1 00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:12,645 Blair: Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Secular Foxhole podcast. 2 00:00:13,545 --> 00:00:19,217 Today we have a special guest, Professor Andrew Bernstein is here to discuss his latest 3 00:00:19,281 --> 00:00:22,365 essay, the Case for Western Civilization. 4 00:00:23,185 --> 00:00:25,657 Well, it to go along with that, there's at 5 00:00:25,681 --> 00:00:30,591 least three people here that value Western civilization, so. 6 00:00:30,623 --> 00:00:31,783 Hi, Andy, how are you? 7 00:00:31,879 --> 00:00:32,311 Andrew: I'm good. 8 00:00:32,343 --> 00:00:34,295 Blair and Martin, thanks for having me on 9 00:00:34,335 --> 00:00:34,655 again. 10 00:00:34,735 --> 00:00:36,983 Always good to be in, in the foxhole with you 11 00:00:36,999 --> 00:00:37,383 guys. 12 00:00:37,479 --> 00:00:39,207 Especially in the secular foxhole. 13 00:00:39,271 --> 00:00:40,079 Blair: Yeah, yeah. 14 00:00:40,127 --> 00:00:41,559 Yes, great to hear. 15 00:00:41,727 --> 00:00:42,639 Andrew: Great to have you. 16 00:00:42,727 --> 00:00:43,671 Blair: Great to have you. 17 00:00:43,783 --> 00:00:46,871 Now this, it's quite a long, it's fairly long 18 00:00:46,903 --> 00:00:49,015 essay and, but it's certainly very thorough. 19 00:00:49,095 --> 00:00:53,075 But I must say you start off with a litany of 20 00:00:53,685 --> 00:00:57,189 less than favorable accusations against Western civilization. 21 00:00:57,277 --> 00:00:59,025 You want to delve into some of those? 22 00:00:59,765 --> 00:01:08,733 Andrew: Well, yeah, it's funny because I think I started with Susan Sontag who was writing 23 00:01:08,909 --> 00:01:11,365 back in the 1960s. 24 00:01:11,485 --> 00:01:12,465 Blair: Yes, you did. 25 00:01:14,005 --> 00:01:19,453 Andrew: Long before these accusations against white people in the west became intellectually 26 00:01:19,549 --> 00:01:20,705 occurrent. 27 00:01:21,495 --> 00:01:26,087 At 67 or 68, an essay she wrote, you know, 28 00:01:26,151 --> 00:01:31,791 Susan Sontag, American writer and critic, in which she called the white race the cancer of 29 00:01:31,823 --> 00:01:32,767 human history. 30 00:01:32,951 --> 00:01:37,839 And so we've seen a lot of, you know, a lot of 31 00:01:37,887 --> 00:01:45,943 leftist writers since then, especially more recently critical race theorists and critical 32 00:01:45,999 --> 00:01:51,007 whiteness studies, you know, people like Robin Diangelo and Barbara Applebaum, of course, 33 00:01:51,111 --> 00:01:53,843 Ibram X Kendi, people like that. 34 00:01:53,899 --> 00:01:58,547 And their claim is the history, the historical 35 00:01:58,611 --> 00:02:05,339 claim is that the white race is, and Western civilization, Europeans and Americans are 36 00:02:05,467 --> 00:02:08,899 inherently, have been terribly imperialistic. 37 00:02:08,947 --> 00:02:12,675 They're responsible for imperialism, genocide 38 00:02:12,715 --> 00:02:17,815 of the American Indian population, slavery of blacks. 39 00:02:19,035 --> 00:02:25,037 And some of these charges are true, obviously and the colonialism in Africa and the so 40 00:02:25,061 --> 00:02:29,285 called scramble for Africa by European powers in the late 19th century. 41 00:02:29,445 --> 00:02:30,997 And there's some truth. 42 00:02:31,061 --> 00:02:34,093 Here's where you need a rational philosophy to 43 00:02:34,109 --> 00:02:39,505 separate out one, the truth from the falsehoods in these accusations. 44 00:02:40,525 --> 00:02:40,861 Yeah. 45 00:02:40,893 --> 00:02:45,797 And then two, to examine it and assess it in 46 00:02:45,821 --> 00:02:50,701 terms of a rational moral philosophy because it's, you know, my good friend Dr. Eric 47 00:02:50,733 --> 00:02:55,517 Daniels, who's an objectivist and an American professor of American history, said to me 48 00:02:55,541 --> 00:02:57,905 once, a long time ago, he said history is messy. 49 00:02:58,405 --> 00:03:02,405 You know, it is, it's very mixed in so many ways. 50 00:03:02,445 --> 00:03:07,149 But the, the critics of Western civilization in our day are not mixed. 51 00:03:07,237 --> 00:03:11,229 They are full throated and unanimous. 52 00:03:11,317 --> 00:03:13,093 Western civilization is evil. 53 00:03:13,149 --> 00:03:14,605 They agree with Susan Sontag. 54 00:03:14,645 --> 00:03:17,147 The white race is the, is the cancer of human 55 00:03:17,211 --> 00:03:17,891 history. 56 00:03:18,083 --> 00:03:21,747 Any attempts to defend Western civilization is 57 00:03:21,771 --> 00:03:30,255 just an, is an attempt to paper, paper over genocide, slavery, imperialism and endless 58 00:03:30,995 --> 00:03:31,515 killing. 59 00:03:31,555 --> 00:03:33,411 Or murder of indigenous peoples. 60 00:03:33,443 --> 00:03:36,011 And you know, Ward Churchill was one of those writers. 61 00:03:36,043 --> 00:03:42,015 I had a whole, like you said, as a whole, you know, reference to whole litany of. 62 00:03:42,325 --> 00:03:43,685 Of people who were. 63 00:03:43,805 --> 00:03:44,865 Edward said. 64 00:03:45,445 --> 00:03:48,665 There's a, you know, there's a endless. 65 00:03:49,525 --> 00:03:52,373 I'm looking through the Howard Zinn, you know, 66 00:03:52,389 --> 00:03:55,597 I'm looking through the David, the anthropologist David Graeber. 67 00:03:55,661 --> 00:03:56,861 I mean, there's a whole. 68 00:03:57,053 --> 00:03:59,669 There's a whole Franz Fanon. 69 00:03:59,837 --> 00:04:06,869 There's a whole list of people, educated people, intellectuals who believe you're too 70 00:04:06,997 --> 00:04:08,519 cardinal claims here. 71 00:04:08,567 --> 00:04:11,583 One, Western civilization is primarily 72 00:04:11,639 --> 00:04:14,455 responsible for slavery, imperialism, genocide. 73 00:04:14,495 --> 00:04:16,439 That's the essence of Western civilization. 74 00:04:16,607 --> 00:04:19,055 Slavery, imperialism, genocide and white 75 00:04:19,095 --> 00:04:19,391 people. 76 00:04:19,463 --> 00:04:21,063 There's the critical race theorists and the 77 00:04:21,079 --> 00:04:25,943 critical whiteness studies people, you know, which is an ally discipline here. 78 00:04:26,119 --> 00:04:31,447 That white people are in America today is still systemically racist and white people are 79 00:04:31,471 --> 00:04:32,391 inherently racist. 80 00:04:32,463 --> 00:04:34,271 This is a whole, this is a constellation of 81 00:04:34,303 --> 00:04:39,845 claims that are integrated around the theme that Western civilization and the white people 82 00:04:39,885 --> 00:04:42,381 who created it are essentially evil. 83 00:04:42,533 --> 00:04:44,557 Evil and racist and evil. 84 00:04:44,741 --> 00:04:48,645 Blair: Well, now, that's Western civilization according to them, right? 85 00:04:48,685 --> 00:04:54,893 What, what is or what does Western quote unquote civilization consist of? 86 00:04:54,949 --> 00:05:01,143 Like what's the rule of law, individual rights, things like that. 87 00:05:01,199 --> 00:05:01,795 Correct. 88 00:05:02,375 --> 00:05:07,759 Andrew: Yeah. I mean, we have to deal with the criticisms because some of them are true. 89 00:05:07,927 --> 00:05:13,951 But we need to put it in a. In a full context, integrate. 90 00:05:13,983 --> 00:05:16,675 See the big picture as Iran taught us so brilliantly. 91 00:05:17,095 --> 00:05:22,271 What is Western civilization? Well, geographically, of course, it's the 92 00:05:22,303 --> 00:05:24,503 civilization that was founded in Greece. 93 00:05:24,559 --> 00:05:26,943 It's the civilization that was established by 94 00:05:26,959 --> 00:05:32,555 the Europeans and later by European colonies, including North America, and would be became 95 00:05:32,595 --> 00:05:34,655 the United States of America. 96 00:05:35,035 --> 00:05:35,835 But it's not. 97 00:05:35,915 --> 00:05:39,883 Even though it's referred to as the west, the essence of it is not geographical. 98 00:05:39,979 --> 00:05:45,491 I think the essence of Western civilization is two things to me, and that is more than any 99 00:05:45,523 --> 00:05:51,275 other culture in history, there's a commitment to reason and there's the commitment to 100 00:05:51,395 --> 00:05:54,535 freedom, political economic liberty or individual rights. 101 00:05:54,875 --> 00:05:59,243 And those were never consistently or universally applied. 102 00:05:59,299 --> 00:06:05,281 They always were embattled in Europe and in the United States, for instance, the 103 00:06:05,313 --> 00:06:08,129 commitment to reason developed in Greece. 104 00:06:08,177 --> 00:06:10,809 Aristotle is the perfect example. 105 00:06:10,937 --> 00:06:17,153 Had to fight a long cultural war against Christianity, tried to suppress the Greek 106 00:06:17,209 --> 00:06:17,805 approach. 107 00:06:19,185 --> 00:06:22,045 But I think more than any other culture, 108 00:06:22,785 --> 00:06:27,765 Western civilization is committed to reason, to rational process. 109 00:06:28,225 --> 00:06:35,311 And you see the fruits of it in freedom, philosophy, science, the arts and so on. 110 00:06:35,503 --> 00:06:36,575 Embattled. 111 00:06:36,735 --> 00:06:39,175 Nevertheless, to a significant degree, reason 112 00:06:39,215 --> 00:06:41,783 was triumphant in the west, more so than any other culture. 113 00:06:41,879 --> 00:06:45,735 And because of that, because of the great respect for Man's reasoning mind. 114 00:06:45,895 --> 00:06:50,351 More than any other culture, the west has been Europe and the United States has been 115 00:06:50,383 --> 00:06:55,895 committed to the rights of the individual to your own mind, to your own life, to political 116 00:06:55,975 --> 00:06:58,249 economic liberty and of course, capitalism. 117 00:06:58,367 --> 00:07:00,837 So I think those are the that's the essence of 118 00:07:00,861 --> 00:07:01,925 Western civilization. 119 00:07:02,085 --> 00:07:03,741 What makes it special, what makes it great, 120 00:07:03,773 --> 00:07:07,945 and what makes it distinctive from all other cultures in the history of the world. 121 00:07:08,885 --> 00:07:16,741 Blair: Well, much like your essay, we will go back and forth with the praise and deserved 122 00:07:16,893 --> 00:07:17,629 condemnation. 123 00:07:17,717 --> 00:07:21,325 So let's talk about some of the accusations 124 00:07:21,405 --> 00:07:24,151 against, about genocide for a minute. 125 00:07:24,183 --> 00:07:27,955 Andrew: Or two, if you want a minute or two on genocide. 126 00:07:28,655 --> 00:07:39,831 Well, yeah, it's a grim topic, but the main claim regarding genocide regards the American 127 00:07:39,903 --> 00:07:45,399 Indian population or in what became politically correct terminology several 128 00:07:45,447 --> 00:07:47,079 decades ago, the Native Americans. 129 00:07:47,127 --> 00:07:48,567 And I just want to make a point about 130 00:07:48,631 --> 00:07:54,391 terminology here because there's no accurate locution here because American Indian, the 131 00:07:54,423 --> 00:07:58,759 old, older term that I grew up with and many of us grew up with, is inaccurate because 132 00:07:58,807 --> 00:08:00,955 those tribes were not originally from India. 133 00:08:02,375 --> 00:08:04,239 Native American, I think, is even more 134 00:08:04,287 --> 00:08:07,655 inaccurate because the implication is they were indigenous to the North American 135 00:08:07,735 --> 00:08:10,239 continent, which they most certainly were not. 136 00:08:10,407 --> 00:08:11,935 It's been known for a very long time by 137 00:08:11,975 --> 00:08:16,775 anthropologists that they migrated from Central Asia, you know, during the last ice 138 00:08:16,815 --> 00:08:20,145 age, 10, 12,000 years ago. 139 00:08:20,685 --> 00:08:23,093 So I use, I prefer American Indian because at 140 00:08:23,109 --> 00:08:26,501 least the recognizes that they're of Asian. 141 00:08:26,653 --> 00:08:29,989 These tribes are of Asian origin, indigenous 142 00:08:30,077 --> 00:08:30,973 to North America. 143 00:08:31,029 --> 00:08:32,685 No, but they were certainly here long before 144 00:08:32,725 --> 00:08:36,885 the Europeans, you know, thousands of years before the Europeans ever arrived. 145 00:08:37,045 --> 00:08:44,887 But the main claim about genocide against the west is the European and American attempt to 146 00:08:44,911 --> 00:08:47,435 wipe out the American Indian population. 147 00:08:47,935 --> 00:08:53,235 And yet it's been known for many years now and 148 00:08:53,615 --> 00:08:55,367 many writers have written about it. 149 00:08:55,471 --> 00:08:58,703 I like Dr. Clark Whistler, who was an 150 00:08:58,719 --> 00:09:03,319 anthropologist from Columbia University and a curator at the American Museum of natural 151 00:09:03,367 --> 00:09:03,863 history. 152 00:09:03,999 --> 00:09:07,063 His PhD was in anthropology and his specialty 153 00:09:07,119 --> 00:09:08,319 was American Indian culture. 154 00:09:08,367 --> 00:09:10,087 His book Indians of the United States I think 155 00:09:10,111 --> 00:09:10,799 is very good. 156 00:09:10,887 --> 00:09:13,349 It's accurate, published like around 1940 157 00:09:13,437 --> 00:09:18,621 before you know any any politically correct or woke prejudices infected academia. 158 00:09:18,773 --> 00:09:27,549 And Whistler writes and any number of other people write the overwhelming deaths by, you 159 00:09:27,557 --> 00:09:31,741 know, the American Indians suffered was from the transmission of European diseases such as 160 00:09:31,773 --> 00:09:34,985 smallpox, for which they had no natural immunity. 161 00:09:35,525 --> 00:09:41,383 And it may have been some European or American commanders who traded deliberately infected 162 00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:46,559 smallpox blankets to the Indians in a deliberate attempt to wipe out various tribes. 163 00:09:46,687 --> 00:09:47,679 That's possible. 164 00:09:47,847 --> 00:09:50,007 Not a lot of evidence to support it. 165 00:09:50,191 --> 00:09:57,471 Generally it's acknowledged that these were diseases were transmitted Naturally, 166 00:09:57,543 --> 00:09:58,375 unintentionally. 167 00:09:58,455 --> 00:10:01,007 And the Indian population simply had no 168 00:10:01,111 --> 00:10:02,239 natural immunity to it. 169 00:10:02,287 --> 00:10:05,655 And they were ravaged by European diseases, 170 00:10:05,775 --> 00:10:06,887 smallpox in particular. 171 00:10:06,951 --> 00:10:11,687 So genocide it was overwhelmingly. 172 00:10:11,751 --> 00:10:12,903 That was unintentional. 173 00:10:12,999 --> 00:10:16,151 And then all the evidence, if I'm American, 174 00:10:16,303 --> 00:10:18,191 you know, influential Americans. 175 00:10:18,343 --> 00:10:20,703 Benjamin Franklin, who wanted to send your 176 00:10:20,759 --> 00:10:23,535 blacksmiths among the Indians so they have a productive trade. 177 00:10:23,575 --> 00:10:26,983 George Washington, who wanted to live in peace with the Indians and wanted to encourage them 178 00:10:26,999 --> 00:10:27,815 to be farmers. 179 00:10:27,935 --> 00:10:30,895 Thomas Jefferson also wanted to live in peace 180 00:10:30,935 --> 00:10:32,983 with the Indian tribes, so on and so on. 181 00:10:33,039 --> 00:10:35,095 Ulysses S. Grant wanted them to become 182 00:10:35,135 --> 00:10:41,543 American citizens, which eventually happened after World War I. By the late 19th century, 183 00:10:41,679 --> 00:10:44,871 the US military had defeated the most warlike. 184 00:10:44,983 --> 00:10:46,543 All of the warlike tribes, the Sioux, the 185 00:10:46,559 --> 00:10:48,119 Apache, whoever it is. 186 00:10:48,247 --> 00:10:50,231 And why didn't they wipe them out? 187 00:10:50,383 --> 00:10:52,271 They consigned them to reservations. 188 00:10:52,463 --> 00:10:54,783 If genocide was the attempt, why not just wipe 189 00:10:54,799 --> 00:10:56,717 the Indian tribes out? But they didn't. 190 00:10:56,901 --> 00:10:58,669 They consigned them to reservations. 191 00:10:58,797 --> 00:11:00,213 And as I pointed out in the essay, the 192 00:11:00,229 --> 00:11:01,717 reservations were not sealed. 193 00:11:01,781 --> 00:11:03,509 Like a communist country behind an iron 194 00:11:03,557 --> 00:11:04,237 curtain. 195 00:11:04,421 --> 00:11:06,029 You know, many of those western tribes, you 196 00:11:06,037 --> 00:11:10,957 know, tribes west of the Mississippi, were powerful warriors and true to the heritage. 197 00:11:11,101 --> 00:11:14,981 A lot of them left the reservations, enlisted in the US military, were heroes in World War 198 00:11:15,013 --> 00:11:17,785 I, later heroes in World War II. 199 00:11:18,085 --> 00:11:20,301 And I went. 200 00:11:20,453 --> 00:11:21,173 Let me one last point. 201 00:11:21,189 --> 00:11:24,845 I went to College of South Dakota in 1970s and 202 00:11:26,425 --> 00:11:32,257 the pine Ridge Reservation, huge Sioux reservations in western South Dakota. 203 00:11:32,361 --> 00:11:38,201 And a number of my classmates were sue, you know, men or women who left the reservation to 204 00:11:38,233 --> 00:11:43,657 go to college, get an education, have a career, you know, take advantage of life in an 205 00:11:43,681 --> 00:11:45,257 advanced American civilization. 206 00:11:45,441 --> 00:11:47,433 The reservations were never sealed, like, not 207 00:11:47,449 --> 00:11:48,685 like a communist country. 208 00:11:48,985 --> 00:11:50,485 So that's an important point. 209 00:11:50,955 --> 00:11:55,655 Blair: Yeah, I. Two things I want to mention just in passing. 210 00:11:56,635 --> 00:12:03,707 When I lived in Nashville, I met a young woman who's like half Cherokee, extraordinarily 211 00:12:03,771 --> 00:12:05,215 attractive young lady. 212 00:12:06,155 --> 00:12:07,843 She was working in a bank. 213 00:12:07,899 --> 00:12:12,255 So they do assimilate, if you will. 214 00:12:13,115 --> 00:12:15,107 And the other thing I want to mention is 215 00:12:15,291 --> 00:12:16,015 these. 216 00:12:16,445 --> 00:12:17,565 These critics, they are. 217 00:12:17,605 --> 00:12:24,733 They apply modern terms to things that happened 200 years ago. 218 00:12:24,789 --> 00:12:32,829 So their accusations, in a way, in my mind, aren't valid. 219 00:12:32,877 --> 00:12:40,557 Because you're using today's terms to what? To identify what happened unintentionally, as 220 00:12:40,581 --> 00:12:44,327 you say, you know, 200 years ago and so on. 221 00:12:44,471 --> 00:12:46,151 Andrew: Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. 222 00:12:46,183 --> 00:12:53,703 There was genocide was a term, best of my knowledge, coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish 223 00:12:53,759 --> 00:12:59,311 Jew who escaped the Nazis, you know, during the time of World War II and was writing about 224 00:12:59,383 --> 00:13:04,759 the Armenian genocide or the Turks, that was a, that was a genocidal attempt. 225 00:13:04,887 --> 00:13:07,779 So the term is 1930s, 1940s. 226 00:13:07,902 --> 00:13:11,995 But the reality in 1915 was the Turks did 227 00:13:12,035 --> 00:13:12,995 attempt to. 228 00:13:13,155 --> 00:13:14,939 I don't want to use the term exterminate, that 229 00:13:14,987 --> 00:13:20,331 applies to insects, but did attempt to annihilate the Armenian population 230 00:13:20,403 --> 00:13:21,215 deliberately. 231 00:13:22,115 --> 00:13:25,611 And the European and American leaders in the 232 00:13:25,643 --> 00:13:31,091 new world did not attempt to deliberately wipe out the American Indian population. 233 00:13:31,163 --> 00:13:36,331 If they wanted to, they could have done so circa 1880s when they defeated these tribes 234 00:13:36,363 --> 00:13:40,921 and those tribes were exhausted and consigned to the reservations. 235 00:13:41,113 --> 00:13:42,369 Would have been a bloody. 236 00:13:42,497 --> 00:13:44,425 Would have been bloody for the US army because 237 00:13:44,465 --> 00:13:45,737 these guys were mighty warriors. 238 00:13:45,841 --> 00:13:48,057 But if they wanted to wipe out the Indian 239 00:13:48,121 --> 00:13:50,097 population, they could have done so. 240 00:13:50,241 --> 00:13:53,073 And they had the heavy guns, just using the 241 00:13:53,089 --> 00:13:58,297 heavy guns, the artillery, you know, on the, on the, on these peaceful camps in the 242 00:13:58,321 --> 00:14:02,633 reservations, they could have wiped out any number of American Indian men, women, 243 00:14:02,689 --> 00:14:02,881 children. 244 00:14:02,913 --> 00:14:03,805 They didn't do that. 245 00:14:04,605 --> 00:14:05,469 Blair: And let's claim. 246 00:14:05,517 --> 00:14:08,557 Andrew: The claim is beyond false, guys, it's, it's a flat out lie. 247 00:14:08,701 --> 00:14:10,725 Blair: Yeah, yeah. 248 00:14:10,765 --> 00:14:12,325 In my mind certainly that's true. 249 00:14:12,445 --> 00:14:19,181 And look again, let's jump back to today here in Connecticut, the Mohegan Sun Casino is run 250 00:14:19,213 --> 00:14:21,773 by the Mohegan Indian tribe. 251 00:14:21,949 --> 00:14:22,685 Andrew: Yeah. 252 00:14:22,845 --> 00:14:28,145 Blair: And. And that's certainly the area around that where they've. 253 00:14:28,885 --> 00:14:33,365 I'm assuming there's a reservation there, although I haven't honestly looked. 254 00:14:35,705 --> 00:14:42,713 Those homes, although basic and modest, are, Are all built by that. 255 00:14:42,849 --> 00:14:45,405 The wealth obtained by the casino. 256 00:14:45,745 --> 00:14:47,473 Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I've been on base. 257 00:14:47,489 --> 00:14:49,445 Blair: The wealth that isn't drained by the state. 258 00:14:49,865 --> 00:14:51,685 Andrew: Right, right. 259 00:14:53,425 --> 00:14:56,145 Are the Indians with the casinos, are they tax 260 00:14:56,185 --> 00:14:59,017 exempt? I'm not sure whether they have to pay taxes or 261 00:14:59,041 --> 00:15:01,349 they, well, certainly pay state taxes. 262 00:15:01,397 --> 00:15:02,765 Blair: I'm not sure about federal taxes. 263 00:15:02,805 --> 00:15:06,213 Andrew: Yeah. Okay. I've been on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the enormous Sioux 264 00:15:06,269 --> 00:15:09,029 reservation in western South Dakota. 265 00:15:09,117 --> 00:15:10,269 And any pretty. 266 00:15:10,437 --> 00:15:13,741 It's like, it's like going into the projects. 267 00:15:13,853 --> 00:15:16,197 You know, there's a lot of drug trafficking, 268 00:15:16,341 --> 00:15:18,501 just like in the, in the projects. 269 00:15:18,613 --> 00:15:21,941 We have a large black American population in 270 00:15:22,093 --> 00:15:25,933 many of the urban areas that there's drug trafficking, there's violence between and 271 00:15:25,949 --> 00:15:26,701 amongst the gangs. 272 00:15:26,733 --> 00:15:28,221 There's a high homicide rate. 273 00:15:28,333 --> 00:15:35,223 It's really, it's, you know, it's just really tragic how many young men kill each other and 274 00:15:35,239 --> 00:15:37,103 how many innocent people get caught in the crossfire. 275 00:15:37,159 --> 00:15:41,743 But my point, of course, is today and for a long time, the reservations are not sealed and 276 00:15:41,759 --> 00:15:46,199 the people who want a better life leave, you know, to go to school and have a career and 277 00:15:46,247 --> 00:15:50,103 get, you know, just like people can leave the projects, get, you know, move to a better 278 00:15:50,159 --> 00:15:51,591 neighborhood, get a, get it. 279 00:15:51,623 --> 00:15:53,759 Get a job, you know, move to a better 280 00:15:53,807 --> 00:15:55,711 neighborhood, raise their kids in a safer. 281 00:15:55,823 --> 00:15:56,703 In a safe area. 282 00:15:56,759 --> 00:15:57,795 And people do. 283 00:15:58,295 --> 00:15:59,635 Blair: Yes, yes. 284 00:15:59,935 --> 00:16:04,415 Now you moving along here, you also mentioned 285 00:16:04,535 --> 00:16:07,975 things like the Asian communists and the Mongols and so on. 286 00:16:08,015 --> 00:16:10,595 Now what, what are. 287 00:16:10,975 --> 00:16:16,751 Is that related to more false accusations or 288 00:16:16,783 --> 00:16:17,355 what? 289 00:16:18,855 --> 00:16:27,239 Andrew: Yeah, the accusation is that you white Westerners have been uniquely evil in terms of 290 00:16:27,287 --> 00:16:29,063 these heinous crimes. 291 00:16:29,239 --> 00:16:32,687 The enslavement of black Africans, you know, 292 00:16:32,711 --> 00:16:34,519 the transatlantic slave trade. 293 00:16:34,607 --> 00:16:35,183 Blair: Yes. 294 00:16:35,319 --> 00:16:38,075 Andrew: You know, the colonialism I mentioned. 295 00:16:38,815 --> 00:16:43,991 Leopold ii, King of Belgium, who established 296 00:16:44,063 --> 00:16:50,579 his fiefdom, you know, established his fiefdom in the Congo, in the Belgian Congo. 297 00:16:50,627 --> 00:16:58,371 And he's a slow, you know, making money, stealing, you know, exploiting the rubber and 298 00:16:58,403 --> 00:17:03,255 the, and the, and the ivory tusks and, you know, and everything. 299 00:17:03,875 --> 00:17:07,295 So there was a lot of, There was a lot of evil here. 300 00:17:07,675 --> 00:17:10,815 King Leopold II in Belgium was a monster. 301 00:17:11,515 --> 00:17:11,987 Ludicrous. 302 00:17:12,011 --> 00:17:14,655 Von Mises called him a lot of Dick Conquistadore. 303 00:17:14,835 --> 00:17:22,599 But the claim is that this is, the leftist claim is that these kind of depredations of 304 00:17:22,647 --> 00:17:29,975 colonialism, killing American Indians, taking their lands, enslavement of black Africans is 305 00:17:30,015 --> 00:17:34,999 uniquely Western, that this is what the west did. 306 00:17:35,127 --> 00:17:39,407 And the implication is, since they don't talk about the rest of the world when they're 307 00:17:39,431 --> 00:17:45,291 making these accusations, the implication is, you know, people around the world were like, 308 00:17:45,323 --> 00:17:50,251 you know, innocent little boy scouts who were exploited and brutalized by the evil white 309 00:17:50,283 --> 00:17:50,787 man. 310 00:17:50,931 --> 00:17:52,667 So, you know, if Susan Sontek says, well, the 311 00:17:52,691 --> 00:17:57,379 white race is the cancer of history, we need to look more broadly at history and let's. 312 00:17:57,427 --> 00:18:00,443 Well, let's see what went on in the rest of the world. 313 00:18:00,499 --> 00:18:02,955 And so I gave three examples, right. 314 00:18:02,995 --> 00:18:04,563 One was the Mongols. 315 00:18:04,619 --> 00:18:06,763 Almost, Almost unbelievable. 316 00:18:06,819 --> 00:18:08,647 Unfathomably destructive. 317 00:18:08,771 --> 00:18:13,398 Genghis Khan today was 13, you know, 13th century Mongol conqueror. 318 00:18:13,494 --> 00:18:20,095 Today they claim 40 million murders on the hands of Genghis Khan and his men. 319 00:18:20,175 --> 00:18:25,955 40 million using swords, spears and fire as weapons of mass destruction. 320 00:18:26,415 --> 00:18:35,207 Tamerlane, another Mongol conqueror in the 14th century, again, his favorite form of 321 00:18:35,231 --> 00:18:37,923 architecture, Matthew White says was a wrote. 322 00:18:37,979 --> 00:18:40,147 Wrote a really grim book. 323 00:18:40,251 --> 00:18:44,067 Atrocities is the title, but like the hundred worst atrocities in human history. 324 00:18:44,091 --> 00:18:46,723 But he's White is an expert on these atrocities. 325 00:18:46,859 --> 00:18:50,851 He points out Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror in the 14th century. 326 00:18:50,963 --> 00:18:54,651 His favorite form of architecture was the tower of skulls. 327 00:18:54,763 --> 00:19:00,083 He'd have his men drag all the civilians out of a conquered city, chop off their heads Men, 328 00:19:00,139 --> 00:19:02,227 women, children, babies, pregnant women, everybody. 329 00:19:02,251 --> 00:19:08,987 And then pile their skulls in so many towers and like 70,000, 80,000, 90,000 human skulls 330 00:19:09,011 --> 00:19:10,039 ring the city. 331 00:19:10,167 --> 00:19:11,847 Mongols did a few good things, but. 332 00:19:11,871 --> 00:19:18,799 Martin: The, the, and, and talking about that also as a remark, Andy, didn't they also do 333 00:19:18,847 --> 00:19:26,367 other things when they conquered? So in a way many people could be traced back 334 00:19:26,391 --> 00:19:28,583 to the Mongolians, right? 335 00:19:28,719 --> 00:19:35,245 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan had nobody knows how many fathered, you know, 336 00:19:35,415 --> 00:19:40,585 nobody knows how many children, you know, from the many wives he had, the concubines, the sex 337 00:19:40,665 --> 00:19:46,777 slaves of the, you know, the, of the conquered women who he raped or had sex with. 338 00:19:46,801 --> 00:19:47,281 Nobody knows. 339 00:19:47,313 --> 00:19:49,721 But yeah, yeah, he tried to repopulate the 340 00:19:49,753 --> 00:19:54,761 world after depopulating it, you know, but unfortunately, probably some of that was rape 341 00:19:54,793 --> 00:19:57,073 of, you know, of conquered women. 342 00:19:57,169 --> 00:20:00,017 But the Mongols are unbelievably destructive 343 00:20:00,201 --> 00:20:05,371 and modern Westerners don't just kind of conveniently ignore that. 344 00:20:05,563 --> 00:20:10,747 And from there I went to the Arab Muslims and their, and some of their converts like the 345 00:20:10,771 --> 00:20:14,827 Turks and you know, the, they, they conquered them. 346 00:20:14,931 --> 00:20:19,211 Muslims conquered this vast empire to the east, which they still hold to this day, 347 00:20:19,323 --> 00:20:22,467 imposed Islam on those countries to this day. 348 00:20:22,491 --> 00:20:26,067 If somebody leaves the one true faith, it's 349 00:20:26,091 --> 00:20:29,001 apostasy that it's a capital offense. 350 00:20:29,163 --> 00:20:31,789 Will Durant, very sober minded American 351 00:20:31,877 --> 00:20:36,837 historian, said bluntly in the story of civilization that the Islamic conquest of 352 00:20:36,861 --> 00:20:38,957 India was the bloodiest story in history. 353 00:20:39,061 --> 00:20:42,045 One Indian historian claims that over those 354 00:20:42,085 --> 00:20:48,579 centuries following roughly 1000 AD, that Islamic conquerors annihilated 80 million 355 00:20:48,710 --> 00:20:49,235 Hindus. 356 00:20:49,366 --> 00:20:51,373 Claims 80 million Hindus. 357 00:20:51,469 --> 00:20:53,701 And of course, I don't know what the exact number is. 358 00:20:53,733 --> 00:20:54,389 Nobody knows. 359 00:20:54,477 --> 00:20:58,725 But Islam is a fanatically monotheistic 360 00:20:58,765 --> 00:20:59,365 religion. 361 00:20:59,485 --> 00:21:01,253 And the Hindus say things like, you know, 362 00:21:01,269 --> 00:21:06,317 there are millions of gods which strike the jihadist year as blasphemy. 363 00:21:06,461 --> 00:21:09,597 And so, you know, they butchered millions of Hindus. 364 00:21:09,661 --> 00:21:14,333 The Turks, of course, I mentioned before, during World War I, attempted genocide of the 365 00:21:14,349 --> 00:21:20,085 entire Armenian population, murdered roughly one and a half million civilians. 366 00:21:20,205 --> 00:21:26,505 Muslim invaders repeatedly invaded Europe, conquered Spain, invaded France. 367 00:21:28,485 --> 00:21:34,397 Later on, the Ottoman Empire, of course, conquered large parts of eastern and central 368 00:21:34,461 --> 00:21:35,065 Europe. 369 00:21:35,405 --> 00:21:37,589 The Mediterranean for a long time was referred 370 00:21:37,597 --> 00:21:38,581 to as an Ottoman lake. 371 00:21:38,613 --> 00:21:39,365 They took any. 372 00:21:39,485 --> 00:21:44,189 They took hundreds of thousands of white European Christian slaves, including many 373 00:21:44,237 --> 00:21:47,393 white women who they preferred as concubines, sex slaves. 374 00:21:47,589 --> 00:21:54,697 And today when people talk about slavery, it's like the only form of slavery they seem to 375 00:21:54,721 --> 00:21:59,257 know of is white Westerners enslaving black Africans. 376 00:21:59,401 --> 00:22:05,833 And the Islamic slave trade out of sub Saharan Africa was significantly more extensive than 377 00:22:05,849 --> 00:22:07,001 the European trade. 378 00:22:07,113 --> 00:22:09,721 The numbers vary from source to source, but 379 00:22:09,873 --> 00:22:13,915 everybody concedes the Muslims enslave more. 380 00:22:13,995 --> 00:22:15,707 You're long before the Europeans ever got 381 00:22:15,731 --> 00:22:22,971 involved in the slave trade, enslaved more black black Africans. 382 00:22:23,043 --> 00:22:29,835 And in a way the treatment was even worse because the Muslims castrated their slaves, 383 00:22:29,955 --> 00:22:34,815 which explains the dearth of a black population in the Middle east today. 384 00:22:35,115 --> 00:22:42,473 So. And today, of course, you know, the religion of peace commits one atrocity, 385 00:22:42,609 --> 00:22:44,445 terrorist atrocity after another. 386 00:22:44,945 --> 00:22:46,769 And then I went on to the Communist. 387 00:22:46,937 --> 00:22:53,325 Martin: Yeah, Andy, before that, I wanted talking about that a symbolic date there. 388 00:22:53,665 --> 00:22:54,761 9 11. 389 00:22:54,913 --> 00:22:56,201 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. 390 00:22:56,233 --> 00:23:01,405 Martin: That's also little historical thing that Osama bin Laden recognized. 391 00:23:01,705 --> 00:23:04,353 Andrew: Yes, thanks for bringing that up, Martin. 392 00:23:04,529 --> 00:23:08,805 Most Americans don't know, and I don't know if people in the Western world generally know. 393 00:23:09,825 --> 00:23:15,325 The second time the Turks besieged Vienna in 1683. 394 00:23:16,105 --> 00:23:19,805 And think about how much of Europe the Turks had conquered. 395 00:23:20,345 --> 00:23:26,937 Much of Eastern and Central Europe was conquered by the Muslims and besieged Vienna. 396 00:23:27,041 --> 00:23:31,662 They besieged it before in 1520s, under Suleiman the Magnificent. 397 00:23:31,797 --> 00:23:40,007 1683, King John Sobieski, a poem, devout Catholic, noted Muslim follower, brought his 398 00:23:40,031 --> 00:23:44,795 army down out of the hills and they routed the Turks in front of the gates of Vienna. 399 00:23:45,615 --> 00:23:51,944 Different accounts historically, but generally it was claimed to be on September 12, 1683, 400 00:23:52,105 --> 00:24:02,047 which means that September 11, 1683 was the high point of the Islamic long coveted attempt 401 00:24:02,111 --> 00:24:04,915 to conquer Christian Europe. 402 00:24:05,295 --> 00:24:06,719 That was the high point of it. 403 00:24:06,767 --> 00:24:10,231 After that, of course, the Ottoman Empire slowly went into decline. 404 00:24:10,423 --> 00:24:14,767 1680s, you look at the date, Britain's going to go through its industrial revolution soon. 405 00:24:14,911 --> 00:24:18,351 The west becomes certainly starting in Britain. 406 00:24:18,383 --> 00:24:23,079 The west becomes, you see John Locke's influence, the principle of individual rights. 407 00:24:23,127 --> 00:24:25,847 The west becomes politically freer. 408 00:24:25,991 --> 00:24:27,471 Industrial revolution. 409 00:24:27,663 --> 00:24:31,485 You free the mind of all these great thinkers in Britain. 410 00:24:31,905 --> 00:24:33,273 British industrial revolution. 411 00:24:33,329 --> 00:24:35,081 The British become wealthier. 412 00:24:35,233 --> 00:24:37,321 Western Europe in time becomes wealthy. 413 00:24:37,353 --> 00:24:40,081 You see the rise of the west, the decline of 414 00:24:40,113 --> 00:24:42,361 the Arab Islamic world. 415 00:24:42,473 --> 00:24:44,201 People don't realize it anymore. 416 00:24:44,393 --> 00:24:49,761 For a thousand years, the struggle between Christianity and Islam or between Europe and 417 00:24:49,833 --> 00:24:53,085 the Middle east was dominated by the Muslims. 418 00:24:53,545 --> 00:24:55,645 It was the Muslims invading Europe. 419 00:24:56,225 --> 00:24:58,601 And the Mediterranean was an Ottoman lake. 420 00:24:58,633 --> 00:25:02,457 It wasn't an Italian lake or a French lake. 421 00:25:02,641 --> 00:25:07,353 But after this, the shoe goes on to the other foot, right? 422 00:25:07,449 --> 00:25:09,609 You see Napoleon conquering Egypt. 423 00:25:09,657 --> 00:25:12,489 And the British defeat Napoleon and the French 424 00:25:12,657 --> 00:25:15,825 conquer Algeria and Morocco, large parts of North Africa. 425 00:25:15,865 --> 00:25:18,593 You see the scramble for Africa in the 19th century. 426 00:25:18,729 --> 00:25:24,723 And of course, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I by the British famous 427 00:25:24,779 --> 00:25:28,147 Lawrence of Arabia incident, you see eventually the establishment of the State of 428 00:25:28,171 --> 00:25:29,891 Israel in 1948. 429 00:25:29,923 --> 00:25:32,971 All of this Western imperialism as the Islamic 430 00:25:33,003 --> 00:25:39,083 world sees it, but prior to that, for a thousand years, it was the Muslims invading 431 00:25:39,179 --> 00:25:39,435 Europe. 432 00:25:39,475 --> 00:25:41,283 And the Europeans did a good job defending 433 00:25:41,339 --> 00:25:42,003 themselves. 434 00:25:42,179 --> 00:25:44,827 But other than the Crusades, which again was a 435 00:25:44,851 --> 00:25:51,899 defensive struggle because the Muslims had conquered large parts of the Byzantine Empire 436 00:25:51,947 --> 00:25:53,651 and eventually conquered Constantinople. 437 00:25:53,723 --> 00:25:56,339 But, you know, the Europeans did a good job 438 00:25:56,387 --> 00:25:57,155 defending themselves. 439 00:25:57,195 --> 00:26:02,011 But to this day, the Arab look, according to 440 00:26:02,043 --> 00:26:08,291 Islam, Islam is the one true faith destined to rule the world and whatever it takes, 441 00:26:08,443 --> 00:26:12,259 conquest, terrorism, murder, rape, whatever it takes. 442 00:26:12,347 --> 00:26:16,295 And Islam is still very much on that philosophy. 443 00:26:16,435 --> 00:26:19,663 They're just not as strong as the west, so they can't conquer the west militarily 444 00:26:19,719 --> 00:26:20,303 anymore. 445 00:26:20,439 --> 00:26:24,375 So they perpetrate terrorist acts, terrorist 446 00:26:24,415 --> 00:26:25,927 atrocities instead. 447 00:26:26,111 --> 00:26:30,631 So but you know, the West, Western, the 448 00:26:30,663 --> 00:26:37,991 Western leftist intellectuals treat the Islamic world as generally victims of the 449 00:26:38,023 --> 00:26:38,311 West. 450 00:26:38,383 --> 00:26:40,071 It's like they'll start history at around 451 00:26:40,143 --> 00:26:48,535 1800, you know, as the west is growing stronger and conquering North Africa. 452 00:26:49,435 --> 00:26:58,323 And all that happened before that is like a blank out, as John Gwalt says in but maybe the 453 00:26:58,339 --> 00:27:01,027 most egregious example of the Asian Communists. 454 00:27:01,211 --> 00:27:05,315 And I pointed out, I couldn't even deal with, I couldn't even discuss the Soviets because 455 00:27:05,435 --> 00:27:07,331 the Soviet leadership was white. 456 00:27:07,523 --> 00:27:10,523 And I was concerned here to point out the 457 00:27:10,539 --> 00:27:13,659 atrocities perpetrated by non white, non Westerners. 458 00:27:13,787 --> 00:27:14,795 The communists are the worst. 459 00:27:14,835 --> 00:27:17,531 I mean, Islam, like I said in the essay, Islam 460 00:27:17,563 --> 00:27:22,131 at least had a golden age where Islamic thinkers made advances in any number of 461 00:27:22,163 --> 00:27:23,175 different fields. 462 00:27:24,075 --> 00:27:27,811 Astronomy and medicine and literature and any 463 00:27:27,843 --> 00:27:32,619 number of fields influenced by Aristotle, of course. 464 00:27:32,787 --> 00:27:37,095 Yes, yes, it was definitely inspired by the Greeks and Aristotle in particular. 465 00:27:37,255 --> 00:27:38,135 Absolutely right. 466 00:27:38,255 --> 00:27:42,366 But the golden age of Islam ends roughly 1200 467 00:27:42,444 --> 00:27:44,727 A.D. you know, roughly 800 years ago. 468 00:27:44,751 --> 00:27:46,167 For the last eight centuries, I think the 469 00:27:46,191 --> 00:27:51,383 Islamic world's been in the dark ages, but the Communists never had a golden age. 470 00:27:51,479 --> 00:27:55,303 Well, they had a gulag totalitarianism, mass murder. 471 00:27:55,439 --> 00:28:01,199 Can look at Mao's mass murder in China, look at the insanity in Cambodia, North Korea, the 472 00:28:01,247 --> 00:28:06,511 gigantic slave labor, even like 10% of the entire population is a brutal slave labor as 473 00:28:06,543 --> 00:28:07,355 we speak. 474 00:28:08,615 --> 00:28:11,055 You know, these are, these are the most evil 475 00:28:11,095 --> 00:28:18,359 people in history, along with the Nazis and but to the leftist Western intellectuals, you 476 00:28:18,367 --> 00:28:24,955 know, these, I mean, the communists are much worse than any, than the west at its worst. 477 00:28:25,455 --> 00:28:29,935 And so I went through all these examples before I even got to the major point to point 478 00:28:29,975 --> 00:28:34,315 out that the criticisms of the west, you know, especially Susan Sontek, put it very nicely. 479 00:28:35,005 --> 00:28:37,277 The white race is the cancer of human history. 480 00:28:37,341 --> 00:28:40,505 Western civilization is evil. 481 00:28:41,325 --> 00:28:45,465 This is a gigantic example of the half truth fallacy. 482 00:28:46,045 --> 00:28:52,845 That is where you look at part of the truth, those parts that tend to corroborate your 483 00:28:52,885 --> 00:28:59,461 conclusion and you simply ignore or neglect those parts of the truth that are relevant but 484 00:28:59,493 --> 00:29:02,465 that tend to disprove your conclusion. 485 00:29:02,805 --> 00:29:05,541 So you know, these depredations of the 486 00:29:05,573 --> 00:29:14,413 Mongols, the Muslims, the communists, they do not reduce the guilt of any white villain so 487 00:29:14,429 --> 00:29:19,541 much as one scintilla, but they do raise a question and that is why single out the white 488 00:29:19,573 --> 00:29:22,181 man? Why are we singling out Western civilization 489 00:29:22,253 --> 00:29:27,339 when these other guys, if anything, were at least as bad and maybe even worse? 490 00:29:27,477 --> 00:29:28,879 I think the communists were. 491 00:29:29,007 --> 00:29:31,559 Yeah, I think they're all worse than the west 492 00:29:31,647 --> 00:29:32,615 at its worst. 493 00:29:32,735 --> 00:29:35,199 So it's, it's a gigantic example of half truth 494 00:29:35,247 --> 00:29:35,799 fallacy. 495 00:29:35,927 --> 00:29:38,143 And that doesn't even, that doesn't even 496 00:29:38,199 --> 00:29:38,583 count. 497 00:29:38,679 --> 00:29:40,783 We haven't even gotten yet to the main point 498 00:29:40,919 --> 00:29:46,759 about the half truth and that is the enormous life giving achievements of Western 499 00:29:46,807 --> 00:29:50,407 civilization which get completely overlooked by the critics. 500 00:29:50,551 --> 00:29:56,259 Of course give the advances in medicine I mentioned, well, the advances in agriculture I 501 00:29:56,267 --> 00:30:01,107 mentioned Norman Borlaug and the Green revolution that you know, by some, by some 502 00:30:01,171 --> 00:30:05,563 estimates have, you know, saved a billion lives around the world. 503 00:30:05,739 --> 00:30:12,411 Borlaug was an American agricultural scientist and medicine I mentioned Maurice Hillman at 504 00:30:12,443 --> 00:30:18,795 Merck who, whose vaccines and you know, for various measles and rubella and all kinds of 505 00:30:18,835 --> 00:30:24,289 diseases again saved millions and millions of lives around the world and go on and on, you 506 00:30:24,297 --> 00:30:28,553 know, Jonas Salk and Albert Saban with the, you know, the vaccine for the dreaded polio 507 00:30:28,609 --> 00:30:29,249 virus. 508 00:30:29,377 --> 00:30:31,961 Western science, Western medical science has 509 00:30:31,993 --> 00:30:36,205 saved millions and millions and millions of lives of people all over the world. 510 00:30:36,745 --> 00:30:41,633 They just give you know, so many examples of the great accomplishments of Western 511 00:30:41,689 --> 00:30:49,167 civilization in science and philosophy, in the arts, and had to mention John Locke and the 512 00:30:49,191 --> 00:30:54,911 rise of the principle of individual rights, political economic liberty, capitalism and the 513 00:30:54,943 --> 00:30:59,023 stupendous wealth creation that benefits people all over the world, especially in 514 00:30:59,039 --> 00:31:00,751 Europe, North America and the Asian tigers. 515 00:31:00,783 --> 00:31:02,543 But we trade with people all over the world 516 00:31:02,639 --> 00:31:05,951 that benefits them and critically. 517 00:31:06,143 --> 00:31:10,431 And I took great pleasure in writing this on 518 00:31:10,463 --> 00:31:16,273 slavery, Tommy Sowell and any number of other writers point out slavery was ubiquitous. 519 00:31:16,409 --> 00:31:21,405 Slavery has existed all over the world going all the way back into the mists of prehistory. 520 00:31:21,785 --> 00:31:26,937 It's not the white race, you know, who was, whose response originated. 521 00:31:27,001 --> 00:31:28,457 Yeah, yeah, no way. 522 00:31:28,481 --> 00:31:29,497 A white man didn't originate. 523 00:31:29,521 --> 00:31:31,217 It's been all over the world forever. 524 00:31:31,321 --> 00:31:33,601 White men didn't originate it, but they ended 525 00:31:33,633 --> 00:31:34,185 it. 526 00:31:34,345 --> 00:31:37,607 Because the principle of individual rights in 527 00:31:37,631 --> 00:31:42,255 Britain is what gave rise for the first time in history to a concerted abolitionist 528 00:31:42,295 --> 00:31:47,439 movement that succeeded to a significant degree in certainly curtailing slavery. 529 00:31:47,567 --> 00:31:52,391 And, you know, starting in Western territories, British territory, 19th century, 530 00:31:52,503 --> 00:31:56,671 the Brits, the French, the Americans all abolished slavery in the. 531 00:31:56,743 --> 00:32:00,791 In the 19th century, the Brits pressured the Ottoman Empire. 532 00:32:00,983 --> 00:32:05,775 They never did succeed in stamping out slavery in the Ottoman Empire, but succeeded in 533 00:32:05,895 --> 00:32:07,183 curtailing it. 534 00:32:07,319 --> 00:32:09,919 And, you know, I think there's a great line in 535 00:32:09,927 --> 00:32:16,151 the essay where I said slavery was ubiquitous, abolitionism was western. 536 00:32:16,303 --> 00:32:17,455 And that's absolutely true. 537 00:32:17,535 --> 00:32:18,487 Blair: Absolutely. 538 00:32:18,671 --> 00:32:19,567 I want to. 539 00:32:19,711 --> 00:32:20,119 Go ahead. 540 00:32:20,167 --> 00:32:20,911 Go ahead, Martin. 541 00:32:20,983 --> 00:32:22,167 Martin: Yeah, thanks, Blair. 542 00:32:22,271 --> 00:32:24,511 Isn't it the case also that still slavery is 543 00:32:24,543 --> 00:32:29,031 around in certain parts of the world, like in Africa, in different tribes? 544 00:32:29,063 --> 00:32:30,567 Andrew: Oh, yeah, absolutely right. 545 00:32:30,591 --> 00:32:30,855 Martin. 546 00:32:30,895 --> 00:32:37,085 I mentioned just before, 10% of the entire population of North Korea is in heavy, 547 00:32:37,125 --> 00:32:40,965 including children or heavy, brutal slave labor as we speak. 548 00:32:41,085 --> 00:32:45,829 You know, sometimes if I'm feeling sorry for myself, you know, I think, well, wait a 549 00:32:45,837 --> 00:32:47,493 minute, I got a lot to be grateful for. 550 00:32:47,549 --> 00:32:49,717 I could have been born in North Korea, you 551 00:32:49,741 --> 00:32:51,501 know, I wasn't, thank God. 552 00:32:51,613 --> 00:32:53,985 I was born in the United States. 553 00:32:55,205 --> 00:32:55,909 Yeah. 554 00:32:56,037 --> 00:32:59,507 And in North Africa, in Sudan, and, you know, 555 00:32:59,531 --> 00:33:01,011 jihadist regime. 556 00:33:01,203 --> 00:33:05,739 And under Islam, it's impermissible to enslave 557 00:33:05,787 --> 00:33:09,331 a co religionist, but everybody else is fair game. 558 00:33:09,483 --> 00:33:12,387 You can enslave everybody else. 559 00:33:12,571 --> 00:33:17,611 And South Sudan is largely black. 560 00:33:17,683 --> 00:33:26,619 And yes, the Islamic regime of North Sudan arms guerrilla outfits, or at very least 561 00:33:26,667 --> 00:33:27,507 tolerates them. 562 00:33:27,611 --> 00:33:29,695 And they've slaughtered. 563 00:33:30,955 --> 00:33:32,695 How do you say that, duffer? 564 00:33:33,915 --> 00:33:35,795 Blair: Darfur is what I've heard it as. 565 00:33:35,835 --> 00:33:36,995 Andrew: Yeah, Darfur. 566 00:33:37,075 --> 00:33:39,755 They've slaughtered various black African 567 00:33:39,795 --> 00:33:40,027 tribes. 568 00:33:40,051 --> 00:33:43,131 They've enslaved thousands of black Africans. 569 00:33:43,163 --> 00:33:48,443 So many parts of the world, slavery not only continues, I don't want to say it flourishes 570 00:33:48,499 --> 00:33:54,589 because something evil doesn't flourish, but it's widespread and popular and legal. 571 00:33:54,787 --> 00:33:58,005 Now, slavery exists all over the world, but it's illegal. 572 00:33:58,465 --> 00:34:03,457 The sex slave trade, for example, but it's illegal in the western countries. 573 00:34:03,521 --> 00:34:09,193 It's illegal in China under communism, the gulags run by the government. 574 00:34:09,249 --> 00:34:11,805 It's legal in North Korea, it's legal in Sudan. 575 00:34:12,505 --> 00:34:19,601 So, yeah, it's the Western commitment to abolitionism that has wiped out slavery to a 576 00:34:19,633 --> 00:34:20,449 significant degree. 577 00:34:20,497 --> 00:34:23,028 Not everywhere, but to a significant degree in 578 00:34:23,036 --> 00:34:23,460 the world. 579 00:34:23,532 --> 00:34:25,620 And that's the principle of individual rights 580 00:34:25,732 --> 00:34:27,224 applied in action. 581 00:34:27,604 --> 00:34:27,988 Blair: Right. 582 00:34:28,036 --> 00:34:31,260 So right now, let me, let me throw this out 583 00:34:31,292 --> 00:34:32,024 real quick. 584 00:34:34,364 --> 00:34:37,756 I've long, and certainly when I've thought 585 00:34:37,780 --> 00:34:38,660 about things like this. 586 00:34:38,732 --> 00:34:43,404 I've, I'm just wondering, and you may or may 587 00:34:43,444 --> 00:34:46,304 not have thought about this, but I just wonder. 588 00:34:47,164 --> 00:34:55,845 There's certain people that are incapable of living in freedom, that psychologically 589 00:34:56,545 --> 00:34:59,729 incapable of understanding freedom. 590 00:34:59,817 --> 00:35:00,729 Does that make any sense? 591 00:35:00,777 --> 00:35:05,993 I mean, you again, all these critics of Western civilization, which is fundamentally 592 00:35:06,049 --> 00:35:09,965 about individual freedom, yet they attack it. 593 00:35:11,265 --> 00:35:13,337 In my mind, that means they're incapable of 594 00:35:13,361 --> 00:35:14,377 living in freedom. 595 00:35:14,521 --> 00:35:15,937 Does that make any sense? 596 00:35:16,121 --> 00:35:22,365 Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I think there are some people who aren't evil. 597 00:35:22,705 --> 00:35:23,761 They just. 598 00:35:23,953 --> 00:35:27,217 Freedom means to take responsibility for my 599 00:35:27,241 --> 00:35:27,777 own life. 600 00:35:27,881 --> 00:35:29,593 My mommy and daddy aren't going to take care 601 00:35:29,609 --> 00:35:30,525 of me anymore. 602 00:35:30,865 --> 00:35:33,889 The welfare state, the big brother state or 603 00:35:33,897 --> 00:35:35,617 the nanny state's not going to take care of me. 604 00:35:35,681 --> 00:35:37,553 Under freedom, I have to take care of myself. 605 00:35:37,689 --> 00:35:41,265 Some people aren't evil, but, you know, 606 00:35:41,345 --> 00:35:46,785 there's this crazy harmless and there's crazy dangerous and they're just kind of the 607 00:35:46,825 --> 00:35:47,129 harmless. 608 00:35:47,177 --> 00:35:50,265 They may be, may have some form of mental 609 00:35:50,305 --> 00:35:54,849 illness, they may be crazy homeless, but they're not capable of holding a job and 610 00:35:54,937 --> 00:35:55,945 taking care of themselves. 611 00:35:56,025 --> 00:35:58,489 And they'll need their family or private 612 00:35:58,577 --> 00:36:02,465 voluntary charity in a free society to take care of them. 613 00:36:02,585 --> 00:36:06,211 Then there's the evil people that you're talking about who want to destroy freedom. 614 00:36:06,313 --> 00:36:08,471 Right? And they're not only incapable of living for 615 00:36:08,503 --> 00:36:09,135 themselves. 616 00:36:09,295 --> 00:36:11,087 They want to make sure that you and I don't 617 00:36:11,111 --> 00:36:13,591 get, you know, don't get to live. 618 00:36:13,623 --> 00:36:16,007 I remember once talking to my sister who a 619 00:36:16,031 --> 00:36:22,767 very smart, very common, sensible person, you know, about various American communists who 620 00:36:22,831 --> 00:36:25,959 went to Cuba and they talked about, you know, what a great guy Fidel is. 621 00:36:26,007 --> 00:36:29,927 And they had such a great, they had such a great time when they were in Cuba and my 622 00:36:29,951 --> 00:36:33,247 sister got irate and she said to me, well, why don't they go live there then? 623 00:36:33,391 --> 00:36:38,527 You know, And I, which is a, which is a very, very good question. 624 00:36:38,631 --> 00:36:44,119 And it occurred to me in, in that conversation, they don't want to live in Cuba. 625 00:36:44,247 --> 00:36:47,271 They want, they want it, they don't want to live in a communist state. 626 00:36:47,343 --> 00:36:52,119 They want to impose communism here and make you and I live under, you know, live under 627 00:36:52,167 --> 00:36:52,943 communism. 628 00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:55,119 So, yeah, there's these, these evil guys. 629 00:36:55,167 --> 00:36:57,615 They, they, they're power lusters. 630 00:36:57,655 --> 00:36:59,327 They want to, they, they can't live under 631 00:36:59,391 --> 00:37:01,923 freedom and they want to make sure that you and I don't either. 632 00:37:02,079 --> 00:37:09,187 Blair: So now, again, very shortly after this, the section we've been covering, you mentioned 633 00:37:09,211 --> 00:37:11,375 a hero of mine, James Lindsay. 634 00:37:11,915 --> 00:37:12,815 Andrew: Oh, yeah. 635 00:37:13,315 --> 00:37:17,095 Blair: I've been trying to get him on the show, but to no avail yet. 636 00:37:17,555 --> 00:37:26,867 But he is, I think he's the foremost critic, or if that's the right word, of crt. 637 00:37:26,931 --> 00:37:28,269 Critical race theory. 638 00:37:28,467 --> 00:37:29,209 Andrew: Yes. 639 00:37:29,377 --> 00:37:33,105 Blair: And again, you touched on him in your essay. 640 00:37:33,145 --> 00:37:38,521 Can you go into that? Yeah, it's under the subheading the reasons 641 00:37:38,553 --> 00:37:40,645 for the assault on whites and the West. 642 00:37:41,625 --> 00:37:42,881 Andrew: Right, right. 643 00:37:42,913 --> 00:37:47,049 Because, you know, just to set it up, you 644 00:37:47,057 --> 00:37:53,081 know, we see that the west at its worst is not as bad as these other bad guys. 645 00:37:53,233 --> 00:37:58,055 And at its best, it's the most life giving culture that we know of. 646 00:37:58,095 --> 00:38:05,207 There's no culture that we know of that promoted human life around the world as 647 00:38:05,271 --> 00:38:07,367 effectively as Western civilization did. 648 00:38:07,471 --> 00:38:11,527 So why the attacks on the West? 649 00:38:11,671 --> 00:38:21,747 Why attack the best with all the bad in it? It's the best culture in history and give a 650 00:38:21,771 --> 00:38:22,595 pass to the worst. 651 00:38:22,635 --> 00:38:23,371 I mean, that's. 652 00:38:23,523 --> 00:38:27,455 If we assume that the critics of Western civilization are honest. 653 00:38:28,315 --> 00:38:31,435 That's a puzzling, you know, that's, that's a puzzling issue. 654 00:38:31,475 --> 00:38:33,867 That's a good question to raise. 655 00:38:34,011 --> 00:38:34,339 Blair: Yes. 656 00:38:34,387 --> 00:38:34,651 Martin: And that. 657 00:38:34,683 --> 00:38:35,227 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. 658 00:38:35,251 --> 00:38:35,867 And that, you're right. 659 00:38:35,891 --> 00:38:39,763 That brings us into critical race theory and its subcategory. 660 00:38:39,819 --> 00:38:46,965 One of them, I think, perhaps the single most irrational thing I've ever heard of, perhaps, 661 00:38:47,045 --> 00:38:51,701 maybe the only exception being the Nazis, perhaps is critical whiteness studies. 662 00:38:51,853 --> 00:38:53,205 And very similar to the Nazis. 663 00:38:53,245 --> 00:38:55,365 They just, you know, they, they just reversed, 664 00:38:55,445 --> 00:38:57,345 favored and disfavored races. 665 00:38:58,725 --> 00:39:01,669 But yeah, so James Lindsay is a, he's a 666 00:39:01,677 --> 00:39:02,261 mathematician. 667 00:39:02,293 --> 00:39:02,413 Right. 668 00:39:02,429 --> 00:39:04,069 I think his PhD is in mathematics. 669 00:39:04,157 --> 00:39:04,533 Blair: I think that. 670 00:39:04,549 --> 00:39:06,317 Andrew: Right, yeah. 671 00:39:06,421 --> 00:39:09,885 But he's a, he's a brilliant cultural critic 672 00:39:09,965 --> 00:39:16,273 and does a very effective job of analyzing critical race theory, which goes back, I don't 673 00:39:16,289 --> 00:39:20,633 know the antecedents of crt, but I know the essence of it today. 674 00:39:20,769 --> 00:39:25,025 And that is the two major claims that the CRT advocates make. 675 00:39:25,065 --> 00:39:31,737 One is that America Today in 2024 is still systemically racist, as if we've never changed 676 00:39:31,761 --> 00:39:36,725 from the Jim Crow era until White people, white people are inherently racist. 677 00:39:37,985 --> 00:39:45,023 And James Lindsay gives a very, very good explication of that. 678 00:39:45,119 --> 00:39:49,583 But the starting point for the, for crt. 679 00:39:49,679 --> 00:39:51,607 And unfortunately, I think Lindsay agrees with 680 00:39:51,631 --> 00:39:54,319 this to some extent and I think, and I think it's false. 681 00:39:54,447 --> 00:40:00,463 And that is the claim that the white race is a social construct, that race is not 682 00:40:00,599 --> 00:40:08,643 biologically based, that it's, that it's constructed socially and, you know, I mean, 683 00:40:08,659 --> 00:40:09,975 what does that even mean? 684 00:40:12,595 --> 00:40:13,051 Blair: I. 685 00:40:13,123 --> 00:40:17,123 Andrew: Anyway, yeah, I mean, what it means. 686 00:40:17,219 --> 00:40:19,403 And Lindsay gives a good account of it, I 687 00:40:19,419 --> 00:40:19,571 think. 688 00:40:19,603 --> 00:40:21,971 But you can get it also from the, from the 689 00:40:22,003 --> 00:40:25,067 horse's mouth, from Robin D'ANGELO. 690 00:40:25,131 --> 00:40:28,075 And Barbara Applebaum and you know, Ibram X 691 00:40:28,115 --> 00:40:30,467 Kendi and you know, and people, and people. 692 00:40:30,651 --> 00:40:33,201 Taezy Coates, you know, people, people like 693 00:40:33,233 --> 00:40:35,285 that, that, you know, leftists. 694 00:40:35,985 --> 00:40:39,685 But the claim is that some group of people 695 00:40:39,985 --> 00:40:44,085 just arbitrarily defined themselves as white. 696 00:40:44,545 --> 00:40:48,209 Claimed, claimed intellectual moral 697 00:40:48,257 --> 00:40:51,153 superiority on the, on the basis of being white. 698 00:40:51,209 --> 00:40:55,449 Excluded arbitrarily a whole bunch of other, you know, you know, people they didn't like, 699 00:40:55,497 --> 00:41:02,787 Indians, blacks, you know, you know, so on, excluded them from membership in the club, as 700 00:41:02,811 --> 00:41:03,515 it were. 701 00:41:03,675 --> 00:41:06,403 They claimed, you know, self proclaimed, 702 00:41:06,499 --> 00:41:11,395 intellectually immorally superior which gave them the moral right to conquer, enslave, 703 00:41:11,555 --> 00:41:16,683 murder, large, large parts of the, you know, of the inferior, the inferior races. 704 00:41:16,819 --> 00:41:18,815 That's an arbitrary social construct. 705 00:41:20,515 --> 00:41:24,295 Now to me this is, this is just false. 706 00:41:24,875 --> 00:41:27,643 You know, I pointed out, look, look at the empirical data. 707 00:41:27,699 --> 00:41:32,507 First of all, it's perceptually obvious that there's, you know, that there's different 708 00:41:32,571 --> 00:41:37,779 color race, there's people with different color, people with their facial structure, you 709 00:41:37,787 --> 00:41:43,619 know, this cheekbones relative to the, to the eyes, configured, you know, slightly 710 00:41:43,667 --> 00:41:46,035 differently and so on and so forth. 711 00:41:46,075 --> 00:41:47,075 Which argues for. 712 00:41:47,155 --> 00:41:48,851 These are perceptual level facts. 713 00:41:48,883 --> 00:41:50,979 They're observed, they're observable facts. 714 00:41:51,147 --> 00:41:57,883 Which argues for physical genesis, not social, not a social genesis for whatever the 715 00:41:57,899 --> 00:41:59,291 underlying biology is. 716 00:41:59,443 --> 00:42:02,459 I think the key point about race is several 717 00:42:02,507 --> 00:42:03,547 points trivial. 718 00:42:03,731 --> 00:42:06,027 But the true but trivial point about race is 719 00:42:06,051 --> 00:42:06,347 it's real. 720 00:42:06,371 --> 00:42:08,107 I don't think it's socially constructed, it's 721 00:42:08,131 --> 00:42:10,379 biologically based, it's perceptually self evident. 722 00:42:10,427 --> 00:42:12,295 You could actually, you could see it. 723 00:42:14,195 --> 00:42:17,021 The key point about race is it's trivial. 724 00:42:17,163 --> 00:42:22,873 It's, it tells us nothing about the, the most important characteristics of a human being, 725 00:42:22,929 --> 00:42:27,017 namely their moral character, whether intelligence or their proficiency at their, 726 00:42:27,121 --> 00:42:28,369 you know, in their profession. 727 00:42:28,457 --> 00:42:30,865 But above all, moral character is what matters 728 00:42:30,905 --> 00:42:31,737 above all. 729 00:42:31,881 --> 00:42:34,273 And you know, race is irrelevant to that. 730 00:42:34,329 --> 00:42:35,425 Real but trivial. 731 00:42:35,465 --> 00:42:36,817 Like, you know, with white people, some have 732 00:42:36,841 --> 00:42:40,521 blonde hair, some have red hair, some have brown hair, whatever. 733 00:42:40,553 --> 00:42:42,025 It's real, but it's trivial. 734 00:42:42,065 --> 00:42:44,377 Tells us nothing important about, about the 735 00:42:44,401 --> 00:42:44,965 person. 736 00:42:45,665 --> 00:42:51,121 But anyway, so the white race was a social 737 00:42:51,193 --> 00:42:55,365 construct on the part of people just several centuries ago. 738 00:42:56,025 --> 00:42:58,725 It's a power play, it's a power struggle. 739 00:43:00,025 --> 00:43:01,169 They wanted power. 740 00:43:01,257 --> 00:43:09,111 And so that was the gestation of the white race according to the CRT movement. 741 00:43:09,233 --> 00:43:15,451 Do you notice, by the way, I quoted an unbelievable essay, Harvard Magazine of all 742 00:43:15,523 --> 00:43:20,835 Harvard Magazine, I think was 2002, abolish the white race. 743 00:43:20,995 --> 00:43:21,851 Martin: That's scary. 744 00:43:21,963 --> 00:43:22,979 Blair: Yes, that's scary. 745 00:43:23,027 --> 00:43:24,795 Although I've heard it many times from 746 00:43:24,835 --> 00:43:25,971 different people as well. 747 00:43:26,043 --> 00:43:26,323 Other. 748 00:43:26,379 --> 00:43:30,655 Andrew: Yeah, this Harvard magazine is supposed to be, you know, a serious 749 00:43:31,355 --> 00:43:32,467 intellectual center. 750 00:43:32,491 --> 00:43:33,707 Abolish the white race. 751 00:43:33,771 --> 00:43:38,341 And they said, they said in the essay, though the authors said they wanted to. 752 00:43:38,413 --> 00:43:43,933 They want to destroy, not deconstruct, but destroy the social construct that is the white 753 00:43:43,989 --> 00:43:44,573 race. 754 00:43:44,709 --> 00:43:47,345 Martin: Was it written by a Caucasian or. 755 00:43:47,645 --> 00:43:49,277 Andrew: I think so, yeah, most. 756 00:43:49,341 --> 00:43:50,585 Martin: So I have. 757 00:43:51,085 --> 00:43:52,141 Andrew: Guys are white. 758 00:43:52,213 --> 00:43:52,797 Yeah. 759 00:43:52,941 --> 00:43:53,285 Blair: Yeah. 760 00:43:53,325 --> 00:43:55,181 Martin: So I have a question about that. 761 00:43:55,213 --> 00:43:59,797 Before the so called survey or census that you 762 00:43:59,821 --> 00:44:10,031 do in usa, why is that so focused on what race and other things that you are belonging to, so 763 00:44:10,063 --> 00:44:10,815 to speak. 764 00:44:10,975 --> 00:44:12,511 Have you thought about that? 765 00:44:12,703 --> 00:44:21,311 That you divide a country and the citizens in different, like white or Caucasians, Latino, 766 00:44:21,383 --> 00:44:24,983 black, colored, all kind of different ways. 767 00:44:25,039 --> 00:44:25,935 Have you thought about that? 768 00:44:25,975 --> 00:44:30,085 Why they doing this census and with surveys over time. 769 00:44:30,465 --> 00:44:31,801 Andrew: Yeah, it's a little bit. 770 00:44:31,833 --> 00:44:33,753 Martin, that's a, that's a really good 771 00:44:33,809 --> 00:44:34,405 question. 772 00:44:34,705 --> 00:44:37,737 And I just want to, you know, as a preamble to 773 00:44:37,761 --> 00:44:41,137 answering the question, I just want to go give an example. 774 00:44:41,201 --> 00:44:46,529 I was five, six years ago, I was lecturing at the Adam Smith Institute in London. 775 00:44:46,657 --> 00:44:47,645 Yeah, okay. 776 00:44:48,105 --> 00:44:51,505 And it's a really good crowd, you know, really 777 00:44:51,545 --> 00:44:52,729 intelligent people. 778 00:44:52,897 --> 00:44:54,649 I don't even remember what I was lecturing on 779 00:44:54,737 --> 00:44:55,905 at this, at this point. 780 00:44:56,025 --> 00:45:01,649 But somebody in the Q and A raised the 781 00:45:01,697 --> 00:45:07,005 question, why is the United States so much more racist than Europe? 782 00:45:08,185 --> 00:45:12,369 So anyway, my jaw hit the floor at that question. 783 00:45:12,537 --> 00:45:18,433 And after I picked my jaw up off the floor, I said, you want a serious answer to that? 784 00:45:18,569 --> 00:45:19,929 And the person said, yes. 785 00:45:20,017 --> 00:45:22,537 So I said, okay, you asked for it, you know, 786 00:45:22,681 --> 00:45:28,257 okay, yes, no, look around the rooms, like hundred people where we're in London. 787 00:45:28,401 --> 00:45:31,257 I said, is, is anybody here Irish? The. 788 00:45:31,281 --> 00:45:34,569 Right away you go, a bunch of answers. 789 00:45:34,617 --> 00:45:36,921 But right away, the question that rolled his 790 00:45:36,953 --> 00:45:37,193 eyes. 791 00:45:37,249 --> 00:45:37,769 I get it. 792 00:45:37,817 --> 00:45:39,473 I get, I get where you're coming from. 793 00:45:39,529 --> 00:45:42,073 So, you know, I discussed the brutal, you 794 00:45:42,089 --> 00:45:44,057 know, subjugation of the Irish. 795 00:45:44,161 --> 00:45:45,297 And I'm a big Anglophile. 796 00:45:45,321 --> 00:45:48,921 I love the English, but you know, what they did in Ireland was not their shining hour. 797 00:45:49,033 --> 00:45:49,689 Right. 798 00:45:49,857 --> 00:45:51,313 And then I said, well, second, let's go 799 00:45:51,329 --> 00:45:54,409 across, let's go across the channel to the continent. 800 00:45:54,577 --> 00:45:59,241 There's this group of people on the continent, they're called Jews, you know, and they went 801 00:45:59,273 --> 00:46:03,409 off on, you know, in the pogroms and persecution and when, you know, and then, you 802 00:46:03,417 --> 00:46:08,681 know, the jingoistic nationalism, which is a form of, you know, tribalism, it's a form of 803 00:46:08,793 --> 00:46:09,577 racism. 804 00:46:09,721 --> 00:46:12,817 The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, you know, go 805 00:46:12,841 --> 00:46:13,073 on. 806 00:46:13,129 --> 00:46:16,321 Anyway, my point is, Armenian genocide didn't 807 00:46:16,353 --> 00:46:17,161 take place in Europe. 808 00:46:17,193 --> 00:46:17,865 It was in Turkey. 809 00:46:17,905 --> 00:46:23,401 But my point, of course, is racism in different forms all over the world, and 810 00:46:23,513 --> 00:46:24,561 certainly in the United States. 811 00:46:24,593 --> 00:46:26,409 And this is a legacy of racism. 812 00:46:26,457 --> 00:46:33,193 And if up to me, we will all recognize, you know, colorblind individualism, which I think 813 00:46:33,209 --> 00:46:34,369 was the spirit of your question. 814 00:46:34,417 --> 00:46:36,377 Martin, none of this matters. 815 00:46:36,441 --> 00:46:39,257 Latino, white, black, Asian, whatever is none of that. 816 00:46:39,321 --> 00:46:40,449 None of this stuff matters. 817 00:46:40,497 --> 00:46:42,631 Let's just, you know, it's real, but it's 818 00:46:42,663 --> 00:46:43,431 trivial. 819 00:46:43,623 --> 00:46:44,703 We could jettison it. 820 00:46:44,719 --> 00:46:47,635 The whole human race would benefit from it. 821 00:46:48,215 --> 00:46:51,151 I think the United States has the best chance 822 00:46:51,343 --> 00:46:54,439 of becoming a multi. 823 00:46:54,527 --> 00:46:58,495 Peaceful, multiracial polyglot society. 824 00:46:58,575 --> 00:46:59,783 It's very difficult to do. 825 00:46:59,839 --> 00:47:02,231 History shows us it's history to do. 826 00:47:02,303 --> 00:47:05,327 But the principle of individual rights the country was founded on, I think gives the 827 00:47:05,351 --> 00:47:11,525 United States an advantage in the attempt to overcome racism. 828 00:47:11,645 --> 00:47:16,525 I just want to say this cold, blind individualism, you know, is the panacea for 829 00:47:16,565 --> 00:47:22,589 racism in any of its forms directed against whites or blacks or Jews or Christians or, you 830 00:47:22,597 --> 00:47:23,745 know, or whomever. 831 00:47:24,925 --> 00:47:27,261 And you see the left today rejecting it. 832 00:47:27,333 --> 00:47:29,965 So it's a microaggression they claim. 833 00:47:30,045 --> 00:47:32,685 I just want to say publicly here, anybody who 834 00:47:32,725 --> 00:47:37,165 repudiates colorblind individualism, the recognition that only character matters or 835 00:47:37,205 --> 00:47:41,221 character matters above all, far and away, above all races, trivial. 836 00:47:41,413 --> 00:47:46,877 Anybody who rejects colorblind individualism cannot, in logic or in ethics, claim to be a 837 00:47:46,901 --> 00:47:47,861 foe of racism. 838 00:47:47,973 --> 00:47:48,445 It's the. 839 00:47:48,485 --> 00:47:48,917 It's the. 840 00:47:48,981 --> 00:47:52,385 In logic, it's the only panacea for racism 841 00:47:52,805 --> 00:47:53,565 that there is. 842 00:47:53,605 --> 00:47:58,585 And I think we're still, you know, we still. 843 00:47:59,045 --> 00:48:01,533 I think that's still a legacy of it. 844 00:48:01,669 --> 00:48:03,821 You know, to do that on the census, I would. 845 00:48:03,853 --> 00:48:05,067 I would eliminate it. 846 00:48:05,221 --> 00:48:10,527 But racism is a worldwide problem, and the 847 00:48:10,551 --> 00:48:13,343 United States, I think, is the best chance to overcome it. 848 00:48:13,439 --> 00:48:15,151 But we certainly haven't done it yet. 849 00:48:15,343 --> 00:48:23,407 Blair: Andy, just for my own clarification and I. Some of what you said, at least to me, was. 850 00:48:23,431 --> 00:48:31,273 Garba, would you go over the part where you said the people who don't advocate a white. 851 00:48:31,399 --> 00:48:31,989 The color. 852 00:48:32,037 --> 00:48:34,345 I mean, excuse me, a colorless society. 853 00:48:35,565 --> 00:48:36,181 Andrew: Yeah. 854 00:48:36,293 --> 00:48:37,629 Martin: Colorblind individual. 855 00:48:37,677 --> 00:48:38,945 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. 856 00:48:39,805 --> 00:48:41,325 Blair: They are the actual racist. 857 00:48:41,365 --> 00:48:42,573 Is that what you said, or. 858 00:48:42,669 --> 00:48:46,661 Andrew: Yes. Yeah. Colorblind individualism means we know. 859 00:48:46,693 --> 00:48:54,725 We. We recognize that character above all matters and that people make moral choices. 860 00:48:54,845 --> 00:48:55,357 That's. 861 00:48:55,461 --> 00:48:57,533 That's what defines their worth as a human 862 00:48:57,589 --> 00:49:02,887 being, is the moral choices that they make and the color of their skin and these other racial 863 00:49:02,951 --> 00:49:06,583 characteristics are enormously secondary and irrelevant. 864 00:49:06,679 --> 00:49:08,039 To their moral character. 865 00:49:08,127 --> 00:49:10,047 So that's what the essence of colorblind 866 00:49:10,151 --> 00:49:11,275 individualism. 867 00:49:12,855 --> 00:49:15,151 We recognize that race doesn't matter, and we 868 00:49:15,183 --> 00:49:19,911 recognize that human beings are individual first, foremost, and always not members of a 869 00:49:19,943 --> 00:49:22,991 tribe, and that they make moral choices that define them. 870 00:49:23,103 --> 00:49:26,457 That's the only cure in logic for racism in any form. 871 00:49:26,561 --> 00:49:31,177 And the people who reject it, like a lot of leftists who claim colorblind. 872 00:49:31,321 --> 00:49:35,685 To argue for colorblind individualism is to commit a microaggression. 873 00:49:36,945 --> 00:49:41,249 And I said those leftists are racist. 874 00:49:41,297 --> 00:49:43,425 And I want to go on public record as saying 875 00:49:43,465 --> 00:49:48,009 that anybody who rejects colorblind individualism, who believes it's a 876 00:49:48,017 --> 00:49:54,347 microaggression, cannot, in logic or in ethics, claim to be a foe of racism because 877 00:49:54,371 --> 00:49:57,535 you're rejecting the only panacea for racism that there is. 878 00:49:57,875 --> 00:50:04,819 Martin: And Andy, I got here also for the record, now I got an idea about potential. 879 00:50:04,947 --> 00:50:07,139 You could say podcast, because you have this. 880 00:50:07,227 --> 00:50:10,979 Had this great podcast on hero worship and 881 00:50:11,107 --> 00:50:18,275 heroes together with others, and maybe that could be like a series of defending Western 882 00:50:18,315 --> 00:50:25,055 civilization and take out great examples and follow through the history and so on. 883 00:50:25,475 --> 00:50:27,699 Andrew: Well, that's a. Yeah, that's a good idea. 884 00:50:27,747 --> 00:50:28,515 Martin. 885 00:50:28,675 --> 00:50:30,931 The Hero show that you're referring to we did 886 00:50:30,963 --> 00:50:37,419 with John Hersey and then with Robert Begley was under the auspices of the Objective 887 00:50:37,467 --> 00:50:38,347 Standard Institute. 888 00:50:38,451 --> 00:50:41,235 Martin: Yeah. And where everybody could find the article that you have written. 889 00:50:41,275 --> 00:50:41,891 Yep. 890 00:50:42,043 --> 00:50:48,021 Andrew: Yeah. And Craig Biddle, who runs osi, gave me Crop launch to, you know, gave me the 891 00:50:48,133 --> 00:50:53,141 intellectual property rights, as it were, that if I want to reprise that show, whether by 892 00:50:53,173 --> 00:50:55,373 myself or with you guys or. 893 00:50:55,549 --> 00:50:56,445 Martin: Great to hear. 894 00:50:56,565 --> 00:51:01,669 Andrew: Yeah. That we can reprise the Hero show and defend the great heroes of Western 895 00:51:01,717 --> 00:51:09,581 civilization as well as other human beings who reached achievements that were supportive of 896 00:51:09,613 --> 00:51:10,349 human life. 897 00:51:10,477 --> 00:51:14,389 Martin: Yeah. Because I think that's very important to say because you have. 898 00:51:14,437 --> 00:51:19,877 And I want to end on a positive note, but you have some people and groups that are saying 899 00:51:19,901 --> 00:51:25,373 that they are defending Western civilization, but often it's boiled down to very like the 900 00:51:25,429 --> 00:51:31,781 Christian faith or the Yudo Christian tradition or some other things like that. 901 00:51:31,853 --> 00:51:39,261 But that's why I asked about this question you said about this symbolic year and to learn 902 00:51:39,293 --> 00:51:45,277 from the history and then continue and then show that the United States of America is the 903 00:51:45,301 --> 00:51:48,303 greatest example and others could. 904 00:51:48,399 --> 00:51:49,279 Inspired by that. 905 00:51:49,327 --> 00:51:51,767 So that's great to. 906 00:51:51,831 --> 00:51:52,687 Andrew: Yeah, thank you. 907 00:51:52,711 --> 00:51:55,695 And I just want to say I, you know, agree 100% 908 00:51:55,735 --> 00:51:57,743 with Ayn Rand that the. 909 00:51:57,799 --> 00:52:00,567 The essence of moral virtue is, you know, 910 00:52:00,591 --> 00:52:05,199 living in accordance with the requirements of human life and promoting human life. 911 00:52:05,327 --> 00:52:05,591 That. 912 00:52:05,623 --> 00:52:06,071 That which. 913 00:52:06,143 --> 00:52:08,311 That which furthers human life is the good. 914 00:52:08,463 --> 00:52:10,999 And that which harms human life, what kills it 915 00:52:11,047 --> 00:52:12,287 is the evil. 916 00:52:12,431 --> 00:52:14,631 And there is not, to repeat, there is not a 917 00:52:14,703 --> 00:52:20,943 culture in history that we know of that supported human life and whose achievements 918 00:52:21,119 --> 00:52:25,823 benefit human life all over the world nearly as much as those of Western civilization. 919 00:52:25,959 --> 00:52:32,967 And for anybody all over the world, male or female, any race or tribe or nationality, if 920 00:52:32,991 --> 00:52:33,399 they care. 921 00:52:33,447 --> 00:52:35,967 If we care about human life, then we need to 922 00:52:35,991 --> 00:52:39,247 support the main principles of Western civilization. 923 00:52:39,391 --> 00:52:45,975 Reason, philosophy, science, the arts, freedom, individual rights, capitalism. 924 00:52:46,095 --> 00:52:50,335 We need to support these principles if we do, if we care about human life, because then 925 00:52:50,495 --> 00:52:54,191 human beings all over the world will benefit from this as they do. 926 00:52:54,263 --> 00:52:58,155 Look at what this has done for the Asian tigers over the last 80 years or so. 927 00:52:59,295 --> 00:53:03,431 Blair: Well, ladies and gentlemen, on that note, I think we should wrap it up. 928 00:53:03,583 --> 00:53:04,103 Andy. 929 00:53:04,159 --> 00:53:05,983 We've been talking to Andy Bernstein, of 930 00:53:05,999 --> 00:53:10,455 course, on his great essay, the Case for Western Civilization. 931 00:53:11,395 --> 00:53:14,415 Andy, thanks for manning the foxhole with us. 932 00:53:14,875 --> 00:53:17,195 Andrew: Always. Thanks, Blair and Martin. 933 00:53:17,235 --> 00:53:19,395 Always good to man the foxhole with you guys. 934 00:53:19,435 --> 00:53:24,003 If I had to go to war, I couldn't find two guys, you know, that I'd be more happy to go 935 00:53:24,019 --> 00:53:24,935 to war with. 936 00:53:25,515 --> 00:53:27,935 Martin: Great to hear, Andy. Thank you very much. 937 00:53:28,795 --> 00:53:29,195 Blair: All right.