A Call for The Sane - Beauty, Truth, & Purpose

A Call for the Sane - Beauty, Truth, & Purpose | Douglas Murray | EP 472

"...his suffering wasn't merely a consequence of his failure in life, it was a consequence of his failure tempting him to open the door to Evil, and so if you think about it in terms of these complexes of associated ideas, they're ideas that if you let in, they bring A Host of other ideas with them, and A Host is exactly the right phrase --"

For he said unto him, 

"Come out of the man, 

Thou unclean spirit." 

And he asked him, "What is thy name?" 

And he answered, saying, 

"My name is Legion : for We are many." 

And he besought him much that 

he would not send them away out of the country. 

Now there was there nigh unto the mountains 

a great herd of swine feeding. 

And all the devils besought him, saying, 

"Send us into the swine, 

that we may enter into them."

And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. 

And the unclean spirits went out, 

and entered into the swine : 

and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) 

and were choked in the sea.

And they that fed the swine fled, 

and told it in the city, and in the country. 

And they went out to see what it was that was done. 

And they come to Jesus, 

and see him that was 

possessed with The Devil, 

and had The Legion, sitting, 

and clothed, and in his right mind : 

and they were AFRAID.

And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with The Devil, and also concerning the swine.

And they began to pray him to DEPART out of their coasts. 

And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with The Devil prayed him that he might be with him.

".....why do all the holy places of the British people keep being attacked literally and metaphorically...? 

Because they want to hurt these people -- they want to hurt the people who revere them, you might say... 

Well, why do you want to do that? Revenge, for some people; supremacy, of a different kind for others; weakness among others -- 

Why would you do that to 3% of the population...?  

You know, among other things it's rude, it's cruel, it's unusual and why would you do that to a majority...?"

Hello, everybody I had the opportunity today to talk with Douglas Murray Douglas is the author of the war on the west the strange death of Europe and The Madness of crowds among other books has been a cardinal voice signaling to everyone the danger of the culture War trying to assess its reasons trying to mount a defense against its most destructive aspects and trying to call people's attention to the dangers that beset Western the Western World and and freedom in general because freedom in general is essentially identical to the Western World for better for worse and so so an assault on the west is an assault on everything that isn't nihilistic catastrophic and authoritarian in its Essence what did Douglas and I talk about today we talked a lot about the situation in the UK the recent uprisings of the British working class the incredible ethnic and cultural tensions that have been generated in the wake of an immigration policy whose rationale is what would you say incomprehensible not only incomprehensible but absent what's the function of the untrammeled immigration policies that characterize Germany and France and the UK especially given the obvious fact that they're producing a tremendous amount of internal stress we talked a little bit about the more pragmatic aspects of the problem it's easier to travel now than it ever was before it's easier to share information uh and certainly both of those factors play a cardinal role but there's also this strange blindness among the political Elite a willful blindness or perhaps a motivated willful blindness to the catastrophic consequences of these kinds of indiscriminate policies so Douglas and I spent a lot of time delving into that trying to parse it apart assessing also the strange Union of the radical leftists with the Islamic fundamentalists let's say with regards to what's happened in Israel and in Gaza since October 7th so tough conversation um we also talked about Douglas's plan to do a speaking T her for the next couple of months and he's in a number of American cities you could go to Live Nation and type in the name Douglas Murray and find tickets so I'd also recommend that I think it's going to go in LA on the 23rd of September so anyways on with the analysis of the strange death of the West well hello Mr Murray it's good to Douglas Murray’s Live Nation speaking tour see you again it's it's been about a year since we've done a podcast already and it's been some time since we've seen each other we obviously saw each other when you were on tour with me last September um I guess first of all I'm pleased to be able to talk to you and there's lots to talk about that's for sure and I guess maybe the first thing I'd like to find out is well what have you got planned in the upcoming months what's on your plate uh well uh I'm in New York at the moment and uh in September I'm doing a tour here in the US a speaking tour doing six cities uh from LA to New York uh finishing at the Beacon Theater where I saw you a while ago and also doing Miami uh Fort Lauderdale Denver and maybe some more dates to add but that's in September and anyone who's interested can go to the Live Nation website and you'll find all the details there um otherwise uh I am uh as ever uh living out of a suitcase and uh trying to keep a breast of all the things that are doing as uh lots of things in our sociey is falling apart so uh I've spent a lot of the last year in Israel in the Middle East covering the conflict there in Israel Gaza um I was there for almost 6 months after the 7th of October um but now um things are kicking off in quite a number of countries as you know so this speaking to her let's concentrate on that for a minute too so what's your goal and your plan what are you offering people who come to and and what are you hoping to achieve what are you offering people who are going to come and listen well one of the things is that it's a uh follow on from you know I wrote this book the war in the West which you and I discussed when it came out about 18 months ago um and and since then there have been so many things that have happened uh not least the 7th of October and the war that's followed um because I've covered all of this up close and got some pretty extraordinary camera footage of this I wanted to present it to an audience to be able to show what I've seen um and what I think of as the the realities that I think a lot of people running away from at the moment um but the realities of what happens when you know well frankly when violence breaks out and uh I think it's a great warning uh to people in America and elsewhere a great warning of you know this this stuff can become very real uh as it as it did in Israel last October and um anyhow it's there's going to be some fun to be had along the way my friend and colleague from the monk debates in Toronto Natasha housef is going to be with me on stage to do the Q&A uh session and interview and uh yes and there's going to be a lot of lot of uh never foreseen footage uh from a lot of crazy situations so that's it sounds in some ways like a what a live current affairs show that's focused specifically on this issue okay so you said that you're going to use if I've got it right you're going Object lessons based on extraordinary circumstances to use the occurrences of October 7th and afterwards as an object lesson right an object lesson in the consequences what of the disintegration of a societal ethos the consequences of what like what how do you exactly do you tie in what you were writing about in the war on the west with what you've seen unfold since October 7th say in relationship to what you're going to speak about well one thing is of course is that uh October 7th for a lot of people in Israel was an example of of what happens when you've been living in a delusion and have suddenly woken up uh from that uh I've written a lot in recent years um as have others about the way in which in in all the Western democracies we've had a sort of a lack of seriousness really about some of the threats that we Face uh there's a there's a a slumbering that's gone on for a long time uh which I and others have warned against um but I suppose among other things of course it's not just about that it's about how people react in the face of of real threat and real crisis and that's one of the things that I'm very interested in at the moment is the way in which a terrible situation like that throws up these these two completely counter forces one is the force of of real evil and what it's like to stare into the face of real evil the other is of course um the face of true heroism the people who in the face of atrocity become the person that they were meant to be and uh I've seen a lot of that in the last year and I think there are enormous lessons to be learned not just of the negatives but the positives of of of of the way in which actually when extraordinary uh events occur extraordinary people are thrown up and uh you know we might all see a bit more of that in the years ahead so in what Manner do you view what The “rich history of protest” and the need for a great call happened in October 7th on October 7th and afterwards as a reflection of the sorts of things that you were warning about in war on the west how do you see it as the what another step in The Logical out unfolding of the processes that you were assessing well it partly from that and partly from a previous books including my one the strange death of Europe came out in 2017 um a lot of a lot of that was concerned with saying look you know there are deep deep challenges that are going on to what used to call the liberal Democratic Society and a deep unwillingness of people to realize that those challenges were not metaphorical since 7th of October we've seen unbelievable scenes on everywhere from the Streets of London and major cities in Europe to the most elite campuses of Northern America Ivy leak campuses where students who have the most privileged existence imaginable have decided to openly throw their lot with the terrorists of Hamas you know this is this has gone this has gone further a lot faster I think a lot of people realized but it is something I've been warning about for a very long time uh that yes there are there are deep deep things happening in our society including the what I've described in the past as being the thing of people people at risk of rebelling for the sake of rebellion and out of boredom and uh and this is this is a deep thing in American society in particular you know the the the call for A Great Cause -- 

One of the student protesters at Colombia was quoted in New York Magazine the other month saying that he was a first generation low-income student who was the first member of his family to go to university and you think "Well, that sounds good --"; and then he went on to say "...and when I got to Colombia I learned about the history of protest at Colombia and I decided I knew he said I knew that as soon as it kicked off I wanted to be in the middle of it --" 

JP : I mean um so so let me let me ask you about let let me ask you about that in The Cardinal Call to existence: adventure, hedonism, or something else? in some more detail so this going to be a complicated question but you put your finger on something that's crucial and deep psychological rather than political uh or even spiritual let's say rather than political as you know from touring with me you know I've been investigating one of the things I've been investigating is what is it that makes life worthwhile I talked to a philosopher this week um on my podcast who has written a couple of books on a stream of analytic philosophy that's been debating whether or not if you weigh up the evidence on mass whether you know existence itself is a net good or a net evil with whatever implications you might want to draw from that argument for its creator right so I'm not trying to make a theological case but part of this inquiry is like if if there was a God is it more logical to conceive of him as good or as of e as evil and underneath that is a sense that the proper axis of evaluation for such a question is whether there's more pain and misery in the world or pleasure and my sense is that that's the fact that that's how the argument is constituted is actually an indication of the pathology of our culture because it's a Fool's game to map Pleasure and Pain onto good and evil partly because there are evil pleasures and there are exactly morally justifiable pains right so so whatever the landscape whatever the moral landscape is it's not reducible to the hedonic landscape and any axiomatic assumption it is okay so there's a Cory to that and one of the corollaries would be well if we're not built to maximize pleasure and minimize pain let's say which is a powerful argument because emotions are powerful and the positive and negative emotion systems are are powerful motivating systems but if we're not built to maximize pleasure and minimize pain then what's the Cardinal call to existence and my sense is that it's something akin to adventure maybe it's romantic Adventure which is an even better formulation all right so then let's say if that's the case and you and I talked about this the last time we talked about the truth as part of the Call to Adventure the heroic Adventure yes exactly exactly well so then if that's the case and the Cardinal motivation in life is something like the heroic Call to Adventure then you might ask yourself well what if that's not being pursued what beckons as an earth that's alternative and like certainly protest in the name of a ideology the name of a CA F Adventure it's very tempting it's very tempting 

DM : I mean I would say in general the the purpose uh uh finding Rebellion for the sake of rebellion purpose in in a higher cause is of course one of the most most useful ways uh to find a meaning in your life beyond the maximization of pleasure unfortunately uh the the rebellious the rebellious attitude for the sake of rebellion becomes extremely appealing uh another of the students at Colombia s to hark on about it but it does show a a rot somewhere you know at Elite institutions one of the other students at Colombia said uh that started the year out as a a protester in October uh against the climate emergency the climate crisis and you know within a month uh it was Hamas --

JP : So, one of the things I noticed I suppose it was in about 2014 which was approximately when I was starting to detect that something had gone seriously wrong with the universities let's say one of the things I did recognize amongst my colleagues was this axiomatic presumption that part of what the universities were there for was to teach young people how to be moral by protesting that that that Pro that that protest itself had become a standin for Morality and so you know you can feel sort you can feel some sympathy for that kid that you were describing I mean he's gone off to an elite institution hoping to be taught how to live a good life in the classic sense by the world's most profound experts and what he found when he got there was that since the 1960s the best thing that the universities have to offer to their students is the false the false reputation the false claim to morality that can be had and the excitement that can be had by engaging in a protest and 

DM : Yes the the life of an activist is the ideal life um and the life that's rewarded and the life that is seen to be virtuous I mean it's all of that and by the way I one of the other things that that has struck me very much in recent times has been um the fact that of course a lot a lot of the problems that we see emerging in in our Societies in the west come about not just from that boredom but of course the fact that when the when the financial uh uh Pi goes out um and and stops being able to lift people up a lot of other stuff gets revealed um um we see this in the UK at the moment it's not by any means the only explanation for the riots that have been going on but if you look at all of the northern towns in which the riots have been going on the material uh well-being of the population has declined in the last 30 years since the last set of riots and you know you sort of think well if you if you if if the society isn't working for you financially and joblessness has actually gone up and on top of that you have challenges to your identity well of course there's a there's a there's a Cause right there and not an ignorable one if it's if it's about saying you know I want to I want to defend my culture and all that ignoble once somebody thinks that the way best way of doing that is to pick up a brick and throat at a policeman or a place of worship -- 

JP : Yeah well it's no simple matter to distinguish the genuine protests from the false protests that's for sure and so so let me ask you one more question about your tour and your From those who studied evil scientifically: “it feels like a force that descends” talk and then maybe we'll turn our attention to the situation in the UK okay so you're planning on showing your audience is footage from your Journeys through the Middle East for the last 6 months so I guess I'm curious about well you know you didn't step into the conflict in the Middle East as a naive Observer either of people or of societies but my suspicions are that you've seen a lot more in the last 6 months than you ever really wanted to see and so I'm curious about what you've seen and what you've concluded from that and how it's altered or extended your Viewpoint or challenged it for that matter like you've been poking your nose into very dangerous places and so what's been the consequence for you and what is it that you're hoping to shed a light on with the imagery in particular let's say what are you hoping to shed a light on for the people who are going to come and hear you talk 

DM : Well there's quite a lot of things I mean the I've covered a lot of conflicts before including in the Middle East uh and a lot of what been happening is sadly familiar territory to me there are there are um though as you and I have discussed before there's there's there's a reason why um hell is a pit that's endless and uh when it comes to violence and the ability to to commit acts of evil it seems to me that I mean that that axom that the pit is just endless has was really been shown in the last year um um I've been uh I've been in Israel and Gaza most of the time since the 7th and yes I mean of course like anyone reporting from the front line seen lots of things that I'd rather not have seen but I mean my my belief is that there's a very important role in society for people who do that and come back and tell everyone else what it's like not least of course to warn people I mean no there's lots of things that you know I've seen as a reporter And the reporter from war zones which I I know I would not want other people to see -- I know I didn't want to see myself but in order for other people not to see that you have to know where people can go and um you know I like one of the things that has struck me a lot in the the last year has been that the and I've made this comment a couple times in pieces and and elsewhere that the the that the terrorists of the 7th in particular were were deeply gleeful, whilst carrying out acts of unbelievable barbarism... 

....and that's something that --
that's something I've been thinking about a lot, because -- to be to be doing something you think is  right, but is evil is one thing; 

to be doing something that is evil, and being joyful about it, is.... um --

And for people around you to celebrate it, and then at several degrees of remove uh -- that people who think they've got the same cause as you, would excuse it, or, you know, say "Uh well, -- context, or, you know.... 

Much like all sorts of things like that that are just alarming and I, you know --

I've often thought actually in recent months of there was a late uh historian a writer called Gita Sereni who died about 20 years ago made a great impact on me when I was growing up She Wrote among other things a biography of the child killer Mary Bell and also the biographies of stangle the camp commandant of Treblrinka, who she interviewed, and also of Albert Speer --

I remember reading an interview with Gita Sereni towards the end of her life, and she -- she was not a religious person, but she said, having spent a lot of her life considering Evil, and staring at Evil, and writing about Evil, she said, it's -- 

'It feels like a force 

that descends, it just --

....it just manifests, 

and there's no other 

explanation for it, it's not..... 

It isn't just about some problem

in the developmental process 

or simply a matter
of Education or opportunitues;

on top of all those 

problems that do exist

sometimes, there is an 

incarnation of Evil in The World --

JP : Well in one way of thinking about what psychology tells us about gleeful evil that I think even technically is that because I've been thinking about this a lot in relationship to these new large language models you know and there's a statistical probability that any given concept will be associated with any other given concept and if you're mapping is technologically advanced enough you can calculate those statistical relationships and that's what the large language models do and then you can start to see you can start to see you can start to map mathematically what the psychoanalysts called complexes and complexes are systems of ideas that occur in each other's proximity and there's a core to them and one of the ways of Imagining the theological represent presentations of of evil the legions of devils let's say that are behind the the generation of the bottomless pit of Hell is that they are representations of complex of ideas that hang together an I think you put your finger on the core of it actually the core of it isn't evil the core of it is gleeful evil right so it's not merely the evil and --

DM : It's the it's it's rejoicing in evil. 

JP : Yeah well and that that's it's that is that is actually the core of of sadism from a psychopathological perspective right it's not it's positive Delight it's quite -- it's it's it's a multi-dimensional characterization it's positive Delight in the unnecessary suffering of others, right, and the unnecessary element is also Cardinal because that plays up the element that's parody you know so in Auschwitz, for example one of the games the guards used to play was to have the the prisoners who got off the train cars shivering and frozen and accompanied by their dead relatives who you know died of his fixation or or froze to death in the cattle cars they'd arrive at the camps and then they'd be compelled to carry wet socks of salt from one side of the camp which was the size of a town to the other and then back and so it's a parody of work right and it's a it's a demonstration to the person thems that not only are they suffering for every for all the reasons that they're in the camps and by the fact of the burden that they're carrying but the utter counterproductive pointlessness of the painful labor is also emphasized and insisted upon and and then Delight taken in that and that is a very dark thing to observe -- 

DM : Yes, I mean there's one of the I was in the uh one of the maximum security prisons in Israel early this year and saw the Hamas terrorists from the seventh who had been captured alive one of them was somebody who I I recognized from uh one of the atrocity videos uh who had thrown there were two young boys about 10 12 they with their father they went into the safe room when the bombs started falling and hamaz terrorists came and they saw them go and they threw a grenade and the father threw himself on the grenade and was killed in front of his sons and then you know one of them lost an ear and the other one lost an eye and they were staggering around the main room of their house house weeping and wailing in the most uh Unforgettable awful awful way and one of the terrorists came in and who' just killed their father in front of them came in and opened the fridge and helped himself to the food and the youngest of the boys in to in total trauma and you know said that's my mother's food and the terrorists turned him and said where's your mother I want her too How could a how how could anyone do that --

JP : You uh you put your finger on it, well you know that idea of the dissent it's like um one of the things that God accuses Cain of when he becomes bitter is opening the door to evil he said his suffering wasn't merely a consequence of his failure in life it was a consequence of his failure tempting to tempting him to open the door to evil and so if you think about it in terms of these complexes of associated ideas is they're ideas that if you let in they bring a host of other ideas with them and a host is exactly the right phrase --and you might be tempted in a moment of weakness to invite something in that you think that you can control or that you could Bend to your own purposes but the problem is is that you're inviting in a complex that has been around forever and that once lodged inside you might prove uh What uh that whatever defenses that you might think you have there to mount are trivial in comparison to the power of what you've invited in and that is I I think you can think of that technically and it is a terrible thing and it is the kind of things that that are warned against at the theological level although that's a very complicated thing to to untangle and so all right so let's let's turn from that a bit so that's the sort of thing that you're going to explain as you're communicating with your audience and what you're hoping to demonstrate to people is that is The Logical conclusion of the sorts of games for example that are being played on the University campuses for sure for sure yeah yeah well then of course the problem with that is at least to some degree is that that complex of ideas that takes possession of people in the circumstances that you're describing has that end in mind oh yeah absolutely yeah of course of course all right all right well let's turn our attention to the to the situation in the UK if that's the case I mean so let's start with something Tommy Robinson and the UK protests contentious I suppose Tammy and I went out on a limb recently and interviewed Tommy Robinson I saw I've been I've been watching Tommy for a long time um and he struck me as particularly interesting well for two reasons is the first reason I suppose is because he is a genuine workingclass guy and for better or worse and second I haven't seen anyone anywhere who's been more unwavering in his commitment to reveal the atrocities of the grooming gangs in the UK which are act what organized patterns of activity that are very persuasive that are so terrible that it's almost impossible to talk about them without sounding like a conspiracy theorist so now there's no doubt that there are many things that you could accuse Tommy Robinson of and many things many of those he would admit to but to me and also to my wife fair enough um but the fact that he's pointed his finger at something that's seriously needs to be attended to and has paid a major price for it is also not ignorable it's like do we expect someone who's brave enough to do that to also be perfect in every regard that's asking a bit much given that there's many people who in principle have moral characters much more un unsullied than Tommy Robinson who are cing and silence constantly in the face of this absolute brutal and so well so we interviewed him and what did I think of Tommy he's very articulate he can certainly make a case for himself um and then I thought it was up to the audience to listen and to make their own judgment now that was before the recent March that Robinson and his crew organized in London which in my estimation I'm interested in your perspective went as peacefully and well as the protests in Ottawa which it was modeled after and so I thought his crew handled that extraordinarily well now in the aftermath of those protests of course all sorts of chaotic hell has broken loose and um well why don't you are much closer to such things than me I mean being a Denis of that country I'm looking from outside trying to make sense out of it but my sense at the moment is that the UK is somewhat of a Tinder Box and so yes and I wish I wish it hadn't been so predictable um I um again I I wrote about this so many years uh warned about it uh the strange death of Europe was largely my last ditch attempt to warn my own Society of birth and other Western countries not to go down the path that they were precisely going down and as the former government Minister said in the times a couple of days ago the thing about my my prediction on that was that I made them not with any Glee but in a spirit of deep lamentation about what was about to happen to my society and as I see it there um Tommy Robinson's a very ex interesting example of of of of this whole thing but let me just explain where how I see it the uh this whole configuration of recent days uh started when a 17-year-old went into a tor Swift dance class A couple weeks ago now and uh started hacking at young girls with a knife killed three girls 9y olds thereabouts wounded many others and the news of that came out and a very typical modern British modern European modern Western thing happened which was that in the aftermath people started to suspect something was being kept from them now wiser heads would wait but not everyone's a wise head after nine-year-old girls are bludgeon to death um stabbed to death so false information went out online saying that the attack was a um had arrived on one of the many boats of illegal migrants that come across the English Channel every every week uh that was untrue uh in fact he was the son of um immigrants from Rwanda but people started to sense that there was a cover up of some kind or at least the news was being managed the police in Britain seemed always to think they're being very clever at this and it's always seemed to me that they exacerbate every problem they put their their mind to um they insisted that the first the young man was originally from Cardiff uh capital of Wales and people just sense there something as something with their holding from us sure enough um anyway the point is is very uh unpleasant ugly and again evil forces can get Unleashed at such a Time the spirit of Revenge and some uh protests started peacefully at first then some violent a mosque was targeted nearby and then violence started to spread out to other towns then Muslim communities started to arm up in some cases literally people turning up uh with knives to defend their areas um this is all and maybe it'll die down by the time this podcast has gone out or maybe it'll get a lot worse but the one thing you can say with absolute certainty is it's not going to go away because all of this is the consequence of what I call the problem of primary and secondary problems the primary problem in the UK as in Europe in recent years has been the total unwillingness of the political and other classes in the UK to address deep deep concerns of the public and when people said in recent days how could anyone leap to such a conclusion that the attacker would be and go because everyone's seen this before you know people don't actually forget very fast the media class may but they don't forget very fast that it's only seven years ago that uh the son of Libyan migrants to the UK went and detonated a suicide bomb at an Ariana Grande con concert in Manchester they don't forget fast that three people who had no right to be in the UK including one whose Asylum claim had been rejected but who was nowhere near being deported went across London Bridge in 2017 hacking at the throats of passers by and shouting Alo Akbar they don't forget that they notice it but the uh the British government and others have had this very very clear policy that they don't really know what to do to tackle that they don't know what to do really to tackle The Grooming gangs issue there was another set of prosecutions the other day and another uh case is coming to court in the in the coming weeks you could say well they clearly do they're using the law but the but a lot of the public say well not fast enough and not really there's an awful lot of rapists still walking around with girls who are their victims in the same towns and the government knows that the public ascribed this to the government's immigration policies its integration policies but the governments can't take responsibility for that because they've made that mistake now they've they they the the conservative government that just left power that said that they would bring migration down to the tens of thousands a year left office with net Migra ation of legal migration at almost 34 of a million a year which is by the way completely unsustainable but they just keep doing it anyway the interesting thing that Tommy Robinson speaks to and has always spoken to is um what are you allowed to do about this or say about this now if if you're me for the time being um you're allowed to write about it sometimes you're allowed to speak about it sometimes you're allowed to raise alarms sometimes you're allowed to speak your mind somewhat but if you're a Tommy Robinson character if you grow up in Luton and you haven't had many advantages in life and you've had quite a lot of disadvantages and you're white and working class what are you allowed to do about this what are you allowed to say about any of this and the government for decades now has had the attitude you're not allowed to do anything you're not allowed to say anything you can't do anything because if you do we'll call you a racist and we call you far right and this has all gone on for a very long time well it's an it's an effective epithet you know like when I first came across your work and I've seen this reaction in the depths of my soul to many people when I first came across your work which is quite a long time ago now you know know I was leery of it and I think the reason for that is that it's something like this it's that there are a lot of people in the world and I'm not going to be able to meet all of them or read all of them or have anything to do with all of them and now and then some of them get tarred with some epithet well the cost to me of accepting that tarring is very low on average because if I don't pay attention to some person there's a whole bunch of other people I could pay attention to so it's not like the pool of people to attend to shrinks right so so and and that epithet of far right is a very effective brand of taring and even it it's even effective among people who are very skeptical of such things so I'll give you an example so I talked to Michael shellenberger after he released the W paath files when he was investigating the absolute pathological corruption and Craven cowardice of the of the Cadre who presented what purport to be the standard guidelines for enlightened care to the American Medical Association the American Psychiatric association the American Psychological Association and he was appalled at their lack of competence and their ideological possession it was another bottomless pit and I and I asked him how he became aware of this and he said well one way was that he had listened to Abigail shrier and I talk about it I guess it was two years ago when Abigail first put out her book irreversible damage it was the first podcast I did after I'd been so ill and I was terrified to do it because it was such a Hot Topic and you know shellenberger himself said he listened to that podcast but he really couldn't believe it you know and that's another example of the effectiveness of that tari yes it's it's so easy to demolish someone's reputation and it's especially easy to demolish a reputation for people who do not have as it were a backlog of published work yeah I mean it's it's relatively easy but to to weigh up someone's views and make an estimation of them if they have seven books to their name as I do or you know thousands and thousands of articles but it can't be the case that only book authors are When the politicians continue to ignore and insult the public… allowed to say anything about the disintegration of their societies it's it's it's not like it should only be left to people who write newspaper articles yeah well God no not that like maybe maybe least of all and but but but but then you go to this question which as you know has come up in Canada in recent years and is very live now in Britain which is what again what are people allowed to do now obviously by the way and I'm aware as you always are of the deep desire of bad Faith actors to seize anything I say in this discussion and misrepresented so let me do a very boring piece of throat clearing if I may the idea that people's response to any problems in their society should be to go out and commit acts of violence is obviously insane and wrong what we're seeing on the streets of the British cities though raises this question as I say of if the public keep saying something to the politicians and the politicians keep not just ignoring them but insulting them what are they allowed to do these people these are populations that have have every single election like the rest of the British people for 20 years they have voted for Less immigration I've been told that they'd get it and instead it's just gone up the these are they've lived through an economy since 2008 where of the jobs created by the British government in the last since 2008 um so in the last what we're talking 16 years of the jobs created since 2008 74% have gone to people who were not born in Britain so just just people think about this for a second the government refuses to do what the public keep on asking for and what the government keeps on saying it'll do it is seen to be I think accurately extremely LAX on policing certain social cohesion issues it's extremely eager to crack down on anyone of a Tommy Robinson type and what material benefits have come about in the society in the last 16 years have largely gone to people who were not born in the country what I I I repeat what what is what is permissible in this situation to do and I would say peaceful protesting would be one thing or speaking up or you know whatever you like to do except that every time even there is a peaceful protest the peaceful protesters are defamed as far right uh neo-nazis I mean there definitely will have been and have been in last in recent days some extremely ugly people who've come out of The Woodshed who I'm sure do include there's like one guy everyone's obsessed with who has a swastika tattoo on his back um is that guy representative of all the people who are angry in the wake of the uh the slaughter in Southport I would have thought not and in any other situation every public official political official opinion writer and policeman would be very wary of trying to Tar everyone with that brush uh I mean for instance the the the the police and authorities even when uh you have discovery of of of an Imam in a mosque preaching violence the V everyone is incredibly careful lawyers at all the newspapers and everyone else to make sure that it isn't implied that everyone who attends that mosque is somehow in favor of this in fact woe beti you if you did do that you have to say it's this one person and no one else is responsible but somehow the the actual desire to Tar anyone who has as I say not got a voice and is wanting to make their voice heard as you know as as a violent far-right Neo-Nazi seems to me to be a big error by Kia starma and others because you know if you can't say we recognize your deep deep concerns about some things that have happened including Mass stabbings terrorism and much more we understand your deep deep concerns and we are going to try to get onto this and on top of this but there is no excuse to turn out on the streets and be violent against your Muslim brothers and sisters and neighbors or anyone else if they can't say that they just cannot say it they just have to go to the secondary thing what kills me about this is it's exactly what I said for years if you don't deal with a primary problem you get secondary problems and if you just focus on the secondary problem you will never not you'll not only not solve the primary problem you will make it worse exactly what we're seeing the less your business spends on operations on multiple systems and on delivering your product or service the more money you keep but with higher expenses on materials employees distribution and borrowing everything costs more to reduce costs and headaches smart businesses are graduating to net Suite by Oracle netsuite is a number one Cloud Financial system bringing accounting financial management inventory and HR into one platform and one source of Truth with Nets Suite you can reduce it costs cut the cost of maintaining multiple systems and improve efficiency by bringing all your major business processes into one platform and slashing manual tasks and errors over 37,000 companies have already made the move why haven't you by popular demand netsuite has extended its one-of-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks head to netsuite.com jbp that's netsuite.com jbp nets.com jbp okay so a couple of I got a couple of questions out of that and well one The epithet of “Far Right” has lost its meaning observation the first observation is that the epet far right is rapidly losing its utility now when I hear someone now described as farri I think yeah maybe probably not but maybe and now and I should also point out that I actually it's not like I'm unaware of the existence of Bad actors I don't even know if right and left are the right dimensions of evaluation anymore and I suspect not but for for now we'll stick with that I mean uh ever since I came out in defense of the defensive response of Israel to the October 7th Massacre I've had no shortage of farri trolls on my case and I know what they're like of studying historically and of course that happened to me when I partnered with the daily wire to begin with because its headman in some ways at least in the public eye was Ben Shapiro and so I I'm perfectly aware of what the far-right uh agitators look like and they're a remarkably despicable Bunch so we we'll get that out of the way to begin with um the idea that they're in the same camp for example as um as the workingclass protesters that you're describing in the UK is absurd because first of all what the UK what the workingclass protesters are doing isn't fundamentally political it's it's fundamentally based in something approximating frustration okay so so okay so having said that then I've got two I've got a question so with regards to the drivers of immigration you know you say the We’re coasting downward on the idea of moral relativism politicians campaign at least on the conservative side at least some of the time with the claim that they're going to get a handle on this but they don't in fact quite the opposite they seem to facilitate it and so then is that because it's actually beyond their control or is it because here's a psychological reason it's like for decades our culture has insisted on something approximating a position of moral relativism there's no way of drawing hierarchical distinctions between the value claims that different cultures present we can't admit for a moment that there might be some reason to be um lery let's say of an immigrant class that would be associated with the kind of education that the Madres are producing for all sorts of ideological reasons we can't make any allowance for the idea that some immigrants might be more difficult to integrate into our culture than others and that is a thorny problem don't get me wrong but now so we open the flight Gates let's say and we find out that there are people who don't have democracies in their own country because they don't have the culture for it let's say or the desire for it and they bring those attitudes along with them surprise surprise because they weren't just Freedom loving oppressed people striving to be free who are now thrilled to death to be in a democratic country but people who are pretty damn prone to bring all of the problems that they had in their own country along with them now and we're not supposed to say that now my sense is the working class doesn't get to have their say because if they had their say everyone who's modern and liberal and tolerant in that pathological manner that accepts everything without distinction would have to do some serious digging into the underst structure of their own belief systems and think oh well and then that touches on something else now so here's a weird segue uh or or what would you say a idea that popped into my head an association Richard Dawkins announced What’s driving mass immigration to the West himself as a cultural Christian so then one of the things that makes that makes me ask is something like well what is it that the West has right that the enemies of the West have wrong that's percolating at the bottom of all of this mess that's driving what that's driving the relativistic arguments of the pro-immigration types but that's also fulminating this terrible clash of cultures that we unsurprisingly see emerging on our streets it's like so so the first the question first is like what the hell's driving the massive immigration into the West because we see it in Canada maybe worse than anywhere else at the moment or more at a more rapid rate than anywhere else Canada is so damn peaceful it's hard to destabilize it but we're working hard on that so so what's driving this m is it the insistence is it this ideological insistence it's a lot of things one is as I've warned about for a long time one is something that isn't inevitable but is hard to resist which is a simple ease of movement in the 21st century the relative cheapness of travel compared to any previous century and the knowledge through the devices we have in our pockets around the globe I mean what three bit three billion people are on WhatsApp Alone um the ability of people anywhere in the world to discover the life of anyone else in the world easily uh and add to that the fact that most countries in the world are not even remotely approximating either the safety or the wealth uh available in 21st century Canada for instance or Britain and you and it's inevitable that a lot of people will want that now as I've said for years just because they may want wanted does not mean that Western liberal democracies can remotely be the place where everybody who wants a better life can or should go it's simply impossible and you just crunch the numbers on people in subsaharan Africa who want to move into Europe for instance and if that happened if the third of subsaharan Africa who who want to move moved Europe were totally unrecognizable now the the the the the second thing that comes from that is that it is extremely difficult for politicians to maintain their borders and I think this is highly regrettable because I think the only way in which among other things you can have an actual Asylum system where you actually take in those unusual cases uh where Asylum should be uh needed just disappear once you have illegal migration every day coming in on boats or as in the case of America millions of people walking ACR Ross the southern Border in the last four years and add to that the fact that as has been as was famous he said in 1968 by somebody uh it's the easiest thing to put off any difficult decision you have to make today and leave it for your successors to address all the time making it harder for your successes but I said this to a European politician some years ago when they said that they were going to deport the million illegals that were in their country I said how are you going to do it because you and I know that day one if you rounded up everyone who is legally in the country put them on what buses trains boats the first woman or child crying would be on the front page of every newspaper the next morning and by day two you would have to stop because of public pressure um that that's just it seems to be a reality for the time being by the way until such an time emerges and it could where where the society says we don't give a damn anymore we don't give a damn that may that may well happen but until that does happen you know countries are absolutely incapable politicians are incapable of answering this question then you have then you have a follow on one which addresses what you mentioned about Richard Dawkins among other things The problem of integration: founding ideas, ethnicity, and culture which is um America it's not quite true to say that America was a society based on an idea but it's a nice idea um America was based on an idea but the idea came about because of the people who founded the Republic the United States of America and if they had Englishmen right if they had have been from somewhere else even a different denomination the United States would be very different however as far as States founded on an idea goes America is probably the most the nearest to that European nations Britain are not based on an idea they were not based on an idea now that isn't to say that they don't have very distinct culture and my word the different cultures across Europe are so different that everyone jokes about their neighbors and regards their neighbor and the neighboring European country being wildly different from them to an outsider it seems Preposterous that the swedes and the Norwegians would have distinctions between them but they do but but I say this to say that uh EUR Europe and Britain was made up of ethnic identities and those ethnic identities had ideas of course but even in Britain you have the Welsh you have the Scots you have the English Northern Irish the Irish um how do you integrate into that how do you do it um does anyone know and the answer is no have some people I'd say Yes um have a majority it doesn't look that way to me um and and so so this is this is this is just a bomb underneath the society's in Europe in particular it's it's it's it has been about ethnicity we don't like things about being about ethnicity so we say it's about an idea but all my adult life this idea has been so hard for anyone to pin down that they've just failed it it time and time again I'm old enough to remember when Gordon Brown was prime minister and I contributed to a book that he edited about being British what britishness was that was 20 years ago and Britain is no closer to defining that today than it was 20 years ago uh people say things like britishness is about queuing or fair play and that is so completely inadequate to the task at hand but the other one that can come along with this and this is one of the ones that white “You don’t have a culture” is a great lie levied by bad actors working class communities in the UK deeply resent in particular is the you don't have a culture which is one of the other nice which well it's one of the nice things that race baers of all shapes have been doing for years at these people you don't have a culture it's what I read about in the war in the west the jabbing majority populations and if you do have a culture it's not a good one or it's a rapaciously evil one or it's one that's only to be described through the lens of colonialism or slavy or racism or institutional racism or patriarchy or whatever and they've just done this for years there has been what I showed in my last book to be this for instance why do all the holy places of the British people keep being attacked literally and metaphorically why does Winston Churchill the great hero of the British Nation keep on being attacked by people because they want to hurt these people they want to hurt the people who rever them they literally want to strip their gods from them they want to defile the holy places of the culture you might say well why do you want to do that revenge for some people supremacy of a different kind for others weakness among others false Adventure cowardice going along with the tenor of the times however bad that direction of travel happens to be but I said recently before The madness of demoralizing the majority population these riots happened I said you know it would would be and I might have said this to you in private before Jordan but I say it would be Madness to if I don't know if people from the Indian subcontinent made up 3% of your population it would be Madness to try to demoralize that population or to try to find ways to just say that they were nothing and never had been anything and it was sort of best if they just tried to Sidle through their lives without harming anyone why would you do that to 3% of the population you among other things it's rude it's cruel it's unusual and that 3% of the population is a significant amount of the population you don't want to demoralize 3% of the population okay why would you do that to a majority who is so insane that they want to do this to majority populations and the answer seems to be well we're finding out we are finding out well okay let's let's delve into that on the idial front I mean I would say who would want to do that well my sense is that it's this metastasization of Marxism it's the spirit that metastasized Marxism that's bringing this about and consciously and so you have you have the people that hold the center the majority of people who approximate some implicit ideal however poorly and then you have people who are perhaps unable to do that or who are unwilling to do it or who are even opposed to it and they occupy the margin and there's many of them they're a plethora and the postmodernists especially the modern queer theorists let's say want to bring that margin into the center by whatever means necessary now I think there's a profound philosophical misunderstanding that accompanies that desire although if the underlying desire at the base is just the desire for chaos which is certainly possible then it's not a mistake it's not a bug it's a feature but you know we we tend to believe in the west that an idea has its opposite and that progress might be obtained by watching The War of an of a thesis and its antithesis but that's not how things work you have a thesis and you have a plethora of antithesis in fact an infinite plethora and so if you try to Center the marginal all that happens is you demolish the entire structure and one of the ideas that I've been working on recently conceptually is that imagine that now you're motivated to Center the marginal at all cost and you presume to begin with because you're naive or corrupt that those marginal are a community and they're a community with something in common apart from their marginalization well that's C certainly the claim of the alphabet mob for example we're all a community it's like yeah I don't think so doesn't look like it looks to me like you're a plurality United by your what would you say your resentment okay and narciss and narcissism and narcissism okay so then but but here's the the subtle part of the argument let's say and I think this is true it looks to me that if you demolish the center by centering the marginal you destroy the marginal first not the center because the thing is well the thing is Douglas the center is protected you know let me give you an example let me give you an example because I think this is relevant so since the 1960s since the early 1960s under the guise of the sexual Revolution there's been an allout assault let's say against the structure of marriage and so and the consequence of that is that many people aren't married but none of those people are wealthy and educated because the wealthy and educated are just as married as they were in the early 60s the people who aren't married are the economically marginalized let's say the people who are in trouble and so that freedom that came from the removal of the patriarchal ideal which which is a burdensome thing to bear and also a judgmental entity let's say you know single mothers aren't to be tolerated that finger wagging sort of morality it's like fair enough okay now we bring the marginal to the center who dies first the center no the marginal yes well another example of that which is you see that in um I don't go on the tangent with but you see that in the in the drug normalization which is the the the elite classes who almost always push for further liberalization in laws are actually the people who if they do dabble in that themselves are most likely to be able to be saved after all there's a reason that their job will probably support them if they want to go into rehab and there's they will be able to pay maybe even their office will pay maybe their firm will pay not so for the people lying on the streets of this city with absolutely no safety net who have not benefited from that liberalization process to say the least but it's the same thing absolutely the people you bring in you bring in the most marginal case and then yes in the end the marginalized become the people who suffer the most and by by the way I mean we've just lived through this bizarre um I know sort of social stampede on the Paris Olympics thing but what you said what you said was just resonating with me because I say why is it now so completely predictable that an Olympic Games will have to open with a sort of balls out bearded drag queen being the center of attention and an a very obese transperson should be the kind of like the main figure of worship in this bizarre modern cult Theology and uh and I know you notice this I noticed this the truth is everybody notices this it's absurd it's a complete it's it's a kind of replacement theology as far as I can see and one that hasn't been thought through at all well and doesn't work and is hideous and ugly and is not encourage people to Aspire to anything beautiful or true yeah well that's the dread abomination of desolation right that the theologians warned about when it's put in the highest place then it's time to head for the hills and what does that mean it means something like Well when the social order is so inverted that the most monstrous is elevated to the highest place then that's a sign that like all that chaos is about to return and that seems to me to be highly probable well we can see it and everyone can feel it absolutely everyone can feel it in one form or another you that you can and to it's very terrifying to see it start to emerge in such a dramatic form in the UK you know and it is something for as a Canadian it's really something to go to Europe and hear the Progressing polite instincts into policy, “diversity is our strength” elite types Express doubt about whether or not they have a culture you know I heard people in in the Netherlands say that to me uh I met a group of you know very well-placed Comedians and artists and writers and and and and they that most of them were conservative people and they expressed doubts about the even the existence of their own culture you know and I come from the Hinterlands of Northern Canada and I go to a place like Amsterdam I'm just just makes my bloody jaw drop and it's the same whenever I visit the UK it's like you people don't think you have a culture it's like well who has pretensions to a culture then like if if Europe doesn't have a culture then no one has a culture I mean Europe has a culture that's so miraculous that people make pilgrimages there in the tens of millions just to see its remnants yes so it's like what the hell is this claim it's it's it's it's um the the the Nic way to interpret what has been attempted in that uh in that regard is what it's nicer to incomers if we do ourselves down a bit because otherwise it's boastful and maybe that is the Instinct of some people it's been a stupid thing to try to progress that from an instinct into an actual policy and uh to you know to fall back on the sort of mant of you know everyone's a migrant for instance I mean this is one of the ones that has just been endlessly forced on people and again sorry to keep referring to it but as I said in the strange death of Europe people in Europe Europeans British people others do notice that if they moved to China or India they would not become Chinese or Indian they do notice that and they do notice that if they had children in that country their children would not be regarded as Indian or Chinese either and that's just to pick out two countries that happen to be the largest ones but in that case a lot of people think how come anyone can move here and immediately become us and the answer is that's not clear at all it doesn't seem obvious at all at the same time of course nobody wants to say nobody can become like us because that's too judgmental and too too negative a thought too pessimistic a thought and so what happens is just a set of stupid and banale lies diversity is our strength that's another one diversity is our strength is possibly the main Mantra of British and European societies now and actually again as mantras go is false diversity does bring some strengths and it also brings some weaknesses diversity can bring a range of ideas and it can bring ideas so terrible that they could destroy the society it wasn't great that that Hari Ali Ali Hari Ali's parents moved from Somalia to the UK got Asylum and their son then macheted an MP to death in his surgery um we didn't need the allei family to bring the worst of the war zones of Somalia to the streets of a British constituency and so when you hear people saying things insisting everybody insisting all the time diversity is our strength people know it's a lie people know at the very least it's a half truth and they get fed up with this stuff being forced at them because all the time they're noticing the downsides of this and the downsides include by the way I mean it never can never be said enough the change of a society when the movement uh is so fast and the numbers are so large and the the type of diversity is so difficult people notice that for instance a high trust Society of the kind that Britain used to be becomes a very low trust society and Bel poor and the and the belief in institutions that used to characterize Britain once all of those have delegitimized themselves what are you left with and then they come for the holy places they come for your gods they come for your temples and people are meant to suck it up endlessly and I've never been sure that they would when a woman experienc is an unplanned pregnancy she often feels alone and Afraid too often her first response is to seek out an abortion because that's what left-leaning institutions have conditioned her to do but because of the generosity of listeners like you that search may lead her to a pre-born network Clinic where by the grace of God she'll choose life not just for her baby but for herself pre-born offers God's love and compassion to hurting women and provides a free ultrasound to introduce them to the life growing inside them this combination helps women to choose life and it's how pre-born saves 200 babies every single day thanks to the Daily wires partnership with pre-born we're able to make our powerful documentary choosing life available to all on daily wire plus join us in thanking pre-born for bringing this important work out from behind our pay wall and consider making a donation today to support their life-saving work you can sponsor one ultrasound for just $28 if you have the means you can sponsor pre-born entire network for a day for $5,000 make a donation today just dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby that's pound 250 baby or go to pre-born docomo that's preborn dcom Rates of radicalization Jordan so well here's a here's an obvious question too it's like well here's a definition of war war is the definition of irreconcilable diversity right so diversity is our strength it's like okay well Hamas and Israel have diverse viewpoints and they're not reconcilable so what do we have a war so what's the story that people are supposed to swallow it's that although the world has been eternally mild in interesing Conflict the war between diverse viewpoints if we import all that diversity into the West magically we wave a wand and all that diversity will be be transformed into nothing but what productive complex productive cooperation in the absence by the way in in the absence of any reconciling framework because people like Trudeau for example dispense with the idea of any national identity whatsoever so their presumption is something like the natural state of people regardless of the diversity of their opinions no matter how diverse those opinions are their natural state is productive peace right so that's what that's rouso is that is that what that is is that an unbelievably naive rouso and and is that the is that the unwillingness is that a reflection of the unwillingness to look at the aspect of the human psyche that's gleefully pursuing murder and Mayhem just to not and just to never cast an eye in that direction it's all sweetness and light we're all little children and and if if it that's what it looks like something like that to me it'll be the strange death of Europe will be something like the death of the overprivileged at the hands of their own naivity yes and you can see it you can see it very closely I mean as I say you know some ways I mean it's a horrible thing to say thank goodness the the killer in Southport wasn't a migrant who had arrived illegally into the UK a couple of weeks earlier but you you you want the Peace of your society and the possible peacefulness of your Society for the foreseeable future to be reliant on that never happening again well there's also reliable evidence Douglas that the children of immigrants are more likely to be radicalized than the imants themselves yeah yeah especially if they're having a hard time integrating right well I mean that's one of the most common ones I've spoken with you about this before but I mean the most common one is you know a parent who flees a particularly ugly and warlike Society like say Somalia might realize how lucky they are to arrive in Canada they might one would hope that they did will the child no the child's expectation is that the place they've born in is the normal Order of Things um and then a load of other people in society you know have tot Al forgotten what the state of nature can be and has been for most of human history and forget that actually you know you can bang on all you like about disinformation or online and so on most people are just looking at the situation in front of them and then suddenly War breaks out Hell Breaks Loose hopefully it's contained but sometimes you see it completely uncontained that's certainly what I saw in Israel the the the the absolute epitome of unconstrained hate that was Unleashed on Israel on the 7th by the way again so one other sorry Cassandra, the prophetess, and the role of the prophet one other quick thing on that because it's something that is so often in my mind is onto communities by the way in the south of Israel precisely overpopulated by people who dreamed the dream of peace with their neighbors and believed for instance that you know by driving Palestinian children from Gaza to is isi hospitals every weekend they were doing something in the cause of Peace literally the woman who was doing that who was in her 70s was burned alive in her home on October the 7th so the simple dream dreaming does not make it so you may well be living in the most wonderful dream but if if everyone else is not you better just hope you're not woken up one day but the likelihood is you will be and again what I've laid out about the situation in Britain I was some example of that a a dream which maybe doesn't work maybe you're woken up from okay so now I have a better Insight too into your goal in the speaking tour is like you're doing see you're destined to be Cassandra so that's always fun and you can tell if you're Cassandra if you make prophecies that you pray would not come true but believe are likely oh my gosh yes you can't can't believe how much you can't believe how much that's been on my mind my late friend Jonathan Sachs wrote after a strange death of Europe came out he wrote to me with a message from uh with a line from Ezekiel where he said uh he said um what's the line he said and whether they listen or fail to listen they should know that a prophet stood among them right right which I have children I got in I really hope that he wasn't right right well so I can see I see so so you know what you're doing at the deepest level with this new tour is I can see why it's The Logical ex next step in what you've been doing because you're going to attempt to bring to public attention all those things that people would rather not look at right there's a very old idea U and I elucidated it in some detail in this new book I wrote this we who wrestle with God that the way you become immune to the poison of the worst serpents is by looking at the things you least want to look at right and the goal of the Prophet the role of the Prophet is to identify what it is that people want to look at least and to hold it up in front of them in the hopes that that will that that will make the people who are viewing voluntarily stronger and that that will set the social order itself on a more appropriate path well we certainly don't need we certainly don't need people to be more dreamy and weaker than they currently are all right so maybe we could maybe we could turn our attention this direction you know in this conversation we've done a lot of what A profound form of loss and the remarkable traditions of the West conservative types often do which is to point to what's not good and to make a case for its pathology and danger now that it's that proclivity let's say that gives rise to the accusations from the radical utopians of the reactionary nature let's say of the right now like I said earlier I don't know if right and left I don't believe even that right and left is the right way to conceptualize what's going on in our society now but again we'll leave that aside you know that with this Alliance for responsible citizenship for example that was started last year in the UK um we've been trying to outline something approximating a positive Vision rather than merely pointing to the the evils of the current pathway and that outlining of a more positive vision is something that conservatives aren't particularly good at and and I can understand that in a sense you know because it's strange times indeed where you have to point repeatedly about what should be self-evident in relationship to your culture to remind people that it exists you know and at the deepest level you might say well the confusion about what constitutes a woman is a cardinal example of that it's like we're so lost that we can't agree on the distinction between the Sexes and so that's there isn't a there isn't a form of loss that's more profound than that as far as I can figure so so what do you see let's say as what do you offer what do you console yourself even let's say with in regards to something approximating a what is it that you're defending what is it that the West let's say that you're whose loss you're decrying what's what's at the bottom of this that we're in such radical danger of losing this is exactly what Dawkins was pointing to however implicitly when he described himself as a cultural Christian like okay the West is under assault well what is it that's worth defending precisely and how you conceptualize that and make it explicit and so I mean when I go to Europe what do I love about Europe the great beauty of its artistic tradition that's something that if you have any sense and any aesthetic sense at all that drops you to your knees to go to Italy to a town like Florence and to go into a random Church where there's a painting that if sold would be worth $500 million and to see it just hanging on the wall unguarded with no one around well what is that that's an indication of two types of treasure one the art itself two the fact that that art can just sit there without having a hundred men with machine guns around it making sure that no Thug comes along and perins it so that's the that's the Treasure of that implicit trust that you described so there's the beauty there's the Deep sense of voluntary civilization that characterizes Europe right there's a remarkable history of valuation of the individual all the way down the economic framework that's particularly present in the UK probably I it's there in the Netherlands as well there's other European countries that share that this is not no civilization and no culture and then so so what do you what is it that we should be promoting and fighting We should be continuing, not reframing and deconstructing for as far as you're concerned the main thing we is what you've just outlined we should be continuing you know it's it's uh one of the one of the things is where small C conservatism is that if if the most radical figures on the left come up with completely bizarre new manifestos for what should happen like the complete forgetting of biology or anything else if they come up with that it's true that others could resist that and say no we have an alternative utopian vision and so on I myself not a devotee of that idea I'm a devot of the idea of returning to the sane and the normal and the and the pursuit of the beautiful and the true now those are all things which you don't have to invent a whole new paradigm for we had it we have it in the civilization you just described in the institutions and the buildings and the works of art and much more uh it's it's what I I mean think of it this way what if instead of everybody in our age who has any Intelligence being told that they should use it to um problematize history and go over history focus on things that were solved and try to unsolveable before they decided to become historic figures themselves well that would be something to to aim for What If instead of seeing the the the the dozen or so figures that stand over the the Courtyard at Columbia University Dante Aristotle and so on what if instead of viewing them as simply dead white men you viewed them as part of a tradition that you can be a part of and add to and add to well that would be something and uh I think it's a very good vision for life and I think it did our forbears well and if you if you have a pride in that tradition which certainly in Europe we have the right to not to eradicate any Dark Times goodness knows but a right to have that tradition and to want to add to it and to want to preserve it and keep it going that seems to me a pretty good basis for life and remembering things that everyone knew until yesterday today and I wonder is it History is made by great men and women, you can be one too is it pride or is it grateful aspiration to you know cuz that word pride that's that's to that's been a very thorny word you might say and and increasingly so in recent years it's like while the right attitude to have towards the great figures of the past I mean in this Peterson Academy that we just launched we have one of the members of the House of Lords do a lecture series on seven Great historical leaders of the past I I'm kind of rubbing my hands together about that course because it's not the sort of course that you could get at a university All Things Considered there were no great men they were just pursuing their own power Dynamic for their own narrow self-serving purpose which so so it's so Preposterous I mean you just uh I was with some mutual friends of ours recently on the island of St Helena and although I tend to take the British view about Napoleon which was that he was a Proto Tyrant you cannot sit in Napoleon's study in Longwood house looking out at the ocean and considering the battalions of the British army that had to stay on the island to keep the emperor inside and the fleet of British boats that had to sit in the harbor facing inwards to make sure the emperor didn't escape to just think wow this was a world historical Force this man um you know you know you you able to take the the bad with the good sometimes and uh you know but but but goodness me I mean the idea there were no great men in history or that it's all just sort of relative is so it's so Preposterous and you don't have to go to a sort of carile and great man Theory but by the way that's a much better Theory uh of History than anything that's being pushed on us at the moment I mean just very I don't want to ramble but I mean there's a case I I was saying actually I did a an alternative commencement speech for some of the students at Colombia the other month because they weren't allowed a commencement ceremony because of the protesters at their University and of course so so a nice group of students and their families asked if I would would speak and I did and I did as as much as I could and but one of the things you know I I uh I I said you know as well as talking about the famous great figures of the past I gave the example of there's a there's a 16-year-old who who who Andrew Roberts mentions in his history of World War II the storm of war the 16-year-old who lied about his age to get into the British Navy as a Submariner in 1940 or so um is on uh is is on one of the summaries that sinks a German ubo they get the they get the crew off the boat and and it's sinking but this 16-year-old and a couple of the others get into this German ubo as it's sinking find among other things one of the encryption devices which is sent back to Bletchley Park and which allows the Allies to crack the Enigma code that 16-year-old ended up being as it as it happened he was chucked out of the Navy because he lied about his age but that 16-year-old boy called Tommy changed the course of human history for the good now tell me tell me it wouldn't be better as a society instead of telling people to wallow in grievance and anger and bitterness to say you know it actually doesn't matter where you come from if you have it in you you could be a world historical figure as well and improve things demonstrably for the better with your life I suppose one of the conclusions that you could draw what would be that the provision of ideologies that claim the contrary are generated for no other reason than to alleviate the responsibility for doing so from the from the shoulders to lift the burden of responsibility for doing so from the shoulders of the authors of those ideologies everything is pointless all morality is relative no one's life has any true significance I can do whatever the hell I want with whoever the hell I want to with no consequences whatsoever because in the final analysis does it really matter it's like well does it really matter well the reason I concluded eventually that it did really matter was because that's the pathway to hell and it looks to me like he even if heaven doesn't exist hell matters and you'll you'll figure that out when you get there and it sounds to me like what you're doing with your new tour is bringing what an expanded vision of the hell that awaits us if we don't walk a little bit more carefully than we have been and the heroism that can await you too that's I I I will get into this more but I mean that is one of the things that I find extraordinary from my past year I've seen it before but wow until you see what people are able to do under unbelievable circumstances and to risk their lives and sometimes to give their lives uh for a common good for a purpose for a cause sacrificially almost self-sacrificial I'm thinking of people who drove right into the fire on the 7th and were citizens and who stood up for their neighbor and saved a lot of people and people people often think heroism is you know sort of a thing from the past no it isn't no it isn't it's something that if if the if the time emerges you would hope you'll be able to raise yourself to but I've seen many people who did well that's the purpose of education is to prepare yourself for precisely that I mean you saw when you came on tour with me you saw the lights go on in the crowd let's say when a case was being made for the relationship between truth and responsibility and adventure and meaning it's like this this call to take your place at the seat at the feet of the greats let's say that's not some cliche and it's so interesting to watch people's response to the representation of that pathway because so many people are so seriously demoralized it's like no you know you could G your loin so to speak and become something and you have a cardinal role to play and you'd find the meaning of your life in doing that and and that meaning is more real than anything else because it actually is the medication that you can take that doesn't precisely make you immune to pain but it makes you able to accept it without becoming bitter and murderous and that's not nothing well I it has to be that there is an answer to demoralization and that is something like remoralization of people a a reminder of people uh to rise to their better instincts to rise of their to their better pasts to to Aspire to their better forbears that's all possible you know there's no reason reason that the the radicals on any side should have to drag us down into this pit absolutely no reason and we should be able collectively to cut whatever rope it is that they are trying to link us to and pull us down on and saying no you can go that way you're not taking me with you yeah you're not taking me or anybody I can communicate with effectively with The idiocy of thinking we are meant to judge Shakespeare you we've got 12,000 students signed up already to Peters that's fantastic fantastic so you know that's that's a good it's a good index of The Hunger that people have for an education that has the goal that you just described which is to remind people not only of where they could go if they weren't awake but also of who they could be if they decided to be who they could be Absolut I I was with one of my fellow centanin the other week with Andrew doy who had just done the Shakespeare series for you I said what what a fantastic thing to have to have Andrew Doyle teaching Shakespeare and I said because and I I said to him you know one of the funny things these days is that if you wanted to get a university Grant to study Shakespeare you'd only be able to get one if you were promising to queer Shakespeare or problematize him or look at him through the colonial lens if you just wanted to study the tragedies or the comedies it would be extremely hard to get a gr but as as a friend of ours pointed out I like to reiterate you know the stupid thing about that is the idea it's the idea that it's our job to judge Shakespeare um whereas maybe maybe Shakespeare is um is able to judge us and maybe maybe if you read Shakespeare well and watch it well and listen to it well and think about it well you'll realize that sometimes Shakespeare judges us and finds US wanting and uh you know maybe maybe that maybe that's just possible that one of the reasons why we keep on wanting to Chuck out great figures from the past is because like anything beautiful it makes us nervous any ideal is a judge yeah exactly right right well and that's that's a very interesting thing to contemplate psychologically because the conundrum there is well that means the higher ideal the more severe the Judgment so that's a problem and that's a non-trivial problem like I'm not trying to make light of that but there's a there's a correlat to that is that well every ideal is a goal and there's no hope without a goal so you can sacrifice the ideal to avoid the judgment but then you don't have a goal and if you have no if you don't have a goal you have no joy you have no enthusiasm you have no hope and then your life truly is the kind of bitter misery this is what happens to Cain right when he kills Abel he kills his ideal and the first thing he says to God is my punishment is greater than I can bear it's like well why well you've just killed you just killed that which you most wanted to be and so what do you do after you've done that well well there's no place to go there's no place you can run to there's no place you can avoid your fate and the universities have become places that are dedicated towards the demolition of the very ideal that gave rise to them and obviously that can't stand for long yeah no and that's why I mean the great answer I I said at the end of the war in the West the great answer to all of this and it it also uh comes back to what you were saying about Pride I I prefer to use the gratitude and to and to say that that really the appropriate answer to much of the am miseration and much more is to turn it around and instead of resentment feel gratitude and that's no that's not impossible because millions and millions of people across the world have have waged that war within themselves and won The way down and the way up: it’s your choice well I think you know part of what you experience when you go into a great Cathedral if you have any sense is I wouldn't say it's a sense of your own littleness because that's not right but it might be something like a sense of your own littleness in POS in relationship to the wealth of possibility that's pointed at by these remarkable architectural forms it's like look what human beings can do are you doing that are you doing that probably not and there's a reason why people are demoralized about that because there's there must be some reason that we haven't been building things like uh the great Basilica at Sand Deni in recent years and there's a reason that those places increasingly look like lost tombstones in a ragged Urban you know dystopia and uh yes I that's why all of these things point to the same direction uh the way down and the way up and the way down we know and we've all been able to study and we've all been able to see quite enough of uh the way outputs there's a task all right sir well I think we'll close up I I always get the sense when I'm talking to you that our conversation has just begun but well we'll be able to continue it as we have over several years now and um for those of you watching and listening Douglas came on my tour last September for a number of of of events and that was very uh useful and hopefully inspiring certainly was for me and hopefully it was for the audience that certainly seemed to be the case and with any luck we'll be able to continue that in the future um good luck with your speaking to her I hope that I can come and see you at one of those events you said where where do people look so if they go to Live Nation uh to the website of Live Nation and uh type in my name and we start on September the 8th at Fort Lauderdale although that's sold out and we go through Miami Beach Washington DC Los Angeles New York and then Denver uh on October the 13th so it's a little over a month yeah when are you in La I am in LA on the September the 23rd at the uh the Wilton in La maybe we'll come out to LA and see you that would be fun yeah yeah okay so all right well for everybody watching and listening most of you know that we'll continue this conversation for another half an hour behind the daily wire pay wall and I think what I'll do is with Douglas is focus a little bit more on the situation in Israel and what he learned and to delve into some of the geopolitical realities behind that uh um especially with regards to the what would you this say the conspiratorial involvement of players like Iran in fostering this bloody hellacious mess and so if you are inclined to join us for that that would be much appreciated otherwise Mr Murray it's always a pleasure a perverse pleasure in talking to you um and uh well good luck with your tour um you said you Fort Lauderdale is already sold out what size venues are you are you um addressing pretty big ones um uh the uh I think we're now filling the Filmore in Miami Beach for the 10th of September so yeah they're nice siiz theaters but still tickets for some so come along well so so that's heartening you know the fact it's pretty strange you know if you think about it that you can make a live event out of what you're doing showing people this horror and atrocity and making an intellectual case and that there is enough public appetite for that to make it not only event but an event but a mass event that's in some ways unprecedented because you're doing what live journalism that's that's a that's not a that's not something that we've seen before I it might also have to do with the fact that as the online World becomes more and more pathological and more and more difficult to trust the value of these in-person events is going to increase proportionately absolutely it's a among other things it's a community of people finding each other as well finding other people concerned about the same things yes yes yes and you're actually there to watch you can evaluate deeply and so that's an interesting unexpected consequence of the virtualization of the world right okay and then I guess what I'll close with apart from uh an invitation to everyone once again to join us on the daily wire side is uh we'd love to have you lecture for Peterson Academy on love that yeah I we discussed this I'm definitely Keen to do that y yeah yeah well we could make a we could we could make we could make a great course out of that and that's our goal so all right we'll talk about that further and to everyone watching and listening thank you very much the film crew up here in my Cottage in Northern Ontario appreciate the fact that you guys said set this up and make it straightforward and also the to the Daily we for facilitating this and Douglas well on to the next interview and uh it was a pleasure talking to you thank you for sharing what you've seen and been thinking about with everybody watching and listening thank you Jordan [Music]