The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 05, 2026


The Prescience of ＂A Few Good Men＂ and Suicidal Empathy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_952)

Topics
suicidal empathy
Hosted by
Gad Saad
Mentioned
Michael Shermer Jack Nicholson Tom Cruise Weinberg Santiago Superman Maduro Batman Trump Film
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Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

146.07

Word count

927

Sentence count

56

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I discuss the tension between deontological and consequentialist ethics, and the dialogue in the film, "A Few Good Men," and how the dialogue between Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise in the movie is a perfect example of this tension.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad. One of the many benefits of art in general and films in particular is that they sometimes share with us really important issues that are, in many cases, universal issues that speak to our shared common human nature, that speak to ethical principles that humankind has been debating and discussing.
00:00:30.000 And grappling with since time immemorial. And so what I'd like to do today is talk about very briefly, I mean, something that I've talked about on many previous occasions, including in the parasitic mind, this tension between deontological versus consequentialist ethics, right?
00:00:46.720 Do you always adhere to some absolute moral standard or legal edict? Or should it always be looked, whatever action you engage in, through the calculus of consequentialism?
00:01:02.120 So, it is never okay to lie would be a deontological statement. It is okay to lie to spare someone's feelings would be a consequentialist statement.
00:01:10.180 And so, when Trump went ahead and extracted Maduro from Venezuela, many people were arguing that, no, there are, I mean, they didn't use the term deontological, but there are deontological principles that don't allow you to go into another country and take out a guy, no matter how execrable he might be.
00:01:34.160 Whereas others say, no, no, this is a case where, you know, there is a mechanism by which Trump is allowed to do this, and he's doing it, and the world will be better for it.
00:01:45.420 And of course, there are valuable insights to be gleaned from either positions, but what I'd like to do today, and I want to give a hat tip to my very good friend, Michael Shermer, I saw him posting the transcript to truly one of the most brilliant dialogue exchanges in a film, A Few Good Men, with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.
00:02:13.060 So, I'm going to play it here, and I trust that this is under the fair use clause, and that it doesn't affect the commercial viability of the film.
00:02:23.620 I'm taking a small snippet for educational and academic reasons.
00:02:30.180 First, watch it, and tell me how astoundingly relevant it is to the current realities that we're facing.
00:02:39.840 Back at you in a second.
00:02:40.740 Did you order the Code Ray?
00:02:42.520 You don't have to answer that question.
00:02:44.340 I'll answer the question.
00:02:46.500 You want answers?
00:02:47.580 I think I'm entitled to it.
00:02:48.620 You want answers!
00:02:49.640 I want the truth!
00:02:51.000 You can't handle the truth!
00:02:54.260 Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.
00:02:59.020 Who's going to do it?
00:03:00.100 You?
00:03:00.960 You, Lieutenant Weinberg?
00:03:03.420 I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
00:03:06.920 You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines.
00:03:10.660 You have that luxury.
00:03:12.180 You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives, and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
00:03:24.540 You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties.
00:03:29.020 You want me on that wall.
00:03:31.520 You need me on that wall.
00:03:34.540 We use words like honor, code, loyalty.
00:03:39.080 We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.
00:03:42.880 You use them as a punchline.
00:03:44.400 I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
00:03:55.980 I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way.
00:03:59.300 Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. 0.72
00:04:03.300 Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
00:04:08.600 Wow.
00:04:09.400 Was that something or what?
00:04:11.060 I mean, they don't make movies like this anymore.
00:04:13.000 It's now all, you know, Superman and Batman and, you know, AI-generated stuff.
00:04:21.400 Film is an art because of dialogue like the one that you just watched.
00:04:26.740 In any case, what you're watching, I mean, I won't get into all the weeds of the story behind A Few Good Men if you haven't seen it,
00:04:34.960 but you have here a high-ranking officer that's saying, look, sometimes you have to do things
00:04:40.360 that while they might be unappealing to your progressive lisp sensibilities, you have to do them because the outcome is that the world will be a better place for it.
00:04:52.560 So, for example, when the Democrats say, oh, but you didn't go through the 73 rules before you blew up, you know, the poor tourists,
00:05:03.040 Venezuelan tourists who were on a speedboat going from a well-known drug cartel place to deliver drugs to the U.S.
00:05:13.300 because there's a mechanism and it's not fair and it's not right for you to just blow them up.
00:05:18.040 That would be an example that is contrary to what the colonel was saying in that clip.
00:05:23.240 When you say that you have to engage in a series of 17 steps before you blow up some terrorists that are going across some desert
00:05:36.120 because otherwise it would not follow the proper protocol,
00:05:41.240 again, it's probably falling into the traps of suicidal empathy.
00:05:46.700 Of course, we live in a civilized society where there are laws that govern our behaviors.
00:05:54.180 Of course, I understand all this.
00:05:56.360 But in the ugly realities of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes and enemy combatants who wish to impart great harm to your civilization,
00:06:11.580 then maybe relaxing some of your suicidal empathetic tendencies might be appropriate.
00:06:18.640 Anyway, something for you to think about.
00:06:20.220 Take care, everybody.