“I Was Wrong”: Why the Civil War Is Running Late - Rudyard Lynch (WhatIfAltHist) 2026 Update

Ruard Lynch, welcome back to Dad Saves

America.

>> Hi, it's a pleasure to be here as

always.

>> It has been about a year and a half, I

think roughly since you were last here.

And you were all over the internet at

the time proclaiming the pending civil

war. Now, if you look on the news and

obsess about Minnesota, one could say

maybe you were a little early. But

what's your take? Did are we in a civil

war now? Was that prediction maybe a

little too hyperbolic? How have you uh

shifted in your thinking on this civil

the American Civil War uh circumstances?

>> I stand by my older prediction and I

think it's still going to happen. I'm

not going to give out a date soon

because I've been wrong the previous

time. Um, but all of the variables uh

that I said I still stand by because the

situation has not fundamentally changed.

Um,

>> let's recap those for those who haven't

seen the first. What was the original

thesis?

>> I had studied about four uh different

eras of history that have parallels to

ours. And so I compared them and I

looked at a variety of historic cycles

for when revolutions happen. And from

adding all of that together, I predicted

America would have a civil war

comparable to like the English Civil

War, the American Civil War, or the

French Revolution. A and the fall of the

Roman Republic to say the fourth one.

Um, and these are consistent threads we

see pop up again and again over history.

So, what what are some of those threads?

cuz I one of the things that since we

last saw each other that I've um spent

more time thinking about and reading

about is that is the French Revolution

and and to me it seems like we are

closer to a French Revolution type of

cultural problems

>> than say the the American Revolution

seems kind of almost an oddball. It's it

is almost not a revolution. It was more

like a a skirmish that preserved the

existing order. Whereas like the French

Revolution was like let's overturn

everything. Let's turn Notraam into the

Tower of reason or whatever.

>> Yeah.

>> Um

>> what what what do you do you do you

agree? Do you think that that's

>> more like where we're at?

>> A very important thing I've learned in

the last few years is that the ideology

of the French Revolution is the same

ideology or really religion of uh the

current crisis. And I've just discovered

one of my favorite new historians who's

a Catholic historian named Chris Dawson.

And so he rewrites all of world history

through the lens of sort of Catholic

apologia, but he's very good about it

where he puts it in the Catholic frame,

but he's not propagandistic about it.

And so he has a book called the gods of

the revolution looking at these

different ideologies from the

enlightenment forward. And so he says

that the French Revolution was a sort

and davville says this too. It was sort

of new religion that had specific

precepts. And a lot of people like to

blame the leftism on the Jews, but when

you go back to the first generation of

thinkers, they were by and large

Frenchmen

>> in the 18th century. And so St. Simone

is a great example. He was a thinker who

said um in 18th century France, we need

to get rid of sort of normal human

things like masculine and feminine or

ethnicity or social class and replace

them with a new man. He talks about

ideas that sound very similar to trans.

He said or his buddies and his so sort

of social cohort said we need to import

migrants from the third world to destroy

the first world in the early 19th

century. Um, and they talked about

making a new priesthood of the science

and priesthood of rationality where they

have scientific materialist rituals. And

so if you were to go back to the French

Revolution, it's an ideology that in

many ways is very similar to the current

one. It's just they keep on rehashing it

as new.

>> Okay, I'll keep this quick. Be sure to

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So, please subscribe to the channel. It

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watching. Now, back to the show.

I It's funny cuz I just came across his

name for the first time cuz I was trying

to understand like how far back does the

idea of global government go?

>> Yeah.

>> And I asked I think I asked like Gemini

or something, you know? Yeah, I I spawn

all the all the robots to do do research

and then compare their outputs and then

try to verify that they're not making

stuff up. And he came up as one of the

earliest globalists and then I think he

had his name is escaping me now. Is it

Compe? I forget. But he had a disciple

that is considered the father of

sociology. Are you familiar with this

guy? He was similar. There's multiple

people who are called the father of

sociology. Durkheim, Max Vber, um

there was a probably French guys.

>> Yeah. But he he he was also similarly

like a kind of global utopian blank

slate jackaben kind of guy.

>> Yeah.

>> Um

you mentioned that there's this there's

a notion that leftism comes from the

Jews. What is that? because I I um

obviously we're not going to go into

some rabbit hole about all of the

factionalism on the right, but I have

found as somebody who's very

I like Judaism. I have close Jewish

friends. I came out of New York and

entertainment, so that's kind of part

for the course in a certain sense. But I

find the kind of like blame the Jews for

everything stuff that's going on right

now to be pretty scary. What's your

understanding of that narrative? Like

>> I agree. I've come to see anti-semitism

more as like a biological switch where

it it fills a very primal archetypal

function inside the human mind that it

once the switch gets hit um basically

people suspend rationality. And

that doesn't say if you want to push

back there every evolutionary switch

involves growing up in a certain context

where certain things are justified and

other things are not justified. I don't

want to look at that angle for it. But

it's clear that this takes a very deep

part of people's psyche. And the thing

that I I I was just writing about um the

political shifts of the last few years

because I was trying to rewrite what was

it like for me to perceive how the

internet's changed in the time since

Elon bought Twitter.

>> Mh.

>> And uh the thing that really struck out

to me as I was writing and I I had to

add an extra chapter in because I

thought, oh, I'll just talk about the

the Israel Gaza conflict as a side

theater. And I thought, wait, this was

the dominant political current of a

two-year period, and I had never

processed it because I I largely do not

care about this conflict. It it's uh

entirety of Israel is the size of New

Jersey and Gaza is the size of Cape May

and Gaza is smaller than Chester County

and by a significant margin.

>> These are these are shared these are

shared collar county, Philadelphia roots

that you understand. And I, you know, I

understand.

>> Yes. And uh and so I'm I'm Celtic and I

know how honor disputes work. And this

is so clearly to me a sort of like

hereditary honor dispute like North and

South Ireland. And no one looks at North

and South Ireland and thinks, "Oh, what

if we just dropped UN peacekeepers to

stop this 400-year-old blood feud?" That

would just be seen as staggeringly

delusional. But also I can look at the

Israel war conflict and think none of

the people involved are my kin. This is

a different continent. I am not part of

this honor dispute and I am grateful for

that. And then I see everyone else hop

along to this this sort of like clan

honor dispute depict like the morally

right and wrong faction. I thought

that's not what this is about. The

people in the Middle East do not share

this frame with you. Um, but it really

struck me that the the Israel Gaza

conflict, it was basically used to

invalidate sort of public figures where

everyone was had their position. Are you

for or against it? And it it's crazy

that it was used to sort of divide up

the public. And furthermore, we wasted 2

years of what could have been valuable

discourse on this. We could have talked

about the demographic issues or the

economic issues about the mental health

crisis, China, and yet we chose to talk

about a country the size of New Jersey

and it's war in an area the size of Cape

May.

>> Well, and it's I know it's always a

little bit like there's multiple

conversations going on, although frankly

the all the issues you talked about

don't get enough airtime or

consideration to be so I think you're

right in principle. Um,

it is also strange and seems almost on

purpose that you have sort of Trump come

in and be reelected with a lot of energy

behind him and what should be

functionally like a unified American

right behind this in an interesting way

and then this issue which had been sort

of festering on the like omni ideology

intersectional the left where it's like,

"Oh, well, the Jews are rich, therefore

they're oppressors, and now we can just

all be whatever they're whatever that

blob sticky

sticky thing they have that attaches

everything to everything else."

It

it's it comes back on the right now in

the past year in particular

and just creates even more splintering.

So, how do you understand why that is?

Not not again again like the particular

players Candace, Fuentes are kind of

less interesting. That's all they're all

varying flavors of shock jock.

>> Yeah.

>> So, the fact that we have spent so much

time in like serious political

environments talking about them is kind

of goofy. It's like obsessing about

Howard Stern in the '9s when considering

whether NAFTA should be passed. It's

like, yeah, but but like it does seem

deeper. How do you how do you think

about that? That's a that's a good point

or a good question and I'll say two

things. The first is I think this is a

way to avoid responsibility or

seriousness. I think the public is

actively picking issues where they won't

have to look at their own problems. And

I think Israel is a useful psychological

projection because it's sort of so

religiously and culturally loaded, but

it's also totally away from any of our

issues. So everyone can point at it and

say this is what we care about. And that

can allow them to abdicate

responsibility over their own country

and their own lives. And we're we I have

said before that the core of leftism is

the abdication of responsibility. And

because the left has controlled all of

our institutions of basically teaching

people and cultivating them, you end up

with this hyperleist victim narrative

that spills into the right. And this is

one of the things I really hate about I

I I've been thinking a lot about the

different parts of the right and um the

the two elements I think are really

holding the right back now are the

boomers and the sort of uh like

degenerate online zoomers. Um and I

think these two demographics are bad in

different ways. the boomers are sort of

complacent and willing to see their

society die if it if they can still take

in the six figure check. Um, and

they're blinds to the issues. Well, the

degenerate Zoomercons,

uh, they just try to attack anyone who

actually tries to solve the problems.

They focus on silly things and the only

thing they really care about is the most

petty and stupid status games.

hanging out with looks maxers, etc.

>> Yeah, I was I was talking with my dad.

What would my What would my I was

saying, what would my great grandpa who

grew up in the Irish ghetto think about

looks maxing if he heard about it? He

ser he he he guarded German PS in World

War I. If you talked to this guy about

looks maxing,

what would his reaction be?

>> Let's think about that for a second. Did

you play it out? What do you think it

would be? So I talked to my dad and we

inherited two cudgels from this guy

because he was a policeman until he

passed on two giant cudles.

>> The literal cudles.

>> Yes.

>> Not not not the not cudgel as a kind of

use like like a rhetorical term.

>> No, because he was a policeman. So he he

he kept cudgil in the house and he

didn't have a challe though. Um which is

a failure for an Irish family. Um, but

uh he he had he had a policeman's Billy

Cub club club and then he had his own

personal billy like club. Um, so he

could beat you up in your free time and

uh his work time. Um, and uh, no school

like the old school.

>> My my dad just listed expletives as his

as his response.

>> Sounds about right. That's, you know,

well, we we both have um our our our our

heritages are both sort of filled with

expletives. Mine being southern Italy

and yours being Irish. So, it's like

we're both like the people that came to

America or our great-grandparents

were treated terribly, eventually found

a place and never lost a potty mouth.

>> Yeah.

>> Even in polite company. Um well so

there's there in a way you know it seems

like there are kind of many civil wars

happening in our culture and our

discourse

but but how does that

to come back to my original question

about like where are we in your original

thesis of a bigger civil war like a real

one

is that part of what's feeding this h

how how what what's your Why do you

think it's still happening but hasn't

yet happened yet? And h have you updated

the way you think this would happen

actually? Is it like states versus the

federal government like we're seeing in

Minnesota? That seems like the hints of

something plausible and not great.

In my earlier predictions, I had divided

this between

the two different crises of the mouse

utopia biological

crisis versus the political crisis of

the civil war. And I had spoken of an

event called the psychological black

death. And so it's similar to the crisis

of the 14th century where you had the

hundred years war, the gs and the

jiblines and uh the battle of Nikopoulos

u where you have the these countries

having civil wars and political crisis

but the black death is a facilitating

factor.

>> Is this the it pardon my bad history is

this the war that ends with the treaty

of Westfailia?

>> That's the 30 years war. Okay. The

hundred years war was the one that ended

with Jonavar. Ah, okay. Um, and so the

facilitating factor for the crisis of

the 14th century

is the black death, which was a disease

that killed half of Europe's population.

And so for me, I was always torn between

does mouse utopia hit first or does the

political crisis hit first? And my

assumption was always that the political

crisis would hit first because I did not

think that this sort of level of denial

was possible. And I've been studying

Nichze's age of the last men lately. And

that's been the the key variable that

sort of had this a lot of this locked

into my mind. But um

I think we're basically seeing

internetbased psychological degeneration

and atomization hit as the first layer

and that's delaying political crisis.

The underlying political issues are

still there. I think sort of mouse

utopia is delaying this though. So,

mousetopia being this sort of um

confined

bizarre psychopathology that happens

when with in mice when you put them all

together and they breed like crazy,

right?

>> Yeah.

>> Uh

>> why would that be what does that mean

though? What what does that mean? What

does that mean that mouse Utopia is

delaying? Are we just getting caught up

in nonsense like looks maxing and stupid

weekly news cycles and not looking at

stuff like the population collapse or

the fiscal the fiscal death situation or

what?

>> I want to state this for your the people

in your audience who don't follow my

work. But I I say I'm betting against

God. That's one of the phrases I use.

And what I mean by that is I think

foretelling the future is an impossibly

difficult task. So I operate in a place

where I'll make a probabilistic guess

and then each year I factor in new

information into my assessment and then

I rebuild my worldview. So I see I see

the way I view the world as a sort of

organic garden that I'll see the plants

grow and then I'll drop some extra

fertilizer. I'll cut out this plant if

it's not growing right. So when I'm

saying these things, I'm forming an idea

that I can later work on. And most

people sort of put out an idea say this

is my identity. It's going to be

correct. But I don't think that's

actually like a fair or a reasonable

sort of metric to use as a person

because if you if you want to guess the

future, you're betting against all of

God's creation and there's always more

variables going on. Um, so the reason

I'm saying that is three variables

showed up that I didn't really account

for. And there the best paradigm that

explains all of this is NZ's concept of

the age of the last men. You can ask me

about that if you'd like. Yeah. But

those three variables are screen

addiction, socialism, and mass utopia.

And so those are the three variables

that I think are delaying a political

crisis because it's not like things are

getting better. They are in fact getting

worse. But people don't have the mental

framework on how to deal with it.

They're sort of lost. And I think we're

in a state of psychological limbo now.

So let's take each of those three um in

reverse order. So let's start with mouse

utopia. Give the brief recap of what the

mouse utopia experiment is and its

application to the present.

>> Mouse utopia was a series of studies in

the 60s and 70s that was meant to assess

the effects of overpopulation because

the world's population had tripled in

the last century and maybe probably even

more than that. Um, but what happens

when you give mice perfect conditions

with no external threats, perfect

climate, no disease, is the mice breed

like crazy. So you start with nine, you

end up with 2,000 mice in a cage that

could potentially hold over 6,000. What

then occurs is a supercharged version of

decadence

>> or imperial declines. So without an

incentive, the mice stop being able to

form relationships. They have a what

Calhoun calls the first death or a

spiritual death where they lose their

internal monologue. Then the mouse

social structure falls apart. Male mice

become hyper mas hyper feminine. Female

mice become hyper masculine. Um there's

sort of K-pop style beautiful ones of

people who are just obsessed with their

looks looks maxing in fact. Um and mice

lose the ability to maintain

relationships where they their society

falls apart. Some mice become autistic,

other mice become hyperviolent. Um, a

and just every single time the birth

rate crashes to zero and the mouse

colony totally fails.

>> So,

yeah, there's all kinds of sync with

what we've seen in our in our social

order there, right? The the the the

feminized men is particularly weird.

What's the theory behind that? Why is it

just that the like the male drive to be

ver like

viral doesn't have an outlet and so it's

like a an an adaption to the new

circumstances of comfort like what have

you you've spent a lot of time on this

looking at this mouse utopia experiments

what's the causal reason for like

suddenly

you know like in Japan like young young

men are sometimes buying bras and

they're not even saying I'm a girl. It's

just weirdo stuff. Totally weird.

Like for the mice though, what's the

reason for the mice?

>> I'm thinking it through. Um so first of

all, there's a removal of

there's a removal of external threats.

And then secondly, in mating rituals,

purposeful inefficiency is good. Which

is why guys buy expensive cars or

watches. Um

>> conspicious consumption.

>> Yes. just like look at me, I'm a high

status. I have all this stuff I don't

need.

>> And so certain meeting rituals devolve

into highly into purposely ineffective

antisocial behaviors as a flex. Um, no,

I'm completely serious. And so

>> it makes sense

>> when you end up in a dynamic like that

with also crowd psychology that crowds

take on sort of lower level

psychological attributes and then

magnify them. So when you're combining

no external threats with doing the

opposite of something being attractive

and then crowd psychology is that for

people without a lot of independence,

they sort of get stuck in these

psychological crowd games where they're

confusing sort of a crowd something that

signals well to the crowd with actual

behaviors. A lot of the left was a scop

made by communists, which sounds like a

conservative conspiracy theory, but this

has been studied and completely

bookended. But these things that started

out as communist political strategies

are now people's unironic beliefs. You

>> mean like queer theory?

>> Yeah, exactly. That started out as a

cynical move by the Marxists to destroy

the society and the family. And now

plenty of like teenaged uh young women

actually believe this as their real

identity. I think of it like uh we just

finished the second season of Land Man

and there's this great scene in it where

the the beautiful like daughter goes to

the university and she meets her

roommate and her roommate is like a copy

and paste like Tumblr blue sky avatar

like they them with a ferret androgynous

you know and like as the plot

progresses, you see, they actually kind

of end up becoming friends. But but like

the the the snapshot of that the like

where and like and the book end of like

where are you from like Minneapolis is

so perfect. Um

so that's all like adopting somebody

else's SCOP as an identity for yourself.

>> Yeah. And it's it's really remarkable

and uh I've been studying crowd

psychology a lot. It follows its own

logic. Um but it's really common that

sort of a scop becomes a reality and

our worldview is often Marxist

propaganda where the Marxists made a

certain propaganda and they were quite

open about this. You can look at the

Soviet uh the Soviets talked about all

of this. It was released either by

defectors like Yori Basminov or after

the fall of the Soviet Union. The

Soviets had this done to a science. But

then the quote people who the Marxists

called useful idiots, they actually

believed it and then started

implementing it across the society. And

>> American academics in the 60s basically

>> and and the death of God

um the death of God removed any sort of

immunity inside our collective

unconscious where once you remove the

divine framework, people can't actually

discern the world. I've been coming more

and more to think that religion is a

biological organic part of humans minds

and so removing it basically removes the

structure for discernment.

the So, you've got this mouse utopia

dynamic, this sort of um

population,

comfort,

new forms of status seeking that are

sort of bizarre biologically but serve

some social purpose but then become in

this mass feedback loop.

>> Yes. And then we've shifted now into the

sort of the socialism in a sense which

is okay then you have these sort of

parasitic ideologies.

Why is socialism communism? I just say

communism because I frankly think that

the whole use of socialism is a joke and

also a scop.

>> Yeah,

>> it's all just communism. It's all just a

single sort of fundamentally like

materialist theology

that tries to say it's about equality

but it's always just about power.

>> Yeah.

>> Um is that how you think about it? And

like what what is the so how why is

socialism one of your three key uh

pillars of this like the problems we're

facing now? This is why I find

Nichzche's age of the last men so useful

because NZ was writing in the 1880s and

he predicted he said no one will

actually understand my philosophy till

the year 2000 and the reason he said is

that at the in the 21st century he said

after two centuries would be a period he

called the age of the last men and the

age of the last men would be a society

that would glorify mediocrity

complacence and the west would be dying

of nihilism And he said during the age

of the last men it would be so sort of

sterile and comfortoriented that you

wouldn't be able to cultivate healthy

human life and the society would be

based off what he called resenti or envy

where he said the age of the last man is

a combination of

a lot of wealth and comfort and then in

the absence of the death of god there's

no way to justify suffering or exertion

and what fills the void is sort of

envy-based socialism. um where the aim

of the society is sort of cutting people

down as this sort of mutual envy her

dynamic and the final so it's um death

of God removes moral framework you see

the rise of sort of socialism and um

conformist ideologies that fill the void

and then you have the wealth and the

comfort and so Nietz said the age of the

last men would be the most dangerous era

of western history ever where the west

would be committing suicide due to

nihilism. But he says it ultimately is

defeated.

>> What

is your understanding of what nihilism

is? Like what define nihilism for me

because I I I it's worth revisiting

these basic definitions.

>> There's a a wonderful book called

nihilism by uh father Sarapim Rose who

is an orthodox theologian. And so he

goes through how nihilism is imprinted

across all of modern society. And you

would understand this better because

you're Catholic, but so imagine in a

sort of a a religious worldview,

the coming from God is sort of if you

submit to God, then it generates new

things around you. And so there's this

idea that life matters. And because of

this core belief that life matters, if I

do an act, it sort of generates more for

the world. And so it's it's it it's uh

it's a sort of um emergent order, as you

might say. Um that once you follow these

principles, you can trust in the

emergent order. Nihilism is the inverse

of that. Nihilism is that because things

at their core don't matter, my actions

don't matter and thus I should not. It's

a variety of things. I should not be

held accountable for the choices I make.

Um, no one's better than anyone else.

And so if you sort of go through

everyone's logic chain, if the end of

the logic chain is I can do this because

nothing matters, it's nihilism. And what

father Sarapim Rose did so well is he

articulates different social

institutions where for art as an example

um we make bad art because we don't

genuinely value art's potential for a

Christian or other world societies art

is partly a reflection of God's

creation. And so through through God

perceiving art, it creates an value for

the art that uh that basically you are

making something innately worthwhile

that other people will look at and

derive value. But if you're nihilistic,

the art is supposed to be gross and

weird to reflect that.

>> So So you so that's the the specs for

the median Netflix TV show.

>> Yeah.

It doesn't need to be good. It can just

be slop. Do a bunch of DEI checkbox

stuff. Make your favorite former

character like black and gay uh

checkbox. Move on. Uh

>> it's not art. There's no art part of it

except maybe occasionally the framing is

pretty and the lighting looks nice.

>> And one of the things Nietze said that

was quite precient and I am not a

nichian. I don't even really like Nichze

that much as a philosopher if I'm

honest. I think he just got several

things quite correct. Um and

uh so

he called the left anti-life and that's

a very precient thing to say in the 19th

century.

>> Yeah, that's interesting.

>> And he said that during the age of the

last men, the left will metastasize

from like supposedly caring about

minorities and women and whatever to

just being raw anti-nihilism, anti-life.

And I think we crossed that threshold

where CO was the last point the left

pretended to care about the groups

they're helping. I I I I have a term

called um like the John Oliver SNL

America. This tin this like relatively

small window when the current ideology

of liberal we're still the dominant

voice of America. And it's disturbing to

see that demographic of people devolve

from pretending to care about whatever

groups they're saying to in reality just

supporting the Iron Boot. Because

whenever you look at leftist messaging

today, it's basically accept iron boot,

you will be poor, don't have kids.

>> Yes. Oh, and kill your babies.

>> Yeah. In fact, that should be like a

right of passage that you as a woman

kill your baby. Kill a couple babies and

then you can really say you're a woman.

I've heard I've had I have a friend

who's a lawyer. um she now runs her own

firm and she said that it was so

prevalent among female lawyers

to have had an abortion that because she

was she's Catholic and because she was

against that and actually had kids she

was it was quite literally told to her

like you're not part of the sisterhood.

I mean it's so anothetical to the entire

premise of like an organism to be

actually in favor of ending your

population. It's like the most inorganic

>> Yeah.

>> thing imaginable. It's like what do all

life forms want to do? Right down to

deer and insects.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. It's uh and NZ said that the age

of the last men would become a capstone

for the future of what to avoid but not

for the reasons people think. What he so

na said that there'd be mass tyrannies

at with the death of God. He said this

would be a phase but then after that

phase would the nihilism would creep in

and he said what was insidious at the

age of the last men is sort of how

passively evil it is. It's I have a

difference between passive evil and

active evil. Active evil is burning

villages down and uh just murdering

people. Passive evil is enabling and

it's not doing things when things needed

to be done. And he said the age of the

last men had become a capstone for

basically the evil of decadence. it

would be the the most personified ver it

would be like the perfect version of

evil decadence. And he said that was

something we needed to sort of have in

our mental toolkit to avoid but we

didn't have. So he said the age of the

last men would be us being forced to

learn the lesson of basically that

passive evil is just as evil as active

evil.

One of the things because so the

description this Nietian description is

very frightening in how preient it is.

>> Yeah. But one question I have is when

when did this age start from your

perspective? Because you know when you

read um when you read uh the uh man's

search for meaning by Victor Frankl

which is just I think such a important

it's like a cornerstone book for me in

my current phase of my life.

He talks about

for those who haven't read this book,

it's Victor Frankle. He's a

psychologist. He had been through the

Holocaust. He documents the experience

in this really like almost the

documentary kind of way. And then the

back half is trying to grapple with why

did some people survive and protect

their identity and their psychology and

others just give in. And it's quite

powerful. A lot of good stuff for today.

One of the things he notes that just

struck me is the like is the nihilism of

youth in the 1950s.

>> Yeah. Because of the comfort and like he

sounds like he's describing 2026, but

it's he's describing the the nihilism

and the and the and the lost boysess

of the 1950s. Yeah.

>> So, when did the age of the last men

start? Is it in the 21st century or is

it much earlier than that? I've been

thinking about that because I've been

wanting to make a history 102 video,

which is my second podcast. Um, I'd

recommend it above my first actually.

Um,

because I made a podcast in the 1950s

and the thesis I had is you can't really

perceive the 1950s as a conservative

decade. It was progressive

compared to everything before. And if

you actually go back, this is a this is

a society with uh socialism, a 90 plus a

90% tax rate. It's got feminism. It's

overwhelmingly people sort of went to

church, but there was no actual sort of

like spiritual belief underlying it. Um

and

>> cut flower society.

>> Yeah. Very well put. Um and

it's a gradual thing. I've developed a

term called plastopia. And Plastopia is

sort of the plastic utopia we thought we

had in the postw World War II era. Um,

and then

so

>> it's kind of like The Graduate. Did you

see that movie, The Graduate?

>> Oh, sort of classic 1970s Dustin Hoffman

at the uh it's it's like loaded with

this sort of 60s critique of American

culture. And one of them is one of the

moments is he's uh you know he's he's

graduated from basically the thing is

he's graduated from school and what's he

going to do and life feels meaningless

and he's he's like in a bourgeoa family

and he's at if I remember this correctly

it's been a while he's at like a uh like

a dinner party or something and he meets

like one of his father's friends and

he's like son you should get into

plastics and it's meant to be I think a

metaphor that the whole society is

basically just plastic.

>> Yeah. Um, and so the thing with the age

of the last men is you have I want to

make a video in the future. Line go up,

line go down. 20th century is line go

up. We are entering line go down.

>> You mean materially?

>> Um,

>> or just in along a lot of dimensions

>> dem demographically, materially,

uh, socially, um,

>> psychologically.

>> Yeah. And so the turn from line go up to

line go down is scary, but it's

ultimately just a moment in time. So if

we accept that this is just a moment of

time, we can maintain sanity and not

take it too seriously. Um, but the so

the start of the age of the last men is

World War I and a lot of this stuff is

sort of trauma reaction to World War I

where everything because people talk

about the Holocaust in World War II. I

think that's genuinely valid as a sort

of we are reacting against that. I think

what we're reacting against even more is

World War I where you saw these sort of

uh traditional heroic masculine

monarchies fight this epic sort of Lord

of the Ringsesque conflict over these

old European countries, but it was done

in the most horrifying ways possible

with trenches that looked like Mordor uh

gaze at the psalm with trench feet. And

so when you're looking at everything our

society is built about, it's sort of we

want to reject everything that went into

World War I. And so we've been trying to

reject their concepts of heroism or

colonialism or earnestness or the idea

that science can genuinely model the

human condition. And so we've doubled

down on a lot of unhealthy traits due to

that. But where where I think the age of

the last men really set in was the '60s

with the removal of all the standards

and the time it flipped from sort of

line go up to line go down is 2008

>> where because it's it's a so line go up

line go down

>> is like a singular process but at the

same time um

it's two because you have when you look

at sort of the the society that led to

the current mouse utopia, it has a lot

of the same traits, but it was perceived

in a very different light because it was

seen as part of the prosperity. So, it's

the same process. It just looks very

different from different sides of the

mountain because once you get to the top

of the mountain, you see the way down.

It totally changes the ascent if that

makes sense.

Is it uh you know it's it's funny for

you to bring up World War I because it

is this it is

>> I come back to that period quite a bit

because for for a bunch of reasons that

are sort of just my own nerd path.

>> Yeah. Woodro Wilson and and and in 1913

and this sort of like and I've been

reading more and more about this

revisiting his um his like notion of

scientific administration and I I I feel

like he is the first full instantiation

of that French jackabin

ideology like the oh we have the science

now

most of the public are actually rubes so

what we really need to do with the help

of my buddy Walter Litman and then

Edward Bernay is manage people's

perception of reality so that their

choice set is narrow because they're

basically wild animals and imbeciles. So

democracy in any form is sort of a joke.

We just need to manage the public. We

need to have a global government

structure. So he creates the League of

Nations in the aftermath of World War I.

And so it seems like that like World War

I is like the crisis opportunity for

the kind of technocratic global WF elite

to give be birthed by by that group by

Wilson Lipman,

George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, this that

whole group sort of says like this is

our time to use science, trust the

science, including eugenics which we all

really like and like That's That's kind

of So I've been Is that part of that? Is

that Is that in Is that Is that part of

your model of what happened in that

moment?

>> Yeah. No, you totally nailed that. You

You did a great job explaining it. That

That's what I would have said. It it's

that generation and it's uh it's Wilson

Bernay's in progressivism meant a

different thing back then is it it means

the same thing but different. And I'm

guessing you're getting the argument

from Soul

>> and a bunch of sources. But sure. Yeah,

for sure.

>> Soul talks about that really well.

>> Yeah. the unconstrained vision of man,

the sort of straighten the crooked

arrow.

>> Yeah. He also he he's written about um

progressive World War I era progressives

a lot too. Um but Edward Bernay is a

he's a sort of interesting figure and

there's a great documentary Century of

the South.

>> I've just been watching this actually.

>> It's one of the best documentaries of

the last few decades. I think

>> it's um uh Michael Shelonburgger

recommended it to me. I'm like I'm I'm

like into episode three so far cuz it's

it's older and long and I you know but

um Yeah. So so it's al Yeah. So it's

also Freud. So you've got this Freud

stuff that's all and he he becomes

completely despondent about about

mankind and so so you know bring us

back. So you've got this this Age of the

Last Man starts with like the whole

vision of the world being smashed by

World War I. Yes. What? And and then

World War II is basically just a kind of

echo continuation of World War I really.

It's like sort of the we call it like

the inter war period between the two. Um

yeah, that that's correct. Uh there

there are sort of different um James Bum

says World War I is the last war of the

capitalist order and World War II is the

first war of the managerial order. And

you can see that with the regimes that

went into World War I were by and large

aristocratic uh parliamentary

monarchies. They were the kind of

society you could have seen in the

Middle Ages. Um and that order ended

with World War I bringing in the

managerial society,

>> the collapse of the Hapsburgs.

>> And I've been looking a lot uh at sort

of mass society. Um, mass society is the

idea that you have media and national

institutions where across the country

everyone listens to Dolly Parton or the

Beatles. They have the same bureaucratic

structure. And so mass society is how do

you make social institutions for as many

people as possible that once you do that

you establish weird incentives where

if you enable the most people as

possible then you hit lowest common

denominator as the shared value. Um and

so World War I smashed that open and you

also had to convince these populations

to die for their countries. And so it

created incentives for sort of social

handlers to first of all radically

manipulate people and tell them things

they want to hear. And so that

generation of social engineers around

the world wars

>> built a pretty inhuman society. And that

was something they built through the

education system, the architecture, the

intellectuals where in our society

something is only registered as real if

the system recognizes that it's real and

if the system benefits from it. And so

>> what do you mean by the system?

>> The bureaucratic structure. So truth is

organ truth is orchestrated by the

bureaucratic structure in our society.

If the bureaucratic machine says

something it's is true then it's true.

Um

>> the New York Times in the deep state

like what what do we mean by the

bureaucratic structure?

>> So trans is the best example of this

same thing as climate change for trans

the the current managerial priest class

said that men and women are the same and

they can remake reality. Trans people

are real people. So they're bludgeoning

you over with common. So,

I find people defer to AIS on the

internet a lot. It's weird where they'll

just say like Grock, is this true? Um,

Claude, is this true? ChatGBT, is this

true? Because they sort of see it as a

machine god. If you had actual

rationality, you would be assessing the

point you're given through these

rationalistic frameworks that Aristotle

or Francis Bacon developed. But you're

just listening to the machine god

because that's how they already think.

The system supplies them the truth. I

will not analyze this myself through

common sense and reason. I will listen

to the output the system gives us. And

that's how you get people to believe the

utter absurdities where the idea for

example killing the rich will make us

wealthier is so staggeringly insane if

you look at common sense because who do

you think generates the innovations? who

do you think are the people who were

running the companies where um if you

want to get a nicer iPhone then it's not

going to be small entrepreneurs who do

that it's the pre it's going to be the

wealthy uh and so when you believe these

strange disjoints where as an example if

you're from a city like Philadelphia the

idea that all cultures are the same is

insane because I say Philly is four

different subcultures you have uh

northeastern Catholics southern blacks

um Midwestern Protestants and then sort

of northeastern wasps. And these are all

people you will deal with in different

ways. But then you can just shove the

idea all cultures are the same. And they

can believe that because the system

tells them to believe it because from

the systems perspective, all cultures

are in fact the same because they're

equally exploitable.

the um one of the things that I I I

worry about and I think feeds into the

nihilism you're talking about is the use

of this term the system. So, I want to

linger on this for a little bit because

I know you think about this stuff in a

deep way, but a lot of people on the

internet, basically every populist in

one form or another, some of which I'll

agree with more than others, will say

that we have a thing called we have a we

have there's a the system.

And and I guess what I'm gonna I want to

push on and see how you react to is

the way I think about a system

just like kind of technically is it's

actually got cause and effect mechanisms

in it that are essentially reproducible.

Like oh a system when you push this

button here this light goes on over

here. Like like the electric grid is an

actual system. It's all connected. It's

got to run at 60 Hz. It's a system. But

when you have sort of this like the

society even you have something that

we'll say is the system but it's not

really a system in the same way or maybe

it is and so I want to hear right cuz

it's not

>> it's like okay

>> it seems like it's more almost more

Marxist it's like a more

>> there's there's like a class culture

divide like you have a kind of people

that go through a certain kind of

education and come up together through

Yale and Harvard and UPEN and Philly and

they all have this same

way and so they their view is very

particular and they end up there's this

like dirty dozen of schools that end up

occupying like half of all managerial

jobs.

>> So that's not the same thing as like the

electric grid but it maybe is close

enough. So but that's still not the same

thing as like this is where I get a

little worried when I hear even my

friends say like we need to burn the

system down or smash the system. I'm

like

can you be a little more specific? I I

think that's a very valid point because

I am talking about something very

different from the Marxists. I am

pulling this from virtual de Juvenile um

who is a libertarian philosopher from

France a century ago. And he divides

society between the society and power.

And so power is an established

organization where you send out orders

where the government is power, a

corporate bureaucracy is power and then

the society is the organic self-organism

that it's the it's are you emergent

order or are you bureaucratic? And so

preodern political philosophy was all

about how do we increase the power of

the society versus the power of sort of

bureaucrac bureaucracy because

bureaucracies become sort of cultural

dead matter. They're not responsive to

their environments. Yeah.

>> And so when you're looking at Aristotle

say that a society's natural elites

should govern it. What he means by it by

that is that when you have the social

organism,

people will naturally rise to the top

and be widely respected as competent or

skilled rather than being chosen by a

hierarchical bureaucracy. And this has

occupied the minds of philosophers for

thousands of years. So I'm just dipping

my toes in. But when I'm talking about

the system, I'm talking about

bureaucratic structures that operate

under hierarchical rules. and um sort of

pre-established systems that trouts

organic emergent order.

>> One way I think

>> I'm going to add something else as well.

>> Where when Marxists talk about

capitalism being a system, they're doing

psychological projection where

capitalism is an organic phenomena

attached to its environment. And as a

rule, the more your society's social

structure reflects nature or reality,

the better it will do. And so the reason

capitalism and democracy and science

work so well is they have these checking

mechanisms of does this social structure

replicate nature? And what Marxism does

is it tries to crush nature and control

every element of it. So

when you're looking part of the reason

that figures like Donald Trump or Elon

Musk garner respect from the American

public and can lead on the right while

the left can't do that is because these

people have actually gone out into the

world and built reputations and status

through dealing with the real world. And

we can't respect the people who were

rewarded according to the systems logic

because the system operates under rules

that are removed from reality. So the

left will look at their own people and

say that in our own priest structure,

this is like a level 12 battle mage and

so we should give them status. But then

>> you're talking about Hillary Clinton.

>> Yes. Hillary Clinton is a level 12

battle mage.

>> Yeah. But I mean the real odd one is

it's like that's that that model of

selection found its perfect what was it

like HL Mein said like eventually

democracy will be some will be so

perfected that the president will be a

complete [ __ ] I'm paraphrasing but Kla

Harris is the is the final is the final

boss in hierarchy that is based on

nothing nothing that could be considered

measurable merit.

>> Yeah. I I've considered uh if I had

extra money or whatever, I've considered

doing a media stunt of finding the

singular most oppressed person on earth

in the left's framework and interviewing

them, the the Muslim, bipok,

trans, queer, disabled, autistic person

and see what their actual opinions are.

Um

>> the these often don't don't go as

expected.

>> Yeah. And it's interesting to see, this

is a tangent, but it's a valuable one.

how often the left's psychological

projections of certain groups are not

accurate. They have a sort of very

distinct psychology from what the left

says. Left's image of black people is

not what actual black people are about.

They almost always pick a highly

assimilated sort of educated class of

black people. But then if you if you

look at black communities like Atlanta

or Philadelphia or uh uh St.

It's nothing like the left's portrayal

of black people. The the left has uh

because they have concerns that are far

more like local and reasonable. They by

and large do not care about the left's

social projects. They often see them as

abominations. Um they often are socially

conservative. Um and if you look at the

working classes, again, the real working

classes had nothing in common with the

left's projections. The working classes

were not the sort of vanguard of the

Marxists. Intellectuals were. The

working classes had their own specific

sort of more practical interests of can

I get my kids to go to the right school?

Is my is my job going to lay me off? And

so when the lefts did or when when our

uh ruling class did

de-industrialization,

they were technically saying they were

supporting the working class's interests

while doing the exact opposite. Well,

the best example of this that comes to

my mind is of character like Claudine

Gay at Harvard. So, she was the

president during uh you know, at the

time of um 107 and yeah, you know, was

brought behings

and whatnot, but her backstory is so

much more awful. So, she's one of these

sort of hack

she's literally a hack. She's she's like

a known proven plagiarist that's

published very little actual research.

While she was at Harvard, she was all

about critical theory nonsense.

Meanwhile, she's a silver spoon kid that

came from a well-off background. Has

nothing to do with sort of um poor black

culture, inner city black culture, any

of that stuff. She actively sought to

and largely succeeded in trying to

destroy um Roland Frier who actually was

like a poor black kid that managed

against all the odds to become a great

genuine intellectual and a scholar at

Harvard.

>> Yeah.

>> But so so he and and his work was

pushing back on all of her assumptions

including for example

uh the actual stats around police. So

his some of his work included that the

police are actually less likely to use

deadly force against a black asalent um

for the reasons you would expect, which

is they know they're going to get in

trouble. And actually like more than

half of all police forces are black or

people people of color, black and brown

people, non non-Caucasians. So um she's

like the avatar. She's basically like

the like the the Woodro Wilson of our

times. like she's the avatar of this

like fake

social signaling

race hustler.

>> Yeah. I I I've always had a wonder if

the reason she got her job is because

her last name is gay where so that

sounds really superficial and lame,

>> but as we've put together the left

psychology, they are in fact profoundly

superficial and lame. Look at the

culture they produce. I'm just thinking

because they're not deep people and I'm

thinking no hair, last name gay, black,

woke. She is like um if it's like a card

game, she's like a clean deck in their

weird status games.

>> She's a straight flush. It's really

interesting to look at sort of the left

with culture because they're sort of

psychologically spilling all their guts

where they have no push back. So if you

look at leftist Hollywood, they'll just

say utterly psychologically deranged

things that were just too numb to

notice. Where the subtext behind all of

the recent Hollywood is these are just

profoundly petty people and they're

profoundly pathetic. where they always

have to have the old white guy get

emasculated.

They can't write real characters.

There's no sense of depth or purpose.

And it really reminds me of CS Lewis's

quote that if you want to be original,

tell the truth. And if you try to be

original, you'll be like everyone else

who's trying to be original. And it's

just disturbing that these people have

cultural authority.

One of the things that I think the

moment we we are in now, especially sort

of in the aftermath of 2024 and the

Trump assassination attempt and all the

big voices coming out and him getting

reelected and and like the sort of full

realization of of like Elon's ex is we

we have a moment where we can have the

kind of conversation we're having

and say and say things that you didn't

used to be able to say.

>> Yeah.

And I I I

struggle with this and I'm trying to

explore how to do it myself, which is

how do you tell the truth, which is

which in especially at the at the margin

where you're talking about something

that

is going to be offensive, but it's true.

Whether it's about race or genetics or

differences between men and women on

average, you pick the subject. the Jews

in society, whatever it might be,

whatever sort of hot button. Um,

there was something called like decorum

before

and maybe going further back there was

like a Victorian version of that that

was even more controlled or more there

was like more complex order of how you

would go about conducting yourself in

public. And now we're in this time of

okay, we came out of like this this

period, this sort of Biden censorship

industrial complex era of of the total

cancel culture insanity. You can't even

say that the immune system responds

to to to viruses and bacteria

>> really, right? Like natural immunity

would became like a sensorable act,

right?

natural immunity is therefore so we're

post now we're in a time where everybody

can say anything kind of at least in

America not in Europe because they put

you in jail

and so so now it's like well where do I

where have I where do you then cross the

line is should there be no line there is

no norm to look to

>> that's a that's something I've been

thinking a lot because I've come to the

same conclusion that there's no social

norms to mediate interactions. And

that's very dangerous. Especially so

with sort of mouse utopia, mating

crisis, that if there's no shared social

norms, you can't police interactions.

And when you can't police interactions

or develop rules, people kind of just

sputter because people need to have a

social structure that tells them how to

cooperate with others. And uh the sort

of the lie of postmodernism is that

everyone can do that as an individual.

But then the system attacks anyone who

actually tries to build a frame.

>> Well, and it's like this sort of maybe

is a natural segue into this third. So

you list sort of three components of the

moment like the mouse utopia, socialism,

and then screen addiction.

>> Yeah.

>> And it's not I feel like this like

normless

everyone's a troll. the the systems of

actual algorithm are that that drive all

of our feeds reward that.

>> Yeah.

>> So that's kind of like a not great norm

that we can both not like censorship and

also be worried about. I've so I'm going

to drop these points in so I don't

forget them. But one of the things I've

been thinking about is a lot of this is

like riding a horse. It's similar skills

where and the second thing is I think

honor culture could fill a lot of the

void for this stuff. So the reason I say

is riding a horse is horses are hurt

animals and they're not actually that

responsive to stimuli itself. When you

deal with a horse, they care more about

the body language you do and the way you

deal with something than the thing

itself. And that's exactly how internet

the internet works where the thing you

say on the internet doesn't really

matter. There's no standards. It's sort

of the bearing in the character you do

it with. So, the reason people can get

away with the worst possible opinions

that are just deeply evil in my opinion

is that they're playing their group's

crowd psychology well and they're

following its rules. And so, people on

the internet care about do I do the does

this person follow the social rules of

my algorithmic ghetto. The problem

though is those become highly

solopscistic and stupid. So, it's all of

these social groups have these highly

stupid rules that no one thinks about,

but it's just a herd mechanism where the

way herd animals work is they care the

most about the status games inside their

herd. So horses, and my mom was a horse

lady, um they would they'll fight over

who gets to have this little clump of

land in the herd, and they all stay

together in the same part of the

pasture, and they'll fight and bite each

other over who gets to be the first

person in the herd, and who gets to take

this tiny clump of land. And that's what

most internet disputes are about. And

they cannot see past their these little

status games. And so the way to sort of

deal and so the internet the worst thing

is an absence of confidence where the

internet will utterly attack you and the

internet also attacks vulnerability a

lot which becomes a huge issue because

vulnerability is the underlying thing

behind depth. So if you're attacking

vulnerability everything becomes

peripheral signaling games and that's

where we are now. And so the only way to

sort of get past this is to set a frame

of masculine leadership. Because once

you've established the frame of

masculine leadership of this is what I

believe in, this is what I think are

true. These are the rules I follow and

if you disagree, you can go somewhere

else. Because without that, everything

devolves into the sort of the status

games.

>> Why is that leadership masculine?

Because fundamentally

um

alpha men do not alpha men will have

trouble respecting sort of a female

leader and women often do not respect

female leaders either. And so the

archetypes of strong female leaders in

history are by and large queens. Um or

like Margaret Thatcher. Uh Margaret

Thatcher is the democratically elected

politician who I think sort of speaks to

female leadership. Um, but the

structures that hold society together

have been masculine. That's

corporations, that's churches, that's

militaries, governments,

adventurous ships. These are sort of war

bands of men who congregate together

under a shared goal. The structure, the

organizational structure of society has

to be masculine. And women can inhabit

these structures sometimes as leaders.

So when you have a female leader, she's

inhabiting a masculine leadership

structure. And there have been capable

female leaders like Queen Elizabeth I or

Katherine the Great or um Cleopatra, but

they're inhabiting a masculine

structure.

>> The person that comes to mind who I'd

love to have on the show at some point,

oh her name is Helen. Her last name I I

always

>> No, she she wrote about how basically

Andrews.

>> Yes. Helen Andrews. And she basically

says that what we what woke is

fundamentally is the feminization of all

of our institutions.

>> Yes,

>> it is the because like technically she's

like when you have 60% of college

graduates becoming female and then all

of these fields becoming dominated by

women.

It's not that there's anything wrong

with women, but women have on average

different group and social dynamics and

they favor different things. And among

the things that they favor more versus

less is they favor more emotion versus

versus truth seeeking and comfort and

harm reduction versus truth seek. Truth

seeeking tends to get like reduced in

the hierarchy of preferences. If if I

can if I can save the baby, truth is not

as important. If I can ease your sorrow,

truth can take a backseat. So, um I know

I know this stuff is like it's easy to

kind of talk about in big senses, but it

seems like that's what you're what she's

describing maps against what you're

laying out more or less to a tea that

it's like the structure needs to be

built around

uh merit, reality,

truth seeeking, um performance,

efficiency. And if you have that, any

person, male or female, can do that. But

that structure needs to be there. And if

it's like small P politics and feelings,

well then you're going to have it's

there's no there's almost no good way

out of that.

>> Men are like iron and women are like

water. You need to use the iron so the

water can flow. If you don't have the

iron, the water is going to flow in

coetely. And so in a healthy society,

you have the masculine institutions of

this is where we channel social

interactions through these standards.

And so in traditional European society

um you had the nobility, the church and

then the merchant classes having these

structures that social interactions

flowed through. But if you remove those

structures, it's sort of just all chaos

where um women's sort of empathetic

agreeable urge naturally leads to chaos

and it works if there's a framework to

accept it. And if it doesn't, everything

just becomes discordant

>> one. So this is actually a perfect

example of the kind of um issue

that

we are now in uncharted waters for how

to talk about and have it not just kind

of get

lumped in with like the worst examples

of Andrew Andrew Tate type stuff because

he will say things that are living

squarely in this conversation and then

he'll go off into

you beyond. So like how how do you think

about

in this time?

How like what do we need to be what like

what should be the rules of the road for

the conversation we're having about

about this topic for example to get meta

because it's actually it's when we talk

about screen addiction being terminally

online being in these ideological

ghettos you end up in like womenhating

world very quickly when you start to

talk about some of these on average

distinctions and we have to be able to

talk about them

>> yeah in a way that's not just like

Neanderthal yes and the way I do This is

we agree to inhabit frames that we can

hold for now and over time you evolve

those frames for what the context needs

and what I mean by that because that's a

very abstract way of seeing something

very concrete is

we start by agreeing to basic things

because I have a visualization in mind

this is my core these are the things I

know for certain and then you have

differing levels of certainty to raw

chaos and so once I map my frame of life

of this is my core, these are the things

I know, these are the things I don't

know because we can start with obvious

designations and then agree to that and

then gradually build rules over time.

But you have to be intentional about it

and you have to sort of say this is the

frame we're operating under. This is the

consensus. If we can agree to this as

the first step, then we can agree to

something as the next step. And you do

it over time where I I if you say that

uh every society in human history has a

patriarchy that would be historically

true. But then the question is what is

the next extrapolation from that? We can

start from a true statement

sort of organically develop ideas from

that because I think thinking needs to

be organic and occur over time and occur

through sort of channels that make sense

to people. As of now, we're just making

up the rules of social interactions and

we do something very cruel that we don't

have a social code and we say that there

are no social rules and then we penalize

people for getting the rules wrong,

which is the majority of internet

discourse. Most internet discourse is

like this is a dating issue, this is a

social issue, we're not going to tell

you the rules. We live in a post-modern

society where everyone writes their own

rules. Um

>> or they're identity based which means

there's no rules.

>> Exactly. But then the the hidden joke in

the hidden clause inside postmodernism

is you can just tell if everyone's truth

is relative and every argument is good

as any other. Okay. If any argument is

good as good as any other that means

your argument is invalid compared to

mine so I can just ignore you. Do you

see what I'm saying?

>> Yeah. And um I I want to get into the

honor culture thing because I think

that's valuable where um

I am of Celtic ancestry or Ireland,

Scotland, north of England and I'm also

from Pennsylvania which Philly does have

a certain variety of honor culture and

then the countryside around it does in

different ways. And so it was something

>> it just doesn't happen after an Eagles

game.

>> Yeah. No, I mean

>> or maybe that's a version of it that I'm

not understanding.

>> Honor culture is still there. It's just

if you insult the Eagles, you've

insulted Philly's honor and so you get

punched in the face.

>> I'm thinking more like the Eagles win

and there's a riot.

>> Fair. Yeah, fair. That that's that's

like a it's like a feasting day after a

tribal victory.

>> Okay. Fair.

>> Um and uh so I I was my my parents told

me that honor was the only thing that

mattered in life. Um and it was the

number one priority. And that was

something I kept in sort of the back of

my mind until I started going around the

country and I started realizing how many

other different ways there are to live.

But

>> what is honor? What does that mean?

>> Honor is the ability to hold on to moral

standards even if they cost you. And the

sort of locust of the your honor is your

sort of sense of self in honor and then

that extrapolates outwards from you. So

there's national honor, there's family

honor, there's your personal honor. And

so it's I find for

a lot of sort of West Europeans who

aren't from honor cultures, they don't

have a pre-established framework for

boundaries where you're like, I'm going

to give more to other people and I'm

going to let people walk all over me

because that's sort of the nice

Christian thing to do. That's not

actually what Christianity says.

Christianity doesn't tell you to be a

cuck or to like be let people walk over

you.

>> Yeah.

>> Um but then they sort of translate that

logic, but in an honor culture, as an

example, um if someone messes with you,

that's a slight on your personal honor

and it's an insult to your family line.

And so you have a moral framework that's

quite complex that can operate with the

death of God because beforehand we had a

social structure where everyone believed

in God or at least said they did. And so

that constructed the framework. We're

now in a society where you can't point

at the Bible and then point at someone

and say you should do the thing in the

Bible. The thing with honor codes though

is they're not reliant on belief in God.

They're reliant on belief in yourself.

And so there's no sort of theology

needed for them, but it's a

pre-established framework on how to

handle disputes and how to sort of

maintain your own boundaries.

Um,

I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking

about like the root. So there's this

there's these kind of things there's

these things we we call traditions,

right?

>> Yeah. that can we where it's not clear

where they started or why and you can

tell like just so stories about well

they evolved because we're groupish and

so in order to have a group and live in

a group we can blah blah blah blah blah

insert height

>> yeah insert that um

>> but

it does seem like

you do need some really potent kind of

moral north star

to have anything like a culture like

cohhere over time because you just like

oh you've got this thing that you do and

then it becomes a habit and then it

becomes sort of a ritual but then kids

rebel against it and then two

generations later it's all been turned

into trash.

>> Yeah.

>> So how does you know this notion of like

this honor code honor culture that isn't

ultimately sort of rooted in faith. I

guess I'm skeptical of that. Are there

historical examples of like these are

there just like pagan honor things like

the Vikings that you're talking about?

Is this like a northern Viking deal?

>> Yeah. Um it's also across cultures. So

Europe's original cultures were

honorbased. Vikings, Kelts. It stems

back to the original Aryans 4,000 years

ago in Ukraine. Um but the Romans had an

honor culture, too. When Carthage

attacked Rome, their honor was insulted,

so they crushed Carthage. um a Roman

gentleman was required to do all of

these things for the to for both the

honor of his family and of Rome. So this

was a European thing. You see it in

Native American peoples, Afghans. It's a

warrior culture thing that stems from

unpredictable environments. And so it's

biggest in America in the South because

the English nobility who helped make the

American South, they had an honor

culture. World War I was these different

European honor cultures fighting each

other where Serbia insulted Austria's

honor which insulted Russia's honor.

Germany um you modern sensibilities look

at that and say how silly King Ferd we

fight a world war because of like the

assassination of King Ferdinand. What a

ridiculous thing to do.

>> But am I am I supposed to justify that

opinion? I just push back against it.

Well, no. I mean, I just that's when we

hear I think when when modern hear ears

hear honor honor in that way being

something that can motivate war, it

sounds wrong. It sounds anacronistic.

That's because they're already consumed

by nihilism where if you I mean I I've

I've tried to disentangle myself from

the internet and as I've done that it's

strange because I'm I get memories back

from before I was internet addicted

where as I spend less time online I'm

I'm like wait these were memories from

my childhood. This was like I used to

love running around in the forest and uh

I I remember going out of the creek and

what the way uh the world was in like

2005 Pennsylvania because as I

disconnect from the internet I realized

that my internal monologue was connected

to the internet. And so the attitude I

had as I did it is I thought wait I'm

missing out on this but I don't want any

of the things I'm missing out on. And so

when you're dealing with these people

who say that like honor starts wars is

these are people who are already so

deeply nihilistic and degenerate that

they are actively happy that their

civilization is dying and why would I

listen to these people and we've hit a

threshold where I am willing to totally

throw out the woke paradigm and every

sort of the John Oliver SNL America. Um,

>> no, it has nothing of value to offer.

>> And so

>> I I agree with that in totality. It has

literally nothing. It is like basically

a satanic death cult.

>> I'm laughing because it's true.

>> I I I struggle with this because in in

one sense, which is like there's a part

of me that is temperamentally inclined

to try to be reasonable, whatever that

means. And there's a part of me that's

deeply self-righteous and wants to see

clearly what is good and what is wrong

and what is bad.

>> And um

the Marxist death cult just is evil. And

it's like you you just read it. You just

read it. Just read what these people

say. Read their history. Go all the way

back. See the threads. Go to their text.

It's demonic. So

>> it goes back to like Mark's mocking

people in the back of church. He's scum.

He's a scum from top to literally

bottom. Boilcoed bottom. So I don't what

what am I gonna get from that guy?

Nothing.

>> And

so the reason I'm bringing up honor is

you're looking at the events in the

modern western world and you can

rationalize why it's okay from like a

purely Christian perspective. Or you can

pretend to. It's not actually okay from

a Christian perspective, but you could

rationalize to yourself why it would be

because we're giving to the poor. We're

helping people. We're spreading love.

You can't from an honor culture. From an

honor cultures perspective, we are

basically having our society get

actively ravaged and we're too weak to

stand up. And that doesn't require a

theology because it's a biological

reaction. Um, and they've tested people

from honor cultures versus non-honor

cultures where people from honor

cultures they hear an insult. It's

literally a biological reaction of

hatred which people from non-honor

cultures don't have. And so if you're

looking at it's just we're constantly

actively being screwed over. And we

don't need a rationalistic legalistic

definition for why this is bad. It just

fundamentally is a violation.

And so if if if you sort of get into

these arguments of, oh my god, can you

make a legalistic justification for why

it we should fight back against the

destruction of our society, the honor

culture answer would be this is a

rationalization for your own weakness.

You are making up justifications

demanding to not look at this

fundamental issue.

Give me an example of the destruction.

Be very specific. When we say

destruction, it's very easy to say

destruction of the society. What are we

t what give me just one example that's

very that's big and real

>> failure of school system failure of

legal system um importing of mass

immigrants to take America's jobs um no

sort of understanding for how

de-industrialization or AI guts out the

economy the mating crisis the left

seizure of academia the left seizure of

the corporations um you would a bet a

better question to ask would be what

institutions still work because we are

facing a sustained cultural attack on

every single front that we do not have

the immunological response to. And the

difference in why if these things

happened in America in 1890 and we would

immediately see what's going on and hate

it is that we lost that honor culture

due to World War I

because the variables that motivated

Europe's sort of uh conquest of the

world and um and freedom these are honor

culture variables. The final word I

believe of the Declaration of

Independence is our sacred honor. Where

the founding fathers were saying they

were defending America's sacred honor.

Because when the British were trying to

force us to pay taxes without legal

representation, that was an attack on

the honors given to nativeborn English

people. the core of the American

Revolution was the king of England was

violating the natural rights and honors

given to a native born Englishman. Um

I'm processing that that's really

interesting.

the um

it seems like one thing that's part of

this

is

honor is a

is acting in accordance with with an

identity.

>> Yes.

>> That

is solid. So it's like if if you are a

husband and someone says something about

your wife or does something to your wife

that that relationship is a fundamental

part of your identity and your role in

that relationship is a fundamental part

of your identity and like so just like

really personally we're watch again like

to reference like bedtime TV watching

we're watching the um Land Man and

there's a scene in it where the uh the

son's fiance who's this pretty Mexican

girl is in is like being assaulted in

the back alley and he comes out catches

the guy before he can he's beat her up

but he hasn't you know

he grabs him, flips him and then punches

him 17 times in the in the face

ultimately leading to his death. And

this actually prompted a conversation

with my wife in which I'm like yep I'm

glad he murdered that guy. That's good.

I can't not imagine I would have done

the same thing in that alley if that was

happening to you. And she was being very

Christian and saying, well, Jesus

wouldn't want that to for you to do

that. Like that's not proportional to

murder him for that assault. And I

couldn't get past the visceral feeling

that no, no, no, it is right and just.

>> So,

>> it is right and just that if you assault

a woman like that, you should be you

should you should be put through a a

wood chipper.

Like I can't. Is that the honor DNA?

It's like I like I like even like

morally I'm like I know I'm supposed to

I I think I know that I'm supposed I'm

not sure. I'm going to have to go back

and look and see like what would Jesus

think if I just beat that guy's head

into oblivion cuz that's what I really

feel like I would need to do.

Yeah. I have two I have two points here.

The first is um

both of them relate to Christianity. The

first of which is I've defended

Christianity a lot in my discussions

lately where people say that communism

is an outcome from Christianity. And

what I say is

>> if you want to look at this from a sort

of responsibility perspective

Christianity existed. It formed a

theology. Marxism is in many ways a

child of Christianity. A lot of its

assumptions only make sense through a

Christian frame. But it's a child who

totally spurned its parent and its

entire moral code is based off an

invalidation of Christianity. And so

what you have there is

if you do not follow literally anything

in the Bible and if you throw out the

entire Bible, then you can't blame the

Bible for that. It's just because you

have to divide the world into who's

responsible for what. and you can't hold

Jesus and the church fathers accountable

for this weird death cult that emerged

2,000 years later. And I said, if you're

not following any of Christian morality

and you reject Christianity, then you

should not blame Christians for that.

And what I said is when a lot of people

blame Christianity for the rise of

socialism,

what I tell them is um it's like you're

judging first of all the Mad Max

timeline where if you look at Mad Max

after a nuclear war, the Australian

desert produces all of these weird

cultures that are sort of descended from

the earlier ones. And the industrial

revolution was comparable where it was a

sort of a cultural nuclear war and

anything that made it through the

industrial revolution's nuclear warf

filter of wealth and industry is like a

really warped version of what was at at

the start. Um, and one of the and so

whenever people sort of blame

Christianity for the rise of socialism

or wokeism, what I say is if you factor

out the word Christianity and put in

socialism, the argument actually fits

where if you say socialism's tenants are

blank. And there's I read a really

brilliant author named Uspensky who said

the way to understand Christianity is to

realize it's actually about God. It's

not an ethical moral code. It's not a

rationalistically built philosophy. It

is actually about attaining the kingdom

of heaven. And he said, when you read

these church figures, you have to not

analyze it rationally, but think it's

actually a spiritual path to reach God.

And so when you try to apply

Christianity in a non-religious

framework, it gets weird. And so one of

the things Guspensky said as well is he

he interprets it as these Christian

teachings are for other Christians to

build the community in imitation of the

kingdom of heaven. But if you're getting

attacked and destroyed people who don't

have your value system, you should not

turn the other cheek.

Yeah. There's um it's like

it's

m the crusades

and the the fact of the crusades, the

fact the actual facts, not the fake

facts that we're all taught in school

because we're taught by a bunch of like

low IQ low IQ Marxists. But the actual

facts of the Crusades is you have North

Africa, Syria, Lebanon, that entire

region being actually like the hub of

Christendom.

Egypt is Christian. They're all

Christian. And then along comes warlords

conquering by the sword

for, you know, in the name of in the

name of Muhammad.

And in fact, when Muhammad dies, then

you have to have this apostasy thing

because all the people they conquered

and converted were immediately like,

"Oh, good. He's dead. I can go back to

being Christian." And then the next wave

of people like, "No, we'll kill you."

So, you got to not do that. So you have

militarism for its own sake as a sort of

like hybrid ideology making its way on

its way to conquer Europe

and the church saves saves Europe and

then the alt timeline without the

crusades there is no west there is no

there is no modernity there's none of

that stuff there's just there's just

like

it's all it's all Muslim so I can't

imagine a conception of like what's the

proper way to be Christian in the real

physical fallen world. That doesn't say,

"Yeah, actually you need the Crusades to

push back on the people that want to

kill all the Christians." Like, you

can't just turn over and let the people

that want to kill all the Christians

die. I mean, nowhere in the Bible does

it say, "Thou shalt be a cuck." I mean,

that's just that's the core of my

message.

>> It says there thou shalt not kill, but

there's other stuff that thou shalt not

murder. Murder is a legally incorrect

killing, deaths in war or whatever. And

what one of the things I tell myself is

I pro as I had ancestors who murdered

entire villages and did horrible things

and they they went to church and they

forgave themselves. And I thought if my

ancestors living in the 12th century

could burn an entire village, I can

forgive myself or I can have God forgive

me for whatever minor transgression I do

this week. And because when you see the

scale, you're like, I I I can chill. And

uh I mean we are also judging the

entirety of human history by a failed

ideology that just survives in the weird

place we're in. We're judging all of

human history by mouse utopia. And I

when I look at the Crusades, I'm

comparing it to the medieval world where

it's constant warfare. I was reading

this history of um medieval Poland and

they went through every single German

invasion in the 12th century. In nearly

every single year there was a German

invasion of Poland. And so I don't view

the crusade I view the Crusades as a

medieval society doing a conquest. And

they've been fighting the Muslims for

centuries. This is a a reciprocal thing.

And you you can't like get rid of war.

You can't get rid of plague. You can't

rid of suffering. We live in a fallen

world. And this is why I say you have to

see Christianity as a as a religion, not

an ethical ideology because their goal

was to reach heaven as individuals. They

were not on the social engineering sort

of bent that we are. So their idea is

there is war. If I'm have to choose

between murdering fellow Catholics over

this plot of dirt in northern France or

going on an adventure and killing

Muslims, the latter is like a more

elevated version of war. and my entire

society has trained me to wage war as my

one job. So, I'm here. And so, a

disconnect non-religious people have to

religious people is, and I want to make

a video explaining sort of the logic

behind this is that religious people

accept that life is sort of flawed and

boring. So, let's make the flawed and

boring elements as sacred as possible so

my life can be sacred. And so, people

will be like, "Oh, it's just sex." which

is true on a biological level, but once

you're adding in the institution of

marriage or the society or whatever is

you've transmuted what is basically just

a biological material act into something

which is in service of something higher

like the society or God or the family.

And so a lot of religion is taking these

base sort of unpleasant human acts and

then giving them a sort of label and

direction that feeds together into a

cohesive worldview that everyone in the

society can partake in and also elevates

the individual.

>> I want to come back to the screen

addiction. So, I'm just saying that to

put a marker in my mind, not to forget,

but I I what we're talking about right

now feeds into something philosophical

that I think is um

>> I wanted to talk to you about, which is

>> last time we hung out together and and

talked and and even off off camera, I

think we both I certainly would consider

myself fundamentally in the thread of

classical liberalism.

>> Yeah. as it is generally understood

among conservatives, you know, like I I

I increasingly think of that as

fundament my ideal ideology as just

being Americanism. like the the

institutions, the ideas of the founding

that say the individual is free and has

sovereignty that's God-given

that the government is really basically

a monster that should only be only be

properly understood to the extent we

have one at all to protect that first

thing and the bill of rights is all the

things government can't touch so that

that first thing the individual

sovereignty can be as robust as

possible. So like that's class that's

like

peak what would you call classical

liberalism like the the the British

enlightenment the John Lock Montescu all

this stuff

I have a lot of friends in this space

you've sort of off-handed mentioned one

group sort of the boomer boom boomer

cons I have a lot of friends that would

probably fall into that category

it feels like at the intellectual level.

These things are starting to break where

they're starting to not

have the purchasing power that they used

to have among the people that they

should. Not like everybody. Most people

are going about their normal lives not

worrying about this. But for those of us

that are interested in the world of

ideas, you know, there was a time where

it was like

the time we're in now, especially here,

right now, January 2026,

it's like,

what does it mean to be a classical

liberal

now, in a world where the West is

committing suicide along every

dimension, and where for me, and I know

I'm monologuing here, so excuse it. It's

your show. I do it. I know.

do it.

>> Run it how you deliver.

>> But but there's there's a thing that I

I'm I'm cur there's a thing that is I

just observe which is like

I used to really like Steven Pinker.

Now I think he's kind of a tool. And I I

say that with reservation because it's

kind of being mean and I respect his

prior work, but

like he is part of this like fake

decorum.

I really care more about being seen as

being legitimate among like left of

center people that have that have

allowed the world to be destroyed.

And I'm just not on that team anymore.

>> Yeah. And I don't know where that puts

me now cuz I don't I don't think my

values have changed very much. I don't

know if it's aesthetic,

but I think a lot of us feel this way

like like okay that that like weak I

want to be seen as legitimate at a

Georgetown dinner party or some I don't

know what. It's just like no.

>> Yeah. I I'm glad you brought him up uh

because I I I use Steven Pinger for

different reasons when I he's

interesting to me. I've tried to I've

read like two of his books. I didn't

finish either of them. Um where he and I

agree on all of the things he's written

books about. Um I I agree the

Enlightenment did a lot of really

positive stuff. I agree the blank slate

was a lie. I agree that language changes

how people think. But everything he

writes is in establishment of the old

regime. Um, and

that's something I I I find disturbing

where I can read the book and agree with

him, but it's sort of like looking at a

weird sort of mirror where he's agreeing

from the lens of the regime. And he

never says anything that's against the

regime. And one of my friends has a term

called a pinkerism. And a pinkerism is

the collapse of American society is okay

because there are more toilets in Africa

which meant line went up equal world

goodter.

There's a very specific version of this

that uh I you that's very that's sort of

um naval gazy.

>> Yeah.

>> Which is re and recent. He was part of

he was an early part of this group of

people like sort of loosely associated

with the University of Austin which is

you know we're here in Austin. I know

the the U of Austin people well from all

sides. There's been a little bit of a

schism there and and

he has

he has like actively gone out of his way

to call out

University of Austin for daring to like

be conservativeish

like like it's just beyond the pale that

you could for example say you're for the

pursuit of truth and also say that you

don't want any of your professors to be

avowed Marxist activists?

>> Yeah.

>> Which to me doesn't seem like in

conflict because Marxist activists

believe in bull. So if you want to

convince your students to believe lies,

well that's not the pursuit of truth.

But he can't he can he felt it necessary

and I'm picking on him but he's an

archetype. He felt it necessary

to punch down at one of the few startup

universities in this country while he's

at Harvard.

>> Yeah.

>> Because they dared to do something that

could and I think this is really what's

going on that could leave the stain of

being called rightwing on him. I know

exactly what you're saying. Uh and the

way I think of it is that uh the there's

a sort there's a sort there's the

rationalist community and they're

adjacent to tech and they sort of they

use a Harry Potter fanfic as their

bible. You know what I'm talking about.

>> Elaborate the Harry Potter fanfic. I

need I need to hear this one fully.

>> Harry Potter and the rules of

rationality. And so they they go through

Harry Potter and they explain how to

apply rationality to every part of your

life. how to be rational about how just

different situations in your life, how

to wake up in the morning and

>> how to do utility maximization.

>> And that that sounds smart if you're on

like a highly specific tier of

consciousness that almost no one in

history has been in because if you have

more wisdom, you realize I'm a I'm an

animal. Like imagine you do this to a

dog. It would just be stupid. And we're

the same biological function as a dog,

but we have more prefrontal cortex and

societal planning. Well, it's always

been weird to be like, if you're going

to be rational, isn't it rational to

treat the human being for what it is?

>> Yeah. And the other thing about these

people is they always apply rationality

incorrectly. For example, they believe

in equality. Equality is not rational.

Equality is not defended by any

scientific thing. It's a faith-based

thing from the left. Uh they talk they

believe in progress. Progress is not

rational. and they're stuck in this sort

of French Revolution Reddit atheism that

has been continually disproven. And

these people these people have stuck

with opinions that seemed smart in the

enlightenment uh that time of Voltater

and they have continually failed. And so

if you want to sort of use rationality

as your only god and your only idol and

you have nothing else, it's just a very

useful diarama of your delusions

because you're not grounding it in

anything. You're not grounding it in

human nature or values or history. So

you're just making a very elaborate

logical game that doesn't have a

reflection in the world. And that's what

these people do. They're very good at

making these games, but the games have

no relation to reality where I mean I

was reading um so Steven Pinker was

going through in his book Enlightenment

Now he makes very valid claims saying

that hundreds of millions of people's

lives have been saved from modern

medicine which I think is completely

valid. Or he'll say people aren't living

in poverty but then he'll say from these

mental health stats people are happier

due to these modernist things. I'm like,

cool. The statistic says that that is

not the reality. People are not happier.

Um or or or he'll say, um there is this

slight there was this reduction in

quality of life for workingclass and

middle class Americans, but this was an

acceptable loss for progress. He writes

that in the book,

for the god of progress.

>> Yeah.

>> What is progress from their view?

steelman the definition of progress that

you think he's using

>> uh progress is increase in

standardization

comfort equality and sort progress in

their book is the removal of the

spiritual and the biological

so if you split

>> so the more the move towards the

singularity

>> basically um where progress to them is

you've seen the images of McDonald's in

the8s in the 90 versus today.

>> I'm not sure. I'm not sure what's the

difference.

>> It went viral where McDonald's used to I

I don't know. I I wouldn't have been

there at the time.

>> I mean, I remember it quite well.

>> They they used to have like interesting

decorations and bright colors and like

places for children to play.

>> Here's one thing I will say. I remember

that um was this McDonald's? I think it

was was the big purple guy at

McDonald's.

>> Barney. No, it was like this weird

purple creature guy that sort of looked

like a giant like a I don't know what he

was, but I remember in one of them,

maybe it was Burger King, the the kids

section

had a play thing that was a a metal cage

on giant springs with two metal bars in

the middle to hold so you could do like

this. And I remember getting stuck in it

and having my head bang back and forth

between the metal bars. And this was

just the kind of this was the

playgrounds of the time.

>> So anyway,

>> yeah,

>> more interesting.

>> I mean, your generation grew up better

than my generation.

>> We had stuff.

>> We had dangerous stuff at the play gyms

at McDonald's.

>> Um,

>> I might have taken us off the track of

this meme, but

>> but um so it it's and then the modern

McDonald's is just glass and steel. Same

thing as car design.

>> It's all bow house modern minimalism. No

character.

>> Everything is beige gray. Sorry, beige.

Everything is beige.

>> Well, everything's this, right? I mean,

I love Apple, but it's How do you get

down to

there almost being it being almost

stylus, invisible, a single sheet of

glass?

>> Yes. And by and large,

um, their definition of progress

is sterile. It's no place for humans or

for children or for sort of an inner

monologue. Um, I like to say modernity

is the alliance of the hysterical

feminine, the autistic masculine

and the hysterical feminine sets the

emotional tone and the autistic

masculine enforces it

or maybe the masculine feminine. You

take these these these these uh the

some of these you look at every one of

these activist movements today and who

is in the front of the street. It's not

even men anymore.

>> It's just it's it's like majority

screaming activist women in the crowds

>> everywhere including right now in

Minneapolis. Everywhere you look

>> often older whites too.

>> Yeah. The older ones like the like

wanting to relive the 60s boomers. I I I

uh as we sit here, a video is being

edited that'll go live today where I

mock one of these people cuz it's so

heinous. An older woman clearly probably

it looks like she's in her either late

60s or 70s telling a a young pro-life

girl that she should be so she would

feel the trauma of of abortion or

something. And it is just like is like

you really have become like the the true

cartoon villain of a 1960s feminist.

>> It's like absolutely

>> like I I kind It's

>> It's like what have you become? Like

look in the mirror like take a deep

breath. You're Can you imagine doing

that? Can you imagine being outside and

yelling at a stranger, strange young

woman as a as an older woman,

wishing violence against her to make

your political point about killing

babies? It's so crazy. Often I I have

come to believe in the existence of good

more so because some people so obviously

accept their position as villains that

there must be the converse. you find a

lot of just evil people where they just

sort of get off on it and they've

they've sort of at least subconsciously

accepted that I am the villain of this

story and they glory in that and that's

something that people actually do. So we

have in this um to continue using Steven

Pinker as our punching bag for a kind of

denatured denatured enlightenment

rationality. Um there's something that's

wrong with that. Yes,

>> I have friends,

>> people I consider pretty good friends

who are like that um and like people

I've really looked up to like uh um Matt

Ridley, rational optimist, kind of in

the same boat, same camp. I think

stylistically I prefer him. He's got

more guts.

>> Yeah,

>> he's not afraid to have someone dare to

call him a right-winger.