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Liberalism vs “Doomerism” in the Modern World
90 Plays1 year ago
We sat down with Warren Rhea: a corporate attorney, political commentator, streamer, and self-described "Neoliberal."
We discussed classical liberalism versus neoliberalism, the rise of "doomer" politics, and how liberalism can provide an optimistic, yet realistic, political vision for America.
Follow Warren: https://twitter.com/EverydayWarren
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Transcript
Introduction to New Format
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Project Liberal episode four, I believe. Episode four. We've been doing this for a while. My name's Josh Jekyll. I'm the co-founder of Project Liberal, joined here as usual by my co-host Jonathan Casey. Hello, hello.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello, Jonathan. And today we are doing a
Guest Introduction: Warren Ray
00:00:26
Speaker
couple of things. So we have Warren Ray joining us, and I'll give a bio introduction about him in a second. But we're going to try a new model. In the past, last couple of episodes, we've been very focused on having an expert and interviewing the expert about a very specific topic. And today we're going to try to make it a little bit more conversational, a little bit more fun, talk about some big high level ideas related to liberalism. And that's why I am very glad and excited to invite our guest, Warren Ray.
00:00:51
Speaker
Warren, I kind of pulled a bio out of out of thin air for you. So, you know, feel free to correct this. But I've seen you describe yourself as a as a as a political commentator. You're also an American attorney who practices law in the energy industry. I know you do streaming as well. I know that you at one point, the neoliberals elected you the chief neoliberal show to figure out what that means. I don't know what that means.
Neoliberalism vs. Classical Liberalism
00:01:15
Speaker
It's big, big. It was quite an honor. I got to say, it's certainly the highest honor of my
00:01:21
Speaker
uh, commentating career such as it is. They have a bracket for that, right? Yeah. They do a yearly bracket, um, where they, uh, you know, it is sort of tongue in cheek to deal with at the time. All these socialists who would call anybody to the left of, uh, I guess anybody to the right rather of, uh, Lenin and Stalin, you know, neoliberal show. And so they decided to make a bracket on it. So it was a lot of fun. I loved it. Did they only elect one a year?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yes, and you serve for one term, and you get there hopefully by Twitter posting, and you spend a year Twitter posting. So it's not the highest demand office, but it was fun. And the current fellow, Matt Darling, is also a lot of fun to use. He's a real deal worker.
00:02:10
Speaker
He works at a bank tag. He does a lot of really cool policy work. Matthew Darling, I would encourage you to check out. Matthew Darling, I'll have to check him out. So that was for the neoliberal project, or I guess it was the Center for New Liberalism is what they go by. Okay, gotcha. So I think, you know, just to frame everything, I know that you're a big advocate, a self-described advocate for liberty, open society, the Constitution, a lot of those things that are related to liberal thought.
00:02:36
Speaker
I find it interesting because I think that we might have kind of multiple unique perspectives on the podcast. So first and foremost, I know you describe yourself as a neoliberal, being the chief neoliberal shill. I think we describe ourselves, Jonathan, not speak for you, but more kind of classical liberals.
00:02:53
Speaker
And I think that those two unique perspectives actually don't think those ideologies or those concepts are very far apart by any means I think there's some distinctions and those are the kind of things that I'd like to discuss But I think that we'll have a pretty interesting interesting conversation So without further ado, why don't we just kick it off with that question? So you you're the chief neoliberal sure at least were a couple years ago. Well, although I referred myself as emeritus because it was so much fun
00:03:19
Speaker
noted. So how do you describe neoliberalism for somebody who asks, like, what does that mean to you? Well, it's an interesting question, because I suppose today, in practice, the neoliberal project, which is gradually becoming the center for a new liberalism, is increasingly sort of basically center left Democrats. And it's an interesting, I don't presume to speak for them, but
00:03:49
Speaker
shill contest was kind of a fun Twitter poll project. But I don't, so I don't presume to speak for them or anything. But in my view, the way that I think about it is the liberal tradition was very much on one track from, I suppose, the time of the early 19th century to the calamities of the early 20th century, right?
00:04:12
Speaker
And in the face of the rising tide of collectivism in the 1930s, there were some who said, look, we are still believers in the old ideas, but we feel like we've got to take on some of the reigns of greater state power in order to fend off the unabashed, shameless state power of rising collectivism on the left and on the right.
Challenges in Liberal Societies
00:04:39
Speaker
So there
00:04:42
Speaker
I suppose, I don't know that there are too many people who genuinely will call themselves neo liberals, but I think that the general idea of it is that you believe in a free society and the maintenance of those institutions, which perhaps in a perfect world, you might not want to spend all that much time in my own, like I suppose the military regulations for the banking sector, a lot of
00:05:12
Speaker
a lot of social welfare programs that maybe you might think, okay, well, you know, the arguments for this on principle are often based on practicality as well. Maybe it is the case, for example, that I'm not a big fan of the bailout of the banks, even though, of course, in practice it ended up making the United States government money. Maybe I think still ideologically, look, that's just not the role of government. Government has no place in doing that.
00:05:41
Speaker
Well, maybe so, but at the same time, it's important to protect liberal society such as it can actually exist in our fallen world.
00:05:55
Speaker
as a reference to ideas, like original sin and all that, mankind. I grew up an evangelical and so I completely understood the reference. I used to say stuff like that. Sometimes people say, wow, are you some kind of right winger or something? No, just mankind, perfect nature.
00:06:15
Speaker
We've got all these things from different influences, may as well use them. Yeah, sure does. And so we try and meet that nature where it exists. And we say, look, we want to try and tailor programs so that we can meet people's real needs, like a functional economy that can survive crises. And to that extent, occasionally we'll make compromises with the use of state power toward those greater ends.
00:06:41
Speaker
At the same time, I think it is also something that, in its proper form, involvesality distrust of the ability of state power to do things, like to just land the economy. Although, of course, there are those who would say, well, you know, your central bank is a kind of economic planning in a very real sense. And what you would say, you know, that's probably true. It's just that, you know,
00:07:03
Speaker
You have to deal with the political circumstances as they exist. The public does not want the sort of boom-bust, boom-bust economic cycles of the past. They are very politically problematic in practice. They cause a lot of other terrible consequences, none of which seem to lead to freer societies, only more unfree societies. Therefore, for example, you end up with a degree of economic planning.
00:07:33
Speaker
something I find important, but which I think is nevertheless better, at least theoretically more. I think it's better than the alternative, which seems to be just about everywhere and always much more intensive economic planning control of people's economic lives and reduction
Taxation and Wealth Perceptions
00:07:51
Speaker
of individual liberties. That's just kind of one example. But that's the idea, trying to reconcile with the fact that, you ever heard of Wagner's law?
00:08:01
Speaker
I don't think so. No, it's kind of interesting. I mean, it's one of those laws that's true law, but it's a description of the phenomenon, which is that in prosperous societies, the percentage of the economy that ends up being consumed by the government in GDP.
00:08:17
Speaker
continually increases. The United States is lower than, say, Europe, but it's still much higher than, say, developing country and not that far apart from Europe, as we might sometimes imagine. In fact, sometimes the United States has higher tax rates in European countries. Not often, but when it comes to the richest people or corporations, sometimes it does. And the idea is that as a population gets richer, they want more money to be put into government expenditure.
00:08:45
Speaker
And it seems to be, it seems to be true that public wants more public services. And I imagine three of us would find some I don't take some issue with, with
00:08:59
Speaker
that many people might view as an unalloyed good public expenditure for social services might say, well, hold on now. There's some problems with that. That's not government's proper function. But it is overwhelmingly the public's demand in industrialized countries all over the world. The culture is as far apart as, say, Japan and France. I mean, the pattern tends to hold. That's not an ironclad law or anything, but it's something that just
00:09:26
Speaker
something about modernity that we have to reckon with and figure out how to deal with. Because so far, folks like, say, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, who are typically called neoliberal, but are now, of course, typically disavowed by the neoliberal, Project Neoliberal, I'm not disavowed.
00:09:46
Speaker
But it's a complex issue. Folks like that, though, I mean, they were able to arrest the growth of the state, but not much in the way of true reversal, really. Mark with that term much more so than Reagan. I was going to say, Reagan expanded a lot of things about government. And kind of back to your point about this law, one of the arguments I make is that
00:10:08
Speaker
as we get wealthier, as we increase our wealth, the burden of government is actually going down. Sure, we're taxed at much higher rates than we were 100, 200 years ago, but the actual burden, the actual cost to people is quite a bit lower simply because our wealth has expanded so much greater than what it was in the past. So while our tax, our average tax rate is 30, 40, even 50% in the West, it's actually less than when it was, you know, two, three, four, 5% because we have so much more wealth now than we did. So the burden of government is less even though we're taxed
00:10:37
Speaker
quite a bit at higher rate. And so we, I think that we kind of, we fall into a, you know, modernity, we've fallen into the, you know, kind of a, we kind of ignore the actual problems with these growing tax rates because the burden is, perceptionally, is less. That's an interesting point. I never
00:11:01
Speaker
I hadn't thought about that because like you're saying that the burden is relatively less even if the rate is higher. The burden is less because you're working with a much larger pie. Exactly. If you're a subsistence farmer in 1700s, 1800s, Kansas, if you're being taxed at one or two percent, that's a large cut to your actual income.
00:11:25
Speaker
Whereas now, if you're working a salary of $60,000 a year, even if you're taxed at 50%, which you're not, I don't know exactly the tax record, but even if you're taxed at 50% there, $30,000, the GDP value of that worldwide is 10 times the average worldwide salary, right? So I think in the West and developed countries, we've got this sense that the burden of government is less even than the tax.
00:11:52
Speaker
The tax is higher. So I don't know if that explains all of it. I think it explains some of it. Well, it is. It's something that this is something I see sometimes in libertarian circles as a claim that the American was actually freer prior to the American Revolution because well, it's one of those things where, I mean, first of all, not to get all woke on you, but of course that claim only really applies to that show the population to which we all belong. But apart from that, you know, because that's not good.
00:12:21
Speaker
thrust the argument anyway. The main thrust the argument is taxes and government control and interference in your life. And that's something that I'm, yeah, I mean, the tax burden issue, like you said, that's, it is a, it's a relative share of a larger part.
00:12:38
Speaker
Also, of course, the not insignificant part, the taxes were all levied by authorities to which the Collins had no say. It was a not insignificant part, but they did say that was a huge part of it, right? They weren't typically complaining about the PLEVs, they were complaining about the principle of it and the way that the principle worked out. And then that last part, I guess,
00:12:59
Speaker
You know, government had, I mean, it had no restraints on what the government could do. And certainly the powers of the individual over other individuals, which were blessed by the state, not just like, for example, slavery, but the degree to which ordinary people could kind of meddle in other people's lives without consequence. I mean, freedom of speech, for example, I mean, the idea that there was such a thing in fashion that we were able to really count on it.
00:13:28
Speaker
You know, although I will say sometimes I do derive some satisfaction, I think, to how crazy politics is now, you know, you look back at the kind of things that people read in political newspapers back in, you know, 1780s. I mean, it was pretty rowdy, man. I mean, politics hasn't really changed that much when you look at it. We have different mediums to discuss this thing, and it maybe feels more
00:13:52
Speaker
Oppressing and oppressive. It's more in your life in your face that it may have been 250 years ago But these fights the nastiness of it. That's not anything new. Yeah, I will say yeah, in fact, it seems like there was this period I mean, I'm you know, I don't presume to be an expert on media history Yeah, it seems to be the case that sometime the I guess 19 like around World War two
00:14:17
Speaker
Media, the centralization
Impact of Social Media on Politics
00:14:19
Speaker
of media as such, I mean, not by, as far as I can tell, some central plan, but just the economics of it, was such that, you know, then you had things like fairness doctrine, I guess, but the economics of it were such that you'd have these big, large media institutions that all followed a certain kind of path, and you had a lot of, I guess, local newspapers, all for whatever reason, local media, that for whatever reason, for example,
00:14:43
Speaker
do things like refuse for a port on JFK's affairs. I mean, not because the Kennedy administration had a gun there. It just seemed like for a period of time, a few decades, maybe 40 years, the news meeting was really something different, I guess, than the ordinary, which is a lot closer to today, it seems like.
00:15:03
Speaker
I wonder if that's more the audience has changed or maybe we're more comfortable with those types of subjects, right? It's a weird, there is a weird shift in the media. You had up until, like you said, around World War II, you had the kind of the respectable media, at least the perception of respectable media, when in reality, they were covering up a lot of things.
00:15:23
Speaker
Well, I'm saying something slightly different, which is that for a period between World War II and I don't know when it ended, but, you know, for a few days, maybe so. There was a lot of that respect and belief. But prior to that, it was like, what, people were pretty vicious.
00:15:43
Speaker
Listen, the founding fathers would write anonymously to newsletters calling each other horrifically awkward things. I think I looked up something I once read about one of them calling the other her hermaphroditical character, like things that just just really nasty at each other. One of the things I did want to bring up with you today was talking about just
00:16:04
Speaker
how we've gotten our politics feels like it's much more vitriolic than it has been in the past. And I wonder what you think of the role because you obviously you kind of, you know, you've built up an audience in the social media era, you've kind of you've seen a lot of this. And one of the things I appreciate about you is that you've kind of
00:16:23
Speaker
you haven't let the doomerism or the hate kind of seep in that feels like so many influencers have let happen. So I'm kind of wondering, what's your perspective on that? Why have you been able to avoid it? Why is it so seeming so prevalent?
00:16:39
Speaker
Well, I will say that I think huge reason why I have been able to avoid it is that this is just something I do for fun and it's not really a job and I don't really make any money off. You're not getting paid by Elon Musk? I didn't actually just register for the monetization because they sent an email saying, hey,
00:16:57
Speaker
You're accruing revenue. You're leaving it on the table, honestly. I mean, if I'm accruing revenue. But I was thinking, I don't think so, though, because my engagement lately has just been terrible. So I don't think I'm actually. But the email said, there's revenue that is occurring, not just potential. And I checked. I was like, what is this?
00:17:21
Speaker
You gotta wait till the next interval not to get a drop in intervals. So the next interval you're gonna get more than other people will. Okay. All right. Well, that's not, I'm excited. Thank you. Yeah, there you go. But, you know, I mean, it's like, it's relative still, like you gotta be, who's that guy?
00:17:38
Speaker
The guy from Malaysia, who's always... Oh, Ian Shopkin? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And, yeah, he was posting, oh, I get $10,000 a month off of Twitter, or X, as it's called. Yeah. The name that will never quite stick.
00:17:55
Speaker
It's- It feels like such an incentive for disinformation, for exactly the type of bad content that you worry about. It was always, I think it was always, I think that was always kind of there. Like the difference I think now is I guess the monetization is much more direct. Whereas previously Twitter was like a thing that the incentive was the dopamine hit immediately. And then also the, you know, you could then take people and say, hey, come do my thing where you give me money.
00:18:23
Speaker
Or come, you know, go to this website to just give me money or whatever. Now, I guess Twitter can be the money. I don't know how much that changes. I'm sure it changes somewhat. Cause like people have said, there's a lot more Facebook type content on Twitter now, but. Definitely. Definitely. Oh, well, and what that, okay. So the algorithms I think are a big part of the reason why, I mean, it's like, you get, you get incentivized by being in many cases, uh, spreading misinformation by being really,
00:18:51
Speaker
bombastic and by being really controversial and I think that's an incentive but You're saying your reason that you have not fallen to the trap is because you just don't give a shit Well, I mean because you know, I I'm not saying it because I'm a good person I'm saying because you know, I have a day job and this is something I do for fun I mean if it were my job, I think I feel very different because why I
00:19:16
Speaker
be not like other girls. But you know I think the incentives would be very different because at that point you know unless you have cultivated an audience where it's like no we're the opposite of that you know which is something you can do. I mean hopefully it's something like you guys are trying to do. You know but for the most part though I think it's um it's uh it is a little tougher I think uh perhaps because it is so um
00:19:40
Speaker
It is just so easy to just kind of focus on like, I need to just like engineer this to be as compelling as possible. And I mean, nobody's going to check. Nobody really cares if it's true or not. If it really kind of matches up and lines up. I mean, most people, I mean, it's got to be really egregious before the profit loss is, you know, of like lying or making something up or whatever.
00:20:05
Speaker
So, I mean, that is there. I don't, I mean, it's, and that's tough to deal with because it can come across like you're saying, well, that just means the people are not interested in our arguments. And there is, I don't think I'd be saying that. I think there's also a sense among
00:20:26
Speaker
which I would call myself, I'm not calling you all that, but people who are like, no, things, you know, we're always a lot of good stuff going on, and we should change some things, but we shouldn't burn it all down and start over. I think there is a, I had this great talk the other day where a fellow said, this British politician, his name escapes me, I'll look him up later, but
00:20:52
Speaker
He was saying that liberals sort of lost some of the fire in the belly belief, energy to defend their own ideas, which there may be something too, you know, when they're not challenged for a long time, when they're accepted, you know, suddenly somebody, somebody in a movement comes out to just kind of thrash everything. It can become, it can be hard to meet it on its own terms. So I think there's also some of that.
00:21:21
Speaker
I think that I think the pendulum is swinging the other way. People are sort of wising up to the scope of the challenge to free societies and are kind of changing their tactics.
00:21:36
Speaker
I think you're speaking to something that both Jonathan and I think about a lot is in a way we, I don't know how it feels to you, but at least to me being in, you know, from my perspective, watching all this play out over the last decade to a decade and a half, it feels like that kind of liberal world order.
Rise of Extremist Ideologies
00:21:54
Speaker
It's been on a pedestal for so long in the 20th century, in my childhood growing up.
00:21:59
Speaker
It has been, it has really been challenged and knocked down by extremists and not even extremists just on the right. Like a lot of people in the Democratic Party say it's just the Republicans, but also extremists on the left. It's like really radical.
00:22:12
Speaker
far-left individuals that are challenging that within the DNC. They have less influence. Obviously, the GOP is completely run by these populists and these anti-liberal, these illiberal individuals. But it feels to me like somebody has to go to war with them. And again, change the tactics. You can't expect to fight for liberalism through these. You've got to really think about new ways to address these narratives. And that's kind of what we're trying to do with this project.
00:22:35
Speaker
is really fight them on on their own turf but you know like turn that logic against them in a way that resonates with people. I think that one of the easiest traps a political movement, philosophy, whatever can fall into is this idea that well we are morally correct so we don't need to argue we don't need to defend what we believe because well we're right we're superior we're better than them we're morally correct and we
00:22:59
Speaker
morally justified. So we don't need to defend our views. And I think that this happens on the left and the right. But I think recently, the left has certainly kind of fallen more into it than others. On the right, it seems like they've kind of gone the opposite way, where they're like, we're fine with being the immoral people, right? Will you call us immoral? Will you call us despicable? We'll own that title, right?
00:23:18
Speaker
They've kind of got the opposite, the reverse mirror image problem with it right now. And I think that there is an appetite for something other than those two things, for a rigorous discussion of ideas. I'm curious. Twitter isn't real life. The vast majority of people actually really resonate with the ideas that I think we all kind of collectively share here. And they let these extreme voices in our media and our social media define the narrative, and it really pisses me off.
00:23:46
Speaker
I think you're right, although I would say one of the things to be concerned about in the future is that it does feel like one drop at a time, Twitter is leaking into real life. But for the time being, I agree, Twitter is not real life.
00:24:01
Speaker
Well, and when I say that, I mean the vast majority of people aren't really paying attention to what's going on in Twitter. Twitter does have a real life impact. I mean, it's arguable that without Twitter, Donald Trump may not have even won the 2016 presidential election. And this never would have happened. But it's like I'm sick and tired of seeing the extreme voices monopolize the conversation.
00:24:18
Speaker
And no one really, truly challenging that as Jonathan mentioned a second ago on the liberal side, which I think you guys at the neoliberal project actually do very well. Or not you guys, but you know what I mean. You know, they were sort of early on, I think, you know, in their own way, just sort of like, okay, how do we deal with these sort of attacks from the left all the time?
00:24:45
Speaker
some of the some similar tactics, although different from from them, you know, like the idea of using ridicule as a tactic, for example, but not in a way that is quite so just like, terrible. Yeah. But in ways that are still nevertheless, you know, you know, there is some real utility there in the sense of
00:25:06
Speaker
of highlighting bad ideas, you know, but also hopefully in ways that don't make you feel like gross afterward. So there's a, and they've done a lot of interesting stuff there. So again, I don't presume to speak for them, but I do really, I do really admire the work that they've done for, you know. I mean, they created the dark Brandon meme. Yeah.
00:25:28
Speaker
And they can at least put that on the rest of it. That alone is hilarious to me. Whoever got Biden to actually buy into that was, I don't know who had that conversation. But hey, listen, that was a slight miracle in and of itself. One thing I did want to ask you is, where do you see the differences between kind of neoliberalism and classical liberalism? Where's the dividing line?
00:25:57
Speaker
I have my opinions on where the dividing line is, but I'm curious, what do you think?
00:26:00
Speaker
Well, I would guess first, probably the Federal Reserve, which I don't quite know. I wouldn't presume to be an expert on it, but it does seem like libertarians are very, you know, quite, I shouldn't say libertarians, because I know that's a, today's term means a lot. Yeah. It doesn't. Yeah. But there are a lot of folks who would, I'd say, liberty oriented. If you look at an institution like that and say, just like, look, I don't care.
00:26:29
Speaker
whether it has, you know, whether you're saying the league is better off. I mean, that's a, that is a ridiculous use of state power. It's not even democratic. I mean, it's, and it's vested with incredible authority, you know, to regulate the economy in ways that are just fast, far reaching, to which I would say, I mean, probably, yeah, hey, but same time, you know, we've seen the alternatives and the alternatives are just not great. So, you know, we live here in the United States
00:26:59
Speaker
in the world and we got to figure out how to roll back state power. But if Central Bank of some sort is necessary, if I would...
00:27:10
Speaker
I wouldn't presume to be an expert, but it seems to be the case, then is what it is. But I think maybe the bigger one, and I don't say, that's not just the issue, although I single it out because it does really seem to drive a lot of feeling. It's just the example of what I just said. I mean, what I imagine strikes many people is just unprincipled nonsense. But at the same time, you deal with the world as it is, and utopia seems to be very far away.
00:27:38
Speaker
But we can think about ways how to make the government more accountable, how to get the government less involved in the economy without going
00:27:47
Speaker
full tilt in the name of principles. So that's one thing. Maybe a bigger issue, I'm not sure if it would be bigger or not. Many people really do seem to be animated by the Federal Reserve, but maybe a bigger issue would be the military, which I guess over the last year and a half, I just really, ever since the Russian invasion, I really have had nothing but good things to say about American commitment to national defense, but many people would quite rightly
00:28:18
Speaker
Well, not just national defense, but, you know, defense of international order. Any people, though, would say, you know, one, that's, it's military, maybe the government's business, but, and maybe one of the few things we'd argue the government should do, but, you know, this isn't an empire, you know, this isn't, this is not what the founding fathers envisioned. This is not necessary for a free society. In fact, this is deleterious to a free society, have created a sort of
00:28:47
Speaker
a military that is itself too enmeshed in civil government. Not to be silly, but folks talking about the woke military, but other folks who are sometimes concerned about the prospect of, say, those are getting involved in politics at a high level.
00:29:14
Speaker
I don't want to speak out of turn, but people who are concerned that the military just has too much influence in political life. And of course, who were concerned about the fact that the military was also engaged in two wars, that Afghanistan and Iraq, that
00:29:34
Speaker
cause immense human suffering with arguably little to show for it. And which, I imagine the greatest sin of both of those cases is that it doesn't feel like we won. I think that's what most people are upset about. But in any event, those are things to really be upset about or to be concerned about, which I typically would say, yes, I share your sentiments. But at the same time,
00:30:04
Speaker
we are the only democracy in the world capable of defending itself in a real way, I suppose, other than maybe India, although it never seems to get better of its exchanges with China. But, you know, the only democracy in the world, eh, may be France, too. I'm being a little expansive here, but, you know, one of the only democracies in the world capable of defending itself, and certainly the only one capable of defending others, and
00:30:30
Speaker
That's a good thing, a freer world, a world where free societies have greater security, can collaborate, can work together, can trade freely, uninterrupted, can speak freely, uninterrupted without fear of violent retaliation from foreign states. I mean, these are good things. And unfortunately, because our
00:30:54
Speaker
Rivals are so tenacious. Sometimes we're going to spend upwards of nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense because they're spending
00:31:02
Speaker
They hide their budgets in different ways. A lot of that trillion, for example, is retirement and medical care for our men and women and our forces. And maybe they're not doing that in Russia and China, but the fact is they're spending a lot. They are sophisticated rivals. We have to keep up because at the end of the day, I mean, this is existential stuff.
00:31:24
Speaker
We want freedom
Military Power and International Order
00:31:25
Speaker
to endure. We have to make those investments and recognize the political risks while have less also recognizing the necessity, trying to square those. Those are two big differences I would imagine. Makes sense. And a lot of the things that you describe, I see as more characteristics of kind of like anarcho-capitalist or, you know, boilerplate libertarian thought, whereas classical liberalism, I think, is a subset of the liberal libertarian umbrella. But the word libertarian is becoming to mean something
00:31:54
Speaker
very different, at least it feels like in the last couple of years. Jonathan has an interesting way that he articulates the difference between the two, and I am interested. I want to hear Jonathan's chime in on this, but I was going to say one of the things that I think personally I see as the major difference, and maybe Jonathan, this is kind of what you're going, I might screw this up, but like
00:32:13
Speaker
I feel like neoliberals are a lot more ontological. They're like focused with reality and like what's the real outcomes. Whereas I feel like classical liberals and even libertarian system agree the opposite in the sense that they're more like the ontological they're more focused on like ideas and ethics and values and like the outcomes are kind of secondary to that. They put those things in different priorities. So I think there's a lot more to it to unpack. But Jonathan, I know I cut you off.
00:32:36
Speaker
No, I think I was trying to remember exactly how I put it to you the other day, but I do think that classical liberals put the outcome of freedom first, and I think neoliberals try to balance that out with economic or other concerns. I think the classical liberals are a little bit more focused on that.
00:32:56
Speaker
on that central idea of that freedom is what is to be valued and aimed for, wherein economics is an outcome, good at prosperity and development are an outcome of the freedom. Whereas I think that sometimes neoliberals kind of switch that order and they say, okay, we need to achieve economic liberty or economic success leading to more liberty.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who are quite willing to throw out really old principles, most of them at least, if they say, you know, like, here's a graph that shows that there's some good outcomes. So, you know, that just is what it is. And as Margaret Thatcher would say, there is no alternative. And I'm definitely a big Margaret Thatcher fan.
00:33:42
Speaker
I feel like significantly, another reason I try and spell out that I don't speak for neoliberal projects is I feel significantly to the right, I think sometimes, of my good friends over there. But it's, I think you put it well. I guess I will only say this, Josh, and you, John, as well. I have the
00:34:09
Speaker
I feel like I agree with the idea of freedom as an end in itself to be bound for itself, and that the outcomes really should be secondary.
00:34:21
Speaker
Suppose if I have my way, I might have a different society in some ways than the one I advocate. I don't know that if I had my way, I would, because I guess I like some of the things. Maybe it's worth it to me. I don't know. I'd have to think about the specifics here. But generally, I might feel that way too. I get the sense that
00:34:41
Speaker
If we had sustained inflation for, say, four years or eight years, we would get some pretty terrifying government that would have no interest in liberty of any sort. And so if there are ways we can restrain this stuff, I mean, we've got to think about it.
00:35:01
Speaker
in the sense of not trying to just ensure better outcomes, but because I think largely, and this is the difference, those better outcomes are essential to any hope of making decisions based on principle, rather than on, you know, anything else because once when folks feel like they're, you know,
00:35:20
Speaker
and folks feel like they're hungry, whether it's right or not, whether it's justified or not. I mean, because the people in Germany say 1930, I mean, it's not like these people were living in a third world country. They were still living in one of the most developed countries in the world, but they still had that myth and I shouldn't say myth because it did have some economic problems, but myth of just being kind of downtrodden and just like crushed by the world. It's not true.
00:35:46
Speaker
And life in the Weimar Republic, all of its problems, was not so bad as people will sometimes say. But the fact is, it almost doesn't matter sometimes because people feel like they've lost something. They feel like they've lost economic opportunity or any of that. I mean, it seems like folks are just all too quick to say, yeah, you know what, freedom's nice.
00:36:15
Speaker
I love that you kind of are bringing this topic up because this was something I did want to bring up as well, was that we live in a time of unparalleled prosperity, not just in the world, but in America itself. You can look at the data. People talk about the disappearing middle class. It's like, guys, that's a good thing. They're disappearing into the upper class, guys.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yes, the lower income, that's not moving up into the middle class as fast as we would like to see. Don't get me wrong. And I don't mean to say this in a way that dismisses people's real world concerns and real world issues. There are many people struggling in America in all over the place. Let's not dismiss that. But as a whole, the human race, Americans themselves, we've never been better off
00:37:01
Speaker
And yet, we don't realize it. The perspective that we have has really, I don't know how we all comparing ourselves to the Kardashians. And we aren't successful unless we reach that level. What can we do? Because I feel like that's one of the things that we at Project Liberal are trying to work on is this countering this doomerism. That's really dangerous. It's a very dangerous thing. I think that Trump was kind of an outflow of that. And Trump was a buffoon who didn't actually know how to get anything done.
00:37:29
Speaker
Right, exactly. But what if somebody comes along that can tap into that numerous energy that is really, truly threatening to just the American way of life, the liberal order that we have in this country. How do we fight that just kind of that doomerism that seems to just be everywhere right now?
00:37:52
Speaker
Well, I will say one thing. It is very exceptionally important to ensure that our rivals overseas are not able to create a sense of feeling of inevitability that comes by, for example, being able to conquer countries and destroy democracies without consequence. Because one of the things that powered the
00:38:11
Speaker
feelings that democracy's time had come and gone in the United States in 1930s. What's this feeling? Oh, yes, these are the societies of the future. And they show that actually all of our values are nonsense. And you know, it's really crazy. That's what's happening now with the rise of Russia and China effectively,
Geopolitical Dynamics: China and Russia
00:38:30
Speaker
right? I mean, it's the same kind of thing. It's like this idea that these pseudo-fascist, these massive authoritarian governments can somehow rival us.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's very true. Now, we are fortunate, I say in our time, that our rivals are, you know, Russia, which is, you know, I think we'll all probably live to see Russia's final act whenever that may be. It's not, it doesn't have a good future no matter what happens. I mean, I'm not saying I wish anybody ill. It just seems to be the case. Russia and China are demographically fucked. Well, I will say this. I don't know as much about China. It does seem like a bad picture demographic.
00:39:10
Speaker
but it also just seems, it doesn't- They're gonna be under a million people by the end of the century. Think about it, that's a recipe for a disaster. You worry about how that plays out, but go ahead, I'll let you speak. Well, I would always say that, I don't know, maybe I should, maybe this is just my own bias. I don't get the sense of the same raw,
00:39:33
Speaker
just hopelessness of Russia in China. Seems like this is a country that has achieved a lot in the last few decades, not by means we would like. I mean, some by means we would like, and certainly others not. But, you know, it's some advance, some development. Many people have been pulled out of poverty. Real achievements there. I'm not saying it's because of communism. There's been achievements there.
00:39:57
Speaker
Russia has just been one tragedy after the next very, very long time. I mean, yeah. That's one thing is that our rivals are not the German economy after the Nazis took over. It was fascinating. They just juiced it as fast as they could on the assumption that we're going to have a war
00:40:22
Speaker
And then we're going to have to pillage to keep this fire going. So when they annexed Czechoslovakia, for example, the first thing they did was seize as much gold as they could. And I'm trying to remedy their economic situation. But anyway, so back then they were really, it wasn't too much better, I suppose, but Russia
00:40:42
Speaker
you really got to be, it seems only like the most deranged, you're really looking at Russia and saying, oh yes, that is a model that I would like to emulate. And China, though this is not an honest and good way to judge future societies, China seems to have something in common with the fascist power of the 1930s that
00:41:01
Speaker
you know, nobody was really looking at as a model for the future in the West, which is Japan. And that something in common is that they, you know, it's not a country, you know, European extraction. And so our right wing fanatics don't look at it as a model to emulate for the most part, because, you know, that seems to be the only real reason to me. Otherwise it's just, you know, every so often you'll hear somebody who does, you know, like a Sohrab Amari, for example, who will post something,
00:41:28
Speaker
you know, that this is why China is coming in the future or whatever. But for the most part, no, China is universally held as a threat. And I gotta say, it seems to be that it's, you know, just, I don't think anybody's looking at that as a trab life. And that seems to be the only, you know. Yeah. As somebody who spent, somebody who had a year or two where I ran through Russian literature, Tolstoy Dostoyevsky, there is a, like we talked about paperism in America.
00:41:58
Speaker
Russia has a perpetual humorism that is wild to me. I don't I don't understand it. Maybe it's just having to live so far, so far north. But then again, Canadians don't feel that way. No reason had to be that way. Right. Exactly. But I think China, China has a different, a very different mentality. And they also
00:42:20
Speaker
With China, they've liberalized their economy enough to a point where they have decreased poverty quite a bit. Whereas Russia, over the past 20 years, has really gone the opposite way. Almost two-thirds, like 60% of Russians, depend on the state, either through being directly employed by the state or by their welfare system or
00:42:44
Speaker
Or any other by other means they all depend on the state for their income. So that right there tells you how like that that they may the government may not directly control the economy. They control the economy. Yeah, it's wild. And it's it's just it's it's just it's unreal. Like how just what a different league they are really in like I
00:43:05
Speaker
You know, if you think about it sometimes, how insane is it really? Like, you ever bought something that was made in Russia? You know, if you ever, when's it unless you saw a Russian restaurant? I mean, hey, there was Russian vodka on the show. There was the one thing that we could all think of, right? Now that thing is, now that's gone. It's like that and caviar. And it's not, I'm not saying this because this is a culture, like a cultural argument. It's because it just
00:43:33
Speaker
is wild that this huge part of mankind in this country
00:43:38
Speaker
Part of mankind is a part of Europe. Massive natural resources. Massive natural resources. There's no reason that this, and also massive immigration from this country to the United States for decades. But of course, most of that immigration was people fleeing. I suppose it's a little different. It is just wild that by comparison China, which certainly we've had a fraught relationship with at times in the past,
00:44:04
Speaker
and which, you know, this country's had a long history of racial difficulties as well. Nevertheless, Chinese culture, we all know Chinese culture at some base level and all dissipated it in some base level. Our houses are
Promoting Virtues of Liberalism
00:44:20
Speaker
full of goods made in China, many of which, they get better each year and they're not
00:44:24
Speaker
oh this is great and they're quite good so it's just wild that like here's the difference this country that was just mired in just the most grinding poverty until basically our lifetimes yep and then russia which has been a developed country for quite a while and it's just still just mired in just shit it is so tragic it's unbelievably tragic and it's just like their future compared even to china it just seems like there is just
00:44:54
Speaker
No. No future for country like that, where demographics are generally already, you know, populations are already going to be, you know, slowing down. I think it's like six million people have left Russia in the past decade. Not trying to celebrate this because, I mean, you know, there's going to be a world after the war in Ukraine and all that, of course, and it's just, it's not, it's not great. But that said, the original question about doomerism, I think one thing is important.
00:45:21
Speaker
talk about stuff like that it's like look you know you you want to talk to the United States it's fine but if you're going to go parading another model okay well we need to have a talk that's one thing but more than that I think um you know uh it seems like uh you need folks to be a little more aggressive about promoting the the values and virtues of our own society not just in the sense of saying you know kind of hey look everything's pretty good as it is but also talking about why you know
00:45:47
Speaker
in a little more historical context to really creating an emotional sort of connection to it. Because it seems like we're in an age of, I guess, romanticism, where people are really looking for that emotional argument rather than just a rational argument. And we've had that before. And this country thrived on that era. That was a pretty insane era. That's basically the period prior to the Civil War.
00:46:18
Speaker
But there was a lot, there was just a huge, like, to explain why this is something to think about, for example, religiosity in this country, which many people decry the loss of.
00:46:28
Speaker
It exploded during this period of time, not because, you know, religiosity is some fixed quantity that started at 100 at the time of Jesus, and it's just only a trickle down since. It blossomed during this period of time. People founded new churches, discovered old churches again. They formed new community groups where there hadn't been any
00:46:50
Speaker
A lot of civic activity, a lot of civic ritual that we participate in dates back to that time. It wasn't just something that George Washington decreed from on eye. It arose organically. And I think it's because there is a real sense of spirit and values and that stuff people have to generate that organically. It's not going to come from the top down anymore than it ever has.
00:47:12
Speaker
And the United States remains a very religious country relative to some of its counterparts. And the more religious relative to a lot of these countries that these national conservatives idolized. I think our church attendance is through the roof compared to Hungary, which is now the conservative. And yet we truly have a secular government. I mean, when it comes to how it approaches these issues,
00:47:39
Speaker
It doesn't stifle religiosity. Well, I think there are a lot of folks who I sometimes wonder how much how much belief some folks really have in their own.
00:47:50
Speaker
Bullshit, you know because you would think yeah, I mean even if you a lot of those folks will say well the u.s Numbers are juiced. It's like okay. Hey still that doesn't change the fact that you cut them in half. It's still go outside I don't know how I'm in the bible belt south. Come on guys. Yeah, we're not very religious And they're talking about these they're talking about them in comparison these ex-communist countries that just I mean they've had just the Faith crush out of them and then they step into our own time where it just
00:48:20
Speaker
you know fates have sort of fallen I guess somewhat out of fashion and so it's like between the the uh and these are european countries that dealt with world war one world war two you know just real raw crises that we as americans just don't really have uh yeah don't have an analog for I mean we just don't like that's a continent of people that either were nazi occupiers or were occupied by nazis and then just we just don't have anything
00:48:46
Speaker
Well, not only were you occupied by the Nazis, then half of the continent were just then occupied by the Soviets. Yeah, yeah. And then you get that. And some places, I mean, millions of people got both. And it's just like, well, so then these places, I mean, they're trying, I guess, to, you know, Hungary is trying to be this, I guess, trad outpost of liberal democracy, as Viktor Orban calls it.
00:49:15
Speaker
You know, it's just wild to me to hear Americans say, yes, this is the country of the future with the same sort of voice of a socialist time at Cuba. Oh boy, like the paradise of Cuba. That's a great correlation. And the other thing I don't get is those folks that never
00:49:34
Speaker
goes anywhere. It's not like the fair play for Cuba Kennedy. It's not like we're going to copy their constitution and replace ours, right? Yeah, and I think there's some idea on the far right that the left has all this power, and they've just conquered all our institutions. And as a result, we need to start using the force of the state to unwind that power, because otherwise we're never going to be able to. And that's why we need to look at country like Hungary.
00:50:04
Speaker
And it's like, one, that's totally just not a comparable example in any way. But two, you're kind of looking at the issue the wrong way. Like, if people are losing faith in religion, it's not because the government is pushing the wife on it. And it's not because the left has succeeded in convincing people that boy, oh boy, it's a lot more fun to believe that when you die, nothing happens.
00:50:28
Speaker
It's like, no, it's probably because for the last four years, we've had more involvement of church in the state, or at least attempts at such involvement. Churches have become politicized, religion has become politicized, and as a result, people living in the here and now are much quicker to decide, look, I don't want to be involved in this institution. It gives me vibes of these politics I don't like.
00:50:56
Speaker
The quickest way to destroy credibility of religious institutions is to legislate the morals of those institutions and have those kind of things enforced violently. And then what do you get if you succeed? You get England where, yeah, the church has seats in Parliament that mean nothing and a church that itself is dying, which will only I mean, I'm not wishing harm on the Church of England.
00:51:21
Speaker
wish them all the best. But it's like, you know, if you want to look at what an established church is, well, that's the Church of England, a church which maintains some constitutional, you know, they view their system as having a constitution. We, of course, in America, know better. But they, you know, yeah, this church has constitutional authorities, some constitutional authority. It will always exist in some sense because it's
00:51:47
Speaker
It is a creature of the state. The monarch is the supreme governor and all that, but in terms of a real vital institution, like vitality, it's just seeping away.
00:51:56
Speaker
And I don't wish that to happen for them. I'm just saying, that's what your established church is. It's not good for folks who really live a vibrant religious life. Many of my ancestors, both pilgrims and Huguenots, they fled established religion to practice their own religion. They came to America to be able to practice their own religion away from those established religions that now are apparently the standard by which we should look at.
00:52:26
Speaker
It seems to me that we tell ourselves a lot of these narratives, both kind of as institutions, as stories, and I feel like one of the narratives that's very important, even though it's twisted, it's true, there's some true aspects, false aspects, it's just kind of the American dream. We don't know what that means anymore.
00:52:49
Speaker
We don't know what that, you know, that didn't mean everyone came here and got rich, right? It meant that people could be able to build a life for themselves. That's still here. We still have that, but how do we change, like we hear all these other narratives going around about Hungary, about Russia, about all of these things. How do we start changing these narratives in our country to promote the positive narratives? Because the American dream is a positive narrative. It means, hey, pick yourselves up and build a life for yourself here.
00:53:18
Speaker
Now, that's harder for some people than it is for others, and we should absolutely be working on all of those things, but it's still a positive narrative. How do we build those narratives up? And it weren't anxious as to what you think about that, but I just want to add something to that. I find it so odd to me because I've spent a lot of time in my work
00:53:35
Speaker
in the, working in the international libertarian movement, talking to people from other countries. It almost seems like the American dream is more understood by people who aren't Americans now. I don't know if you've had this experience, but I've talked to people in like Latin America and even some places in Europe and they understand. My entire life I've worked with immigrants, legal and illegal. And trust me, they know it way better than me.
00:53:56
Speaker
It's still a beacon. I don't think the world hates us as much as the doomers in the United States believe that. No, I mean, most American-hating people are all Americans. Yeah, exactly. When I was in China, they said, we don't hate you, we hate your government. We love Americans, we hate the American government. Yeah, I mean, and it's hell. I mean, Joe Biden went to Vietnam this week and
00:54:21
Speaker
He went up on this pencil in front of this big statue of Ho Chi Minh that previously they only invited other Kami leaders to stand up in front of him. It is this idea that even a country like Vietnam, which whatever you think of the war, might have some reasons to dislike the United States government. I mean, folks are practical. They're not, you know,
00:54:49
Speaker
Well, I guess that's a different situation given that maybe not every country has another country next to it like China has been trying to absorb it for the last 2,000 years or so. But in any of that, I think that is a good point. Time to be married dream. How do people talk about positive issues? I think that it seems like maybe one of the big differences I find at least talking with immigrants and people from other countries who come here and express this sort of appreciation that sometimes Americans don't always
00:55:19
Speaker
they just kind of remind me of people who take a lot of self-ownership in their life and who are really excited about the opportunity to be free to do something and then they have they don't have an idea of what they want to do like I want to do
00:55:34
Speaker
And there's not a lot of that, it doesn't seem like there's the same sense that some Americans have of, gosh, I don't know what I like to be about. What is it that, you know, we have a lot of freedom and the challenge and the curse of free society is that you then are left to derive some, find some meaning.
00:55:55
Speaker
find a purpose. What is all that? You know, it's a little easier. You know, one of the advantages of a supposed country, like say, I don't know, I guess, Orban's Hungary, or maybe one of these trans societies. I shouldn't speak about Orban's Hungary because I don't know so much about that. But maybe a country like, say, I don't know, the Soviet Union maybe.
00:56:16
Speaker
You know, your values, your purpose, all of that has already been decided. You know, you just decide whether you're in that or you're not. And if you're not, there are some problems. So there's some real incentives to at least mouth it along and just kind of go with the flow, you know.
00:56:31
Speaker
And they're true believers. If you're a true believer, there's a lot of benefit to that too. But here in a free society, we have to decide what our own lives are about. And we have to determine what has meaning. We can't have meaning, just give them top down. And that does require a fostering a real sense of self-ownership. And that can be tough, I feel like sometimes, because life is so good now that it's quite easy to, you know,
00:56:57
Speaker
put in relatively little and get a lot of enjoyment. There is endless new content and entertainment for free at any time. It's easier than ever to make. We're all here doing it.
00:57:17
Speaker
kind of really take a sense of self ownership, what it is you want to do with your life, rather than just floating with the breeze and, you know, when your sense of anxiety about life gets too hard, just kind of flip on a new YouTube video and stop thinking about for a while or game or something.
00:57:35
Speaker
So I guess that's one of the challenges of modernity. You've really got to foster a sense of self-ownership. Because with that, once you're really an active participant more in life, then you want to be free of a lot of these things that people in other countries are coming here to get away from, to get out from. You want to be free to take an active role in your life, rather than this passive sort of identity that says, oh, yes, I need to be shielded from all the forces of the world, all these big, bad corporations. Of course, I love when they give me stuff.
00:58:03
Speaker
More product, please, but you know revenue. No, yeah, but they're trying to manipulate trying to screw me over I can't be responsible for my choices. Yeah, my boss is out to get me everybody's out to get me. You know the government's out to screw me over I just need to be protected. I need to be insulated can't can't handle that stuff
00:58:20
Speaker
No, I mean, you start to view things differently. I'm the sense of, I have an idea of what I want to do. I'm the author of my own life. And that's why, hey, you know, I see why maybe some people need some protection. But for me, that's restraint. You're getting in the way of what it is I want to do. I'm going to create X, Y, or Z. I have an idea for business. I have an idea for a project or a
00:58:39
Speaker
the non-profit or whatever it is you want a church like we're just talking about whatever it is you want to do i guess the laws are still pretty good for churches but you know what i mean you get the idea well and warren you you said it so well um that that is that is the true dream of a liberal society and one of the things that i think is the major criticism of liberalism in the modern world is this idea that
00:59:03
Speaker
liberal societies have no purpose. They have no vision, this nationalistic focus. And it feels to many of these like national conservatives and many on the far left, like it's unmoored and it's purposeless and it meandering and it doesn't go anywhere. Whereas you look at societies like, you know, China that has this national mission and it's inspiring. But the truth is you look at the last 300 years, the unmoored meandering
00:59:33
Speaker
Purpose seemingly purpose. Let it be organic. Yeah organic Nature of liberal societies have achieved far more Yeah, and then any of these societies that have come and gone with these national purposes And it's it's so much more of a powerful force when you understand that way at how it relates back to human action It goes back to the examples that you just gave that those principles and of themselves create prosperity create innovation Create the conditions for safety and security and like those principles are so powerful and it feels like people have forgotten about that, right?
01:00:02
Speaker
But they also create the fundamentals for that sense of meaning, that sense of self-ownership that provides meaning. But it's not centrally planned meaning. Right. And they think that you can do this kind of top down. And so there are some examples. I mean, we talk about, I think,
01:00:22
Speaker
I know about you, but I feel like I always feel a little more comfortable talking about some of the Soviet Union because it's always just like, it's so, there's so many clearly ridiculous examples of how central planning has failed in practice. And how the same way, you know, this was so ridiculous. How could it even have been a theory? Although, of course, at the time, nobody had tried to, well, that's not quite fair to say. People tried central planning.
01:00:45
Speaker
But a lot of these ideas were kind of comparatively new so you know hey, whatever, but now it's just so ridiculous. It's easy to
01:00:53
Speaker
to, you know, now you see communists and they're like active degrothers, you know? And it's great because, hey, true, this is a philosophy that, you know, it used to be saying, this is the faster way to grow. It grew much more slowly, although it did at least through its credit grow. Some of it even continued to grow, it was much slower. Now they're just straight up degrothers, you know, misanthropic. Global warming is the reason we need to switch to communism because it will mean less human growth.
01:01:34
Speaker
But in terms of human development, you could say, well, you know, an Eastern Bloc country, you know, at a certain level of economic development, there's a better economic alternative than saying, well, you know, there's a better economic alternative than saying,
01:01:45
Speaker
uh a military hunter might be you know like there there were you know now it's it's not uh a western country but you know it's not like the worst thing you could you could shoot for either uh that's not you know so you kind of get what i'm saying like you could you could envision in the past i mean hey if you're a country that has no development there are some things you could you could see in this model um but you know that time has gone coming and coming
01:02:12
Speaker
We were in a space race with the USSR, right? I mean, there was a time where they were real economic. It seems to be the case that basically once you hit a certain level of economic complexity, which is not all that high, the benefits of central planning, such as they are, are completely gone. They're totally gone.
01:02:28
Speaker
Yugoslavia is kind of interesting to look at because this is a country that was basically totally destroyed in a war and for about 10 About 20 years they were able to get some real economic growth out of their brand of market socialism And then it all slowed down and went to hell because I have a certain point it seems to be the case that after you do the very basic stuff It doesn't work anymore. But um, you know, I said surprise surprise. Yes, right. It turns out yes all that stuff that Comes with a moderately complex society
01:02:57
Speaker
But, you know, so now that's really just not an issue everywhere. Now it's just a disaster everywhere. So it's easy to talk about. But folks don't pay a lot of attention to kind of these right-wing utopias that have existed, in part because the ones we're most familiar with were destroyed in an apocalyptic war, right? And so it's easy to be like, yeah, that's obviously disaster, you know, in Germany.
01:03:18
Speaker
Sometimes I think it's interesting to look at the ones that the braver among them will praise, like say Franco is Spain, or I think Salazar is Portugal. And, you know, you think this is a country that was not destroyed in a positive way. I mean, the Spanish War was a disaster. But I mean, after that, they didn't have another war. It kind of went on for several decades before it finally went belly up with the death of the Generalissimo. And were they able to preserve
01:03:47
Speaker
things you know they the whole this whole movement of the right in Spain trying to preserve tradition fight modernity you know create this you know return to the past as it were in some ways it's more complex than I'm letting on there were more factions on the right it was there were
01:04:06
Speaker
straight fascists, conservatives, traditionalists, all that stuff. A little more complex than letting on, but were they able to at least protect basic conservative stuff like, say, the integrity of the church, you know, the dignity of the worker? No. I mean, the church was just shredded by its association.
01:04:27
Speaker
with this state to the point where now this is a country that regularly elects full-throated socialist governments, where religious faith is certainly much lower than it is in the United States, a country which admittedly never has used fascist means. Well, it's rarely, I would say. I can't think of any examples, but it doesn't regularly use fascist means to defend state churches.
01:04:52
Speaker
This country, which used to be a much more religious society, it used to be much less inclined to things like divorce or abortion. Spain is now by every measure a far more
01:05:08
Speaker
I would say at least a more socially progressive country than the United States, more economically progressive country than the United States, and this is a country that had 40 years of straight unrequited right-wing dictatorship that was meant to turn the clock back on all this stuff. It just doesn't work because it turns out when you associate all of this stuff with your traditional values, you just you speed up the process of abandonment. And this is a result of people who are not willing to engage with their ideas in a competitive
01:05:36
Speaker
marketplace. Instead, they don't have confidence in their own ideas. They think they need to be protected by the full force of the state. And hey, some ideas do need to be protected by the force of the state. You know, I was singing the praises of the military earlier, but when it comes to things that really animate people these days, culture, religion, faith, identity, that stuff
01:05:58
Speaker
can impose a tiny bit of a top-down maybe, but for the most part, you have to build that stuff organically. You have to convince people, persuade people. And if you don't do that...
01:06:07
Speaker
The argument I try to make with a lot of people who are anti-immigration is that the best way to spread American culture is to let people in. Because no one protects American culture, work ethic, family values more than immigrants. If you want to spread it back to their home countries, this has been shown before, that if you, immigrants that come to America, they send aid back. They let people know back home the prosperity that's in the United States.
01:06:34
Speaker
I wanted to kind of go back a little bit here and talk about
01:06:38
Speaker
people and lack of purpose.
Purpose in Modern Societies
01:06:40
Speaker
And I think these are problems of modern times. These are good problems because 100, 200, 300 years ago, you just had to survive. Your goal was to survive. You're going into the woods, cutting down a forest just so you can plant food so that you can actually eat. Now we don't have those problems. So one of the reasons why I think we've seen some of the rise, especially among young men, some of these influencers, and this is something that I'd be curious on your thoughts on,
01:07:08
Speaker
is trying to find a purpose, trying to find meaning in things and these are extremely important questions and I think that we as a modern society can actually start to answer them now that we don't have to just
01:07:21
Speaker
plant our own food and gather the resources ourselves. We can actually create wealth and prosperity and have time to actually even think about these things. I think that back in the 90s or back in the 50s, the average father, we made a meme, the average father worked 97,000 hours in their lifetime, whereas today that's down to 67.
01:07:45
Speaker
that is a huge decrease in how much time you have to spend working and that doesn't even include household chores which have been almost cut by a third. So we've got the time to think about these things and that's you know there are challenges that come up you know that that brings with that brings with that. So how do we start to answer these questions and particularly how do we especially with young men young men seem to be the most
01:08:10
Speaker
impacted by this lack of purpose, this lack of sense of self. How do we start to address these questions? That's a really good question. I have to say, it is difficult. It is a little tragic because I was thinking about that the other day. I was thinking, gosh, I had a great dad.
01:08:30
Speaker
raised me up, gave me a sense of self-worth or feeling of, you know, wanting to be an active participant in my own life and all that. I mean, he wasn't, he wasn't really a global person. He just, you know, the Plinko chips fell the way they did. He was a big part of that, I feel like. And I had, you know, a lot of, a lot of good things to say. Perhaps most importantly, do as I say, not as I do. You know, he was very cognizant about, like he, I really appreciate that sense of self-worth.
01:08:58
Speaker
So I feel like I have a great dad. I feel like he's brilliant. That's probably got to be the most important thing for a young man. I mean, that's the kind of thing, though. It's like, OK, so that's great. I hugely benefited from somebody who happened to be in my life, who I had the control over that. So that doesn't really offer much to a lot of people. It's not that you can just go out and get a new dad very easily. And there are very few policies I think you can make to make better dad. I mean, a lot of people think like, gosh, that's the other tragedy of the National Conserver Project is that there are a lot of folks out there who think that
01:09:28
Speaker
You know, we're not having kids because it's too expensive.
01:09:31
Speaker
Unfortunately, I mean, that holds up to a few moments of really kind of serious thought. Like every other country in the world has proven that. Every country that gets rich has fewer kids, and every country that is poor has more to the point where the poorest country in the world. I believe it was Niger. It may not be Niger. Niger, I believe is actually the correct pronunciation, but it may not be Niger right now. But in any event, it's around there. It has a birth rate of seven or eight
01:10:01
Speaker
children per woman by comparison to the one to two in the developed world. And so is it because, you know, do people have high birth rates because they have a lot of money? It does seem to be the case that at a certain point on the income spectrum, the birth rate does go back up. Once you get to be
01:10:18
Speaker
I think once you really start to be making, I don't know if it has to be millions of dollars, but how much does Elon musk you that with his kids? Right, right, right. It doesn't have, as far as I know, it doesn't have to be millions of dollars, but it has to be, I think, at least a few hundred thousand before you suddenly now have the buying power to buy the services of other people to assist in the project of raising children. So that to me suggests that the real challenge of our time when it comes to an issue like this is all going to get back to the
01:10:47
Speaker
question of man, I promise. I appreciate y'all being so open. I'm enjoying it. It's a great conversation. The suggests that the problem is that people really prefer their time. And they are saying, I would love to have children, but it's just so not getting expensive. Well, maybe, but then again, it may be the case that actually, people historically had children
01:11:15
Speaker
with much less income bait, not historically still do, still in the United States, still around the world. And what do you think that's a responsible decision or not in terms of people's human priorities? We imagine other people in the world also have agency. It seems to be the case that once you have more money to spend on other things, more free time to do other things with, you suddenly decide, boy, gosh, there are all these other things I'd like to do. I'd like to go on this trip.
01:11:43
Speaker
become this sad or whatever. I'd like to work on myself." And all of that is a heckin' cute and fabulous and good. But the challenge is that now we're left with the old question of dealing with, what is it that you value? What is your priority? And instead of that, we kind of get this narrative of, I want to have that... I feel like I want to have my K to need a two sort of narrative where it's like, I would love to do that, but it's just so expensive.
01:12:12
Speaker
That's like in a sense, yeah, because you know, you can't afford the, the several servants, not servants, but you know, you can't afford to go on the vacations anymore, right? Right. Well, you, I mean, even if you could, it's the time that's the issue, right? It's the investment of time, right? Because we want, you know, we love our kids, we want to have good kids, we want to make the time with them count, right? But that does mean that you spend less time on other things.
01:12:37
Speaker
And that time is the ultimate fixed commodity, right? Even if we eliminate scarcity, we still have to deal with the scarcity of time. And that's a very hard thing to do. It seems like in our world until you get to a level of income that suggests really, there's not a great solution to this problem. And people will do things like they'll fund healthcare for
01:13:01
Speaker
or not health care, they'll fund very generous maternal or parental support benefits. And hey, there may be good reasons to do that for the sake of your values or something. But if you're doing that to increase the population, it's just...
01:13:16
Speaker
a tiny bit of difference, and it really doesn't do much of anything at all. Everywhere it seems to have been tried, and they tried it in Russia, Hungary, and France, and it always seems to have a very marginal benefit. There's this idea that we can use state power to kind of reverse these negative trends, and it seems to be the case that that is just, doesn't seem to match up with our revealed preferences. You know, I mean, you can, if people want more time, and not a lot the government can do there,
01:13:43
Speaker
Well, hey, they can make us all more poor. That would make a difference. But then again, the other challenge, too, that makes this such a difficult one to grab. They do a great job at that, too, by the way. The other challenge with this is that now this is a problem that isn't just kind of a rich people, rich country prop, really, because birth control is also very affordable. And whatever people say about their values and ethics, it's something that they want. They want control over when these momentous things happen.
01:14:10
Speaker
So there's just nothing you're gonna be able to do with that. And we have now seen that as you try and restrict access to this sort of stuff, all that happens is people have less sex. So because it turns out now we're so advanced as little monkey with our monkey brains that we found things that are often more compelling. Maybe they should or shouldn't be, but now there's just so many ways to spend your time. Now it is more important than ever that you persuade in
01:14:38
Speaker
I think in the past, just we maybe don't realize just how much of life was sort of slotted out for us. Maybe not in oppressive ways, but just like, you know, what else are you gonna do? You know, I'm 30, you know, in the year 1950. What else am I gonna do with my wife? I mean, it's Tom has a kid. What am I gonna do? You know, there's only probably three channels and they're all over at 930.
01:15:01
Speaker
You know some point, you know now you have the world ahead of you you have to make those choices and that's that's tough So that's that's my to say that there's not much that the state can do with these problems I feel like that gets us to men and that's really tough I think men because men I have such a They have
01:15:22
Speaker
Ah, you know, that sense of wanting to provide, you know, in a free society, you know, your role as a provider remains important, but in a different way. It's not that you are essential for survival because it's possible for a woman to work and support herself. I shouldn't say possible, like it's a rare thing and it's common. And it's not, you're not essential in the sense of,
01:15:50
Speaker
you know, I have to work or we're all going to start. It's more like I have to work so we can have a good standard of living to do the other things we want to do, like go on vacations or realize some other ambition, you know. But if you're not conscious about that, maybe it just feels like, gosh, you know, we work these jobs and then we just blow our money on consumer goods that we don't even really want to.
01:16:11
Speaker
That's just the end of it, you know? So there's a challenge of, I think, again, trying to really facilitate that sense of self-ownership. Without that, I think that a lot of the benefits of our age can be lost, you know? If you're just kind of buying, like that sense of just buying things just means nothing. I mean, it's just, yeah, I suppose if you're not really thinking about what it is you really want, you're really happy. If you're just kind of floating from dopamine hip to dopamine hip,
01:16:40
Speaker
mean that we're not prosperous. It doesn't mean that we should change what's available to people. But I think in the past, it may have been a little easier because so much less was available to people. Your choices does have its benefits, not that we should go back to it. Right. Yeah, that's the thing. Did you guys hear this
01:17:03
Speaker
She won head is one of my favorite posters, not because I really agree with very much of what she says, but because she's very much a master of her craft that just knows how to drive engagement. She's just a master of that. And she posted one recently about this study that said that men would prefer electrical shocks to sitting in a room quietly with their own thoughts. I saw that. I saw that. I think this one was real, but I mean, you've heard permutations of this for a very long time.
01:17:33
Speaker
And I mean, that's true. It is so, god damn hard to just sit there and just think, what do I want out of my life? I said, what am I doing? Have I made the right choices? I mean, heaven forbid, if you haven't made all the right choices, because then you've got to think about that. And he's here to follow the dopamine hits. Right. I've got to think about mortality. I only have so many hours in this world, I've got to make it.
01:17:59
Speaker
These are hard questions to grapple with and I am not sure.
01:18:04
Speaker
What drives people to do it? Because I got to say, sometimes I worry that maybe one of the challenges of our time is that it's just easier to just sort of go on autopilot and just kind of. Well, and I think you're on to something because when I when I really think about that, I mean, sure, things were less prosperous. We maybe had less in the fifties, for example. There was, you know, based on which demographic group we're talking about, you know, the standard American, you know, white male, whatever.
01:18:34
Speaker
they may have had less, they may have poor, that drove them in ways to do things like have children, which having children is a very rewarding thing to do, it changes your life in a way it also kind of introduces agency in an indirect way. But it's like, now it gives you children give you purpose for the next
01:18:53
Speaker
18 years or for every kid, right? And it helps give you that purpose. Whereas now it's just a lot easier to the default state, right? If you're following the dopamine is to just just stick into the matrix. But you know what the other challenge with that is, though, that things like, for example, having a child,
01:19:13
Speaker
Like that is what Brian Kaplan did this, I never read it, but I've heard a lot of praise for this book. I think the selfish case for children is something that, and he says, you know, look, your children are not necessarily going to make you happy.
01:19:30
Speaker
But your grandchildren certifiably will in a way that benefits your life in such a massive capacity, that it is literally in your self-interest to have as many kids as you can. That is scientific. I have proven that that is the way to have the most meaningful life possible. All this and that. I believe that. Well, take it for, you know, just feedback. I don't have any reason to just feedback. So just take that for granted. Keep in mind though, like what a leap of faith this is to say,
01:20:00
Speaker
Look, okay, I'm gonna have a child and just try and think about this like maybe an ordinary person would. Maybe they wouldn't wanna concede to it. Okay, well, first of all, I have forbid I have a healthy child. I'm not gonna have a child where the rest of my life is gonna be defined by their health problems. I mean, that's, maybe I'll find some meaning in that along the way, but at first that is a terrifying prospect. Okay, so that's one, we're gonna have a healthy birth and I'm gonna have a sort of a life changing event that makes
01:20:29
Speaker
makes a permanent trauma, a trauma for the rest of my life. That's one. Two, I guess I've got to decide that I'm at the point where I'm ready to take on an 18-year commitment, right? You know, I have now, many people find the idea of commitments for any length of time
01:20:48
Speaker
very difficult. And now here's one that is not just 18 years, but by the way, increasingly, there's something that probably doesn't help the situation. I don't know, I imagine it's a big decision driver, but I mean, the stakes were all in children. If you screw up, you let your kid walk to school by themselves, then we might arrest you, you know, it's possible. You know, I don't know how much of that really factors into decision making, but I'm sure it makes the whole thing over.
01:21:15
Speaker
little tougher than it will always be. So you're taking on a big commitment. You're asking people to do a lot. And you're saying basically, okay, but huge meaning reward, serious reward in terms of meaning and purpose and it changes your life. I totally believe that. And yet I also recognize that somebody who's not yet on the other side, I hope one day to have some kids of my own, but I recognize
01:21:40
Speaker
uh you know yeah i agree but i also recognize there's no reason why would you ever tell me anything else you probably feel like a terrible person you can't yeah who's gonna say that yeah i mean so it's uh it's a big decision and it's an example of the kinds of decisions that now um people in free society are left with it in the past they just didn't have it all because eventually whatever you control you had would fail if you even had it
01:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, farm you needed a retirement. Yes, you need it. Yeah, there was huge. Yeah, like, you know, the trash is my time. Seriously, like, you know, they're like, it is not a functional
01:22:30
Speaker
thing anymore. You're not doing this for functional reasons. You're doing this for emotional satisfaction and for the, you know, the joy of creating a new life and raising. And not being the one on your deathbed. Yeah, right. I mean, these are really, these are not, these are not simple, simple things. You know, they're not just like, I guess this is just the time to do it. I don't have anything else to do. Like say, you know, in the past, it's
01:22:58
Speaker
it's a tougher choice. And I think that's emblematic a lot of the problems that afflict men today. Like, how do I find meaning and purpose in my life? Well, gosh, you know, I guess in the past you've seen the memes of like, you know, men used to be fighting wars and all that. And, you know, we think about like, gosh, that's terrible. Isn't it nice that we live in a world that's more peaceful, honestly?
01:23:19
Speaker
Well, it's true, you know, but I will say, um, there's probably a serious and extreme sense of satisfaction purpose that comes with, uh, you know, have you guys ever seen, uh, you guys, I'm sure know a little bit about Napoleon, for example, right? I mean, this guy.
01:23:39
Speaker
he's defeated in 1814. He's exiled to this island off the coast of Italy. After nine months after the King of France is restored, Napoleon comes back with a couple of soldiers and raises an army purely on force of personality
01:23:55
Speaker
for the purpose of taking down the king. And it almost works. All of Europe, again, has to come back and stop him for this. And at this point, this guy has made so many disastrous mistakes. So many people have been killed. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. So many people died that France was, I think, the only country in Europe that didn't have a population group in the 19th century. It just later had some serious consequences. I'm not an expert in France, but it's what I've heard.
01:24:24
Speaker
And yet this guy offered such a clarity of purpose, vision, follow me to greatness. And just men were just like, yeah, I will.
01:24:38
Speaker
I'll join you. We'll mark Chaperos together. That is something that I often on Twitter will mock and laugh at, but there's also a kernel of something too that's hard to create in a society where you say, create your own purpose. That's what I do. What if you just don't want it? You just want somebody to give it to you. That's tough. We've got to figure out how to deal with that.
Influence of Modern Figures and Ideologies
01:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, I recently read a cult mind control by Steve Vasson. And he talks about how cults, what they'll often do is they will try to get you to replace your personality with a cult personality. So you adopt the practices, adopt the way to speak, act, talk. And so they get people into these cult mentalities of acting like the group and being one with the group.
01:25:28
Speaker
And exactly what you said with Napoleon. People buy into this vision. They've replaced their identity with this other identity that's out there. Somebody's been showing them this vision of this identity that they can be a part of. And I see that in a lot of smaller ways now.
01:25:44
Speaker
with influencers today, getting people to adopt these identities, adopt these things. And I do, back to the original question, how do we give people a different, how do we get people to really, to break free from those things, to create a positive identity of themselves? That's going to be, I think that's going to be the question of
01:26:04
Speaker
for a long time. I don't know that there's a single answer. Well, I think it's sort of a combination of saying, well, here, kind of what's your alternative? And we are fortunate, I suppose, in our time that, and by the way, to be clear, just to give some credit to Napoleon, I don't want to say that those folks didn't have agency. They weren't. But you just imagine that the sort of meaning that comes from being told, you're on a crusade to liberate the world of kings and emperors,
01:26:34
Speaker
irrespective of the fact that I just declared myself emperor. I mean, whatever. But, you know, I mean, just the rhetorical power. It is hard to say the idea of self-authorship up against something even approaching that. That can be tough because it's just such a lot of rush that must have been, you know, at least until you got a cannonball to it.
01:26:56
Speaker
So I'm not trying to sell short of saying exactly like it's even that a lot of the stuff was cult-like mentality. Just that group mentality, there was something really powerful to that. And it's tough to match that on a purely digital basis. The alternative, I guess, is to create voluntary groups.
01:27:13
Speaker
But voluntary groups themselves are a challenge. And it can be hard to, without the means of coercion sometimes, to create something quite so compelling. A cult that were purely voluntary perhaps would not be as much of a cult, right? But that said, I think it's a combination of presenting the, one of the things we're fortunate about in our time is that in terms of alternatives, all the alternatives to a liberal society basically don't have any figure in them.
01:27:43
Speaker
liberal society talking about all the challenges that were assigned, but nobody else really has a seriously proposed an alternative model. It's all just folks talking about reanimated versions of far older or far more discredited ideas. And they basically sort of all seem to share this hope that look, if we can
01:28:03
Speaker
If we just sort of smash this one up enough with a hammer, that will create breathing space for new ideas. But the truth is that these new ideas are not likely forthcoming because, oh, at least I don't really believe that politics is something that is driven by, like,
01:28:24
Speaker
innovation in a way that's something else. It's sort of a response to circumstances. And this seems so far still be the best response to the circumstances of the human condition, liberal democracy. Everything else seems to just be, they'd be worse and nobody wants it. Even if they maybe don't like this, they never affirmatively want the other thing. And that's why even Russia and China still eat the structures of a democratic system. They still talk about how they are more democratic in fact. But the truth is like,
01:28:51
Speaker
The folks out there who argue, actually, we should have less freedom, less democracy, very rarely will they do that openly, and that just shows that the ideas that they have have no vigor, really. All they have, as far as vigor, is saying, look at the expectations you have for your society. Well, in practice, it has delivered less than those expectations. So we're fortunate enough that that is, that's basically the alternative.
Pride in American Values
01:29:15
Speaker
It's somebody saying, you're a hypocrite and your society doesn't work as well as you say it should, or would, or whatever.
01:29:20
Speaker
In the past, people were like, hey, here are some new ideas that we should try. Now there are no new ideas. All the new ideas are just permutations and regurgitations of things that have already been tried, like national conservatism is basically just the same right-wing stuff hard-boiled and repackaged in a way that, at least for the moment, isn't usually straight fascism, which basically will get there in time.
01:29:48
Speaker
We're still going to have elections, but they're going to be different because only good people will run in these elections. It's just the same stuff as always. We are fortunate we don't have those vibrant alternatives. There still is no real alternative. Like when Francis Fukuyama, who's often mean about now, said that, it wasn't that he was saying that everybody's just going to become a liberal. I shouldn't quote Francis Fukuyama here, but I think the gist of the ideas I understand is that
01:30:18
Speaker
It's not that there aren't alternatives. It's that there aren't alternatives with vigor. So it's not that we're all destined to become liberal democracies, but it is that that's the only thing people are building toward. Nobody is building toward anything else. They're only trying to destroy this in the hope that something else can be maybe done at some point in the future. So that's a good thing we've got. And highlighting that, I think, is important.
01:30:47
Speaker
The other thing is to really, I think, try and inculcate a sense of self-ownership and try and tell people that, look, there is no way to meaning and happiness except to try and do the hard work of creating it for yourself. And failing that, I think we have to figure out ways to deal with the problem of the large
01:31:16
Speaker
that large part of mankind that is like, no, I want somebody to give me something to believe in. I don't really know what the answer to that is because, you know, I've heard people say things like, you know, 30% of the population is just generally just inclined toward authoritarianism. You know, I mean, hell, I don't know. I don't really have a lot to offer of that. You know, if you have a sort of, that's a challenge, you know.
01:31:44
Speaker
I'm not saying that's definitely true, but I kind of read that that's a challenge. Just authoritarianism is kind of a mindset.
01:31:51
Speaker
I think that the idea that we have to control others to a certain degree is just kind of innate. Yeah. To a certain degree. Yeah. And remember, liberalism is brand spanking new. In the grand scheme of human history, we've had 250 years where we just had, you know, for the first 100-ish years of America's existence, we were the only ones. It really was a liberal-ish government. I wouldn't even call it, I wouldn't say that we were even
01:32:18
Speaker
pure liberal even today we aren't even pure liberal at all. I will say I think another challenge that we have is that we don't grapple I think honestly with history or usefully with history. We do so in ways that I think they seem to rob it of some of its vigor. Like for example one of the things I realized that I would always do in the past is I would say for all its faults America you know for all its problems for all its challenges
01:32:45
Speaker
And I feel like in practice, we should just stop saying stuff like that. Because nobody who believes, nobody who you can reach cares, and nobody who cares is reachable, you know? For all that's fallen, for all this, despite the, oh fuck that.
01:33:01
Speaker
Nobody cares who is the people who are highlighting that stuff at this point the year of our lord 2023 We're saying the united states is just a fundamentally broken society. Those people are in practice It is now I think clear to me that that is an argument people are never making good faith that the purpose of that argument is the same as the national conservatism stuff that I was talking about their point is to try and demolish as much of what exists in the hope that maybe then Their ideas which are not popular at all. Yep
01:33:27
Speaker
Boiled-over versions of old, uh, old cherries with one flavor or another will have a chance to flourish. And that's why they want to tear down this country. Where are other countries, too? This happens in, uh, in, uh, in Britain, which gets worse than most countries because of, you know, the legacy of empire. People trash every institution there. I mean, you know, those poor bastards, they can't even post a picture of their breakfast without somebody dog-piling them. Doesn't look good to me, but I mean, they must like it.
01:33:52
Speaker
So this is a problem. We don't have more vigorous defense of our institutions from a sort of pride perspective. Just imagine the romance of somebody like George Washington in 1776, fighting against the most powerful empire in the world.
01:34:11
Speaker
perhaps in the history of the world at that time. It only went on to become more powerful, in fact. It was a massive enterprise fighting against one of the most established ideas in the world of a hereditary, authoritarian monarchy.
01:34:29
Speaker
fighting on the edge of the known world against that, some of the longest odds in the world, for the chance to be the author of his own life, just as a sample, or to preserve rather, because people back then, the leaders of the revolution, they had already had what were traditionally called the rights of Englishmen, and they wanted to preserve those.
01:34:57
Speaker
from encroaching monarchical power. That's what it was about, the right to preserve the freedom to be the author of your own life.
01:35:07
Speaker
instead of focusing on all the bad, because the bad is not remarkable, right? The bad in human history is, for the most part, it's everywhere and it's unremarkable. I mean, you gotta get real bad, you know, you gotta get Nazi Germany bad before you are specially remarkably bad. Bad is, you know, bad is pretty common, you know? It's the good that is not, and it's those exceptions, the rule that should really be highlighted.
01:35:34
Speaker
We need to judge people, clearly we need to have caveats when we talk about the Founding Fathers and we should talk about their flaws. But they made a step forward that had never been seen and has impacted the world in a positive way. If the revolution has failed,
01:35:55
Speaker
Can you imagine what the world picture would look like today? I have a hard time imagining exactly what that would look like. But I can guarantee you, it's a lot worse than what it looks like today. Of course, those who are well you see would be better off because we wouldn't really know what we had lost and we still would not have lost. We wouldn't have had the war in Vietnam if the America hadn't you?
01:36:17
Speaker
There you go. Yeah, there's a lot of people in the UK. I shouldn't say people in the UK. Very few people say anything has deranged to this, but they'll say something like, well, revolutionary war was a sort of mistake because, you know, they had them, they had the NHS. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's what it's all about. The world that we created, the world that I developed from, from that point on, yes, it is defined primarily by the difference in health systems.
01:36:44
Speaker
No, man. It's really worth, I think, and I don't have a lot to say for people in other countries because I don't have their historical experience. I imagine there's something similar to think about for folks abroad, but at least here, I mean, how much pride must one be able to take in knowing that the ideas
01:37:08
Speaker
that set forth the thriving of the modern world in large part got their start here. And people in Europe had been writing about them, but they hadn't been able to really put them into practice until the United States got started. And then Spark was lit and then it expanded and expanded and expanded.
01:37:30
Speaker
You know, I mean, there's really a lot there to find romantic and to take pride in. And for people who just are constantly just focusing on the bad, at this point, I have to say it must be obvious that the only people who are served by that are the people who are trying to destroy everything good in your life. Every authoritarian, everyone who wants you to be poorer for your own good, those are the only people who benefit. Because at the end, as one of these trial attorneys,
01:37:58
Speaker
Pastor Meiner Law School used to say when the plaintiff's lawyer would say, you know, we need this and this much money for the damage you've done, he would come up and say, look, money ain't gonna bring him back. You know, money ain't gonna bring him back. You know, the damage has been done, all right? And that's a tragedy. But the fact is that the damage that is being done now is not by the past so much as the people who are trying to use the past now
01:38:28
Speaker
And not with that exception, but when people are talking about things like the Revolutionary War, the Founding Fathers, the damage that was done is not the issue now. What is the issue now is the damage that people are trying to do, particularly those forces I guess animated by Russia and China, but really, authoritarians all over the world are trying to do is they're trying to leverage
01:38:49
Speaker
hypocrisy and inconsistency for the purpose of convincing you to give up your own freedom for the sake of some sort of imagined moral clarity that, of course, you know, whether society has a moral record any better than art are often much worse. So, you know, be proud, unabashedly proud, not in an ignorant fashion like, say, after 9-11. You had a lot of ignorance of the stupid freedom fries pride. But, you know, a justifiable, qualified sense of pride in who you are.
01:39:18
Speaker
And in being a part of an incredible project, a group community, a nation dedicated to the prospect or the project of individual flourishing. That's got to be at least as good as Hungarian nationalism.
01:39:36
Speaker
Yeah. Winding like a fucking bitch over the tree of trying on 100 years later. No offense to hungry booze out there. Nothing gets hungry. A valued NATO ally when Victor Orban is not mucking things up. But I mean, come on. If you're an American and you're looking at these places for inspiration,
01:39:56
Speaker
It's like these communists who want to talk about Lenin in Stalin and won't even give somebody like Eugene V. Debs a chance. You know, I mean an American socialism. They don't have no interest in that stuff. They just want this romantic nonsense that has no applicability abroad. It offers nothing. If you want, you know, you want, so that's I guess my idea maybe for a sense of identity is maybe a renewed sort of
01:40:20
Speaker
unashamed, intellectually qualified, but not constantly tripping over itself to prove that it's good and decent and caring and thinking about all this stuff, just says, no, America is freedom, is good, and there's value and virtue in that because it allows you to be the author of your own life, to transcend misery, to define the human condition everywhere and always in the past. Here's a chance to do something else. This is a project worth being a part of, worth contributing to, worth identifying with.
01:40:50
Speaker
uh and worth defending there's something that is Yeah, I was going to say I think we're we're over our target time So I think I couldn't have chosen a better way to kind of encapsulate the conversation I mean effectively that's a lot of the ways That's a lot of the motivations behind what we're doing with brush and clip roll We want to be guided by that true optimism and that that mindset like that Bring people back to the true values that like made the society great because we believe that they're not dead They can make society great in the future
01:41:19
Speaker
and fighting the central planners of culture and the central planners in government by showing clearly that the ideas, even though they feel unmoored and unguided, can lead us to a better life.
Modern Political Risks
01:41:32
Speaker
And I really loved your commentary on self-ownership and really the importance of that. That is so critical. A lot of people don't really think about that. We need more voices that are advocating for it.
01:41:41
Speaker
So much of our society and so much of our discourse is talking about tearing things down, tearing other people down, tearing institutions down. Sometimes we need to tear institutions and ideas and things down. Don't get me wrong. But we have to be able to build things up. And America gave us a hell of a foundation to build things up on.
01:41:59
Speaker
Our founding fathers really built a foundation that we can build on, we can improve on, and there are plenty of improvements to be had. But we can build on those things, we can build on these ideas. And like you said, the way that they've spread around the world, I mean, it's not universal, but it's hard to imagine in three or four more generations that these ideas
01:42:19
Speaker
won't spread because there's just an innate human desire. We talked about an innate human desire to control other people but there's also an innate human desire to be free and you can't be free if you're trying to control everyone else. Well that is a challenge I think sometimes to appreciate is because of course um I mean
01:42:35
Speaker
You know, like that wasn't always true that when we say, well, I think it's true that everybody wants to be free, to be able to shape their own life in at least whatever capacity they'd like to. I mean, not everybody has the same desire to make all the decisions that maybe other people want to make, but they want to make some decisions. But at the same time, freedom, certainly in the United States, like the one I was just praising at first was I want the freedom to author my own life. And of course, obviously the lives of all the people who are in control.
01:43:05
Speaker
you know, not just slavery, but you know, family, children, poor, whatever, right? But so that idea is like, it's never like perfect and unfinished. But the fact is, you do start from something, you shape it, prove. And I mean, we've now seen several alternatives of basically, okay, well, yeah, we're literally gonna burn it all down and start over. And it's kind of like, I watch this incredible
01:43:33
Speaker
like the French Revolution. I mean, this isn't the only thing I've learned or read about the French Revolution. This is just the most recent one. It was kind of fun. I was listening as far as cleaning out my garage on this weekend. Like 34 parts of like an hour each. It's the most insane thing that somebody just is making this just for fun, you know? Because they were great. They were fantastically researched. They only had like four or five thousand views. So it's not like this person is made up of money. You're just doing it because you like doing it.
01:43:59
Speaker
And maybe, hopefully somebody gets some money. I don't even remember his name, tragically enough, but French Revolution just searched like part 34 or something and finally won. And it's just like, yeah, they tried to destroy everything. Not at first. At first they were like, let's, okay, we're gonna keep King. They tried to do something that sounded very American.
01:44:22
Speaker
for a variety of reasons. It just didn't pan out that way. So it eventually got to the point where they did try to destroy everything. All the religion, we're going to have the cult of the Supreme Being, and the state's going to have full unmitigated power to make people into better people, and it just didn't work. It just ended up the same thing. You basically got, instead of you have the all-powerful King Louis, you have
01:44:46
Speaker
the even more all-powerful emperor Napoleon, who admittedly was more competent than any of the Bourbon monarchs. But that's not what the revolution was. We want to have a more competent, all-powerful leader, right? And it's the same with the Soviets. Certainly Stalin was far and away more competent than Tsar Nicholas. But that wasn't what the whole thing was about. It wasn't millions of lives lost over 30 years of struggle and misery so that we could trade out Tsar Nicholas for somebody with even more power.
01:45:14
Speaker
That's what destroying everything gets you know if you have the moral courage to say hey Let's grapple with things in a real way and then think about like what can we improve upon? You can make some real progress, but it does require a little moral courage because it does feel like a lot easier to just say Now I'm morally pure burn it all right
01:45:35
Speaker
Man, who cares about the consequences? And of course, the people who say that typically do not suffer the consequences as directly. Although, to be fair, at least Robespierre got his head cut off at the end of it. So there is justice in this world. What a great way to cap it. So I don't know if you guys have anything else to add, but since we're at about hour 45, I think it is time to write it down. Do you guys have anything else you want to comment on or maybe plug? One thing, I love the Hold the Course poster in the back.
01:46:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's one of my favorites from the neoliberal project there. Let me see if I can get the camera. There we go. Oh my gosh, yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah. Reaction revolution. I loved how you have them. Yeah. Yeah, and I wonder if I didn't see those in the background. Yeah, thank you. I do want to be clear. I think that the right in a developed country
01:46:20
Speaker
is somewhat more dangerous than the Left at baseline because the Right is able to take power in modern societies through violent force or through the ballot box and build authoritarian societies. In a way, the Left has not yet been able to. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it is just the Left has not been able to take a developed country and then turn it into a socialist dictatorship. The closest I
01:46:46
Speaker
party. Maybe they were able to get something really like state planning in place, but even that went to hell, you know, so that collapsed. So I do think that I don't want to say everything is equally, you know, the same. In my opinion, I think there is a difference. I do think at baseline, I mean, even though I don't like Bernie Sanders as politics, I find him less
01:47:10
Speaker
threatening to the institution to the baseline and say Donald Trump. But that said, I do believe that the problems are common. And frankly, I think the biggest thing the DNC has going for it is that Trump happened to the Republicans before some figure like that could happen.
01:47:28
Speaker
And so now they have the benefit of being able to say we're against that loss aversion is easier than Listen, my favorite thing about Democrats is that they're not Republicans and my favorite thing about Republicans is that they're not Democrats Yeah, so I'm not trying to say that everything is the same. I'm not trying to both sides things I do acknowledge their problems on both sides So I do want to make that clear but since the poster it sort of implies that it's the same both ways I think broadly speaking intellectually the challenges are the same and
01:47:56
Speaker
In the United States today, and I'd say in prior developed countries, I think the risk on the right is slightly, I'd say, demonstrably higher. But let's not say that there's not risk from the left. The left's greatest problem is that it can wreck things up so bad that it creates great conditions for the right to really
01:48:14
Speaker
That's a really good point. That honestly feels like also another topic for a whole other conversation because that alone, I feel like we could talk about for two hours. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it. Do you, do you have any plugs you want to throw at the audience before we meet? I haven't been doing my stream lately, but I am always on Twitter at twitter.com forward slash everyday Warren.
01:48:33
Speaker
X.com. X.com. Yes. I just, it's not just, it's the name that rolls off the tongue. That's the problem. Go give, go give Warren a follow at everyday Warren on X and make sure he gets that sweet, sweet X revenue that he's going to be bringing in this week.
01:48:53
Speaker
I'll wrap us up there since we're at an hour 50. This was the Project Liberal show. We'll be back probably within two weeks with another episode. I appreciate everyone's time. Thanks again, Warren. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for having me. It's so much fun talking with y'all. I really appreciate everything you do. And it's a lot of fun talking with you. We'll try to have you back soon. Thanks again. See you guys.