strategy in this situation again self defense the only way to guarantee that the enemy will not rise again and kill your people is to crush them every time Israel has compromised with Hamas and it has for 20 years longer than 20 years every time it's compromised with the Palestinians it's been rewarded by more violence every time it's cut a deal every time it's done anything less than crush the enemy more violence has erupted more Israelis have been killed and therefore it is the moral responsibility of the Israeli government to end what's called the cycle of violence and the only way to end the cycle of violence is to crush the enemy the moral justification of crushing the enemy is self defense the requirement to end violence to end war war is evil the only way to end war between good and evil is to crush evil there is no other way to end it no conflicts end out of a friendly peace agreement when they've been killing each other for decades World War II ended in a sense ended war in Europe at least until recently because Germany was crushed unequivocally crushed unequivocally crushed the only way to end the war with Hamas is to crush the Hamas and that means crush the Gaza Strip because Hamas is the government of the Gaza Strip you can't just bullet in Germany we didn't have bullets that said Nazi is only don't kill non-Nazis there's no difference between fighting the Nazis and fighting Hamas zero difference and to win the allied needed a flattened resident they needed flattened a lot of cities and a lot of people died and a lot of children died and it's sad and it's horrible the children have to die because their parents and the political leadership of their parents are aligned with the great evil because the kids are truly innocent they didn't choose this but that is life you suffer the consequence of the choices your parents make and all of us suffer the consequences of the choices that our political leaders make that's why you should care about politics that's why you need to be involved in politics because when you want it or not whether you like it or not you will suffer the consequence of your political leadership somebody says sad to see Iran acting so irrationally am I acting irrationally? I'm curious what did I say or do that is irrationally acting irrationally where is the irrationality we'll get to Iran something has to be done with Iran but that's not the local question what option is that? I'm curious so somebody has just come in to your country and they've killed a thousand young people innocent people people going to a music festival with no weapons they slaughtered them, they raped them they tortured them should there be a response? Israel should say sorry you know yes we understand you're upset at us what could we do to appease you is that the response that Israel should engage in? really? one of the interesting things just as an aside because I saw something here and it reminded me have you guys seen the treatment that Ben Shapiro is getting from the right? have you seen an interview with Vivek and Ben Shapiro criticized it and how the right has gone after Ben Shapiro all the anti-Semitism that's built up there is just being targeted at Ben Shapiro disgusting so the right strategy is to crush your enemy and how do you crush the enemy how do you destroy the enemy is really military, strategic or tactical decision compromise with evil what happens when you compromise with evil you give them validity you're saying yeah you have a legitimate point of view we're going to negotiate but there is no legitimate point of view that Hamas has there was no legitimate point of view that ISIS or al-Qaeda has there is no there's not some aspect of them that's reasonable and we can figure it out no they're evil through and through they're violent they're religious fanatics they throw homosexuals off of roofs they treat their own people barbarically there's no freedom of speech there's no freedom at all under Hamas' rule so what should we negotiate with them sit down in peace talks cease fire and let them just kill as many Israelis as possible and war would go I mean this is where Christianity is really evil the idea of turning the other cheek the idea of loving your enemy evil, evil ideology to the extent that it's taken seriously that is evil my responsibility is to my life and if you take a bunch if you're trying to kill me and you take a bunch of hostages to protect you and you're still shooting at me I might kill an innocent I'm not shooting back practice that in your lives I'm not somebody shooting at me it's sad that they've taken hostages some innocence that I'm gonna shoot back and if some innocence die it's on him because he started because he's the initiator of force he's evil and it's just mind-boggling how this is controversial this is hard for people to get I mean it takes a sudden it takes a real unique I don't know brain-dead attitude it takes a real unique moral confusion evasion to not see that this works exchange prisoners they don't want exchange prisoners every time we exchange Israel's exchange prisoners and usually it's a thousand to one those prisoners land up turning around and going to kill Israelis give them northern Sinai Egypt won't give them northern Sinai the Hamas over there Israel has a chance for with Muslim Brotherhood they don't need another radical Islamist, nutty fanatical, evil group within Egypt the solution, the real solution is for Palestinians to rise up and kill their leaders that's been the solution for 30 years it's what the Palestinians should have done but they keep endorsing their leaders they keep supporting their leaders they're recruited into their leaders' evil schemes they have to pay the price and I am the evil one for calling this I'm the evil one for seeing this for telling you about this can you explain the concept of individual losing their individual rights if they violate them if they lose it how do they lose it how much do they lose all rights for how long is it proportional to the crime I mean I think it's the crime but clearly they lose their rights this is why a police can arrest a criminal and use force against them once you initiate force you lose any claim to your own rights at least in proportion to the way you violated rights I mean that's how rights are set up rights are not some metaphysical thing inside of you the conditions are the conditions under which human beings can survive in a social context but the only way to enforce those rights is to use force against those who violate them so by violating rights you're basically saying yeah rights don't matter I don't recognize them and therefore nobody has any commitment to recognize yours how much you know how long of a sentence how much force can be used against you depends on the crime depends on when you resist depends on a lot of things and that's why you need a legal system and you need real thought into how to use retaliatory force so rights are not a part of you that you lose they're a moral principle that does not apply to you anymore once you violate rights you don't have yeah you don't have the right to live your life based on your own mind in pursuit of your own values because you have forfeited that by using force on somebody else by violating somebody else you've acknowledged your dismissal of the concept by doing so you eviscerate your own rights what is the right philosophical attitude towards the concept of revenge I don't know I have a feeling that different objectives would have a different view here but I think if you understand revenge as evil needs to suffer for its evil then I'm all for revenge and people who commit murder should you know potentially lose your life usually life but certainly be incarcerated for a long long time if that's revenge then I'm for revenge justice in a sense requires retribution in a sense is revenge now what you don't want in a civilized society is people as individuals going out there and without an objective process without an objective standard seeking revenge that's what anarchy leads to this idea that different police forces individuals will protect their own rights that is an abandonment of objectivity and basically justice being replaced by revenge and by complete rejection of any kind of objective reality okay final question on this one and then I'll take some of your questions we have a lot of those can you explain why force is the ultimate evil why can't you negotiate with a bully well you can't negotiate force is the ultimate evil because human life requires your ability human life requires your ability to think and to act based on those thoughts in pursuit of your values that's human life requires that it requires thinking and acting what force does it then negates both it places you under the constraint of somebody else's values you have to do what they say forces a means of disrupting your mind and disrupting your actions it's a means of subjugating you to somebody else's judgment your judgment no longer matters and there's no greater evil than eliminating the individual's ability to judge and act for himself and the reason you can negotiate because there's nothing to negotiate about okay so you can only force me to do half can only kill half my kids and all of them what is what is there to negotiate with a bully he wants control over something he has no right to he wants control over your life over your mind and I mean it would be immoral for you to give him control over half of your mind half of the time some of the time so what is the negotiation the only options is for you to take action to stop the bully if the bully to take action to stop himself that's it he has to stop anywhere the other he needs to be stopped there's nothing else force kills one's ability to think it kills reason it kills your ability to make judgments for yourself it kills the ability for you to pursue to identify and pursue your own values alright yeah I mean in this context well anyway we'll get to that in a minute okay the other questions I'll see if I have time for later but we've got a lot of questions here okay Remo sent so let me take these three questions how do you respond when people that are against Israel say what about the displacement of Palestinians by Zionist militias during the period of the Nakba that already happened before the 1948 war yes but the period of the Nakba was the initiation of force was again unilateral it was the Palestinians who initiated force and in defending themselves Jews kicked Palestinians off of their land because they were using that land to attack the Jews it's also true that many many many most of the Palestinians who left left because they were afraid left because Arab countries told them to leave that in when they invaded that they will destroy the Jews and bring them all back but the context of the Nakba is the dedication of the Palestinian people and the Arab world to destroy and murder every single Jew in Palestine Jews were defending themselves in defending themselves that they kick out some Palestinians in defending themselves that they kill some innocents yes that's the end force the blood is on the Palestinians the blood is on the Arab countries it is their responsibility it's from beginning to end it is their responsibility again if you're defending yourself somebody's coming at you with a gun and shooting at you what are you supposed to do just say whoops I don't want to hurt their property rights I don't want to kick them off their land you know I don't want to hurt them in any way I mean you have to really lack self-esteem and valuing of your own life to have that kind of perspective on self-defense I'm going to care more about my enemy than myself I'm going to care more about his rights than me more about his children than mine and you can say I'm biased but show me the history book that suggests otherwise I'll take you on in the history and this is the thing 99% of these libertarians know nothing about the history I'll take you back to the late 19th century when Jews came to Palestine and bought land I'll take you back to the first Arab riots against Jews I think it was 1917 and then 1920 something and then 1938 and then 19 and then 1947 a partition plan two states a two state solution you'd think the Palestinians would jump on the opportunity Israelis dancing a street the night the UN votes on two state solution the next day the Palestinians start shooting they reject the two state solution completely and what is their solution? violence, violence, violence it's all their leadership is ever known it's all their leadership is ever advocated for and to respond to their violence with I'll just give them what they want I'll just pretend second question respond when people are against Israel say what about the acts committed by the Zionist movement like the Haganah for example Deir Yassin again this is during the War of Independence I mean during the War of Independence because it was all part of that in the late 1940s and yes were there circumstances in which innocents died yes and you can even say were there certain circumstances on occasions where where innocents were killed gratuitously I'm sure they were I'm not going to deny that they were who started and then do you really want to match up atrocities for every Deir Yassin there were at least 10 massacres of Jews committed by Palestinians did you really want to do a numbers game on this and the Palestinians started it's a war they initiated look for all of you wondering I'm not debating Dave Smith Dave Smith is not worthy of debating he is an ignoramus his moral relativism is disgusting and I will not debate him so it's not going to happen so you can argue and you can call me a coward I don't really care I've you know it doesn't matter to me one way or the other but I will not debate Dave Smith on an issue that he knows zero about he is too ignorant to be wrong on this he is ignorant and dumb about it he has no conception of morality and he has no conception of history or current events what's going on in the ground I don't debate people like that what should Israel's policy regarding sediments in the West Bank be I mean that's a much more complicated question because sediments need is much worse than Yonchazzoni he's a thousand times worse than Yonchazzoni I'll take Yonchazzoni over Dave Smith any time any time God this is a more complex issue because there's no question with regard to the sediments Israel has indeed violated the rights of Palestinians now nowhere near as much as the Palestinians violate the rights of Palestinians but it has to the extent that sediments and the original sediments were like this Israelis bought land for the Palestinians to settle there then that's completely legit but then what used to happen was every time an Israeli would buy land from a Palestinian that Palestinians, other Palestinians would kill him or kill his family in retaliation for the fact that he sold land to his Jew so Palestinians started not being willing to sell land not that is wrong I'm all against now sediments that were established on land that doesn't belong to anybody i.e. owned by the Jordanian government before doesn't own by anybody so why not it's settled by people and by the way the whole list of sediments at least used to be again it's become it's become so associated with a religious right in Israel it's horrible it used to be then when Israelis settled in the West Bank they brought jobs they created an industry Palestinians worked for them I mean this was a good thing why is it a bad thing if Jews settle among you I mean this is why in the end the solution the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a one state solution not a two state solution and in a one state solution people live where they want everybody's rights are protected and they work where they want and they move where they want and that ultimately in the very long term has to be the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian issue but why is it why is it wrong for Jews to settle among Arabs any more than Arabs settling among Jews I mean you drive around Israel and the Arab settlements all over the place now you could argue they were there first but they haven't been kicked out they haven't been ethnically cleansed supposedly in this what they call apartheid state I mean it's just it's just nutty so why can't you have settlements what's wrong with settlements alright let's see West the more uncertainty I see and people reminds me of how valuable objectivism has been to my life it is such an important tool to clarify thinking thank you West I think that's absolutely right the objectivism really clarifies these issues and makes them real and improves one thinking about it Mike says thanks Iran for your defense of Israel and condemnation of the evil they are facing thank you Mike I appreciate the support Svika says give Gaza the Dresden treatment that's Israel's moral obligation I agree I think that it's this idea that what they're doing right now is primarily to well it's to appease their own left and it's to appease the international community but the idea that it's inappropriate to to carpet bomb is just wrong in self defense sometimes that's what's required alright Shazbot wants me to talk about to review Star Trek The Wrath of Khan if I remember right that's the best Star Trek movie so I haven't watched that in a long time so I'm looking forward to that let me just copy paste that alright I'll copy paste it into the right place later thank you Shazbot really appreciate the support alright let's take these $20 questions one by one Andrew says people are still killing over make believe is that proof of Khan's success more broadly how do you view the philosophical cause of this event well the philosophical cause of this event is is on not being willing on the one hand is on not being willing to declare evil as evil is on not being willing to fight in self defense appeasing its enemies now what are the origins of that origins of that are certainly Kantian that creates kind of the skepticism the moral uncertainty right but everything today the woke the postmodernism but fundamentally it's altruism it's altruism that comes from Christianity and entered into Israel through Christianity I have another question I forgot from the other list that I need to get to that is entered into Jewish thought through Christianity it's the whole love thy neighbor to another cheek altruism and it's so it's Kant it's Christianity it's more subjectivism it's the inability to be objective and to be rational and to be selfish self interested I mean the morality of war proper morality requires you to have a proper morality of egoism and without a proper morality of egoism you can't really I mean you might have an implicit understanding of what's required in one I think America did in World War II because it had a certain self esteem and it got this sense of individualism and self esteem I think from the founding from the enlightenment but it didn't have an explicit way to defend itself and that's why all of that has been eroded and today altruism dominates the aspect of our lives the aspect of our politics the aspect of government action including government action in self defense really egoistic thing so the origins the philosophical origins of this are in altruism I asked do you think the IDF has was weakened philosophically in morality of so-called yes of course and you could see this starting in suddenly in the mid 1980s when the more confidence the altruism you have to negotiate you have to place the lives of the innocence of your enemy above the lives of your own people you saw that I think Israel made a huge mistake in the 1982 war by staying in Lebanon but as the stay in Lebanon became longer Israel became weaker less committed less morally certain the IDF is basically being influenced by the same books that West Point has been influenced by Just War Theory by Michael Walter is a horrific book basically integrating altruism into war so Reed Walter basically takes Just War Theory that goes back to Augustine and Augustine Catholic Christian tradition and it secularized it and brought it into the American military and the same thing has happened in the IDF that's what they study they study Just War Theory they study wars and engagement tie the hands of your soldiers up and you saw that in the various wars in Lebanon versus Hezbollah in the 1990s and 2000s you saw that in the various dealings with the Palestinian Authority where in response to violence Israel started using rubber bullets and that was the first real indication of Israel's weakness and if you really want to understand how weak Israel is philosophically I've got a talk you can find it online I think audio only called the rise and decline of the state of Israel that I gave in 1999 or 2000 and it's all there the Kantian roots of Israeli altruism the Kantian roots of Israeli weakness and why Israel you know does not defend itself anymore does not defend itself anymore so it's and by the way there's a big difference between what good guys do and what bad guys do the the evil that the bad guys inflict the inflict as initiation of force that is out and out evil so whether they kill one person or whether they flatten the city it's evil in defending yourself you have to do what you have to do and it's not evil it is right it is good and I know I know this is a hard concept because egoism is hard this is exactly where the rubber hits the road with egoism and altruism is dominant even among so called free market advocates altruism is dominant and you can see it when it comes to war you can see it when it comes to war so yes I think the IDF has weakened philosophically it's become more Kantian and I go into a great deal of detail with regard to Israel's weakness and Kantian's influence I mean the founders of the first university in Israel were all post neo-kantians Kant had a profound impact on Israeli politics and ultimately in Israeli military and again just war theory is taught in Israel in Israeli military and as a consequence Israel's been weakened all the wars that it's been fought to date and I predict they're still weakened you can see it every day still no land invasion Gaza is still mostly standing in a flat and not in any kind of degree justified if Israel wants to win and the reality is that Israel is going to go in with land forces pretty much before they do enough to flatten again because of fear of civilian casualties they're going to sacrifice their own troops they're going to sacrifice their own soldiers in order to protect enemy civilians that is altruism that is weakness philosophical weakness on the part the idea from the part of Israel all right their view of international policies has always deterred me from the label libertarian, good somehow always managing to side with the bad guys absolutely Russia, Ukraine, 9-11 this furthermore I'm of the opinion that Gaza must be destroyed, good and I agree and really I'm hoping that there is a mass exodus right now from the libertarian party I'm hoping, I don't know that that's happening, I have no idea I'm getting a lot of emails and a lot of private messages on Twitter saying people are leaving the libertarian party and I hope it continues and it would be great if this issue really becomes the issue on which people like Dave Smith and others fall on their sword and self destruct Daniel, I don't think I've been depressed from the news cycle seeing the relatively widespread apologies for mass murder and the Palestinian crown any optimism, words of encouragement appreciated, yeah you saw the same thing after 9-11 I mean it really is horrific it really is disgusting and look this is all a consequence of how we dealt with 9-11 this is all a consequence of the West's weakness in response to 9-11 and primarily the fact that after 9-11 we refused to name the enemy jihadism, islamic totalitarianism islamic something islamo-fascism, Bush used that term for a week as a consequence the islamists quietly have just gotten stronger Hamas, Hezbollah we had a period of ISIS getting stronger and then Wicca but ISIS in Europe all the islamists who should have been demoralized completely by the West complete annihilation of the islamist ideology just kept it under cap and sustained itself but then when you look at all these demonstrations that are pro Hamas, how many of them are Europeans how many of them are non-Arab whites Europeans really horrific so yeah I mean this is the West's fault the West's inability and I have no words of encouragement at the end of the day other than to say yes this evil is around us it comes out when acts like this happen and it becomes evident and everybody can see it but it's there constantly and I'll say this this won't make you feel any better it'll make you feel worse it's our fault for not going to war against them it's our fault for not crushing them after 9-11 it's our fault for waiting for them to be reignited you know and reborn and constantly by another movement that seeks the headlines through brutality and ugliness I mean can you imagine after the scenes, the videos that we saw of the the slaughter the murder people walking around with you know proud of these posters of these people gliding in for slaughter, to kill and they're proud of I mean it gives you a sense of the inhumanity and total barbarism of so many in the Islamic world and so many of their supporters and people march for an evil cause people say that's a disgrace but isn't it really a failure of education and poor reflection on their own culture in the West we should all be disgusted by the state of education yes it's the state of education but it's also the state of our politics the fact that the West had an opportunity to deal with this evil was confronted directly with this evil both you know in the attack on 9-11 and then all the terrorist attacks in Europe after 9-11 and the West chose to do basically nothing to occupy Afghanistan and bring the democracy and to try to occupy Iraq and bring them democracy rather than going after the people and the ideology and the ideas that made all this possible you know think about you know what Lennepikov wrote after 9-11 think about what he warned of for years on his radio show and this is the reality we're getting the reality he saw coming Q.T. Santos isn't there an alternative to eliminate Hamas without having to kill innocent children I'm open to suggestions isn't Israel trying to resolve a decades long problem in a single week the reaction understandably seems more emotional than rational no it's completely rational the problem is that Israel didn't do this in past decades this has always been the only solution it's to eliminate Hamas and it was always going to involve innocents dying there is no other solution to it there is no other way to do it it should have been done 20 years ago by waiting it means more innocents are going to have to die but you I'm sure objected back then well not you particularly but people objected back then the longer you wait the harder it'll be the longer you wait the stronger your enemy will be the longer you wait more innocents will die the longer you wait more children will die the blood of the children is those who demanded we wait waiting will always increase the casualties always and there is no there is no way to get this right there's no way to get this right that is right in a sense of sorry there is no way to do this without killing innocents I mean everybody is open to that how do you do there is just no practical way we live in reality we don't live in a fantasy we live in reality in reality the only way to do it is to crush him and that involves the death of some innocents you want to minimize it but some innocents will die Alexander would you consider reviving some of your older talks in video form with some presentation material associated for example the history of the Middle East series your morality of war talks thanks for all of your work I mean I certainly would not do the history of the Middle East it's too much work it took me a lot of effort a lot of time the same with the history of Islamism of the radical Islamic movement too much work but at the same time I don't think I could get motivated to resurrect that effort and to do it again and I would morality of war I would consider redoing and I might redo it in one way or the other if the circumstances arise if I invited to give a talk about the morality of war I will do it so I have to up to now but the advantage there is video and I'm not sure if video is that valuable people listen to podcasts all the time I've got a number of versions of my morality of war talk available audio only by the way there's a video of me from 2003 you guys should watch it 2003 during the Second Intifada I'm talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the pressure the Bush administration is putting in Israel to negotiate God was I prophetic in that video you should watch it it's quite powerful by the way it's on c-span in those days c-span would come to my talks and tape them no more but in those days they would do that but you should watch that look for that Iran book Israel c-span I tweeted it on twitter but it's it's a really good talk and it's super predictive of exactly what would happen if Israel stayed weak and continued to compromise with terrorists and it's exactly what happened and it's exactly where we are today so I look I've been I've been talking about this writing about this studying this doing courses on this doing all seminars on this for over 20 years or 25 years like it or not I know my stuff should Israel use it to nukes if they start a multi-front seed including Hamas-Rizballah, Lebanon, Syria and Iran is it moral or there's an existential there's an existential threat from Iran so there's no reason to use nukes on Hamas-Rizballah, Lebanon, Syria partially because all those entities are too close to Israel to use nukes safely and avoid fallout on Israel Iran is a different story Iran there might be reason to use nukes on and I certainly wouldn't rule it out using nukes on Iran and somebody asked me this question but look there's no way for Israel to win this ultimately without taking on the Iranians it doesn't have to do much I would bomb their I said I'd bomb their oil facilities it turns out to be there's one really major place where they load up oil to ships for export where they get all their revenue they don't do any refining of oil in Iran so they have to export all their oil blow that up turn that into smithereens and then blow up all their nuclear facilities and blow up and just attack from the air every single one of their military bases and just turn it as much into dust as possible and then you can do more than that if it's necessary but that would be a good beginning but you can't deal with the situation in the Middle East until you brought down the Iranian regime and the Iranian regime has to be brought down whether it's Israel, whether it's the United States the Iranian regime must be brought down Lee, hi Iran is news reporting on the is without the art what the BBC refers to as impartiality a virtuous goal yes I mean in terms of the actual reporting it should be and then there's commentary that gives you the art so it should be impartial I mean the BBC is a bit of a joke because the BBC is the least impartial of all the news shows particularly when it comes to Israel they are obscenely anti-Israel and always have been but yes I think news reporting should be impartial because there's commentary and therefore has a point of view Alex do you think with all the evil with all the evil there was also an opportunity to wake up and rediscover the values of the West do you think this happened with Ukraine and might happen with Israel I think it definitely happened with 9-11 but then it all fizzled away I mean the reality is that without a systematic philosophical change people are now going to rediscover the West and I'm going to rediscover the West at its best we need real philosophical change we need to replace altruism with egoism mysticism with reason there are no shortcuts so yes there will be this a little bit of remembering who we are a little bit of they are the enemy and the enemy is barbarism and the barbaric enemy is barbarism but how long will it last how deep does it go I worry it's shallow it doesn't go very deep and we forget it very very quickly Tony for us Americans who have now given up the libertarian party after having previously rejected both the democrats and republicans where do we turn to now I mean it's good that you've given up a libertarian party it's good that you gave up on the republicans and the democrats because they deserved it and I hope many many many people give up on the libertarian party I think that what you should go is to the realization that it's much too soon for politics that political activism it's just not the time for it there is it's impossible to gain anything it requires real compromise it requires creating big tense with people, you the spies who undermine you, undercut you and ultimately stab you in the back and really the time now and it has been for the last 50 years is for education it's for speaking up it's issue by issue defending individual rights it's for being a voice for reason a voice for individualism and not necessarily being affiliated with any political party they're all crap but it's way too soon for politics now is the time to talk to educate, to advocate to be an advocate, to be an activist that's what the time is now and I'd say give up on politics in that sense of being affiliated with a party you can still find specific candidates that you like, they might be Democrats they might be Libertarians and particular issues, I doubt they're Libertarians but they might be and just deal with particular issues with them, but don't deal with a party co-party, reject political parties for right now because none of them are good and none of them are going to be good for a long time until we do a better job educating people about what's good Mark says thanks for being one of the sadly few sane moral voices especially now, but always thank you Mark, we really appreciate that Adam, after Israel's total victory in 1967 why didn't Israel follow the successful example of how the U.S. dealt with impure Shinto Japan after its victory in World War II well, look, you cannot you cannot extrapolate from the United States military force in all of human history to a small country like Israel Israel did not have the capacity to occupy Egypt occupy Jordan and occupy Syria whether there was at least one objectivist at some point advocated for that kind of occupation Israel is in not position to to do any of that it doesn't have the manpower, it doesn't have the resources it can sustain it for very long economically financially it cannot bring that kind of defeat to its enemy it's too small and when you think about foreign policy and you think about military policy you have to consider the particular country you're involved in, the foreign policy of the United States cannot be the same foreign policy as Israel because you have to look at the strength, the ability to execute, the ability to to not just threaten, not just win here or there, but to actually work through whatever it is that needs working through so Israel couldn't achieve total victory it just didn't have the capacity it can when it comes to Palestinians it cannot when it comes to Arab world now I think that if it achieves total victory vis-à-vis the Palestinians then I think the Arab world will fall into place I think the Arab world will learn its lesson that they won't want to mess with Israel Israel will achieve peace through strength it will not achieve peace through weakness and the weaker Israel is the weaker the peace that it attains is Speiman 3000 unrelated but who would you say are the leading voices in expanding on the politics of objectivism VOS virtue of selfishness says that the specifics of a voluntary society should be left to political scientists so where are they I mean there are I mean I think you see material coming out of the institute constantly which relates to exactly this whether it's Ben's work on abortion whether it's Ankar's work on a variety of different topics whether it's Elon's really important work on foreign policy expanding on the politics of objectivism my work on current events and analyzing them and providing solutions to Augustine's work on immigration all of those are applications of the politics of objectivism and expanding them into new fields and there will be more and more and more of that as we have more and more intellectuals applications whether you agree with it or not on immigration, on gun rights and other things and of course Lennard's years of commentary on 9-11, on foreign policy and other domestic issues have all expanded the policies and books for example free speech we've done a lot of work on free speech written a lot about free speech books about free speech and then the philosophical books if you look at Greg Salomieri's companion and Alan Godhouse's companion to Ayn Rand and then there's a book published by University of Pittsburgh's Press on a philosophical level on the objectives politics which expands as an essay there by Darrell White on a great essay on why force is evil and what is it that force exactly does and there's an excellent essay by Greg Salomieri that one of the things he does is explains the need for why government isn't necessarily good and the evil of anarchy of so-called anarcho-capitalist there's a ton of this kind of work out there a ton of it and some of it is unfortunately in books that are hard to access because they're very expensive university press type books but a lot of it is on the pages of the Ayn Rand Institute website and if you subscribe and you're a donor you would get a lot of that information Dennis, do you think expressing support for terrorist organizations should be illegal? well it depends if you're just expressing it yes I think it should be I think it should be legal to express support once you start funding it recruiting for it acting in a way that is supportive materially, physically supportive of them that should be illegal that should be aiding and abetting the enemy and you should go to jail for that Frank says should Israel emphasize consideration of the Ghazan population surrender to undermine Hamas' suicidal totalitarianism yeah I mean Ghazans who want to surrender I think would be accepted if Ghazans start marching towards Israel with their hands up hands behind their back they'll be frisks and everything and my guess is that Israel will set up refugee camps on the Israeli side and take care of them Ghazans are welcome to surrender although if they're found to participate in the massacre they should be prosecuted if they're found to have celebrated the capture of the Israelis and the Israeli massacre they should be prosecuted but if they're truly innocent and they have no role in any of this and no role in what Hamas has done and they've never supported Israel will accept them and host them until this thing is over so Israel should emphasize that Palestinians are welcome to surrender to its troops and I don't think Palestinians would because they become traitors in the eyes of Hamas and the Palestinians don't believe the Israelis are going to destroy Hamas so they're worried about that their own people will kill them for surrendering you know notice right now that Israel is encouraging civilians to go south so that they don't die and Hamas is telling them not to go so that they will die Hamas wants its own people to die I mean who is more interested in civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip Israel or Hamas clearly Hamas they want to use it as as propaganda against Israel but they're quite willing to have their own children and they're quite willing to have their own people killed and murdered killed by the Israelis murdered by them really by the Hamas in order to use them for propaganda and there's good reason to believe that this explosion on the road where the Palestinians were evacuating south was an explosion that was done by Hamas to stop them because they don't want them to evacuate now think about that Hamas does not want its own people to get out of the line of fire think about how evil that is and what that requires and if you don't believe that's true then you are clueless about Hamas you're clueless about the Middle East you're clueless about the situation right there there's some crazy stuff going on in my chat people pretending to be Lindsey Graham and Dan Crenshaw on there you know talking stuff bizarre alright we got a bunch of two five and ten dollar questions thank you for all the support by the way you guys have been just amazing this last week so thank you thank you thank you I really take it hard this is a great counter to all the hostility I encounter constantly on Twitter maybe I should just stop now I like poking them poking the nest and seeing what happens Daniel says it really seems venture pure has been influenced by you in regards to foreign policy and the morality of war I wouldn't be surprised he was influenced by me in the old days by my views on capitalism I would not be surprised if he was also as it has been also influenced by my positions on foreign policy you know who's this massive disappointment Charlie Cook who is again taking a very weak position on the Israel and you know used to be very friendly to its objective friendly time ran and it's turned into this old white just horrible compromising sell out just horrific you know new white kind of personality David says he likes it when I poke them too yeah I mean it's really cool to poke them and see how they all go apoplectic it's kind of fun and look the reality is that Twitter is not a place to have rational arguments it's not like you have to have an rational argument you have to do is poke and see what happens Charlie Cook is just maybe he's not alt-right but he's just become a clown show of anti-capitalism anti-freedom and anti-west he's become a mega brainless mega type Dean says hey Iran writing from Israel here a lot of people that I see on social media are distinguishing between Hamas and the free Palestinian movement is it right to blame them as apologists to terror absolutely there's no free Palestinian movement that is innocent here the free Palestinian movement is an anti-Israeli movement it's anti-Israeli self-defense it's anti-Israeli to to have a free country it's an anti-west anti-Israeli anti-freedom anti-capitalist movement free Palestine for whom the Palestinians don't want freedom they just want to be oppressed by a Palestinian Israel has offered them freedom over and over and over again and just like in Gaza they have rejected it in favor of violence so why would anybody be for freedom the only thing to be for is an Israeli victory and indeed the best thing for Palestinians who value their freedom is Israeli victory the only way Palestine will be free in the proper sense of individual liberty is if Israel wins Tony talks back I have divorced myself from the libertarian party thank you and I have you to thank for it Israel must triumph over Israel I'm not Jewish but I stand with their people thank you Tony I really appreciate it and I am glad you divorced them and again my call out to everybody divorce these people get out of the libertarian party make this the end of a libertarian party it's been taken over by the NAC cases but it was never that great but it was being taken over by the NAC case and make them pay I found it interesting that the Walshee Journal actually had an op-ed defending Israel from Walter Block one of the worst anarchist libertarians out there and he's written a book I guess on a classical liberal defense of Israel I think he's awful and his books about libertarianism in the past and anarchy in the past will be terrible but even within the libertarian anarchist nuts you know this issue of Israel is I guess even for them not click cut Rust Inge from Australia no question just keep them just keep Adam you're on absolutely cheers mate thank you Rust Inge I appreciate the support all the way from Australia is Trump or Biden more to blame for Hamas attack? I don't think either one of them is to blame for Hamas attack I mean directly and the list of presidents to blame I mean you want to play the president of the United States game of blaming for Hamas attack I would say Reagan for saving us of our fight in 1983 and allowing him safe passage out of Beirut when Israel should have and could have killed him that set in motion the whole modern Palestinian movement the whole nihilistic you know Islamic nationalist and Islamic the whole trajectory of the Islamic movement was set and the conflict the way it's evolved was set by that decision by Ronald Reagan to save Yasir Al-Fatibat which is one of the worst decisions foreign policy wise and American president ever made and it basically gave the West Bank and Gaza only one leader Yasir Al-Fat who was one of the most corrupt horrific authoritarian but just I mean he died with like half a billion dollars in the bank I mean in his personal account one of the most corrupt disgusting awful human beings ever he led the Palestinians and in a sense Reagan sanctioned that and Israel ended up sanctioning it with the Oslo Accords another set of treaties so you can go back to the Oslo Accords you can go back to the American appeasement of the Palestinians under Clinton, under Bush Bush saving Al-Fat's life several times preventing Israel from doing what it's necessary to defend itself during the Second Intifada not fighting Islamists in 1911 so Bush is much more responsible than Trump or Biden but Trump and Biden are both partially responsible absolutely because they continued that tradition Enric says it looks like the Overton window has moved to the elimination of Israel with the wide acceptance of decolonization how to counter and make the idea untenable well I mean yes it's always been there certainly it's become more legitimate on the left recently but that whole agenda of the left the agenda of woke of decolonization of intersectionality of identitarianism of critical race theory it's all connected it's all the same and that ideology needs to be thoroughly uncompromisingly fought and rejected and eviscerated it needs to be undone it needs to be attacked I'm actually reading right now um what's his name Yasha Monks who's left of Sena Sena lefts attack on identitarianism and he's basically CRT and everything around it and he's connecting it to it's intellectual roots and it's fascinating really interesting book and I'd rather read his book on it than one of the right wing republican types book because it's interesting to me to see how a leftist attacks his left and yes this ideology this philosophy needs to be eviscerated but partially it's in the name of what what replaces it and that you know I fear that what replaces it is a kind of a white that is fascist but we as objectivists we're attacking it constantly and need to continue to attack it and everybody else needs to attack it as we also attack the fascists but it's very difficult to have hope given given Alexander Scott says the Israelis are pulling their punches they are making it much harder on themselves by holding back so much absolutely and to the extent of self sacrifice to the extent that Israelis are going to die Israelis are going to die and Israel is holding its punches it's holding back John says hi Iran thanks for all you do how do you teach children about atrocities perpetrated by human beings without corrupting their view of man as a rational being with whom they can engage positively throughout their lives I mean I I wouldn't depending on their age pre-teens they should be exposed to this or if they are exposed to it they should be exposed to it in very simplistic terms there are bad guys out there bad guys who kill they kill innocent civilians they kill children they kill don't watch it don't let them watch the videos don't let them see the pictures I mean nobody should be exposed to that but the good guys are winning at the end the bad guys I mean this is the thing to emphasize to children the bad guys are impotent the bad guys cannot succeed unless people on the side of the good compromise with them appease them give them so evil depends on the good evil is dependent it has no independent existence it cannot survive it cannot feed itself it cannot do anything evil is dependent on the productive it's dependent on the good so the thing to teach them teach them it's in the context of bullies in school you cannot give into bullies because they feed off of being given into they feed off of the good's weakness you have to stand up to them or call a teacher or call a parent somebody has to stand up to the bully otherwise they will destroy your life and I think that's the context but most people are not bullies most people are not bad look around your class there might be a bully or two and sometimes people will go along with the bullies and that's terrible but most people don't most people stand up to them the people who stand up to them or the people who don't go along with them those are the people who are worth investing and being friends with having a relationship with avoid the bullies and the people who go along with the bullies ignore them I don't think it is but was there any concern about the appearance of a conflict with ARI advertising on the chairman's for profit channel no, but so what happens here is that any compensation I get from ARI any advertising I do for ARI is reviewed by a committee of independent directors at the INREN Institute to make sure that there is no conflict to make sure that I'm not and believe me I'm not getting an exobitant amount and so we deal with potential conflict of interests all the time and we have a committee of independent directors the directors are not beholded to the institute for any income make these kind of decisions and approve any kind of contract it is important to know that ARI advertising on my channel does not constitute agreement either constitute a sanction obviously a sanction but it doesn't constitute agreement I'm not speaking for the institute so I might say stuff that the institute might disagree with but it is a sanction of the showers being basically consistent but you know we take appearances of conflict of interest seriously and we deal with it Andrew do the Trump indictments worry you at all that America is moving in the direction of charging people criminally based on political motivation do that as right wing propaganda I I don't view it as right wing propaganda in the sense that I think it happens and I think it's happened all the time I go back to Giuliani prosecuting people for purely political reasons not prosecuting his political opponents but prosecuting people in order to get the headlines in order to get political credibility in order to appease the enemies of the people he was prosecuting so that they would fund his campaigns and I think politics has driven a lot of prosecutions in America and I think that's sad now what's unique about what the right is arguing is that Trump is being prosecuted because he's a Republican because he's a threat to Democrats and Democrats are doing it and there's probably some truth to that other than the fact that I think that there is in all these cases look there is a real basis to prosecute him he clearly violated the law now he's appealed to Supreme Court because of presidential immunity we'll see if that holds but maybe it holds I don't know but no I mean the tragedy here is that the Republicans refused to enact the rule of law and impeaching him the second time they should have clearly impeached him over January 6th and the fact that they didn't impeach him over January 6th left it to the Justice Department to deal with Trump over real criminal behavior around the elections I mean Trump should have been so it's the I blame it all on Republicans this is all the Republicans fault all the Republicans fault that they didn't deal with Trump but what's the probability that he didn't do the things he's accused of being doing even the one in New York I mean there's a problem there of how bad is it but did he not pay the porn star hush money he clearly paid the porn star hush money now whether you can link that to campaign finance and all that that's a different story but did he or did not pay the hush money of course he did did he or did not hold and hide and prevent the government from taking classified documents that that he had no right to hold on to did he not hide them and lie to the FBI and all that of course he did did he not try to overturn the election in Georgia of course he did we know this so now you can argue is it criminal is it something you should prosecute him for okay but he did all these things so it's not completely political Jason and again if Republicans have done their job none of this would be happening how easy would it be for the peace for a peaceful person from Gaza willing to swear allegiance to Israel to get in prior to last week I mean there are some people I don't know probably not easy because Israel is very wary of increasing the population of Arabs within Israel when the Arabs turn on Israel so easily and so quickly but there are some people were persecuted by Hamas people who were you know who went after certain families within the Gaza Strip have found a home in Israel by the way there's some great videos online of of Israeli Arabs defending Israel and condemning Hamas and just giving you a perspective on what Israel is like from Israeli Arab I mean I don't think people understand I mean I'm not saying Israel is perfect Israel is far from perfect and certainly its treatment of Arabs is not being perfect but I mean the hospital my father used to look at as a doctor in Haifa half the doctors in that hospital this is a hospital in the third largest city in Israel one of the top medical centers in the world half the doctors at Haifa-Lambam hospital are Arabs I mean if there was apartheid how could that happen and they're treating Jews most of the patients are Jews like 70-80% I think those are the cases of the doctors in the hospital in north of Haifa which deals with the Galilee the major hospital for the Galilee are Arabs Arab doctors what a apartheid a bad condition I mean again I'm not saying it's perfect there are laws on the books that should be there there's discrimination when it comes to land and all of that but in comparison let's see people don't know this libertarians talking about Israel they have no clue they read what's his name books on foreign policy he's a biased ignoramus about foreign policy and they use his dictates as a bible and they think they know something about foreign policy because they read a few of his books but they really don't know they have no clue about what happens in Israel what happens in the Gaza Strip what happens in the West Bank what happens in Egypt what happens in Iran they certainly have no clue about Iran so I don't know Jason I don't know how easily my guess is not easy but the reality is that there were at least 10,000 maybe 20,000 Gazans every day until a week ago going into Israel to work that is Israel was providing them with jobs and they were working in Israel and then going back into Gaza Strip every evening there's evidence that some of those people of the people massacring civilians and children on last Saturday some of those people so it's very hard to vet when you're in a state of war it's very hard to vet if somebody comes from Germany during World War II and says I'm not a Nazi I promise how do you vet them that's the challenge Andrew thank you for your extreme clarity on this issue explaining their audience and emotions that both sides are suffering of course it's only going to get worse and again the more Israel waits to inflict the suffering that's inevitable to come the harder it's going to get for the West to accept it what was the purpose of bombing Dresden many people say the war was already over it was to completely crush the will of the Germans to fight I mean this was explicit by Churchill to eviscerate the will so it was to save lives on the Allied side yes the war was already won but the same as if it was Shimon Nagasaki but it's a question of how many of your troops are going to die and winning it again the responsibility of the Allied forces was the Allied forces it was not Germans that was the responsibility of their government and they governed by initiating force against the Allies you know Babish D forfeited the lives of their own citizens you know because the Allies were going to do whatever was necessary to win quickly and minimize their own casualties here's the formulation I have the only purpose of a government defending itself a war of self-defense is to win it as quickly as possible and with the least casualties on your side your responsibility is to protecting your side not their side the bad guys in the United States force people are going to die and it's on them and I'm not denying that they're innocent and I'm not denying they're individuals and I'm not denying it's sad but it's a reality reality is sometimes sad but war is hell war is hell there is no shortcuts there's no making war nice there's more making war pleasant there's just no way to get around the fact that war is hell is to make that hell suffered by the other side not by you and the other side means the people who live under the government that initiated force against you not to suggest all those people and not to suggest that they're collectively responsible it's not an issue of responsibility it's an issue of the fact that you have to protect yourself and in protecting yourself sometimes some of them must die that's the reality of war that's why war is hell but war should be avoided the other says is it a good idea for me to leave Israel until the wars end you know it might be I don't know how how much in danger you feel you are in depending on where you live I'm sure there are places that are safer so it's certainly an option but I don't think it's necessary and there is a certain aspect of you know if you want to continue living in Israel of providing moral support to the people who are actually going in there and in a sense defending your ability to live in that country so you know I would want to stay just to provide moral support to the people defending my ability to live in the country long term Justin why are terrorists not scared of BB he's tough, he's not he's one of the weakest, he's really really really really weak and he has been forever he's never been tough you show me one example where BB was tough on the Arabs they're just the terrorists he's never been tough, he's been a weakling and by the way I've been saying this for over 20 years and I've been fighting with other people about how weak since the late 1990s how weak BB is in confronting terrorists and in confronting he's always been weak indeed if BB wasn't weak what would have happened would have never happened BB wouldn't be tough in the past what happened on Saturday would have never happened draw your own conclusions from that how innocent is a civilian choose to live in Gaza well granted you don't choose to live in Gaza you know again most of the innocents forget about the adults, most of the innocents are children and they didn't choose to live in Gaza they live in Gaza and 50% of the population in Gaza is under 18 most of those not all of those most of those are truly innocent they were born there, what could they do so I don't deny the existence of innocence it's just I deny the ability to fight a war without them suffering there's just no way to do it and what that means is that you have to sacrifice your own people and that I reject Andrew says it's a good time to read Rand's essay collectivized rights the citizens of our country are responsible for their government and should face the consequence of the bad of the government's actions good Andrew thanks for reminding people it's in I'm pretty sure that's in capitalism that are known ideal, collectivized rights citizens of our country are responsible for their government's actions you are that's why it's so important to fight for better government Spiderman 3000 says thanks for consistently being a person to come to for a little sanity on this side you're on the passion is much appreciated for being emotional and therefore just as I said is Scott Horton a worthy expert in foreign policy no he is actually you know Scott is is all about misinformation so if you're getting wrong stuff it's not just that he's not a worthy expert he is a destructive force when it comes to foreign policy he is actually does harm to the cause of liberty and freedom in the world and he literally perpetuates myths and stuff that's made up he writes a lot of books and he is you know he's God to the to many libertarians don't fall for it don't fall for it David says I remember you saying a few years ago you thought there was a chance of Europe rounding up Muslims how close are we of that today I mean we're getting closer every time we get closer every time they go out into the streets that you're seeing the rise of kind of right wing borderline fascist movements in Europe who will have no tolerance no tolerance you're already seeing and you know Marcon is already banned protesting for there is no free speech in France sees banned any kind of expressions of pro Hamas but it's you know as the right wing rises in Europe the likelihood of camps in which Muslims are slaughtered increases the next genocide is likely Holocaust like event is likely to be against Muslims by the far right in Europe Paul Cohen says keep up the fight thank you Paul I will keep it up and thanks for all the support guys wow you guys are being incredibly generous international Marxism has been pro-Palestinians in the 60s oh this was some yesterday the last year I did international Marxism has been pro-Palestinians since the 1960s what should be made of these sympathizer networks and stopping them rose cross Christians I mean yeah and this is left generally is being pro-Palestinian of course now kind of the right and the new right are quite pro-Palestinian and what must be done is they need to be challenged philosophically they need to be challenged ideologically their Marxism, their wokeism their postmodernism needs to be challenged over and over and over again could you talk about occupying the way Israel is Israel is not occupying anybody's land Israel either Jews either bought this land and settled it and built it and created something often on own land there was just their swamps and other stuff and also Israel has won some wars and through those wars it has gained land that did not belong to either individuals who were killed or individuals who left it or individuals who or not individuals but states and it's every legitimacy for Israel to turn that over to people who will do something productive with that land that's not occupation Propa, why is it why is the far left so passionate about microaggressions in the West but you never hear a peep from them about Middle East executing gay people and having child marriages because they're you know, moral relativists and because they're multiculturalists and they believe that all cultures are equal but in their culture it's okay to do whatever this is the moral relativism the multiculturalism that says every culture is legitimate their culture is okay so yeah, I'm not a multiculturalist I like people from all different cultures but idea wise there's only one culture that is good and that is the culture of the Enlightenment or fundamentally the culture of the Enlightenment or the culture that the Enlightenment could have become if it had followed a more objective path Mark Thomas says Egypt's leaders belong to the Ashari sect also extreme I don't know Maximus X is Benny Mariser reliable so it's what you'll take on him people say he has a balanced view he's awful he is a postmodernist who rejects truth not the fact that his books some of the stuff he wrote in his books was made up he is part of the post-designist movement which is basically an application of postmodernism to Zionism he is not balanced at all at least he wasn't maybe I think he had a change of heart so maybe he's better today but somebody who wrote academic books and articles from a postmodern perspective and then suddenly changed his mind it's not somebody I trust to believe in when he was a postmodernist or after he rejected it Andrew one follow up historical philosophical cause of this even was the failure of the west to protect individual rights vis-a-vis private companies oil interest in the early 20th century yes I agree completely the West should have stood up to the nationalizing trend in the Arab world starting with Iran in the 1950s but also Saudi Arabia Egypt and the Suez Canal and so on Donateater thoughts on siege an Israel-Egyptian blocking escape from Gaza possibility that Hamas surrenders to avoid 2 million people starving what's the strategy I think the possibility of Hamas surrendering is zero they'd rather their people starve siege is it's about time I mean Israel's been accused of placing Gaza strip under siege providing them electricity, water, food and all this other stuff it doesn't provide them with materials that could be used to build tunnels and bombs shocking that Israel doesn't want to provide them with materials to kill Israelis but it's providing them with water and electricity now it doesn't after this attack good for Israel what is the strategy, the strategy I hope is to go in there and ultimately over the next few weeks find the entire Hamas infrastructure kill as many of the Hamas leadership and troops and underlings destroy all their tunnels every single one of them blow them up to smithereens destroy all the weapons they have and basically eviscerate the Hamas the military, political and I think spiritual wing of the Hamas now that's my strategy, I don't know if Israel likes to do this and then we'll figure out what you do with the Palestinians who are there, who are left but it's got to be thorough, systematic and brutal and yeah, Palestinians surrendered, that would be perfect the Hamas are there, but the probability of that is zero I found a website called hobby link model kits of Israeli tanks what tank did you serve in I served in a centurion this is just as the Merkava was being introduced and the M1 was brought into Israel but I was still in the old centurion tanks is it rational optimism about America's premises that our government's words have been unequivocally pro-Israel or Europe is hesitant only America is clearly standing by the right to self-defense yeah, but Europe has been much more positive than it has in the past so I'll give them credit for that and I think it is the American sense of life and the connection to 9-11 and a certain understanding of the political class that this is right it's rare that they come together but they do, but again it's the same thing after 9-11 they said a lot of tough words that they live up to it and we'll see if the Biden administration lives up to its rhetoric Dennis, when Hamas slaughters of a thousand people and you organize a celebration of that in the streets what is the legal-political relevance of that in your opinion let's see how legally you could stop that morally it should be condemned by everybody in government it should be condemned throughout I don't support demonstrations generally, I don't support the blocking of streets and having demonstrations for any cause I think all of them should be banned but including this but yeah, I mean it's people should take names and I'm glad to see some employers taking names for example of the Harvard students who signed the letters and there should be consequences on a personal level that is you should take names of the people participating in these demonstrations never hire them, never support them never hire them I mean I'm all for cancel culture I never was against cancel culture cancel evil cancel people who advocate for evil ideas absolutely kick them out of university we should be kicked out of the university you don't have a right to be in the university if you're a Nazi you don't have a right to be in the university if you're support of Hamas Adam Reed, will you invite Yasha Monk for an interview in your show I might, I don't think he'll accept but I might Frank, this which said is Iran's six billion dollars should be placed on hold and Iran's sued on behalf of Israeli victims of money, America's making itself useful yes, I think that should happen I think the Biden administration has already put the six billion on hold Iran is constantly being sued in American courts for its involvement in terrorism yeah, this should be a pool of money made available to the victims of Iranian support of Hamas absolutely, good idea alright, thank you everybody I mean, you guys showed a lot of support today and really since Saturday since this happened and the shows I've done I really, really appreciate it part of what makes these times tough is the extent of the irrationality out there in the world both on the good guy's side Israel's hesitancy, slowness to act not acting in full self-defense and then CNN and then the libertarians and the whole gamut of them it's great to know that there are people here watching the Iran Book Show who are supportive who get what I'm trying to do, get the message you get the ideas and that so many of you are willing to support me and what I do financially so thank you this is in a sense a real yeah, it's uplifting so I appreciate that I will be back tomorrow with this, we'll talk about history to kind of wrap it up and see what other angles we haven't yet covered and we'll try to cover those plus by then there might be some additional development I will see you all tomorrow bye everybody