Jeremy Boreing's "Third World Thinking"

0:00Man in the life man, you like this man. You're not in the butterfly flattening wing. Dig down in the force. Man it gonna cause a tree fall. Let it five thousand miles away man. You think nobody's seeing nobody. Man you should look, you don't need nothing man. You don't need to look, you're like you're born in this world. Man, you get like it's like that. That's the more you're mad. Like a day in the pen, man. You don't get it. You don't get it. You don't get it. You don't get it. You don't get it. You don't get it. Alright, we are back with another one of these solo reaction response videos. This one is to a clip from Jeremy Boring's show. Actually a number of clips, technically more clips than I've ever put in one of these. Where he talks about what he calls the third world ideas.

1:02And what does he mean by that? Specifically, he's arguing that figures like Hassan Piker, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens are selling you third world ideas. And at least in two out of three examples, I'd maybe agree with him. If we want to be particularly punitive about how we use those terms. But he's actually making a very specific argument about what the West is. According to Boring who has become a sort of the nexus or a node of this neo-neo-conned, anti-new, right conservatism. What the West is about is individualism and capitalism. Your ability to be an individual and trade with someone, honestly and directly. Without any sort of intermediating institution. You can simply trade $5 for a hamburger regardless of who that person is or how they like you.

2:02And look, there's a certain element of sort of the Western conceptualized version of the economy that I like. I like the fact that people generally view a price tag as something to be honored. They have a concept of dealing fairly. But he takes something, I think, as a flowering of Western civilization, a feature of it, and turns it into the whole thing. There's also a very interesting misreading of Carl Schmitt, by which he attempts to condemn really everyone in our neck of the woods, root and branch, ironically enough. And why do I keep going back to Jeremy Boring? One, because he does these monologues, which are unique in the sense that it is one thinker providing this argument and broken sense. It's pre-recorded, I'm giving you the full context, so there's no critique that can be leveled that I'm taking this out of context, or that I'm trying to twist his words. But also because, as I've said, he's become sort of a nexus of this response, of this attack, the woke right, which of course I've spoken about at length on this.

3:11Sort of the desire to turn right wing politics in America back into a containment operation. And look, I think that's a bad thing. He obviously is on the other side of it, but he is representative of many people. He is perhaps less bombastic than Mark Leven, less irritating than James Lindsay. But he is at a central position in that network. Many of those people, not Leven, but many of the others, they appear on his show. We see the things that he says, transferring through that network. You can sort of imagine him as a bizarre world tucker Carlson, and that seems to be very deliberately what he is set up to do. But without further ado, I'll pull up this first clip. The walls that once separated the west from the endless despair and injustice of third world thinking are starting to crumble, and not just the physical ones either. The physical ones are crumbling and playing sight. That's the Biden administration halting wall construction and bulldozing sections of border fence so that illegals could waltz into our country unopposed.

4:16It's the scenes from the Spanish town of Suta as migrants from Morocco triumphantly marched through the streets, smashing stores, invading homes, and chanting a lahu Akbar. But the physical walls aren't the only ones that matter. I mean, they matter quite a lot, but they're not the only ones. It's the walls we can't see that are having a more corrosive effect on our country and on Western civilization than you probably realize. So this is an interesting framing. What he is doing is sort of creating this version of the west that is cultural and propositional. The idea is the west is based on a number of these grand ideas. Now of course he is not an open borders advocate, but also remember as we've proven in other episodes, he is not a white nationalist very clearly. He doesn't believe that there is any genetic component to this in one sense, in a positive sense, but in a negative he is deliberately trying to attach immigration.

5:20Sort of social invasion or social injection from somewhere else. To an erosion of ideas he particularly likes. He's trying to cast them as one and the same thing. Also look at how he speaks about the third world, again entirely in cultural terms. The idea that these cultures are bad, that there's something about them that is dysfunctional, which I would happen to agree with. But he means that in a very narrow sense, one that I think you should keep your ears open towards. The walls we can't see that are having a more corrosive effect on our country and on Western civilization than you probably realize. The walls of our minds trained by thousands of years of Western thought and tradition are also cracking. The backward thinking of depressed cultures is creeping in by immigration, yes, but by other means too. They're being carried to us by social media, deemed to us by hostile foreign governments. It's invading the public square, it's invading our politics, and it's invading our way of seeing the world.

6:25So a couple of things there. One, I think that the framing of this issue, why are people turning away from the post-war consensus is quite interesting? Because he paints that as turning away from the West, that the West is synonymous with the version of politics handed down in 1945, which I would dispute. But also, do we see any sense of responsibility? Any realization of the fact that people are turning away from those politics for, well, rational reasons? They're looking at the situation on the ground and responding in kind. No, no, it's all external. It's social media. It's foreign governments. It's this sort of dark matter, political dark matter I turned it and an essay I wrote quite a while ago. But the idea is, no, no, no, this system has not failed. There's nothing wrong with it. It is an external, invisible force that has caused it to, and to recryses.

7:28Ironically enough, of course, for a man who spent hours talking about personal responsibility. There are really two distinct ways of saying the world to distinct world views that belong to two distinct cultures. Those world views are at war and one of them is losing. In the West, we live in what cross-cultural researchers call a guilt-innocence culture. That means that we appeal to an objective moral code. We have rules that we endeavor to apply to everyone, where a nation of laws, or at least we aspire to be, where justice is supposed to be blind. We care about the rights and behaviors of the individual, no matter their station. Outside the West, you have cultures researchers call honor shame cultures. People in these cultures still exist as individuals, of course, and they're still bound by moral law. But the law is a bit more relational. Who you are, who your family is, what you owe your people, and where you stand in the social order all bear much more heavily on what justice requires. In this world, honoring your tribe is more important than pursuing justice, saving face, preserving your social credit and your good name,

8:33are valued more highly than personal integrity or truth. So this is what we call a false diet, creating an artificial black and white distinction. And additionally, we have a certain level of straw manning here. We will put all the good things on one side, all the bad things on the other, and force you to choose. But it's not like that. That is not the black and white dividing line between different cultures. This is sort of a recasting of the classical liberal points on individualism versus collectivism. Because, well, not only is every society a bit of both, but this idea that your only two options are sort of Afghan honor killings. The sort of worse excess is tribal warfare, what we see in Minneapolis, or derasinated modern conservatism. That's not true. There's a great number of societies that fit neither mold. For instance, our own American founding fathers, we will reference, they will, at least Jeremy will reference at multiple times in this.

9:39Well, were they individualists on a certain level? Yes, of course. But obviously, they believe that they had a common connection with certain people based off of, well, obviously, their nation, as nation as it may have been, their state, their culture, but also, on a familial level. One of the great examples of this is actually John Hancock. And I'm stealing this analysis from, I guess I gave out all my copies, which is an endorsement of the book. Johan Curves is leading the legacy, very, very good book. But he addresses this from a slightly different angle, specifically talking about nepotism, which is effectively the same thing. I sort of tribal or familial based way of doing business, not necessarily of politics, but he says that this is far from being dysfunctional. This is not a system that directly produces fail-sense. If anything, it is the system that produced this great civilization.

10:39Jeremy has spent so much time waxing poetic about. And when he talks about John Hancock, he says, look, there is a man who was very, very poor. And his uncle was incredibly rich. Hancock was an orphan, I believe. And his uncle brought him into his household. Why? Because he was particularly bright, sure I'm sure he was. But no, because he was related. And he gave him a great deal of responsibility. He sent him across the ocean to deal business when he was a teenager or a young man, at the very least. Why? Well, because they were related, because they owed each other a bond of loyalty. And even when Hancock failed, at least at that initial meeting, he lost his uncle money. Well, he kept him in the business. He was an asset. It had loyalty to one another that was not merely propositional, that was not merely economic. There was more to it. And so were we saying that John Hancock was third world?

11:40John Hancock, or many other examples, the European nobility, the long list of kings that ruled our civilization made it great, or leftists, they were brown? No. And look, I'm using that term because he does it exactly say that, but that's functionally what he's doing. Creating a false dyad and using people's inbuilt, shall we say, feeling of cultural chauvinism. Earned, I might add, to pull them in a certain direction. Which is a vector, excuse me of attack, that we've seen quite often from American Zionists. The idea is that you're either with the foreign horde, the Muslims, or you have to support us. And in each case, that is a false dyad. I don't have anything in common with this sort of horrific tribal honor killings that he describes. These dysfunctional, clannish societies, we can even call them.

12:41I don't like that. I don't think that that works. Clearly not. Look at Mogadishu. But also, what you are presenting as the only alternative. Well, that's not in my best interest either. And so I think that's something we have to bear in mind, just in the same way that I don't have to support Hamas. I don't have to support Hezbollah, support the Mullahs. Welcome immigration from the Middle East into my hometown. Just to own Israel. Well, I also don't have to support Israel because I don't like those guys, because I don't want every city in America to look like Dearborn Michigan. Which funny enough, I might have clipped it out, because there is a lot of this that is rambling about Dearborn Michigan. Which I think is interesting. Again, another false diet, another false dichotomy, which is quite common, particularly from men like Jeremy. The evidence against Tyler Robinson is substantial. And yet. Oh, and I might add, I know I've mentioned this half a dozen times, the kind of Kirkwashing that goes on. That's endemic throughout this. There's like three long sections.

13:49This only matters because he is using this broader framing of the third world thinking. The kind of, I guess you could say uncivilized savage framing to go after specifically Candace Owens, but also anyone who is off the plantation on certain issues. That's really what Candace Owens functions as for these people. They're not actually particularly worried about her, her say. People have been peddling conspiracy theories for a long time, but it's because one, she attacks a certain group, a certain top line priority of this movement, but also she's a very convenient stick to beat those people. Because she says stupid things because she is a not particularly sophisticated thinker. And so it's a tar baby. It might be a porch voice of words, given Candace's demographic information. I did not intend to that. I'm sorry Candace if you're listening.

14:50But the idea of now anyone is by association guilty of her worst excesses. An interesting point. I'll let Jeremy continue. The rules will still be followed. The evidence will still be presented carefully. The accused will be presumed innocent until proven guilty and God willing, justice will be done. It's one of the hardest things a civilization ever asks of itself. The put aside passion and to present evidence in pursuit of truth and justice in a court of law. It's also one of the most beautiful and one of the most fragile things that we've inherited in the West. A room where the accused gets his day in court before an impartial law and an impartial jury of his peers. It took thousands of years to build that room. So at least on its face, I agree with much of what he said. That system is very delicate, but it's not universal. It's highly cultural. I'm sure you guys have heard the recent discourse around trial by jury. The idea that you can predict a jury's findings based off of, well, the demographic details of who sits on it with a disturbing degree of accuracy.

16:02For instance, at least according to the research I've read, white juries tend to be fairly impartial. Whereas juries of other groups do not. So you're seeing something that was cultural. It was an outflowing or I guess a flowering, one might say, in more elegant terms. I've a specific people of a specific culture. It's sort of a technology. And it evolved for that people. And much like the constitution, when you change that people, this roots, well, the flower dies or at the very least it changes. It becomes a different plant. We've already seen that. I would also like to quote the idea of impartiality. Of course, it is much like blind justice itself, an aspirational goal. This sort of Anglo idea of fairness. But we have to understand that, well, the lefties are not wrong when they say everyone is biased and everyone is to a certain degree political.

17:02You can't get away from that. The specific issues change one generation to a next perhaps. But the idea that our current system, as it sits now, is this perfect impartial pinnacle of justice. We know that's not the case. Of course, I don't have any insight into what's happening in the title Robinson trial. But if you think of other very prominent American court cases, I don't know. With a sort of judicial lynching of Derek Chauvin, for example, what do you see? A man who is convicted according to the law as it sits? Or politics, sort of biases, if we can use that term? It's affecting the juristic? The court will go with that term. The process of dispensing justice. There's no way around. Our system is perhaps better than others, but it is already deeply, deeply compromised. And a recognition of the fact that that system is compromised, that that system was designed for a very specific culture for a very specific type of person, peers, one might even say.

18:09That's not a third world. That is simply looking at the situation as it is. And I understand aspirational goals, these sort of fowstian civilizational visions are never enacted perfectly. There's always a gap between what we ought to be, what we think we ought to be, and what we are. There's no way around. And I'm not saying one or two court cases went wrong and so we must burn down the idea of a trial by jury. But the idea that one, a system can ever be impartial is false. And two, the idea that the way our courts currently work is anything lawtable. Well, that's completely and totally absurd. For instance, look at the beginnings of the Trump administration. This kind of flurry of executive orders is flurry of actions. And what happened? Well, the judiciary decided, no, we are the sovereign. Look at the trial of Derek Chauvin. Look at the trial of Daniel Penny. Look at the trial of, I don't know, whoever that woman is, who seems to have killed her children.

19:13We don't know what's happened yet. We says this recording. But nonetheless, you see again and again this idea of an impartial jury of your beers. How's that working out? If the courtroom in Utah represents the glory of Western civilization, and it does a modern order only dreamt of by ancient slaves and medieval peasants who suffered under the whims of kings or the theory of mobs. Well. Okay, so that's an interesting little argument there. The idea that all civilization before effectively, the Enlightenment, was horrible grinding misery that no one smiled, men didn't love their wives, was all just grinding misery, repined, and abuse of power. Well, one, that's a frame I've seen before. I've seen someone else talk like that. I've seen a whole group of people talk like that. I wouldn't exactly call them conservatives. But also, well, is that true? We understand that politics has entered more and more into daily life as we have entered into modernity. The amount of control, the amount of power we interact with is much, much higher than anyone in any time in history.

20:28Sure, crime and punishment has come quite a long way since, shall we say, the Middle Ages. And I mean that in a specific sense, not in the kind of broad sense he does. But also, it was actually just very difficult to be convicted of anything because who was going to see you do it? The police is a relatively modern invention. I did a, actually Thomas and Pete did a series on that. It's worth your time. You can find it on the Pete Quenone show. But again, the idea that all power was unaccountable and therefore it was just sort of money Python. You know, people whipping themselves and rolling around and filth, that simply is not the case. If anything, the capacity for repression, the capacity for rule, the capacity for tyranny, well, it's only increased. And sure, your chances of being a victim of random violence may have decreased and that is certainly an element of progress.

21:30But the idea that simply because you had a cane, simply because you didn't have represented a democracy, your life was horrible and miserable. Well, that's not the case at all. And also, and look, I am the Christian, but we have to understand that his argument that our system of courts, our system of laws is ultimately derived from Christianity, was only partially true at best. The Romans and Greeks had sure, should we say, less advanced system of laws than we do, although I wouldn't share advanced would be a positive in that connotation. But if we look at the roots of our system of law, it has just as much to do with Athens, just as much to do with Rome, as it does with, well, Rome, if you see what I'm saying. Well, then the podcast studio and the online audience of Candace Owens represents something very different. It represents everything our ancestors built civilization to escape.

22:34So this is a really interesting point here, because I actually agree. I think that there is something really damaging about appealing to the common man. But that's why I don't believe in democracy, that's why I don't consider myself a liberal. I understand that the mob must be resisted, and in fact I think ordered freedom is best preserved by, well, previous ruling arrangements. I'm not autistic enough to refer to myself as a monarchist, but you look at how, I say the average citizen under a king is if that doesn't describe effectively every civilization ever, but we'll go with that framing. Well, were they freer or less freer than me? Sure, I have access to material benefits they never could have imagined, but functionally, let's even talk about something as simple as taxation or surveillance. It simply was not possible when powers come concentrated in a relatively few people. They just can't be bothered. Why would they?

23:36But again, I guess we have to at once as modern liberals, and I mean that in a classical sense, not merely AOC, we have to hold two ideas in tension. The appeal to the mob, populism as someone different might say, is it wants very, very dangerous and also the bedrock of our entire project. We have to both be very skeptical about Candace Owens appealing to the Hoi Palloy, basing all of her arguments on appeal to the masses, and yet also you best get out there and vote. There's a tension there, one that is not resolved, I might say. It represents the old default. You see it all the time online, someone makes a careful well-reasoned case, lays out the facts, walks through the logic, and arrives at a conclusion, and then another person responds, not with a better argument, but with an attack, with contempt, with volume, with a sneer, with a cutting little line about how ugly or stupid the person is.

24:40Now, for most of our lives, responding to a well-reasoned argument with an ad-hominum attack was a sure sign you were losing, but not today, not... Okay, so this is really the problem with the marketplace of ideas. It's not real, it doesn't work, it's a conceit, there's no there there. Notice that framing, notice the way that he describes that. For most of our lives, the idea is that this is new, this is something that's just now happening, and it sure is scary. This is why Western thinking, as opposed to Third World, and of course he has a very specific way of describing both Third World and Western, probably no great mystery to the audience here, what he means by that. But let's go back into the evidentiary record. Look, I happen to be a big fan of Nixon, but the infamous Nixon Kennedy debates. Well, what happened? Well, the public was swayed by just how cool Kennedy was. By just how swath, how put together he looked compared to sort of sweaty chud that was Nixon.

25:53I don't know if that's what literally happened, but that's how it's been remembered in a cultural context. So you see at least, well, I don't know, let's just say 60 years ago, that was not the case. There are many other examples, times when the appeal to the crowd, the appeal to these lower baser instincts overroad, this sort of appeal to argument. And this is really the problem. Fundamentally, when we enter a time of capital P politics, where politics becomes existential, well, we're not having arguments anymore. And this is really what men like boring fail to realize. Their values, their proclaimed conception of America as a creedal nation, has led to a place where people have so little in common, whether culturally, genetically, religiously, that they can no longer debate. I think that those debates were always, well, to be honest, a slightly fast aisle, but nonetheless, there at least was enough common ground, a common shared conception of the universe that men in good faith could debate one to another.

27:03Maybe even change their minds. But when you have nothing in common, when you have no shared framework, well, what does it become? It becomes a power struggle. It becomes a situation where it literally doesn't matter. What you tell me, I will never join your side. And I don't think that that's a great state for a, well, nation to be. I would much rather that not be the case, but as with the situation in our courts, pretending as if everything is fine does you no benefit. Functionally, politics is, well, a study of what is possible, that's what we're doing here. What can be done. And merely wishing that the tide will not come in tomorrow. That doesn't actually stop the waves when you're seated down on the shore. Your opinion, ironically enough, has no bearing on that fact. And the thing is, your facts have no bearing on, well,

28:03politics, no bearing on that struggle. Just in the same way that you may well have been right as a Southern general, but that doesn't stop. It doesn't stop Savannah bird. Savannah bird, I should know that. That doesn't stop Sherman's March. And this is, I think, a really fundamental misunderstanding. We are seeing a confusion between justice and, well, politics. Because, look, politics often overlaps with justice. People are motivated by justice. But there is no correlation between being right in a philosophical sense, in an ontological sense, and carrying the day. And we could even look at the conservative movement as being right in many different instances, and yet having lost the game. And by losing the game, they have no ability to, well, preserve what they are set to preserve or conserve what they are set to preserve, conserve.

29:07Not on the internet. Today, the sneer wins. The audience treats the person with attitude is more authoritative than the person with evidence. But there are two completely different ways to keep scoring an argument, and they belong to two completely different kinds of society. Let's even look at that. One, the idea that ad hominem attacks are illegitimate. We will keep that in mind. Put a pen in that. Let's see how long we can stick to that standard. The answer is not very long. But also, the idea that this is about scoring points. Sure, if we were debating in class, if we were in a debate society, that would be a functional way to analyze things. We're not. We're talking about politics. We're talking about a civilizational struggle. And again, no matter how many points you have, you carries the day wins. It's an unseerious way to look at that.

30:07It's applying a model designed for a college debate society. Well, to a culture, they're not one in the same things. For instance, we know this. There's a difference between talking about politics and doing politics. I'm not doing politics now. It best, I hope I'm entertaining, providing you some sort of analysis that you can use to live your life better. Hopefully, keep you from going entirely insane and driving to your local Walmart. But it's not the same thing. The rules don't carry over. I had no sway whatsoever. We understand this. I mean, look, I like, you know, Carl Benjamin as much as the next guy, but he found this out when he ran for office. He was unable to transily internet points into politics points. And much the same way debating points have absolutely nothing to do with winning the day. And really, again, this is why that cultural component is so important.

31:08Because when you have a group of people who share a common culture, that big common understanding of what isn't isn't acceptable, how you are to act. Well, you can say that. Oh, you were doing this in an incorrect way. We don't do that here. We don't talk like that. And fair enough, maybe it works. But when politics becomes multicultural, when it becomes fractured, when it becomes tribal, ironically enough, your protestations do not matter. Because no one cares. No one has the same conception of what is and is not appropriate. It doesn't translate. It would be roughly equivalent. One might add to going to one of these tribal societies, to going to Mogadishu, to go to the city of the city. To Papua, to Guinea, to North St. and the L Island. And sitting down and saying, you know what? I think you guys need to act like individuals. I think you need to realize that your your loyalties need to lie with institutions, not with your tribes, which I'm sure will go very poorly. You might well be eaten, but it does not translate.

32:10In the world you and I were raised in, a guilt innocence culture, also known as a truth culture. Well, the person with the better argument carries the day. He can be meager, he can be unimpressive, he can be the least charismatic man in the room. But if his evidence is better, well, then he takes the point, the claim outranks the man. The claim outranks the man. Okay, so apparently someone's demographic details, their associations, one might even say have no bearing on the claim they're making. I know I've said this like 10 times, keep that in mind. See how long we can stick to these ironclad liberal principles. But in an honor culture, that's not how you keep score at all. In an honor culture, the man who answers an argument with dominance wins because the whole contest isn't actually about who's right. It's about who's of higher status and status is settled by the display of dominance, not by the evidence. The sneer isn't a failure to make an argument. In an honor culture, the sneer is the argument and in the third world, it's the winning one.

33:17Last week, Candace Owens and right wing commentator Andrew Wilson began a negotiation for a possible debate over the Charlie Kirk case. And their back and forth Wilson proposed an objective standard, no personal attacks and no ad hominems. If one is made said Wilson, that person loses by default, enforced by the moderator. Okay, this is such an embarrassing way to negotiate an Internet bloodshorts debate. I could not be less interested in this debate, which already happened. I think boring. This monologue was recorded just before. I could not care less. I haven't washed it because I sort of already knew what was going to happen. And funnily enough, the results of that debate sort of just proved really my central thesis about the fact that debate is kind of pointless. It's vibes based. The idea that it ever could be this appeal to objective reality. Sorry, it's just not the case. This has been a critique by the way going on for thousands of years.

34:22Look, rhetoric is perhaps a loaded term you need to use rhetoric even in the defense of the true, the just in the beautiful, because as much as we want to believe that we can sort through ideas, not based on how they're expressed, just based off the truth claim. At its center, it's not how it works. It's never how it has worked. And look at the idea of the sophist, the fool, the man who will argue any point for money, but he can do so convincingly and win over the crowd. This exploit's been known. We have understood that this is a flaw. Maybe the human animal, but still it is a very baseline flaw. This is not new. This is not something invented by Candace Owens. This is not a recent development in civilized history. It's simply how it goes. And also, I will say, I don't know anyone, Andrew Wilson, but man, that is embarrassing. You can't call me any mean names, you're going to lose.

35:22Shut up, dude. No, that's not how this works. I don't do internet blood sports, because one, I don't think I'd be particularly good at it. And also, well, because that's what it's for. It's Jerry Springer. So don't show up on Jerry Springer and get mad when he starts asking you, impolite questions. Or when your girls ex comes on and the whole crowd goes, ooh, and they reveal who was or wasn't the father. Dude, that's nature of the game. You signed up for this. So don't halfway through trying to recast this as a scholarly debate, like you're trying to convince the Oxford student union. Anyway. Candace's response was revealing, quote, stop being so soft. The public will decide who the winner and loser is, and you don't get to direct them in that judgment with some obscure fine print clause. Fair, actually. I do think generally speaking, Candace Owens is perhaps the most bite of indictment of democracy possible. Read into that, however you will.

36:29But she's got a point there. You're the one who wants to fight. So, you know, I get to choose the weapons. It's actually funny. You've probably seen this dynamic before where someone wants to have a fight, a literal physical altercation. And then immediately after they've started the challenge, they begin to rule Slayer. I could think of a buddy of mine who's challenged to a fight. And once he said, yes, the other guy immediately came up with a million different excuses. Like, oh, well, we have to do it this way here, here, here. And at that point, you've, you've already kind of lost, man. You're, you're looking for it out here. As in other words, no objective standards that follow the classical rules of debate need apply is you are on the internet. That is what this is for. Sorry, if I get distracted on this, it'll be four hours long. So it's an ad hominem, our fair game. And the score is kept not by an impartial moderator, but by the public, by the mob.

37:32Well, this is interesting because I thought the public was who we ought to appeal to. If we are capital D Democrats, if we believe in a representative system, surely the public is that, well, scorekeeper, there are the ones we're trying to convince there is no group of moderators. There is no selected group of impartial experts. So why is this, why is this breaking down here? Seemingly, either both or OK or night. Seemingly, if we're doing false dichotomies, if we're doing artificial diads, we'll turn about his fair play. And again, I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican in the old sense of those words. I don't think that makes a lot of sense at all for a political system. But you do. You do believe in the marketplace of ideas. Surely now you're just mad that well, you're selling apples and someone else is selling crack.

38:36And that's what we decided to be libertarians, didn't we? We decided to be ancams. And once you have said, well, anything is permissible, as long as there's someone who wants to buy it, well, it's a race to the bottom. And much like he said earlier that he sort of created Candace Owens, literally by hiring her, ironically enough as a diversity hire. And there's another element here, which is look man. What did you think cultural and capistan met? What did you think the marketplace of ideas met vibes, papers? This is why Candace hates contracts and hates courts, by the way, and it's why those are the only places she can actually be defeated. In fact, no comment. The purpose of contracts in courts is to defeat people like Candace Owens and the third world mentality that they champion. I think that's a funny line. I think that's a really funny line. The entire purpose of court is to defeat people like Candace Owens. I don't know, maybe you'll have.

39:42In 2011, two psychologists, Angela Lang and Dove Cohen, published a framework in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, comparing our culture with the honor cultures of the rest of the world. Again, false dichotomy. If I comment on this every time we will be here for four hours. They found that in our Western culture, something they called dignity culture, your worth is yours. Each individual has inherent worth, and this worth doesn't depend on the esteem of other people. This worth is neither conferred by others nor can it be taken away by them. As such, it is inalienable. Nobody can take it from you. Okay, let's talk about that. One, I do think that is a positive development in Western thought. Now, my pagan bros made disagree with me on this. The idea of universal human dignity. Some have argued that that leads us to alchemy. But there's actually something very specific about that. Well, every human is made in the image of God, and so they ought to be treated justly.

40:49But that gets us back to justice. And again, we've talked about this distinction between justice and politics. Aristotle defines justice as giving every man that which he deserves. And the question of course becomes, well, what does he deserve? Different people deserve different things. And unfortunately, in a world in which group identity matters, sometimes you have to, well, make a generalization. For instance, you are a citizen of another country, and so you do not deserve the same things that well, someone who lives with me does. And sure is that equal? No, but it is just. It is fair. We live in a world of limitations. One of, well, constrained value. And also, I think this term inalienable is kind of stupid because they are entirely alienable. I mean, look, we can all think of people who have had their rights alienated. Whether in our personal lives or I don't know, in the world, people imprisoned unjustly, people killed, people robbed.

41:56Whether simply by criminals, ironically enough as J. Vant said, my recent episode talking about Huey Long, or by other state actors, they are entirely alienable. There is no magic force field which protects these rights. I may well believe they ought to be preserved. They are a goal. I would like to live in a world where people had access to that. It looks like I had access to that. But that does not make it unalienable. I'm sorry, that's just simply an error. That is not the case. Can take it from you because nobody gave it to you. You're judged on your character and your achievements based on objective standards. All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. So that's an interesting way to look at that. The idea is we are all simple, simply atomized individuals. There is no relevant feature of us that we did not choose. It is not our actions.

42:58Well, that's not real. That's not true at all. I am American because I was born in America. My ancestors came here hundreds of years ago. Did I choose to be my father's son? No. But I look like him. I share a great deal of his personality. We look very similar. That matters. That deeply, deeply changed me. Religion and culture are things that you can choose to change but it will never be the same as something you grew up with. It works its way into your bones. For example, I've raised and still am Calvinist. If I give in one day, you people wear me down and I end up kneeling towards Byzantium six times a day to pray or becoming Mexican and joining the Catholic Church, I would still be at a very deep level Calvinist. It would be in my bones. I can't shake it in the same way that sure I could learn silly Dutch and try to become an African or I could never be a boar in that same way.

44:02Maybe if I married in, obviously I'm married now, but you understand what I'm saying in hypothetical sense. My children might be or at least might closer than I am. But fundamentally the things about me that matter most are unchosen. What I am. These are the bonds that are perhaps the most significant. Sure, there are many things in your life you can choose but you can't choose anything and those things you can't matter. Deeply matter. They're the basis of civilization. Again, this idea of everything as a contract. Everything as a agreement between consenting adults. Sure, it might be a neat way to talk about the social contract. But it's an abstraction. It's not real. There never was a moment where someone sat down and said, here is the social construct. All right, let's all stop living as random units, ones and twos wandering around the woods. That never happened. Organization is inherent to man even on a very basic level. Look at the hunters and gatherers. Sure, they're incredibly primitive. If it figured out the wheel yet, let alone something more complicated.

45:13But are they running around like they're playing rust or minecraft? Just individuals running straight into the woods with a stone axe. No, they have societies, albeit primitive ones. Did they choose to form them? I mean, maybe on some level, thousands of years ago. But again, these are not active choices. People are judged, are understood as part of a whole. Now, again, going back to this false diet, does that mean that I'm a mauest? I believe that people are interchangeable bug man units? No, not at all. These are not your two alternatives. But again, these unchosen bonds, these things that are simply true about you. Are deeply, deeply important. They're what makes a culture. They are what makes a family. And these sort of prejudices, these sort of choices, these sort of allegiances. Again, nonchosen bonds, the bond of a father to a child, the bond to your hometown, to your home nation. They're incredibly, incredibly important. They are what produced.

46:23This wonderful civilization, Jeremy, is so eager to tell you about. It was not created by atomized individuals. It was created by people who sell themselves as belonging to something, as being both owed something and owing something, not simply a fungible unit who could make whatever they will of themselves. Now, does that mean you are simply the product of something else outside yourself and you can just kick up your feet? No, not at all. But ironically enough, those men who were much more supposedly third world, who were much more supposedly, I guess we could say unindividualistic, much more collectivist. Will they produce great heroists, great feats of individual courage? Why is that the case? Surely we should be cranking out heroes, surely we should be cranking out men of high agency encouraged to faster rate than ever?

47:23Well, is that the case? I contend it is not. The scorecard of the rest of the world is different. Langen Cohen mapped the attitudes and behaviors of people from honor cultures too. And in honor culture they found, your worth is on loan. It's issued to you by the people watching and it can be revoked by the people watching too. I runnyly enough, I think this is actually quite a good critique of the EZOT system. You can find that there's a Keebie Farms thread that talks about this in sort of an India, Indian cast based context. I just well worth your time. You can find it. That gets eyes ZZAT. Yeah, obviously that's super dysfunctional, but is that dysfunctional because it's an honor culture or because it is a horribly more abundant cast system in India? I would contend the latter. In an honor culture, an insult is a real injury to your standing and letting a challenge go unanswered is a kind of social death.

48:23Donald Trump exploited this emerging third world mentality in our culture to great effect. We all remember those early primary debates in 2015 and 2016. Traditional Republicans armed with facts and figures took the stage against Donald Trump and they walked into a buzzsaw. Trump made fun of Rand Paul's looks and he won. He called Marco Rubio, little Marco and he won. He called Jeb Bush, low energy and Ted Cruz, lion, Ted. And he said Megan Kelly had blood coming out of her wherever. And he won. The crowd went. So yeah, well, surely if all that matters is the points, if all that matters is your ability to have the right charts and figures, where does Trump come from? Is it the fact that there's this mysterious third world culture? And it's funny because in a certain context, I actually would agree with that framing. I would just define it slightly differently, of course, because surely if these men who had facts and figures on their side, who had the charts, who had everything aligned, well, should they not have been both incredibly successful politically and also capable rulers.

49:37People like to imagine Donald Trump as if he came out of nowhere. No, no, no, Donald Trump is the damn. He is not the river. He is a symptom of deep, deep dissatisfaction of a deep sense of dispossession. And how did we get to that place of dissatisfaction and dispossession? Was that the third world culture just out of nowhere? Did people just decide to go on their phones? Was it Russian interference? Or was it the failure of men with charts and graphs? Either to attain the lovers of power or once they'd got there to actually do anything. Again, for a man who talks so much about agency and responsibility, he loves to appeal to this sort of mysterious external force. And for no reason at all, people voted for Orange Hitler. Obviously that is how a leftist would frame it. That's how Rachel Maddo would frame it.

50:38And at least I've been assured that Jeremy Boring and Rachel Maddo are not anything alike, so why are they saying the same things? Especially when I think back to the first one of these I ever did, which was Dreir in Boring, about a month and a half ago. You'll remember that they attacked these same figures, these third worldists, so to speak, for being non-maga Republicans. This is a term we heard James Lindsay say not too long ago when he was speaking with... Shadis Kestinbaum? Brought that back? He again brought that up that these people aren't even Maga Republicans. Amplifying that, well, you must be. So why is he the avatar of the third worldist of third world thinking? Why is he the avatar of the yellow or we could say the orange peril? Look, I'm not a Trump guy. But come on. You can't get mad at me for noticing this.

51:38The crowd went nuts. Of course it did. It was something we'd never seen before in American politics, not in our lifetime anyway. It was hilarious. Our rational brains switched off. Our lizard brains were activated. Nobody remembers the facts or logical arguments from those debates. We all remember Trump, the insult comic. But what was novel and hilarious in 2015 is ubiquitous and tragic today. It often feels like the entire idea of reason debate and principled opposition to social pressure has collapsed entirely. Yes, because much like trial by jury, much like the Constitution, that was culturally specific. That belonged to a certain people, but rarely a certain people in a certain time. And as that's changed, it has no more bearing on our current version of politics than, I don't know, the Blarney Stone. It's irrelevant. Who cares? It's a cultural artifact if nothing else. Really? Thanks to the internet and social media, the gates have been thrown open.

52:41Our public square now includes not only Americans, but everyone in the world with internet access. The comment section can include your family and your community, but it can include a tribal, chic and Afghanistan and half the population of India too. And once you get past your family and your community, all the rest of them are relying on the old default as their scoreboard. The deep irony, of course, I'm saying you can't think trivily. So only trust your family. I don't know, I think it's kind of funny. Also, if you look at the comment section of this source video, come to your own conclusions about who is in the comment section. That is not an accusation. I do not wish to be subject to the same pressures Candace Owens is. I understand that as a podcaster, of course, the only cure for me, the final solution for the podcaster is, of course, to be dragged into court. And so what I'm saying is, Joe, I don't think that. I don't even know what I think. But I definitely don't think there's anything going on in the comment section of perhaps your own channel, Mr. Jeremy Bore.

53:44Nowadays, the truth is whatever gets the most likes from an audience, often largely consisting of foreign accounts and foreign bots and sometimes powered by foreign intelligence agencies, manufacturing social proof to pressure you and your neighbors into their own third world way of thinking. Oh, okay. Okay. Can you guys, I want you to put your heads together. Can you think of one foreign intelligence service that we know for a hundred percent certainty has been caught. Uh, missing with US public opinion through the internet, give you a chance to think. And the answer was the government of guitar. That's the answer, the only answer. Anyway, all that Jeremy keep going. The values that used to discipline or public square have been quietly outvoted, not by immigration or at least not only by immigration, but also by importation.

54:48Okay, let's talk about that. Just some historical context. Obviously, there have been multiple waves of immigration to America. Our current one is perhaps the most destructive. But do you think the politics changed when we imported just like half of Ireland, half of Italy, or a bunch of Germans? Okay, the Germans were relatively peaceable. Well, I kind of give them a pass. The 1840, 48ers were cringed. But you know what? We'll put them to the side. Did things change? Yes or no? Oh, yeah. Of course it did. Because the people changed. Because all of a sudden you have created a definite in group and out group. And you have created a split. Now, if you're the people who brought them in. Well, this is awesome for you because you don't have to do politics anymore. You just have to throw gifts to the new people you brought it.

55:48And that exploit was discovered pretty early, actually, as far as politics goes, whether bringing people in from other nations or simply expanding the electorate. That is the great flaw in democracy. So this thing that he's talking about is not unique. It is not new. Sure, the internet has accelerated. But this is a flaw with democracy. And if you think this is a flaw, well, we have some other alternatives. But I've been reliably informed earlier that anything before democracy was grinding horrible slavery, everything was gray and horrible and people mocked around and I don't know, human waste. So I guess that's off the table, which really does. But it just puts us in a pickle. We plunged our discourse into a global score card. And the global score card runs on a completely different operating system that the West spent thousands of years replacing. Yeah, actually, yes. There's part of that. That's true. Yeah, you import the world. You become the world. We're doing that.

56:52So, maybe we unimport it one way or another. Now, I don't necessarily think that will help. I don't know. Jeremy Boring's project here. But I, you know what, fine. Unlike the bedfellows, I guess if we can get on-side, I guess I'll link arm and arm. I might have to get a stool for it. But you know what? Fine. I won't be a jerk about it. Yes. If you are this new, I guess, you know, white nationalist Jeremy Boring. Apparently, if this is the project we've embarked on, fair enough. All right. Great. But no, that isn't what we're doing. It's not what we're doing. What we're basically doing is complaining about, well, the woke right. That's what it comes back to. I've sort of gotten rid of a lot of the most of the personal commentary. We may play a little bit, of course, of him whining about Hassan Piker. But I tried to pull it out just because I don't care. I don't care. But functionally, this is a long-winded way to attack anti-Zionists on both the left, briefly, but the right. That's what this comes down to. This is another version of the woke right argument. It is saying,

58:01shut up, go away. You're gross. You're for it. That's what he's doing. Ironically enough, while being very much not racist, apparently. The Third World values slowly displacing our own tribal loyalty, blood over justice, social proof over truth. None of that was invented in Jordan or Iran or Africa. Our own ancestors lived by those same values, too, and none of us today is immune. That's the whole point. Third World thinking isn't some foreign disease that we catch. It's a native condition that we were all born with, but learned to overcome. The Third World isn't strange. We are strange. That's why America has almost single-handedly invented the modern world. Not because we're just like everyone else, but because we're not... Because we're not like everyone else. Because we're exceptional. We are the exception. The West is the exception. The simplest things that we take the most for granted in the West are among the strangest innovations in human history. Something as innocuous as the price tag is unbelievably strange.

59:07Yes, so he spends quite a lot of time talking about the price tag. It's a symbol of a high-trust aside. I'm going to cut that out because it is very, very long. We will continue on with the next bit of this. Earlier this year, the New York Times hosted a podcast conversation on whether Theth is ever justified. They were responding to a new trend among young progressives in Brooklyn that they call micro-looting. The act of liberation against big corporations. Essentially, it's a fancy way of describing petty theft from Whole Foods. Okay. What's going on here? Are rich, Brooklyn-owned progressives? What do they do? Are they engaged in tearing down Western civilization? On a certain level, of course they are. What are they actually doing? Well, they're thumbing their nose at its throats. They're outing themselves to their friends being edgy. They're adopting some sort of luxury position luxury belief. Should that be tolerated? No, no, not at all.

1:00:11But come on, man. Is this that big of a deal, dude? Like, yes, sure, it's not good. They should be charged. But this race is sort of a moral panic. Young people have stolen. It's not a good thing to do. It should not be tolerated. But I think what we're seeing is people appending ideology onto what they already wanted to do. Basically, justifying this as, oh, they'll never miss it. When really what we're seeing is something much more like, you know, Augustine and the apples or the peaches. The Persimmons? Whatever fruit. Right. Stealing for the joy of stealing. It's not good. It's evil. And in these cases, it's a particularly sort of banal form of evil because obviously they're not hurting for the money. In fact, they're going to Whole Foods in the first case indicates that they're probably doing all right for themselves. But it is a feature of man.

1:01:11It's sort of a dark part of our nature. I don't think that this is unique to the sort of framing that he's talking about. One of the guests on the show was Hassan Piker, a twitch streamer with millions of followers. Most of them young, most of them American. We can quibble about that. Also, I think it's entirely fair to call a saw guilty of third world thinking. But if I expounded my beliefs on that, Erdogan will, will send a kill swad. So you know what? We'll just let that one go. Piker said that he's pro stealing from big corporations. And his reason was that those corporations still far more from their own workers is. Okay, does, do we really need to, and I know I am because apparently I'm playing on that show, do we need to take Hassan Piker seriously? Apparently we do. Anyway, I'll let this keep rolling. His fellow guest, the New Yorker's Gia Tolentino, said she had actually stolen food from Whole Foods herself. And she hadn't felt bad about it a bit. And it taking from a big box store is quote, not very significant as a moral wrong.

1:02:20The Times editor, hosting them, wondered why she should have to pay for organic avocados when quote Jeff Bezos has too much money. Piker went further. He said that if it were as easy as pirating a movie, he'd still a car. He said we ought to get back to the good stuff, bank robberies and stealing priceless artifacts. But is this a serious point? I don't think Hassan Piker is a serious person. Seemingly, he's quite motivated by money and attention. So at a certain point, it's like, well, much like talking about canisones. It's like, hey, like you're part of the problem here. Just ignore it. I honestly, I think we should just deport him. He's Turkish, whatever he loves dressing up as it. I was going to say an old term there. You know, I'll have to say anymore, a person of Chinese descent, particularly communist one. So let him have him. He seemingly is violated, you know, fairer or something with Cuba. So like, yeah, sure, fine. Get rid of him. I don't care.

1:03:20I don't think his thought is worth philosophizing on. It's worth rubbing your chin over. There's not that much to it. It is a combination of a not particularly intelligent person, not particularly intelligent audience. At a certain point, this is the same thing as well. I don't know. Let's go back to our previous example of analyzing Jerry Springer. It's like, well, yeah, people say stupid stuff all the time. Do they mean it to the end to degree? No. Do they create negative externalities when it comes to politics? Yes. Maybe that's why we shouldn't let people vote. It seems like an easy sort of run around. But functionally, you got to understand this aggression into bashing the left is really only there for a little bit. But in the interest of fairness, I'll let it keep playing. Now, you can dismiss that as the posturing of an online grifter, and sure enough, but underneath the posturing is a serious claim. And it's believed by a growing number of people on the American left, and it doesn't stop with petty theft.

1:04:21Why? Why? What broad trend could have influenced the rise of, should we say, third world thing? Could it be third world people? I don't know. It's at least a guess. I don't know. On December 4, 2024, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in cold blood. He was murdered for being the CEO of United Healthcare. His alleged murderer is left-winged extremist Luigi Mangione, and according to Emerson College, 41% of voters, 18 to 29, say that the killing was at least somewhat acceptable. That's because in the Marxist view, as in the third world view, a financial transaction is never just two people trading. There's always a strong party and a weak party, a winner and a loser, someone on top and someone underneath. They arrived there by different roads. The honor culture asks who got the better of whom. Marx asks who exploited whom. But both roads end in viewing the transaction itself as a status competition.

1:05:24Wages aren't payment. They're what's left after a theft. Profit isn't a reward for creating value. It's the measure of what's been stolen. And once you've accepted that, well, been stealing from Walmart isn't stealing at all. It's collection on a debt. It's getting yours back. It's regaining the honor that was taken from you. It feels like restoration. Okay, again, this is fundamentally a question of justice. That is actually what's being argued here. And whether you express that in terms of honor, we could just as equally say, we were bound to your word. And if you have promised to exchange a good for a service, well, you must do it. Is that an honor framework? Or you could also say, well, we could express that in terms of shame on the confluence. We could say, oh, he ought to be ashamed for taking so much. And because he is, you know, shamed himself, well, I am under no obligation to these terms don't really add up. They're not particularly adequate. It's it again, a false dichotomy, a false diet.

1:06:30So this next one is like 15 seconds long. I just thought it was funny. I don't have a point of significant analysis here, but he's talking about in his framing, the Christian church as the origin of our modern framing of a guilt shame culture. Again, I don't think that term works is when I think of a guilt culture or a shame culture, I think of like Asian cultures, you know, where if you have dishonored the group, you're supposed to kill yourself, but he uses it. This is just a funny turn phrase. I don't really have any analysis to add talking again about the Christian church. The church took that claim and spent thousands of years building machinery for it. Can employers argued the just price into existence merchant guilds swore oaths on relics confessors assigned restitution to men who had shaved a coin or short waited a stack. Okay, so Jerry boring got us to clipping coins draw whatever conclusion you will for that. I think it's funny. But again, the idea that well, how did this culture originate? Well, apparently it was by men swearing oaths bound in honor.

1:07:38A collective group, a guild, for example, swearing an oath. Well, what's happening there? Is that not an honor culture? It seems exactly what's happening. Centuries of work to arrive at the price tag to get the ego and the honor and the shame out of every transaction. All that, only to be told now by a streamer with a twitch channel by democratic socialist and by the whole of the left that you can't be a winner, that you're merely a victim of exploitation that you must reclaim your honor. But an economy. Again, the way he uses honors very, very interesting to me. Because I think honor is a very positive thing. The idea that you are representative of something and must must act accordingly. For instance, the idea of being well, a British man of holding some sort of responsibility to how you conduct yourself.

1:08:39That seems to me very, I don't know, positive. Or again, the idea of being a Christian of publicly marking yourself out as a religious man. There comes with that a responsibility. You ought to act in such a way. Your last name, the idea that you are a member of X and Y family. And so if you act badly, well, that will bring shame upon yourself and bring shame upon your family. That's a very powerful organizing idea. One that we see, I mean, really even not that long ago. You can see it in the world wars in the idea that I should clarify that because he would agree you can see it in the world wars. And I guess I would too just with slightly different intonation, of course. But again, the idea that you owe something to king and country. Your conduct as a man, your honor, is it peril and how you act? That is a deeply, deeply western idea. Do we see this concept of honor in the same way? Where we sort of appending a western concept onto this like, you know, it's sort of internasing tribal warfare. This kind of low vennial conflict, you see in third world. It's not the same thing at all. I hate this term. I really should stop being triggered by it. But to me, honor virtue is what built the west is what built this civilization before and after the church.

1:09:59Anyway, with a fixed price tag isn't the only weird miracle that the West built the West also built a culture where we elevate truth and justice above tribal loyalties. Sadly, many of us are forgetting that too. In 2015, Tucker Carlson said, quote, you know what, if my brother committed a mass murder, I would not criticize him in public. He's my brother, period under no circumstances will I criticize my family in public ever. That's the rule and I'm not breaking it. Now loyalty is generally a good thing and loyalty to your family is a real virtue. But it isn't the highest virtue. Refusing to criticize a mass murdering brother is placing the tribe above the truth. It's placing blood above justice. And there's a whole world outside our borders where that kind of thinking is common. They nod their heads in agreement. But it is it our way. Just a direct quote, Jeremy Borgne, you should not place the tribe above truth. Draw what conclusions you will from that.

1:11:03And look, Tucker is his own man. I feel the urge to reflexively defend him. He does come up a lot in these discussions. And of course, the question is, well, why? Again, I think that might lead us back to my previous remark. But he may have overstated his point. I mean, look, I don't have a brother. And that's a difficult situation to be in. But this idea that you must in this situation, literally denounce a family member. Why? What does it matter? It's not like Tucker said I'd help him skip town. I'd hide the murder weapon. He just said I wouldn't criticize. Which, I mean, to be honest, seems like a fundamentally decent position. Like I would accuse myself from public commentary if my family is involved, both out of loyalty to my family and also because, well, what are you supposed to do? Betray your brother for what? So everyone knows that doing something wrong is wrong. It's a weird point to die on. And it seems sort of like this is a long convoluted way to criticize anti-sianists and Tucker came up because he was kind of the anti-Summit of the year or whatever.

1:12:15I don't know if he actually won that award or if it was just a joke. But seemingly it was just a convenient stick to beat Tucker Carlson with. There's a political thinker who's become fashionable in certain corners in recent years. His name is Carl Schmidt, a German. Awesome. So, hey, remember when I asked you to pin a couple things, to pin the idea brought to us by Jeremy Boring, of course, you were supposed to judge, work on its own. You're supposed to judge an idea based on truth, not based off its association. Well, let's see. Let's see how that shakes out. Might I add like 15 minutes after he brought that off. A German jurist whose 1932 book The Concept of the Political has become the basis for a new pattern of post-liberal right wing thought. Okay, I don't realize I spoke about this on orange show. Couple things. One, Jeremy Boring does not understand Carl Schmidt. And two, framing him as the base work or the basis rather of the new right of the post-liberals, a term which is fast becoming incredibly meaningless.

1:13:20To me, I don't think that's entirely fair. Because, well, what is Schmidt? Schmidt is in a tradition. One that goes back to Hobbes, one that goes back to Machiavelli, one that goes back to Demastra. And, well, sure, these are foundational thinkers, but what are they doing? Do you call yourself a Schmittian? Or do you say, well, his framework of politics is accurate. Regardless of the man himself, he has a good idea. He's won the points he's carried the day. Well, that's what I say. I don't agree with Schmidt entirely. In fact, after this clip, I will sort of go into that in a little bit more detail. But again, Jeremy himself cannot keep up with the standards he himself introduced a scant 10 minutes ago. People like Curtis Yarvan and Adrian from Mule and Vokim often. Schmidt argued for what he called the autonomy of the political. Politics is severed from the moral order and put in its own category, answerable to nothing above it.

1:14:20And inside that category, sits what Schmidt called the friend-inemied distinction. All of politics reduced to rewarding friends and punishing enemies. Okay, a couple things here. I know this is sort of an echo of what I said on our Mac and Tire, but this triggered me enough. I decided to do an entire as of current recording hour and 15 minutes on this. Several things. One. Devoursing politics from morality. That is simply how it is. This is not prescriptive. It is descriptive. This is what happens. And this is why I said earlier, there is a distinction between justice and politics. These are two separate endeavors. They're two separate, well, frameworks. For instance, he talks about the friend-inemied distinction. Well, what is that? Is the friend-inemied distinction always the situation in which we operate? No, it occurs when, well, politics becomes existential. Where we go from the politics of, I don't know, arguing over a tax rate. Well, heck, even authority. Something like the American Civil War.

1:15:32Not American Civil War. That actually is existential politics. I met the American Revolution. Right? Where, okay, sure, the Patriots and the royalists were fighting it out tooth and nail. But what were they arguing about? Well, who's in charge of America? Were they arguing about what is a woman? Were they arguing about who this nation is designed to serve? Were they arguing about something that basic? Were they arguing on religious lines? No. It really was a sort of Civil War rebellion. Both of them arguing from, well, the same copus of law. The founding fathers saying we have not been afforded the rights extended to Englishmen. We wish to secure those. The Brits obviously had a different take on it. But is that existential? Is that a level of war that, well, the Second World War was? An existential one.

1:16:36When politics becomes existential, when it's a situation where it is zero sum, and that does happen, where if one party wins, the other will not be able to live life as they see fit. Well, you do descend to the realm of friend-animity, because that's all that matters. It is existential. It is not based on values. It is based on survival. And so in that situation, which I might add, I do not think American domestic politics should be existential. I didn't choose that. I wouldn't have chosen that given the options. But it's the situation that we're in. And this is fundamentally his mistake of viewing Schmidt. One, I think is perhaps a more unique thinker than he is. And I like Schmidt quite a bit, but he is pulling on a long tradition of Western thought. Well, and also the idea that he is describing how things ought to be. No, he is saying what is? He is pointing to in a debate in the marketplace of ideas, one might say, charts and graphs, how things actually work.

1:17:43Again, clearly boring has no idea what he's talking about here. Now, just as it's not wrong to have family loyalties and natural affections for your own people, it's not wrong to recognize friends and enemies and politics. I certainly have enemies, and I spend a considerable amount of time fighting them. That isn't what Schmidt is selling. Schmidt takes the one true thing and makes it the only thing. Rewarding friends and punishing enemies stops being a piece of politics and becomes the entire point of politics, the highest good, the thing every other consideration bows to. Okay, one, that line is not from Schmidt. It's very, very old. I think you'd find it in the platonic dialogues, like it's that old. The politics is punishing enemies and rewarding your friends. You can look it up on your own, it's been attributed dozens of different people throughout time, all of them older than Carl Schmidt. Because, well, that's kind of how it works. Again, politics and justice are not the same thing. When you support someone during their campaign, you have a good chance of getting an appointed office.

1:18:51Trump has done this every other president, every other leader in history has done such a thing. It's how it works. When you're the captain, who's the first over the wall, will you get a crown of lawyers? When you are the king's right hand man, you get to be a Baron. This is how it works. This is simply what is. And also, that concept of friend and enemy has no bearing on morality. There are an immense number of situations we re-recognize this, where two people, two parties can come to blows due to regrettable circumstances. Where you can't even say this is the side of unalloyed good and this side is mustache twirling evil. It's sort of the tragedy of the world that they came to blows, that they were on opposite ends of this dire political struggle. The G-Balains and the G-Gelts, I believe, G-Gelts, I always get that wrong. But any number of these situations, where you can see, sure, we may have opinions one way or the other.

1:19:54But fundamentally, the question being asked is a political one, not a moral one. You are oftentimes forced into political legions, again, because of that friend and enemy, that sort of existential situation, not because you are morally aligned. Look at the Spanish Civil War, you saw a great amount of this on both sides. These are different questions. Which is exactly how it works in an honor culture, where loyalty to the tribe outranks truth, outranks justice, outranks everything. Schmidt didn't invent anything, of course. All he did was take the oldest and most basic arrangement on earth, laundered it through a German law faculty, and then sold it back to the west as some sort of sophisticated political theory. Schmidt is foundational and literally any politics program, you have to grapple with Schmidt. Whether you like him or not, you have to understand him. He is foundational. In the same way that I am not a Nietzschean, but in order to understand the history of philosophy, you have to understand Nietzsche.

1:20:54In order to understand, this could be either politics or economics, you have to understand Marx. Sorry. It's trying to recast these men as irrelevant, because you don't like them, you don't agree with them. It's incredibly disingenuous. The friend enemy distinction is just a permission structure. It's the logic that tells a nation that its enemies are owed nothing. Oh, it's enemies. So it's illegitimate for a nation to believe that its enemies are owed nothing. Let's cast our minds back to Israel Palestine, for example. By no means a Palestinian, I feel like that should be fairly clear, just judging off the white balance of this photo or this video feed rather. But seemingly the Israelis don't feel as if they owe the Palestinians anything. They treat them as existential enemies. I don't have a moral problem with that, for reasons I've outlined.

1:21:54And I would argue there is a moral element to at least that conflict. But nonetheless, this is not a standard universally applied. What about the Iranians? What about any of these other designated groups that are Empire or satellites or a warwick? Again, this is not a standard that's actually upheld. This is a tactical way to attack Schmidt, to mark him as being other, being an enemy, being gross and evil and wrong. And once a people believes that, well then there's no atrocity that can't be justified. Schmidt. I'm just going to let that one sink in. And himself it should be noted was a card carrying Nazi. And, well wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I thought we were supposed to judge ideas based on their own merit. Based off their explanatory power and then assigned points, I thought we weren't supposed to, uh, I don't know, make snide comments to sneer. To attack a speaker based off of what he is or what he was, instead of what he said.

1:22:58Oh wait, sorry, I forgot we hit ironically enough, this median exception. We hit that one priority for which all else must bet. And that's the grim world that can't us in Tucker and Hassan Piker and all the rest of them are driving us toward. They get there by different means, but they all get to the same place. Seeing you either believe in objective truth, you believe in an impartial system, you believe in the primacy of justice over tribe and over wealth and over might. Or you don't. That's interesting, isn't it? You, the idea of an impartial system and of truth are one in the same. Well, that's not obviously not the same idea. Ask where a congregationalist lawyer in colonial Massachusetts got the idea that his enemy was owed a defense and the answer isn't the enlightenment. It's the pulpit quote. Okay, so a little bit of context on this one. He goes through the story of John Adams.

1:23:58I might have that mixed up. I think it's John Adams. Who defended the British soldiers who fired on the crowd? The infamous massacre, sort of predicate to the American Revolution. And he upholds Adams as a good and honest man for defending these English soldiers, forgiving them their fair shake. I think he's a lot of a man. Again, I would argue that this conflict is not existential in the same way. So the sort of friend enemy distinction doesn't necessarily apply. Although, look, I know his story and I could well be wrong about that. But again, fundamentally, there's something very different going on, which is they have dragged these men into court. And again, with a common cultural understanding, they're both effectively Englishmen. I'll be a kind of distant cousins at this point. But that's very, very different than the idea that you can simply dismiss any sort of allegiance you have to a group, not at all. I will also say there's a very funny pivot in this clip that I decided to leave it.

1:25:03So this is Adams' justification of why he did this. The Christian religion, he said, is above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times. Okay. So this man were supposed to emulate, says that the Christian religion is supreme, above all other religions. Watch for the pivot here. Religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity. It is resignation to God. It is goodness itself to man. The law told Israel's judges in... And that's where we go. Right? That is very much Judeo-Christian values. Perfectly expressed. Right? We go straight from that to something else. When the church made this change, they changed the trajectory of the West forever. So what he's talking about here is the church banning... basically marrying your cousins and marrying your siblings. Again, talking about the breakdown of clannish tribal cultures.

1:26:06I will say several things. One, you should not marry people you were blood-related to. It's a brave position. But also, again, that is something we see very, very early in European culture. Again, before Christianization. And I think Europe was at its best when it was Christian. I think that's a good thing. I'm a fan of that. But also, I mean, just look at the way that, well, Northern Europeans treated their women, I don't know, even in Caesar's time. Right? Well, well before the Christianization of Europe. And you see things that are very similar. Women retreated very well. And part of this is due to... there's some genetic things I don't entirely understand. The European population was extremely focused on, well, near-out group breeding. There's a genetic advantage to that. And there are a series of cultural moors attached to that. For example, ironically enough, women in Northern Europe dressed very differently than they did in other areas.

1:27:09They showed off more skin by modern standards. But the idea was, the patriarchy, the system, the clan was strong enough, that if something bad happened to her, this woman, you would have hell to pay. And so, women were able to be relatively free. They could interact with other groups and marry with other near groups. Again, we're not talking about, you know, people hundreds of miles away. But there was a culture and sort of genetic predilection that sprang up together. Ironically enough, I actually learned about this on the Grimdarket Lightenment podcast. I had him on not too long ago. Really fascinating. It's Chad and Kevin Deanna. Great show. Honestly, a lot of fun historical insights. They did a whole episode on World War One. They're just great. So check that out, Grimdarket Lightenment. I know it's on Spotify. I think it's on some other programs as well. But they bring up exactly this point. Yes, did Europe reach its full flowering under Christendom? Is European culture and Christianity deeply, deeply linked?

1:28:12And is Christianity, at least in its sort of modern expression, very much a product of Europe? Yes, but some of these things are, well, inherently European to be perfectly blunt about. Christianity expressed that. But honestly, they were sort of reacting to something that was already there and was a good idea and deserves to be or an ought to be extended to the whole world. The world would be better if that were universally practiced. But even as a Christian, you have to say some of this came from Europe. Forever. Nobody at the time was trying to invent the modern world. They were just trying to obey God about marriage. But when you stop people from marrying their cousins, you weaken the client. You dissolve those dense, inner-married, blood-bound networks where every obligation you have runs to your kin and no one else. And what grows in the space where the clan used to be is something new in the history of the world, the individual. A person whose loyalty is not automatically owed to blood and who therefore can be loyal to something higher than blood, to the truth, to the stranger, to the impartial law.

1:29:19Well, how's that gone? We are more individual than we've ever been. Do we see more truth? Do we see more honor? Do we see more transcendent action? Do we see people throwing themselves into things that are bigger than themselves? No, we've created gray goo. Now his conclusion. You'll hear people say all of this was inethical, that liberalism was doomed, that the West was always going to rot. That it's just the tide going out and there's nothing to be done, but don't buy it. Again, playing a little bit of a show game here. Liberalism in the West are not synonymous. Liberalism is real to me speaking, innovation, one that has produced, well, this rot. I it. It's just the same old dodges saying that you're poor because of someism or doomed because of some cabal deciding that you have no agency so that none of it is your fault. Okay, no, that's not the same thing at all. What you're saying is, hey, people started to think this way and live this way and bad things happen.

1:30:24I see the results of that. I think we should stop doing this. This is problem solving, 101. Like if your computer isn't working, if your car isn't working, what do you do? You look at what changed from when it was working. That doesn't mean that your woke because you were competent mechanic. That doesn't mean that you're a communist because you go through a change log and a bit of code doesn't work. No, this is just how people solve issues. I know that I've practically shouted myself horse on this issue of personal responsibility, but it does just drive me up the walls. If all of this is inevitable, it's only in the sense that entropy is inevitable. Yes, everything is prone to decay, but entropy can be resisted and entropy can be reversed. Yes, and it should be. However, many of the ideas you promote are in tropic. You are merely looking back to a version of this house where it was still rotten, but you couldn't see it yet. The floor was sagging, but it hadn't given it.

1:31:33And so sure, we could go back to when it was only a little bit rotten or when the water damage hadn't quite shown through, hadn't quite discolored the paint yet. Yeah, sure, but we're still on this course of entropy or you could say this needs to be ripped out. The floor needs to be redone. The roof needs to be finished. This needs to be whole. This needs to be solid again. Again, he is not wrong in certain of the things you say. Again, entropy can be reversed. Entropy can be resisted. That is the project that we are all engaged in. But the hour is much later than he thinks. And it will require some of that, shall we say, third world thinking, because that's the thinking that built the house, at least in his framing. First, and human beings made in the image of God and commanded to impose order on the world, can reverse it. The central figure in Western history and in Western ethics was, according to scripture, despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief.

1:32:40Which men? Reef. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Dispised, rejected and right. Because in God's accounting, the esteem of the crowd doesn't measure the worth of a man. The love or rejection of a family doesn't determine his standing before God. The entire West was built on just that truth. Well, then why are we? Why are we Democrats? Why do we believe in the wisdom of the crowd? Why do we believe in the marketplace of ideas? I agree. The story of Christ indicates exactly the problem with appealing to the masses, with appealing to a broad base. But that's not a problem for me. It is a problem for you. Nobody made us forget it. We chose to forget a little bit at a time. And the thing about a choice is that it can be made differently tomorrow.

1:33:41We built the fixed price. We built the jury. We built the man who turns his own son in because justice is owed even by a father. And that brings us to we. Who is weak? Because we did. But there's other people here. And because of that marketplace of ideas, because of that mass franchise, they have just the same say that you do. Why is that? Why is that fair? Why should someone who just moved in, in many cases without asking, why should the burglar have just as much say in how you repair your house? As you do, the man who owns it, the man who may well have inherited past down hundreds of years. We understand that's ridiculous. Because all that house was created for a specific people. These institutions were created for a specific people, for a specific culture. And absent those people and absent those culture, they have no power. They're vestigial. You could give Liberia price tags.

1:34:49You could give them. Oh, maybe even our constitution. And that would not turn Liberia into. I was going to say Wisconsin, but Wisconsin sort of is turning into Liberia. It would not turn it into America. Clearly not. There's something more here. It is not simply the ideas. Ideas matters, of course. Richard Reaver told us ideas have consequences. But what really matters is the people in the culture. Because for most people, ideas are just that. There's sort of aery conceptions, not necessarily particularly well defined. But these cultural bonds, these unchosen things that define us. That's what really matters. That's what really shapes a culture. I'm not going to let him finish. It's kind of more of the same moralizing. But I thought that this was relevant because this is sort of a perfect encapsulation of why the conservative ethics of the propositional nation falls apart.

1:35:49It's not true. There's so many contradictions running through it that it's just incoic. Inco here. And so this idea that we are illegitimate, we're sort of at this decivilizing process. We are the barbarians. And I may like that framing. It's not true. The project at which we are set. Our goal, our road, hope, if you will, is an old one. We are part of the tradition. He is not. He is simply part of a series of ill thought out convenient ideas stitched one to another. So adopting the platitudes of a previous era, liberally. He has nothing to say. Really. But he's calling for you. And he's going to try and force you into this diet of either being John McCain resurrected from the dead. Or being a third world list being bad, being a savage, doesn't necessarily use those terms. But that's what he means. This diet is false.

1:36:53And funny enough, he says one of these two frames is losing. And from a certain perspective, he's right. They are losing. Their version of politics makes no sense, despite their graphs, they have no ability to rule. And look, I may not be a Democrat. I may not be a Republican. I may not be a man who believes in the marketplace of ideas. But one, we're better than they are, both from the perspective that we can't point to how things work. And also because we understand blood matters. We understand that these unchosen bonds matter fundamentally. These men are mercenaries. And of course, you understand you remember what Machiav Ellis said about mercenaries. What do they do when things get tough when things get bad? They turn tail because they're in it for coin. There in it to be a simply a member in a marketplace, not because they owe something.

1:37:56Not because their honor binds them to fight no matter the odds. So you know what? I think we're gonna win. That's it.