Hello, my name is David Lewis. I'm coming to you from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I'm here today to talk about a project mapping the digital scholarly communications infrastructure. I'm speaking on behalf of my two colleagues, Mike Roy, the Dean of Libraries at Middlebury College and Catherine Skinner, the Executive Director at Education Copia, and this was the team that has been working on this project for the last couple of years. A little bit of background on where this project came from and how we got to where we are. It began with my little paper, the two and a half percent commitment and I circulated that to a number of my friends and colleagues and Mike Roy and I began a conversation and we decided that what we would be useful to do would to do a map of what the open scholarly infrastructure looked like. And we had an ambition of trying to create a map of that infrastructure that looked something like this map of the commercial infrastructure that Posada and Chen had put together. We were we were jealous of this accomplishment and we wanted to try to do something akin to this with open. We did a number of presentations and that led a couple of years ago to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to do a study of the digital scholarly infrastructure. This was not quite what we had in mind. We wanted to look both at infrastructure and content in an open environment, but the funding we got from Mellon. We've just looked at opens just looked at infrastructure and we looked at both the open infrastructure and the proprietary infrastructure. Both of which were provided on occasion by both commercial firms and not for profits. So this is the team that we put together shortly after we got the grant we brought in Catherine Skinner as a core member of the team. We put together a really nice and very talented advisory committee that we consulted with and a variety of points along with the project and the survey and visual visualization work that I'll talk about a little bit later was largely done by Nathan Brown and his firm true bearing. So in the beginning it's important to talk about what we mean by infrastructure. And this is a little bit tricky and in some ways about the way we thought about it in general was it was the tools services and systems that underpin scholarly communications. There are a couple of dimensions of this that that become a little bit tricky. There is a gray area between content that lives on a particular system and the system itself, and in many cases that's really hard to disentangle that. So things like hotty trust or archive. We tended to include some of those when they were very large and general. We also didn't look at discipline discipline specific infrastructure, but rather the things we included needed to have some general application across disciplines. And we looked at communications what that meant and we defined that very broadly from discovery to access to preservation. But it was not the things and tools that were used to create scholarship. So it's the communication of scholarship broadly defined, not the creation of scholarship so we then and also there's some gray area there as well. Tools used to write and bring data into articles we tended to include those. But if it was a data manipulation tool or digital humanities tool we left those out. We tried to create a higher a description of the different types of tools. And this is the one that we mostly worked with but this kind of categorization really needs some work and it's one of the things we'll recommend at the end but we started with researcher tools there's some writing tools collaboration tools. Repositories pre print servers leading into a variety of publishing tools both for monographs and journals. The whole discovery piece. Evaluation and assessments of various sorts preservation, and then there are a series of what we've called general services that overlay the whole system so things like orchid or. Things of that sort that make it all possible are also included. So the project had six goals, but the first of which was to create a census of the infrastructure providers, we, we thought it was very important to try to understand who was out there, what they were doing and how they all fit together in the to the best of our ability. So we tried to do a survey of that we called that the census of. So that was the first piece. The second piece had to do was a literature view we looked very diligently and across the web and and harvested a lot of literature about a variety of general issues and also about specific projects. In order to, and both of those look at the provider side. We also did a number of case studies of the providers to do some qualitative data that would enrich the numeric and quantitative stuff that we pulled out of the census. And that we wanted to look at was how particularly libraries invested in these providers to get a sense of who was making what kinds of investments and why. And we did this in a couple of ways we looked at focus groups we did a number of focus groups with library leaders, and we also did a survey of library investments in an attempt to capture the amount of money that was being invested by libraries of a number of sizes and types. And what things they were putting their money into in terms of supporting the infrastructure that they rely on. And then as I said at the beginning our ambition was to create this map of the digital scholarly infrastructure and ironically we accomplished at least to some degree all the first five things but the map. We have a draft that's very preliminary but that was the one piece that we didn't accomplish in the way that we had really hoped for. This is another way of looking at the things we tried to accomplish you can look at the library side of it and you can look at the infrastructure provider side of it and qualitative and quantitative views. So the focus groups the literature review the case studies were qualitative the survey and the census were web based surveys that attempted to collect mostly quantitative data. So I'm going to run through the five pieces that we really managed to accomplish. The first of those was the census of providers. This was a web based survey. It was done largely by true bearing and Catherine Skinner wrote it up. It was based on a tool that Jocopia had put together that looked at the organizational maturity and financial maturity of organizations and this is a fairly extensive document if you really interested I would encourage you to take a look at it. Catherine also wrote a blog post called running a queen red Queens race, which is her interpretation of the data and I would I would recommend that piece to you as well. In general, the findings of the census the first one I think is is pretty stark we only got 42 responses to the census after haranguing and harassing a number of providers for some time. So we were we were disappointed with that result. And we think it's pretty important but to try to continue this effort and I'll talk about that a little bit farther down. It's pretty clear that we need the taxonomy that I talked about a little bit at the beginning in order to get a better sense of how to think about and look at what's out there. The other thing that became very clear to us is that many of the providers were challenged to provide the data that we requested and a lot of what we were looking for was financial data and particularly open providers. Often they are project embedded in different organizations and or our grant funded or multi organizational projects and it's not easy often for them to bring together the information that we were requesting quickly enough to make filling out our census instrument worth their while. A lot of people got frustrated with that. And so I think that it's that effort needs to continue and it's a sign that many of the providers are their institution their organizations are not as mature or as robust as they ought to be. The data we were requesting really should be straightforward if you had a good annual report and a lot of people really didn't have that easy. I think that was easily at hand and many were especially small projects. Just the time to even do a very relatively short survey was was a challenge. Among the open providers who did manage to do this survey and actually many of those who did found it a really valuable exercise because it required them to pull data together that they had before. I think to expect many of them have a hard time raising and sustaining the level of funding that that's needed to really maintain the projects. It also became clear that many of the providers are in need of guidance mentorship training other kinds of opportunities in order to enhance their organizational and financial health. So again we have a lot of organizations that are providing important infrastructure that are not as robust as we would hope for the other thing that's quite clear and looking at this is that there is no coordinated or even uncoordinated end-to-end workflow in the open environment and that the varieties of technologies and strategies that the providers are using will make it a real challenge to put all of this together. And this is true at at a time when the commercial providers particularly the large publishing houses are working very diligently and with significant resources to try to put this end-to-end workflow in place. And so if you believe as we do that that open is important. This is a very dangerous sign for us. We really need to work on trying to figure out how to make this happen. So the second piece was the literature review and I did this work and I've called it a bibliographic scan of the digital scholarly communication infrastructure. It is an extensive bibliographic essay and that looks at both the literature of the deal with the general issues involved in this and then the literature that documents the activities of the sector. I identified just over 200 projects. About two-thirds of them were not for profit. Many of these were very small projects. And then I also identified 67 commercial projects in a variety of firms. It's insightful, I think, that many of there are relatively small number of organizations that provide a significant number of the projects both on the commercial and on the not-for-profit side. So if you look at organizations like the Space Public Knowledge Project, they have a variety of projects involved and on the commercial side the big firms do as well. So this is as close as we get to a map. This shows the sort of the workflow is the yellow arrow in the middle running from sort of creation just off the screen all the way through to preservation and assessment. You can see the number of different projects in each of those areas. I think it's interesting if you look at the researcher tools. The ones that are really significant, particularly around collaboration are controlled by large commercial firms. The discovery layer is also the important tools are managed by large commercial firms, but in this case the firms are not part of the scholarly communications environment. They aren't really their Google Scholar and Microsoft and the ones that really matter are from big firms that are sort of outside our sector. In the repository sector and in the publishing sector there are a large number of not-for-profit open alternatives. One might say that there are really maybe in some cases too many and that there are redundancies in there that are unnecessary and that we maybe need to look at sunsetting some of those projects or leading them out, although how that happens is a really difficult way to think about it. There are a variety of preservation strategies, many of them open although probably the most important is a commercial firm. And then when we get to assessment, again, the large commercial firms dominate, particularly in the CRISP systems. And so at both ends of the research workflow that are dominated by commercial firms in the middle, there are many good open alternatives, but those are not coordinated in a way that you would be able to piece together a consistent workflow easily. So the next piece has to do with case studies. These were done by Katharine Skinner. You can see the four firms that she looked at. Again, we have a fairly nice publication that brings these all together. I would encourage you to take a look at them if you have interest in any of these projects. There also are a series of case studies that have just been released by Spark Europe, and I would encourage you to look at those as well, as well as some conversations that are similar in nature that the invest in open infrastructure group has recently released. So there are a variety of case studies beyond what we did that can give you a feel for the particularly the open side of the infrastructure system. The next piece I want to talk about are the library focus groups. We did a series of groups we did some at ALA in the summer of 19 and at ARL in September at CNI last November and we did a series of virtual sessions in January and February of this year. The majority were from large research universities, I think, mostly because we were at ARL and then a smattering of other kinds of libraries. We asked them how much do they invest, where they invest and why they invest, as well as what the challenges and opportunities they were from where they sit. I think the most striking finding that we had here in the focus groups was that often people really have a hard time sorting out how much money they invest in the infrastructure, particularly the open infrastructure. And these were primarily library directors. So unlike collections where the definition of what ought to be counted where are pretty clear and you could ask most library directors how much they spend on collections or staffing and they would be able to give you a number off the top of their head. Almost immediately and this was not the case with open. They really didn't know how to, they really hadn't done that exercise before and so they often didn't didn't have a number at the tip of their tongue. And which I think is really important and it's an effort that I think would be important for library organizations that think about statistics to start to define these things so that we really have a better picture of how much investment is going in which directions. When we asked them about some why they invested. A lot of the answers for what you would expect they wanted to be part of a community, particularly if it was a tool they were using that they wanted to influence. Sometimes the investment that got them a seat at the government's table table was useful. Interestingly, a lot of people said that it's the keep up with the Joneses or I trust my friends at a comparable institution and she invests so unprepared to do it because I trust her judgment, not so much that I've done the assessment but that it's what everybody else is doing. And a lot of people admitted that they really didn't have a good sense of whether what the trade offs were and whether or not they were making good, good investments. When we asked about the factors we got the kinds of analysis when they were carefully looking in some cases that you would expect about privacy costs, exit strategies that kind of thing. There was a major concern about the sustainability of the system and as I've talked about when we talked about the census. That's really justifiable. I mean the sustainability of the whole system is at risk I think and not as robust as we would hope. And there was a frustration with the funding model, which was, you know, an organization that a tool we use comes to us and says, give us five to $20,000. And there's no overall strategy and there's no clear way of creating an overall strategy and for investments that would invest in the whole system. And there was a sense that it and often this was based on a campus, rather than a library perspective that you really needed to invest in strategies that were were quote unquote winners or that had a sustainable strategy and often those were commercial players so be pressed might be a better investment even though you hate the idea of doing it because your computer center says you need something you can trust for the long haul technical glitch here. So when we looked at the live. So, excuse me here. So we, the next piece is the library survey. Sorry. Okay, here we go. The library survey again was a web based tool. We asked about investments, numeric investments in particular tools which we had classified, and then some other data on staffing. We got 91 responses, two thirds were large research universities mostly about a quarter were small liberal arts colleges and then a smattering of the other types. A couple of this was obviously a very low response rate considering the number of institutions, and primarily we were focusing focusing on the US. It occurs, it appears to us that there was a bias towards people who were invested in open. And often that the data was incomplete and again I think this is the issue that often the people responding to survey had a hard time pulling the data together. So here is some of the data that we were got got here you can see that there was 14 million dollars of investment by these 91 libraries that's about 150,000 a piece, one and a half percent of the library budget and two and a half percent if you take off of salaries, and that was $8 a student. We based our survey I should say, in large part on a survey that the Canadian Association of Research Libraries have done and I would strongly recommend their survey if you're really interested look at their survey if you're looking if you're interested in that data. Here's another couple of ways of looking at it, a large portion of the return 10 million over 10 million of the 14 million was in staffing so less than $4 million actually left the campus. So that's a relatively small investments in infrastructure providers, the majority of that was for hosted repository solutions, and then you can can see that down the way. This is another interesting way of looking at it you can see the graphs here the, the person, the higher up you are the more as a larger percentage of the investments you're making. As a library, you can see the one really high large library and that's a university that supports a very large project so they make a significant investment in it. The majority of the respondents regardless of size invested less than 2% and there's a great deal of free writing. Often, we asked about which projects they used and often people would use a project but not make an investment in it. So that's the work that we did. I think it's probably important to indicate that we did all of this before the pandemic pandemic set in so our data is all based on that and maybe subject to change as a result of that. We have a series of recommendations that we made and the first three are the most important, we think that continued efforts to try to get a survey of the open, particularly open providers, so that we can get a picture of what that universe looks like and can begin to think about it as a coherent whole rather than bits and pieces. It's also clear that a variety of strategies that work to enhance the organizational and financial robustness of that community of providers is important, whether it's a community of practice or other kinds of work. We think that's pretty important and we think that the library survey ought to be continued in some way, whether that's groups like ARL or other library organizations that might try to collect that data. It would be useful if all libraries did it but if we could get even some large consortiums or groups to work on it, they could get some of the kinks out of it. The other thing is a sort of annual report of the sector would probably be useful, case studies continue to be useful. Some idea about working with librarians to give them a better sense of what is going on would probably be important as well. So we have a variety of reports and resources. Catherine Skinner's done a couple of these. I did the bibliographic scan. We have a couple of blog posts I would recommend as I said before the second one here Catherine's Reds Queen is pretty good. A couple of other resources that are part that you might want to look at and I put a PDF of this presentation up at this tiny URL so you can then use the links to get to this. So if you have any questions about our project. Any of us would be happy to hear from you by email. So thank you. Sorry for the little glitches going back and forth couldn't quite my screen to work. But again, thank you very much.


Merry Christmas everybody and welcome to your book show on this Christmas Eve We're gonna be talking about a lot of different things today We're gonna make you kind of a mish-mash show and I'm encouraging you guys to call in so We we've got a phone number three four seven three two four three zero seven five three four seven three two four three Zero seven five and press one once you call in and and call in with Any kind of questions any kind of issues you want to raise? I've got a few things I want to talk about and then we're gonna get to Christmas I'm gonna leave the last half an hour for Christmas I was saying coverage you to wait for that last half an hour and call in with your favorite Christmas movie So I'm gonna go over a list of the top 25 Christmas movies ever But I encourage you guys to call in with your favorites.  I'm not I'm not huge on Christmas movies, but You know calling today, let's let's make this a Interesting Christmas movie by the way, we are broadcasting Facebook live. I think let's see. Yeah, we are live So in and I see Penny is still shopping. I don't know how she's watching this probably on her iPhone while she's shopping, but Those of you who are still shopping you can get this on mobile devices You can listen to it anytime, but hopefully most of you have completed your Christmas shopping I actually have to run to Best Buy right after the show just to finish up just one last thing. All right um A few things I want to talk about today. I want to start off with talking about kind of a Depressing topic, but we'll try to get it out of the way quickly But I got a lot of requests to talk about this and I get hounded regularly on this issue so So yeah, let's we'll just dive in and talk about it. I'm gonna get I Watching myself on Facebook live and that's a very very distracting and of course This this week we had a terrorist attack in Berlin An Islamist took his truck or actually hijacked the truck killed the Polish driver Murdered the Polish driver and then took the truck and drove it through people killing up 12 people injuring about 50 Of course, this is the second time we've seen this particularly tactic use it was actually used to more devastating effect even in France not that long ago. I think it was a niece Where a truck was driven through a Crowd and killed many many people. So just just horrible, of course This was this was a crowd that was celebrated Christmas and a Christmas festivities and Of course, this brings up a lot of questions that relate to Muslim migration into Europe Muslim immigration into Into the United States and so on, but let me just point out a few things one This guy everybody knew he was a terrorist. So the guy who did it it was identified as the terrorist by Italian authorities Was on a watch listing Germany? if they if the security forces if they if the police if we just if they just did their job, this is a little bit like like What do you call it 9-11 if they just did their job? This would have never happened and and I think so many of these terrorist attacks The fact is that in spite of the millions of Muslim immigrants in Europe and in in the United States Almost all these attacks are committed by people that are on watch lists, and if we only got aggressive with those That would solve much of the problem in terms of these terrorist attacks, but there's a lot of question here and that is What should be done and I've said this many times and And you know and I guess I have to say it many more times because people are not listening or people are not taking it Seriously or people still have questions about it But the only way to deal with this threat is to take it seriously Is to take it as a real existential threat? And the only way to do that is to actually Declare war and Actually go on war footing now that would require the United States and its allies in Western Europe to declare war against the Islamic totalitarian of the world and You can't just declare war against an ideology you have to declare war against specific political entities And you can do that we can make a list I can do I can run off a list right now But but but somebody would have to take this seriously and actually create a list of Those who are engaged in war with us That would include Saudi Arabia include you on it would include his baller Hamas and Islamic jihad and many of the organizations that are committed to Death to to death of anybody who's not a Muslim or anybody at least to who does not succumb to Islam So it requires first and foremost to recognize the enemy identify him as Islamic totalitarianism Islamism radical Islam jihadism, I know I know some of you prefer the term jihadism It's not Islam if Islam is the enemy then who should one fight?    Not unless you talk about philosophical enemy, but I'm talking about an Existential enemy and any you can actually do something physical with an enemy.   You have to wipe them out You have to really destroy the capacity to do anything and that should be easy It shouldn't take more than a week if the United States really wanted to to go into You know parts of Eastern Syria and parts of North Northwestern Iraq and just devastate and destroy Islamic jihad that would immediately immediately demoralize many of these people in Europe who think that the Islamic state is the second coming of the caliphate and Will establish Islamic rule and the Middle East and the rest of the world if they are devastated and destroyed the ability to recruit new people to this ideology will be Reduced dramatically and you're seeing it right now in Nigeria. The Nigeria army is basically wiping out Boko Haram You remember Boko Haramu killed hundreds of people Kidnapped young girls just terrorized vast areas of that part of Africa in Nigeria and other countries adjacent to Nigeria and It's finally Nigerians took it seriously and they went out and they're basically wiping them out and That is going to reduce accruement to radical Islam in that part of Africa. There's no question in my mind People are recruited towards an ideology That they believe can be successful that they can really believe will change their lives If they believe that the only thing to come from being recruited to this ideology is death Then they won't do it now There's a certain percentage of them that don't care because they believe in you know in in 72 virgins, but the fact is Even today, they are very very very few Muslims ready to commit suicide in the name of 72 virgins or anything else That's why in spite of all the millions of Muslims in Europe Once in a while, there's a terrorist attack. It's too much It's unjustified But it's not millions of terrorist attacks not like every Muslim out there in Europe is willing to commit suicide for the cause so if you Demolarize them if you make it clear that their ideology is a failure that what they're advocating for will never happen Few of them we're gonna advocate for this It doesn't mean it's gonna be eliminated completely But just fewer people are going to join fewer people join the losing cause then join a winning cause no matter what The religious motivation is I don't care When Christianity Became a winning cause under Constantine when it was embraced by the Roman Empire as the Ideology that's when it grew that's when it became so that's when everybody joined That's when it became cool and sexy and popular to become a Christian And the same thing with Islam as long as it succeeds when when the Islamic State gains lots of land That's when it gets milk most of its recruits When it's losing it's gonna get very few recruits and if it's crushed Without any question. It'll gain even fewer recruits now. You can't solve the problem though Just by destroying Isis because Isis will be replaced by something else It's like Isis replaced Al Qaeda there they're still an ideological vacuum You have to destroy this entire option. You have to destroy the entire possibility Of advocating for political Islam You have to destroy the entire possibility of being a jihadi and believing that anything positive can happen from doing it And the only way to do that is to go after the source of this ideology to go after the places that advocate for it Preach for it give it moral authority and Also that fund it support it train weaponize it and those are the regimes of Saudi Arabia and Iran So if you do that if you declare war And you and you go after those regimes and it could be a short war and I think the problem with Islamism At least can be pushed out into the distant future not that radically slum will disappear but that its advocates will go and find a cave somewhere and hide in it and They will not pose any kind of threat Any kind of threat To us on the West and you know, and they will just disappear the Islamist and then maybe the rest of the Islamic world You know will actually You know will actually be able to Yeah, I'm just wondering if the Facebook live is working. I can't tell Anybody anybody in the chat on Facebook live. Can you tell me if it's if it's actually working? I can't tell my Facebook is kind of frozen on me. I think I think the Entire. No, just just this Facebook page Well, it is okay. All right is Facebook live still working. It's working. Okay. Good. So you're seeing video You're seeing video and you're hearing sound and everything's cool. Good.   It says Why do I pose ideological screening of Islamists? When I'm willing to bomb them, but I'm not willing to ideologically screen them when they enter the United States Well, I've never said that when you declare war. I'm You know, it's quite reasonable to say the enemy cannot enter the US But you have to declare war for that you have to define an enemy very clearly If the enemy is Islamist Islamists are not allowed to come into the United States Shouldn't be allowed into Europe and at that point. Yes, an ideological screening is appropriate Just like during World War two. It was quite reasonable to say Nazis cannot come into the United States and if you're a Nazi, then you're not welcome So ideological screening in the case of war in the case of an emergency is Absolutely appropriate. There's no problem with it It's important to define the ideology you're fighting in a war and it's important to know who the enemies are internally and externally given that ideology So the idea that I don't advocate for ideological screening in a time of war is Ridiculous now you want to I know you want to say, well now let's Extrapolate outside of a war and anybody I don't agree with should be allowed into the country Well, that's nuts to give the government the power to decide which ideology is acceptable in which ideology is not acceptable is nutty except at a time of war when it's doing its function of Protecting individual rights when America has been attacked as it was in 9-11 and previously by Islamist Then it is the job of the United States government to figure out Who is this existential threat and how to destroy it and what ideology is involved and to prevent People who hold that ideology from coming into the country So I'm fine with a ban on Islamic immigration particularly a Islamist radical Islamic immigration during a time of war And indeed more than that and this relates to a Muslim immigration into Europe I have never defended that the mad the the open borders let hundreds of thousands of Muslims all come into Europe all at once Because because there's a civil war in Syria. I mean that is absurd That is not what open immigration even in a laissez-fait capitalist country means well first Imagine the violation of property rights if hundreds of thousands of people are just crossing the border and walking over somebody's property particularly in a laissez-fait country where there would be Everything would be private property So you have to have a regulated way in which people enter into your country Because everything's private property in your country. They can't just walk across and trouble you know a step on other people's property that's called trespassing and secondly, if somebody's just basically hundreds of thousands of people are coming in that is Unexceptive for for government a government has a responsibility within the domain of the borders around it To to protect individual rights within that domain It has to have some control over the number of people that has to know to some extent Who's there and who isn't and it's completely legitimate Temporarily during a time of crisis during a time of civil war and therefore huge migration to close the border off and Figure out what you do at that point and how how you how you decide who to let in and who to let who not a let in In in a time of an emergency like that for example, if there was a civil war tomorrow in Mexico and hundreds of thousands or millions of Mexicans came to the US border I would not advocate open borders just let him in what the hell I mean, that would be absurd right so during a time of crisis during times of emergencies if if the incoming population is clearly in a sense some kind of invasion or one-time aberration or caused by some external event you have an obligation as the government to protect property rights in the United States by setting up some kind of barriers now You know, how do you do how do you figure out who's an Islamist and who isn't and and of course they're gonna lie And and somebody says the Quran calls for life. Everybody calls for lying. I don't know sing a ideology Particularly a totalitarian ideology that doesn't advocate for lying for the for the sake of for the sake of Achieving something so everybody lies who's trying to violate somebody else's rights. I mean to sing a lot Islam for this is absurd So, how do you tell this is what you have intelligence services for this is what you have FBI screenings when people enter the country for I've always advocated for those kind of screenings The fact is that most of these terrorists almost all of these terrorists with a few exceptions like the San Bernardino people Well identified and and known in advance for what they're gonna do right All right, so I know This hasn't ended I know we're gonna keep coming to this and everything I know that we're gonna keep coming back to this issue of immigration because you guys are never satisfied because I don't agree with you And and I and I know that you don't think that what I've done is given a satisfactory answer But the fact is as I said, I'm not from mass migration into Europe Particularly not by Islamist.  Otherwise, what are we doing? otherwise You know if if by what standard of screening Anybody we don't like who gets to decide that do we really want to give the government the power to make those kind of decisions? Outside of the decision to go to war. I don't I don't you know I'm sure I will be and and my ideology we want to be the first thing so we'd be banned If we gave if we give the government that kind of that kind of power All right A few other questions that came up one of them was why is Merkel so motivated to open up Germany to all these Muslims So to all these immigrants. I think basically it's an issue of guilt and It's an issue of German guilt around the Holocaust. It's an issue of Christian altruism So you see one of the one of the big myths is that Europe is no longer Christian now in a sense It's no longer Christian in the sense that It doesn't they don't go to church and they don't maybe even believe in God But in it but in the sense of the morality of altruism. They're very Christian So, you know particularly Germans because they feel guilty. So for them for them Bringing in a million Muslims or whatever is a form of Redemption it's They feel guilty about the Holocaust, but they feel guilty because the Christians and They're altruistic and this is just them sacrificing and so what so they sacrifice big deal Europeans are big on sacrifice, right? And I think Germans in particular big on sacrifice. So This is just a form of Christian Sacrifice Christian guilt that that's what's engaged here. This is why the Germans are doing it. There's no Social there's no big political agenda now. They in the past has been an agenda on immigration Germany and the rest of Europe are shrinking populations. They're very elderly populations They've got a lot of old people very few people to do the work in order to in order to finance the pensions of the old people They need immigrants for this For the last 50 years Germany is at a steady stream of Turkish and other immigrants in order to work Because they don't have enough young Germans to do the work and to some extent or to a large extent they still need that So they've they've allowed for more immigration. They've allowed for a lot of immigration It just got out of control over the last few years Because of the of the civil war and because of other factors that drove these immigrants in but at the end of the day at the end of the day This is about altruism. This is about guilt You know by these by these By the Germans by the rest of the Europeans and and and that is at the end of the day what is going on All right What else there was there was something else All right, I think I think that said any any questions out there you can call in three four seven three two four three zero seven five three four seven three two four three zero seven five and the calls You should be able to hear them on Facebook live so it should be integrated into Facebook live should be it should be fine and Particularly those of you who haven't called in the past. I'm curious to get some calls from first-time callers Three four seven three two four three zero seven five.  So all right. We've got our first caller Hi, you're new on book show. Who's this? Hey Eric. How are you? Good good Sure, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. You had to go all the way to Beijing to hear me to hear me speak in public All right, that's pretty cool Yep. Yeah, I remember. Oh, they can't hear the caller. That's That's interesting that they can't hear the call. Yeah, I can hear you but but on Facebook live They're not hearing the call your call, which is which is strange. They should be hearing it All right Go ahead Eric. Yep Well, of course a peacock cringed with you with the reference starting to end that I would cringe even more So I'm no iron man, and I'm no then a peacock, but I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. That's all right Yeah Yes Okay, great. So as the question is for those of you in Facebook live is why do I like? Hostile audiences and why do I like hostile calls and and I think the reason is first When there's hostile audience also call it it suggests that people are listening to me You don't really agree with me and and that just makes me feel good that fact that I'm reaching I'm reaching an audience that it doesn't already agree that I'm expanding the audience that I'm going beyond that I also think it's always good to be challenged and these hostile calls are challenging calls they are They are You know that they're pushing they're pushing the envelope. They're challenging you they're asking something Hopefully in some cases that you've never heard before It also gets me gets the juices running, you know, it gets it gets my adrenaline going and I think I get a little bit better when the adrenaline is It is working. So I like it from that front, but really I Love to talk to what I call virgin audiences virgin audiences virgin audiences audiences That have never heard this message before the audiences that don't know Don't know anything about what I'm talking about because they've never heard it before so and you know, I love audiences like that and I think that I think that it's it really challenges and pushes me and It gets the message to new people. All right. Thanks. Eric. I really appreciate the call and keep listening to show and Yeah, it's good to have you in the US. I hear things in China are getting tougher and tougher and you know much more difficult Than than they were even a few months ago. So It's good to have you in the United States. All right, you can call to and I apologize that you can't hear it on on Facebook live, I'm not sure why so I Am gonna have to work on that to figure it out. I'm getting a new soundboard. I'm hoping soon Really soon and and Hopefully everything will be Jiggered together to work much better than it's working now. So We are last week was fine last week. You could hear the caller. So I'm not sure what the difference is between this week and last week Don't know Something's some setting. That's the thing. I need a soundboard that I can understand right now I'm using kind of a digital soundboard to me by duet it called duet and and I have no idea what I'm doing. So I Think that's basically the problem is my complete ignorance and incompetence when it comes to when it comes to sound engineering, so All right, well, you know, we'll we'll keep trying and we'll keep seeing what works and what doesn't work and You will see okay All right, let's see, but you can call in 347 343 075 Let's see. There was one other topic. I want to talk about before we get to Christmas And this was actually suggested by somebody on Facebook. Okay, let's see This was on this was suggested on Facebook, you know, we're gonna take a quick break And I want you to take it. Tell me on Facebook live if you can hear the the commercials and I might think a little bit, but I'm gonna take a quick commercial break and And and then we will come back and wait a second. Where are the commercials that they are and talk about I Think what should Trump do? Like what should his administration do? What's realistic for them to do? What would be my advice to Donald Trump and somebody suggest I cut this out of the show and send it to the Trump administration? Yeah, maybe sounds good. All right. Here go the commercials. Let me know on Facebook live You can hear them. All right, and we're back and So let's let's do let's say, let's shift now to something more positive. So let's shift to Something that oh by the way, I forgot to mention this. So let me just mention this with regard to this whole issue of The Islamic threat and the immigration and all of that is I you know, there was this I put this up on Facebook And there was this photo published in Haaretz Newspaper now how it's just to give you context how it is the leading Israeli newspaper It's the number one. It's the equivalent of the New York Times in Israel And it's it's a it's a very prominent, you know, red newspaper and it published just a couple of days ago picture of Prime Minister Netanyahu So the Prime Minister of Israel holding a copy in in the Knesset in Parliament of So he's reading while other people are talking, which is not very polite, but what the hell right? He's he's holding a copy of John Lewis is nothing less than victory Now this is an astounding an excellent book, right? This is a book that explains how one could win the war with Islamic totalitarianism how one can beat the jihadis and Here is a Prime Minister of the state of Israel Holding, you know holding a copy. Yes, and and and it is a Leftist, you know a leftist newspaper just like the New York Times, but and it had a little commentary on the book basically positive and then a connected John to Objectivism and add a little blow of an objectivism linking. I think today I'm an institute so Wow, I mean, this was terrific marketing terrific advertising But also the idea that somebody like Netanyahu is actually reading John Lewis is exciting. Now. I know Netanyahu is read Al-Shraged and he's read a lot of I think he's read one of my books Or at least he's read an article. I wrote about Israel I Don't get too excited about this because he's a politician. So I don't think anything actually good will come of it But I do find it interesting and it was a great photo and it was a great opportunity and I wish John I wish John was alive and with us to To enjoy To enjoy that picture was just it was just perfect It was just perfect and go if you haven't read the book if you haven't read the book you should read the book It's called nothing less than victory by John David Lewis a good friend An objectivist intellectual who taught at Duke and unfortunately passed away. I think it was five years ago. So Fantastic one of the best books about the you know deals with history with lessons to be learned about the crisis that we face today lessons from The ancient world and from the more modern world from World War two. All right We're gonna take another call before I get to advice for Donald Trump. Hi, you on the Iran book show. Who's this? Hey, Cory, how's it going? It's 30 degrees. Oh my god That okay Okay, I think I talked about that last show but but I'd be happy to I'd be happy to talk about Trump's cabinets And then maybe I can I can go from there into discussion about what Trump should do about taxes regulations defense and entitlements As somebody asked on Facebook. All right, Cory. Thanks. Thanks for the question And I'm gonna take you offline just because it's easier that way. All right I'm Merry Christmas Cory and hopefully you guys have a white Christmas because I tell you we in We inside of California do not have a white Christmas. It's very disappointing this year All right, so what what are the what are the most recent appointments or what are the you know It's very mixed. I think there's some very good appointments There's some mediocre appointments and there's some very bad appointments in in the very bad appointments, I would cat I would characterize his What do you call it? Attorney General Who whose name escapes me the second but who is a who's very much a religious? Anti-separative state and church very anti immigration including legal immigration Very anti-drug so a big uptake in the war and drugs. I expect unfortunately Which means more conflict sessions sessions more conflict with states that have legalized marijuana But also a huge huge opponent of abortions. I expect a lot of problems with that So I'd say that that is one of the worst ones You know others that I'm just not that impressed with well Bannon is also goes under one of the worst a self-defined economic nationalist And and and a hater vine van does somebody who mr. Presence doesn't understand and and obviously Dislikes on rent and also very religious if you read Bannon, he's very religious then then there was There was the one this week another one the good the bad and the ugly in In Trump's appointment these all the bad Pina Navarro. Oh my god. So first of all first of all Trump is has created this trade advisory commission a committee This is the first time president has such a thing. This is the this is the whole idea of of The advise them on industrial policy So we now have industrial policy in the United States like Japan and look how well it's worked for them And Pina Navarro is a complete idiot.  He's actually here from you see over and I've bumped into him a few times and it just Disagree with him so thoroughly about these issues. He's basically made a career made a career of over this over this whole issue of Trade and the evil of trade particularly with China. He's got a documentary about the evil of China So just a just a bad guy. So that's that's like the bad then there's like the We'll see, you know, and I think they would have to put Rex Tillis in the secretary of state I have no idea what to think of that, you know Rex Tillis and obviously really smart guy Good CEO of Exxon a fan of Alice shrugged But does he know anything about foreign policy? Does he have any positions about foreign policy? Is he any more than he is very good at cutting deals with the Arabs? Who have oil and the Russians who have oil and this is of course where you have to be a little suspicious? Most of these dealings in terms of foreign entities have been with people like the Saudis the Kuwaitis and the Russians That and is he gonna be very very pro Arab because of the oil interest is he gonna be pro Russia because of oil and because of his energy interest? He you know, he won the friendship medal from the Russian government or something like that So it's just I just don't know and I don't know what his positions are He has nothing in writing about what his positions are vis-a-vis American fall policy I have no idea what what kind of secretary of states. I guess that would go under the ugly Just because you don't know Um Another one would be under the ugly would go minutian who is the uh the uh treasury secretary No idea What he stands for No idea what he's going to do. I think he's just a pure pragmatist We got rick perry at secretary energy probably a good thing rick perry promised as a campaign to do a way With the department of energy. I'd like to see for once for once One of these guys actually followed through with what they say they're going to do for once Right, so actually shut it down That would be terrific. But will he do that? I i'm skeptical probably not Uh, hud ben caution at hud Don't know don't know what he's gonna do again at the department. It shouldn't exist the united states government Should not have housing policy and as such there should be no hud Right, there should be no hud um What else? So that's that's uh now his military guys, uh, so flinn And mathis is a secretary of defense is is uh advised on farm policy They're pretty good except. I don't know about flinn and russia. I'm a little suspicious there, but but they're pretty good They're pretty good on on on the islamic threat mathis seems pretty good about what it means to go to war and um And how to go to war So, uh in in the need to win uh to win the war So I I don't know a lot about mathis having to read up on him I need to read more and watch his interviews But he's you know, a lot of people are competing to patent I'm a huge patent fan So to the extent that he even comes close to patent that would be good other patent was also a crazy guy um It's less That he was a fighter that he was this or is that what does he think that's what's important? What is the ideology? What is the ideology? so Is he any good? I don't care if he's a general or civilians around the defense department What I really care about is that he has the right approach to going to war and the right approach to if you go to war to win it all right all right, um So that's a quick thing on his on the on the you know, and I talked about I think last time last show Which you should all listen to because it's pretty good about the whole idea of all these people are iron man fans And what does that mean? I don't want to repeat myself yet So what is doable for a trump administration? So if trump was asking me for advice About what to do in the first hundred days or the first four years, right? What would I suggest doing and and how to go about it in a realistic way? So not not in a you know deregulate everything taxes should be zero you know bomb the hell out of out of Saudi Arabia, but in in something that's realistic that's realistic to to present to a Given given congress and given the obstacles that they're going to face and it let's so let's try to conceptualize this um Now the person who asked the question asked about taxes regulations defense entitlements, but I want to I want to look at this a little differently um The first one I I would address and this should be right up donald trump sally It's not but it should be right up donald trump sally Is the first thing I think that should be looked at okay? So this is this is my plan for the new year good good good for christmas, right? How do we drain the swamp? Right now I take the swamp as meaning cronyism I take the swamp as meaning corruption the the involvement in government in in every part of our business lives And the involvement of business and governments and just this ugliness And the idea that many americans have that the system is rigged and the system is fixed so I would actually I would actually Put up put a package together Of drain the swamp bills, right and basically these bills would be or another way to call it is and cronyism in america and cronyism in america and then number of facets To this bill. I think they're all doable Very difficult to get by congress very very difficult to get by congress because congress is Part of the swamp they benefit From the bribery of business to them from from being paid up by business They have an every incentive to keep the swamp as it is So but but I would propose as as president In I think in the name of draining the swamp donald trump can get away with this I mean people are ready for something radical from you particularly in this area So I would I would break this down into Three buckets bucket number one would be bailouts and subsidies, right And and I would I would go to congress with a bill that says With a bill with two parts to it part number one is Congress will not subsidize any business period period right So in this context what we would do is is Delineate all the different studies subsidies the windmills solar energy gas and gas and and and And oil oil and gas everything right everything so And subsidies now this would include farm subsidies which would be harder So the phasing out of all farm subsidies over the next three years Over the next four years within this administration so start with The the obvious subsidies where government is just handing out checks to oil and gas and other things to farm subsidies A second part of the bill will be no bailouts It would be a bill that basically says the united states government is prohibited from bailing out any business or industry This would have this would involve having to change dot frank and involve other things So there's no no way now the federal reserve You'd have to redo the whole federal reserve charter Maybe that's for a different day because they could probably bail out businesses through the discount window which they did in 2008 and 2009 But this is the start right. We're trying to be realistic here. What could we do? realistically so government will bail out no businesses not auto industry and our banks Not auto industry and our banks and you would again you would have to change Dot frank in order to reflect this as part of this bill All right, so that's that's The subsidies part of it, right? But this is all all one big package called ending cronyism Part number two is taxes And in this part it's simple and donald trump has actually proposed this 15 percent Corporate tax rate flat And no deductions no exclusions nothing Right take away depreciation take away all the artificial ways In which and just look at some kind of net cash flow And have a flat tax. I mean I I would argue And I think it's it's doable to argue this although I think it would be hard for a zero corporate tax rate A zero corporate tax rate But let's take that you could do a five percent now He's proposed 15 but I assume that's with all kind of deductions and exclusions a five percent tax rate on corporate positive cash basically Cash in minus cash out so Something like that, right, but my preference would be simplify it zero corporate tax rate You only get taxed on money that goes out Of the corporation that is dividends a capital gains Capital distributions, right right so Something something like that now you could get we could get it to the details of the technicalities I would leave that to the technicians, but basically something that did not provide any loopholes any exclusions Any special deductions so that again there would be no incentive for business to come lobby now notice if you just pass those two You would destroy what do you call a k-street? You would destroy lobbying As we know There would be no incentive to lobby or very little incentive to lobby because you couldn't lobby for loopholes in a tax code Because they they wouldn't be any and you couldn't lobby for subsidies because there wouldn't be any now the third area of lobbying Why you have to get cronyism in a cronyism bill Is and this is the big one The elimination of regulations and and this is very very difficult and this is the the trickest part But but again if you frame it all as and cronyism, maybe you can get away with this and here I would have a series of bills taking on a series of industries which Completely deregulates those industries now you'll notice that over the last few days and I expect in the next few weeks Obama is going to introduce more and more and more new regulations hundreds of them Maybe thousands of them it costs a billions and billions of dollars To make it as difficult as possible For the uh trump administration to undo Now every president does this but obama is doing more of this than ever, right? He's going Overboard right the country just rejected his agenda To hell with that to hell with that anyway So take the deregulation thing I would I would have a bank deregulation plan Four years by which we deregulate the banking sector for example Lower deposit insurance to ten thousand dollars instead of the 250,000 today So only really small investors, you know depositors get to benefit from deposit insurance The way it was supposed to be originally and you take away much of them all has it out of deposit insurance you know Slowly eliminate the power of the fdc the occ by the way I would shut down the occ the office of control of the currency of the fed To regulate loans to decide on what and quality of loans to so I would eliminate regulations Raise capital requirements and do away with deposit insurance as much as you can In the banking sector do away. We're too big to fail.  They're all gone all gone, right? So, uh, so that's that's a big part of it, right?  We're not going to get to zero regulations But you show how all these are going to be trimmed And you introduce principles by which congress cannot add regulations at least I think they've got a rule Well, you can only add a regulation if you get rid of two other ones I'm not for adding anything But again, if we got to be realistic fine, you got to add one you have to do away with two something like that Where you see where you start seeing a dramatic reduction in regulation across the board for example, I would appoint a committee Uh to look at how do we deregulate securities regulations the sec How do we go from where we are today to a free market in actual securities in in trading? So and you present that to congress. I don't know if it's with our first hundred days Maybe this is complicated Maybe it would have maybe we'd have to be it would have to take longer than that But in every area in every major area you present a bill to deregulate that area in dramatic significant fashion, right? um So that is the ancronism Category and and that would be it would be a big Like umbrella bill that would have all these bills within it and I think that's doable He could call it drain the swamp bill It would be incredibly powerful and and just that if you did nothing else If you literally did nothing else That would drive That would drive The economy through the roof That would make that would make the economic growth that would increase economic growth by two percent is just gdp at least You could get to the five percent gdp growth if you just did those things Now it's not just because all of those are complex and they're not easy But imagine if you put somebody like like uh, john allison in charge Rather than treasury secretary or whatever, which is a waste I think in charge of helping draft a bill That would deregulate banking completely I mean that would be amazing. All right, so that would be regulations That would be the drain the swamp second I would introduce a a a tax reform That would flatten the tax taxes Um, whether you do one flat tax rate or two flat tax races, but I think here's the key again The key for me is no deductions. No exclusions You don't use the tax code to manipulate people's behavior You don't give them exclusive deductions for charity. You don't give them deductions for mortgages You take all those away now. You have to phase them out. You have to do some things. Maybe grandfather existing mortgages I don't know You have to think that through and I haven't thought it completely through but the point is Simple flat no deductions. No exclusions. You don't incentivize people to do this or not that You just make it simple and flat And you tax all income Equally the same For example, one of the one of the things that is is most important in terms of investment Is get rid of the distinction between short term and long term capital gains It's devastating.  No economist believes that this serves any purpose Speculation short term speculation serves a a very important long-term financial purpose to get away with this stuff Get get rid of this stuff again flat simple Right stop manipulating people's behavior using the tax code All right, so that's that's taxes simple Simple simple simple so that anybody can fill out his own taxes Right. I think that is much more important than the rates at this point much more important than the rate At now the rates should be low particularly on high owners particularly in the producers particularly in the creators But the tax rate should be low But i'm less concerned at the first step with the rates as with getting rid of making it simple Getting rid of the manipulative elements and again if you did these things the economy would take off Entitements all right. This is a tough one Now I would as a rector proposal um a proposal Done by paul rine To provide vouchers for medicaid. I think this is really really important right provide vouchers for medicaid and then what you do is You provide medicaid recipients with a voucher to buy insurance Rather than provide them with the healthcare direct from the government. Now. How do you do this? How do you how do you phase it in maybe existing people who already retired get medicare as it was promised anybody retiring tomorrow gets a voucher And what you say is every 10 years the voucher goes down in value by x percentage So that you provide an incentive for future generations to start saving and not rely on government for their healthcare. So Voucher eyes Medicare in other words try to try to privatize it as much as possible Try to privatize as much as possible and lastly Or the same thing then start the process of privatizing social security again. You can do it all at once And and maybe a trumpet administration can't say we're going to phase it out But at least privatize it at least let people open private accounts and put the 12 and a half percent Instead of to the government into private accounts start with 20 year olds and start moving up All right, so again put in place a few mechanisms by which entitlements Being privatized and moving in the right direction Even if you don't do the phasing out because it's not politically feasible at least give people options And then of course in defense Um, I would say much more important than building out, you know, trump has been tweeting lately about building up our nuclear program And stuff like that much more important than that Is much more important than modernizing the weapons that we have Is to have a clear defense policy to have a clear um a clear You know The people stop believing in what the united states says and I think you start there by defining the enemy You start there by defining south urabia and iran as enemies Doing away with the iranian treaty, which I don't think they will do but doing away with the iranian treaty It's not a treaty agreement Telling the iranians in unequivocal terms that the nuclear program has ended And if it doesn't end tomorrow, you will destroy it telling the Saudis and the iranians if they continue supporting Islamic jihad isis and other terrorist organizations that they will be held accountable for every act of terror At every act of violence at those organizations Those initiatives and then deploying the u.s. Military with a full force To do it so the chinese and the russians see that we are willing to use the full force of the military And those two countries will be covered once they see that so that that would be the Essence of my defense policy focus on the enemy as it exists today the enemy as it exists today is The islamic jihad is the jihadis Focus Saudi Arabia and iran Deploy military troops to destroy isis and any other threat that we have in the middle east Destroy not build democracy not Go in crush them and come home And tell the world This is the new america watch out right and You know and that's that's the fence and then i'll end with uh with um health care and education Too very very key and again that he's got he actually appointed two Relatively good people for health care and education education You know one of the best signs that the trump administration can give to uh us free marketers that they're serious about Moving towards more free market economics is to shut down some government government departments Education which has 150 000 employees. I would shut down You know leave this to the state. We want reform. We want tax credits. I want education saving accounts That's the best idea about education that exists out there But it looks like right now that has to happen at the state level at the state level is where the education is funded At the state level is where most k through 12 education is uh Is regulated Shut down the department of education now things that you can do when you shut them down The federal government should give no more loans to college students privatize that Shift it to the banking industry banking industry is quite capable quite competent to give loans to people who can actually pay them back So shut the department of education down with all its functions Return k through 12 education to being regulated by states not today advocating state regulation But let's fight this battle at the state level Get the federal government out of education should shut it down get rid of all the No child left behind common core and and the regulation of private colleges and Student loans all of that should go away All of it should be privatized That's what I would do in education. Um, and again, then then I'd advocate and push the states to offer education saving accounts Maybe congress can force them to do that health care dual way with obama care But basically Allow, you know, in a sense find ways to get around state regulations of of insurance companies health insurance companies to do away with Restrictions by insurance across state lines Get rid of all government regulations on health care As you as you slowly do with medicare It's not it's not possible to do it completely but at least if you're under 65 there should be no involvement at all Uh, so just completely privatize everything Again, if you have the simple tax code Then businesses are now getting a tax deduction for employee health care You shouldn't get a tax deduction for employee health care or Equated somehow, right? So nobody should get a tax deduction to buying health care, right special tax deduction for that so, uh Make it equal make it encourage individuals to buy their own health care through health saving accounts And just privatize the whole sector and and there are lots of plans to do that In terms of pre-existing conditions, you cannot force insurance companies to cover those If you force insurance companies to cover those then you're destroying insurance And you're just feeding into ultimately what will be A single payer universal health care provided by the government If you want to still cover people with pre-existing conditions create a risk pool A government funded risk pool to do that for now And and and then try to encourage the free market or find ways to incentivize the free market to create Its own solutions to pre-existing conditions. There are a number of ideas about how to do this It's going to take time for those ideas to evolve in the meantime create special risk pools Subsidized by the government for pre-existing conditions And that's how you also solve the problem of why why would insurance companies buy Sell insurance to old people? Well, you find ways in which to create these risk pools that cover the pre-existing conditions that old people tend to have And over time Private companies will come up with solutions for this and then you do away with these risk pools So you find ways to create to create incentives to do this again These these are difficult, but you've got to get rid of state mandates on insurance companies You've got to get rid of state regulation on insurance companies One way to do that is to allow competitions across states an ideal way to do that Is to deny the ability of states to regulate health insurance companies? Um, I think this has been done in certain insurance markets. I I don't remember Which ones right now, but but there's a way to do that The congress can just take that now whether supreme court would uphold that or whether they would declare that state rights or whatever Who knows? I guess it depends on on how conservative that the The court is their conservative court is going to say States have a right to do this in the federal government shouldn't intervene All right, so that is that would be my proposal for the trump administration for both taxes regulations defense entitlement health care Education all wrapped up nicely in a in a bowl. That is my christmas present For the trump administration and my happy new year gift for them. So, uh, You know Anybody want to send it to them feel free to I'll post that the segment Uh as a separate audio and you can then forward it to whoever you know within the trump administration and And encourage them encourage them and I'm I'm happy to consult On how to implement any of these any of these strategies. So go for it All right, the meaning of christmas I love christmas Because what does christmas actually mean? christmas is about a celebration Of life A production it's about lights and trees and gifts and Good nature and benevolence towards other human beings. Oh my god Some of you might say but a object is not supposed to be believable because we're selfish That is one of the great confusions and and and um, I don't know lies about objectivism. Not so much a confusion No, we are the most benevolent. We are the most Loving of mankind in generally Objectivism is the philosophy of love It's about loving yourself. It's about loving your life And by extension loving the people who make your life so successful and so wonderful it's about Thriving and loving and and and embracing the good that's out there so And and what is more good? Than mankind mankind that's built skyscrapers and iPhones and and this camera that is feeding this to facebook live and and Blog talk radio and and you know all the wonderful things we have human beings made that Human beings made that and you gotta love human beings for their ability to make it to make my life so much better So christmas is a celebration of all that It's a celebration of the fact that human beings can produce can create can make Now they are bad human beings. We talked about some of them in the earlier in the show Yeah, those need to be destroyed, but christmas today tonight tomorrow About a celebration of the good human beings The people you love your friends your family at least the part of their family that you like And not just your friends and family, but any human being out there Who exercises his potential to produce and create and build It is a great holiday to celebrate silicon valley and everything that they produce I know some of you hate silicon valley because they're leftist, but I go to the more fundamental their creators their builders so This is a celebration of all of that now The christians have taken this holiday Which was a roman holiday a pagan holiday a holiday celebrated around this time of the year In every pagan culture almost every pagan culture all day. It's a seller. It's a holiday that the jews celebrate hanukkah, which is a celebration of You know a rebellion of independence of freedom I put freedom in quotes because it's not real freedom not individual freedom It's freedom of the jews from the from the greeks It's it's a collectivistic type of freedom, but nevertheless It's a hanukkah was a is celebrating a a rebellion of the jews against the greeks for religious Freedom reasons the greeks were trying to impose. This is the post alexander the greats and not even greeks They're really macedonians trying to impose Their religion and their culture onto the jews now I happen to think the greeks had a better culture than the jews So sometimes or hanukkah I kind of regret that the jews won that one Maybe it would be even better for the jews and for everybody else if the if the greeks had won but but nevertheless hanukkah is a celebration of Against of of the victory of those who were trying to defend their religion against religion irreligious oppression against the greeks of that period not the greeks of 300 years earlier the greeks of that period who were authoritarian And and and who were nowhere near this is nowhere near the the heights of greek philosophy and greek art Which is a period that I would have embraced over jewism any day Um, so hanukkah is a celebration of that it has a lot of mystical elements You know the minors because there was a miracle that that helped to you know That kept a minora a life of seven days, but you know, it's kind of a minor miracle who cares And um and the macabees who won were not good guys There were a bit of religious fanatics and they kind of imposed their religious fanaticism on the jewish people after they won the victory fine, okay, but you know, but at the end of the day Pager this this this holiday is a holiday to christians the christians adopted they you know They initiated a holiday at the end of december. I don't think this is when jesus was born To the extent that jesus, you know, jesus was a real man He was born probably sometime in the spring at least that's what historians suggest but The christians needed a holiday to compete with the pagans. So what did they do? They they took the same time frame the winter winter solstice the shortest day of the year And they picked a holiday around the same time and then on top of that they stole All the good things that the pagans You know had adopted so for example in in rom This holiday was associated with gift-giving. So the christians took that Uh in scandinavia, and I think in rom it was associated with a sudden worship of trees particularly in the cold environment of scandinavia Where where trees were symbol of life the evergreen tree is the symbol of life. They brought the tree in To uh, you know into the uh into the home Into the home and by the way, I just remember this You guys should live tweet this show because that's how we're going to get you know Hashtag your on brook show with the link to the show that's going to be increase the number of people who listen to the show Is if all of you like live tweet the show Um, that'll actually encourage people to listen live and then to download, but it'll actually get people engaged. So Uh, I forgot to say this earlier, and I should have said at the beginning of the show Please live tweet the show Anyway All of the all of the customs that today we associate with christians were created either by pagans and adopted by by christians, or they were created by Greedy capitalists trying to recreate money. So for example Santa Claus as we know today Is a combination of different characters from different european You know mythologies But the Santa Claus we know today is a creation of coca cola from the 1930s And a creation of retailers who have you know children sit on santa's lap and astral presents and all that kind of stuff That's all a creation That's all a creation of um Of santa claus, you know a lot of the lights and the celebration and the benevolence The benevolence of this right Is A consequence of 19th century retail marketing Macy's Is to a large extent responsible for much of modern-day Christmas and in the way it's celebrating and I love modern-day christmas. I love jolly santa claus Uh, I love the idea of giving gifts. I don't kind I don't really I love even the idea of santa claus judging you And deciding who's good and who's bad. That's a very non christian, right? Why should a bad kid not get presents? That's not right Even if he says he's sorry How about he goes to confessional does he still get presents then santa claus Judges if you're a bad kid you get you get what coal you get coal. How cool is that right? How cool is that? um So it's it's it's it's just a you know, I love christmas trees. I love the lights I love the idea of decorating there with the gifts underneath the tree and again The tree was was Scandinavia celebrating their ability to survive in the in the face of this harsh winter And here was a tree that also survived in this harsh winter So the tree symbolizes our ability as human beings to survive in spite of that Uh, so it's just it's just a wonderful holiday So those of you upset because it celebrates jesus's birth get over it Get over it let those guys over there celebrate jesus's birth None of us are really celebrating that and you know what they're not even celebrating that because nothing they do actually reflects Jesus's birth now You know some of the music some of them go to church But even church they go why because it's nice music because it's pretty Because they get a celebrate with other people because they get a hang out with people You know, it's just it's just a cool holiday. I mean um and and We always celebrated here, you know We open presents in the morning and we have a nice dinner in the evening And we have friends over and we have family over and it's great. It's great. So, uh, Yeah, favorite christmas song somebody posted this on the chat My favorite christmas song is santa baby Particularly when sung and I forget who sings it, you know, you know, really really sexy voice Santa baby is the perfect christmas song.   We We love this. We love christmas. We love everything about christmas and we love human beings human beings Who is more benevolent? Than a good objectivist. Now, there are a lot of objectives out there. I know who you are who are not benevolent Who are nasty dogmatic idiots? Stop it You gotta stop it, right? It might have been melolyn run row who was saying santa baby She would be perfect for santa baby if it wasn't her. She should have sung it But uh, that's that's uh, that's what I think it's earth a kit Also thinks it's a number. They're probably a number of interpretations, but I can just envision melolyn run row singing It would be it's the perfect perfect kind of combination of of sexiness with uh, with uh, uh, uh song so We got to get over this image that we have as grouches to stop being a grouch life is good Life is good.  There's too much good in life to live in fear Stop living in fear Embrace life think about solutions think about positives look for the positives Maybe they're not falling on top of your head, but go find them It's your life live it All right, christmas movies. I had a list here. Where's the list? Ah, where's the list of this disappear? Oh 25 best christmas movies all right So i'm gonna list this is a list One tomatoes one tomatoes calm and you can you can post your favorites on um on the chat Let me see if I can keep track of facebook live You can also post your favorite christmas post your favorite christmas movies and I'll respond on the chat and on and on On there i'm gonna go through these and we'll cover i think many of of the ones Oh my god, you're posting stuff i've never heard of you're supposed to post movies. I know You can't post movies i've never heard of how can I comment on them? Right i'm not seeing anything on facebook nobody's posting anything on facebook. I don't know maybe that Maybe my feet is that is is died all right number one best christmas movie According to rod and tomato is one of the most evil movies ever made It's called it's a wonderful life Oh a lot of people are leaving are leaving because they don't want to talk about movies I hate it's a wonderful life. It's a wonderful life is all about altruism It's all about sacrifice. It's all about not following your dreams. It's all about it takes a village and community Oh, I hate that movie. It's a socialist movie created by a Moxist frank capra It's brilliantly made brilliantly acted very christmasy shows on christmas all the time But thumbs down on it's a wonderful life It's an anti christmas movie ultimately because it's got the wrong Sense of life. It's all about You haven't seen how can how can g not have seen it's a wonderful life You should all go see it's a wonderful life because it's a classic, but it doesn't it doesn't get out there Okay miracle on 34th street okay Moreno have a natalie wood. How can you go wrong? It's cute. It's nice I'm okay with it. Not my top movie, but okay. All right holiday in That's number three. That's a good movie And it's with bean cross being fed a stare love those movies. I encourage you to go see them. These are classics This is not you know your modern stuff. All right now come my uran books number one christmas movie of all time Drum roll Yeah, right you've never heard of these movies because you guys you guys if it's if it's not black if it's not Like from the 80s on beyond you don't go back further But the best movies ever made were made in the 30s 40s and 50s Best movies ever made were made in the 30s 40s and 50s and here's an example One of the greatest movies ever made 1940 1940 my favorite christmas movie of all time is Shop around the corner Shop around the corner. You probably never heard of it But it is a great movie. I've recommended it here in the show in the past It's directed by uran sloughby. It's the greatest director of comedy ever And it's with margaret sullivan and james stewart And you should all go rent it or watch it on netflix tonight or tomorrow It is Fabulous. Uh, it's just so fun. It's so benevolent. It's so Just it's great. It's just it's just a good good movie, right? Um All right You've got mail somebody put up you've got mail.  It's a remake Of shop around the corner. You got to see the original. You've got mail. It's cute shop around the corner is brilliant It's beautiful. It's active Finally and you just your heart goes out to them. It's just the best best Christmas movie best romantic comedy ever. Okay, what else? Here's one. I did not expect to see on the list But I like I like this because it's a great movie and again, you've never heard of it Typical, right? It's called stalling 17 Right, it's about a german POW camp And it's it's it really is a great movie It's with um with uh, it's directed by billy wilder one of the great directors with william holden peter graves Robert Strauss You know really great actors of the period 1953. I'm telling you best movies ever made 30s 40s and 50s Here you got chopper on the corner stalling 17 both excellent movies stalling 17 really dramatic really exciting Directed by billy wilder one of the great directors of all time. All right, that's the top five. Let's keep going How do I get to number six? okay, number six they've got as Tangerine never heard of it number seven the apartment one of the greatest comedies of all time I'm not sure why it's a christmas movie But again billy wilder can't go wrong with billy wilder 1960 jack lemon shirley mclean fred mcmarie Wow, one of the great comedies of all the time one of the great movies are directed by billy wilder of all time So the apartment you got, you know an excellent movie fun entertainment cute Shirley mclean give me a break right so all right uh Hey chopper on the corner is on today saturday december 24th at 4 15 p.m. Eastern time On tcm. So you know record it. This is a great great movie All right, uh the apartment the nightmare before christmas This is the one with uh tim botten cute. I liked it. Okay, not bad for a modern movie pretty good I'll go with that. All right. Ah, here it is the classic The one and only one of the great action movies of all time and suddenly a christmas movie In many ratings. I've seen this as the number one christmas movie of all time. Are you ready for it? diehard the first one diehard with bruce willis Now that was a fun. That was a fun action movie. I'll go with that bruce willis allen rickman Just the whole you know high You know la skyscraper being blown up So a nightmare before christmas diehard. That's not bad. I'll buy that This one's author christmas number 10. Never heard of author christmas. Don't know a christmas story A christmas story don't know don't know 1983. I'm suspicious The miracle on morgan's quick 1944. You see this is a movie. I've never heard of it's 1944 I'm gonna go watch this because it's 1944 and 1944 they made good movies. All right Let's see. What else? What else? It where exports a christmas tale 2010 this is number 13 best christmas movie ever never heard of it okay in bruce This is a 2008 movie that I've seen Come on. It's not a christmas movie.  It's not a bad movie. It's a pretty good movie, but there ain't no christmas movie Uh, I don't get it. I don't get it. It's it's very well made. It's very suspenseful You want a thriller a fun thriller to watch in bruce, but I wouldn't watch it in christmas Wouldn't watch it in christmas.  Robert Downey jr. Is excellent and van kilmer is excellent It's fun. Go watch it. Not christmas. I don't I don't buy christmas. So I'm critiquing their list. All right Let's see number 16. What do we have is number 16? A christmas tale No, no tokyo godfather 17 never heard of it gremlins from 1994 Eh, I don't know trading places.  It doesn't get it.  You got to watch trading places one of the great comedies of all time excellent, uh, direct by john landis who made some great comedies And uh trading places. Okay, and midnight clear never heard of an elf. I didn't like elf. Eh, uh, all right a christmas carol a christmas carol Now it's a good movie. It's just so long right like the hero of a christmas carol should be scooch I I should have done the whole show on scooch On the heroism of scooch. Why scooch is a good guy, right? He's paying He's paying market wages. I mean if what do you call it? What do you call the The guy who works for him who who always think he's uh, he deserves more. Um, I can't remember right Uh, Cratchit. So If Cratchit deserves more, why does he go get another job, right? Obviously he's getting market wages. What's he complaining about? Scooch is actually building up the economy Anyway, you know me. I'm pro scooch, but a christmas carol a classic There are multiple versions of this that that are that are fun to watch. I guess. Okay. Here's another action movie That's very christmasy One and again one of my favorite action movies with a lot of sense of humor and a lot of fun aspect to it And uh, it is called lethal weapon lethal weapon from 1987 1987 80s read pretty good action movies So uh, so uh diehard and lethal weapon to action movies and then number 24 is a bishops wife A bishops wife. It's okay It's kerry grand david niven loretta young great performances good movie qual movie You know philosophically, I can't remember all the details, but you know, it's it's a typical Christian movie with lots of cutie angels and and a lot of altruism and finally number 25 number 25 is um The best batman movie ever batman returns dark brooding Wait a minute. This is this is this is not the one I met Well, anyway, this is what they list. I don't know if I'd listed batman returns Tim Burton's batman returns michael keaton. Yeah, I don't know I like the other batman the ones that were made by Um, I forget his name. Anyway, the more modern ones All right 25 best christmas movies now. We've got scoots by bill molly. They didn't have that. That's a good movie I'm just an elf. I don't really like elf. I think it's kind of silly Um, I need him. I need a I need to watch a christmas story. Everybody's been recommended this for a long time What else aren't maim? I never heard of it. Um What else are people recommending here? Let's see. Let's see. All right Um Shop well shop on the corner. I recommend it. Um All right, I don't see any others. There's a there's a bunch of other ones Holiday Inn has some wonderful Wonderful music by uv and berlin. So you got some stuff to go go go watch and look Enjoy this holiday. This is the coolest holiday It's it's a holiday to celebrate life. This is the objective is holiday forget about jesus who cares forget about You know the jews winning against the this is why you got it. They got a focus focus lights presence cool stuff people you love People producing and creating stuff exchanging gifts with people that you care for that you value That is what christmas is about and for those of you who have a white christmas Then it's it's also beautiful on top of everything else. All right. Hope you enjoyed today's show Tweet it tweet it facebook it share it. Hopefully Facebook won't make the facebook live thing disappear like it did last time So so please share the facebook live of it share the the blog talk We got to get a viewership up a listenership up Back to november levels when we went through the roof Um and uh, hey Merry christmas everybody and the next show Is going to be new years and for new years. I'm going to do 2016 in review What did I think of 2016 lots of talk about? Lots of talk about and then the show after that is going to be Assessing obama's presidency. So the next two shows are 2016 in review and assessing obama's presidency and Have fun watching all those great christmas movies with people you love while exchanging gifts It doesn't get much better than this Merry christmas. Happy new year