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Sept. 21, 2021 - Louder with Crowder

01:04:27

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Jordan Peterson and the LATEST on the COVID Pandemic | Louder with Crowder

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	🎵 Outro Music 🎵 🎵 Outro Music 🎵
	🎵 Outro Music 🎵 By the power of Crowder Shop, I have the power!
	Ah!
	Oh Dave, you're not wearing pants.
	Tis true.
	Where'd Dave get those cool threads?
	Wouldn't you like to know?
	It's a mystery.
	But you can start your treasure hunt at CrowderShop.com.
	I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, Browder Shop.
	Mmm.
	Half the moist in the palate.
	That, I just realized, that is stale water.
	Oh yeah, it is.
	Tuesday morning, which for most people means uneventful.
	Wednesday's hump day, Monday, is a horrible day.
	Tuesday doesn't feel like anything.
	But I'll tell you what it feels like today.
	Saying hello to an old friend who we have not seen.
	Now, full disclosure, I've spoken, of course, with our next guest behind the scenes, but a lot of you have been asking why hasn't he been here on the show.
	Well, look, we'll talk about that with him.
	Usually we've been doing guest segments.
	I think this one warrants long-form sit-down because, well, first off, you're not going to get him to answer a question in anything other than You know, a novella.
	Well thought out, though.
	Very smart man.
	We actually, I think this was the first show to really have him sort of stateside, because originally we wrote about him at livewithcrowder.com with the free speech laws from my homeland of Canada, and this guy really was.
	Look, I think some people may not appreciate, and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do this with him here because he'll get embarrassed, but the truth is, This man took a big risk and I want people to really appreciate.
	The limb he stepped out on, the reason you know who he is right now is not because of Joe Rogan and not because of this show, but he was a public enemy in Canada.
	Free speech doesn't exist in Canada.
	And so now he's talked about a lot of other things and he's brilliant.
	He's a professor.
	But the whole reason he came to the forefront is because he was one of the few people in academia in a country where you are not allowed to go against groupthink.
	And he took a stand at great risk to himself, and so I think that warrants, as his first time back here, doing a long-form interview, talking about everything.
	The whole world is different, so I'm curious to see what he has to say, what's going on right now in his world, because we haven't spoken since the pandemic.
	Yeah.
	This is a totally different interview.
	A whole new world.
	A whole new man, a whole new world.
	Let's get to it with Dr. Jordan Peterson.
	Alright, here he is.
	I mean, I can give him an introduction.
	Uh, you know.
	Does he need one?
	Does he need one?
	I mean, I can say doctor, because he'll make a whole big thing about it.
	But, uh, I don't know if he's been on since this new book has been out, but, uh... You could say professor, but it's three syllables.
	Well, you know, listen, you're asking a lot of me, sir, what with the sinus infection and the soft palate effect therein.
	The new book is Beyond Order 12 More Rules for Life, so a lot of rules.
	You follow him on the Twitter, Jordan B. Peterson.
	Professor, thank you for being here, sir.
	How are you?
	I'm quite well at the moment, actually.
	I'm so happy about that.
	I can't believe it.
	That's good.
	Murray, I'm talking to you, and I'm looking forward to it.
	You know I'm well, if that's the case.
	I was going to say, yeah, I don't know, you must have had to rally for this.
	So let me do my very best to shoot that down.
	Do you think you're feeling so well because of all your... it wouldn't be because of all your rules now, would it, Professor?
	Oh, you can't have too many rules, man.
	24, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
	Isn't that kind of funny, though, that you, and I would say myself, a lot of people who've sort of had run-ins with big tech, you're sort of seen as an anti, certainly an anti-authoritarian figure, I just have a general problem with authority, full stop, but then you really are a big believer in rules and order.
	Is that more so personal rules and boundaries as opposed to something being enforced externally?
	Do you think that's a big difference?
	Yeah, well, I'm not interested so much in what people should and shouldn't do in some rural sense.
	I'm more interested in trying to discover and discuss with people what principles we should live by, each of us as individuals, that would serve each of us and the collective best.
	And I can't see why you wouldn't want that.
	I mean, if you're bitter and cynical and resentful and you want things to go to hell, And I can understand that, and I understand how people get there, but I'm not really interested in stopping people from misbehaving because what they're doing is wrong.
	It's that I'm interested in investigating what are the principles that help you live a life that justifies itself, and even more than that, you know, if you're fortunate.
	And maybe it's because I'm not finger-wagging in some sense that people are willing to put up with the fact that I'm writing about rules.
	And they're for me, too, right?
	I'm not saying these are for other people.
	And I'm also not saying that I can abide by them all the time.
	No, there's no way to.
	I mean, that's the only person who can abide by all the rules that are set is Jesus, and that was kind of the great irony of it.
	It's like, yeah, you guys can't do this, only I can.
	And then anyone else coming around... But let me ask you this, this is something, and this might be a bit of a smart-ass question, but, um, so you wrote the first book, and there's 12 rules.
	What point did you go, s***, and you realized that you missed 12?
	Oh, well, ha, I do have an answer for that.
	That isn't what happened.
	I wrote 43 rules.
	Oh, all right.
	Okay, so this is the original.
	Exactly.
	That's right.
	I haven't thrust all my rules upon anyone yet.
	So, well, I wrote an answer to a question on Quora.
	I wrote like 50 answers.
	I had a Quora fit there for a while and wrote a bunch of answers.
	And some kid had written in saying, you know, what What principles help you live a meaningful life, let's say.
	Right.
	So I cranked out 43 rules, just very fast, you know.
	And then that answer became very popular on Quora.
	It was way more popular than any of my other answers.
	And so then I talked to my first agent, Sally Harding, about a more popular book.
	I wrote this book called Maps of Meaning, which is a hard book.
	Though the audio version is probably more accessible.
	And we were talking about how some of these ideas might be made more publicly accessible.
	And I remembered this list of rules and the fact that it was popular.
	And I thought, well, you know, it's been market tested already.
	And I don't mean that in a cynical way.
	No.
	You know, I mean, look, if you're going to write a book, a popular book, you want people to read it.
	Otherwise you're a fool.
	And if you don't pay attention to what people are interested in, then you're not meeting your audience halfway.
	Right.
	That's how it came about.
	And so I picked 12 that I kind of thought went together thematically, and that struck me as interesting and meaningful.
	And I wrote the first book, and then, well, I did the same.
	And then I grouped them.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think that one was an antidote to chaos, and one was a warning about the danger of too much order.
	So that kind of covers the political landscape in some sense.
	Yeah, it definitely is. I wonder too, you just touched on something, if that's why you have more,
	you know, there's some people like yourself who have more staying power. And that's because,
	like you said, you're not, you are meeting your audience halfway. But then on the flip side,
	you have people who are just sort of, who are what I would consider trend chasers, right? They throw
	bombs, they look at the trend, they throw something in there, some red meat, get people riled up.
	But then once that trend goes away, they go away.
	And we've always said, look, if we're talking about subjects that don't interest people or don't matter to people on this show, we're not really serving our audience.
	But a perfect example might be last week, you know, the FBI, they were having to deal with the sex scandal of the Olympic gymnasts and not reporting this for 17 months and 40 more women having come forward being raped, you know.
	And I use that to segue into something that I've wanted to talk about regarding the difference between field agents and corruption in our intelligence agencies for a long time.
	But that just wasn't really an in, and how are you going to get people to go, long history of FBI and CIA corruption, and I'm not talking about insane false flag operations, I'm talking about things that have been determined in a court of law where people have already been tried and convicted that most people don't know about, but we said this is a perfect opportunity because now eyes are on the FBI's transgressions and kind of, you know, you feather it into what matters to people so that you buy yourself some leeway so that you can say, well, may I offer this up?
	Perhaps this might be of interest.
	And I noticed that you do that, and I think it's an important delineation between what people like you do, and certainly what I try and do, versus someone who's just, you know, Trump 2024.
	Well, I'm trying constantly to talk about things that I think are true in some sense, regardless of time and place.
	I mean, I'm not trying to make some claim that I've managed that, but look, the 12 Rules for Life, the first book, It hit the number 10 spot on the London Times bestseller list again this week.
	It's four years later.
	And so it's been perennially in the top 10 on Amazon.
	And the reason for that, I think, is that I didn't bind it to anything specifically political that was topical at that moment.
	And I didn't want to do that.
	And I'm trying not to do that with my podcast as well.
	And in terms of meeting the audience halfway, I mean, I really try to do that in my lectures, too, when I go on tour, when I went on tour.
	I don't use notes, and part of the reason for that is that I'm looking at audience members all the time.
	I always pick someone out and talk to them, and then I pick someone else out, and I'm talking to that person.
	I'm not lecturing.
	I'm not lecturing, and I'm meeting people You meet the whole audience if you concentrate on one person.
	And that's much... well, that's working, and it's a good thing to do.
	It's a dialogue that way, because the audience then informs you as well, right?
	Right.
	And you feel like you get inspiration from your... you know, it's funny, I don't use notes just because I can't write them.
	I'm dyslexic, so it reads sans.
	See, this is just a penis.
	I don't know if you can see.
	That's all I did on here.
	There's nothing useful.
	It's not a very good one, either, really.
	Well, it's a self-portrait, thank you, Professor.
	Yes, well, lots of people would agree with that.
	Yeah, well, look, not the least of all my life.
	Hey, speaking of things that you like and meeting people, we were just talking about this not long ago.
	One of your guilty pleasures, I hope I'm not outing you, I think people will be thrilled to hear this.
	It shouldn't be a surprise because you're Canadian, and I know you to have a sense of humor, but sometimes, you know, people see you as this more of a father figure.
	I'm just going to come out.
	Trailer Park Boys.
	You've seen every episode, right?
	Oh, I've seen every episode a number of times, yes.
	Yeah, I find that.
	I grew up in a working class community in Canada, in the north.
	I mean, that's all Atlantic Canada humor, the Trailer Park Boys, but it's the same thing.
	Yeah, I think those three characters are comic geniuses.
	I really do.
	I mean, it's filthy, and it's obscene.
	It's way too much.
	Yeah, it's inexcusable.
	It's way too much.
	And it reminds me of FUBAR, which is a Canadian movie, and it's about the same sort of people, except in the West.
	It's even more deadly aimed at the sort of people that I grew up with and they were working class people and they they were smart and they were bonded to each other and they were witty and and Well, I'm trying to rationalize this.
	I think it's funny.
	I think they're funny.
	The honky episode when the Bubbles character pulls out this damn puppet.
	I mean, I think that's one of the funniest 30 minutes of television that's ever been produced.
	It's really work of terrible, awful, unforgivable, obscene genius.
	And so more power to them.
	And yeah, I'm big fans.
	I haven't seen that in years.
	I don't know if you remember Anthony Hopkins' film Magic where he was sort of a serial killer through a ventriloquist dummy.
	That's exactly it. They have a pretty good imitation too.
	That was a, you know what? That was actually, and I, maybe perhaps I was reading into it too much.
	I thought that was a send up of, I don't know if you remember Anthony Hopkins, a film Magic, where he was sort
	of a serial killer through a ventriloquist dummy.
	And maybe they hadn't made that connection, but every time, you know, someone is sort of a cinephile, and I've seen,
	the only other person who I know who's seen more is Dave, who's not here right now.
	I always go, oh, wait, maybe there's a connection there.
	And you know what?
	I might want to tell you – maybe let me turn you on to a show.
	It's not a Canadian show, but it's – you will see, you can just hear the Canadian accent.
	It's all shot in Vancouver, even though it's set in Seattle.
	It's called Louder Milk, and it's about a 12-step program.
	Ron Livingston heads up a 12-step sort of Alcoholics Anonymous program.
	Um, in Seattle, he's a former music critic, and I don't want to give it away, but I will say Brian Regan, who's just known not only as a comedian, but an ultra clean, kind of goofy dad-like comedian, but really well respected, deserves an Emmy.
	He will rip your heart out.
	Louder Milk.
	Louder Milk.
	Yeah, there's three seasons, and I hope to God they make a fourth, but it is a really, really good show, and there is definitely a Canadian bent there, just because, you know, It absorbs.
	It's a character in and of itself.
	Even though it's set in Seattle, we all know what it's like out there in Western Canada.
	I kind of only have heard tales, because I grew up in Quebec, where we're not really witty and bonded.
	They're mostly just loud assholes.
	And they speak French, too, which is really unforgivable.
	It really is unforgivable.
	In this day and age.
	It's like, get on board, guys.
	It's like, you know...
	Join the rest of the world.
	Oh, it absolutely, it absolutely, see I'm not even joking though when I say that.
	People used to get furious when I would point to Quebec as an example of multiculturalism
	versus the melting pot and the United States gone wrong and I would talk to Americans when
	I lived in New York and I would say, do you realize you can just go 30 minutes north to
	the border and you can go into a country with its own culture.
	Different language.
	They don't speak a word of your language.
	You can't read a word of your language.
	They don't watch the same shows.
	They don't know your same celebrities.
	And they are a part of an English country known as Canada.
	But you will have gone to Quebec and you won't know that it's Canada.
	And by the way, they have a nationally representative party whose only interest is to separate from Canada.
	I said, this is part of the political—and these were a conquered people who the English said, you know what, all right, we'll let you have this, and we go through the plains of Abraham.
	And I tell Americans, I go, you just don't know.
	That's why you say, okay, look, French folk, time for you to feather in Canada's English.
	And then you have the referendums to—it'd be like, it'd be like Texas separating because they wanted to just be Spanish.
	It doesn't make any sense.
	Americans aren't understanding this, but Quebec's a silly place.
	That's my point.
	I should say, in Quebec's defense, that Montreal is a great city.
	If people in the U.S.
	want a quick taste of Europe, Montreal is a great place.
	It's truly one of the world's great cities.
	It really is.
	I love Montreal.
	I lived there for like eight years.
	It's such a great city.
	It's so fun.
	It's got such a dynamic culture.
	The street life is amazing.
	It's really, really safe.
	Like, you could wander around anywhere at three in the morning.
	It's no problem.
	It's beautiful.
	Well, I can't.
	I was mugged twice.
	In Montreal?
	Yeah.
	I was mugged over a set of Interpol tickets by a small Haitian.
	Incidental.
	I only say it because the story was one that I've told on air.
	Yeah.
	I was mugged for Interpol tickets.
	He was a scalper anyway.
	Mugged me for the money for the Interpol tickets.
	And anyway, the whole point is... That's really humiliating.
	That's really humiliating.
	Especially because he was small and it was Montreal.
	It's like, how did you manage that?
	And twice!
	Do you know how he got away?
	He screamed, I swear to you, this is true, he screamed out that I was racist and I stopped chasing him.
	That's good, that should have happened to you, that absolutely should have happened to you.
	This is the true story, okay?
	You can see God up in the clouds for you.
	Yeah, because I was going, why isn't anyone stopping him?
	I was going to see Interpol that night with my friend Carl.
	It was a band, sort of an indie rock band.
	I was going to see them at, I believe it was Metropolis or Spectrum, and I was going to what I knew was a scalper.
	Well, he didn't have Interpol tickets, but another guy who, you know, he presented himself as a scalper.
	Turns out, not all... I don't know if you know this, you have to be choosy with your scalpers.
	They're not all... Oh, you mean not all scalpers are honest?
	Not all legitimate.
	Isn't that something?
	Though, ironically, you'll hear at the end of this tale, it was all redeemed through an honest scalper.
	So this small Haitian man says, oh, you want Interpol tickets?
	I'm not even going to try and do his accent because people get all mad.
	But rest assured he had one.
	Sounds like most people who are Haitian immigrants in Montreal.
	And he said, I got Interpol tickets.
	And I said, OK.
	He gave me the price.
	And I said, it seems a little steep, but OK.
	So he goes to, I can't remember which hotel.
	I just remember it wasn't the Queen Elizabeth.
	It wasn't a hotel I was familiar with.
	He goes, I got to go pick them up at the front desk.
	Right away, I'm thinking, this is weird.
	He just said he has Interpol tickets.
	Why would he go to this hotel front desk?
	So he goes there, and then he goes into the restroom.
	again should have given me a red flag. I'm 16 years old, mind you.
	Uh, okay, well that's a bit more... Yeah, yeah, 16 years old and he comes out
	and then he has, uh, I see him putting, stuffing what's like toilet paper in this
	envelope and he goes, all right, here are the tickets, give me the money.
	And I said, uh, no, that's not, those aren't tickets.
	He said, what do you mean?
	I said, those are toilet paper.
	Those are toilet paper envelopes.
	And he goes, how do you know that?
	I said, well, I saw you put toilet paper in there.
	And he goes like, man, he walks out.
	So I go, OK.
	He walks out the revolving door.
	And then when I walk, I was waiting for him.
	He's like, no, no, you mistook it.
	These are the tickets.
	And he shows what actually looks like tickets at this point.
	I said, oh, OK.
	So then I hold my money, but I see that he's covering up the name on the ticket.
	And I said, let me see the ticket.
	And he goes, whoa, whoa, you don't trust me?
	You don't trust me?
	Making his accusations.
	And I said, no, no, no, just show me the ticket.
	He grabs the money from my hand.
	But the good thing is, he ripped the $20 bills in half, so it was of no value to him.
	So I find solace in that.
	Then he runs out in the middle of the street, and I'm going, hey, hey, that guy just took my money!
	And I'm at this point 6'1", 6'2", but very skinny.
	But this guy is all of 5'3".
	And he's running through the street, and I go, why isn't anyone doing it?
	Of course, no.
	French?
	Hey, ferme ta gueule!
	Tabarnak!
	They're not friendly at all.
	And this guy just goes, what?
	You're saying it because I'm black?
	You're racist?
	And I stop him like, what?
	No!
	No!
	And he just ran into an alleyway.
	And I thought, well, now the alleyway has him now.
	I'm 16 and it's an alleyway.
	And then finally I told the story to another scalper who was right outside the Interpol concert.
	At that point, the show had already started.
	And he said, man, there are some really rough people out there here.
	And he gave me the tickets because they were of no worth at that point.
	The show had already started.
	He gave me Interpol tickets, which was very nice.
	But then he said, don't trust the Haitians.
	And I said, you're racist.
	So it could have been full.
	You met the devil scalper and the saint scalper the same night.
	Right.
	Yeah, so the point is, not as safe as you make it out to be.
	But yes, Montreal is a wonderful city to visit.
	I don't know that I would ever want to live there again with the taxes, and I don't know that I could raise kids there at this point.
	I mean... I loved living there.
	I loved living there, so... Our Times Square is Club Supersex in Montreal.
	When I tell people that, I go, our Santa Claus parade is going back giant, flashing, neon, purple tits.
	It's not like there's a red light district.
	It's the whole city.
	And Americans are like, you're exaggerating.
	I go, just go visit.
	But, unbelievable restaurants, a lot of fun.
	So, Trailer Park, boys, okay.
	This is something that might surprise quite a few people.
	A lot has changed since we last spoke.
	I want to talk with you about this because I know you're eating some jerky right now, right?
	Am I seeing that?
	Lamb?
	Uh, yes.
	It's beef with lamb fat.
	It's beef with lamb fat.
	Well, I know you've talked about, you know, sort of the carnivore diet.
	I accidentally went on the carnivore diet after my surgery recently.
	For, like, hardline, accidentally, nothing but red meat for about five weeks.
	What happened?
	Well, I had surgery and then I gained 30 pounds in a week and a half.
	Now, I didn't know at that time that it was, I had a gallon and a half of fluid in my, well, for the Canadians out there, five and a half liters of fluid in my thoracic cavity.
	So I said, oh, I'm getting, I'm really gaining weight.
	I mean, I looked like I was, you know, looked like Macaulay Culkin after he found out he was allergic to bees and my girl.
	And I said I should cut out sweets.
	Well, that didn't do anything.
	I still kept gaining weight because, you know, I didn't know what was going on, internal bleeding and such.
	I said, well, you know, now I'll just cut out carbs.
	And it didn't work.
	But at that point, once I had been drained, you know, surgically, I had already gotten into that rhythm, and I was kind of by myself after five days in the ICU to recover.
	And I kind of enjoy grilling.
	It's something I've always done.
	You know, my wife will make the sides if we do a grill night, and then I'll make the meat.
	But at this point, my wife was across the country preparing to have twins, because we didn't foresee these complications, so I'm recovering by myself, and I'm grilling like a porterhouse, and I'm saying, I don't want to learn how to make the sides, that's my wife's thing.
	So it was born out of laziness.
	You are a sexist, you're a sexist person, and lazy too.
	Yes, yes!
	And you're a carnivore, you're carnivorous.
	You're really a bad person.
	I am an awful human being.
	Sounds like it.
	Yes, yes.
	Did you lose weight when you started eating just meat?
	Or was that still, like, were you still being affected by the surgery?
	No, so, so I lost, I lost, uh, like the 30 pounds in about six days because they actually drew weight.
	So I went in about 230 and I came out about 232.
	Um, so yeah, but it was, I tell you what, I didn't feel bad.
	Uh, I was surprised that there was just sort of born out of, All right.
	At this point, I was doing one meal a day, and I've just always preferred red meat.
	I'm not saying that I'm a doctor.
	I wouldn't advocate it necessarily to anyone, but it was accidental, and it was a fun little experiment.
	In other words, there were no side effects.
	Sometimes people are like, oh, I go through this.
	I was like, I think it could be a blood type thing.
	Because when I was a kid, my mom used to call me her carnivore.
	I'd go to McDonald's, and I'd say, could I not get the fries?
	Just double up on the burger patties.
	And she'd lock me in a closet.
	That accounts for some of your weird personal characteristics, I guess.
	Well, I've been eating basically nothing but meat.
	I don't like to talk about this much because I'm not a dietitian and it's really weird.
	In some ways, I just hate this diet because I love to cook and I love to go out to restaurants.
	It's very restrictive.
	But when I went on this diet to begin with, because of autoimmune issues, as far as I could tell, I lost like 50 pounds in six months.
	It was ridiculous.
	Really that much overweight.
	I'm about 6'2", but like eight pounds a month.
	It was unbelievable.
	I just couldn't believe it.
	And that is permanent.
	I've never gained the weight back.
	And so now I'm down to the same weight I was when I was like 26.
	I've never seen you overweight, though.
	Well, even back, that was in 2015.
	I was up to about 2'12", and I'm at 165 now.
	I was up to about 212 and I'm at 165 now.
	You know, I wasn't in great shape, but I was tall enough to carry it, but
	losing that much weight was quite the, it was a real shock to me, a conceptual shock.
	I couldn't believe it.
	I still can't believe it.
	For me, it was different gaining the weight so quickly.
	I mean, I think this is something people realize psychologically, and I would imagine it happens to a varying degree, but long term, you know, right now we've sort of talked, I've talked about this on the show to kind of go back to something a little, a little more philosophical.
	You know, the fat pride movement, for example, and this sort of ties in obviously with as
	we're struggling with an international pandemic and the signal being as preventative, you
	know, comorbidity is an obesity, but we're not allowed to talk about it because we've
	declared that it's beautiful.
	You know, when I gained that much weight very quickly, I felt it on my joints.
	Now, keep in mind, this was obviously fluid in my thoracic cavity was basically, you know, medically induced.
	It was a complication.
	But I felt like a very different person.
	And it was amazing how much it also affected my psyche.
	And I've got to imagine that even if that's happening over the course of a long period of time, sure, physiologically, you adjust more, you know, the connective tissue, but it's got to have an effect on your mental state.
	And like you've talked about even losing the weight.
	I mean, right now, this is right... Have we bound ourselves in such a knot to kind of go here with, to make COVID and the fat... And we need to delineate.
	People who are overweight and want to lose weight, and that's an entirely different situation than someone saying, you will declare me beautiful and healthy at the same time that we're told to follow science.
	Well, one of the things I've really been thinking about lately, and I'm going to write the next book that I'm going to write about this, I think, at least in part, is that It seems to me that if we don't have a delineated space, conceptually and socially, for the sacred and the religious, and that it's put in its proper relationship to the other things that we're concerned about, then what happens is not that we become pure rationalists, as people like Dawkins and Harris, for example, might hope, but that
	Much that should never be religious instantly becomes contaminated with it.
	Right.
	And so, an issue like body size, relative obesity, starts to take on this intensely moral element.
	And the people who are pushing hard against shaming someone if they're fat, they have their point, but it shouldn't be a moral issue to begin with.
	If you're overweight, it's not because you're a bad person.
	There's all sorts of reasons that you might be overweight, and we should be able to have a discussion about that without it becoming moral, and we can't, and part of the reason for that is, well, we don't know what's sacred and what isn't, and we don't even know that some things have to be, and we certainly don't know what things should be, and so everything in our political landscape is becoming contaminated, as far as I can tell, with What are essentially religious concerns, and I mean that psychologically, not theologically.
	Yeah.
	So, and that's not good.
	It's very bad.
	It also means that we're going to be more tempted to elevate our leaders, our political leaders, into spaces of treatment that should be reserved for the sacred, and that's not a good thing either.
	I mean, politicians are basically administrators, and that's the proper sense.
	That's the proper conception.
	Right.
	Yeah, as opposed to leaders who are really almost executive decision makers.
	That's not necessarily what they're supposed to be empowered to do.
	Well, they're not kings!
	No.
	They're not kings.
	I mean, one of the weaknesses, I think, of the American political system, which I admire greatly, is that it's not a monarchy.
	It's not a constitutional monarchy.
	And I think the advantage to a constitutional monarchy is that you have someone carry the weight of the symbolism of the state.
	And so, because you see this, and you really see this in the US, And you see it manifest itself in celebrity culture, too.
	It's very hard for Americans not to turn the president and his family into something like the royal family.
	And Americans place a tremendous amount of attention on the first family.
	It's very foreign to Canadians, because we never do that in Canada for one reason or another.
	But, you know, your president has to carry all that symbolic weight, and that's not good.
	I think it's a problem.
	It's a stark contrast.
	You know, we have assassination attempts in Canada.
	They have successful pyings of the Prime Minister, where they will get pied in the face.
	And that has happened many times.
	Now I tell Americans that, they go, you mean like your president? I go, yes, like our president.
	They go, like what? Like a Boston cream pie.
	Right in the face. On a podium.
	On national television. It has happened multiple times.
	They go, you can't be serious.
	I say, yes I am.
	And I had someone on this show, it's interesting that you bring up sort of discussing
	I don't remember who it was, and so please, if this person remembers, I don't want to miss giving them credit, or maybe they were quoting a philosopher, said, you know, the one thing that people sort of fail to realize about the monarchy is, unlike pure democracy, at least in the sense with the monarchy or royal family, they had some kind of attachment to To their legacy and wanting to be remembered fondly wanting to be remembered Well, because really there wouldn't be this capability of passing the buck that you voted for this.
	This is a democracy.
	So some in some ways they were actually More beholden to some kind of at least self-governing Moral moral compass moral guidance code of ethics.
	He said that's one of the sort of the great attributes that people often Miss out on, I thought, very introspectively on the monarchy.
	The worst part, the fruity hats.
	You're not a fan of the hats?
	Not a fan of the hats.
	Yeah, but I'm just, the first part was true.
	The second part, that was just my editorializing.
	But it is interesting, though, too.
	I mean, it is true.
	It's given to us a king.
	This is as old as time.
	I mean, this is really one of the original sins of the Bible.
	And one thing, going back to what you're talking about, sort of not keeping our sacred institutions separate, I see a lot, when I grew up, Not even noticing that we actually need a space for the sacred, and we need to figure out what that is.
	It isn't optional, and this is one of the problems I have with the atheist-rationalist types.
	The mistake they're making, I believe, is that they treat religion as if it's a set of propositions about the nature of reality, like a scientific theory.
	And religious people make a huge mistake because they react to the scientific criticisms also as if that's the case.
	But the religious is... This has nothing to do with an argument for or against the existence of God, by the way.
	That's a separate issue.
	Right.
	It's that the religious covers all sorts of elements of experience that aren't propositionalized.
	They're not statements about the structure of reality.
	So, architecture has a religious element.
	You certainly see that in the cathedrals.
	Music.
	Ritual.
	Yeah.
	All of that.
	It's more in the domain of the arts, let's say.
	So that's technically speaking.
	But then also within the domain of human experience.
	So we all have the capacity to experience awe, for example.
	And we can experience that to a greater or lesser degree.
	And I would say The more profound the experience of awe, the more it shades into what's always been described in religious terms.
	And so you can say, well, we'll dispense with religion, but, well, what about the experience of awe?
	That's not a proposition.
	It's not an argument.
	It's something that happens to you.
	And it takes you unaware, right?
	You don't necessarily expect it to happen, although sometimes you'll seek it out.
	And you Experience awe when you're in the face.
	And it seems to me that this is the case.
	You experience awe when you're faced by something that calls you.
	It's beyond you.
	It's greater than you.
	So you see that, and you experience that.
	But then it also calls to you, in some sense, to be better than you are.
	And that seems to be an intrinsic part of the experience.
	And there's no just rationally dispensing with that, atheist or not.
	You can experience this.
	I think you experience it when you look up at the night sky, if you're somewhere extraordinarily dark.
	And maybe it's a problem that modern people often don't have that experience now.
	So the argument I'm formulating, I suppose, like I said, this is part of the next book I'm planning to write, is that we need to have a really serious conversation about The psychological reality of the religious, and how it exists in relationship to, let's say, the political or the ideological.
	Because if that's all mangled together, incautiously...
	All sorts of things happen that we don't want to have happen.
	And that's the issue of rendering unto God what is God, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
	And that's also the idea that church and state need to be separated, not only politically and constitutionally, say, but also conceptually.
	Otherwise we get muddied up.
	And so the atheists, the atheist types, what they haven't grappled with, as far as I can tell, is, well, There is a hierarchy of values.
	Some values are lesser than others.
	Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to pursue what you believe to be the most important.
	So some things announce themselves as more important than other things.
	There's a ranking of those.
	The most important issues, they're in the domain of something approximating the religious.
	And whenever you touch on them, you elicit from people religious experience, religious reactions.
	And like I said, that has nothing to do with an argument for or against the existence of God.
	It's a philosophical and conceptual issue.
	And part of the problem that we're facing in our society is that we're muddying the lines.
	And that means all sorts of things get inflated beyond their...
	They're necessary importance, and it also means that the arguments aren't about what we're arguing about at all.
	They're about something underneath that's hidden.
	Yeah.
	And that pops up everywhere.
	I think no more apparent than actually, to sort of piggyback on that, but explain a little bit of a difference in where I was raised.
	I was on YouTube in 2006, right, and then 2009 doing every week, and there were no conservatives,
	there were no real Christians, no one of significant note, not like today, like yourself or other
	even Christian and political channels out there, self-help, whatever we wanted, however
	we want to describe them.
	It was the edgy atheist territory, right?
	It was you were an atheist or bust.
	And I watched them sort of always trying to attack Christians, and I wouldn't say in a
	way that's completely unfounded with, well, how do you reconcile your religion in the
	face of this scientific data?
	You know, that's what they would often be arguing, or the evolution argument was very
	big back then.
	Whereas now, I see it on the flip side, where especially in this sort of era of COVID, where, like you're talking about, in muddying the lines, sometimes science has tried to insert itself and almost replace religion.
	And people, not necessarily science itself, but people have tried to turn to science as a religion for, for example, things that are unexplainable sometimes.
	Well, the other problem that comes up there, as far as I can tell, and Sam Harris has tried to address this, although I don't think he's done it successfully, is that we're always faced with the problem of perception and action.
	We have to see the world, we have to hear the world, we have to interact with the world through our senses, and we have to act.
	None of that's optional.
	And even to perceive something, you have to Select what's important and what isn't.
	So if you listen to someone in a crowded room, you focus in on their speech and not on the speech of the people in the background.
	Right.
	And so you prioritize that person's speech in the hierarchy of value that guides your perception.
	Well, so you're stuck with existing inside a system of value.
	There's no way out of that.
	Well, it isn't obvious at all that science can provide us with guides as to what constitutes
	the appropriate values.
	And it's not obvious to scientists.
	In fact, I would say that science in some sense was designed so that that was something
	it didn't even try to do.
	Right.
	Because it's trying to present an objective viewpoint, devoid of, to the degree that it's
	possible, devoid of a priori value judgments.
	But then you have this whole domain of, well, we need to make judgments of value.
	Well, okay.
	And when I point out, for example, that there are things that call to you experientially that are outside of rationality, I would say to the atheists, well, why don't you look at the science of religious experience, let's say, or that domain, and try to account for that from within your particular perspective.
	If you criticize the religious people for not following the science, what are you going to do with this fact that human beings are wired, for example, Right.
	admire and to imitate that which they Which they find calls them to a greater self, right?
	That's the the instinct for imitation. And so what is it?
	We're imitating and and why do we imitate that particular value? And so that the whole that
	Well, that's a domain of unexplored mystery that has to be taken seriously
	This isn't a matter of mere rationality, by no means.
	And I think you make a great point about the hierarchy of values, and so you end up looking toward a messianic figure.
	I mean, this is kind of what was supposed to be beautiful to me about the scientific process.
	I hate the word the science now.
	The science is the equivalent to—it is an equivalent to religion, just like Scientology in a certain way.
	They put science in the name, the science, especially if someone says that with Fauci pillow in their office, which Governor Whitmer did at
	my wonderful home state of Michigan.
	Science, what was beautiful about it, is that it wasn't determined by consensus. Like you said, that was by design.
	It was determined by truth.
	It didn't necessitate, and as a matter of fact, it rejected people saying, this is the right science because of
	consensus.
	No, no. If the consensus is the world is flat, but it's wrong, the science says that you're wrong.
	And now we're at this point where people don't even understand they're making these same religious judgments and saying, when we say trust the science, we're saying Fauci.
	Well, hold on a second.
	What about when Fauci goes against the World Health Organization?
	What about when the World Health Organization doesn't actually correspond with the CDC?
	What about the fact that you have other scientists at the time, for example, who've come out and said Fauci was wrong while he was talking about the fact that if you lived in a home with a parent who had AIDS, you could catch it from a cereal box?
	This is all on the record.
	You had all kinds of other scientists who are more qualified who said, this is not the guy.
	And people, in not understanding that they've made this value judgment, have said, no, no, I've decided he's the guy.
	And this is a real problem right now because You know, this kind of brings me, and I hope that this all makes sense, and you can just tell me if I'm stammering.
	I've always had my litmus test for a conspiracy theory, when you have to kind of dismiss it, right?
	You can't go through every conspiracy that someone brings up.
	You'd have too much to debunk.
	You do have to start with, how many people is they?
	How many people is they in this conspiracy theory?
	How many people have to be involved?
	Okay, so one of the things you're suggesting implicitly is that one of the ways we establish value judgments Is through consensus.
	But that isn't how we do science.
	And fair enough, but it does point to some mechanism for the establishment of value.
	So if you're trying to figure out what's important, what isn't, well, one way you can do that is to see what people in general think, and that might be a reasonable thing to do.
	But, as you pointed out, that's not part of the scientific process.
	Certainly not.
	It'd be very weak if it was.
	Right.
	And now I guess my point that I was going to, sort of, in where we live, the domain, you know, big tech, this sort of sphere where we One point we're really grateful that there weren't gatekeepers the conspiracy now when we say hold on a second We're talking about Fauci the CDC and scientific guidelines that fly in the face of other scientific guidelines the they and this conspiracy is really only about five heads of organizations people have decided about five you're talking about five companies in
	in about two or three international governing bodies who determine what is allowed to be spoken,
	regardless of your scientific qualifications, for it to be considered proper or misinformation.
	And by the way, they can change that a week from now, and they have, we've documented at least
	20-something times. That, to me, is religious dogma.
	I talked to John Anderson last week. He was the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia
	a variety of years ago, a number of years ago.
	He was Finance Minister when they ran something like five consecutive budget surpluses nationally.
	That's a hell of an accomplishment for a Western democracy man.
	So he's a very sensible guy.
	And we were talking about what was happening in Australia underneath this, as a consequence of the COVID pandemic and various other causes.
	His point, essentially, too, was that, well, because politicians, in some sense, are abdicating their responsibility, we're forcing medical people to make what are essentially political decisions.
	And so, just as much of the dialogue that, much of the problems that beset us politically are a consequence of the bleeding over of religious concerns into the political domain, we now have bleeding over of the scientific concerns into the political domain, because politicians are using these experts as proxies for their own particular, for pushing forward their own particular ideological positions.
	And that's a very dangerous misuse of science.
	And so you see that in the climate change discussion too, where The insistence is, well, here's the problem, and this is the magnitude of the problem, and it's a moral issue, and you have to accept that, or you're not a good person, or you're ignorant, or you're malevolent, you're a bad person, fundamentally.
	But part of the reason that that insistence is there is because there's a pack of solutions at hand in that person's imagination that are usually ideological in nature, and if the first proposition is true, then That the imposition of that particular set of solutions is a fait accompli, and so not examining that is extraordinarily dangerous, because if you have that ideological set of solutions, then you're going to be extraordinarily tempted to co-opt the force of the scientific endeavor as a justification for your political ambitions.
	It's very difficult for people to separate those sorts of things out.
	Like, I believe, personally, I believe this, is that It's very, very probable to me that massive solutions to the climate change problem
	Global-scale solutions, even national-scale solutions, are going to cause far more trouble than the problem itself will cause.
	I really believe that.
	Of course.
	So... Yeah, no, I don't think there's any question about that.
	I mean, I learned that again when I was 20 years old and I went to the Cancun Climate Summit and I watched Ted Turner propose China's one-child policy to thunderous applause.
	Everyone had flown into Cancun.
	They hadn't heard of Skype.
	I was there.
	I was there, and I said, oh.
	You know what?
	For me, that's when I stopped trying to feign being a centrist.
	I said, oh no.
	Why did that strike you so hard, do you think?
	How old were you?
	And so why did that hit you so hard?
	I would have been 21 or 22.
	I just started at Fox News.
	I think it struck me so hard because it was sort of funny.
	You know, you always see the hypocrisy.
	Everyone's a hypocrite.
	I always say, don't focus on the hypocrisy.
	Focus on whether it's genuine.
	For example, Nancy Pelosi was a hypocrite when she went and had her air vortex blown out.
	It's not that she's a hypocrite, it's that she doesn't believe about COVID,
	what she tells her constituents, or she wouldn't be going out in public
	and putting her head into a particle accelerator.
	So the issue there is I had seen the hypocrisy, it was kind of funny.
	They all really were all a bunch of climate scientists finding an excuse to vacation in Cancun.
	This is when it was still the CODA protocol.
	And then it hit me when about as bad of a policy as you can think of, right?
	Almost a policy that would be considered a strawman if you were to say to an environmental, almost paganist, which is what I would determine some of these people to be now who worship at the Altar of Gaia, if you were to say, well, how far does it go?
	Like China's one-child policy?
	They would have said, oh, okay, strawman, red herring, and rightfully so!
	I would think many of them would have agreed with it in their heart of hearts.
	It's like, yeah, you know goddamn well there's too many people on this planet.
	It's like they have to go somewhere or other.
	We're a cancer on the surface of the planet.
	Well, I guess I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and then hearing Ted Turner say it, and I thought, that's as extreme as it gets, and that's not a problem.
	Okay, I'm out.
	I'm out with any... I'm not on board with any... I'm not going to feign being a centrist here, because this guy wants to... Okay, so why did you think that was a bad idea?
	So, like, why not?
	Why not have fewer people?
	And why wouldn't that be better for the planet?
	What do you see as a danger in that?
	Well, that comes from a fundamental worldview, where I don't believe that basically our role here is to be subservient to the planet.
	Our role here is to go forth and subdue the planet.
	And that we were created in the image of God, and not the wildebeest, not the beast of the field, nor the fish of the sea.
	I think we need to be good stewards of the planet.
	But the minute you start getting into the territory of eliminating human life for the betterment of the planet, to me, that's a pagan religion diametrically opposed to not only, obviously, the Christian worldview, but a pro-human worldview.
	I just don't think you can do it.
	You're killing babies, right?
	We talk about taxes.
	Who's going to enforce... Hey, hold on a second.
	Is that child number two?
	I mean, we know what happens in China.
	I've made jokes about them.
	That's a straightforward route to walk down.
	It's like, yeah, you really want to cede that much power to your governmental structure?
	Right.
	And you're not worried about authoritarianism?
	Are you sure of that?
	And are you so sure that your motives for positing that Have nothing to do with anything but your saint-like devotion to the long-term well-being of the entire planet?
	You're really sure of that?
	Are you?
	And why?
	And how come you're not sure that maybe you're not a bit bitter and maybe you just don't like people that much because life is hard and you've suffered a lot and you're angry and this is a bit of revenge?
	And like, if you don't think you have motivations like that, then I don't think you've thought very much because If you put someone in a vice president and make them suffer, they're going to produce all sorts of bitter ideas.
	We have to watch out for that.
	We have to be very careful about that.
	Well, I think that's an interesting parallel, right?
	The climate situation, because I've always said this.
	Look, I'm not saying that there is no impact, of course, in humans and climate change.
	And I'm not a scientist.
	I don't work for NOAA, even though they get their predictions wrong every single year.
	But my point is, I don't hold myself out to be an expert.
	However, I can say it doesn't pass a sniff test when I read the entire 16-page Green New Deal and it says, And social justice and equity in there.
	You just added everything into this bill.
	This doesn't make sense, right?
	I don't have to say, hey, here are my scientific qualifications to say, I don't believe that AOC or the UN have a shot in fixing it, getting China to play in line.
	When you look at the policy proposals, Way, way down the trail.
	Policy proposals.
	No way they work, so it doesn't matter if your science leads to those policy proposals.
	You can't enact it.
	So let's try and be better and not throw our sh** out the window, you know, when we're... Well, you have to be a pretty damn incautious scientist to posit that the science necessarily elicits a given policy approach, because One of the things you learn as a practicing scientist is that you set up your experiment to test the micro details of your pet theory and it's highly probable that
	The experimental results will turn out some other way than you predicted, even when you're trying to predict small things.
	And so, to say we can go from the science to the policy as if there's no intervening mystery, and as if, as a scientist, you're 100% certain that the imposition of your policy is only going to produce the results you intended and nothing else, none of that's science.
	Right.
	A scientist with any sense would never, ever make a claim like that, having learned through painful laboratory experience that everything will go wrong with your stupid theory that you can possibly imagine, and then a whole bunch more, too.
	So there isn't a direct line from the science to the policy.
	When anyone ever tells you that, They're not speaking as a scientist, except perhaps in, you know, extraordinarily limited cases.
	Moving from what the situation is to what we should do about it to bring a given future into being, that's an unbelievably difficult proposition.
	And science can only solve that in micro-domains.
	And so that's the problem with saying, well, you know, the science is settled.
	It's like, yeah, why are you telling me that?
	Like, why is it so important for you that I believe that?
	Oh, well, it's because I need to do these things.
	It's like, yeah, that's exactly why.
	Right.
	Because the science just sits there as a set of facts.
	A set, in some sense, if it's properly done, as a set of disembodied facts.
	Right.
	Well, what do we do about that?
	Well, that's a different question.
	How do we decide what to do about it?
	That's a different question, too.
	Those aren't scientific questions, as far as I can tell.
	I think we all see sort of the art world mirrored in science a little bit, and this goes right to sort of what you were talking about and how this is happening in real time.
	If we want to know what will happen with the climate proposals long term, take a long-term version of what's been accelerated with COVID and the radical changes in proposals.
	We didn't take that first step, at least not in a multitude of ways.
	Okay, where are we?
	What is actually happening?
	We rushed to, you have to do this.
	This is what has to be done.
	This has to be the proposal.
	Wait, hold on a second.
	Put that back.
	We're going to change it.
	And as a comedian, I've talked about this with comedy.
	I think there's Objectively funny.
	Objectively funny. You put people there, maybe people don't find them, but like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Norm MacDonald,
	right?
	You may not love them, but they're objectively funny.
	Objectively unfunny, which is people who've been open-miking for 20 years and never made a dime.
	They're obviously not very good. And then they're subjective.
	This is with most art, right?
	Some art will appeal to some people.
	I think with science there is the objective facts, data.
	At some point something is settled, otherwise we'd never get anything done.
	For example, if I say the room temperature is 67 degrees right now, I know that it is, otherwise someone will be fired if it's not.
	I'm a tyrant.
	Now there's the objectively incorrect.
	I know the room is not 63 degrees because I can look at the thermometer.
	But then there's the subjective of how do we most effectively, let's say, get 267 degrees.
	And it seems as though we've really just blurred that line.
	in COVID with the objective and that whole subjective or in science yet to be determined
	and we've altered everyone's lives because of it. And that's not to say that it's not a pandemic and
	that it's not a virus that is particularly lethal to certain groups of people. But it seems like a
	right now, especially in big tech, asking the why we've done what we've done and if this is the
	correct course forward is really scary and a lot of people are afraid to speak out.
	This is something you and I haven't had a chance to talk about because I haven't spoken in a while.
	The world has changed dramatically.
	Has it changed your view of where the world is going fundamentally than when we last spoke maybe a year and a half, two years ago?
	Well, I have been shocked to see how As fragile our civil liberties have turned out to be across the West.
	I mean, we basically, China put the first lockdowns into place.
	And we mimicked, so we mimicked the actions of a totalitarian state instantly.
	Now, you know, we didn't know what to do exactly in some sense.
	So it's a complicated problem.
	We didn't know the magnitude of the problem.
	And it's hard to criticize people In some sense for jumping to conclusions prematurely.
	Right.
	But it's a long while later and the danger of using danger as an excuse for social control is making itself more and more manifest.
	Yeah.
	I've been very, very sick through most of this, so I haven't had a chance to think it through as much as I might have wanted to.
	And I've been criticized for that, too, for, you know, not adding my voice to the general clamor.
	I mean, I spoke again with, well, the leader of a new political party in Canada, Maxime Bernier, after I spoke with John Anderson about the COVID issue.
	My sense is that with the proper policy move, essentially, I think, is something like Well, we've got the vaccines.
	We think they're useful.
	You can get one whenever you want.
	Now.
	And so, and lots of people have got them.
	So, January 15th, everything's open.
	And if you don't, if you're not vaccinated and you have your reasons for that, well, then we'll still do what we can to make sure the systems are in place to take care of you if you get sick, but It's time to get back to normal and I think an approach like that would actually convince a lot more people to get vaccinated because when you push and you push and you force and you mandate then
	All you do is increase the skepticism, radically increase the skepticism of those who are skeptical of pushing and forcing and shoving and mandating.
	And I just see that, I see all of that mandate, all of that force as a admission of the failure of policy.
	Well, you didn't convince as many people as you think you should have that the vaccine was a good idea.
	Well, whose fault is that?
	Well, it's the anti-vaxxers, those sons of bitches.
	No, no, no.
	You didn't formulate your argument properly.
	You didn't formulate your argument carefully.
	It's not so clear that all those idiots, it's their problem, and they're just stupid and malevolent compared to you.
	It's a policy failure, and you don't admit that, you won't admit that, and so now you think you're justified in the use of force.
	And you're justifying that because, well, you're doing the right thing.
	It's like, are you?
	Are you doing the right thing, exactly?
	I remember when the vaccine first came out.
	It was unanimous, right?
	The insult du jour was, oh, you dumb anti-vaxxers.
	OK, Republicans will kill off their own base.
	Problem solved, right?
	Darwin Awards.
	I thought, great!
	If you believe that, then let them win it.
	And then it became, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
	You said you didn't care.
	Let them kill themselves off.
	That is proof positive that the argument they presented was that someone not being vaccinated didn't affect them.
	And I don't even want to get into the whole main, anyway, people know where I line up on that, but I will say this.
	Well, you see weird, you see very weird things happening in Australia right now.
	And so, for example, there, and I hope I've got this right, but the police, they're using an app that Works on your cell phone, which so conveniently happens to know where you are, which perhaps turns out to not be such a good thing.
	And maybe you have to send the police a photograph of yourself with something in the background that proves you are in fact right there.
	It's like, okay, are you so sure that that app isn't more dangerous than the virus?
	Right.
	You know, because it's not obvious.
	Like these, you look at an app, like you look at this technology.
	This technology is stunningly, overwhelmingly, cataclysmically powerful.
	Right.
	And you think, well, it's just an app.
	It's like, yeah, and Tinder was just a dating app, too.
	But it completely transformed the psychological dynamics of Human sexual interactions.
	Now whether that's how permanent that is, is a whole different question.
	But we're faced with these radical technologies every day and we don't even notice how revolutionary they are.
	Like this app, this is quite something that you have to send, that the technology is already there to establish a system that makes it the case that you have to take a photograph of yourself and send it to the police so they know where you are so that you can go and do your business.
	Are you sure that's not more dangerous than the virus?
	Yeah, and uh... Because it isn't obvious to me!
	No, it's not obvious, and I would take that one step back, you know, because I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist when I said, uh, red lights, uh, red light cameras are unconstitutional.
	Same exact argument.
	Because a red light camera can't, it's not a human being, it doesn't present context, these things can be faulty, and you don't have the right to monitor me at any point at any intersection.
	So, I think... Worse than that, worse than that, are you so sure that establishing the precedent that enables a machine To find someone and elicit the force of the state is a good precedent.
	Right.
	Because, remember, these things are getting twice as smart every year or so.
	It's like, where exactly do we want them to go?
	Well, if nature's kind, that Australian app technology will be relegated to yet another pile of a mechanism for d**k pics.
	That would be our greatest hope.
	We'll see, won't we?
	It's terrifying to think of, and I would say this, what scared me most is not just policy, not that, I've always believed that civil rights, certainly the government would see them as Riddle.
	What struck me the most, and then we'll go to Mug Club only a little bit here because we've been going along on YouTube and I want to show a clip of you sort of talking about authoritarian regimes and their relation with infectious diseases, which may be a little difficult on YouTube.
	We never know what they'll think about that.
	But I will say this.
	What's scared me the most And as someone who's far more thoughtful than myself, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
	What scared me more is not what the government would do.
	I never realized how willing half of the country, half of the world and now even more, but my fellow countrymen are willing to rat me out.
	Even knowing that it could come with dire, violent consequences.
	We're going, I want to flag this person.
	Look, this person's breaking the rule.
	This person can't be allowed to go in public.
	This person doesn't have a passport and revel in it.
	Yeah.
	Well, you also want to ask yourself, are you so sure you want to set up policy that rewards that kind of behavior?
	Because you think, well, it's for a good reason.
	It's like, yeah, well, you train, people do what they practice.
	And they practice what you incentivize.
	Are you sure you want to incentivize that?
	And so, I mean, we have these liberties, in some sense, to distribute decision-making power so that cataclysmic errors aren't made in the name of doing the best thing.
	Right.
	And so... So I think, well, I think the vaccines are there, I'm vaccinated for what it's worth, and I'm not stating that as some badge of moral superiority, but I'm still I, it seems to me that the right policy move is, here's the vaccines, they're available, we're opening up, take your chances, and away we go, and let's get back to our free life.
	Now the problem is, what's scary, is the fact that you just said something entirely reasonable, and I go, yeah, that sounds, and I don't even necessarily know that I agree, I think that I would take it more extreme, you know, being the right-wing extremist, I would say they had no authority to do any of this in the first place, and take it a step further, but the point is, Either one of our views could result in this being removed because the policies, and this goes to the First Amendment, right?
	It doesn't just involve the government.
	Now you have people who meet with the federal government, who meet with international governing bodies.
	I mean, it's not, again, it's not a conspiracy to say, Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Wojcicki, Jack Dorsey, that these people are in a meeting, a closed-room meeting, and come out with agreed-upon terms of what you're allowed to say.
	Look behind us.
	There's the Orwellian doublethink.
	And I will say that has accelerated exponentially since the last time we've spoken.
	And it is scary.
	That's what scares me, not a new disease or even the next pandemic.
	What scares me more is my fellow countrymen.
	Well, the next pandemic worries me, too, because now we've established a precedent, which is if the health risk is severe enough, Then your civil liberties are optional.
	Okay, so, well, exactly how severe?
	I mean, exactly.
	And then I think about other freedoms that we have, like the freedom to drive.
	That's actually pretty dangerous.
	And it's not that good for the planet.
	And so just what makes you think that you should be doing that exactly?
	Like the safety issue, the impact issue, It's very disturbing to me to see those issues being hijacked for what are essentially political purposes.
	Yeah.
	And it's worrisome.
	Remember that shocking moment when you first get behind the wheel of the car by yourself when you're 16 or 17 and you're like, what?
	Two tons of steel glass and gasoline and I can point it anywhere?
	No kidding.
	It's no kidding.
	There's nothing that embodies individual freedom more than a 550 horsepower internal combustion engine sports car in the hands of a young man.
	Well, now you're just showing off.
	It's bloody amazing that that was ever allowed.
	I know.
	I know.
	It is absolutely insane.
	And you know what?
	The same thing can be said for the first time I ever shot a gun when I moved to the United States.
	I said, oh, oh, oh, this is the finality.
	This isn't a film.
	And that's why I've always encouraged people to take proper shooting lessons and just go understand what it is to respect the power of anything mechanical, whether it be an automobile or be a Be a gun.
	And with our kids too, I will have my kids shooting very, very young just to make sure they respect it.
	Because I tell you what, I knew, I think I was 20 years old when I first fired a firearm, I said, you know what?
	Had I never shot a gun, I don't know that if I walked into the magical closet of mystery and stumbled across a gun, let's say a friend's father's gun, that I would have respected it.
	But I know if I would have shot this gun when I was a kid, I absolutely would have.
	And so I spoke to my wife.
	I said, we're going to get them to a shooting range with us, supervised, as young as they can so that they learn respect for it.
	Because I had no respect at all for that.
	And very little respect for my parents' paneled Windstar.
	It was an awful, awful, awful vehicle.
	You couldn't get a less cool car.
	Actually, no wait, that was the upgrade.
	It was an old Aerostar, which was shittier.
	Okay, we're gonna go to a mug clip because I want to show a clip talking about authoritarian regimes and infectious diseases, but the book, the new one if people don't have it, as I say new because you haven't been here in a while, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life.
	There might be some bonus rules in there because he likes them.
	Where can people get it there, Professor?
	They can get it anywhere.
	Any bookstore, any bookseller, online at Amazon, it's round.
	And so, if you like the first book, well, hopefully you'll like the second book.
	The online consensus seems to be, on Amazon, there's thousands of reviews, that it's an improvement over the first book.
	So, I hope that's true.
	Well, you tease me, as the professor knows I can't read.
	YouTube, thank you very much.
	We're going to go discuss things that you may not allow, we don't know, not gonna chance it.

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