0:01

Hello, everybody. I

0:16

had the privilege today to speak

0:19

with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, I

0:21

don't know, if you took the 10 bravest people in

0:23

the world, she'd be one of them, as far as I can

0:25

tell. She made a

0:27

remarkable splash years ago with her first book,

0:30

Infidel, which talked about her experience about moving

0:32

from Somalia to the Netherlands,

0:34

which is like the center of Western

0:37

civilization. And so that was a great

0:39

book. And Ayaan has

0:41

had a very storied political career, to say

0:43

the least, and a threatened

0:46

life in many ways, standing up

0:48

against the Islamic fundamentalists. She's

0:50

recently converted to Christianity, which is also

0:52

a stunningly brave move for someone in

0:55

her situation. And

0:57

she's launched a new enterprise called

0:59

Restoration, which is a sub-stack media

1:02

enterprise designed to make

1:05

a case for the necessary primacy

1:07

and, what would you say, bedrock,

1:11

foundational necessity of the presumptions

1:13

of Western civilization. And

1:16

so we had a chance to talk about all that.

1:19

And so I would

1:21

say it'll be 90 minutes well

1:24

worth your while with the additional conversation that I

1:26

had with her as well on the Daily Wire

1:28

side. So welcome,

1:30

everybody. Listen

1:33

to Ayaan, that's always worthwhile. She's

1:36

a real force of nature. And so, as

1:39

I said, it was a privilege to talk to her again. All

1:42

right. So you've recently announced a

1:45

new writing and

1:47

media endeavor, and I've

1:49

been following that quite avidly,

1:52

particularly on Twitter, and so

1:54

called Restoration. And so do

1:56

you want to tell us how

1:58

that came to be and what it is? is and what

2:00

you're hoping to accomplish with it? Well,

2:03

restoration, I think the word says it.

2:06

It is my mission is to restore

2:09

the institutions that you and I

2:12

love to their original

2:14

missions, ideas,

2:19

the origins and history of

2:21

our culture, institutions

2:25

like the family, schools,

2:29

the university, democratic

2:33

institutions, what

2:35

political parties are supposed to do, what our

2:37

governments are supposed to do, what they're not

2:39

supposed to do. And

2:43

then discourse, a

2:45

lot of us have been talking quite

2:47

a bit about freedom of speech. And

2:51

the institutions

2:54

that protect freedom of speech, the

2:57

free press, all of these have

2:59

been, in

3:02

my view, they've been subverted. There's been

3:04

an effort to subvert our institutions. And

3:06

we're in a place now where we

3:12

cannot communicate

3:15

with people we disagree with, or

3:17

we have a different perspective from,

3:20

without immediately seeing an

3:23

enemy status in them. And

3:25

I think the first and

3:27

most important thing to do is

3:30

to bring back that civic discourse.

3:32

When I came to Europe in 1992, and

3:36

over the course of the first 10 years

3:38

of my residence there, conversations

3:42

between people who disagree with one

3:45

another were seen as what

3:47

defined Europe and what defined the West

3:49

and what made it different from other

3:51

places. And now look at

3:53

where we are. And so

3:56

restoration is an attempt

3:58

to awaken people. to

4:02

recognize what's at stake and

4:04

then to restore, yeah,

4:07

in one word, to restore sanity.

4:10

Okay. So you brought up a lot of points

4:12

there, and I want to delve into them one

4:15

by one. I

4:18

guess I'll start with an overarching

4:20

question and then drill in

4:22

a little bit. Do

4:26

you find yourself surprised

4:29

to have

4:32

developed the beliefs that you have

4:35

developed? I mean, in

4:37

your description of your project, you

4:40

pointed to the

4:42

dissolution of civic discourse, the

4:47

threat to democratic institutions,

4:50

the threat to our culture, the

4:52

collapse of freedom of speech. And

4:55

all of those

4:58

are serious charges,

5:00

right? Especially,

5:03

let's say, the observation

5:07

of subversion. And

5:11

it's easy for the

5:13

apprehension of something like

5:16

subversion to

5:23

be tossed into the conspiracy theorist bin,

5:25

let's say that. I mean, in the

5:27

things that you've been writing about in

5:29

restoration and pointing to, they're

5:32

quite dramatic. And so

5:35

let's do two things. The first is,

5:37

why don't you talk a bit more

5:39

about what you mean by subversion, where

5:42

that might be stemming from, right?

5:44

Because that's, well,

5:46

that's a mysterious question. And then also address

5:48

the issue of whether or not you find

5:51

yourself surprised to be in the position that

5:53

you're in having to

5:55

say the sorts of things, let's say, that you're

5:57

saying to be now. So let's start with subversion.

6:01

The opening essay in Subversion,

6:04

the Bulletin, so my platform on

6:06

sub-stack, has to do with,

6:09

I start by describing the

6:11

fact that many of us

6:13

feel that something is off.

6:17

That like in the parable

6:19

of the Buddhists, we're all trying

6:22

to figure out what is it that is off.

6:24

So we're all these blind people, we're touching different

6:26

parts of the elephant and we're trying to figure

6:28

out what this whole is. When

6:33

I look at these, you

6:35

know, take any list, I'm

6:38

in the academic world and I

6:40

see what has happened to academia from the

6:42

time I came as a student in 1995

6:45

in the University of Leiden to

6:47

my present role at Stanford.

6:51

There is just this churning

6:54

out of very

6:56

expensive, useless degrees

6:59

in gender and race and you name

7:01

is. That's

7:04

the universities. K-12, there

7:07

is this crisis that I see because

7:09

I'm a parent. Parents

7:12

around me, homeschooling their

7:14

children, going from

7:16

A to B, just completely confused

7:18

about what is it that's going

7:20

on with our education systems. They're

7:22

on the brink of collapse. There

7:25

are these statements that

7:28

are contrary to reality, that there

7:30

is an endless number of genders.

7:33

There's this whole, what

7:35

seemed like in 10, 15

7:38

years ago when I first heard about terms

7:41

like intersectionality and oppressor and oppressed and

7:43

all the rest of it. It

7:45

just seemed like some, to me,

7:48

juvenile. Intellectual

7:50

mishmash, nonsensical, the sort of

7:53

things that first year, freshmen

7:57

students dap or in.

8:00

And then they grow up and they grow out of it. And

8:03

then along comes 2020, and we

8:06

have that incident with George Floyd

8:08

in the United States of America.

8:10

And what then happens is what

8:13

I only see can describe as

8:15

a revolution because we went

8:17

full on with

8:19

the defund the police.

8:23

Let's abolish SATs and other

8:25

standardized tests. Mathematics

8:29

is racist. Everything is racist. And

8:32

this demolition, clearly demolition of

8:35

ideas and the institutions of

8:37

like the family education and

8:41

I'm looking at this and I'm thinking this is

8:44

familiar. And

8:47

let's pay attention to the people

8:50

who are leading the charge in

8:53

these projects to destroy the

8:55

structures and the institutions

8:58

that have served us so well. And

9:01

on the one hand, you have this identity

9:04

politics, cultural Marxists

9:06

that have developed

9:08

these elaborate theories

9:11

that they call critical theory, critical theories.

9:14

And it's not a conspiracy theory, Jordan.

9:16

They stated as clearly as possible that

9:18

they want to bring down, they point

9:20

to all of these injustices and they

9:23

say the answer to all of this

9:25

is to bring down these structures and

9:27

destroy them. And then on

9:29

the other hand, I see the Islamists

9:32

and the Islamists have

9:34

never really been dishonest. It

9:36

was always in your face,

9:38

but they fast tried many

9:40

years to bring down our

9:42

system through terror and terrorist

9:44

plots and relentless terrorist attempts.

9:47

And they failed at that. We are

9:50

militarily and economically and technologically superior

9:52

to them. And so

9:54

obviously they went down the path of

9:56

Dawa, which is a religious subversion, which

9:59

is a It

10:02

has a much longer timeline. Then

10:05

of course, you look at the CCP

10:08

and Putin, and these are external

10:10

adversaries, and they're looking what's going

10:12

on our soil

10:14

domestically, and they would be

10:16

stupid not to take advantage of that. As

10:20

I try to look into

10:22

and analyze, again, think of me as one

10:24

of the blind men touching

10:27

the elephant, is

10:29

to say, where have we seen this

10:31

before? Now, communist

10:34

attempts at subverting the West as

10:36

well as communism,

10:38

they're as old as the times of

10:41

the Bolsheviks and

10:45

Lenin and all the various Marxists.

10:48

And when the Soviet Union was established, they

10:51

had programs to subvert us, and

10:54

it was mutual. We had programs to

10:56

subvert them. So

10:58

when you listen, I quote Yuri

11:00

Besmanov at length, where he describes

11:03

their length. You

11:07

just listen to him and the institutions

11:09

that he describes and the intended effects

11:11

of that kind of subversion. And it's

11:13

right before your eyes. You don't really

11:15

need a conspiracy theorist for that. The

11:18

Islamists, it's the same thing. What's

11:21

interesting about all of this is

11:23

to see this collusion between

11:26

the Islamists and the

11:28

neo-Marxists or cultural Marxists,

11:31

what is called the unholy green

11:33

red alliance. Some people describe it

11:35

as the watermelon. And you think,

11:37

okay, where is this going? Queers

11:39

for Palestine looks nice in

11:41

Colombia on a, these

11:46

things that on a plaque that students hold

11:48

up. What would queers look like

11:51

if they were actually in Gaza or the West

11:53

Bank? We know what they look, we know what

11:55

happens. But

11:58

that aside, question

12:00

of, is there subversion

12:03

and has it been effective?

12:06

Are we on the brink to all of that?

12:08

The answer is yes. My

12:11

remedy for that is restoration.

12:14

Recognize the institutions, the

12:16

ideas, it's our elites,

12:20

and then we have to come

12:22

together and restore this. So

12:25

not together in these empty

12:27

platitudinous ways, but to say

12:31

what made us different as Western societies, is

12:33

that we used to disagree. Actually, we used

12:36

to think it was fun to disagree. The

12:38

other day, I had a debate with, what

12:41

I didn't think of it as a debate, I

12:43

thought it was a lovely conversation with Richard Dawkins.

12:47

We live in a world where a

12:49

lot of people who watch that discussion,

12:51

their takeaway was not, oh, how interesting.

12:55

This one has to say that, what are

12:57

the arguments that they're making, etc. No,

13:00

there was

13:05

suddenly this enemy friend thing. I

13:10

think for me, the

13:12

greatest takeaway from that whole thing was

13:15

the hug at the beginning and the hug at

13:17

the end, that it is possible to

13:20

disagree on fundamental

13:22

issues and continue to

13:24

have that affection for one another. If

13:27

you don't want to have affection for

13:29

one another, still, peaceful handshake. With

13:35

Dawkins in particular, I've met him a couple

13:37

of times and I've read

13:39

his books, and I learned

13:41

a lot from his books. One

13:44

of the things that I've thought about Dawkins all

13:46

along, and I think this

13:48

is reflected in the fact that he described

13:50

himself as a cultural Christian recently, is that

13:54

he is a good scientist, and

13:57

a good scientist is someone who

13:59

strives. to seek the truth.

14:03

And I think that truth-seeking is a

14:05

religious enterprise, and so a true scientist

14:07

is embedded in a religious enterprise, and

14:09

I think that's why Richard

14:12

Dawkins understands that he's a cultural

14:14

Christian. But it's

14:16

very, there's many things that

14:19

Dr. Dawkins and I don't

14:21

see eye-to-eye about, but

14:23

some of that is because we don't understand

14:25

each other, like a fair bit of it,

14:28

and some of it is that the issue

14:30

at hand is insanely complex and

14:32

difficult to figure out, and neither

14:34

of us should be presuming that

14:37

we've got the right answer. And

14:39

then the discourse that you're

14:41

describing, which is competitive discourse, should be

14:43

conducted in a manner that enables both

14:45

of the participants to further seek the

14:48

truth. And then you actually want

14:50

that enmity, so to speak, you

14:53

want the person you're talking to to come at

14:55

you with ideas that you haven't

14:57

heard and positions that you haven't thought

15:00

through because in principle,

15:02

they move you closer to the

15:04

truth. And so hypothetically,

15:08

Dr. Dawkins and I will be speaking

15:10

at some time in the

15:13

next few months. We're trying to arrange that now,

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think that we can talk because I

15:56

think that he's trying

15:59

to pursue the truth. is

18:00

an outcome of subversion. Well,

18:03

okay, so let's take that apart

18:06

further. So you

18:09

talk about a relapse

18:12

into a kind of tribalism of

18:14

idea ownership. So there's a disintegration

18:16

of something that was unified into

18:18

a more pluralistic tribal

18:20

landscape. Okay, so that's one

18:23

of the things. Let's identify some of the other

18:25

characteristics of the collapse. So

18:29

we could talk about purposeful and

18:31

accidental subversion. So let's start with

18:33

the Marxists with regard to purposeful

18:36

subversion. Okay, so Karl

18:38

Marx split

18:40

the world into oppressor

18:43

and oppressed in

18:45

an envious manner, presuming

18:48

that all the moral virtue was with

18:50

the oppressed and all the evil was

18:52

with the oppressor, and that

18:54

that all could be understood from

18:57

within the framework of economics.

18:59

So the primary axis of

19:01

oppression and oppressed for

19:04

Marx was the economic axis. And

19:07

he presumed that the

19:09

reason that that inequality between oppressor

19:11

and oppressed exists was because of

19:13

the structure of capitalism.

19:16

At least that's what he claimed. Now whether or

19:18

not he believed that is a whole different issue.

19:21

Okay, so now I wanna

19:23

take that in two directions. I want

19:25

to point to how that's metastasized into

19:28

what I think is less

19:32

than ideally conceptualized as cultural

19:34

Marxism. And I wanna

19:36

also discuss its precursors, its archetypal

19:39

precursors, okay? So what

19:41

seems to me to have happened, and I

19:43

want your thoughts on this, is that Marx

19:47

established the framework

19:50

for an elaborated victim-victimizer

19:52

narrative. But

19:55

he basically stuck to the economic realm

19:57

when he made that case.

20:00

Now, as the revolution unfolded,

20:03

what we found out was that

20:05

the subversion of the capitalist order

20:08

in favor of the oppressed only

20:11

produced the universalization of poverty

20:13

and produced no viable

20:16

redistribution of equity or income.

20:19

And so by the 1970s,

20:22

the hollowness of the economic

20:24

approach to the

20:26

victim-victimizer had been demonstrated

20:29

so thoroughly that even

20:31

idiot Marxists in France

20:34

were forced to accept it. And

20:37

so you know the proof is compelling

20:39

when a French intellectual is forced to

20:41

swallow it. And so

20:43

then what happened, as far as I

20:45

could tell, is the postmodernists, who

20:47

were all Marxists at their core, decided

20:50

that there was no utility

20:52

in beating the economic inequality

20:54

drum anymore, but

20:57

that they could fragment the

20:59

victim-victimizer narrative into a metastasis

21:02

and say, well, the

21:05

basic idea that it was a

21:08

power dynamic that ruled everything

21:10

was correct. But

21:13

we underestimated the seriousness of the

21:15

power dynamic because it shows up

21:17

in the relationship

21:20

between men and women, and it shows

21:22

up in the patriarchal structure of the

21:24

family, and it shows up in the

21:26

dynamic of sex, and then the dynamic

21:28

of gender and race and ethnicity. So

21:31

all of a sudden, you had the

21:33

same victim- And colonization between countries. Sure,

21:36

sure, between races, between tribes. You

21:39

can understand the postmodern

21:41

claim was that even though

21:44

they purported to

21:47

dispense with the idea

21:49

of a superordinate meta-narrative,

21:52

they smuggled in the

21:54

power narrative as the fundamental

21:57

exploratory concept.

22:00

and metastasized it to account

22:02

for, to explain

22:04

the relations between human beings,

22:06

regardless of how they categorize

22:08

themselves. So that every group

22:11

categorization became a locus of

22:14

power and exploitation. Right,

22:16

and so now we have a metastatic Marxism,

22:19

okay? So that's bringing it forward. Now I

22:21

wanna bring it backward. And you

22:23

tell me what you think about this, because I

22:25

think Marxism itself is a variant

22:27

of something deeper,

22:30

much deeper. So there's

22:34

a Marxist-like spirit that

22:36

inverts the French Revolution

22:38

soon after it occurs.

22:42

And so, and that was well

22:44

before Marx. And I've

22:46

been thinking more archetyply, let's

22:48

say, in relationship to

22:50

fundamental stories that Marxism

22:53

is a variant, Marx

22:55

is a versus capitalism, let's say,

22:59

as a variant of the story of Cain

23:01

and Abel, right?

23:03

Because Cain and Abel is really

23:06

the first victim-victimizer narrative. And

23:08

it basically presents

23:11

the human moral landscape, because

23:14

it's the first story about human beings in history,

23:16

right? Cause Adam and Eve were in the Garden

23:19

of Eden, let's say. Cain

23:21

and Abel are the first two human

23:23

beings that are born in the world

23:25

of history. And they develop modes of

23:28

being that are antithetical to one another,

23:30

with Cain being the

23:33

oppressed, angry, bitter, malevolent,

23:35

murderous, and then genocidal

23:37

victim, and

23:39

Abel being the successful, right?

23:42

The successful individual who

23:44

strives forward, aims

23:46

up and makes the proper sacrifices.

23:48

Now that's presented in the biblical

23:51

corpus as the

23:53

fundamental spiritual division, and

23:56

Cain's failure to

23:58

make the proper offering, and then his... make

28:01

one big mistake in my view after 1989,

28:04

which is they forget about it. They think we've

28:08

won this. Right, history is over. History

28:11

is over, let's move on. The

28:15

loser, for the loser, history is never

28:17

over. For the loser, history begins when

28:19

he loses. He has to shake off

28:22

all of this and come up and

28:24

come back. And they come back now

28:26

with this idea of identity

28:29

groups of culture. The

28:31

person who can tell this way better

28:33

than I can is James Lindsay, who has

28:35

been through all of their creeds and screeds

28:37

and is really eloquent in the way he

28:40

tells this. Right, right.

28:42

But they divert towards the culture

28:44

thing. But my takeaway as a

28:46

relatively new Westerner is

28:50

I come into this world of ideas, good

28:53

ideas, bad ideas. I'm 22 years

28:55

old. I'm trying to find

28:57

an explanation for why are these rich countries

28:59

rich and powerful, why are poor countries poor.

29:02

I was a Muslim, so it's like if we

29:04

have the, as a Muslim, if I have God's

29:07

last prophet, God's last book, God is on

29:10

my side, then why are we poor and

29:12

miserable and so on. And

29:14

so in that world of ideas, in

29:17

the 1990s, when I'm going to

29:19

university, I'm acquainted with the idea of

29:21

national socialism that nearly

29:24

destroyed European society and

29:26

Western society. And what

29:28

follows after the defeat, listen

29:31

to this Jordan, after the

29:33

defeat of national socialism, what

29:35

happens is an intense

29:38

process of denazification. In

29:41

fact, using some of the tools of

29:43

subversion that Bess Menoff speaks about. And

29:46

after the process of denazification,

29:48

what follows is another reckoning

29:50

of what was national socialism.

29:52

Why would a society as

29:55

advanced as Germany fall

29:58

victim to ideas that later on... we

30:00

all understood to be so destructive. This

30:03

is in my classrooms. This

30:06

is what's happening. I come into the

30:08

West just as it's going through that

30:10

reckoning of the idea. The

30:13

idea is forensically

30:16

scrutinized, and it becomes

30:20

after we fully understand what

30:23

Hitler's ideas were, that this is

30:26

something that would never

30:28

and should never happen again. Now,

30:31

this is something we did not do

30:33

to communism. Right,

30:35

definitely not. Yeah. After

30:38

the fall of the

30:40

Soviet Union, there was

30:42

no campaign of de-communization

30:44

or demarcification of

30:47

everything and anything. There was no

30:49

reckoning. So up until I think 2002, 2003,

30:55

we were still finding individuals who had

30:57

been found to be active or sympathizers

31:00

with Hitler. We were trying them still.

31:02

We were still trying to go after

31:04

them and put them in jail. But

31:07

we never did anything of

31:09

the sorts with Marxism. So

31:11

the first thing I noticed,

31:13

the big thing is, of

31:15

course, this terrible idea keeps

31:17

recurring and it metastasizes,

31:19

and it manifests itself in different

31:21

ways. Because for the young generations,

31:24

it never really has been here.

31:27

This is what Marx is similar to. The

31:30

death toll. We all have

31:32

been schooled in how many people

31:34

actually died. But more interesting, I

31:37

think more fascinating is the Nazi

31:39

psyche. We

31:43

explored it to the point that right

31:46

now, there are conversations we can't

31:48

have without everyone referencing Nazism. In

31:50

fact, I think one of the

31:52

reasons why Europe is completely

31:54

paralyzed when it comes to the issue

31:56

of immigration is because there is

31:59

this terror, this fear that they

32:01

might fall again into that nasty

32:04

collective madness of

32:07

putting people in concentration camps. We

32:09

haven't done that to Marx.

32:13

We haven't done ideas of Marx and communism. And

32:15

I think it's a bit, we

32:18

are a bit on the later side, but we should do it.

32:21

Well, okay. So while you've got

32:23

two issues there that run in

32:25

parallel because, okay, three.

32:27

So the first is your observation

32:30

that we

32:32

assumed too prematurely after 1989 and

32:34

the collapse of

32:37

the Soviet Union that the

32:39

spirit of communism was dead

32:41

and buried. Right.

32:44

Now, if that spirit is

32:46

a reflection of something far

32:49

deeper, say like the internal

32:51

antagonism between Cain and Abel, then it's not going

32:53

to be dead and buried, or at least it's

32:55

not going to stay buried without a lot of

32:58

work. And your point is,

33:00

well, we didn't do that work.

33:03

Now we might've thought that the

33:05

object lesson of the collapse of

33:07

the Soviet Union plus the capitalist

33:10

transformation of China and the triumph

33:12

of the democracies was enough evidence

33:14

that the West had something right.

33:17

But apparently no,

33:20

the house cleaning wasn't deep enough. Well

33:22

then you point out though that there's

33:24

an additional problem, which

33:27

is that we're not exactly

33:29

sure how to handle internecine

33:33

conflicts at a deep

33:35

ideological level without falling

33:37

prey to something like the worst excesses

33:39

of the Nazi regime. It's like, well,

33:41

let's imagine for example, that we did

33:43

do something like a demarcification

33:45

of the institutions. I've been

33:47

thinking about this in relationship

33:49

to universities. So

33:55

when Musk took over Twitter and

33:57

demarcified it, he fired like it was a

33:59

demarcation. 80% of the people. Now,

34:03

I do not believe for a moment that

34:06

an institution like Harvard can be

34:09

reconstituted or restored

34:12

when all of the same players are

34:15

still in place and

34:17

they're doing the same thing with different

34:19

words. Now, I just met a

34:21

couple of Harvard professors last

34:23

week when I was in Boston who were at

34:25

the forefront of the genuinely

34:27

active free speech movement at

34:30

Harvard. They have, I think, 140 professors.

34:34

That number may be wrong, but it's a

34:36

substantial number of professors who are pushing

34:38

the administration hard and

34:42

Harvard has proclaimed

34:44

in the last couple of weeks, like Stanford,

34:46

I believe, they've adopted

34:48

an official position of institutional neutrality,

34:50

at least with regard to their

34:53

public utterances. But there's

34:55

all sorts of machinations still going on

34:57

behind the scenes. Okay, so what's my

34:59

point? Well, if 80% of the

35:02

institutions are corrupt, and

35:06

that's the accusation from the conservatives,

35:09

well, first of all, that risks falling

35:11

into the hands of the radical leftists

35:14

who say, well, the institutions are corrupt,

35:16

we told you so, and so that's

35:18

a big problem. But even worse, it's

35:20

like if the corruption is

35:23

as pervasive as you indicate, and I

35:25

have every reason to agree with you,

35:28

then how is it

35:30

even possible that these institutions can

35:32

be restored and reconstituted? And how

35:34

is that possible without us falling

35:36

into something like ideological

35:39

persecution? Like I watch Chris

35:41

Rufo in Florida, and I

35:44

think Chris is aiming up, and I

35:46

like Ron DeSantis and think he's got

35:48

a good moral keel, but I could

35:50

easily see that their attempts to exert

35:54

legislative control from the top

35:57

over the universities could easily.

36:00

into a counterproductive witch

36:02

hunt. And so, okay,

36:05

so now what we're doing about what

36:07

I'm doing about that, for example, is

36:09

we're launching Peterson Academy at the end

36:11

of June. And I'm involved

36:13

with Ralston College in Georgia, trying

36:18

to generate institutions that offer

36:21

an alternative, but I

36:23

don't have any idea at all how

36:26

the institutions that are already in place

36:28

can be demarcified. So

36:32

you have your restoration enterprise

36:34

and that's devoted to the same thing,

36:36

but that doesn't help us with the

36:38

nitty gritty here. It's like the

36:41

K through 12 education system

36:43

is completely dominated by the

36:45

worst possible students of

36:47

the worst faculty at the

36:49

university, the faculties of education.

36:51

That's been going on for

36:54

four generations. And

36:56

it's completely corrupt at every possible

36:58

level. Okay, what

37:01

the hell do you do about that in

37:04

a manner that doesn't become oppressive and

37:06

tyrannical in and of itself? So

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at her, what are your thoughts about that? What

37:48

I found wonderful about

37:50

Bizmanov's layout is

37:54

that it allows you every time to take

37:57

a step back so that you

37:59

don't become... an

1:02:00

example, if you think of someone like me

1:02:03

who comes from, you know,

1:02:06

I grew up in a childhood where there was very little.

1:02:10

Little of everything, little food, little

1:02:13

water, no water. I mean, we didn't have

1:02:15

running water. Scarcity,

1:02:21

not, there were people who were poorer than us,

1:02:23

but we were poor. I

1:02:26

remember books, I loved books, and they weren't

1:02:29

books, so you know, sometimes I would finish

1:02:33

a book that I borrowed, or that we

1:02:35

borrowed from the library, and the last few

1:02:37

pages, which is where the resolution of the

1:02:39

story is, would have

1:02:41

fallen out of that book, and I would

1:02:43

go to a bookshop, pretend I was buying

1:02:45

the book, actually read the last pages in

1:02:49

the bookshop, and then leave until our

1:02:52

Indian booksellers noticed

1:02:54

what we were doing, and chased us out of that.

1:02:56

So that level of

1:02:59

poverty. And so then I come where

1:03:01

there's plenty, and I find

1:03:03

myself in my 40s and 50s, surrounded

1:03:08

by absolutely everything, materially, completely

1:03:10

satiated. Happily

1:03:13

married, two children, everything that

1:03:15

you would describe would give

1:03:17

meaning and purpose, and yet

1:03:20

there I was completely depressed

1:03:22

and unhappy and terrified,

1:03:24

and all the rest of

1:03:26

it. And

1:03:31

I was self-medicating. I was self-medicating with

1:03:34

wine, with alcohol, and that

1:03:36

was where my go-to

1:03:39

was, that actually itself

1:03:41

brought me on the brink of destruction. And

1:03:46

I sought help, and the

1:03:49

help went from, obviously, with me

1:03:51

focusing on the

1:03:55

material again, scientific

1:03:58

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1:16:00

what we know at the deepest levels in

1:16:02

the world of evolutionary psychology. And I

1:16:05

can't see anything about it that's erroneous

1:16:07

on the conceptual side. Because

1:16:09

how could community be anything other than

1:16:11

the result of

1:16:13

the sacrificial gesture on the part of the individual?

1:16:15

I mean, if you're a wife, you

1:16:18

sacrifice your whims to the marriage.

1:16:21

If you're a mother, you sacrifice your

1:16:24

narrow self-interest to your children. If

1:16:26

you're a family in relationship to other families,

1:16:29

you sacrifice the narrow interest of your

1:16:31

family to the harmony of the community,

1:16:33

and so on all the way up

1:16:35

the subsidiary hierarchy. And, you

1:16:38

know, at the end of Tolstoy's Confessions,

1:16:41

I don't know if you ever read that, but it

1:16:44

details something very

1:16:46

much like what you described happening to you.

1:16:49

So Tolstoy became

1:16:52

suicidally desperate at the height of his

1:16:54

fame and earthly

1:16:56

material success. He was

1:16:58

an unbelievably rich man. He was known all over

1:17:01

the world. He was a

1:17:03

great literary figure. People compared him to Shakespeare.

1:17:05

He had a wife and a flourishing family.

1:17:07

Like on the purely material

1:17:09

front, Tolstoy had it

1:17:12

nailed. And he was

1:17:14

so suicidal that he was afraid

1:17:16

to walk alone around his estates.

1:17:20

And he had a dream. And

1:17:23

this is how Confessions end. He dreamt that

1:17:25

he was suspended in an immense space and

1:17:27

he was looking down into the

1:17:30

abysmal bottomless pit of despair,

1:17:32

let's say. But he

1:17:34

was suspended. And he

1:17:37

turned around and looked up and realized

1:17:39

that there was a cord around his

1:17:41

waist made of gold, and the cord

1:17:43

extended upward into the sky, past

1:17:46

where he could see. And

1:17:48

so he was suspended over the abyss

1:17:50

of despair by a relationship

1:17:53

with what was transcendent and

1:17:55

highest. It's like an image

1:17:57

of Jacob's ladder. that

1:18:00

extends up into the ineffable

1:18:03

stratospheres that is our ally,

1:18:05

you might say, is our

1:18:07

ally against what

1:18:10

the terror of mortality and

1:18:12

malevolence. And as far as I can tell

1:18:14

too, that that's not some

1:18:16

ignorant superstition. That's a foolish way

1:18:18

of considering it. It's actually the

1:18:21

way the proper order

1:18:23

of the cosmos is constituted. And okay,

1:18:26

now you talk to Dawkins, right?

1:18:28

Publicly in New York and you were

1:18:31

friends, I believe. And I presume

1:18:33

still are. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:18:36

So tell me about that conversation and

1:18:38

how it went and what you concluded. And

1:18:41

it's such a fascinating thing to have happen. And

1:18:43

I'd love to see you talk to Sam Harris.

1:18:46

Well, what I concluded is what I started off

1:18:48

with when we started this conversation, which is that

1:18:50

I think it is always a

1:18:53

wonderful experience. To

1:18:59

have, to come at

1:19:02

a subject from these radically

1:19:05

different viewpoints and

1:19:08

hold your viewpoints and argue for your viewpoints

1:19:11

and maintain the level of mutual

1:19:15

affection and respect and friendship.

1:19:19

And so for me, that

1:19:21

was really, it was very,

1:19:23

very important that Richard

1:19:25

and I demonstrated that

1:19:27

and again, that's what we're

1:19:29

trying to restore. What

1:19:32

else? Richard

1:19:35

ended with a

1:19:37

sentence, if you watch that, where he

1:19:40

says, okay, so

1:19:42

he's not convinced. He thinks, of

1:19:44

course, it's a heap of nonsense.

1:19:47

But still he says, he

1:19:51

does recognize the difference between

1:19:53

Islam and Christianity. He does

1:19:55

recognize the threat of political Islam.

1:19:59

And his conclusion, And the conclusion was,

1:20:01

maybe we should take something small

1:20:03

to inoculate us against the larger

1:20:05

virus. Now, different people

1:20:07

may take that differently, but

1:20:10

I think that's coming

1:20:12

from- You mean something like a wafer, something

1:20:14

small like a wafer, like that small, you

1:20:16

mean? Yeah,

1:20:18

well, but that's exactly the

1:20:20

symbol. That's the mustard seed

1:20:22

that Christ talks about, right? That's something

1:20:25

small. It's like, it's small, all right,

1:20:27

but it's alive, and don't underestimate its

1:20:29

power. And so, see

1:20:32

the thing that I see as telling about

1:20:34

Dawkins, I wouldn't

1:20:37

say admission, but realization, right,

1:20:39

that he's a cultural Christian. It's like, okay, when

1:20:42

you're pushed against the wall, would

1:20:45

it be the Christians or the Islamic

1:20:47

fundamentalists that you'd choose? And Dawkins

1:20:49

looks at that and he thinks, well, I

1:20:51

can't even talk about the Islamic fundamentalists, and

1:20:53

at least I can criticize the Christians. So

1:20:55

there's something they're doing right. It's

1:20:58

like, okay, there's something they're

1:21:00

doing right. Yeah, okay,

1:21:02

that means there's a right there

1:21:04

that isn't in the other domain, the

1:21:06

domain of fundamentalist power, let's say. Well,

1:21:08

what is that leaven,

1:21:11

that small thing

1:21:14

that makes Christianity in its

1:21:16

Western form preferable to fundamentalist

1:21:19

tyranny? Well, it's not

1:21:21

something little, it's something absolutely fundamental

1:21:23

and vital, right? And

1:21:25

so it seems to me that it's

1:21:27

incumbent on Dawkins to really understand just

1:21:29

exactly why, when push comes to shove,

1:21:32

that he's a cultural Christian. And

1:21:34

so, well, I'll leave that. Well,

1:21:38

yeah, and I think also, so my

1:21:41

other takeaway was that he, we were

1:21:44

coming at it from, I

1:21:47

had, I was an atheist just like him, and

1:21:49

then, and I didn't, when I was an atheist,

1:21:51

did not accept the

1:21:54

existence of these different planes

1:21:56

of consciousness or perception or

1:21:58

whatnot. what have you, didn't have the

1:22:01

language for it. And by the way, I was also in a

1:22:03

state of rebellion. And

1:22:07

I didn't want that. And so

1:22:09

the statements, all religions are the

1:22:12

same, were

1:22:14

ones that I sort of lazily accepted.

1:22:19

And I think Richard now recognizes, no, not

1:22:21

all religions are the same. A,

1:22:24

and B, I hope that he also

1:22:26

recognized, I don't know, we didn't get

1:22:28

anywhere with that, but I think the

1:22:30

conversation started with, there are

1:22:32

different ways of appreciating reality. And

1:22:35

we cannot have an experiment that

1:22:45

will measure as accurately as possible

1:22:48

the impacts of music on

1:22:52

your psyche, or on your perception, or

1:22:55

the appreciation of works of art.

1:22:57

So there are so many ways

1:22:59

of appreciating reality that

1:23:02

is not the

1:23:05

purely- Reducible. Naturalistic,

1:23:07

yeah, empirical science,

1:23:11

the falsifiable and the verifiable.

1:23:14

This, that whole story of what if we rewind the

1:23:16

tape, would things

1:23:18

look the same or not? We can't do

1:23:20

that. And

1:23:23

so it's also, we've got

1:23:25

to be very careful because I think

1:23:29

we are having discussions about

1:23:36

religion and history and so on. And

1:23:38

we're using the standards of today. This

1:23:40

is one of the things that I

1:23:43

think is despicable about the work, is

1:23:47

they hold people from the past and

1:23:50

judge them by the merits and by the standards

1:23:52

and by the insights of

1:23:54

today. Yes, well, and the

1:23:56

people doing that comparison always come out

1:23:59

ahead on the personal- side, which is

1:24:01

a little bit on the suspicious. You

1:24:03

might regard that as a rather suspicious

1:24:05

endeavor. If you're playing a game you

1:24:07

always win, you might ask yourself

1:24:09

whether or not you're just playing it so that

1:24:11

you always win rather than to get at the

1:24:14

truth. I mean, it's pretty fun

1:24:16

for an undergraduate to presume that they're the

1:24:18

moral superior of George Washington, let's say, or

1:24:20

Winston Churchill. I mean, what a deal.

1:24:23

You're 18, you have an idiot professor who talks

1:24:25

to you for 10 minutes, and your first revelation

1:24:27

is that you're better than the best men of

1:24:29

the past. Now, that's a little

1:24:31

bit too attractive for my liking,

1:24:33

I would say. Yeah. So

1:24:35

I don't know how we veered from this, but I

1:24:38

think what you just said also goes to the classics

1:24:40

in general, the ditching of the classics, where

1:24:42

we said, oh, well, okay, look

1:24:44

at the list of books

1:24:46

that students are to read,

1:24:48

and it is, my Angelo

1:24:51

Shakespeare, my Angelo Shakespeare, Shakespeare

1:24:53

out, let's read my Angelo.

1:24:57

Right, right, same thing. That's part of the death

1:24:59

of God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I

1:25:01

don't want to say anything. I'm not saying

1:25:03

there's anything wrong with my Angelo. I think

1:25:05

she's done a fantastic work, but she is

1:25:07

no Shakespeare. And

1:25:09

we should be able to have the

1:25:11

courage to say we are not going

1:25:13

to remove Shakespeare or

1:25:16

Dante. Right, well, right. Well,

1:25:18

that's part of the undermining of

1:25:20

the fundamental traditions that's part and

1:25:22

parcel of this decimation of the

1:25:24

institutions at every level. That's part

1:25:26

of total revolution, the total revolution

1:25:28

Marx called for, and the upending

1:25:30

even of the norms of sex,

1:25:33

identity by the queer activists, let's

1:25:36

say. It's complete chaotic revolution. Yeah,

1:25:38

and it's got to stop. So

1:25:40

let me ask you another difficult question, if

1:25:42

you don't mind. Maybe we'll close with this

1:25:44

one. I

1:25:47

was ill during the time the Abraham Accords

1:25:49

were established, and when I kind

1:25:51

of woke up and was healthy again and

1:25:54

saw what had happened, I thought it was

1:25:56

something approximating a miracle. And I was amazed

1:25:58

that it wasn't front page head. headline news

1:26:00

in every country in the world, because I

1:26:02

think what the people

1:26:05

who formulated the Abraham Accords achieved

1:26:07

was the closest thing to a

1:26:09

foreign policy miracle that I've seen in like 70 years.

1:26:12

And so now, and

1:26:15

then part of the reason I'm optimistic at

1:26:17

the moment like you are is that despite

1:26:19

October 7th, the Abraham

1:26:22

Accords have held, and

1:26:24

I've heard from behind the scenes that

1:26:26

the Saudis are still quite willing to

1:26:28

contemplate signing it, even under the present

1:26:30

conditions, there's political issues that have to

1:26:32

be sorted out, but they're still on

1:26:34

board. Okay, now I'm gonna add to

1:26:37

that one other thing. One

1:26:39

of the connection points between Islam

1:26:41

and Christianity is the figure

1:26:43

of Jesus, is the figure of Christ.

1:26:46

And so what I see happening

1:26:48

on the optimistic side in the

1:26:50

Islamic world is that there are

1:26:52

actors like the leaders, let's

1:26:54

say of the UAE, and

1:26:58

some of the other Islamic

1:27:00

states who appear

1:27:02

to want to establish

1:27:05

something like an untaunt and a dialogue.

1:27:08

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that it might be possible that there could

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1:27:30

least the exploration of cooperation

1:27:35

or a competition of invitations

1:27:38

between Islam and Christianity instead of

1:27:40

this all out drag

1:27:42

down, knock them dead fundamentalism.

1:27:47

It seems to me as well that the

1:27:49

cluster B psychopath types are

1:27:51

very good at weaponizing Islam and

1:27:54

that we need to separate out the

1:27:56

psychopathic types who are basically Pharisees who

1:27:58

claim it. to claim religious motivation while

1:28:01

pursuing nothing but their own aims, we

1:28:03

need to separate that out on the

1:28:05

Islamic side too and see, maybe see

1:28:08

if, because there is such admiration in

1:28:10

the Islamic world for the figure of

1:28:12

Christ, if there's something there that would

1:28:15

enable us to establish the

1:28:18

beginnings of a deep Abrahamic dialogue.

1:28:20

And so I'm wondering, this

1:28:23

is a world you're more familiar with in

1:28:25

many ways than me, although also more hurt

1:28:27

by than me, I mean,

1:28:30

what do you think of the Abraham Accords and

1:28:32

do you have any optimism on the side

1:28:35

of Entente, let's say between Islam

1:28:37

and Christianity or between Islam, Christianity

1:28:40

and Judaism to broaden

1:28:42

the net appropriately? So

1:28:44

what do I think of the Abrahamic Accords? I

1:28:47

think if we lived in a fair world, the

1:28:49

people who brought about the Abrahamic Accords

1:28:51

would get the Nobel Peace Prize, but

1:28:54

we don't live in a fair world. Yes,

1:28:56

for sure, yes. And

1:28:59

what I find, I really

1:29:01

admire Jared Kushner in

1:29:06

the sense that he tried something new.

1:29:09

He, and this is why

1:29:11

sometimes it's good to have people come

1:29:14

in from the outside and break

1:29:16

open something. So our

1:29:18

State Department has been doing the same thing over and

1:29:20

over again for what, the last 50 years, if not

1:29:22

the last 70 years. And

1:29:26

this man whose politics is not his

1:29:28

thing comes into this realm and says,

1:29:30

let's try something new. And

1:29:33

that's again part of the American spirit, by the

1:29:35

way, let's try something new. Yes, definitely,

1:29:38

definitely, definitely. And something

1:29:40

new yields the

1:29:42

Abrahamic Accords. And

1:29:44

yeah, the people who didn't get anywhere

1:29:46

all those years, obviously, they don't take

1:29:48

kindly to that, which is unfortunate because

1:29:50

it shouldn't have been- That's for sure. It

1:29:53

shouldn't have been condemned as, oh, we

1:29:55

hate Trump, anything that Trump does, we

1:29:58

deplore. It should have been claimed as

1:30:00

an American victory. It

1:30:02

didn't. That's right. That's an opportunity

1:30:04

Biden had. I think he could have given

1:30:07

Trump a medal and his ceremony and he

1:30:09

might've ridden off into the sunset. But

1:30:12

that is, yeah. Because Trump deserved an award

1:30:14

for that. He deserved the Nobel Prize for

1:30:16

the Abraham Accords. Absolutely. And

1:30:19

so, and the

1:30:21

figure of Jared, I think. Yep,

1:30:23

yep, definitely. So we

1:30:26

go from there to, you

1:30:30

know, is there, what, Christian

1:30:33

theology and Islamic theology, can we

1:30:35

find points and things that we

1:30:38

have in common? You

1:30:41

know, I remember Bernard Lewis,

1:30:44

who I think died at the age of 103.

1:30:49

And one of the, I would

1:30:52

say, best scholars of all

1:30:56

three of the Abrahamic, he was a

1:30:58

historian and he really spent a good

1:31:00

long time studying the Middle East and

1:31:02

spent years and years there. And

1:31:04

he kept saying, we have more in common

1:31:08

than meets the eye and

1:31:10

especially with the pajamas. So there's a

1:31:12

lot we have in common from

1:31:15

a theological perspective. The

1:31:19

Taqfirawal Hijra people, you know, these,

1:31:23

you call them, you call them cluster B

1:31:25

bombs or whatever. These

1:31:27

radical groups have

1:31:29

done something that, if

1:31:33

you did it to Christianity, you would

1:31:35

say, this is what Martin Luther did

1:31:37

during the Reformation, he said, let's go

1:31:39

back to Scripture. We don't want the

1:31:42

church and interceptors between us. So

1:31:45

when someone who identifies as

1:31:47

Christian goes back to Scripture

1:31:49

pure and simple, what

1:31:52

they find there is radically

1:31:55

different from what's, you

1:31:59

know, an average Muslim. when he's told to

1:32:01

go back to scripture. Let's go

1:32:03

back to the beginnings of Muhammad. Let's go back

1:32:05

to the time of Medina. Let's go back to the

1:32:07

time of the conquests. What

1:32:10

they find there is a different message. So

1:32:13

I think for leaders, like the leaders

1:32:15

of the UAE, of Saudi Arabia, for

1:32:19

them, they

1:32:21

realize after the Arab Spring with

1:32:25

the rise of ISIS. But

1:32:28

even before the rise of ISIS, when

1:32:31

bin Laden was in Afghanistan and they

1:32:34

supported him, and they knew these radical

1:32:36

elements kept coming and they would just

1:32:38

bash them or export to them elsewhere,

1:32:42

or accommodate them, that over time,

1:32:44

they actually came for their own

1:32:46

seats of power and

1:32:48

for their own families. And

1:32:51

their response was, we

1:32:54

define Islam. So

1:32:56

it is the crown prince

1:32:59

right now of Saudi Arabia who

1:33:02

defines what Islam is for the Saudis

1:33:05

and the world beyond. And

1:33:07

living in the society they live in, they

1:33:11

round up the sub-vertas

1:33:14

and the insurgents who

1:33:16

operate in the name of

1:33:18

Wahhabism and Salafism and the

1:33:20

various flavors of political Islam,

1:33:24

and they domesticate them. They can do that. And

1:33:26

the same with the UAE. And

1:33:29

they then, the crown prince

1:33:31

and the sultan and the king and the

1:33:33

leader of the day, they

1:33:35

decide in

1:33:39

their definition of what Islam is, that

1:33:41

we want to recognize the state of

1:33:43

Israel and we now think we have

1:33:45

more in common with our

1:33:47

Jewish neighbors and brothers and our Christian

1:33:49

neighbors and brothers than

1:33:53

you disrupt us in the world

1:33:55

that you're leading us towards the

1:33:58

path of Hamas. of

1:34:00

Al-Qaeda, of ISIS, of

1:34:02

the Muslim Brotherhood, that is

1:34:05

a path of destruction. And

1:34:07

they've given us a taste of it

1:34:09

when Islamic State was established in Iraq and

1:34:11

Syria. So we know where that goes

1:34:13

and they've ejected. That doesn't

1:34:15

mean that they've, yeah, that doesn't mean

1:34:18

they've accepted liberal democracy or that they've

1:34:20

become like us. Right, right, right. No, no,

1:34:22

no, right. Right, okay, okay.

1:34:24

Their conclusion for their own survival

1:34:26

has led them to

1:34:29

accept the Abraham Accords and to

1:34:31

say we can recognize and we

1:34:33

can make our societies recognize. Now,

1:34:35

I think, Jordan, the next

1:34:37

thing that has to happen and maybe is

1:34:39

happening is there has

1:34:42

to be not just on the political level

1:34:45

that we want to establish

1:34:48

the Abraham Accords and sign

1:34:50

peace and trade deals. I

1:34:53

think the next level is

1:34:55

to de-harmassify Muslim societies.

1:34:59

The propaganda that Muslim societies were

1:35:02

fed about the Jews and about

1:35:04

the Christians and about modernity in

1:35:07

the last 70 or so years, it

1:35:09

has to be undone. And

1:35:11

so there has to be a new information

1:35:14

and knowledge warfare, not

1:35:16

propaganda, but

1:35:20

account of propaganda. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:35:22

That emphasizes for people in the

1:35:24

Middle East, for Muslims, a

1:35:27

life, a narrative

1:35:29

and a story and a theology that

1:35:31

emphasizes a life over death. Well, yeah,

1:35:35

well, that's what we've been trying to do with

1:35:38

this arc enterprise in London, right, is

1:35:40

to formulate, so, you

1:35:43

know, you talked about it in terms of

1:35:45

counter-propaganda, but I think it's more

1:35:47

appropriately formulated, pardon my

1:35:50

objection, as

1:35:52

a, what would you say,

1:35:54

a far more attractive invitation. You

1:35:57

know, like if, so,

1:36:00

My students used to ask me about what I was teaching

1:36:02

at Harvard and at the U of T. They'd ask

1:36:05

me, well, why isn't this just another

1:36:07

form of the ideology that you reject?

1:36:10

And that's a very good question. It's

1:36:13

the postmodern question, fundamentally. Why isn't this

1:36:15

just another power game, let's say? Well,

1:36:18

I think I figured that out, I am. So I

1:36:22

think the spirit of play is

1:36:25

the antithesis of the spirit of tyranny.

1:36:28

And play can only occur if

1:36:31

the players are playing voluntarily and

1:36:33

with their full ascent. And

1:36:36

so you can tell an ideology from

1:36:38

an invitation, because an

1:36:41

ideology manipulates and compels,

1:36:44

but an invitation offers the

1:36:46

possibility of joint mutual voluntary

1:36:48

play. And so what

1:36:50

we've been struggling with at ARC, and what I'm

1:36:52

trying to do in my lectures, is to formulate

1:36:56

an invitation, a

1:36:59

story that's attractive and believable enough

1:37:01

so that all other competing

1:37:04

ideologies, ideological stories,

1:37:07

are revealed as corrupt,

1:37:10

inadequate, and what would

1:37:13

you say, anxiety provoking and hopeless.

1:37:16

And so, right, and so I

1:37:18

think we could, in this restoration project,

1:37:20

let's say, because I think we share

1:37:23

the same vision on that front, it's

1:37:25

very useful to understand that the

1:37:28

best form of counter-propaganda is

1:37:30

a much better invitation that's

1:37:32

actually real and believable. You

1:37:34

know, for example, who would oppose,

1:37:36

if they had any sense, the

1:37:38

idea that we should drive energy

1:37:40

costs down so that we could

1:37:42

eradicate absolute poverty? You

1:37:46

might say, well, that's not practical, and fair

1:37:48

enough, we could have that discussion. But I

1:37:50

think it is highly practical and also

1:37:53

completely possible. And so I

1:37:57

can't see why left and right alike can't get on

1:37:59

board. with that, it's not like right-wingers

1:38:01

who have any sense like the fact that

1:38:03

there are poor people. You

1:38:06

know, they might be inclined to presume

1:38:09

that some of the poor deserve

1:38:11

to be poor because they're really

1:38:13

not putting their best foot forward.

1:38:15

But by the same token, most

1:38:17

conservative types are perfectly cognizant of

1:38:19

the fact that to

1:38:21

some degree economic fate is arbitrarily distributed and

1:38:24

we should do some work to try to

1:38:26

ensure that the poor thrive. And

1:38:29

so the restoration should be

1:38:31

an invitation, right? This is a better

1:38:33

way. Here's the better way.

1:38:37

I think the best way, the first

1:38:39

step of restoration is to bring these

1:38:42

people together in the same room. I

1:38:44

think for me, the assumption is the

1:38:46

moderates on either side, they have more

1:38:49

in common than some of these

1:38:52

problems. Imagine we were not

1:38:54

talking about, you

1:38:57

know, Harry Truman had to consider whether or

1:39:00

not to throw the bomb.

1:39:03

Roosevelt had to consider whether he wanted to enter

1:39:05

the war or not. When

1:39:10

Churchill had to consider whether to declare war

1:39:12

or not, because Chamberlain was there saying let's

1:39:15

accommodate and appease and so on, the

1:39:18

Soviet Union, pigs of bay, remember

1:39:20

the leaders in the Oval Office,

1:39:23

some of the considerations that they had to

1:39:25

make. We're not there. Our

1:39:28

problems compared to that of

1:39:30

previous generation is so, these

1:39:34

things are so easy

1:39:36

to address. The problem

1:39:38

is, I don't know, part of it

1:39:40

is subversion and part of it is

1:39:42

this retribalization of Western society, is

1:39:45

that we hate the other

1:39:47

one so much that we're

1:39:49

willing to destroy. It's not even about

1:39:51

the issue anymore, it's about the person.

1:39:54

And so I think the first step

1:39:56

is to restore the

1:39:59

humanity. of the

1:40:01

person on the other side. Yeah,

1:40:03

well, that's a turn the other cheek. That's

1:40:06

a turn the other cheek ethos, right? Is

1:40:08

that what you wanna work for if you

1:40:10

can, if you have any sense is the,

1:40:12

not the eradication of your so-called enemy, but

1:40:15

what would you say? His redemption in

1:40:18

a manner that allows you both to

1:40:20

cooperate and compete peacefully and productively. That's

1:40:22

a much better aim. And

1:40:25

your point is, well, we're not so much

1:40:27

at each other's throats that there's blood

1:40:29

in the streets. And so we

1:40:31

could still have the conversations, the

1:40:33

difficult conversations and the negotiations and

1:40:36

what extend the

1:40:38

accords across the warring tribes. And

1:40:44

I do think that's possible.

1:40:47

Absolutely. But look at like

1:40:49

where we are with our technology and where

1:40:51

we are with our economy and where we

1:40:53

are with, we just have, for me,

1:40:57

I think we just have an overflow

1:40:59

of resources and even human resources, the

1:41:01

smartest people in the world. And

1:41:04

still, again, look at the whole world

1:41:06

still wants to come here regardless of

1:41:10

the problems we have. So

1:41:13

I mean, it's like, we've got,

1:41:15

it's easy, I think, right now

1:41:17

to come back from these stages

1:41:20

of demoralization and to

1:41:23

some degree destabilization. That's

1:41:26

a very good place to end, I would

1:41:28

say, this discussion, at least for everybody watching

1:41:30

and listening, I'm going to continue talking to

1:41:32

Iann on the Daily Wire side.

1:41:36

We'll delve into what's

1:41:38

more autobiographical and continue to elaborate the

1:41:41

ideas that we're discussing here. So if

1:41:43

you're inclined to join us behind

1:41:45

the Daily Wire paywall, well,

1:41:47

that would be potentially useful to

1:41:50

you. And also, what

1:41:52

would you say? Welcome from our

1:41:54

perspective, the Daily Wire in their

1:41:56

collaborations with me have certainly extended my

1:41:58

ability to have... conversations like this

1:42:01

and to make them freely available and have

1:42:03

been really good and

1:42:06

forthright partners in that endeavor.

1:42:08

So anyways, I will thank

1:42:11

you very much for talking to me today, it's a pleasure to

1:42:13

see you. And

1:42:15

it was really good to hear what you had to

1:42:17

say and to delve into these

1:42:20

things more deeply. And

1:42:22

while I'm looking forward to the next half

1:42:25

an hour of our conversation and also to

1:42:27

seeing you again in the future and to

1:42:29

everybody who's watching and listening and to the

1:42:31

film crew here in Fairview, Alberta which is

1:42:34

my small hometown in the middle

1:42:36

of nowhere up on the

1:42:38

frigid plains of the Northwest. Thank

1:42:41

you guys for coming in from Saskatoon and

1:42:43

doing this and thank you again, I am

1:42:45

much appreciated. Jordan, you're welcome,

1:42:47

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