The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 28, 2022


What Victory Looks Like ｜ Guest： Charles Haywood ｜ 12⧸28⧸22


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 8 minutes

Words per minute

167.13849

Word count

11,375

Sentence count

599

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Charles Haywood of the Wordsy House joins me to talk about Rob Dreyer's new book, "No Allies to the Right: How to Deal with the Right's Most Dangerous Man on the Right" and why he thinks Rob is the most dangerous man on the right.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:29.980 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:01:35.020 Thanks for joining me this evening.
00:01:36.900 Got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:01:41.420 Coming back to the show after his first appearance here, I have Charles Haywood of the Wordsy House.
00:01:47.620 Charles, thanks for coming on.
00:01:48.980 I am even more pleased to be here than the first time.
00:01:51.940 Excellent.
00:01:52.260 I'm glad that the amount of pleasure you have returning has increased.
00:01:56.380 All right.
00:01:56.680 So, it seems that you are perhaps now the most dangerous man on the right.
00:02:02.500 We have mainstream conservatives warning against you.
00:02:07.200 You're corrupting the youth.
00:02:09.200 Very, very, very terrible things.
00:02:11.460 I wanted to bring you on because I talked a little bit about kind of your situation with Dave the Distributist on our streams about friends and gatekeepers.
00:02:22.380 But as we were getting into the conversation, I realized, wait, I know this guy.
00:02:26.380 We can actually talk about it.
00:02:27.700 So, I figured it would be a good idea to have you on.
00:02:31.160 So, maybe we could start a little bit at the beginning.
00:02:33.640 It seems like the thing that got this started was your assertion of a principle, or at least, if not a principle, an idea, that no enemies to the right.
00:02:47.700 This phrase seems to have triggered Rob Dreyer into writing about you.
00:02:53.220 I think that's kind of where things kicked off.
00:02:55.340 Could you catch people up a little bit if they're not familiar?
00:02:57.680 Sure, absolutely.
00:02:58.440 I mean, I feel a little bit bad punching up on Rob Dreyer because he's so very punchable and people have been punching on him a lot recently.
00:03:07.320 In fact, I think everyone's familiar with the famous meme of the pink-haired woman, or I think she was pink-haired, screaming after Trump was inaugurated.
00:03:17.420 And someone said that his friends on the left think of Rob Dreyer as the right-wing equivalent of that woman.
00:03:23.820 So, I feel a little bit bad adding to the cacophony of people beating up on Dreyer, but I think this is important.
00:03:29.840 I like Dreyer, and I think he's done a lot of valuable work, though I think, as you also correctly identified with Dave, the distributist, performative outrage has become his thing.
00:03:41.180 But focusing on the narrow question of no enemies to the right, Dreyer apparently, and I honestly have never gone and looked into the details,
00:03:49.080 because as I said in a piece that I wrote later, I don't care, Dreyer led a witch hunt against a guy who I believe was headmaster at a classical Christian academy that I believe some or all of his children attended in Baton Rouge.
00:04:03.100 And in typical Dreyer fashion, who likes to say that anyone to his right is ipso facto a bad person, he was leading this witch hunt against this guy.
00:04:15.320 And I just commented on Twitter, I saw it pop up because I follow Dreyer, and I commented on his lengthy screed,
00:04:23.320 who cares, no enemies to the right.
00:04:27.040 And as you say, this kind of triggered Rod, you know, Rod, pretty easy to trigger, I guess, but, and I know Rod somewhat, I'm an acquaintance,
00:04:34.720 though he blocked me on Twitter, and I'm pretty sure I'm off his Christmas card list now.
00:04:39.480 So I still do pay $300 a year for his sub stack, because, you know, I can't help myself.
00:04:46.040 But he wrote a piece basically saying that people who say this are very bad.
00:04:53.320 They're, you know, Nazis, and just generally just terrible human beings without naming me, referring to the Twitter comment, but without naming me. 0.93
00:05:01.320 So the excellent online magazine, I Am 1776, suggested a dialogue between me and Daniel Miller discussing this question.
00:05:11.300 And so he wrote this, and I thought my section of it was pretty pithy and pretty punchy, and he published it, maybe two weeks after the original thing.
00:05:21.220 I actually assumed that Dreyer would just ignore it, but instead he went all, you know, crazy and started writing lengthy screeds with giant pictures of myself picked deliberately to make me look bad.
00:05:31.940 I mean, it's very hard to make me look bad, but, you know, it brought me down to like a six or a seven on a ten scale, and it was very offensive to me.
00:05:37.900 And so, but more to the point, he made Nazi references to me and compared me to indirectly to Oswald Mosley, you know, the leader of the British black shirts, the fascists, the run up to World War II.
00:05:51.680 And, you know, just generally, and he didn't, of course, a single time address a single point that I had made, which were very detailed and very lengthy, about the importance of this tactical principle.
00:06:01.580 No enemies to the right. Rather than engaging in this, he maundered on and on about supposed, but non-existent, personal invective, and how I was a Nazi, and that Nazis are bad.
00:06:13.380 It was very kind of tiresome and disappointing, frankly.
00:06:15.540 Yeah, and like you said, I don't want to focus so much on the back and forth, Jared, because A, it's got a little feel of drama, and B, like you said, easy, easy target, no fun.
00:06:28.740 I think that your discussion with Miller was far more nuanced and productive, because it was an actual discussion.
00:06:36.860 And everyone should read it if they haven't.
00:06:38.120 Yes, absolutely. If you haven't read the actual discussion, you can go to IM1776 and check it out there.
00:06:45.640 But I wanted to, because we kind of touched on the topic, and because I think this is an interesting time for the right, I think there are a lot more mainstream people who are fed up with what's going on,
00:06:57.400 and they want to listen to different voices and look at different ways of approaching issues.
00:07:03.740 I think more people are paying attention to this space, and so I wanted to give you a chance to kind of flesh out in a longer discussion kind of what you meant by this,
00:07:13.820 and at the end of this, kind of start pointing to what victory might look like, because as I was reading this discussion and looking at kind of the back and forth between you and Dreher and others,
00:07:24.620 I started thinking to myself, what do people actually think that victory looks like?
00:07:28.740 Like, what does that endgame actually look like to them?
00:07:33.540 And I would be interested in kind of exploring that a little bit with you.
00:07:36.860 But let's start at the beginning.
00:07:39.040 In the discussion on IM1776, you explain a little bit more about no enemies to the right and what that actually means,
00:07:47.620 because Miller does have some criticism about it saying it's too simplistic, there's not enough nuance,
00:07:54.000 it doesn't clarify things enough. Could you speak a little more on what that phrase means to you?
00:07:59.760 Sure. So people sometimes ask me, leaving aside the winning condition and how winning would happen,
00:08:05.980 what's my goal in life or rather in political philosophy?
00:08:11.140 And the goal is very simple.
00:08:12.780 The goal is human flourishing, the flourishing of mankind,
00:08:16.160 which means the flourishing, maximize the flourishing of individuals and of society.
00:08:22.500 And by society, I mean our society.
00:08:24.400 I mean, I can't really speak to societies that are alien to the West.
00:08:27.620 I don't really know what the flourishing condition of a person who lives in China is necessarily,
00:08:32.640 except for the very basics.
00:08:34.580 And by flourishing, I don't mean Steven Pinker type flourishing,
00:08:38.400 which is that we get lots of consumer goods and we live slightly longer than we used to.
00:08:44.600 And that's human flourishing.
00:08:45.980 I mean those things too, but I mean primarily a spiritual or psychological flourishing.
00:08:53.040 And my kind of core principle with respect to flourishing,
00:08:57.100 I have a bunch of theories as to how societies, broadly speaking, can accomplish this.
00:09:02.420 But my core principle is that the left prevents this.
00:09:07.120 And therefore, the left must be defeated.
00:09:09.860 So people, of course, then say, well, what is the left?
00:09:12.660 And the left is what we have seen in applied politics in the West since around 1750.
00:09:22.480 Generally speaking, what is called the Enlightenment or what is accurately called the Enlightenment
00:09:28.340 as opposed to all the things that people like to pull into the bucket and name it Enlightenment
00:09:34.480 in order to make it seem more appealing.
00:09:37.680 So in this context, the Enlightenment means at its core, this is somewhat of a simplification,
00:09:42.480 the twin set of political principles that revolve around unlimited emancipation from all
00:09:48.600 unchosen bonds that are not freely continuously chosen, from all bonds that are not freely
00:09:54.500 continuously chosen, and forced egalitarianism of all people, forced equality of all people.
00:10:01.020 These things are the core of the left project that has dominated the West evermore since 1750.
00:10:08.020 And it is this that is the weight on our chest that prevents human flourishing
00:10:12.320 and has led us into the dead end that we are now in.
00:10:16.760 And of course, as I say, the first step in solving your problems is admitting you have a problem.
00:10:21.760 So I think everyone should admit that this is the problem.
00:10:24.700 And in order to address this problem, this entire philosophy should be exterminated from
00:10:32.560 the political thought of the West in order to enable human flourishing, which, of course,
00:10:37.500 is not auto-generating thereafter, but it is the first step.
00:10:40.800 And that's what I mean when I say that there, I mean, very broadly, and we can get into the details.
00:10:47.700 When I say no enemies to the right, I mean, it is important to focus on defeating the left
00:10:52.780 and winning this particular battle of political philosophies so that we as a society can move forward.
00:11:00.220 Yeah, and speaking of fixing problems, there are some audio issues, guys.
00:11:04.880 I know, Charles, you might want to try muting when you're not speaking just because there's this weird
00:11:09.380 feedback that's kind of coming through when I talk.
00:11:12.520 So that might fix the problem there.
00:11:14.320 Sorry about that, guys.
00:11:15.800 Charles was having some kind of connection issue.
00:11:17.820 I think his internet's okay, but there's something going on.
00:11:20.180 We'll try to make do with the best we can here.
00:11:23.580 So like you were talking about, the strategy of no enemies to the right.
00:11:32.300 I think that the – well, there's a couple different ways we can go with this.
00:11:38.780 I guess I'm looking at a few of Miller's objections, and I'm trying to think about how to best approach this.
00:11:45.800 So maybe the first thing we can talk about is the fact that he says that one of the problems with no enemies to the right
00:11:52.420 is that it's – this is a statement that has no moral content, right?
00:11:57.640 It has – it doesn't take any kind of morality into account.
00:12:01.540 It's too nihilistic.
00:12:02.620 I think that you fleshed out a little bit later on, but Miller's approach seems to be that basically your – or rather,
00:12:13.780 his critique of your approach seems to be that you don't allow for any mistakes could be on the right,
00:12:19.120 any kind of correction to the right.
00:12:22.180 I don't think that's true.
00:12:23.140 I think you were pointing more to like this is a public-facing strategy that people would correct each other in private,
00:12:31.580 that these things would be fixed in a more fraternal way,
00:12:38.320 but that the public-facing aspect of the right should be one that's a united front
00:12:43.360 against kind of removing those really deleterious leftist influence that you were talking about.
00:12:49.100 Could you get a little more into maybe that explanation?
00:12:52.160 Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:53.940 We're not – I think no public enemies to the right is a good kind of addendum
00:12:58.460 because there's really two kinds of enemies to the right.
00:13:03.480 There's kind of current potential enemies and future potential enemies.
00:13:09.080 So right now, my basic principle is that we're attempting to achieve certain political goals,
00:13:14.900 and people who are useful allies in that struggle should not be unnecessarily exact.
00:13:22.160 They're examined into opinions or beliefs or things they do that are objectionable,
00:13:28.460 except in extreme cases if it's irrelevant to whatever we're allying on right now.
00:13:34.080 So there's all sorts of people on the right who I think that they're not very bright,
00:13:38.380 or that they have an inadequate morality or no morality,
00:13:42.120 or that their views on a variety of things are just plain unpleasant.
00:13:46.160 Like, I wouldn't want my daughter dating that person kind of thing.
00:13:49.820 But that's irrelevant to the political struggle.
00:13:52.920 That's – you know, the social things are certainly irrelevant to political struggle.
00:13:55.720 And unless those beliefs are debilitating to the political struggle – and by debilitating,
00:14:02.260 I mean not because the left attempts to make us focus on those things,
00:14:06.000 but they're actually debilitating, they prevent these people from being useful –
00:14:10.520 then those people are, in a sense, enemies on the right.
00:14:14.100 But that's something that should be handled strictly without giving aid and comfort to the left,
00:14:20.800 either by ignoring these type of people or by privately correcting or discussing things with them
00:14:27.780 and trying to come to an understanding about whether you can, in fact, work together for the greater good.
00:14:34.420 And as I also said in the piece, it's also true that once the left is defeated,
00:14:39.700 in the nature of all political conflicts, new conflicts within the new ruling class will arise.
00:14:46.260 And so in a sense, you'll have fresh enemies.
00:14:49.220 I mean, that's – recognizing that isn't some kind of cynicism.
00:14:53.100 It's simply a realistic understanding that in any polity, you can only have, in a ruling class,
00:15:02.120 a certain range of acceptable beliefs.
00:15:05.080 I just think, you know, it's more or less the Overton window.
00:15:08.220 I just think the Overton window that we need in the future should have like a 10% overlap
00:15:12.420 with the Overton window we have today.
00:15:14.540 But in the future, you know, there'll be other fights and other battles
00:15:17.820 and people who are currently friends in the context of the present will become enemies.
00:15:23.420 I mean, that's just the nature of things.
00:15:24.620 But there's really no way around that.
00:15:26.540 What I mean primarily is that right now the greater goal is defeating the left
00:15:31.380 and so focusing on problems within the right, especially in public fashion, is self-defeating.
00:15:36.060 Yeah, I think a lot of people seem to have this idea that the key is crafting like the perfect movement, right?
00:15:45.120 Like if you can just get everybody in the proper ideological alignment
00:15:49.160 and you can just produce a uniform, you know, level of outstanding moral behavior
00:15:56.920 and principle and approach and the best optics.
00:16:00.680 So like once you've crafted this thing to exactly what you want should it be
00:16:04.240 and only at that moment where you have this morally upstanding and sterling movement
00:16:10.520 that then can you actually go forward and change things.
00:16:15.740 And in the meantime, it seems like all the attacks that are absolutely demanded to craft this perfect movement
00:16:22.480 feed the energy of the left, fall into the frame of the left, reinforce the morality of the left.
00:16:29.140 And I think that's really bad because like you said, there are lots of people on the right who I disagree with.
00:16:36.840 Lots of people on the right who go after me and I just don't ignore them.
00:16:41.280 I just don't give them the time of day because there's just way more important things to do.
00:16:46.780 We have enemies that are far more dangerous to the, like you said, the flourishing of our civilization
00:16:53.020 and for just the, you know, the health and prosperity of the people in our own lives and the community around us.
00:16:59.620 And I just don't have time to go around and, you know, spar and hector each one of these people
00:17:05.400 into accepting my exact worldview before I address the people who like actively wish that, you know,
00:17:12.160 everyone around me was like just living a horrible life.
00:17:15.900 So I think it's a question of priorities and understanding that when you go after people on the right,
00:17:21.740 on the left's principles, you're reinforcing the left's principles.
00:17:24.760 You're not purifying, you know, your own movement.
00:17:28.080 Oh, I think that's exactly right.
00:17:29.280 And by the way, I think I've fixed the audio distortion.
00:17:31.660 So let me know if it returns and I'll mute again when you're talking.
00:17:37.040 But this is in a sense, human nature.
00:17:39.500 I mean, it's easy for people to get into internecine fights because it seems it's an easier target.
00:17:47.020 It's easier way to feel important.
00:17:48.480 It's easier way to get prominence within a movement.
00:17:51.400 Because, you know, like my joke earlier, which wasn't a joke about Rod and his being perceived by the left
00:17:57.060 as the meme of that screaming woman being ineffective, but being, you know, an object of fun. 0.99
00:18:04.080 You know, it's easier to adopt that within a movement.
00:18:07.760 I mean, that woman probably is lionized within the movement that she participates in, 0.89
00:18:11.860 even though she's ineffective as a political tool. 1.00
00:18:14.620 And what you want to be is effective as a political tool.
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00:18:33.840 Yeah, I think it's very difficult for people to understand that as a priority to then, you know,
00:18:42.120 like I said, I think it's very difficult for people to understand what victory looks like.
00:18:45.780 But I don't want to skip to the end there for that yet, because we'll talk about this in a little bit.
00:18:50.040 So the next criticism that Miller has that I think a lot of people would, you know, would maybe agree with or find useful is your characterization of the Enlightenment.
00:19:02.300 This is obviously something I've been critical of, so my audience probably wouldn't be shocked to hear someone criticize the Enlightenment.
00:19:09.900 But for a lot of people, especially mainstream conservatives, this sounds kind of insane.
00:19:14.180 And Miller kind of brings up that the Enlightenment, he says your definition is too narrow.
00:19:19.800 It's not noticing a lot of the other things, the freedoms and rights and positive civic consequences of the Enlightenment.
00:19:28.700 You're ignoring all of those things.
00:19:30.680 Could you go a little more into why you've narrowed the Enlightenment down to kind of those two factors and why the rest doesn't really apply in your mind?
00:19:37.820 Sure, because all the good things that people claim for the Enlightenment, or that is, propagandists for the Enlightenment have claimed since the beginning in an attempt to add a desirable sheen to their nasty product, are things that have nothing to do with the Enlightenment.
00:19:54.300 So the rule of law, for example, people sometimes, you know, ludicrously talk about as being part of the Enlightenment when that's something that was part of the West for a thousand years, two thousand years, whatever.
00:20:06.200 Yeah, nobody tell the Romans, right?
00:20:08.480 Right, exactly.
00:20:09.220 I mean, you know, it is the case that the Oriental despot is a stereotype in Western thought for good reason. 1.00
00:20:15.720 Like essentially all stereotypes, 80 or 90 percent of it is true.
00:20:18.860 That is, outside of the West, the rule of law has not been a thing, generally speaking.
00:20:22.920 But inside the West, it has been a thing.
00:20:25.180 And of course, occasionally honored in the breach.
00:20:28.680 But the fact is that things like the rule of law, natural rights, scientific accomplishments, the scientific revolution, none of those things have anything to do with the Enlightenment.
00:20:39.160 I mean, you can get into hyper-technical sub-arguments about whether Francis Bacon's desire to improve man's estate is a precursor to the Enlightenment, and whether we should focus less on scientific progress and more on spiritual progress or something like that.
00:20:54.580 But the fact is that the propagandists for the Enlightenment, you know, people like Rousseau, basically, you know, French philosophes who, of course, ultimately led to the first instantiation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, there's instantiation in the real world.
00:21:09.400 We're all focused on primarily emancipation and egalitarianism.
00:21:14.080 They wanted their definitions might have been slightly different than people might say emancipation today, but they basically wanted to free people of what they thought of as irrational bonds, which in reality are merely recognitions of reality.
00:21:27.380 And so there may be some variations on that, but fundamentally, the things that people claim are part of the Enlightenment are simply not part of the Enlightenment, because they all preceded the Enlightenment, and in a few cases probably came along in parallel.
00:21:42.560 And you can also argue about, like, the Scottish Enlightenment, whether that's really part of the Enlightenment, or that some of the things that political reforms that came along with that might or might not have been desirable.
00:21:52.340 But those things aren't focused on the core of Enlightenment principles, which, again, are emancipation and egalitarianism.
00:21:59.380 And I actually, it's funny, like in 2018, I did a review, you know, on my site, my primary thing is book reviews, or rather, my thoughts masquerading as reviews of other people's books.
00:22:09.760 And I did Steven Pinker's Enlightenment now, where I castigated Pinker at great length for exactly this error, that is telling us, lying to us, that the Enlightenment is the thing that produced all the good things of the modern world, when in fact, what it's done is produced all the bad things of the modern world.
00:22:30.400 Well, it's a wig history with a genesis right around the Enlightenment, right? 1.00
00:22:37.220 Like, you've just, you've got, you know, there was this dark time, and then suddenly rationalism, or rationality was birthed into the world, and it fundamentally altered the, you know, the understanding of humanity and the way it could act.
00:22:51.840 And, you know, moving forward, you know, that was always, you know, going to create a never-ending, you know, progress that now has caught up with the people who worshipped it, and now they're complaining about kind of the end state of that progress.
00:23:07.840 But they don't seem, seem to kind of understand that that was the natural conclusion, the inevitable conclusion of kind of their ideology.
00:23:16.840 I guess, actually, it might be interesting for a second.
00:23:19.400 I've made this argument a few times, but sometimes it's nice to hear someone else make it a different way, and I think you'd probably be pretty good at it.
00:23:25.840 What is the problem with emancipation?
00:23:28.840 What's the problem with a consent-based morality?
00:23:31.320 What's the problem with freedom for everyone?
00:23:34.020 Well, because it leads to societal atomization, and, well, there's two problems.
00:23:39.340 One is that it leads to societal atomization, and a society that is atomized is never going to be a successful society.
00:23:47.120 You can't have a society that operates successfully without having people enmeshed in a web of unchosen bonds.
00:23:57.440 And the second reason is that an emancipatory society denies reality.
00:24:02.440 So, for example, when you pretend that there is no unbreakable bond between mother, father, and child, but instead that's something that has to be chosen, or you can have two fathers and a child, this is just a fantasy, a denial of reality, a form of insanity.
00:24:19.040 And so, because any form of forced emancipation ends in that latter, that is a complete denial of reality, emancipation is bad.
00:24:29.380 And, of course, a stock rejoinder is, well, didn't we emancipate the slaves kind of thing?
00:24:35.360 I mean, there are forms of unjust behavior that need to be remedied by justice, but that has nothing to do with emancipation in the sense that the Enlightenment used it.
00:24:46.140 I mean, you don't want to be Rousseau, who had something like five children that he put in an orphanage, and most of them died, or something like that, because he didn't want the unchosen bonds of having to relate to their mothers and those children.
00:24:59.940 And that's just a kind of, you know, particularly nasty example of the core thought of the Enlightenment, which is, don't burden me with these unpleasant, unchosen bonds.
00:25:09.860 You know, and these things are unpleasant.
00:25:12.220 I mean, the fact is that emancipation is pleasant and sweet if you're a person who has resources and power.
00:25:18.840 And so that's why it's attractive.
00:25:20.780 And Americans, of course, have been propagandized into this for centuries, practically, and the West in general.
00:25:28.180 But Americans in particular, that your life is going to be better if you are not tied down.
00:25:35.020 And in some ways, that's true.
00:25:36.640 I mean, some people's lives are better.
00:25:38.040 They are more enjoyable when they're not tied down.
00:25:40.040 I mean, that's just kind of obvious.
00:25:42.460 But it's also true that that's corrosive for a society.
00:25:46.500 And we see the fruits of that today as the West kind of hurdles toward the brick wall at the end with things like no children.
00:25:54.340 When no one has any children, you don't have a society for much longer.
00:25:56.940 The end.
00:25:57.880 I mean, there's many other problems with emancipation and the theories and the political philosophy of the Enlightenment.
00:26:03.620 But in some ways, the most glaring one is the fact that our society is literally killing itself.
00:26:09.700 You know, you don't need much more proof than that, that a political philosophy is a dead end.
00:26:13.780 Yeah, you know, Christopher Lash does a great job of talking about this in Revolt of the Elites, about how the elites have chosen an ideology for that might work purely for themselves advantageously and applied it kind of to the larger world.
00:26:32.520 So, you know, they're not going to suffer the consequences.
00:26:34.640 They have the material resources, the intellectual firepower, the, you know, the different, the standing in the hierarchy to not suffer significant backlash, at least for some amount of time from adopting this ideology.
00:26:47.700 But by spreading it to the masses, they've kind of doomed them because the vast majority of people can't live in this way.
00:26:53.720 And by promising everyone that you could by simply kind of dissolving, you know, societal structure with this universal asset of consent, consent based morality, you you've ensured kind of the destitution of a large portion of people.
00:27:08.060 It's really intoxicating for people to believe that every that really, you know, upper class living is just a function of, you know, material wealth.
00:27:19.260 And eventually everyone will be able to have that and be able to utilize it.
00:27:23.400 But the truth is, that's not the only thing that makes that happen.
00:27:26.080 It's not the only thing that allows these people to enjoy some of the lifestyles that they do.
00:27:30.140 And pretending that everyone is just going to create, you know, have this, you know, luxury automated space communism is going to and then be completely freed of all these bonds and be able to choose everything they want and have no repercussions was just a great way to ensure misery for the vast majority of people.
00:27:46.100 Yeah, I mean, the vast majority of people need and want guardrails and the reductio ad absorbum, of course, of this idea is the is the Marxist idea that if we emancipate everyone from various bonds, then everyone will be an Aristotle or Mozart and we'll all work one hour a day.
00:28:07.420 And people will, in all their free time, which they will will be totally unconstrained, they will develop superhuman talent.
00:28:14.460 I mean, that's just not the reality.
00:28:15.680 The reality is that most people are just average people who need to have limitations placed upon them.
00:28:21.920 I mean, not most people.
00:28:23.440 Everybody needs to have limitations placed upon him.
00:28:25.800 It is true that some of the people who are most notable in history are the people who rejected that and proceeded to make their own reality, say Napoleon.
00:28:33.740 But Napoleon, you know, we can't all be Napoleon and nor should we want to be Napoleon.
00:28:40.840 It's just an interesting historical artifact.
00:28:43.300 Yeah, you have to be 5'7", which is a real deal breaker.
00:28:47.180 It is.
00:28:47.900 I read that Ernst Jünger was also 5'7".
00:28:51.220 So, you know, there you go.
00:28:53.700 Yeah, Manlet theory of history.
00:28:55.080 You have to conquer a continent to overcome your gap between 5'7 and 6'0". 0.94
00:29:01.000 It's a tragic thing, but consistent.
00:29:04.940 Yeah.
00:29:05.240 So, if we need these boundaries and these guardrails, right?
00:29:10.880 If it's so important to impose these, then why shouldn't we just show everyone how important they are by constantly applying them to anyone who steps out of bounds on the right?
00:29:23.280 Like, if that's good for society in general, why isn't that a good specific political tactic in this instance?
00:29:31.100 Because the kinds of boundaries, you know, unchosen bonds I'm talking about are not fundamentally political ones or political beliefs.
00:29:38.220 There are things like marriage and children and normal sexual behavior and don't rip people off.
00:29:47.460 Be a high-trust society.
00:29:49.960 And ultimately, these things are enforced not by law, though you can, in fact, legislate morality.
00:29:55.900 I mean, you can very effectively legislate morality, but you can't only legislate morality.
00:30:00.340 Things have to be enforced from within the society by stigma.
00:30:03.700 But when we're talking about enemies on the right or political enemies more broadly, those things are not unchosen bonds or emancipation in the same sense that we're talking about.
00:30:15.700 These things are tactical, in essence.
00:30:17.740 And, yeah, they're related in some ways kind of to political philosophy.
00:30:23.100 Both these things might be subsumed within the broad heading of political philosophy.
00:30:26.440 But the people on the right that I disagree with, whether on specific political beliefs or on tactics, it's not an emancipatory thing.
00:30:37.720 And I also think that one should have a very broad opinion of the types of things that you're willing to tolerate on the right.
00:30:46.740 But by tolerate, I mean just not get into arguments unnecessarily about.
00:30:52.780 And that kind of also cuts against the idea that this has any relationship to emancipation on a societal level, which is a core political philosophy of the Enlightenment.
00:31:04.580 Now, some people might say, but no enemies to the right, a lot of you guys spend plenty of time attacking mainstream conservatism, attacking what many people call, you know, Con Inc., going after, you know, I don't know, the Sean Hannity's of the world.
00:31:20.180 Isn't that a betrayal of your very principle?
00:31:23.100 Yeah, I mean, that is a problem.
00:31:24.420 The the the my contratemps with with Dreher is arguably that because obviously Dreher is on the right.
00:31:32.500 I mean, he's not on the left.
00:31:33.900 I mean, so he must be on the right.
00:31:35.560 And I feel a little bit bad.
00:31:37.540 In fact, my mother, who is a big Dreher fan, criticized me for this.
00:31:42.300 And my response was was, well, she's 85 and she reads all my stuff.
00:31:46.680 So, you know, there you go.
00:31:48.280 But she said you criticize me for this.
00:31:50.200 And I said, well, the principle is that wolves in sheep's clothing should be called out for being wolves.
00:31:56.040 And so I think the the somewhat contradictory tactical principle there is that these people are holding back the right.
00:32:05.600 So they're not enemies in the sense that they're that they're friends of the left.
00:32:10.620 I mean, you know, Rod Dreher is never going to be friends with the left, not because he doesn't want to be.
00:32:15.340 He's very happy to suck up to people who are kind of in the moderate left, but they would never accept him.
00:32:22.080 And but these people and Con Inc and Sean Hannity or what have you.
00:32:26.400 I don't really watch any TV, so I barely know who Sean Hannity is.
00:32:29.560 But they are tactical enemies in the sense that they prevent us from achieving our overall goal, which is winning against the left.
00:32:44.180 And so it's an unfortunate necessity that such obstacles have to be cleared out of the way.
00:32:50.100 That's just a necessary part of political life.
00:32:53.600 I mean, I wish it were differently that everything could be handled sub rosa, quietly in an efficient way.
00:32:59.640 But that's just not the way humans interact with each other.
00:33:02.640 So it has to be done.
00:33:03.940 But I think it needs to be, in every instance, carefully scrutinized as to whether it's necessary and whether you're doing it for useful purposes or for some other purpose, like self-aggrandizement or because attacking the left is difficult and dangerous and attacking someone else on the right isn't difficult and dangerous.
00:33:22.720 And it gives you that sweet dopamine hit when, you know, the Twitter likes go up.
00:33:27.020 You know, I mean, you have to consider why you're doing it.
00:33:31.080 But sometimes it just has to be done.
00:33:32.920 Yeah, I think that's right.
00:33:34.840 And I think there's an important delineation there.
00:33:39.360 You know, there are some people, you know, Mitch McConnell, who are just like malicious, right?
00:33:44.640 Like I think there's I think they deserve, you know, your ire.
00:33:49.840 I think they are completely controlled opposition.
00:33:52.220 They're worse.
00:33:52.720 You know, they're they're actively taking steps to to harm the right.
00:33:56.940 And I don't think that they qualify as the right because their their job is to to control it, not to actually lead it.
00:34:05.100 They have no actual intention of bettering the lives of the people who they're supposed to be representing or leading.
00:34:11.200 And so I don't feel bad going after those kind of people at all.
00:34:14.680 There are other people who like you're talking about, maybe with Rod, you know, who have good intentions and in many ways could be aligned.
00:34:25.980 But there's a tactical issue, right?
00:34:28.720 Like you're talking about that that is a serious problem that continuously holds up the right.
00:34:32.500 And if you just let it sit there, then it's then it's a serious problem.
00:34:36.940 And in those cases, it's better if possible to come alongside and make it a teachable thing rather, you know, even if it's public rather than maybe a direct attack on intentions, which which I think I don't think you made any attack on intentions there.
00:34:53.520 But I think that's really important for people, because the more I run into these people, the more I interact with a lot of these people, the more I am surprised how many I think genuinely just didn't don't understand the problem.
00:35:07.180 But like, it's very easy, I think, maybe from kind of our corner of the Internet, that's been a little more on the on the edge of kind of the theory stuff and what's going on to say, oh, every everyone like this is just completely controlled opposition.
00:35:21.220 They're they're disingenuous. They're just grifting, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:25.500 And, you know, fair. There are there are people who do that.
00:35:28.200 I'm not saying there aren't, but I'm just saying you'd be surprised at how often in those interactions people just genuinely didn't understand a misstep they were making and how a correction from someone who has the right ant smell, who is on side, is actually very useful and is actually taken on board for those people when they feel like it's coming from the right place.
00:35:51.220 Well, I think that's absolutely right. And I think that as the right gains power, which, of course, I mean, this is probably beyond the scope of our conversation today, but I maintain that that is is likely to happen in the near future.
00:36:02.440 These kind of conversations become more productive. They build on themselves.
00:36:07.140 I wouldn't quite go so far as to say you'd see some kind of preference cascade, but I think you would see more productive unity on the right than you tend to see now.
00:36:16.840 I mean, this is part of the problem of being a fractured and largely not defeated, but relatively powerless group that you tend to have arguments among each among yourselves.
00:36:29.580 I mean, famously, Eastern, I'm half Hungarian, and my grandfather was was heavily involved with the Hungarian emigre community.
00:36:39.540 That is emigre meaning post people who left after the communists took over in 1945.
00:36:45.060 And and, you know, the joke used to be that emigre arguments were so vicious because the stakes were so low, you know. 0.65
00:36:53.260 And so, I mean, my grandfather didn't. He was a he was a very wise man and indulged in these kind of things.
00:36:58.960 But a lot of people did. And so I think there was a problem like that on the right.
00:37:02.740 I think weirdly or paradoxically, having more power encourages growing up behavior.
00:37:08.500 So let's hope it's true. Yeah.
00:37:10.320 More to lose means you actually have to make social negotiations in a way that those with just nothing to lose don't.
00:37:17.420 There's only purity spiraling in some of those situations.
00:37:22.460 All right. So I think we understand no enemies to the right at this point.
00:37:26.620 We get the idea of this. So let's talk a little bit about victory.
00:37:32.000 Now, obviously, we can't you know, we're not staring into a crystal ball here.
00:37:35.900 We're not going to completely predict the future.
00:37:38.200 But I wanted to talk a little bit about the aspects of victory, the things that people need to understand,
00:37:43.480 because when I talk to a lot of these people who, you know, very principled, conservative, you know, conic guy,
00:37:49.900 they seem to have some idea that like what victory looks like is eventually progressives just kind of reach across the aisle,
00:37:56.900 shake their hand, hand them the keys to the global American empire.
00:38:02.000 Due to the strength of their arguments, as Lee Greenwood kind of, you know, swells in the background.
00:38:08.840 And I'm just thinking what what you know, what does that, you know, what does victory look like to you?
00:38:15.480 Like, what does that do? Do you think the marketplace of ideas just hands you a plaque and then you own it?
00:38:21.100 So what should, you know, the right expect with victory?
00:38:25.940 What what does what do actual victories look like compared to fake victories?
00:38:31.280 Yeah. I mean, I think there's two elements of of victory.
00:38:34.460 The the broader again, I hate to get all theory cell, as they say, political philosophy question.
00:38:43.380 Then, of course, the practical question of how to how to actually administer a victory and what to do thereafter.
00:38:48.840 But the fundamental problem that the right faces is that the Enlightenment vision is extremely seductive
00:38:55.380 and has the benefit of many years, centuries of propaganda and more recently, an aggressive set of propaganda.
00:39:04.320 So Ross Douthat, who, you know, I'm of mixed mind about Douthat.
00:39:07.940 He's somewhat on that con ink camp, but he also frequently in the past had a lot to say.
00:39:14.120 He was the one who first pointed out that what the left cells and I use this without attribution.
00:39:19.120 Sorry, Ross, in my I am 1776 piece, which is that what the left cells is what the serpent sold to Adam and Eve,
00:39:27.760 that ye shall be as gods. And this is a very seductive thing to fight against.
00:39:32.440 You know, when you your response is I can offer you reality and unchosen bonds and working together to human flourishing.
00:39:39.960 That sounds pretty lame. You know, gods working hard.
00:39:44.240 Who's not going to pick the gods part?
00:39:45.820 So so fundamentally, the task is to discredit the left, because let's say the marketplace of ideas did hand us a plaque
00:39:53.800 and the keys to Congress. And let's say we actually had, you know, we had everyone in the Senate and everyone in the House
00:40:00.020 and all the leadership was somewhere to the right of Blake Masters.
00:40:03.580 I mean, that really might be productive in the short term in the sense of passing legislation
00:40:08.600 and doing things within the government that were just awesome.
00:40:12.780 But it's also true that that's likely to be a short term thing, short meaning in decades or maybe even centuries,
00:40:21.360 simply because the vision of the left is eternally seductive.
00:40:24.940 So several generations later, people will say, well, how about emancipation?
00:40:29.000 Emancipation sounds great. And, you know, Blake Masters, the 13th, you know, the 13th of his name,
00:40:34.600 is just isn't giving us that sweet emancipation that I read in this 18th century book is so sweet.
00:40:41.560 And so let's have some more emancipation. I mean, the cycle and sub cycles within the cycle has gone on for centuries.
00:40:48.400 So until this entire political philosophy, this way of viewing mankind is regarded, again, as I said in my piece,
00:40:56.100 as akin to the cult of Mithras, something from the distant past that didn't work out and no one really cares about except archaeologists
00:41:03.820 and people who play a lot of trivial pursuit. Until that happens, the left will always be a threat to human flourishing.
00:41:11.140 So you have to completely discredit the left. This isn't a call to, like, you know, get rid of everyone who has these beliefs,
00:41:18.820 because these beliefs will always return. People have to, the beliefs have to discredit themselves.
00:41:25.940 And it's not a question of writing hot opinion pieces that discredit them. It's a question of reality reimposing itself.
00:41:33.260 So what this looks like isn't really clear, but it almost certainly means some kind of societal crack up where people are like,
00:41:39.860 yeah, this just didn't work out. And hopefully that would discredit the left forever.
00:41:43.880 I don't have much, you know, I don't know how much hope I have for that, certainly in my lifetime.
00:41:49.460 But without it, the struggle just will go on forever. In a sense, the struggle always does go on forever,
00:41:55.500 because the serpent and Adam and Eve were long ago. But we shouldn't forget that this set of beliefs as a political philosophy
00:42:03.260 was only, as I said, first instantiated in 1789. Before that, no one except a few, like,
00:42:10.800 pinheaded losers thought this had any relevance to anything. And we can return not to that,
00:42:18.620 I am a violent opponent of nostalgia, but we can move forward, I guess is a better term,
00:42:24.020 to a society that has the many, not all, many of the same opinions as people did in 1600 with respect
00:42:32.640 to political philosophy. And forgets that the Enlightenment ever existed, because once it didn't
00:42:38.320 exist, and it's entirely feasible that it could not exist again in the future. The reason that people
00:42:46.140 push Whig history, as you referred to earlier, the idea that progress has a leftward arrow, and history
00:42:52.300 has a leftward arrow, is simply because the left wants people to believe that. But it's simply not true.
00:42:58.120 You just have to break the spell. So that, as a political philosophy thing, that's the first step.
00:43:05.200 How to do that, how to rule thereafter, is a somewhat different question. And how would victory
00:43:12.400 it would look like in that case, or what kind of tactical moves might be made if you had a temporary
00:43:19.280 political victory on the path to this complete discrediting? That's, I mean, I have ideas on that
00:43:24.600 as well, and they're fairly straightforward. They are actually, I'm actually writing a piece on the,
00:43:30.360 not published yet, on the denazification after World War II, and it has a lot of analogs to that.
00:43:36.440 But that's a really, well, important, practically, a secondary concern to discrediting the leftist
00:43:43.140 project entirely.
00:43:44.880 Yeah, I like that you pointed out that this is kind of something that's eternal. It is a part of the human
00:43:50.160 condition, like you said, from from the very beginning. That's why it's inculcated kind of
00:43:54.460 into religion and tradition. But it's something that you can never really escape, because it's
00:44:00.960 societal entropy, right? Like every, every society eventually reaches some point where it's built and
00:44:08.240 built up enough scaffolding, you know, where it feels like it can hold things up, no matter what,
00:44:15.720 it's not subject to the same laws, the same inevitabilities of kind of human existence.
00:44:21.920 And so they start to believe, as you said, you know, we can be as gods, which is why I think that
00:44:26.820 the, that's why I think that the Tower of Babel is such a recurring theme, right? I just see it so
00:44:32.280 often in everything that I read or the things that I study. You look at, you know, the, the way that,
00:44:39.480 you know, Spangler talks about how societies eventually calcify their institutions, you know,
00:44:45.760 are kind of holding back the natural order. And eventually people lose their connection to kind
00:44:51.780 of the consequences of forgetting kind of what comes next in the cycle. And so they kind of lose
00:45:00.920 themselves in their ability to play with forms and deny reality. And so what we're really looking at
00:45:07.000 now is not something completely unique, but is instead simply maybe the, the greatest manifestation
00:45:14.440 of this, of this continuous part of the cycle. It's, it's the most intense one where people have
00:45:20.880 been able to deny reality so thoroughly for an extended amount of time and could truly believe
00:45:27.940 that the consequences of ignoring natural hierarchy will never come due. It seems like that because we
00:45:34.740 have invested so much into the infrastructure of our society to kind of invert those hierarchies and
00:45:41.700 delay those consequences. And what you need is not so much like total, you know, one quick tactical
00:45:49.520 victory or control of, of all of the apparatus of government so much as it is to simply, like you
00:45:56.660 said, discredit the left's myth that they can just keep this trick up forever, that they can always
00:46:02.340 deny the inevitable consequences of denying nature and denying a hierarchy and thinking that, you know,
00:46:09.060 they'll just always be able to offer this to their subjects who, you know, eventually once this thing
00:46:14.840 falls apart, we'll suddenly and very quickly understand that that's not ever actually the case.
00:46:20.500 Yeah. I think all that's again, precisely right. I think the interesting wrinkle for us,
00:46:25.940 even though this is in a sense, an eternal recurrence, certain aspects, though probably
00:46:32.820 relatively small ones, even if the enlightenment project occur at the end of all civilizations,
00:46:37.820 as you pointed out, but I think what makes it different for us or potentially different for us
00:46:41.840 is technology. And so I'm a big techno optimist or rather a techno optimist. I frequently say techno
00:46:48.640 optimist, but I'm a guarded techno optimist. But leaving that part aside, the technology both allows
00:46:57.060 the extension of the enlightenment project through propaganda and a variety of other technological
00:47:03.120 controls, as well as doing things with technology, whether that's transhumanism or other kinds of
00:47:08.740 things. I mean, I don't believe that a lot of these things like true transhumanism are possible or 0.99
00:47:14.780 will happen. But nonetheless, technology allows the left to continue its project. But it also allows
00:47:20.840 the society to change very rapidly in a way that simply wasn't possible in the past. That is,
00:47:28.000 in the past, if you're like an average person, an average society, you probably barely noticed when
00:47:34.220 most things happen unless they happen in your specific locality, because that was the nature of
00:47:38.280 the ancient world or even of the world up until probably some point in the late Renaissance or
00:47:45.840 early modern period. And so to me, one of the most fascinating things, the most imponderable things is
00:47:50.840 what will the impact of technology be upon this contest? I think that most likely it's going to be
00:47:59.000 benefiting the right because I think speed of communication is useful. And I think that the left
00:48:04.660 deliberately hobbles itself for ideological reasons in using technology competently. I mean, you see this,
00:48:13.720 for example, in Elon Musk's success with space engineering and the left's, that is the government's
00:48:23.300 total inability to launch rockets, or for that matter, Jeff Bezos's inability to launch rockets, which is
00:48:28.300 probably due at some level to philosophical denial of reality in the case of the left by hiring not the
00:48:39.300 best people for ideological reasons. And you write that large across a wide range of technology, that
00:48:47.480 means the right is likely to be able to use technology more competently. But that's just a
00:48:51.780 theory. I mean, I have no, there's no historical analog for this, so who knows? I mean, I just find it
00:48:55.920 endlessly fascinating, but it's very hard to make any predictions that aren't just guesses.
00:49:01.540 Well, I want to pick your brain about my technological doomerism here in just a minute. 0.98
00:49:07.640 But as we get ready to transition there, guys, we're going to talk about our last subject and then
00:49:14.080 get to the super chats. We've got some stacking up right now. So if you will have any questions for
00:49:19.200 myself or Charles, you can go ahead and put those in now. But one thing I wanted to pick your brain
00:49:26.640 about before we do that is, I think there is a technological problem for the right. And it might
00:49:34.520 just be my inability, like I don't have enough technological imagination in this. I'm more than
00:49:41.080 willing to admit that's probably the case. But one problem I see and something that I think that the
00:49:46.200 right has to overcome is that DeJuvenal talks about power wants to centralize. It always wants to
00:49:55.820 centralize. And one of the main ways that power centralizes is by kind of demolishing the authorities
00:50:04.100 of the past in order to offer those who are outside, the disenfranchised, the periphery,
00:50:13.200 to offer them rights or privileges or other things that they otherwise would not have had under a more
00:50:20.260 natural order. And one of the problems I think we really have is that the technology seems to
00:50:26.940 create this almost infinitely, right? Because technology seems to facilitate the demolition of
00:50:35.780 these boundaries, facilitate all these competing social spheres that used to keep governments from
00:50:42.300 completely centralizing like church or loyalty to your area, your tribe, your family, all these
00:50:50.100 different things. It's able to kind of demolish these things and provide substitutes digitally,
00:50:56.480 even if they're weak substitutes, as I'm sure both of us would probably argue. They do feel like
00:51:02.360 emancipation to the average person. And then that authority is ceded to the government. And they're able
00:51:07.280 to, again, centralize more and more powers. They can provide this theoretical liberty to the people.
00:51:13.940 I wonder if technology can ever solve that problem or if technology is always going to have this
00:51:23.360 aspect of completely liquefying kind of those civilizational boundaries that kind of kept
00:51:28.860 leftism or societal entropy kind of however you want to define this thing at bay.
00:51:34.240 It's a great question. Much of what you describe, of course, is simply human nature. I mean,
00:51:39.980 recognizable law before the Enlightenment in Greek city states, for example. But the point about
00:51:45.820 technology accelerating this is a good one. I think that the only, just off the cuff, I'll probably
00:51:52.800 have to think about this some more. Maybe I'll lie awake at night thinking about it tonight. But I think the
00:51:58.300 answer is that you have to have superseding bonds or superseding opportunities or both. So superseding
00:52:06.560 bonds, I mean, you can imagine a, and I think it's probably necessary for, to have a reborn or renewed or,
00:52:14.920 you know, follow on society in the West, a religious revival. You know, I prefer Christianity. I think on our
00:52:22.340 last stream, I said, I said, but I was misheard because of the way I poorly spoke that I did not
00:52:31.160 believe in Christianity, but I am very, very, very Christian. And I think that's the, a good binding
00:52:37.040 religion, but there might be something else. Certainly. And I think that if you have a binding
00:52:41.960 component, and it's not also why I'm big on space exploration, for example, I think that as a binding
00:52:47.540 societal thing that can help bridge the gaps that naturally arise inside of any society. But at the
00:52:54.460 same time, it's also true that you can't have a society that's overly heterogeneous and still hope
00:53:00.660 to achieve those things. Because if you have both heterogeneity and the technology enabling people
00:53:08.300 to politicians, leaders, to appeal to people's desire for emancipation and power and prestige,
00:53:14.680 that's always going to end poorly. I mean, it always ends poorly because that's just the cycle
00:53:18.720 of civilizations, but you don't want it to end poorly in 25 years because, you know,
00:53:23.000 that doesn't work out real well. So I think that the, you have to provide a binding goal
00:53:28.700 or a binding opportunity. And then again, we come back there to space and maybe this is kind of,
00:53:35.400 you know, Pollyanna-ish of me, but I actually think that whether that's manned space exploration
00:53:40.760 or something else, I think the possibilities of space exploration and space achievement
00:53:46.440 have kind of gotten a bad name or bad odor on the right as some kind of utopian leftist project
00:53:53.540 like Star Trek. And I don't think that that's true at all. So I can think you can imagine,
00:53:58.300 and maybe it's a reach, a society that has a binding ethos, religious, moral, whatever it may be,
00:54:05.700 as well as a binding set of goals that manages to overcome those centripetal forces that are
00:54:11.440 inherent in every human civilization that are, I agree, exacerbated by technology. And maybe
00:54:17.900 technology can be used to enhance the centralizing, I mean, centralizing in the good sense, I mean,
00:54:24.980 the strengthening forces that a society can have. Yeah. What that would look like precisely is hard
00:54:31.860 for me to say. And so I'm hesitating because it sounds kind of, even as I say it, it sounds
00:54:36.940 fantastical, but you know, I'm going with it. Yeah. A little more Imperium of Man, a little less
00:54:44.880 Starfleet Academy. Precisely. The solar Imperium. Here we come.
00:54:52.120 All right, guys. Well, I think we're going to go ahead and pivot over to our super chats here so we
00:54:58.200 don't run too long. But Charles, as we get ready to do that, can you tell people where to find all
00:55:02.560 your stuff? Yes. I write at theworthyhouse.com where I write some pieces that are just original
00:55:10.400 analysis pieces of various types. I also write, as I said earlier, a lot of book reviews that are not
00:55:17.700 really book reviews, but are my own thoughts masquerading as book reviews. So I also typically
00:55:22.000 talk about the books. I published one. I don't just talk about things like this. I published one,
00:55:27.220 for example, this morning on St. John Chrysostom's thoughts on wealth and poverty. So, you know,
00:55:33.640 not so much political, but a question of whether, how and why, and what are the details of Christian
00:55:39.040 almsgiving. So if you like into that, you can check stuff like that out as well, too.
00:55:44.080 Excellent. So we've got Sean Weiland here for 999. Thank you very much, sir. As a right-wing owner of an
00:55:51.080 exit planning firm helping people sell mid-market business tax-free, how can I meet other like-minded
00:56:00.200 people in merger and acquisitions to grow the rights economic base? Well, Sean, there's a lot
00:56:06.680 of people who are setting up different things. I don't think there's a lot of people, you know,
00:56:10.740 forming things around merger and acquisition, but maybe there should be. There's a lot of people
00:56:16.160 setting up kind of these basket weaving groups so you can meet people personally. But there's also,
00:56:22.820 I think, a lot of value, of course, in investing in community organizations where people might not
00:56:28.820 explicitly say, I have right-wing goals or whatever. But if you're putting yourself in a much more
00:56:34.800 religious, traditional community, you're far more likely to interact with people who are going to
00:56:40.040 have kind of those shared goals and values, even if they aren't explicitly having them. I also know
00:56:44.600 that places like New Foundings, I think, is putting together opportunities to connect people
00:56:53.420 with like-minded people for hiring and that kind of thing. So you can reach out to organizations like
00:57:00.180 that to make sure that you're surrounding yourself and you're staffing your business with people who
00:57:04.740 might share your goals and your values. And then there's also, I think, an aspect of, forgive me for
00:57:10.540 saying this, but be the change you want to see in the world. A lot of people are right now in a
00:57:15.900 scenario where they recognize this problem. They understand the importance of building these
00:57:20.720 communities, these connections, these networks. But everyone's first question is, well, where do I
00:57:26.160 plug in? Where's my tender for conservative business people? And the answer is, you've got
00:57:35.620 none of this stuff. This infrastructure doesn't exist. People have to go out and make it. And so
00:57:41.000 that's not an option for everyone. But if it is an option for you, even in small ways, taking that
00:57:47.980 action, you might be the first one doing it. There really is not that much of it out there yet.
00:57:53.440 And so you might have to kind of be the first mover on that stuff if you want to see it as a reality.
00:58:00.000 I totally second all of that. I affirmatively second the nod to New Founding. I think it's
00:58:09.720 newfounding.com, which is run by Matt Peterson and Nate Fisher. I know those guys. But they have a
00:58:16.480 group of businesses and a growing group of businesses in this area, job boards, things like
00:58:23.620 that. So I would strongly suggest talking to them. And I would actually email me. I used to be an M&A
00:58:29.600 lawyer. I know various people in this area doing various things. So I would encourage you just to
00:58:35.060 email me or DM me on Twitter, and we can talk further about it. But I think all those things
00:58:40.400 are true. I think there are already people, particularly New Founding, but also others
00:58:43.920 that are already setting the groundwork for this. And if we go back to what I said earlier,
00:58:49.060 as the right gains power, these things become more serious and grow very rapidly on themselves.
00:58:53.480 So I strongly encourage you to follow up with me.
00:58:56.140 Yeah, I know there are already kind of people, again, in our sphere who you wouldn't have,
00:59:03.520 you know, three or four years ago, just, you know, posting random stuff online. But now they've made
00:59:09.000 enough connections, and they're familiar enough with people who have a little more serious sway.
00:59:14.540 And they're putting together conferences that they're not always ones you see. They're not always
00:59:19.320 things that are publicly advertised. But there are people working on this stuff,
00:59:23.680 who you would probably know who are taking action. It's just not always out in public yet. So,
00:59:30.220 so, you know, definitely take action. But don't think that just because you don't see
00:59:34.720 something right now doesn't mean that other people aren't kind of working to make that a reality in
00:59:39.680 places that you might not be able to see at the moment, because they're still trying to get the
00:59:43.020 ball rolling and kind of crucial steps before anything, you know, kind of comes out publicly.
00:59:47.800 Let's see here. We've got NGS here. I'm not sure what that denomination is. But thank you very much
00:59:54.600 for your donation. How can we liberate ourselves from liberalism and its ideological grip on Western
01:00:01.820 societies, its worldview and its boundless individualism? Well, I think one thing is to
01:00:07.600 remember that we'll never be completely free from this, right? Like this is going to be part of us.
01:00:15.260 All of us grew up in this. All of us were part of this. All of this. This was the water we swam in
01:00:20.760 our whole lives. This is the way that we perceive the world. It's kind of the ingrained value. You
01:00:26.320 know, it's the worldview that that you understand kind of just as your basic way you look at the
01:00:31.720 world. And so completely escaping this is probably difficult. Whatever happens is going to be post
01:00:38.220 liberal, meaning it will it will take parts of liberalism. It will take things that were valuable
01:00:43.960 in some way and it will move forward. But it's also important to remember that I think as Charles
01:00:48.840 kind of was alluding to earlier, a lot of things that people attach to liberalism aren't, you know,
01:00:55.760 or the Enlightenment in general are not, you know, specific to that movement. The rule of law and,
01:01:02.160 you know, the not being completely controlled, every aspect of your life being controlled by a despot.
01:01:07.820 Those things aren't unique to the Enlightenment. They weren't just, you know, brought up in the
01:01:12.700 late 1600s, early 1700s. Those things preexisted those movements and moving beyond liberalism doesn't
01:01:19.920 mean abandoning every aspect of kind of those Western values that I think a lot of people want
01:01:26.160 to hold on to. It's just understanding the aspects that I think, again, Charles was talking about that
01:01:31.560 that really are completely isolating and destructive to the social fabric.
01:01:36.780 Yeah, I agree. And individualism and liberalism are fundamentally weakness. And as the meme goes,
01:01:43.000 you know, hard times make strong men. So in the cycle of things, when the strong men come back,
01:01:48.060 they'll by definition be opposed to individualism and liberalism.
01:01:52.840 Did you, did you see the, the video of the waitress catching the chair and throwing it aside on
01:01:59.660 Twitter? Did you get to catch that? I did. Yeah, that was my favorite, my favorite moment on the
01:02:08.820 internet of this week, the week, or hard times make strong Waffle House employees, I think.
01:02:15.580 I saw several memes already on that. Yeah, very good. They were good stuff.
01:02:19.780 Yeah. Honing a whole different generation of Waffle House employee prepared to deal with what
01:02:26.960 comes next. Macedonian accelerationist for 499. Thank you very much, sir. Charles, would you be
01:02:33.060 interested in debating or having a discussion with Curtis Yarvin sometime soon? Well, I see the
01:02:38.580 Macedonian accelerationist has, has stolen the Argiad star, which I have recently adopted as the symbol
01:02:45.000 of foundationalism, my own political philosophy. So now the Macedonians will be after me. Sorry about 0.91
01:02:49.360 that. But the, and I'm aware of the Macedonians, you know, trade market. So I'm in big trouble,
01:02:55.300 but you know, I'm a, I'm a fan of Yarvin or I'm a fan of Yarvin's earlier work. I'm less a fan of his,
01:03:01.060 his more recent work as we've discussed in the past. In fact, I have started a debate with, with
01:03:08.280 Curtis, a dialogue similar to the one that I did for IM 1776. And he disappeared because my power was
01:03:17.020 so great. So I'm all for debating Yarvin, but he has, he has, uh, I've been given multiple
01:03:22.520 opportunities to do so. Um, I would not debate him, uh, in a forum that is not tightly controlled
01:03:29.040 because he has the bad habit of, uh, talking over his interlocutors and an attempt to, uh, to kind of
01:03:35.380 dominate the conversation. So I think written debates are, are better because otherwise they would
01:03:39.820 devolve into a shouting match. And I'm quite good at shouting matches, but they're not productive
01:03:43.780 for the audience. So yeah, I'm all for talking to, to Yarvin. I've met Yarvin several times. You
01:03:48.020 know, we, we talk occasionally. I'm also the author of the best known hit piece on Yarvin
01:03:52.500 on the internet a couple of years ago. So maybe we should have a debate, but, uh, but so far it
01:03:59.700 does not come off. Yeah. I think he, I think he just had a child, so he might, he might be a little
01:04:06.120 busy here. I'm not saying he necessarily dropped out because he fears my power, but I prefer that
01:04:11.700 interpretation. No, that's, that's exactly what you should assert at all times. Yeah. You, you
01:04:16.180 having, having ripped your shirt off and bared your manly chest to Yarvin, he, you know, quickly
01:04:21.780 submitted and ran, uh, into the night. Yeah, you are taller. You're going to, you're going to mog him
01:04:27.220 with your height. Is that the plan? All right. So there you go, guys. Uh, let's see, uh, one more
01:04:35.080 here. Uh, I'm sorry, I'm going to butcher this name. Uh, but, uh, thank you so much for your
01:04:39.900 donation. Uh, museo scavola. Sorry. I'm, I'm particularly horrible with pronunciations, uh,
01:04:47.140 progressivism piggybacks on technology, uh, technology, uh, on technology advancement to
01:04:52.680 prove that we are better people than, uh, before technology has nothing to do with spiritual growth.
01:05:00.400 Uh, yeah, again, this is something that I think, uh, both Charles and I brought up multiple times in,
01:05:05.820 uh, this discussion, you know, the idea that, you know, the, just, just over time things have
01:05:12.900 gotten better in certain areas like technology and kind of, I think in many ways, technology has
01:05:19.220 stood in for kind of the miracle in progressive theology. It's, it's allowed these amazing things
01:05:26.340 where people live much longer and they have these interconnected lives and they're able to do
01:05:31.380 things that were unimaginable, basic functionally magic, you know, just 50, 60 years ago. And when
01:05:37.760 you're doing that kind of thing, it can be easy to pretend that those, uh, technological advancements
01:05:42.860 are a function of your ideology, um, the ruling ideology. But as those technological advancements
01:05:49.540 slow, as we see, you know, the quality of life of people kind of, uh, collapsing under certain
01:05:55.400 things and, and technology not really delivering on the promises that, uh, it's been given. I mean,
01:06:00.720 when I was a kid, I was told that we were going to be landing on the moon. Uh, we were going to take
01:06:05.960 aircrafts to the moon. Like we were just going to Atlanta, you know, that, that was a, just explained
01:06:10.240 to be a near future thing. And, you know, here we are, we can't even, you know, like, uh, like Charles
01:06:15.100 said, get, get some government, uh, funded rocket, uh, you know, into outer space on a regular basis. So
01:06:20.680 I think, um, I think kind of as those different, uh, technological promises fall short, the magic of,
01:06:28.880 of progressivism kind of also falls short. It starts failing, it starts becoming harder and
01:06:34.000 harder to believe in. And it really does devolve into something that's purely about power. And
01:06:38.800 whenever, uh, you, you kind of lose your political formula and you're sitting entirely on raw power,
01:06:44.840 it's always a dangerous place for a ruling elite. Yep. Completely agree. Nothing to add.
01:06:50.680 All right. All right, guys, I think that's everything. Let me double check to make sure
01:06:54.940 that we didn't miss any here. Uh, but while I'm double checking guys, if this is your first time
01:07:01.680 on the channel as always, please go ahead and subscribe. Uh, if you have not been listening
01:07:08.160 or you'd like to listen to this in purely audio form, you don't want to stare at the, uh, the picture
01:07:13.440 of, of Charles here, uh, then you can, uh, go ahead and subscribe over on, uh, Apple or
01:07:20.420 on, uh, Spotify or any of the main, uh, podcast platforms. If you do subscribe, please go ahead
01:07:26.460 and give a rating and a review, especially the reviews. They really help a lot bump everything
01:07:30.940 up in the old algorithm and everything. Uh, but that said, I think we got to everything.
01:07:35.640 So I want to say thank you to the audience for showing up. Uh, a lot of great questions
01:07:40.580 here. Very interesting, uh, and thought provoking. Uh, obviously there's also been a, a, a challenge
01:07:47.500 issue to Yarvin, uh, that very, very important. Everyone should, should take note, but, uh, Charles,
01:07:54.220 I really appreciate you coming on. Always a great discussion with you.
01:07:57.280 Yes, indeed. I appreciate being invited. Thank you.
01:07:59.260 All right, guys, we'll have a great one. And as always, we'll talk to you next time.