The Auron MacIntyre Show - Top Nine Reads of 2023 ｜ 1⧸2⧸24

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00:00:30.440 I get asked about suggested reading on a fairly regular basis.

00:00:35.240 A lot of people want to know where I encounter different ideas,

00:00:38.700 and so I go ahead and cap every year with a suggested reading list

00:00:43.080 just nine books that I read during the year that I thought were very interesting

00:00:47.800 and had an impact on the way I had been thinking about issues.

00:00:51.520 Obviously, this is a couple days late, but I had a very busy holiday season,

00:00:55.380 so hopefully you'll forgive me.

00:00:57.300 That said, let's go ahead and begin.

00:00:59.240 And this is my top nine reads of 2023.

00:01:04.140 Number one, Skin in the Game, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

00:01:09.340 Skin in the Game is a book about a lot of things,

00:01:12.340 but primarily it's a book about what happens when you separate the cost of the decision

00:01:17.420 from the people who actually make that decision.

00:01:20.480 What does that do to the incentive structure of your society?

00:01:24.260 This is really important because it speaks to what happens when you scale a society.

00:01:29.700 When your society gets too large and you start entrusting certain institutions and bureaucracies

00:01:35.160 with key aspects of your decision-making process,

00:01:37.840 and they're specialized and they're professional,

00:01:40.720 but they're also really far removed from the different communities they're supposed to be serving.

00:01:45.960 They no longer have skin in the game.

00:01:48.580 They're no longer incentivized to actually do what is best for that community,

00:01:52.820 what actually solves that problem,

00:01:54.420 but instead are incentivized to better themselves because it's not really going to impact the area they live in.

00:02:00.760 It's not going to really have a significant cost to their way of life.

00:02:05.200 What's interesting about this book is that Taleb is an options trader.

00:02:09.180 That's his profession, and that's kind of the direction he comes from

00:02:12.300 when he's talking about the psychology behind decisions,

00:02:15.340 whether or not you have skin in the game and how that impacts the way that you look at these different options.

00:02:19.500 However, he's also hitting on conquest laws.

00:02:22.800 I don't know if he understood that, if he's familiar with these.

00:02:25.160 He certainly doesn't reference them in the book,

00:02:27.000 but the phenomenon that he's talking about, this bureaucratic separation of interests from original mission,

00:02:33.300 is something that is squarely in the wheelhouse of conquest laws,

00:02:37.340 and so it's interesting to see him approach the same concept, but from a different direction.

00:02:42.280 He also explains why the intolerant minority will always beat the more accepting majority,

00:02:48.500 which, of course, is counterintuitive for a lot of people.

00:02:51.420 It's very different from the way that people think that democracy or politics or the culture wars work,

00:02:57.600 but he explains why an organized minority that has very specific intolerant demands

00:03:03.760 is far more likely to win than a larger and accepting big tent,

00:03:08.100 putting away the populist delusion, the big tent delusion that we talk a lot about

00:03:13.620 in neoreactionary thought or Italian elite theory.

00:03:17.240 So it's a book that dovetails very well with this space and the different ideas and theories of politics

00:03:23.660 that we talk about.

00:03:25.040 I always enjoy reading a book that approaches a similar subject and comes to similar conclusions,

00:03:30.280 but does so from a different discipline, from a different angle,

00:03:33.260 because that allows you to understand every facet of something, get the full picture.

00:03:37.220 I always think that's a very valuable thing to do.

00:03:39.900 So make sure to read this one.

00:03:41.380 Taleb's a good author.

00:03:42.660 He writes in a very entertaining style.

00:03:44.320 It's a pretty easy read, quick to get through.

00:03:46.620 Go ahead and check it out.

00:03:48.560 Number two, Return of the Strong Gods, R.R. Reno.

00:03:53.120 Return of the Strong Gods is a book that is very valuable for explaining to people

00:03:57.980 why certain forces are taking hold in our world today,

00:04:02.240 why it seems like nationalism and populism are resurgent in a time where

00:04:07.200 many of the people in charge are very scared of those different movements.

00:04:11.160 The author tends to point out the shortcomings of enlightenment and liberalism,

00:04:16.560 pointing out why trying to put away many of the key aspects of human identity ended up failing

00:04:24.420 and causing significant problems when it comes to social cohesion and meaning.

00:04:29.600 Reno discusses the emergence of this post-war consensus after World War II about the need to

00:04:36.220 stop any form of totalitarianism and that so many people thought that the core of totalitarianism

00:04:43.280 was a connection to larger forces of identity, connection to meaning and purpose, to the transcendent.

00:04:50.440 And so it was really important for these kind of new modern states to limit access to that.

00:04:56.940 And this never-again mentality has some very serious side effects or ruling elites end up leaning very heavily

00:05:03.460 into this radical individual atomization and free market fundamentalism.

00:05:08.460 And of course, that stuff has its benefits.

00:05:10.460 There are many aspects of modern life that we enjoy and have a hard time understanding how people went along without

00:05:17.520 that are connected to that.

00:05:19.360 And I think Reno is pretty honest about his own worries here about how he would personally have difficulty

00:05:24.920 parting with certain liberal precepts.

00:05:28.000 But at the same time, he recognizes that these old gods are coming back, that these strong gods are coming back,

00:05:35.300 that these realities about identity, nationalism, populism, they are going to reemerge.

00:05:41.100 And you can be as concerned as you want, but that's not going to stop what's happening

00:05:45.120 because we're transitioning away from the time of liberal ideology

00:05:49.400 and we're returning back to the things that have been true about human identity for a very long time.

00:05:55.520 And so for Reno, it's not necessarily trying to prevent the return of the strong gods,

00:06:00.480 but about channeling them the correct direction.

00:06:03.620 Because again, to Reno's credit, he understands the failure of our current elites.

00:06:07.780 They're trying to contain this aspect of human nature.

00:06:11.000 I mean, they've been trying to contain it for a long time, but it's very obviously failing.

00:06:15.260 It's very clear that this stuff is going to break through.

00:06:17.600 And so while they're running around and screaming about fascism or whatever,

00:06:21.140 he recognizes, okay, this is a reality that's going to occur.

00:06:24.480 And so what we need to do is channel this into something healthy,

00:06:27.280 make sure that this is something that benefits society

00:06:29.520 and not something that creates an ugly backlash when it emerges.

00:06:33.100 And his idea is basically, I think the church,

00:06:35.240 I think that religion is kind of the core component of identity that he focuses on.

00:06:39.080 But he also recognizes that other parts of this are going to emerge.

00:06:42.100 They are going to be real and they are going to need to find a healthy home inside society

00:06:45.920 because continued attempts at suppression are going to end very, very poorly.

00:06:50.040 So I recommend this book.

00:06:51.600 It's not revelatory if you're familiar with these arguments,

00:06:54.920 but they are laid out in, I think, a very honest way

00:06:57.740 by someone who isn't necessarily comfortable with all of them,

00:07:00.640 but understands the truth of it.

00:07:02.400 And so I think it's worth your time.

00:07:04.900 Number three, Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington.

00:07:09.780 Samuel Huntington was an international relations guru and a professor.

00:07:13.320 Famously, Francis Fukuyama was one of his students.

00:07:16.360 And of course, Fukuyama had an alternative idea of the way things would go.

00:07:21.140 It's the Clash of Civilizations model versus the End of History model. 0.88

00:07:25.140 I think we can probably say pretty confidently at this point

00:07:28.340 that Samuel Huntington won that particular debate.

00:07:31.840 But it's very interesting to go back and read this book

00:07:33.720 because it was written in 1995,

00:07:36.200 just after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

00:07:38.900 And he's writing about what the post-Cold War world is going to look like.

00:07:44.440 The shift away from the bipolar world is really important

00:07:49.040 because many countries and alliances had been held together

00:07:52.560 simply by the fact that there were these two major forces

00:07:56.140 that dictated everything to do with international relations.

00:08:00.180 And while Fukuyama looked pretty good initially

00:08:02.260 by predicting that we'd have this kind of monopolar Western hegemony

00:08:06.000 that would control everything and force everybody into one homogenous monoculture. 0.99

00:08:10.620 We're starting to see how Huntington won in the end

00:08:13.020 because he spends a lot of time talking about the ways

00:08:15.640 that different civilizations are going to attempt to modernize

00:08:19.240 while de-Westernizing.

00:08:21.420 How these things used to once be linked and to modernize

00:08:24.180 was to Westernize, was to turn your culture 0.88

00:08:26.520 into a mirror of the West that was required.

00:08:28.960 But now these countries are looking for a way

00:08:31.680 to split those two aspects apart.

00:08:35.160 It's interesting to see what he gets wrong

00:08:36.860 and what he gets right

00:08:37.700 because again, of course, this book was written in 1995

00:08:40.080 and he doesn't predict everything accurately.

00:08:42.680 He certainly fails in particular predictions.

00:08:45.540 However, the thing that he predicts

00:08:47.540 that I think is most important

00:08:48.880 is the same phenomenon that Reno observed

00:08:51.760 in Return of the Strong Gods.

00:08:53.800 Huntington believed that we were going to see

00:08:55.480 the end of the age of ideology,

00:08:57.200 that we're going to leave behind

00:08:58.580 these secular economic identities

00:09:00.900 that had dominated the globe for so long

00:09:03.340 and instead we were going to see

00:09:04.680 the resurgence of classical cultural identities,

00:09:07.700 identities that were incompatible

00:09:09.740 and could not homogenize in a global way.

00:09:13.560 Now Huntington believed that those identities

00:09:15.460 would modernize,

00:09:17.160 they wouldn't just be a return

00:09:18.740 to 300 or 400 or 500 years ago,

00:09:21.720 but that there would be a way to synthesize

00:09:23.940 those classical understandings of identity

00:09:26.220 with modern aspects of our world

00:09:29.120 and again, he believed that religion

00:09:30.800 would play a central role in these identities.

00:09:33.540 It wouldn't be the only factor,

00:09:35.040 but he believed it would be

00:09:36.060 the most significant factor,

00:09:37.800 especially when it comes to updating,

00:09:39.940 kind of synthesizing again,

00:09:41.580 the modern with the more classic

00:09:43.700 understanding of culture.

00:09:45.920 So a great book,

00:09:47.220 though it is a little clunky in places.

00:09:49.300 Huntington isn't actually the best writer,

00:09:51.820 but I mean, it's a pillar of international relations

00:09:54.120 for a reason.

00:09:54.820 It's a classic.

00:09:55.880 You should be reading it.

00:09:57.840 Number four,

00:09:58.920 The Ancient City,

00:10:00.280 Fustel de Colonges.

00:10:02.360 This was my favorite book that I read this year,

00:10:04.900 and that's because Fustel doesn't just take a look

00:10:07.120 at the events of ancient Greece and ancient Rome

00:10:10.220 because you're probably very familiar with those,

00:10:12.500 but instead,

00:10:13.400 he takes you to the very beginning of those cultures

00:10:16.220 and encourages you to approach them

00:10:18.040 as if they were completely alien.

00:10:20.040 It was a totally alien experience.

00:10:22.000 You are unconnected.

00:10:23.160 You are unfamiliar with the way that these people lived

00:10:25.740 because it is a truly different way

00:10:28.180 to understand the world.

00:10:30.440 And Fustel really focuses on religion in this book

00:10:33.780 because this is the core of the ancient identity.

00:10:38.460 This is the water in which they swim.

00:10:40.500 This is the way that they try to understand everything around them

00:10:44.120 and the way that they construct their family relations,

00:10:47.320 their laws,

00:10:48.780 the way that their governments work.

00:10:50.580 Every aspect of financial transactions

00:10:53.460 is in some way touched on

00:10:55.900 by the religious understanding of the world.

00:10:58.920 And when he's talking about the ancient Greek and Roman religions,

00:11:02.340 he's not really talking about what we think about

00:11:04.400 with Zeus or Jupiter or things like that.

00:11:07.100 He's talking about the truly ancient ancestor worship

00:11:10.360 that existed where the sacred hearth is the center of the home

00:11:13.780 and everything is connected to the continuation of that worship.

00:11:18.360 Property rights exist,

00:11:19.460 but they only exist because your ancestors are buried on that land

00:11:24.180 and you need to continue the worship by going to their grave 0.53

00:11:27.780 and feeding them and caring for them in the afterlife.

00:11:30.500 So yes, you have property rights,

00:11:32.200 but there are also property obligations.

00:11:34.600 This isn't something that you could just sell easily with a contract.

00:11:37.600 In fact, the introduction of that at some point becomes rather scandalous,

00:11:41.700 but it's very interesting the way that every aspect of this is again,

00:11:45.680 tied back to this ancient form of ancestor worship.

00:11:49.020 I also find this book fascinating

00:11:50.960 because it's a great case study for the metaphysics of power

00:11:54.380 as laid out by another French thinker, Bertrand de Juvenal.

00:11:58.500 De Juvenal talks a lot about how the central government

00:12:02.300 needs to break down all competing social spheres,

00:12:05.740 all these other organizations that might hold power,

00:12:08.740 whether it be families or churches or other things.

00:12:11.840 If it wants to wield the power of the entire state,

00:12:14.360 of the entire culture,

00:12:15.920 then it needs to go ahead and get rid of these.

00:12:18.040 And in Fustel's book, he explains how the different djins,

00:12:22.200 these patrician families,

00:12:24.000 used to have incredible control over the people in their families

00:12:27.920 and those attached to their families,

00:12:29.200 their servants, their slaves.

00:12:30.520 They had great control over their freedmen

00:12:33.000 and how they could basically restrict the ability

00:12:36.000 of the state to create different laws.

00:12:38.720 Each family's religion was very particular to that family.

00:12:41.600 They were not interconnected in some kind of larger structure.

00:12:44.720 And so it made it very difficult for the city to make wide-scale demands

00:12:48.540 or laws that would organize a larger political entity

00:12:52.760 because the families had this amazing amount of influence

00:12:56.380 that was connected to the practice of the religion,

00:12:58.840 which in turn basically dictated everything

00:13:01.680 about the life of the individual.

00:13:04.200 And so Fustel shows how this transition from individual tribes

00:13:07.460 who are loosely connected to each other,

00:13:09.340 to city-state and eventually to empire,

00:13:11.540 each one of these transitions also required an alteration of the religion

00:13:16.080 and a weakening of family bonds.

00:13:18.980 So if you're a fan of Greek and Roman history

00:13:20.780 or you're a fan of understanding how power works

00:13:23.240 or you're a fan of both, and I know many of you are,

00:13:25.840 then this is an absolute must-read.

00:13:28.540 Number five, Heroes in Hero Worship, Thomas Carlyle.

00:13:32.780 This book began as a series of lectures given by Carlyle at universities

00:13:37.300 and it still has that form.

00:13:38.860 Carlyle believed that hero worship was the foundation of society

00:13:43.020 and that's why it's the most consistent thing you can find

00:13:46.240 in pretty much every human civilization.

00:13:49.000 In each lecture, he gives a different heroic archetype,

00:13:52.180 the hero as the divine, the hero as the prophet, poet, priest,

00:13:56.980 man of letters, and king.

00:13:58.960 Each archetype also comes with a few examples

00:14:01.200 that he goes on about at length,

00:14:03.420 whether it's Odin or Napoleon or Muhammad.

00:14:06.000 Many people will try to use this book to introduce you to Carlyle,

00:14:09.780 but I don't think it's the best place to start.

00:14:11.580 However, it is a critical book.

00:14:13.380 I mean, this is the book that is often credited

00:14:15.660 with creating the great man of history archetype.

00:14:19.140 Carlyle is always a challenging read,

00:14:21.320 especially if you're not used to his style,

00:14:23.420 but it's always rewarding and I fully endorse this one.

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00:14:57.760 Number six, Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions.

00:15:01.740 I haven't recommended Thomas Sowell in any of these videos yet,

00:15:05.380 and it's great to finally get to correct his absence.

00:15:08.120 If you've never read him before, this is a really good place to start.

00:15:11.120 It's a small book and it's not super abstract with a bunch of theory.

00:15:14.820 It's just very down-to-earth and provides an excellent framework

00:15:18.460 for understanding the left and the right.

00:15:21.580 Sowell looks at what he sees as the two basic understandings,

00:15:25.340 the moral visions of the world.

00:15:27.960 You have the constrained tragic vision and the unconstrained or utopian vision.

00:15:33.960 Those with the unconstrained vision see humans as blank slates.

00:15:38.180 There is no set human nature.

00:15:40.120 They can be manipulated in any way necessary.

00:15:42.780 Those in power can change core aspects of human identity and human action

00:15:48.280 to create the utopian perfect society that they envision.

00:15:52.420 In contrast, the constrained or tragic vision is one which understands that humans

00:15:57.020 do have a specific nature and that that nature is imperfect.

00:16:00.860 It is fallen.

00:16:02.080 There will be war. 0.74

00:16:03.060 There will be greed.

00:16:04.460 We will always be self-interested.

00:16:06.400 And these aspects of our character cannot be purged.

00:16:10.080 We can never socially engineer some kind of utopia.

00:16:13.180 So instead, the constrained vision understands that tradition is there for us to learn from

00:16:19.580 our mistakes over time and hopefully get a better framework in which we can live.

00:16:25.400 But we can never actually create a perfect society.

00:16:28.560 We can never remove all of the flaws that make us human.

00:16:32.920 Instead, we must live within those limitations.

00:16:36.500 And of course, starting from two entirely different moral visions has a serious impact on

00:16:42.260 the way you're going to do politics.

00:16:43.840 The left takes the unconstrained vision, obviously.

00:16:47.160 They believe you can change anything.

00:16:48.640 You can change your gender.

00:16:50.020 You can completely re-engineer society however you like.

00:16:53.420 If only you had enough power given to the government to do so.

00:16:56.940 As where the right has the constrained, tragic vision, they understand there are certain parts

00:17:01.280 of who you are that are always going to be there and you can't get rid of them.

00:17:05.820 And when you approach politics from these two different directions, you're going to have

00:17:09.500 a serious conflict in the way you try to resolve political questions.

00:17:13.980 So once again, you might not get hit right between the eyes with some kind of revelation

00:17:17.660 from this book.

00:17:18.600 It's an older book and many thinkers and pundits and writers have taken the ideas and filtered

00:17:23.320 them down to you already.

00:17:25.240 So you might be familiar.

00:17:26.820 But Thomas Sowell is one of the best guys on the right.

00:17:30.040 Yeah, he might be wrong on some things, but he's still an excellent thinker and his books

00:17:34.000 are always worth reading.

00:17:35.280 And he provides a very good framework for understanding conflicts that holds up even

00:17:39.760 today.

00:17:40.280 So make sure to read it.

00:17:41.720 Number seven, the problem of pain, C.S. Lewis.

00:17:45.840 I'm somebody who likes to reread books.

00:17:48.600 It really just opens things up for me, especially if it's a book that is complex or has deeper

00:17:53.280 truths.

00:17:53.960 You simply don't get everything the first time through.

00:17:56.420 And this is certainly true with C.S. Lewis.

00:17:58.520 Even though he writes in a very approachable style, it's something that the layman can

00:18:03.960 approach very easily.

00:18:05.840 He's always layering in deeper lessons, and that's why I enjoy revisiting his works from

00:18:10.660 time to time.

00:18:12.120 This year, I reread The Problem of Pain, and something different jumped out at me.

00:18:16.460 There was a different emphasis that was brought to the forefront.

00:18:19.120 Obviously, the book does what you'd expect from the title.

00:18:22.240 It addresses the issue of theodicy.

00:18:24.160 If there's an all-powerful God, why is there pain?

00:18:26.880 Why is there suffering?

00:18:28.880 And this is important because, for some reason, every internet atheist, every 13-year-old

00:18:33.960 who logs into Reddit still thinks that nobody has ever thought about this problem.

00:18:38.500 You still have grown men like Sam Harris or people show up on the internet and be like,

00:18:43.260 oh, but there's pain, man.

00:18:44.800 Has anyone ever thought about that?

00:18:46.220 Has any Christian ever considered the problem that things are hard sometimes?

00:18:50.700 So books like this are still very valuable because apparently this is still a stumbling

00:18:54.940 block for a lot of people who think that theologians just have never addressed this problem at all.

00:19:00.060 Now, to be clear, C.S.

00:19:01.160 Lewis's books are always more of a primer than any kind of thorough discussion of theology.

00:19:06.940 He's your first introduction to the issue and the higher thinking ordered around it.

00:19:11.720 It's not some kind of exhaustive defense or examination of the issue.

00:19:15.900 However, this time, what struck me while going through the book was C.S.

00:19:21.220 Lewis's discussion about what it means to be truly loved by a personal God. 0.93

00:19:27.260 Many atheists tend to dismiss the idea of a personal God as ridiculous, and they do this

00:19:33.180 because they're like, oh, well, how could a God care about me? 0.95

00:19:36.200 He's got to do all these other things as if God had the attention span of a four-year-old

00:19:40.920 looking at video games.

00:19:42.120 But C.S.

00:19:43.180 Lewis explains that people are uncomfortable with the idea of being loved by a personal

00:19:47.040 God, not because they have some kind of a logical misunderstanding about how God allocates

00:19:51.660 his attention, but instead they are uncomfortable because the implication of that idea is that

00:19:57.360 God will care enough about you to care about how you turn out.

00:20:02.160 An impersonal or distant God might just create you and then move on to more important things,

00:20:07.020 allowing you to move along the track of life in the way that you see fit.

00:20:10.840 But a personal God who actually loves you and actually cares about you might require you

00:20:16.200 to do difficult things, might even put you through hard times.

00:20:19.500 If you're a parent, you understand that giving your children everything they want is a disaster.

00:20:24.720 And in fact, adversity is one of the critical things to growing as a person.

00:20:30.000 So if God is real and God loves us in a personal way, then pain may not be some kind of random

00:20:36.580 accident or it may not be some kind of penalty for our mistakes, but instead it might be an

00:20:42.980 intentional tool of refinement and there might be certain requirements incumbent on us as those

00:20:49.580 that are loved by a real personal God.

00:20:52.380 And that is a notion that soft, secular, modern people who just want to live their lives and

00:20:58.400 be left alone are terrified of.

00:21:00.800 So yeah, definitely read it if you haven't.

00:21:03.340 All C.S. Lewis is basically an automatic recommendation.

00:21:06.280 So check it out.

00:21:07.980 Number eight, state of emergency, Patrick J. Buchanan.

00:21:11.680 I mean, is there any one single human being who deserves a bigger apology than Pat Buchanan

00:21:19.000 in politics?

00:21:20.300 Probably not.

00:21:21.380 Maybe Ron Paul.

00:21:23.060 Buchanan is the guy who was the prophet unwelcome in his own town.

00:21:27.840 He was excised from the Republican Party for being right about everything.

00:21:33.480 His platform was basically the playbook that was photocopied for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

00:21:39.840 And in state of emergency, he's warning about the invasion coming across the southern border.

00:21:45.260 The book is written in 2006 in response to George W. Bush's policies, which of course Buchanan

00:21:52.020 ran against.

00:21:53.500 And it prophesies pretty much everything accurately.

00:21:56.700 The nice thing about Buchanan is, of course, he's not afraid to go after the difficult

00:22:01.580 issues.

00:22:02.920 He's willing to address not just the economic problems or the crime issue associated with

00:22:08.780 immigration, but he's also willing to talk about the cultural impact, the way that it's

00:22:12.700 going to change American identity and the way it's going to alter the ability of Americans 0.60

00:22:17.920 to participate in their government going forward.

00:22:20.900 Buchanan also doesn't just go after illegal immigration.

00:22:23.620 He addresses the problems of illegal immigration and, most importantly, explains why the Republican

00:22:28.600 Party is willing to be complicit in this transformation that negatively impacts their voting base.

00:22:35.480 So yeah, I don't know what to say.

00:22:36.660 Read more Pat Buchanan.

00:22:37.640 Read more paleocons.

00:22:38.780 Do it now.

00:22:40.300 Number nine, America's Cultural Revolution.

00:22:43.360 Christopher Ruffo.

00:22:45.400 Chris Ruffo is, frankly, the most effective conservative activist alive right now.

00:22:50.640 So when he releases a book, you should probably pay attention.

00:22:53.940 America's Cultural Revolution is a book about the ideological roots of wokeness, and it traces

00:23:00.600 the movement all the way from the 1960s to today.

00:23:04.500 Ruffo stops to look at key pieces of ideology advanced by thinkers like Herbert Marcuse or

00:23:10.620 Derek Bell.

00:23:11.860 And he does a good job of explaining how this whole thing hangs together, how one piece led

00:23:17.200 to the next, but I think the most powerful and useful part of this book is the way it

00:23:22.500 shows you how everything was really there at the beginning in the 1960s.

00:23:28.360 Ruffo doesn't hold back when he's explaining the vile and violent and vicious ideology advanced

00:23:34.940 by these people, the way that they were willing to use bombing and terrorism, rape, torture, 0.90

00:23:39.780 all kinds of things to advance their political cause, and that every piece of anti-white hate, 0.96

00:23:45.700 every piece of radical feminism, every piece of anti-family, anti-Christian hatred,

00:23:50.920 they were all baked into this movement at the beginning.

00:23:54.680 Now I have my disagreements with Chris Ruffo.

00:23:57.540 In this book in particular, I disagree with the way that he characterizes the need to return

00:24:02.260 to the Civil Rights Act, the true spirit of the Civil Rights Act.

00:24:05.660 I would argue that the Civil Rights Act did pretty much exactly what was intended, and

00:24:10.200 so returning to its origins is kind of the opposite of what you're trying to do if you're

00:24:14.920 trying to purge this DEI woke philosophy from our institutions, but it's still a very valuable

00:24:21.700 read, and I highly recommend it.

00:24:24.360 All right, guys, so that's my top nine reads of 2023.

00:24:27.980 If you want to look at issues and understand where I found some of the insights that I've been

00:24:33.680 sharing, these are the books that you should be turning to.

00:24:37.840 If you like this video, go ahead and click like.

00:24:40.260 If you haven't subscribed to the channel, now is a great time to do so.

00:24:43.940 If you haven't followed me on Rumble or Odyssey or Twitter or Substack, all of the links are

00:24:49.520 down below in the description.

00:24:51.120 If you'd like to go ahead and get these broadcasts as podcasts, you can subscribe to the Oren

00:24:55.920 McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platforms.

00:24:58.520 And of course, you can read all of my columns and watch all of my videos over at The Blaze.

00:25:03.540 Thanks for another amazing year, guys.

00:25:05.440 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 02, 2024

Top Nine Reads of 2023 ｜ 1⧸2⧸24

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