This is another episode of the secular Foxhole podcast.

Today we're going to celebrate Dr. Leonard Peacoff's Nintieth birthday.

Sadly, it's a week late, but nonetheless, that's how schedules work out sometimes,

unfortunately late.

I could not get Dr. Peak off, but I have the

second best thing.

Our returning guest, James Valiant, is here to

talk about Dr. Peak off.

James, how are you?

I am doing great.

I am really doing great.

Yeah.

Leonard Peacoff was born on October 15, 1933.

So this was his nintieth birthday.

This October 15.

He's 90 years old now.

We're young, you could say.

Right? Young, you could say.

Precisely.

And I understand it was a very intimate

gathering.

I wasn't there, but I understand he had a

lovely birthday party with his daughter and son in law and his closest friends.

And so he's still doing well.

I wish him another 90 years.

I know it.

And we know he likes cake, right?

His favorite thing in the world is birthday cake.

That's his favorite food.

His favorite other food when it comes to a

main course.

His favorite main course is chicken, well

cooked chicken that drops right off the bone, as he describes it.

But his favorite dessert is definitely birthday cake.

And he enjoys going to other people's birthday parties just so he can have birthday.

That's all good.

I have a very good that I have had for every

birthday for a long time.

My brother and I will both like this cake, and

it's a chocolate cake with applesauce in between.

So I will give you the recipe.

It's a very favorite one.

So talking about chocolate, I will always be grateful for Peacock doing that review about

chocolate.

The movie.

Yes. Wonderful movie.

What a work it was.

It is.

It really is.

And Dr. Pekov really understood the.

And he was the guy who turned me onto it, too.

That's the thing.

What insight he always brings to everything.

To everything.

When I first met him in person, apart from him

being a teacher, lecturing me, lecturing, that was in 1983 with his understanding objectivism

course.

So that was 40 years ago this year.

I first took a course live with Leonard Peacock in New York City, and that was

understanding objectivism, which has since been turned into a book.

But the first time I really met him and personally interacted with him was when he, at

the first of the Thomas Jefferson School conferences at the University of California,

San Diego.

And because I come from San Diego, he asked

for someone to help him do some shopping when he first attended the conference.

So I was, of course, suggested, and I drove him to the store where he picked up the

necessities he'd need for the next week in the conference, and so I pushed help.

He did some of the shopping cart pushing, but I did some of it.

And we just had a wonderful time in the store talking about various items.

And I learned more about him as a human being from that little interaction.

Such a joyful guy.

Well, first thing, he knew exactly what he

wanted in the store.

And if you'd asked him, he could give you

reasons, exact thought out reasons why he needed this, this product.

So he had it all in his head.

And so it was amazing that way.

But most of the talk, 90% of our chat, was just light hearted humor.

He has such a wonderful sense of humor.

We were just joking.

He's childlike, innocent, playful.

That's a side that people who are familiar

with his lectures and books don't get to see.

But I got to see there for the first time, for

the very first time.

So I attended more of his lectures.

And astonishingly, in the late 1980s, I got an invitation to attend the seminars he was

giving before the publication of his magnificent treatise, objectivism of

philosophy of Iran.

Before it was published, he invited a group of

us to read each chapter, and we'd go up on Saturday nights to his house, and we'd have a

discussion and give him feedback, chapter by chapter, on his treatise on objectivism before

it was published.

And then we continued meeting at his house on

some Saturday nights because we just loved the group that we had there.

And we continued discussing things like poetry and great plays and scientific induction and a

whole host of other.

And so I had a wonderful opportunity to get to

know Leonard Peacock.

I'd arrive at his home early on those Saturday

nights before anyone else probably did, because I think I had the longest drive to get

there.

So while he was finishing up, getting ready

for the seminar that, in effect, he was doing in his living room, I'd play with his

daughter, Kira, who was just then two, three, four years old, play with her while he was

getting ready.

And the art in Leonard Peacock's home is just

magnificent.

His own art, as well as the art he inherited

from Rand.

I just cannot describe all the magnificent

wonders of my relationship with Dr. Leonard Peak off.

He has been my mentor, the best teacher.

I mean, I've had some excellent teachers in my

life, but he is by far the best teacher I've ever had.

But he really took an interest in me and became my mentor.

And he's my hero, too.

There's no other way I can put it.

The way he lectures.

There are some people who can lecture about

the normative, the should aspects, the advice aspects of philosophy in a very authoritative,

authoritarian almost way.

He does not.

He brings you into it.

He'll show how he was mistaken and how he was

groping for the answer.

He'll make himself the foil.

He was the rationalist.

He made a mistake Aynrand had to correct.

He had to learn something, and he's always presenting it that way.

So he's always just so accessible and so intellectually honest, because he reveals to

you his own intellectual process, even if it was a bit of a struggle.

Mistakes he made along the way.

Just one of the most human, wonderful human

beings, much less teachers I've ever experience of knowing.

James, I have an example there from a conference.

It was in 98, I think.

Yeah.

And we were sitting around the table, and then he heard that we were from Sweden as an

American in spirit.

And he said about, and this is about our

podcast name, the Secular foxhole.

He said, that's good.

How is it in Sweden? Is it more secular?

And we responded, yes, it is, Dr. Leonard Pikov.

But it's about also we believe in the state, so to speak.

And he thought that was an interesting response.

And we had a nice conversation, but already there, he could see, and we will highlight the

positive things, but he could highlight and look on the ominous parallels, what's going on

in America and around the world.

And I thought Scott Holleran did in his

newsletter, very great piece there, both a positive, but also what's going on and there,

maybe you want to mention, deem the book there.

Yes, unfortunately.

Well, as Ein Rand, I think, properly

identified, Western civilization is in crisis.

It is philosophically bankrupt.

Yes, the dominant philosophical ideas that have largely controlled the culture in the

west since Immanuel Kant have been irrationalism and subjectivism and

epistemology, the theory of knowledge, and either a Kantian duty type ethics, or total

subjectivism and relativism in ethics, emotionalism almost in ethics.

And that has led directly to some very negative in the 20th century.

It led directly to totalitarianism, the ideas of German philosophers like Cotton Hegel.

Pekoff argues in his first book, the Ominous parallels led directly to the Nazism and

Bolshevik communism that we saw breaking out in the 20th century.

And there he compares the Nazi ideas and how they came to power with the ideas that they

were being taught from German philosophers, and shows how Nazism in particular was the

direct result of the dominant German philosophic ideas that have been being spread

for more than 100 years earlier.

But those same ideas have infected American

universities, and the same cultural trends can be seen throughout the west today in

consequence of that.

And so, unfortunately, we are headed in a

rather negative direction.

You can see it in our art, the direction even

in theoretical science.

You can see it, but you can see it in our

culture widely, and especially in politics.

I don't have to tell you there's a bit of a

moral crisis in the world today when all you have to do is read the headlines and Dr.

Peacock's climactic book.

In my view, the Dem hypothesis is actually an

entire theory of historiography and how to understand how ideas shape history through the

course of time and without getting into technical details about it.

It does not have a very, let me put it this way, hopeful look, at least given the current

context about the future.

But it also tells us that we got to get off

our tails and change the culture and the world in which we live.

But as a historian myself, I think that both of those books are two of them that you can

see.

Anyone familiar with my own work can see how

dramatically and overwhelmingly the work of Dr. Pekoff on history and historiography has

influenced my own thought.

And again, thanks.

How he practically did that on a podcast also

and a radio show talking about daily things and answering questions from listeners.

And that turned into a book.

So I'm very grateful for that also.

And then actions like supporting Elian Gonzalez.

Oh, heroically.

Exactly.

Trying to protect that poor boy from having to go back to a communist hellhole.

Yeah.

Oh, he's taken up so many causes heroically.

And you're absolutely right.

Not a lot of give the viewers a little

biographical background.

He was born in Western Canada in 1933,

Winnipeg, Manitoba, and his father was one of the most prominent medical doctors, physicians

in Western Canada.

He actually wrote a book about being a doctor.

And his father and brother both were medical doctors.

His brother Michael, in Los Angeles, became a successful physician as well.

So he came from a family of medical doctors and his mother was a band leader, a musical

band leader who toured North America.

Anyway, he himself was going to be a medical

student and spent a couple of years studying premed because he came from a medical family.

But he had a chance to meet Einran at the age of 17 in Los Angeles, when Einran was still

living in the Hollywood area in Los Angeles.

And he says the initial conversation changed

his life.

And in short order, at least in a couple of

years, he would move to New York, where Ein Rand had moved, change his major to

philosophy, and he would study at New York University, which has one of the finest

philosophy programs in the world, if not not just in America, where he spent the next many

years getting his PhD in philosophy, where his dissertation advisor was the prominent and

famous Sidney Hook, sort of the leader of the Pragmatist School of Philosophy in America at

the time.

So he got a PhD in philosophy and taught

philosophy at universities, and later on in Life did have a radio show that was nationally

syndicated addressing the popular issues of the day and followed up by a podcast.

And some of the best material from that is found in a book.

Someone edited some of his best answers into a book called Keeping It Real and the Ein Rand

Center UK Robert Nacer and I do a weekly podcast taking selected questions and answers

from that book and applying them to more recent issues and discussing them at length.

More further, I highly recommend that book, but see the range from academic philosophy all

the way to the popular issues of the day.

And being a radio talk show host.

Few thinkers have that kind of scope.

But he has a power, like Ayn Rand did in

explaining the power of philosophy, the power of ideas, in showing how ideas really are the

main thing that govern human history.

I know, I know what you mean.

But I remember I wrote to him in 2007, it was

the 25th anniversary of the ominous parallels.

So I wrote to him.

He had a website that was taking questions at the time, nothing.

This was pre podcast and so on.

And I congratulated him on the 25th

anniversary.

And if he would change anything about the

book.

And he answered, he answered that the only

thing he would do would be to critique more, do a more religious critique, as well as what

he, in addition to what he wrote about the.

Rest of the book, he did definitely come to see that in a sense, religion is still

the looming greater threat.

Yes, Integrated systems of thought tend to

have greater power in history.

And while the post Kantian world has unleashed

a sort of nihilism, radical skepticism, a very negative view of the world indeed that really

can't be sustained by humans very long for psychological reasons.

So a misintegration of ideas, a dim hypothesis, disintegration, integration,

misintegration is theory.

A disintegration really is not a sustainable

state, a D state, if you will, of ideas, and tends to be replaced by an M state, a

misintegration, a religious.

And these tend to be religious systems of

thought.

But they can be.

But I consider Marxism, for example, a kind of religious system.

So you've got a false choice here, either this false mystical based system of thought like

religion, or Marxism versus nihilism on the other side, when of course the correct answer

is proper rational integration, reality and reason married appropriately.

And therefore he regards the endurance of religion in America, for example, as a

disturbing cultural trend.

At the end of the day, they sort of have an

advantage.

Whatever the moment of political wins of the

moment, they sort of have a long term advantage in America.

Unless we, the rational, the I, the better integrated, can provide an integrated system

of rational, this worldly thought, the future belongs to M, you see?

Yes.

And I think it's an opportunity now window, maybe that is open for a little time

due to these terrible things happening right now in the world.

And you see how they are moved by religion and as puppets going back to Iran, for example,

what's going on like in Israel now and the terror actions by Hamas and Hezbollah and

others.

And they know getting their fuel from religion

and from perhaps still worse.

Yes, these Islamicist jihadist monsters.

Monsters.

I mean, it's civilization versus total

barbarism that really is seen there.

And that's the cutting edge of it, my friends.

Perhaps worse.

Continue.

The barbarians themselves are the Western intellectuals who are compromised and weak and

don't take a clear moral stand when it is civilization versus barbarism.

And so perhaps the more dangerous element are those Western voices that are mouthing

ceasefire and mouthing moral relativism because they're the ones sapping the moral

clarity from what should be a strong Israeli and American response, supported, I should

hope, by the other civilized nations of the world.

Doesn't look like it so far.

Yeah, unfortunately.

I just want to go back to a conversation a couple of minutes ago in my

mind, and this is a vast oversimplification of Marx, he basically substituted the word state

for the word.

So he secularized.

Yeah, Trotsky drew him out on just that point.

The Russian communist.

Trotsky said, god is the state.

The state is God.

And he was officially an atheist Marxist who.

But again, I think books like the ominous parallels and the dim hypothesis are

criminally undersold.

Absolutely.

They should be on the best.

So host for decades, in my personal.

Opinion, tell you about plans that certain people have in the works to promote

the ominous parallels still further.

But believe me, there are good people in this

world who agree with you, Blair, and working hard to see how we can get the ominous

parallels out to the new generation and an ever wider audience.

Let me ask, you mean he reintroduced the ominous parallels as the rise of Hitler,

but he deleted what I think is the greatest tribute to the United States I ever read in my

life.

He deleted it out of that reprint, which I

think I want to just shake him and say, why did you do that?

Yeah, well, there's two aspects to the book.

One is how German philosophy led to Weimar culture, which led to the rise of Nazism.

The other part is the story of America, how America, at least in its national founding

back in the Enlightenment, was the nation of the Enlightenment.

And that chapter, for example, is called.

There's a chapter called the Nation of the

Enlightenment.

He discusses the unique, wonderful thing that

were the founding ideas of my country, the United States.

Truly an amazing tribute and a factual demonstration of the moral foundations and

however, the problems, the weaknesses in that, the lack of a good moral foundation as well.

And then he discusses how America is under the influence of the same German philosophy, is

moving in the same direction that Weimarck Germany was.

So it's the ominous parallels, you see.

But yes, an edited version of it selected out

just the bits on the rise of Hitler, as opposed to the ominous parallels in America,

if you will.

But you're right, it's an amazing tribute to

what makes America so wonderful.

Yeah. And I have opportunity there.

And when know make it in a ways positive and

continue to celebration, is that you could maybe do like what they have done in the

Institute and so on, like pamphlets that you could do or certain printed things.

So I think that could be a special edition, like a pamphlet and get it distributed.

And also the one, the battle between Aristotle and Plato, I think also could be that like a

special pamphlet on.

Its own would be a huge.

Distributed on college campuses.

That would be.

Yeah. And bombarded it in Middle east, for example.

I'm not sure how far we'll get there.

Yeah, but I think it would be.

A dangerous thing to do in some place.

And you have written together with Warren Fay about creating Christ.

I mean, still out there.

Aristotle's ideas could know, rediscovered and

refound, and also continue with Rand and Peacock.

I think opportunities is there.

You're right.

Now I remember also, this was years ago now there was a gentleman who's associated

with, or certainly an objectivist, and he's in the movie industry.

He stated in the institute's newsletter that one of his dreams was to do a documentary on

the ominous parallels.

I wish I could comment further on that right now, Blair, but I'm under strict

instructions not to say anything that I know about.

That's fine.

I'm just bringing that up because that's.

Something that the contained excitement of the sound of my voice is all I can.

All right, well, could we then turn into something that you and Holly and others

have done as a memory, and maybe that could be if you have resources, time, energy, whatnot,

do a thing about ideas in action and you peek off.

Would that be possible sometime in future?

Yeah, that absolutely would be.

Again, other thinking is going on there, but

ideas in action in the middle of the 1990s, this is now, what, 37 years ago or something?

Leonard Peacock agreed to do interview for a television program that my wife and I had

developed called Ideas in Action.

And we interviewed a computer graphics artist.

So we wanted to have a lot of good visuals because it was a television program.

And we went to Dr. Peacock's home.

He gave us hours.

We had to edit hours of interview down to 1 hour.

And that was one of the most brutal experiences.

But we wanted to show people his home, his art.

We end it with him playing piano.

We want to give you a sense of the human being

that we came to know and love as Leonard Peacock.

Leonard Peacock actually came to our wedding party at my mother's house in 1997.

And yeah, we want to get ideas in action, at least in some form out there again.

And I wish I could.

I'm so sorry that I have to kind of shut up

about things because.

You know, because this is on tape, so to speak.

This is on record, so please tell what you can, but not more, not less.

What a wonderful experience that was.

And then when I did my own first book, the

Passion of Iron Rants Critics, I wanted to respond to the biography of Barbara Brandon

and the memoirs of Nathaniel Brandon, which had been released a few years earlier.

And I initially put it on the Internet in the year 2000, back when the Internet was still

young, in a serialized form, an analysis of Barbara Brandon's book.

I didn't tell Leonard, who I already knew pretty well at that point because he had said

publicly he knew these people, and so he knew that their credibility, he said, I'm not even

going to read their books.

I know how they have it out against Ein Rand.

But I didn't know Ayn Rand.

I couldn't help but read the books.

I had to read them for myself.

And so I didn't tell him, though, about it

when I published my critique of Barbara Brandon's book on the Internet.

But a friend of his and I got a call from Leonard Peak off one day and said, jim, why

didn't you tell me you did this? And I said, well, I didn't think you'd even be

know.

You said you weren't even going to read the

books.

He said, no, I love it.

Do you think you could use Ein Rand's unpublished journal notes on her break with

Nathaniel Brandon? And I said, well, I'd sure love to take a look

at them.

And he kicked the door completely open for me.

He let me look at all of a Rand's unpublished material, her notes, her journals, her

letters, all the little love letters between her and her husband, Frank, all the

photographs and memorabilia that he could.

He just let me have access to everything.

But it gave me special permission to reprint her notes on Nathaniel Brandon for free, mind

you, for free.

He gave me that.

And so my book was an expanded, then critique of their books, and it includes.

It's the only place you can find some words of Ayn Rand from her private journals.

Now, it's not objectivism proper, but what powerful psychological and psycho

epistemological insights she gives as she's dissecting Nathaniel Brandon and coming to

understand him.

But it cast so much light, and it proved.

Leonard had told me, you'll see that you were right, and you won't know how right you are

until you see Ein Rand's notes.

I saw Rand's notes, and, boy, did it vindicate

my position in many regards.

And it went further.

It gave me information that I didn't even dream existed that would further vindicate my

position.

I came back to Leonard with that, and he said,

oh, my God.

I didn't even realize that was there.

And so he helped me get out my first book, the Passion of Ran's critics.

You see, I owe.

I cannot describe to you the eternal debt that

I owe to Dr. Leonard Peacock in so many ways.

My teacher, my mentor, and the man who gave me

access to Ayn Rand's notes made possible ideas in action made possible my first book.

And when he publicly endorsed my first book and ideas in action, I could not tell you how

proudest moments of my life, practically.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, he's meant a great deal.

Obviously.

You can see that he's meant a great deal in my

life.

I can say the same at a distance, because taking the lecture courses on cassette

back in the day and then reading the three books that he produced, you devour all those

things.

And.

Yeah, but without Miss Rand herself, though, I mean, that was the catalyst.

I was basically an aimless, drifting day laborer until a budy of mine said, here, I got

something I want you to read.

And it was the Fountainhead.

And that was like, all the cobwebs just blew out of my mind.

Yeah. How's that impact? And I said, out of my head.

Well.

But it's been a lot of heavy lifting since then.

To be frank, I'm speaking for myself.

Well, the culture that we live in, it's not like we have when we go to university.

We're supposed to be getting the finest and cutting edge ideas, and actually our minds are

being corrupted, and those ideas permeate, come out and unfortunately infect and permeate

the rest of our culture, our popular art and so forth.

And it's hard to avoid philosophical corruption in our time.

And if you've been raised religious or something, that only adds to the challenge of

trying to figure out the truth.

Hopefully one day when there's not all that

clutter in the way, because Ein Rand's own ideas are closely tied to reality and you can

use your own reason to validate them.

It should be a more straightforward, a simpler

process, and hopefully it'll be easier in the future.

People like you are actually kind of heroic in the fact that you are in that group of people

who, when you read Aynrand, have those cobwebs cleared.

That shows, in my view, a degree of independence and honesty and integrity on your

rationality, on your part, that is noteworthy and virtuous.

But let's hope that that can influence a whole culture so that one day it'll be a whole lot

easier for young people to access better ideas and philosophy.

Over the years, I've introduced, I think, 42 people to her novels.

See, now you are a hero.

Now you're an agent for the good.

Only one person said, get away from me.

But, you know, that's the way it works.

One mind at a time.

It may seem like an impossible task with billions of people on this planet, but

fortunately, actually it is only individual minds which are capable of thought.

Only individual minds know, and it's one mind at a time.

As Ein Rand taught us, there's no shortcut to the real thinking, the work of thinking, that

needs to happen to understand.

Yeah, so I've been a flame spider.

As John Gault was.

Right, he admits so much that he himself was a victim of modern philosophy, and

he couldn't help but absorb certain bad mental habits after 14 years of university.

Oh my gosh.

In philosophy, he admits that he was infected not in the substance so much, but in

the methodology, in what we call psycho epistemology, the way we have of thinking

about things, our habitual patterns of approaching things and thought was badly

influenced.

So when he attempted to write his first book,

he had, of course, Ayn Rand.

He had a very close relationship with Ayn

Rand, probably closer than any other intellectual over the longest period of time.

And I highly recommend, if I can just write here, recommend his wonderful essay, a speech

he gave after Ayn Rand's death.

My 30 years with Ayn Rand.

It is one of the most amazing biographical essays you will ever read.

It'll give you such insight into his amazing relationship with Einran.

When he started writing his first book, though, these bad mental methods he'd picked

up at university were influencing how he presented the material.

And he'd know, like a proud puppy, you'd send Aynrand the latest chapter, and she'd look at

it, why did you even write this? A lot of red marks, and he would be completely

hitting the solar plexus.

But then he had the honesty to pick up and

say, okay, where am I going wrong? And it took years for him working with Ayn

Rand, editing his writing, editing his courses.

He came out with a bunch of important courses in the 1970s, yes, on philosophy, as he's

writing this book.

So he's not just writing this book, but in the

course of writing this book, Ein Rand sort of straightens him out methodologically.

And then that's really the upshot of that, is his course in the book, Understanding

Objectivism, where he talks about this very subject, psycho epistemology, and how Ayn

Rand, in effect, corrected his method of going about thinking and communicating.

So all of this material is just amazing.

And his relationship with Einrand was such

that he actually got a firsthand guided tour through Einran's own method of thinking.

And so he came to understand her thought better than I think any other writer of our

times has understood Ein Rand, because he had this incredible opportunity to work with Ayn

Rand.

And so when his first book did come out, the

ominous parallels, she declared it to be the first book by an objectivist philosopher other

than herself.

Right. Yes, I remember that.

So, James, as a bit of wrap up, and we have to do a continuation here also of his

celebration for it.

Do you know anything that you allowed to share

what Peacock is celebrating and working on and yourself as an end?

He has largely retired.

He's gone into private mode now, mind you.

He's still seeing ladies socially, he's still interacting with the daughter that he loves so

much on a regular basis.

But he is largely retired and just getting him

out.

I went to a couple, has it been now two years?

He gave his last talk in Southern California on Viennese operetta, a value he shared very

much with Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand of course, loved Viennese operetta,

Coleman and know, and so did Leonard Peacock.

He loves Viennese operetta.

So his last talk then he kind of said it would be his last public talk was on Viennese

operetta.

My wife and I were able to go up there and see

it and meet and talk with Leonard again in person, and he was sharp as attack man.

His mental faculties are still there, but I suspect that'll be his last public

presentation.

But what a wonderful sense of life thing it

was just to hear Leonard talking about the music he loves.

True, true.

I remember that very well.

Yes.

Well, James, thank you again for giving us your insights.

And again, we both celebrate the life of Dr.

Leonard Peacock, who is 90 years old, and

thank him for his contributions.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you so much for having me and having me

on.

Absolutely.

One of my favorite topics, my hero and teacher, Dr. Leonard Pico.

All right, well, we've had James Valiant on.

James, thanks for Manning the foxhole with us.

My pleasure.

Thank you very much, James.

Sam.