TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray Opens Up on America, AI and LGBTQ

00:00:00.680 People who have the means to move around used to talk about moving abroad.

00:00:05.240 If things go south in America, you know, we'll go to New Zealand.

00:00:12.040 But I do notice that that has disappeared pretty much as a subject of conversation.

00:00:17.560 So I think there's a sort of recognition now of that.

00:00:20.040 If you don't save it here, it's not saved anywhere.

00:00:24.640 I do think that it's obviously running, the treadmill is running faster than humans can run.

00:00:31.340 I'm worried about what happens if America does put a pause on this,

00:00:35.440 because America might put a pause on it, Britain might put a pause on it, but other countries won't.

00:00:41.560 But in the end, you know, you can't actually hold back learning, is the truth of it.

00:00:49.700 The entire thing, the LGBTQIA+, the fact that there's more and more people who are coming

00:00:56.000 under this particular...

00:00:57.000 No, it's not a real thing. 1.00

00:00:58.320 It's bullshit. 1.00

00:00:59.320 Total horse shit. 1.00

00:01:00.960 My view has always been there's no such thing as a gay community anyway. 1.00

00:01:03.700 That's just the gays. 1.00

00:01:05.540 There is no bigger chasm in the world than gay men and asexuals. 1.00

00:01:12.200 None. 0.99

00:01:19.700 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the Road from the USA.

00:01:30.560 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:31.800 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:01:32.880 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:37.760 Our brilliant guest today is a prolific author and journalist who returns to the show for

00:01:42.100 the hundredth time in about a year.

00:01:44.380 Douglas Murray, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:01:47.640 It's a little while since we spoke.

00:01:49.480 It is, but you are one of our beloved guests.

00:01:52.280 Oh, well, you're some of my beloved hosts.

00:01:53.880 Thank you very much.

00:01:54.680 I actually told the story on one of our Raw shows the other day

00:01:57.560 about tricking you into our first interview.

00:02:00.520 How did that happen?

00:02:01.400 Well, we were at this small conference in Oxford.

00:02:03.480 Oh, yeah, of course.

00:02:04.280 And you went out to the toilet and I was like,

00:02:06.520 oh, it's Douglas Murray. I want to get Douglas on the show.

00:02:08.840 So I went on.

00:02:09.480 Now's the time.

00:02:10.280 Now's the time.

00:02:11.400 He's in the toilet.

00:02:12.920 He's vulnerable.

00:02:13.800 He's vulnerable.

00:02:15.240 So I went outside and I was sort of on my phone.

00:02:17.800 and when you came out, I was like, oh, Douglas, by the way.

00:02:20.500 And that's actually how we did our first interview.

00:02:23.240 And we have interviewed you many times since.

00:02:25.920 So we've talked about the standard culture and all of that issue.

00:02:29.780 And you, of course, have written about it extensively.

00:02:32.240 Last book, The Madness of Crowds and The War in the West, your last two books.

00:02:36.500 And, of course, The Strange Death of Europe before that.

00:02:38.760 What are you thinking now, Douglas?

00:02:40.120 What are you thinking about?

00:02:41.320 What are you seeing other than all the stuff that we all already know?

00:02:45.660 I think the main thing that's preoccupying me at the moment

00:02:48.600 is what we should be doing.

00:02:54.840 I'm working away on something at the moment,

00:02:56.680 but the thing that started to really preoccupy me is 0.98

00:02:59.680 what would we be doing if this crap wasn't in our way? 0.99

00:03:05.040 Yes. 0.98

00:03:06.680 Mainly in the hope that I know you both share

00:03:09.440 that we can get it out of the way.

00:03:11.560 You know, what would we be creating?

00:03:16.960 What would we be thinking about?

00:03:18.920 What are the things that are out there that should be bothering us,

00:03:22.960 that we can address, that we can make progress on?

00:03:28.580 That's really what's sort of on my mind most at the moment,

00:03:31.440 because I just see this great clutter in front of,

00:03:34.020 particularly young people, that's what really strikes me,

00:03:37.460 particularly in the US, but it's the same in Britain

00:03:39.500 and everywhere else in the developed world,

00:03:42.960 you just have this clutter when you're growing up.

00:03:45.080 Now, you always did, but there's just additional clutter.

00:03:48.900 And I think for a lot of young people I speak to,

00:03:52.840 a lot of them just are checking out the whole thing

00:03:56.820 as a result of that.

00:03:58.980 And I think that we're at an enormous risk

00:04:01.420 of losing the talent of the next generation

00:04:04.720 if we don't start to think really hard

00:04:07.780 about how the adults can clear the path.

00:04:11.080 And what are you thinking there?

00:04:12.180 Because I've talked about the need

00:04:13.720 for a positive vision of the future.

00:04:15.760 And as you say, moving beyond woke and anti-woke

00:04:18.300 because they're both destructive forces

00:04:19.860 in terms of the energy that they direct.

00:04:21.940 So what is the constructive path?

00:04:24.580 What is that thing that we could be doing

00:04:26.960 if we weren't doing all of this?

00:04:28.200 Well, I mean, it's obviously different for everybody.

00:04:31.660 I mean, you know, if you're a comedian,

00:04:34.980 you make people laugh.

00:04:35.920 if you're a writer

00:04:38.840 you write the things you need to write

00:04:40.680 I actually

00:04:42.860 try very consciously, I've tried throughout my career

00:04:44.880 to do this, to roughly

00:04:46.640 balance what I write

00:04:48.380 as doing like

00:04:49.700 stuff that I hate

00:04:52.240 and I'm attacking

00:04:53.940 and stuff that I love and I want to actually

00:04:56.660 defend and write about and

00:04:58.000 do something with

00:04:59.520 it's very hard to get the proportions right

00:05:02.680 and we all

00:05:04.800 get caught on that first one a bit too much I think but you know writers should write you know

00:05:10.980 coders should code but the main thing is in innovation and thinking and then coming up with

00:05:17.340 new ideas you know is is there so much time spent on this unwinnable game that we've spoken about

00:05:24.960 before the unwinnable game of hierarchies of intersection and all this sort of thing and it

00:05:31.260 hasn't yet got anyone anywhere. But imagine if that amazing amount of energy and insight and

00:05:40.800 ability was actually directed onto something. And people have their own answers, as I say.

00:05:45.780 Elon Musk's answer is, you know, we should go to Mars. And if you say to Elon, well, why? He'll say,

00:05:51.980 you know, I think we should have a reason to get up in the morning. Mine is that I'd like to go to

00:05:55.900 Mars. That's not particularly my thing when I get up in the morning. I mean, like Philip Larkin

00:06:03.040 said about going to China, I wouldn't mind as long as I could come back the same day.

00:06:06.920 But I admire him, for instance. One of the reasons I admire him is I admire somebody who realizes

00:06:15.620 that. You've got to have a reason to get up in the morning. There has to be a vision. There has

00:06:18.680 to be something you're going to do, something you're going to conquer. And the other thing to

00:06:24.280 say about that is that the great temptation is to say, well, the conditions aren't optimal.

00:06:32.680 You know, there's this in my way, there's that, there's the other. And I'm not discounting for a

00:06:38.640 moment that there are problems. There are problems of young people accruing capital, that's a big

00:06:44.140 one. We've talked about before getting on the housing ladder, owning property, all sorts of

00:06:51.020 things, rewarding investment, rewarding savings, rewarding prudence, all sorts of things that

00:06:55.620 definitely could be addressed better. But I've become very fond of a sermon that C.S. Lewis gave

00:07:03.200 at the University Church in Oxford in the autumn of 1939, and I've quoted quite a lot recently in

00:07:09.300 speeches. He said there, he says the conditions at the moment aren't optimal.

00:07:15.380 A great example of British understatement. But he says the conditions at the moment are not

00:07:21.000 optimal but they never were he says human life was always lived on the edge of a precipice and

00:07:27.560 if our ancestors had put off the search for truth or beauty until such a time as conditions were

00:07:34.120 optimal the search would never have begun and that is a very important thing for anyone who's

00:07:42.000 watching particularly who's young and starting off that's a very important thing to realize it

00:07:46.720 It wasn't always precisely like this, but in some general way, it's always been like

00:07:51.540 this.

00:07:52.540 There's always been things in your way.

00:07:55.060 The question is whether or not you can get over them.

00:07:57.600 Douglas, isn't there another thing here that all of us who are attempting to chart a sane

00:08:02.960 path through this are coming up against, which is part of the idea of liberalism was throwing

00:08:09.820 off the shackles of the shoulds and the oughts, right? 0.97

00:08:14.300 And we've now come to a point where people like you and people like us want to say there

00:08:18.780 are some things that you can do that will, generally speaking, on average, make your

00:08:22.540 life better, right?

00:08:24.340 But we've lost the vocabulary to be able to say it in a way that works.

00:08:30.120 And so we are now in a position where we're afraid to say, like, it's hard to say, you

00:08:34.200 know, generally speaking, for most people, family will be a good thing, right?

00:08:38.420 But the moment you say that, then you're demonizing people.

00:08:41.400 What about people who don't have families?

00:08:42.600 What about women who can't have babies? 1.00

00:08:44.360 And so on.

00:08:45.140 And any area of life where you look at,

00:08:47.360 that is the position we're now in.

00:08:49.640 And that's why I think we're struggling to articulate that positive vision

00:08:52.500 because we're now all in a position where we can't really say,

00:08:55.780 here's 10 things you can do to make your life better

00:08:58.020 and to contribute to society.

00:08:59.620 Because we're all worried about being seen and being attacked for,

00:09:03.980 saying, you know, this is what you should do.

00:09:06.100 Oh, you want women back in the kitchen. 1.00

00:09:07.900 Or you want, you know, the gays back wherever the gays were. 0.99

00:09:11.080 All of that. 0.99

00:09:11.820 In the bathroom.

00:09:12.400 where they belong no um yeah i i i mean two observations firstly what you describe about

00:09:22.600 the state of liberalism is something which john gray who i'm sort of sometime admirer of um but

00:09:28.260 he did write a very fine essay some years ago he's sort of one of the students by zaya berlin

00:09:33.140 who may be a successor even to berlin if berlin had one um he wrote a very important essay some

00:09:39.660 years ago now called modus vivendi about the two different types of liberalism it's a slight play

00:09:44.780 on isaiah's two concepts of liberty but but the two ideas of liberalism was firstly the the idea

00:09:51.200 of liberalism as an organizing principle which organized it then then left people alone

00:09:56.460 the second form of liberalism is the sort of rampaging always wanting to go forward liberalism

00:10:02.940 always seeking fights always seeking a campaign as it were and this is one of the problems of

00:10:08.260 describing liberalism apart from the fact that it's a shapeshifter term. Many of us, I certainly

00:10:13.680 believe in that first form of liberalism. Liberalism as a way to construct the social

00:10:19.260 order and then you let people do their thing. The second form is the more prevalent form at the

00:10:25.120 moment. It's always the noisier form and it's the one that's most tempting, particularly to young

00:10:28.660 people because it says here's meaning, here's purpose. So that's the first observation. The

00:10:34.740 Second one, I think people just gotta be a lot less scared.

00:10:38.020 I mean, I don't mind saying, you know, look,

00:10:41.100 for instance, all the data shows

00:10:43.940 you're gonna be much happier in your life

00:10:45.580 if you're religious and a believer.

00:10:49.280 I'm not able to be a believer,

00:10:51.980 a literal believer in religion,

00:10:55.120 but I don't mind acknowledging that all the data shows

00:11:00.020 that the religious are more likely to be happy.

00:11:02.660 Why does that bother me?

00:11:04.740 likewise I don't have kids but I'm not at all offended by the data that shows

00:11:12.980 that you know having children is for most people the single most important

00:11:17.860 thing that will happen to them in their lives as you know why does that why

00:11:23.700 should why is that any skin off my nose why should that why should that I mean

00:11:28.780 I mean I'm not going to construct the whole damn world around my own feelings

00:11:32.400 And that's what people are trying to do. And I think we should be much less bothered by them. 0.79

00:11:39.840 So what? I'm not screwing up reality or altering it or pretending to alter it just because

00:11:44.020 you might be mildly upset about something. So what? I'm mildly upset all the time.

00:11:51.200 Very angry, irritable, and much more. Lots. But I don't think the answer to it is to pretend

00:11:58.200 that the world is not what it is.

00:12:01.040 Douglas, one thing that I found very interesting recently is,

00:12:06.100 so for example, when I was growing up, my mother is Latin American,

00:12:08.700 we have a lot of gay men in our family.

00:12:11.480 And when I think about those men, they were tough.

00:12:15.940 They faced a lot of prejudice, they lived through the AIDS epidemic,

00:12:19.640 they lost a lot of their friends and their lovers.

00:12:21.840 And I'm looking at this new movement coming in, 0.76

00:12:24.600 which is trying to turn gay men into victims. 0.97

00:12:27.020 Yeah. And I think it's the absolute worst way to live and to identify us. 0.90

00:12:34.560 Sure, of course. Well, living as a victim is always disastrous.

00:12:37.920 I mean, I wrote about that in the War on the West, using Nietzsche carefully.

00:12:42.340 As I always say, you have to. It's his strong stuff there.

00:12:46.220 I mean, Nietzsche's great on the victimhood problem.

00:12:49.080 The problem of victimhood is, I mean, it's basically a life that's not lived.

00:12:55.220 and it also encourages people to cry about wounds

00:13:01.460 they don't actually feel.

00:13:05.020 I think you're right about that there is a generational thing on this.

00:13:09.440 You're right, I can think of a lot of gay men older than me

00:13:12.260 who, you know, tough as nails because they had to be.

00:13:16.760 Emotionally and sometimes physically as well.

00:13:19.820 I think something like David Starkey, as he himself has said,

00:13:22.260 was sort of created by the feeling of, you know,

00:13:25.540 being thrown into the back of a police van 0.65

00:13:27.080 if you were at a gay coffee shop on the King's Road, you know.

00:13:31.360 My generation was a bit more fortunate than that, 0.98

00:13:34.540 but the one that's underneath me is a bit more whiny, for sure.

00:13:41.040 I mean, you can always complain about people younger than you,

00:13:44.860 and it's a perennial human pleasure,

00:13:46.860 but I'd just say that I think some of those people 0.51

00:13:50.760 We should have a bit more damn respect for their elders.

00:13:53.960 But that's the case everywhere in the Western societies. 0.95

00:13:56.500 We've become very weird societies in not respecting our elders

00:13:59.320 in any community or walk of life.

00:14:02.380 And that's very strange because it means you're left only respecting youth.

00:14:06.580 Young people don't know anything. 1.00

00:14:08.120 Why respect youth?

00:14:09.720 I mean, it's worth recognizing the virtues of youth,

00:14:14.760 but not of worshipping them.

00:14:16.680 I mean, why would you worship ignorance?

00:14:19.140 Why not look to older people in your society to help convey wisdom?

00:14:23.700 It just doesn't seem to be something that much bothers our society.

00:14:27.720 We say, oh, look, here's somebody new and young and hot.

00:14:30.700 Let's see what they have to say.

00:14:33.400 Well, that's like saying, you know, here's this old guy who knows a lot.

00:14:38.160 Let's get him to do a photo shoot.

00:14:39.720 but it this movement has and i don't think people make this this observation enough and it's

00:14:51.000 something that i have started to say more and more it's deeply weird oh yeah of course yeah

00:14:57.440 of course it's weird you just noticed but but the entire thing the lgbtqia plus the fact that

00:15:06.120 there's more and more people who are coming onto this particular...

00:15:08.840 No, it's not a real thing. It's bullshit. 1.00

00:15:11.520 It's total horse shit. 1.00

00:15:13.060 And I'm just... One of the things that's very annoying in this era 1.00

00:15:15.460 is that there are just these steaming piles of horse shit in front of us all. 0.99

00:15:20.880 And we're all meant to sort of shovel our way through them. 0.99

00:15:24.680 I just don't have time. 0.99

00:15:26.320 And I might pay somebody else to shovel the horse shit for me. 1.00

00:15:29.860 But I just don't have time for this crap. 0.99

00:15:32.140 I don't have time for people to keep adding letters to... 0.99

00:15:34.600 I don't, my view has always been there's no such thing as a gay community anyway.

00:15:37.880 That's just the gays. 1.00

00:15:39.520 Lesbians and gays don't get on famously, have very little in common. 0.96

00:15:43.880 Both are very suspicious of bisexuals. 0.97

00:15:46.400 Have nothing to do with transgender. 1.00

00:15:50.460 There is no bigger chasm in the world than gay men and asexuals. 1.00

00:15:59.100 None. 0.99

00:15:59.580 like the idea that in a bar in a gay bar like you know you're like hey you're hot i'm asexual

00:16:09.600 uh i don't know they have their own hookup apps where they don't meet um there's just nothing

00:16:17.780 that keeps you as far away from other people yeah exactly exactly and keeps people's clothes on

00:16:24.540 And then there's one that's like the queer one. 1.00

00:16:28.380 Well, queer, as far as I can see, is only... 1.00

00:16:31.260 I did a bit of this in Manners of Crowds,

00:16:32.620 but it only means either, ooh, look at me, I'm fascinating.

00:16:36.460 No, you're not, you dyed your hair purple, you're boring.

00:16:40.180 Or it's, I'm straight, but I want a bit of the intersectional pie, 0.96

00:16:45.780 so I'll go like, ooh, I'm queer.

00:16:47.300 There was a guy at Oxford who was teaching who said that,

00:16:49.500 and he was like, oh, one of my students came over and said,

00:16:52.180 It's so nice to see myself represented, you know, by a lecturer. 0.73

00:16:55.880 And I think this guy, like, painted his nails or some crap like that. 0.93

00:16:59.600 And he's a straight guy. He's married to a woman. 0.98

00:17:03.040 You're talking about queer. 1.00

00:17:04.680 And queer used to be an insult to gay people. 0.98

00:17:07.420 It still is an insult to gay people. 0.95

00:17:09.280 And then it's appropriated by some straight guys and girls

00:17:12.820 because they think it'll make them interesting.

00:17:14.520 Find another way to be interesting.

00:17:18.660 It's sort of grotesque.

00:17:19.620 The alphabet people stuff doesn't really interest me.

00:17:23.620 I just, you know, get on with their lives.

00:17:25.640 They've bored me enough, you know.

00:17:27.520 But there's also the fact as well that, do you not...

00:17:30.360 And I've spoken to quite a lot of gay men about this 0.99

00:17:32.640 and they all mutter under their breasts 0.94

00:17:34.120 that they actually find it profoundly irritating

00:17:37.280 with the queer thing where they go, 0.99

00:17:38.760 if you do blackface,

00:17:40.120 that is seen as the most heinous form of racism.

00:17:44.120 Unless you're Justin Trudeau.

00:17:45.220 Unless you're Justin Trudeau, in which case it's method.

00:17:47.300 But, um...

00:17:48.300 But, that being the case, if I come out and go I'm queer, and you know, I've never even

00:17:56.220 had any form of sexual interaction with a man, that's fine.

00:17:59.860 Yeah, queer face is fine. 1.00

00:18:01.480 Yeah, it's like woman face, it's fine. 1.00

00:18:03.480 You can pretend to be a woman and it's not insulting to women.

00:18:07.060 I don't agree, I think it's very insulting. 1.00

00:18:09.280 But I can't spend any more of my life being upset by morons. 1.00

00:18:12.940 Yeah. 1.00

00:18:13.940 Just particularly attention-seeking morons. 1.00

00:18:17.040 Look at me, look at me. 1.00

00:18:18.620 Yeah, I've got other things to do.

00:18:19.840 There's books I haven't read.

00:18:21.220 I mean, that is a very profound point.

00:18:23.300 But one of the things that I really wanted to ask you, Douglas,

00:18:25.760 is you tackle some of the most contentious issues,

00:18:28.600 the ones that a lot of people simply won't go near.

00:18:32.480 Why do you do that?

00:18:34.500 Well, it's fun.

00:18:36.920 And it's necessary.

00:18:39.640 And I've probably got a predilection for it.

00:18:42.880 I probably always was one of those people who people say,

00:18:46.060 don't look at that, no, look, of that type of child.

00:18:51.700 Don't read that, I'll read it.

00:18:53.440 Don't say that, I'll say it.

00:18:56.520 That's probably just a habit thing.

00:18:59.060 But also, the more you do it, the more you realize, it's fine.

00:19:03.060 Like, it's not scary.

00:19:04.840 I don't like the whininess, even of the people who might be in agreement

00:19:09.260 with a lot of what I or you say.

00:19:11.640 I don't like the whininess, this sort of self-pity of,

00:19:15.800 oh you should see what i get on social media shut up it's boring uh oh i got so much blowback from

00:19:22.520 this article but go and spend time with your family or friends stop reading people you don't 0.88

00:19:29.080 know on twitter and i just there's just a general sort of boring self-pity in the culture and part

00:19:35.880 of it comes from this sort of idea that if you transgress certain you know i don't know certain

00:19:44.680 dogmas of the time that you'll be put under a lot of pressure. Some people are. And I've noted

00:19:49.880 quite often that I seem to have some inexplicable ability to get away with things that a lot of

00:19:55.420 people don't. And I noticed that my female friends in the UK, for instance, who have tackled certain

00:20:02.760 issues I've tackled, get a horrible amount of blowback. And some of them are not as cut out

00:20:09.660 for it as you know as say I am or some others including some female writers are but well you

00:20:18.220 know okay each to their own everyone knows their own limits but I don't I don't have any I don't

00:20:26.440 have any you know complaints about my life or you know moaning to be done I have a great life I say

00:20:35.420 everything I think is true, and enjoy it.

00:20:40.040 But surely when you were writing

00:20:41.720 about the strange depth of Europe

00:20:43.480 and when you were commenting on Islam,

00:20:45.060 you must have known this, I mean,

00:20:47.240 this is the most hot button out of all the hot button issues.

00:20:50.660 And it's not all about Twitter blowback.

00:20:52.360 Yeah.

00:20:53.200 That's true, that's true.

00:20:54.540 That one is the one, yeah, I'm being slightly flippant

00:20:57.060 because of the stuff I've done more recently as well.

00:20:59.040 I mean, I think my chances of being beheaded 0.93

00:21:01.720 by a trans person quite small. 0.99

00:21:07.400 I mean, famous last words.

00:21:09.320 If I leave this studio, Constantine, 1.00

00:21:12.800 and a purple-haired woman with a dick decapitates me, 1.00

00:21:20.360 please don't send that bit out. 1.00

00:21:22.280 Yeah, all right, we'll keep that, we'll hold that back.

00:21:25.000 But I think chances are low, basically.

00:21:28.040 I think the chances of a non-binary person...

00:21:31.360 Even being able to lift a sword.

00:21:34.020 Exactly.

00:21:35.100 Even making a run at me.

00:21:37.080 I think that's unlikely.

00:21:38.320 The Is On One is, always was, much harder.

00:21:42.280 I sort of feel like I said everything I have to say about that subject.

00:21:46.360 But that was definitely tricky for quite a number of years in my life.

00:21:50.920 Yeah, I mean, it certainly made my movements much restricted.

00:21:55.240 And, you know, a lot of my friends were sharp.

00:21:58.840 So it wasn't great.

00:22:01.360 But nevertheless, I think broadly speaking, the point that a small group of us in Europe wanted to make,

00:22:07.280 which was that we still had the right to blaspheme any religion,

00:22:10.840 I think we actually sort of, we didn't entirely win it, but we held some kind of line.

00:22:19.300 It certainly could have been a lot worse, I think.

00:22:24.740 And certain societies are more cowardly than others. 0.99

00:22:27.360 I mean, Britain is really cowardly on the Islam one. 1.00

00:22:29.880 You know, like the teacher in Batley, you know, I mean, the whole damn government should have come out for that guy, everyone, the police and so on. 0.97

00:22:37.200 And the same with, you know, these intermittent, you know, appearances of sort of people who appear in places like Bradford and stop films by thuggish protests.

00:22:49.260 You know, I don't think that should be allowed.

00:22:51.120 And I have very strong views on that.

00:22:52.780 I mean, I simply think if you don't understand our society, get out of it.

00:22:56.080 Leave. 0.99

00:22:56.560 We're not going to, we're not losing anything.

00:22:58.640 Not going to lose anything.

00:22:59.460 I think you should just go.

00:23:01.220 If you don't like a liberal modern society, leave it.

00:23:04.400 Just go.

00:23:05.540 We don't want you.

00:23:07.020 I think that's what government should say.

00:23:08.640 I think that's what people should say.

00:23:11.800 You don't get the point of being here.

00:23:14.960 Fine, scram.

00:23:16.560 Find somewhere where they don't show films.

00:23:20.220 So I have no time for that,

00:23:22.920 but I'm very struck by how weak the British authorities are again and again.

00:23:26.620 They're stronger in France.

00:23:29.460 And they're stronger in certain other countries.

00:23:31.560 They're a weird holdout.

00:23:32.580 They're stronger in Denmark for other reasons.

00:23:34.880 But it differs from country to country.

00:23:38.780 The thing that really brought it home to me,

00:23:40.560 I don't know if you would have seen the interview Richard Dawkins did with Piers Morgan.

00:23:44.900 And Richard Dawkins is a man, I think, irrespective of his views on religion,

00:23:49.300 some people really like them, some people don't.

00:23:51.320 If you're like me, you really like them, and now less so over time you change your mind.

00:23:55.440 But he is a man who's been willing to speak up and be controversial

00:24:00.000 and say things that people don't like.

00:24:02.280 And then you watch that and you, I mean, look, who knows?

00:24:05.500 But I think the assumption for many of us is like,

00:24:08.020 this is a very principled, decent man who, as he's getting on in life,

00:24:14.240 doesn't want the hassle.

00:24:16.540 I thought that was a very sad thing.

00:24:17.920 That's what I thought.

00:24:19.600 I know Richard Little.

00:24:21.020 I enormously admire him.

00:24:22.640 I mean, he really is a man of principle.

00:24:25.440 And sometimes you don't have to agree with everyone's principle

00:24:29.000 just to admire the principle they're sticking to.

00:24:31.560 He's a man of science, so if he's asked to agree

00:24:34.740 that there are people with multiple genders and sexes or whatever,

00:24:39.780 he'll just say, no, I'm a biologist, there are two sexes. 0.88

00:24:42.680 He doesn't mind doing that, quite rightly.

00:24:45.160 But I was struck by the fact that he didn't want to talk about Islam.

00:24:49.620 And I've seen Richard at that cliff face.

00:24:53.020 Some years ago, we had a slightly unfortunate fallout.

00:24:56.700 Unfortunately, I wish it hadn't happened,

00:24:58.200 but he did an interview on Al Jazeera,

00:25:00.080 and I wrote a piece slightly teasing him

00:25:02.140 because he had slightly stepped back

00:25:04.620 from criticizing Islam, particularly Muhammad.

00:25:09.740 And I knew exactly what was happening,

00:25:12.720 but I made a joke at his expense.

00:25:15.940 And it was quite a good joke, if I say so myself,

00:25:18.520 but it was a bit of a cheap shot

00:25:20.320 because I knew the chasm which he was looking into at that moment.

00:25:25.480 It happened to be on Al Jazeera.

00:25:28.380 And I felt that I'd made my point,

00:25:37.140 but I also should have been more sympathetic to Richard's own position at that time,

00:25:41.900 which is that he didn't want his life to be completely thrown into disarray

00:25:46.100 by becoming a public hate figure number one for the world's Muslims. 0.79

00:25:50.320 And the fact that he now just said I don't want to do that was a loss, definitely, definitely.

00:26:00.320 But other people must pick up that baton, you know, other younger people. 0.79

00:26:06.320 They must. There'll be new young atheists coming along, you know, smart.

00:26:13.320 They'll have been inspired by Richard Dawkins and things he said before.

00:26:17.320 And it's time, you know, I don't see why 80 or whatever Richard now is,

00:26:21.920 he should continue to have to carry such a load.

00:26:24.820 I don't think he should. 0.99

00:26:25.940 I think people need to come along and share the damn burden. 0.99

00:26:28.800 That makes sense. 0.98

00:26:29.800 And Douglas, let's move on a little bit because an issue I've never heard you comment on

00:26:34.680 and you may have nothing to say, which is fine.

00:26:37.120 I'll tell you if I don't.

00:26:38.160 I know you will, which is why I'm asking.

00:26:40.420 A lot of people are starting to talk about AI.

00:26:42.880 And you, I mean, people will say you're a political commentator, but I think of you more as a philosopher to a large extent.

00:26:50.920 You think about society and the ways that it's changing and where it's going.

00:26:56.040 Do you have thoughts on what AI may mean for humanity?

00:27:01.200 Not many. I mean, as you say, I sort of straddle both of those divides that you just described.

00:27:08.580 I've looked into a certain amount.

00:27:10.280 And I do think that it's obviously running, the treadmill is running faster than humans

00:27:16.580 can run.

00:27:18.620 And that's a problem.

00:27:19.940 The recent letter signed by Elon and others was a sign of that.

00:27:25.320 The one I'm worried about, frankly, is I'm worried about what happens if America does

00:27:31.380 put a pause on this, because America might put a pause on it, you know, Britain might

00:27:37.500 put a pause on it, but other countries won't. I think there's a risk that it'll become like

00:27:42.360 stem cells, you know, like America ends up stopping certain research here for profound

00:27:50.080 and, you know, important moral reasons. But go to Central America, and that's happening

00:27:58.740 all over the place. So my worry with the AI one is that America and advanced democracies

00:28:06.000 say, whoa. But, you know, China doesn't. That seems to me to be the worst of all worlds, 0.98

00:28:14.580 is that the technology is developed by countries that are already not free, to say the least.

00:28:23.280 But I don't know what to do about that. I don't know what the answer to that is,

00:28:28.960 other than continuing carefully to do it in our own societies. But in the end, you know,

00:28:34.920 you can't, you can't actually hold back learning is the truth of it, you know. I mean, it's

00:28:46.460 like Gutenberg. Once it's out, you just can't hold it back. You can't stop the printing

00:28:54.040 presses once they start rolling. You can't start the internet once it's turned on. And

00:29:03.040 And again, it's probably always been like this, you know, probably felt the same when

00:29:09.300 gunpowder was first discovered.

00:29:12.260 Do you feel there's a certain futility to thinking about these things?

00:29:18.540 Well, not a futility, because it's very interesting, but I think people are misguided if they

00:29:24.100 think that thinking about things like AI and being able to control them are the same thing.

00:29:33.020 I mean, as I say, you can think about gunpowder, but it doesn't win you any battles. 0.89

00:29:41.200 You can think about the discovery of the cannon or the invention of the automatic rifle.

00:29:49.920 It doesn't win you any battle.

00:29:53.580 We could think endlessly about the nature of AI, but I think the likelihood that you'll be able to stop it is highly unlikely.

00:30:01.840 I think the one thing that does worry me about it,

00:30:06.540 and it's something which various philosophers have talked about

00:30:10.800 in recent decades, is there is a sort of moment when...

00:30:16.260 I mean, arguably, you could trace the moment that we're currently in

00:30:18.940 back to that moment in, what was it, 1994,

00:30:21.840 when Garry Kasparov played the computer chess in Lost.

00:30:26.320 and the notes that Kasparov was making as he went along,

00:30:33.320 there was a very striking note.

00:30:35.320 One of his notes himself was, he said,

00:30:37.320 the machine isn't calculating its thinking.

00:30:41.320 It's a very important moment in the development of what we now call AI.

00:30:46.320 There's another observation on that which Tom Stoppard wrote in his play

00:30:53.320 play the hard problem about the consciousness problem it's very

00:30:57.760 interesting profound play he mentions that the only time that he says there

00:31:01.540 were one of the characters says in the play something I've always been fond of

00:31:04.720 which is that the the machines only really beat the humans when the machines

00:31:09.880 mind losing because minding losing is such a huge human drive wanting to win

00:31:19.180 wanting to you know come back I think at this point the machines do mind losing

00:31:25.860 or very close to it the one that alarms me more is the issue of memory and human

00:31:35.000 memory because human memory and machine memory are clearly different things I

00:31:39.700 mean I know this from our own lifespans already as a sort of weird gap from

00:31:45.400 before the internet era.

00:31:47.180 It was recently actually shown when Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin IRA was back in the news

00:31:51.580 and somebody mentioned that on the Wikipedia website for Gerry Adams,

00:31:56.300 the only controversy under controversies is when he used the N-word some years ago in passing

00:32:03.980 and got a lot of flack for it.

00:32:05.600 I mean, it's an explosive issue, Douglas.

00:32:08.160 It's well said.

00:32:09.500 but he's been involved in more explosive issues in his time.

00:32:16.800 And you would have thought that,

00:32:19.020 and Mr Adams can sue me if he thinks I'm wrong on this,

00:32:23.320 but you would have thought that a man

00:32:25.980 who was high up in an organization,

00:32:28.260 which he's always denied being a member of,

00:32:30.100 and an organization that killed 1,600 people

00:32:33.640 and disappeared mothers

00:32:35.640 and buried their bodies after torturing 0.98

00:32:38.480 and shooting them in the back of the head, 0.62

00:32:40.060 should be on Wikipedia as a potential controversy. 0.99

00:32:44.300 My point is, not to get onto that hobby horse of mine,

00:32:47.840 but my point is that there is this sort of knowledge

00:32:50.760 from before the internet era,

00:32:52.680 which the internet is not capable of holding.

00:32:55.740 It's the same with the television archives.

00:32:59.120 There are things that exist on YouTube

00:33:01.520 only because they exist on YouTube,

00:33:03.520 and somebody's posted them.

00:33:04.860 But there's all of this forgotten memory of what was before.

00:33:10.320 Will the machines ever be able to do the things that we have up here?

00:33:16.540 Maybe someday, but it'll be different from human memory.

00:33:21.760 I don't relish the world in which the machine can compete with the greatest human mind.

00:33:29.920 um because to my mind one of the things that makes humans humans is is having a sense of memory

00:33:40.620 um collective familial and much more and it also brings for the discussion about AI art because I

00:33:52.660 was talking to Andrew Doyle about this and he said well AI can't create art because art is the

00:33:57.780 expression of the human soul but you see everything that is being created over it

00:34:02.440 with AI and it's already so advanced that you think to yourself is it going

00:34:06.120 to make the artist obsolete I don't think that will happen actually I mean

00:34:10.260 certainly what we've what has been produced so far doesn't fool me at any

00:34:14.160 rate it it's currently AI artists as far as I can see it a purely parasitic art

00:34:21.960 platform. It can only work off what's already there. So it can imitate, and it can imitate

00:34:28.460 pretty well. It actually is quite easy to spot, I would say, at the moment. Some people

00:34:34.360 watching will disagree and will doubtless send in examples that I couldn't spot. I still

00:34:39.440 think that if AI faked a Vermeer, I would be able to tell. I'd be able to tell the difference

00:34:47.820 between the fake and the real, maybe partly because there were so few Vermeers that one

00:34:53.060 would know. But certain artists might be easier to fake than others. It's not hard to fake

00:35:00.320 a Warhol because it wasn't hard to make. But will they be able to make advances in perception

00:35:11.460 of the kind that, say, in the 20th century, Picasso and Francis Bacon imagined? Will they

00:35:16.420 be able to push forward the the boundaries like that i i doubt it i think it would be like in

00:35:23.140 music i mean in in in music almost everything in film music for instance is already imitative

00:35:29.300 parasitic art ai can create more of it but can ai create stravinsky i doubt it i doubt it

00:35:39.140 douglas you mentioned northern ireland and it's it's a niche question but i know you've written

00:35:44.580 in the book, you wrote a book, one of your early books, about it.

00:35:48.380 And every time we talk about it, I'm not saying it's not an issue people shouldn't care about,

00:35:53.060 but you really care about it. 0.93

00:35:54.920 Yeah, I hate murderers.

00:35:58.280 It's a controversial position nowadays. 0.98

00:36:00.380 I really, I really, I hate murderers. 0.94

00:36:02.480 I hate people who get away with murder. 0.66

00:36:04.460 And I particularly mind, and it's a very straightforward one,

00:36:08.280 I have a residual deep dislike of the fact that the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland

00:36:16.680 consisted of rewarding the people who shot people in the back of the head for 30 years

00:36:21.780 and then said maybe we shouldn't and sidelined all the people who said from the beginning

00:36:30.800 don't shoot people in the back of the head. I really mean the way in which

00:36:35.200 I mean on the more

00:36:37.540 on the less actually

00:36:38.900 the loyalist side was very

00:36:41.920 very violent and all the extremes itself

00:36:44.000 but I mean like Ian Paisley

00:36:46.120 who I had no love for at all

00:36:48.100 Ian Paisley

00:36:49.860 you know pushes out David Trimble

00:36:51.940 far finer man than him

00:36:53.760 Jerry Adams

00:36:56.400 and Martin McGuinness push out

00:36:57.840 Hume and

00:36:59.720 that

00:37:02.120 just always bothered me because I thought

00:37:04.060 the people who had always said

00:37:06.180 we shouldn't go down the path to hell

00:37:08.600 were all left on the sidewalk

00:37:11.020 whilst the people who merrily walked everyone

00:37:13.440 through hell for 30 years

00:37:14.840 came out the other side pretending to be wise men of peace

00:37:18.040 and that's always bothered me and always will

00:37:20.360 I think it's just

00:37:23.480 it's an injustice which

00:37:25.960 still rankles with me

00:37:28.300 and I had lots of friends involved in the conflict

00:37:30.680 and I just know how many scars and wounds are still there and unhealed.

00:37:37.300 Do you think that it was a necessary injustice

00:37:40.360 in order to bring peace to the region?

00:37:44.660 It always depends whether or not you want to reward violence.

00:37:51.740 And I think we've rewarded violence.

00:37:53.780 It's a very niche view these days.

00:37:55.420 Everyone just sort of celebrates what they call the men of peace

00:37:58.760 who are all the people who were men of war.

00:38:00.680 and then suddenly a man of peace.

00:38:03.640 It's a niche point I would have done it another way.

00:38:05.740 I would have continued to cripple the IRA

00:38:07.560 and make them come to the negotiating table on their knees,

00:38:11.340 which they very nearly were in the early 90s.

00:38:16.540 But I'm always struck by the fact that in an era

00:38:22.060 which talks about equality and kindness and fairness

00:38:26.260 and all these sort of things,

00:38:27.700 Fairness is a much more important tangible thing

00:38:31.440 than equality and all these sort of things.

00:38:33.560 Fairness is a very important virtue

00:38:35.620 and it was totally thrown out the window in that.

00:38:38.860 And it's very, very hard for people

00:38:40.940 to see the people who killed their families walking around.

00:38:47.380 I once was in Central Europe

00:38:50.080 and spoke to a friend who had written a book

00:38:53.400 about a woman who had been tortured and imprisoned

00:38:57.260 in the communist era.

00:39:00.980 And one day, she was, many years later,

00:39:04.160 after the fall of the wall,

00:39:05.320 she was walking back with her shopping

00:39:06.700 and she saw her torturer walking towards her in the street.

00:39:10.780 And he apparently looked at her and recognised her

00:39:13.340 and he darted into a courtyard, disappeared.

00:39:17.480 But I mean, it's unimaginable, really.

00:39:20.640 And that in Northern Ireland is happening,

00:39:24.320 admittedly for people on all sides,

00:39:26.540 for thousands and thousands of people.

00:39:28.300 I think at the very least people should have empathy for that.

00:39:32.680 Absolutely.

00:39:33.440 And you spend a lot of time in the United States.

00:39:35.920 I do.

00:39:36.600 And people are saying that the United States is ever more divided,

00:39:39.580 that the country is on its way out and blah, blah, blah.

00:39:42.660 How do you see this country, Douglas?

00:39:44.680 Well, it's obviously divided, wildly divided.

00:39:46.600 and you can't, unless you spend long periods of time here,

00:39:50.120 you can't write just how bad it is.

00:39:53.040 One thing I would make observation on that is,

00:39:56.440 in the time I've been coming here myself,

00:39:58.200 I've noticed that people used to talk about,

00:40:04.320 people who had the means to move around,

00:40:06.540 which is, of course, not everybody.

00:40:08.520 People who have the means to move around

00:40:10.440 used to talk about moving abroad.

00:40:13.960 If things go south in America,

00:40:16.600 You know, we'll go to New Zealand.

00:40:21.640 Or Malta.

00:40:23.160 It was a sort of dinner party conversation, if you like.

00:40:26.100 Canada was the other one. 0.72

00:40:27.300 Canada? Remember that?

00:40:29.000 I mean, none of these places have made themselves remotely appealing in the time since.

00:40:33.480 But I do notice that that has disappeared pretty much as a subject of conversation,

00:40:38.520 partly because of the way in which countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada dealt with lockdown and COVID

00:40:43.760 and showed extraordinary authoritarian tendencies,

00:40:46.840 which most people hadn't expected.

00:40:50.400 But it's also gone away because what's happening in America

00:40:54.680 is people are moving within the country.

00:40:57.860 You know, a lot of my friends from California have been moving to Texas,

00:41:01.720 particularly Austin.

00:41:03.400 My friends in New York have mainly left when I came here.

00:41:08.160 and they've moved to you know Houston and Miami and some of the wealthy ones moved to Palm Beach

00:41:16.640 or they've to West Palm Beach and you know Florida in general and some people see this

00:41:22.700 as a terrible sign an example of the further fracturing of the society you can see it that

00:41:29.000 way but you can also see it as an expression of trust nevertheless in the United States of America

00:41:35.300 Or to put it another way, the recognition that if America goes south, you don't buy yourself any time in Malta. 0.67

00:41:44.400 You know, if America goes south, you don't actually buy yourself any time in one of the countries that was effectively protected as a satellite part of the American era of dominance.

00:41:58.320 So I think there's a sort of recognition now of that.

00:42:00.880 If you don't save it here, it's not saved anywhere.

00:42:05.880 So you better make sure it works here.

00:42:08.940 And there are people from the crazy extremes of the left and the right in America,

00:42:13.840 most recently on the right from the lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene,

00:42:18.400 who's the sort of gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats,

00:42:21.920 who called for a split up of the country.

00:42:27.580 It's mad talk and frivolous talk, really.

00:42:30.640 But, yeah, it matters enormously that people in America should be able to get along.

00:42:36.680 And if they can't, you know, there are many other problems that come from that.

00:42:40.540 But I think that, and I've said a lot whilst I've been here,

00:42:44.320 that people say, so what one thing can you do to fix the growing divide?

00:42:49.520 And I always say, you know, just agree on one thing.

00:42:52.360 The one thing that happened.

00:42:54.460 Like, agree when you were founded, you know,

00:42:57.140 Or agree on, you know, the inviolability of the Constitution

00:43:01.980 or just agree on the fact the founding fathers were great men

00:43:05.940 or whatever you want.

00:43:07.800 Just like agree that it was a good thing that Abraham Lincoln was born.

00:43:12.980 You know, whatever you want.

00:43:14.080 Just like agree who won the last election.

00:43:18.380 That's a tougher one.

00:43:20.320 You know, just that would really help in America

00:43:23.680 because the problem, as I said quite often,

00:43:25.420 is that the problem is in America in particular

00:43:28.200 is not that people have different opinions,

00:43:29.460 but they have different facts.

00:43:31.040 And you find very fast in any interaction,

00:43:34.360 in public or private,

00:43:35.800 which facts the person you're speaking to has got.

00:43:39.220 And the moment you get into one of the ones they've got,

00:43:41.560 which is one that you regard as not being true,

00:43:44.660 you just get gnarled up.

00:43:47.760 And you very rarely can get anywhere after that.

00:43:50.660 And you either have to park it,

00:43:52.260 say, okay, let's just not do that now.

00:43:55.420 Or you have to go all in and, you know, kind of ruin the evening.

00:44:01.080 I'm a sort of past master.

00:44:04.600 You know what?

00:44:05.460 When you're talking about agreeing on something,

00:44:08.300 all the things you listed are important.

00:44:11.060 But I sort of feel it almost goes deeper than that,

00:44:13.200 which is, first and foremost, Americans and the West,

00:44:17.020 people in the Western countries generally,

00:44:18.960 have to agree that we want the West to survive

00:44:22.120 and we want it to prosper.

00:44:23.520 Yeah.

00:44:24.380 And there's quite a lot of people now who don't agree on that.

00:44:27.320 And I'm not just talking about the crazies on the left,

00:44:30.160 although that is primarily coming from them,

00:44:31.840 but your point about people saying we need a national divorce, all of that,

00:44:35.100 I mean, part of that is an idea, as you say, is crazy talk,

00:44:41.020 that would make sure that America doesn't survive and doesn't prosper. 0.96

00:44:46.260 Yeah, I mean, the problem is that everyone can only see the world

00:44:51.060 from the position they're standing in.

00:44:53.600 and there's a limited extent to which you can say to people,

00:45:00.700 you have no idea how good you've got it.

00:45:03.620 I mean, you've both spoken about this before, and we've spoken about it.

00:45:07.380 You can sort of tell people it's sort of hell over there,

00:45:10.660 or it's hell there before,

00:45:11.860 but people are just living in the lives they've found themselves in,

00:45:16.920 and if things aren't always going their way,

00:45:19.140 they will quite often reach for a grandiose overarching explanation for it.

00:45:27.300 I mean, the oddity, of course, is that they tend to reach back for explanations that have failed

00:45:32.660 every time they've been tried. You know, like, I remember after the financial crisis in 08,

00:45:37.140 there was a glut of pieces by ignoramuses saying things like, should we think about trying socialism?

00:45:44.020 Well, should we look at eating cyanide? 0.99

00:45:53.780 But that's only because these are ignorant people who think that there's a sort of binary, 0.90

00:45:58.260 which is like capitalism when it's gone wrong, like it did in 2008, and the only other alternative 0.78

00:46:06.900 to capitalism is state-run communism.

00:46:12.080 So again, I don't have much time for those people, and maybe we should sort of just ignore

00:46:18.960 them.

00:46:19.960 They just don't know what they're talking about. 1.00

00:46:23.100 You can't open your mouth and be that stupid, I think. 1.00

00:46:26.120 You shouldn't. 1.00

00:46:27.120 But this is what I'm getting at, though, is I think more broadly in society, the very

00:46:31.340 idea, you know, how often do you hear on TV or in the paper someone saying what you and

00:46:37.840 have both said often, which is the West is great and we want it to survive and thrive.

00:46:42.960 But that isn't something that people say and I feel like quite a lot of people don't actually

00:46:47.360 have that concept in mind because they're so busy on the internal fight, they don't recognize that

00:46:53.840 there are external fights in which we are weakening ourselves by fighting amongst each other.

00:46:59.520 Yeah, I think it's partly, it goes back to the point I was making about the modus vivendi.

00:47:04.400 people don't necessarily understand

00:47:08.480 the settlement that they're living in

00:47:10.920 and that this might all be part of it

00:47:15.180 or at least this is the only system that allows for that

00:47:17.620 free market capitalism is the only system anyone ever invented

00:47:23.540 that makes even its critics rich

00:47:25.360 as Mr Chomsky and others have found out

00:47:29.460 Michael Moore is another good example

00:47:33.500 but I think a lot of people don't understand

00:47:39.100 the mode in which the society is set

00:47:44.280 that allows for the self-criticism

00:47:45.940 that allows for the self-flagellation

00:47:47.860 that allows for the endless criticisms and critiques

00:47:52.180 and my view is that that's all actually a feature of our society

00:47:56.700 which is good

00:47:57.660 the self-criticism is a definite benefit in Western societies

00:48:01.700 It's good until it turns into self-laceration, self-loathing, and then self-destruction.

00:48:07.120 And it's not hard to see where those degradations occur.

00:48:11.840 But I think that, yes, a lot of people don't understand the setting they're in.

00:48:19.680 I mean, it's like the fish in water thing, you know.

00:48:21.840 They just don't realize that that's the water.

00:48:26.380 And the alternatives are all just being flung out into dry, parched land.

00:48:31.700 But maybe this stuff only comes up

00:48:37.280 because of sort of frustrations that people are feeling

00:48:39.660 and they grab for whatever there is

00:48:42.600 that they think is the only other alternative.

00:48:45.520 Unfortunately, everything nearby that they grab

00:48:47.560 is so much worse, as we all know.

00:48:50.360 And one of the things that seems to be a really contentious issue,

00:48:54.700 well, not really, it is a very contentious issue,

00:48:56.960 and we were talking about this last night,

00:48:59.020 something that I think could definitely help to split this country up is the issue of guns

00:49:04.680 if the democrats go after the right to bear arms they won't they won't good

00:49:12.540 there are so many guns in this country you can never take them away it just I just don't think

00:49:23.460 it'll happen well that was the nature of the discussion we're having I don't say good because

00:49:26.900 I'm a massive fan of guns I just know what would happen if they did and I hope

00:49:30.500 they're smart enough not to do that. People are, it's very funny, all

00:49:33.900 societies have things about them which people from the outside just sort of

00:49:38.180 can't understand. And I always say that like in America the two things that

00:49:41.720 outsiders tend not to understand, particularly if they're from Europe or

00:49:45.200 Britain, are abortion and guns. And like the thing that Americans don't understand

00:49:51.080 about Britain is like monarchy for instance. I was here when the Queen died

00:49:54.920 and it was very interesting that you know a number of news anchors and others said to me off

00:49:59.640 off screen as it were you know i admired her but i don't quite understand the the intensity of this

00:50:05.400 like what is it and i i found myself explaining to them well well the queen is is like the living

00:50:10.360 embodiment of the flag in america you know it's something like that and it was interesting they

00:50:15.560 sort of they they they got there but of course it's strange if you don't live in a country where

00:50:20.680 there's a family which inherits a throne and a crown and a scepter and an orb and and all this

00:50:27.720 it's sort of strange hard to understand from outside if you're from a constitutional republic

00:50:32.020 but every society's got stuff like that you know france is hard has oddities that are hard to

00:50:37.800 explain unless you're french and all societies like that and there's always a slight problem

00:50:42.420 when an outsider as it were comes in and says i don't like this thing it's it's it's an it's an

00:50:49.060 issue which in particular in America is a problem in the South because the South has unfinished 0.67

00:50:55.260 historical issues. I was touring around the Carolinas and Virginia and other places recently

00:51:02.520 and I saw much of this firsthand. There's a sort of feeling of bitterness that people from outside

00:51:09.340 are coming in and telling them what they can and cannot venerate. And that's, my own view is that

00:51:15.580 that's acceptable to make those criticisms of it

00:51:18.080 because it's people in the same country.

00:51:20.640 But when you have somebody come from, I don't know, Britain 1.00

00:51:23.700 and say, I'm appalled at seeing this statue of general.

00:51:27.120 You're not really appalled.

00:51:28.360 It has nothing to do with you.

00:51:30.740 That is the sort of thing that people mind.

00:51:32.840 But that's the same in every country.

00:51:35.340 But there is a tendency of people to come to America

00:51:37.700 and blow themselves up by saying,

00:51:40.700 I don't understand X about this society.

00:51:43.840 and the society says, sorry, we didn't lay it on for you.

00:51:48.680 When I campaigned against guns in America,

00:51:51.680 I was a British guy telling Americans how to lead their lives. 0.54

00:51:54.900 They have 420 million guns.

00:51:56.580 We have hardly any.

00:51:58.220 And so what do I really know about their gun culture?

00:52:01.180 The truth is I thought I knew better than them

00:52:02.820 and shouted at them louder and louder to try and get them to give up guns,

00:52:05.600 and they sold more and more guns because of my shouting.

00:52:08.180 They had the complete opposite effect to what I thought.

00:52:10.780 We'd been driven out with guns to get them independence in the first place.

00:52:15.780 Who's this snotty British guy with this British accent telling us what to do? 1.00

00:52:19.840 I don't want to hear this from this guy, and I definitely don't want to hear it from an accent. 1.00

00:52:22.960 It would be like an American coming over here and saying, I want to ban cricket,

00:52:25.720 because people get injured.

00:52:28.700 And what would we do? 0.94

00:52:29.580 We'd say, sod off, annoying American. 0.99

00:52:32.540 Go back to him. 0.97

00:52:33.260 That's what we would think, right?

00:52:34.240 So I broke that sort of cultural rule.

00:52:37.660 Douglas, we've got to let you go because you've got important things to do.

00:52:40.900 But thank you for coming back on the show.

00:52:42.740 Very quickly, before we head to our locals for the questions from our audience

00:52:46.440 that only they will get to see the answers to,

00:52:48.620 what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we're really sure?

00:52:51.580 Oh, I forgot you asked that question.

00:52:53.080 Oh, you did.

00:52:53.740 I forgot. I should have prepared some wise answer.

00:52:56.900 Seems to me we're talking about most things other than that thing I mentioned

00:52:59.680 at the very beginning, which is what we should actually be doing.

00:53:03.000 You know, I'd love us to get onto that.

00:53:05.260 I'd love ambition to come back.

00:53:07.180 Is that what your next book is about?

00:53:10.940 No, I'd love us to really focus.

00:53:16.920 That's the truth.

00:53:17.860 And work out how to unleash the real talent.

00:53:22.800 Not the way we talk about it at the moment,

00:53:25.240 of unleashing the talentless,

00:53:27.100 but unleashing real talent,

00:53:28.600 or at least not keeping it down.

00:53:33.420 Yeah, what would we be doing 0.99

00:53:34.900 if we weren't doing this crap, you know. 0.99

00:53:37.420 Broadly speaking, what I think. 0.97

00:53:39.420 Douglas Murray, thank you for coming back on Trigonology.

00:53:41.820 It's a great pleasure.

00:53:42.720 Join us on Locals, we will ask you bonus questions.

00:53:45.340 We'll see you there.

00:53:47.200 Given all the problems that afflict the West,

00:53:49.980 is it irresponsible to have children?

TRIGGERnometry - May 24, 2023

Douglas Murray Opens Up on America, AI and LGBTQ

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