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May 23, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:10

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #398

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	Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
	Welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 23rd of May 2022.
	My name is Carla and I'm joined by Dave Reboi of the Claremont Institute and Late Republic Nonsense on Substack.
	Dave, it's a real pleasure to have you here.
	It's great to be here.
	I've been wanting to do this forever, and I finally got the chance.
	Same here.
	I've been following you for quite some time.
	And if anyone doesn't follow Dave on Twitter, then you're missing out on...
	All I can describe is barbaric savagery against left-wingers.
	You can look smug about that.
	That's a compliment.
	Polite barbaric savagery.
	Sometimes.
	But anyway, no, it's lovely to have you here because...
	At least my parents don't read it.
	So, you know, I can get away with a lot more.
	Yeah, that's why I enjoy Twitter because my parents didn't use it.
	But anyway, so today we're going to be talking about Elon Gates, CPAC going to Hungary.
	You spoke at CPAC in Hungary, didn't you?
	I did.
	I did.
	It was a great experience.
	I came from CPAC Hungary directly here.
	And look, it was fantastic.
	I hadn't been in Hungary for 25 years.
	I grew up speaking Hungarian.
	And when you get older and your grandparents get older and they pass away, it's harder to maintain the language, especially one as complicated and as...
	You know, tiny as Hungarian.
	No, no.
	And it's just a mess when it comes to grammar and the rules and all that stuff.
	But I was amazed at how much just came back instantly.
	And I could absolutely get on.
	You know, I can't have an elevated conversation about politics yet.
	But, you know, I could get on in Budapest just fine.
	And, yeah, I mean, it...
	That experience fed into the theme of my speech there, which was about the importance of language, especially language in terms of the nation.
	We'll talk about it in a minute, because that'll be the middle segment.
	And then the last segment is with friends like these who need leftists.
	You can guess who I'm talking about there.
	Mr.
	French.
	Mr.
	Crenshaw.
	Anyway, let's begin.
	So, have you been following what Elon Musk has been doing?
	Yeah, I mean, you see on Twitter, you just open it up and you're like, wow, this guy's on fire.
	Yes, he's been going absolutely mad.
	And so the hashtag ElonGate has been going in regards to an alleged sex scandal.
	Oh, well, yeah.
	I mean, the sex scandal I didn't follow.
	I just saw the news and I just thought, okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
	I've got all the information.
	Let me know.
	But look, I mean, I'm a fan.
	People say that he got to his anti-woke position because he realized that, heck, I won't be able to send rockets and people into space with a crop of university-educated Soy Boys.
	Soy Boys, right.
	So I don't know if that's true, but whatever it is, I think he's got his mind right.
	I think he does have some sort of liberal ideology as well.
	He says he's a free speech absolutist, and I think it's probably true.
	Right.
	He wrote that statement, which was great.
	And I think, as opposed to almost any other billionaire in his position, he actually wrote that statement, as opposed to one of his people wrote it.
	And he's really going out on a limb here.
	But before we go on, I just want to point out that I know how Elon Musk keeps winning.
	And it's because I did a video on LotusTaste.com.
	And if you'd like to support us, you can go and watch this.
	It's a premium video talking about the secrets of Rousseau.
	And so I find this fascinating.
	So Edmund Burke apparently spoke to David Hume, who told him that he had spoken to Jean-Jacques Rousseau when he was in refuge in London after writing a bunch of radical nonsense.
	And Rousseau had revealed to him what his secrets of being a successful political thinker were.
	And the secret is you have to present people with marvels and wonders that will fascinate them.
	And this is what Elon Musk's entire career has been based on.
	He's very good at self-promotion, very good at making people go, ooh, sending stuff into space, you know, when he sent his car into space, things like this.
	That's exactly the kind of thing that Rousseau did.
	Steve Jobs type.
	Steve Jobs, L. Ron Hubbard.
	Good self-promoters.
	But that's exactly it.
	To present wonders to the public, they can get invested in and have an emotional connection to.
	But anyway, let's begin with going through what Elon's been doing.
	So he says, if there's ever a scandal about me, please call it Elon Gate in 2021.
	Excellent.
	A year ago or so, just over.
	Excellent.
	Yep.
	You got your wish there, Elon.
	So, unsurprisingly, on the 18th of May, Elon tweeted out this.
	In the past, I voted Democrats because they were mostly the Kindness Party.
	Do you agree with that?
	No.
	I mean, where in the past were they the Kindness Party?
	Well, I was a...
	1816?
	Well, I mean, I was a right-winger.
	I was a right-winger my whole life, or I have been.
	So I take issue with this, but I understand.
	Because Elon is about...
	I think he's a little older than we are.
	And the period of the 90s were apolitical for most people.
	And they had good branding in the 90s.
	They had great branding in the 90s.
	It was not scary.
	In fact, the people who...
	to look scary by the media were the right-wingers who ended up being right about everything.
	Trevor Burrus: Unfortunately for them, yeah.
	Aaron Ross Powell: Yeah, yeah.
	But I think that's where it comes from.
	I mean he's a child of the 90s.
	Trevor Burrus: Yeah.
	And again, honestly, it's kind of like Donald Trump in a way.
	Yes.
	Because in the 90s, the order was established.
	Things were set.
	And like you say, things felt fairly apolitical, which gave them a lot of room to maneuver in ways that seemed like a logical continuation of what was already happening.
	It made them sound very empathetic.
	And to the people who didn't realize there was a radical agenda that was challenging the order, underpinning it, they, oh, yeah, of course I can do this.
	Of course we can do this.
	Of course, we know where it led.
	But anyway, he says, but they've become the party of division and hate, so I can no longer, okay, they've become.
	It's like, who was on the side of the Jim Crow laws?
	Who was on the side?
	Well, you cut him some slack for his immigrant experience.
	I know, but he's obviously talking about the Dems from the 90s.
	I was thinking, yeah, but that's a very short window of time.
	Yes.
	You know, where they weren't an evil party, obviously.
	Right.
	I mean, they were definitely evil in the 20s.
	They were definitely, you know, I mean, they were putting, Woodrow Wilson is one of the great villains in American history.
	I don't know much about Wilson, actually, I've got to say.
	Yeah.
	Well, he was the first real progressive.
	Oh, really?
	I mean, he was the president of Princeton.
	Right.
	Which, and he came with, you know, his kind of, I mean, scientific socialism.
	Oh, really?
	I mean he was the one who said basically that the founding of America was too limiting.
	Is he the one who watched Birth of a Nation?
	He was.
	He was also the one who re-segregated the civil service.
	So they desegregated and then he re-segregated the civil service.
	But they're part of kindness, man.
	You've got to listen.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I know.
	We shouldn't go hard on it, Elon, because we know what he's talking about.
	He's talking about 90s Democrats when they were the Bill Clinton party.
	And honestly, right, if they were still that party, I wouldn't have any objection to them, really.
	You know, there was a lot of things in the 90s Democrat platform that I completely agreed with.
	Bill Clinton was like, build a wall, you know?
	Right, right.
	But there's a great piece that I read this morning in a tablet, which is, I think, one of the best websites out there, by Michael Lind, who's great.
	And it was about the three insane ideas that seemed to be victorious in the 90s.
	There was – one was trade.
	Another one was interventionist foreign policy.
	Another one was deficits.
	But I mean the deficits one I'm not that conversant with.
	But the other two for sure.
	And we had more than a decade of – at least on the trade issue, more than a decade of open borders.
	Everything will be great.
	The economy will just – there will be no negative repercussions for the economy.
	The neoliberal consensus.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	The neoliberal consensus.
	And it's amazing now today that it's falling apart and I think that's what's causing a great amount of terror on the part of some people we'll talk about later like David French.
	Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the neoliberal consensus was between both parties.
	Yes.
	So it's not just the Democrats who are guilty of that.
	Anyway, so carrying on with Elon, it says, but they've become the party of division and hate, and I can no longer support the normal vote Republican.
	Now watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold.
	Judging by the relentless hate stream from the far left, this tweet was spot on.
	I've just switched from moderate, and someone just underneath, it says, I've just switched from moderate D to moderate R, and as I think many independent voters have done, we'll know the magnitude of this trend in November.
	I think it's big.
	So this is interesting because...
	I mean, no one was asking him to do that, right?
	Like, he didn't have to make that statement, or at least that's how it appears.
	And so coming out just, you know, saying, well, look, I think I'm going to vote Republican because the Democrats cancer, that's, he knows that he's going to get a huge blowback from that.
	But the question is why?
	Because the very next day, Of course, this allegation came out.
	Now, I think that Elon Musk got a request from...
	For comment, of course.
	Yes.
	And that's why the day before, he's like, right, okay, I know what's coming here.
	I'm voting Republican.
	He's not a dumb guy.
	But the thing is, exactly, he's not a dumb guy.
	But to the public, it looks very much like he just out of nowhere says, I'm going to vote Republican because I just think Democrats are awful.
	And then suddenly, oh, you know, you're a sex criminal now, which is, I mean...
	How far back does that allegation go when it comes to Democrats and notable public figures?
	Well, we don't even see...
	Oh my gosh, yeah.
	I mean, that was the one that radicalized Andrew Breitbart.
	Yeah.
	The accusations against Clarence Thomas.
	And that was in the late 90s, wasn't it?
	That was in the early 90s.
	The very early 90s, yeah.
	Yeah, and so they've been...
	You see exactly the same with Kavanaugh, and these are obviously bunk allegations.
	Sure.
	And this is yet another bunk allegation.
	And I mean, the allegation isn't even coming from the victim.
	We'll go through this, right?
	But this is just, you know, obvious Democrat playbook.
	They've been doing this for years.
	And it's a really gross smear as well.
	Well, this is how Obama got his start, too.
	I mean, it's not exactly this, but, you know, I mean, he and his henchmen sued to get divorce records of his early opponent.
	Oh.
	For the Senate in Illinois, released.
	So, of course, all this terrible stuff came out about him, and he was forced to withdraw.
	So, I mean, this is standard operating procedure.
	Character attacks are a primary weapon of the left.
	And it's not to say the Republicans, again, don't have their own form of character attacks, but this is a particular kind of character attack that I don't see the Republicans engaging in.
	Or often, anyway.
	Well, they can't.
	They can't.
	They don't have the institutional support.
	That's fair.
	And I think it happened in 2009 when there was a scandal with Dan Jones, who was then working for Obama, and some information came out about him.
	And it was a controversy that bubbled up from the right wing.
	It bubbled up from Glenn Beck.
	Right, okay.
	And everybody covered it, and Van Jones was forced to resign.
	He was supposed to be the green energy czar.
	He left the White House in shame, and then immediately everyone in the administration realized, why do we do that?
	Why do we respond to Republicans?
	Right, right.
	So then the media recognized the same thing, and they said, you know what?
	We're not going to cover any controversy emerging from right-wing media.
	Dead.
	So that's why they don't do it.
	If you notice, it does not happen.
	Because I didn't know that, you see.
	Because I was looking and thinking, well, I just don't see the Republicans constantly making these kind of really vile sort of, I mean, that's a really serious allegation morally.
	And so, you know, I don't see that happening.
	But I suppose if it is the left-wing consensus in the media where it's like, we don't care, well, that explains it.
	Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, when was the last time a political controversy from the right became prominent in the media, only to destroy it?
	Milo?
	Yeah, Milo, he had made some comments on the Joe Rogan podcast, and it was misconstrued by left-wing media, based on the Lincoln Project's agitation.
	Oh, right, right, right.
	Yes, to say that he was in support of pedophilia.
	Of course, he's a victim of pedophilia.
	Right.
	And so Milo, he got cancelled by the right, basically, because of that.
	Yes, and that happens with an amazing amount of frequency.
	The less so now, which is a good development.
	Yeah, so anyway, so this is fascinating, right?
	You said you hadn't looked into this, right?
	So look at this headline, right?
	Sorry, go back up to the headline.
	SpaceX flight attendant said that Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned to have sex documents show the company paid $250,000 for her silence.
	Now that makes it sound like the victim, or the alleged victim, is making a direct allegation against Elon Musk.
	Right.
	That's not true.
	Ah.
	Right?
	So this story comes from a friend of the flight attendant, apparently.
	Right, so according to Besider, the attendant works as a member of a cabin crew on a contractual basis for a SpaceX corporate jet fleet.
	She accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her rubbing her leg without a consent and offering to buy a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.
	The horse gambit.
	According to interviews and documents obtained by Insider.
	So in 2016, it's alleged in a declaration signed by a friend of the attendant, And prepared in support of her claim.
	It's like, okay, so the attendant isn't even making the claim.
	It's a friend is claiming that she told her this.
	Right.
	And that this is now suddenly relevant for some reason.
	I don't know what Elon Musk has done.
	I know we know exactly what Elon Musk has done to piss off the left and to gin up this complaint.
	Right.
	Well, this is, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is that this may even not be her friend, but it is a, it's a sneaky way to get around the, you know, the, the, whatever, the 250 grand hash money.
	Yeah.
	So, but either way, the victim themselves are not even alleging this.
	So, not really, I mean, you know, it's basically Chinese whispers at this point.
	But they contacted Musk for comment, which is why I think he knew this story was coming.
	I'm like, I'm turning Republican.
	But Musk, of course, finally gets to use the term elongate, which he tweeted out, if you can go to the next one, John.
	With his own tweet, finally we get to use it as a scandal name, it's kind of perfect, and I guess it kind of is.
	Now Elon of course denies this claim that comes from the friend of the flight attendant.
	Musk says directly, there's a tweet in there if you want to go down, He characterised the person.
	He knows, apparently, who this friend is, although we don't.
	That hasn't been released to us yet.
	But he characterised her in a dismissive tweet as, quote, a far-left activist slash actress in L.A. with a major political axe to grind.
	Sounds about right.
	Sounds a dime a dozen in LA. And he of course says, for the record, those accusations are utterly untrue, but I have a challenge to this liar who claims their friend saw me exposed.
	Describe just one thing, anything at all, scars, tattoos, that isn't known by the public.
	She won't be able to do so because it never happened.
	So that's quite bold.
	I like the fighting spirit.
	Yes.
	Just come back and go, okay, we'll prove it.
	And it's exactly the right messaging.
	Nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech.
	Yes.
	And he understands that this is their playbook.
	I mean, I think he's been red-pilled.
	Oh, yeah.
	You know, I mean, absolutely, he's been red-pilled.
	You can tell by the memes he posts out on Twitter.
	Yes, for sure.
	Which we'll get to in a second, actually.
	But you are right.
	He says, look, this tax should be viewed through a political lens.
	This is the standard, despicable playbook, but nothing will determine you from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech.
	This is obviously being done in response to him trying to buy Twitter.
	And he is right.
	It should be viewed through a political lens because that's exactly what this is.
	Major political presence on the public stage will accuse him of some sexual impropriety.
	He'll be hopefully taken down.
	But the thing is, like, it doesn't actually work that often for the Democrats, does it?
	Like, Kavanaugh still got confirmed?
	It doesn't work anymore.
	Yeah.
	Because people understand that it's just a bunch of BS. Yeah.
	And I saw that they tried the same thing with Hungary yesterday.
	The Guardian did.
	You know, Trump sends message to event in Hungary and shares the same, you know, podium with blah, blah, blah.
	We'll get to that in a minute.
	I've got that.
	Of course I've got that.
	We're not going to let that go.
	Anyway, like you say, it looks like Elon Musk has been somewhat red-pilled by Twitter.
	If we can go to the next one.
	On the very same day, I mean, he posted this meme, which is just...
	Savage.
	For anyone listening, it's a picture of Skeletor in front of a screen saying, Ladies, Mansplaining is short for Man Explaining.
	Just amazing.
	Look, Donald Trump must be so jealous.
	Yes.
	He must be burning with jealousy.
	Well, he did claim that he had suggested to Elon Musk that he buy Twitter, which wasn't true, and it's a really weak move.
	It's like, oh, don't do that.
	Right.
	Well, look, I mean, he is, you know, Elon Musk is a higher IQ, younger, more hip and engaged person who's taking Twitter by storm.
	Whether or not he owns it, he is the number one Twitter user.
	And look at the numbers he's putting up.
	But anyway, so Elon Musk has also been doing other interesting things, such as going to meet Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
	That's a big move.
	Yeah, I did not know that.
	No.
	What do you make of it?
	Look, I mean, I think it's good.
	I'm a fan of Bolsonaro.
	Yeah, me too.
	And wow, he completes transition to supervillain.
	Oh, my God.
	Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful.
	The media has no idea what to do with this.
	And increasingly, we see it in every story.
	Yeah.
	And I think, look, I mean, that makes the people wake up and makes them realize that this is all just phony baloney.
	To the credit, Bolsonaro does look a lot like a supervillain.
	But he's our supervillain.
	Yes, exactly.
	He looks somewhat like an alligator that's taken human form.
	And I say this with a great amount of love because I love Bolsonaro's attitude towards leftists, which is like, screw them.
	Because that's the only attitude you can take now.
	They're not going to give you any charity whatsoever.
	So you have to just be like, I don't care.
	I'm carrying on.
	And this is, you know, frankly, that's the DeSantis attitude.
	That's the Orban attitude.
	It's in stark relief to the Trump attitude, which was on the surface like that.
	But in reality, he was very, he was deeply, deeply insecure.
	Governed as a moderate.
	Right, right.
	He's very moderate.
	Right.
	And at the end of the day, he was afraid of the press.
	He wanted elite press recognition.
	Yeah.
	But, I mean, as if he was going to get that.
	Never.
	Right.
	I mean, the thing is, there's something, like, adorably naive about it, where it's just like, come on, man.
	They hate you, you know?
	And it's only the fact that, you know, you're doing what people actually want to see done that keeps your popularity at, like, 45% or whatever it was.
	Right.
	You know, if it wasn't for that, you'd have been totally destroyed.
	Right.
	But anyway, so apparently he went over there to, he tweeted out that he wanted to speak specifically about the Amazon and preserving the Amazon conservation.
	Now, one of the main claims is being made against Bolsonaro is he's opened it up for logging and things like that.
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	I don't follow this, unfortunately.
	But he says, super excited to be in Brazil for the launch of Starlink for 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas and environmental monitoring of the Amazon.
	So, I mean, how can the left ever say that's bad?
	It's being done by Elon Musk, that's how.
	But anyway, obviously Bolsonaro's in favor of Elon taking over Twitter, and you can see that this is Elon actually committing to a right-wing position.
	You can't be an ally of Bolsonaro and be a centrist moderate, I would say.
	Right.
	I mean, it doesn't tell us anything new, but it indicates that he has rejected the cathedral's frame on everything.
	And this is even more emphasized when he started going hard against Hillary Clinton.
	Right.
	Did you see that?
	Yes.
	Let's go to the next one, John, because this is actually quite mad.
	So Clinton tweeted out, oh, computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based bank.
	This was a lie.
	And it happened to be totally wrong.
	And Elon Musk posted the BBC article talking about Clinton's lawyer who lied to manipulate the FBI over Trump, as you can see from the headline there, and saying, you are absolutely correct.
	This tweet is a Clinton campaign hoax for the campaign lawyer is undergoing a criminal trial.
	And so the person above have been like, well, look, I've reported Clinton's tweet for misleading disinformation to the powers that be at Twitter.
	And rightly so, because it's an actual lie.
	Now, there's a lot more to talk about in that particular story.
	I'm not going to go into now.
	But what's interesting is that Musk tagged Parag Agrawal and Vijaya, I can't remember the name, saying, okay, what do you say to this obvious misinformation?
	And the answer is, of course, not much.
	But the point is, if we go to the next one, you can see that Elon Musk is currently out for blood, absolutely out for blood against them.
	Next one, or a bit further down?
	Makes you wonder how much else is fake.
	Elon is out for blood.
	Love to see it.
	And he's like, yes, I am indeed out for blood.
	Okay, so this is a huge, absolutely seismic realignment for Elon's political outlook.
	And you love to see it.
	It's great.
	Like I say, absolutely love to see it.
	And so Elon knows that he is courting a very powerful set of interests against him.
	And they are going to range against him to destroy him.
	And so unsurprisingly, he's going full Hank Scorpio, it seems, and creating a crack legal team to deal with what is going to be coming his way.
	And so he's expecting lots and lots of lawsuits, basically.
	And I think that's how they're going to try to destroy him.
	I think being red-pilled on Russiagate is one of the most important things because – and it's clear that he has been.
	And that's because – I mean, heck, I've been a right-winger all my life.
	It red-pilled me.
	It radicalized me, understanding that the national security bureaucracy of the United States can be corrupted and there are no consequences.
	Yeah.
	I mean, this is the thing that's ridiculous.
	I mean, half of conservative world, like conservative mainstream commentariat, throughout Russiagate, they're like, no, no, no, no.
	Okay, they messed up.
	No, no, no.
	It wasn't deliberate.
	No, no, no.
	They would never do this.
	They're apolitical public servants and they were in as deep as anything.
	But you can see why, because it shakes the foundations of your worldview.
	So actually, the non-partisan instruments that are meant to be dedicated to the national interest are in fact partisan political agents who have been systematically attacking their political opponents.
	That means we're not really very different to somewhere like, you know, an Eastern European country like Ukraine or something like that when it comes to We're good to
	go.
	All of them normally enrich themselves, but Donald Trump lost billions, and Elon Musk is losing billions.
	This is, of course, because the stock prices are down, because Elon Musk is causing trouble for the establishment.
	Apparently, he's $25 billion poorer than when he began all of this.
	Now, that's not much money to Elon Musk.
	It'll have to be a slightly smaller island.
	It will have to be a slightly smaller island.
	But the point is, you can't say he's doing this for the money.
	And this is something that the sort of like people like, in fact, if we go to the next one, Business Insider, this sort of, you know, the sort of, you know, in a world of media reporting, this is something they've noticed.
	And sorry, not, yeah, this, no, have you not got the Business Insider one?
	Yeah, sorry, yeah.
	So this is fascinating, right?
	Because this came out in 2020.
	So before all of this happened, so while Elon Musk was still the golden boy, you know, while he was the Iron Man, the real-life Iron Man, and that's how they used to report him, this is fascinating, right?
	So this Matthew DeBoard, he says, for the past decade, I've tried to figure out what Elon Musk spends his money on.
	And apart from supporting his large family, I've come to the conclusion that he doesn't blow his money on anything.
	He has some cool clothes, but that's hardly extravagant.
	He drives Tesla vehicles.
	He sent his personal original Roadster into orbit, so goodbye to that museum piece.
	He tweets a lot, so he probably owns the latest iPhone.
	I think he plays video games, so an Xbox and a flat screen or two.
	He travels quite a bit.
	A limited, you know, a small fleet of planes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But he says he travels quite a bit using a business jet, but so do mere millionaires.
	And these are all going to be business expenses.
	Sure.
	So they're not his personal property.
	So, okay, fine.
	And so he's like, well, what does he spend all his money on?
	And Elon himself has said, look, I'm not doing this for the money.
	This is about doing interesting and grand things.
	And so he says, perplexing as though this might seem, Musk thinks of money less as a medium of exchange and even less as a store of value.
	He doesn't even see money as a way to make more money, a standard play of high net worth people.
	No, he sees money as a means to an end and he appreciates its function as a financing tool.
	To achieve his grand and futuristic goals and serve the more mundane but immediately impactful effect of creating 40,000 jobs at Tesla and 1,000 jobs at SpaceX.
	So that's good to know, I think.
	That's great to know.
	You know, people who've been studying Elon Musk's career for over a decade are like, we don't know why he does this.
	It's like, yeah, but I actually do.
	I think Elon actually wants to make a better world.
	You know, as idealistic as that sounds.
	If not me, then who?
	I'm sure that's how he's thinking.
	And the fact that he's not an extravagant spender speaks volumes of the richest man in the world.
	A business jet is not what the richest man in the world you would think would be traveling on.
	He'd be traveling on a souped up 747, something like Air Force One.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Which the Google guys travel on.
	Absolutely.
	It's got beds and bars and it's like a home away from home.
	But Elon's not doing that.
	So anyway, just to cap off this segment, Elon is indeed playing 5D chess, in my opinion.
	I think he knows what he's doing.
	So you know he put the Twitter deal on hold because he's like, oh, look at all these bots.
	Isn't most of Twitter actually bots?
	And it's like, I don't think most of Twitter is bots.
	I don't know either.
	I'm not sure of his gambit here, as far as the bots and the fake accounts.
	I mean, unless he's trying to, I don't know, run down the share price just a little bit until his purchase kicks in.
	Maybe.
	But if he's not really that concerned about money, is he doing that?
	Or is he playing mind games with them?
	Because what happened following this is that essentially they had said, no, no, he's committed to this, so he has to do this.
	But it's put Twitter's, the functionality and the credibility of their platform is now in question as he's in the process of buying it.
	And so this puts them on the back foot, and now he's the one, you know, nipping at them and outflanking them and calling the shots.
	And they must feel surrounded by Elon Musk wherever they go.
	Right.
	And so...
	Yeah, I mean, look, immediately after this purchase was announced, we had, I mean, everyone covered it.
	We had a bunch of people on the right who gained followers all of a sudden.
	The shadow banning kind of ended.
	I mean, I've been shadow banned forever.
	A bunch of people, not me, though, got their accounts restated.
	Right.
	Unfortunately.
	I mean, you'll have to wait for the next round.
	Don't worry.
	Well, when Elon gets it, he's like, we're going to take away the permabans one day.
	There you go.
	Come on, Elon.
	Right.
	He gets back from the dead.
	But...
	So there was a period where it was fine and open, and then it came back.
	The censorship came back.
	The shadow banning came back worse than before.
	Well, that's when he put it on hold.
	And suddenly the shadow banning begins again.
	You think, hmm, that's very interesting how all of this happens.
	But I think Elon is basically...
	I think he's maneuvering to make them insecure in their position.
	You know what I would like to see before this all ends?
	I would like to see an actual...
	I mean, heck, let the leftists do it.
	Take Vice...
	And send Vice in to Twitter HQ and say, we're going to make a documentary of what it's like under siege of Elon and Twitter.
	And the developers are crying.
	I mean, something like the Hillary movie that happened when you see...
	Yeah, they're literally crying where she should be accepting the thing.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So the final days of public Twitter.
	Yeah.
	They should do it, man.
	Someone should finance it.
	I would love to, but I think they've become aware that, hang on, this would be- They're laughing at us.
	This would be a massive L, you know, and we would look like pathetic and weak idiots who just got crushed.
	But anyway, so just to finish this segment off, the deal is still on.
	People, what's going on?
	No, no, the deal is still on because basically Twitter have been demanding the deal is still on.
	And this, as they report here, it's Vijaya Gad has said no.
	She's told the workers recently that the deal is still moving forward and there's no such thing as the deal being on hold.
	So again, if there's no such thing as the deal being on hold, this is Elon Musk's, like you say, siege works surrounding Twitter.
	So this is him playing games with them to make them insecure in their position.
	Uh, and so it is still going on.
	He's just chewing away at their defenses, which I think is fantastic.
	Uh, good luck, Elon.
	But anyway, so let's talk about CPAC going to Hungary.
	Now, before we, before we begin, I just want to promote a book review that we did on let's these.com called the populist delusion by some female Iranian author.
	No, I'm joking.
	As a friend of mine, Nima, Nima Parvini.
	He thinks that it is not that the people rule.
	He's an adherent to Italian elite theory.
	And so it's not that the people themselves rule.
	It's that a cadre of elites rule in the people's stead.
	And the question is, are your elites in doing what you want or are they serving some other agenda?
	Now, I think we can safely say that the elites of the West have been serving an internationalist agenda for the last couple of decades.
	And this is why CPAC going to Hungary is outraging them so much, because if there's one thing you can't accuse Viktor Orban of, it's being a globalist.
	He is definitely acting in the best interest of the population of Hungary.
	And so let's begin.
	I'll put just another finer point on it.
	In the best interest of the population of Hungary and their future, unlike globalists, neolibs, neocons for the last 30 years, 40 years, he has...
	He has really thought about, okay, what happens three generations hence?
	And that's the important thing, isn't it?
	Because one thing that you can't deny is that in the West, our ruling elites have just been burning the future to pay for the debts of the present.
	And they assume they can just burn infinitely into the future.
	But at some point, the bill is going to arrive.
	And I guess they're just hoping that they're all dead when it does.
	Yeah, I don't know if they even think in those terms.
	No, I don't think they do.
	It is going to happen.
	Right.
	I mean, they just avoid it.
	And it's certain to happen.
	Look, we're seeing it happen.
	Yeah.
	And when someone stands up and says no, they get the Orban treatment, which is the Trump treatment and the Bolsonaro treatment, etc.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But Orban gets it worse than others, though.
	He's constantly called a dictator or an autocrat, which I find fascinating.
	We'll talk about it as we go through this, in fact.
	But anyway, so you were at CPAC and you spoke.
	Yes.
	Would you like to give me a quick overview?
	Sure.
	Well, full disclosure, I worked for the Orban government for a bit doing media relations in the United States.
	Is this a part of that?
	Is this a part of it?
	No, no, it's not.
	I have not taken any money from them in quite some time.
	I mean I went – I was asked to speak because I'm a conservative in the United States who has a platform and speaks a lot about Hungary and Hungary issues.
	So I went there and I gave a speech about the importance of language as it relates to the maintenance, the survivability of the nation and what happens when – The homogeneity that comes in.
	I mean, globalism is an enemy of particularity.
	Oh, yes.
	And the Hungarian language is very, very particular.
	And he and many of his voters, I mean, even the people who hate him, are still sympathetic to the broad outlines of his program, which is a very common sense idea that, yes, we have a nation, yes, we have borders, yes, we have traditions, and we need to do things to maintain them.
	Yeah.
	And they're fundamentally not buying into abstract conceptions of, hey, we can all be the same.
	We are the same.
	Abstract liberal conceptions.
	Liberal conceptions.
	Universal human.
	Right.
	Universal values.
	The universal values delusion, which I've been talking about a long time, which is kind of the engine for all of these stupid policy things that came after the end of the Cold War.
	Like almost every post-Cold War thing has been marinated in this universal values delusion.
	And one of the things that many Hungarians said was, look, the Cold War was awful.
	It was really bad.
	The Soviets were terrible.
	But it ended up being a blessing in disguise because it allowed us to see what's going on in the West.
	And it gave us a distance.
	It gave us some perspective in terms of the distance.
	Now, I ran into Hungarian young people and about 17, very bright, perfect English, the whole thing.
	And they look and they say, the West has nothing for me.
	The United States has nothing for me.
	It's all woke, crazy.
	Right.
	They've got Big Macs.
	Right.
	No, I mean, they look at it and they say this is – they understand if I'm straight, if I'm white, I'm not getting into a university in the West.
	And they're afraid to say anything because they'll be canceled.
	So they are very aware of what's going on here.
	I mean, something else was interesting is the CPAC Hungary played a video and Integrating U.S. issues into kind of Hungarian issues.
	Like they had Antifa and BLM and the gender stuff and DeSantis and Florida and Trump in this video in Hungarian.
	And then you kind of realize, yes, these are all at bottom the same issues.
	And I think that's really the only key to understanding what's going on here because – I think this is completely fair.
	And this is the split between the conservatives and the left.
	And the Enlightenment has always been predicated on this kind of thought experiment of the universal human.
	But the thing is, there is no such thing as a universal human.
	Every human comes from a particular time, a particular place, a particular culture, a particular customs, that has an individual national character.
	That is distinguishable from other nations and can't be replicated in other countries.
	You know, it's a unique world historical event, each country.
	And so, I mean, you can go to literally any of them, you know, Locke, Rousseau, they all imagine stripping a human being of that cultural baggage and inheritance they carry and saying, well, this could be for any human.
	It's like, yeah, but it won't be for any human.
	That's the thing.
	When you say it's a universal human, you're pointing to a nobody, someone who doesn't exist.
	And the fact that the Hungarian conservatives can recognize that, that's the inflection point at which the conservatives can actually start winning.
	You're appealing to nobody.
	You're appealing to nothing.
	Orban can at least identify his constituency, which is the Hungarians, whereas the left can only say, well, it's a hypothetical universal human being.
	Right.
	That doesn't exist.
	And for Hungarians, that is a very powerful thing because they know innately that their language is – I mean it's not completely endangered.
	It's not on the endangered species list.
	But they need to maintain it.
	It's 13 million Hungarian speakers and 10 million inside the country.
	But the other thing that I pointed out was that social media breaks this down because if you want to engage in social media, you're going to not be Instagramming in Hungarian.
	You want everybody to see.
	So, I mean, of course, it's good that everybody is learning these languages but for little countries with particular languages and particular cultures, that is – it's a balancing act that needs to be maintained.
	No, I agree.
	So anyway, let's talk about Orban opened CPAC by speaking very directly, I think, to obviously speaking to American conservatives, but I think it is important for conservatives generally because, I mean, this guy, he knows exactly the problems that are going on here.
	He thinks that 2024 will be decisive and says we need to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels.
	We need to find friends.
	We need to find allies.
	We need to coordinate the movement of our troops, metaphoric troops that is, because we have a big challenge ahead of us.
	So he's saying there needs to be an international alliance of nationalists.
	Yes.
	I mean, I agree wholeheartedly.
	I think that anyone, any nation, any party all around the world should ally itself with similar groups.
	I mean, at the end of the day, who is it?
	It's not about a particular policy decision.
	But okay, how do we live in the modern world?
	How can we live into the 21st century but maintain our national character?
	That's the essential question.
	A lot of people talk about Hungary and Brazil and the US under Trump and Brexit and all these movements.
	I mean, I think...
	Maybe now it's a little different, but during Trump's period, you could put Israel and you could put Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and some other countries into that group because they're all fighting.
	I mean, any country with a strong, let's say, religious identity or a strong cultural history is going to be pushing up against that homogenizing.
	Yes, exactly.
	No, I completely agree with you.
	And I think that Orban is actually completely right here.
	And so it is nice that there are a, you know, you can point to Modi, Bolsonaro, Orban, Trump was one.
	You know, these people are not the same.
	You know, they're not the same.
	They're nationally a product of their own countries, but they understand that they're facing the same force.
	And so there does need to be some sort of coalition.
	Anyway, so he's very aware that the media is the powerful agent in this.
	We can go to the next one.
	He told CPAC that the path to power is to have your own media, and God, that is the truth.
	It's absolutely true.
	Orban realized in the 90s and then subsequently the 2000s, 2010, that it was crucial to have a real robust media in Hungary that supports the right.
	And look, I mean, it's amazing.
	In the United States, we really don't have that.
	Well, I tell you, you've at least got something.
	We have something.
	What do we have in Britain?
	Oh my god, even if you read the Daily Mail, it's like 50% leftist.
	At least Fox News has some good commentators on it.
	Yes.
	And, I mean, Canada is also in a horrible situation.
	And they can – but yeah, look, I mean it needs to be solved.
	What Orban realized was that essential to his – I mean essential to his maintaining in power and also doing the things that Hungary needs to do is he would have to surround himself with very wealthy businessman – a businessman class that is going to support these institutions.
	I mean, we in the United States, we don't have that at all.
	No.
	You've got a couple of angel investors, shall we call them, like Peter Thiel and...
	Yeah, and then we have people who just kind of habitually give to these old institutions, which, as we'll talk about later, are not actually right-wing.
	Have been captured.
	Yes.
	But he says this.
	You have to have your own media.
	It's the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.
	The problem is that Western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint.
	Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.
	Of course, the GOP has its media allies, but they can't compete with the mainstream liberal media.
	My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there.
	His show is the most popular.
	What does it mean?
	It means that programs like his should be broadcasted day and night, or as you say, 24-7.
	I mean, he's not wrong, is he?
	No, he's not wrong.
	He's completely correct.
	The media is generally left-wing, and they are very, very powerful.
	And this is the reason that the right really needs to be able to understand.
	Look, if you want to be competitive in persuading people that your stories have validity, then you have to have a media apparatus that is capable of challenging left-wing narratives.
	Because this is how they got everyone on board.
	They didn't do it with the gun this time.
	They did it by persuasion.
	You know, by framing.
	And that's the issue with the media is that every battle they fight when they put out a story is captured in the framing.
	They frame it in a particular way that there's only one inevitable moral conclusion.
	That's how people are brought on board.
	Yes.
	The good guy, the bad guy is, you know, is apparent in everything.
	And I mean, in addition to having our own media Not just a little website here and there, but our own mass media.
	We also have to have people who staff it who are aware of how this is done.
	And we don't have universities that are pumping out right-wing journalists.
	Right.
	Well, the old saw was, or maybe I came up with this, was that every left-wing journalist wants to be a muckraker.
	Every right-wing journalist wants to be George Will.
	They want to be a commentator.
	And I've worked at several, I mean, I worked at Breitbart, I've worked at several right-wing media outlets, and people want to be commentators.
	It's fun.
	Right, it's fun.
	Hey, I get paid for my opinions.
	But they don't want to do the hard work of researching a story, doing the beat work, all that stuff.
	God bless James O'Keefe.
	Yes.
	But in the meantime, if you want to support right-wing media, sign up to lotuses.com.
	Help us grow.
	Anyway, the conservatives, of course, want to make the U.S. more like Hungary, according to The Guardian.
	Oh, no.
	Terrifying.
	What would you say the quality of life in Hungary is like?
	The quality of life in Hungary?
	Compared to, say, the Californian bug man who's paying $3,000 for a one-room box.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Well, look, I can't speak to Hungary.
	I can speak to Budapest.
	I have friends who are American and picked up and now live there.
	They're in language classes, which are very hard, and things like that.
	But the quality of life is...
	Amazing.
	It's absolutely safe.
	It's completely safe.
	Can you imagine being a New Yorker and calling where you live the capital city, it's not even capital city, but calling a major city safe in America?
	Right.
	And it's also wholesome.
	Wholesome in a way that, like you would say, wholesome.
	It's not, there's a level of depravity that you get used to.
	Like, Ambient depravity that you get used to in the United States.
	In San Francisco, it's more than just ambient.
	Invasive depravity.
	Right.
	But there, it just does not exist.
	I mean, I wake up in the morning, go downstairs in my hotel, and there's a flute duet, you know, two girls playing the flute.
	And how nice!
	Right.
	So, I mean, I feel like that was an encapsulation of the time there.
	Yes, of course, you go into the countryside and, you know, things are different.
	Things are like in the countryside of any Central or Eastern European country.
	But it's a wonderful place.
	You're surrounded by beauty.
	But you don't have just, you know, drug addicts wandering like zombies through the streets taking dumps on the sidewalk.
	No.
	No, you don't.
	You don't have gangs of migrant...
	Really?
	No gangs of feral youth stabbing each other in the middle of the street?
	No.
	No, you don't have that.
	that.
	In fact, you see young kids together, you know, one, two, or three, taking the metro themselves at night or in the afternoon and, you know, going for, for, you know, whatever, to grab something from the store for the parents.
	- Like how we used to do-- - Like how we used to grow up, exactly right.
	- 'Cause we lived in safe countries.
	What a terrifying thought, what a terrifying thought, says Andrew. - So all of these people are reading from the script that was Anne Applebaum's initially.
	Anne Applebaum and a couple other people, But she was the one, really, who developed a great reputation in the US for her work on communism.
	She was great.
	I mean, she was a hero of many of ours on the right.
	And then she – she was broken by Trump and the fact that she's married to a Polish parliament member runs in the Davos, let's say,
	dinner party circuit and – The problem with Hungarian is that it's complicated and the problem with news out of Hungary is that it's necessarily gatekept by this fact.
	So everything anyone knows about Hungary, it's from one, two, three people.
	Okay, well let's use a quote that actually really highlights what you're saying there.
	It's no exaggeration to say that urbanism, with its rejection of democracy and its willingness to use coercion to enforce a narrow cultural and religious agenda, defines the danger posed by modern American conservatives.
	Yeah, I mean, it's absolute hysteria.
	It's based on nothing.
	Nobody knows what, you know, it's circular reporting.
	It's the opinion version of circular reporting.
	And people say these things, and it's like, okay, you know, we're just going to push it.
	You get yourself very riled up by it.
	I know Steve Schmidt, who was at the Lincoln Project, utter weirdo, did.
	He's not the guy who was accused of pedophilia.
	No, it was a different one, but he kept it quiet.
	But he's also – I mean he's a maniac and it looked like he went on a crazed cocaine binge and just tweeted – he probably tweeted 400 things about Hungary, all of which were exactly this, NPC, paint-by-numbers nonsense conventional wisdom.
	Yeah.
	And so, I mean, just the idea, like, Orban's rejection of democracy, they keep saying Orban's an autocrat, right?
	But the thing is, if you just go to his Wikipedia page, you can see when he was in office, right?
	If you scroll down just a little bit to the contents bit, so you can see, right?
	Early career, 1988 to 1998, then first premiership, 1998 to 2002, and then leader of the opposition for eight years.
	So two election cycles.
	He's the leader of the opposition.
	That's not what an autocrat does.
	Like, Vladimir Putin was at no point the leader of the opposition during his time not being the president, and then second premiership.
	As in, the people of Hungary voted him out of office.
	What kind of autocrat gets voted out of office?
	Right, and he, look, I mean...
	That's not to say that Viktor Orban is not corrupt, or something like that, or that he's, you know, some wonderful good guy, but you can't say that he's a dictator.
	If the state of New York was its own country, Andrew Cuomo – One party.
	Right.
	And it would be a one-party state with its own media that is – New York City media run by a guy with every possible – You know, corruption scandal and, you know, and all this stuff.
	I mean, that's what we're dealing with.
	We're dealing with a country of 10 million people.
	And, yeah, I mean, I see this stuff and it just – it makes me angry on one hand.
	But on the other hand, I realize that people are now waking up.
	The same vocabulary is being used over and over again because it's tired and also because of that gatekeeping effect.
	There are only so many people who are originating the memes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, there are not that many meme writers about Hungary.
	Yeah.
	Unsurprisingly, yeah.
	Right.
	And the ones that are are almost always completely funded by Soros.
	Well, you're absolutely right.
	The Soros Foundation funds almost everything that's...
	What I would describe as kind of...
	Civilizational attack on the West.
	You know, all of the migrant caravans and, incidentally, the Soros Central European University.
	Ah, beautiful.
	That was a good tweet.
	I told you he was a savage on Twitter, didn't I? Soros Central European University was your when government closed down and ran out of the country.
	Suck it, Libs.
	Look, I mean...
	Oh, no, I agree.
	You've got to be there on that street and to see the context of this, you know, what I consider to be.
	I mean, it's not the most monstrous modern building I've seen.
	It's still ugly.
	It's still ugly.
	But compared to the beauty of the building next to it.
	Yeah.
	We'll show that in a bit, actually.
	Yeah.
	Because the thing is, I actually looked into the courses that Soros University was presenting.
	It's the most radical social justice courses you can imagine, and they are designed to undermine the fabric of the civilization.
	This is no question.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	Designed to.
	Yeah.
	That's the point.
	Yes.
	It's all critical theory, which the point is deconstruction.
	There's no particular reason that should have been allowed, and I don't blame them for doing that at all.
	And, of course, you've got the comparative example in Jack Posobiec at CPAC saying, well, look, you know, you were trying to set up a ministry of truth in the United States.
	That got dissolved too.
	Good.
	Suck it.
	Again, deal with it.
	Because why would you want these things?
	Why would you want a university that's only purpose is to put out radical revolutionaries?
	Why would you want the Department of Defense in America to have a ministry of truth?
	When they say, oh, he's attacking our democracy, good, because your democracy sucks.
	My democracy is where I get to vote for the person in charge, not to allow you to set up a bunch of institutions that destroy the nation.
	If that's the way it goes.
	But anyway, let's get on to him sharing a platform with Trump and some notorious racist anti-Semite.
	Now, I don't trust the Guardian's reporting on anything, but I don't know who Zolt Baier is.
	I do not either.
	Right, okay.
	Well, apparently he's some sort of firebrand Hungarian political journalist.
	Shock jock type.
	Yeah, shock jock, yeah, exactly.
	And Hungary not being a particularly politically correct place...
	Right.
	Well, whenever you see head or subheads like that, who's called Jews, stinking excrement, and Roma animals, you know that something fishy is going on.
	When the entire sentence is not presented in context, when you can't bother to present the sentence, I'm not talking about the context of the piece or a paragraph.
	When the entire sentence is not there, when it's like three words, you can't believe them.
	It's a deliberate cherry pick, isn't it?
	But no, I'm not going to lie.
	It does seem this guy is pretty extreme.
	He said, do we have the...
	I think they actually have the quote here.
	So he's a television talk show host in Hungary and has been widely denounced for his racism.
	During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, he wrote on his blog, Is This the Future?
	Kissing the dirty boots of effing racist epithets and smiling at them, being happy about this, because otherwise they'll kill you or beat you up.
	And in 2011, he used the phrase stinking excrement to refer generically to Jews in England.
	And in 2013 wrote, a significant part of Roma are unfit for coexistence.
	They are not fit to live among people.
	These Roma are animals and they behave like animals.
	So, I mean, I'm not saying that he's not a racist, because it sounds like he is.
	Probably is.
	Yeah.
	But either way, he does have some good takes.
	Right.
	I mean, look, this is...
	He supported the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which made prominent Democrats as pedophiles.
	That's the good take.
	Right.
	But no, he seems like he probably is actually a racist, but I mean, it's Eastern Europe.
	Like, you'll find a lot of people out there Yeah, I mean, of course.
	But this whole genre of reporting is like – I like to call it the neocon, neolib way of war.
	This is what they do.
	Don't talk about – we're trying to warn you.
	Do not touch that third rail.
	Do not open your mind to what this person or this group of people is saying.
	This is all you need to know to dismiss it and that's it.
	And it has worked for a very, very long time.
	I know because I did stuff like this 15 years ago.
	The person I find it most remarkable that's working against is Alex Jones, ironically enough, because I can't think of anything actually racist Alex Jones has said, right?
	Alex Jones is a libertarian, like a really hardcore American libertarian.
	And so, like, you know, you can say, oh, well, I disagree with his conspiracy theories.
	Okay, yeah, sure.
	And, oh, he shouldn't have said anything about Sandy Hook.
	Yeah, sure.
	Sure.
	You know, and the Pizzagate thing.
	Sure, I agree.
	And he got sued over all of these things because that's what the legal system is there for.
	But what has he said?
	He's never said, like, black people are inferior or something like that.
	And so from a progressive point of view, he actually doesn't have the pedigree of crimes that this guy has.
	And yet they would put him on the same playing field as this.
	I just find that fascinating.
	Yeah, I mean, and the anti-Semitism thing is such a, you know, it's such a loaded BS charge now.
	And I say this as a Jew.
	It's not good.
	There are people who hate Jews out there, but now all you have to do is hate George Soros and you get the anti-Semitic label, which is by design.
	Right, which is absolutely by design.
	It's either groups and individuals who are funded by Soros or who want to be funded by Soros and everybody lines up to defend it.
	But I mean, it is convincing fewer and fewer people every time they do this.
	Well, it's like a child lying.
	The first couple of times they lie, it is quite impactful because you think, oh God, my son would never have lied about that.
	Okay, what was that?
	But then it's the boy who cries wolf.
	It's suddenly like, well, yeah, you said this a lot.
	And it is George Soros.
	I think there might be legitimate criticisms of Soros that aren't, he is Jewish.
	Anyway, so there are a bunch of other of these which were not very terribly different.
	Oh, I didn't see Jim Acosta.
	Oh, this must be beautiful.
	Oh, Jim Acosta, well, he calls Orban an authoritarian.
	Sure.
	Of course he does.
	Because someone told him.
	Yeah, and they're just empty allegations of authoritarianism, and it's based on the idea, the presupposition that underpins Acosta's complaints is that the right is essentially not allowed to set their own agenda in the way that the left sets their own agenda.
	For example, he never complains about the authoritarianism of violating a person's pronouns and the punishments you get for misgendering and things like this, which is actually legal code in England and Canada these days.
	So, you know, you like hate crimes, hate speech, all of these things have been – this is left-wing authoritarianism, in my opinion.
	Acosta's got nothing to say.
	Does Viktor Orban have a misinformation and disinformation board?
	Not that I'm aware of.
	Not that I'm aware of either.
	Yeah.
	But then neither does Joe Biden anymore.
	So, you know...
	Well, they're bringing it back.
	They're going to bring it back under some other construction.
	But up until Elon, you know, to bring it back, up until Elon, they had a run of the place.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	You are absolutely right.
	And you're absolutely right that they're going to keep trying.
	Yes.
	They need to.
	It's an imperative at this point.
	Exactly.
	And it's a religious conviction for them.
	It's, you know, like, you know...
	You get up and you feel a natural sort of unshakable impulse to do it.
	That's how they look at trying to fix the world.
	It's a genuine crusade.
	Right.
	And I think it's scary because these people genuinely, you say, I mean, it's based on nothing and nonsense, have heard repeated talking points, but they legitimately believe that the existence of the right in the world or in the United States is, You know, the greatest threat to their life and liberty and this, you know, and which of course justifies in shutting it down.
	But like I have to tell people like they actually do believe this.
	You know, they are going to act upon the things that they believe and they believe this.
	And there are a lot of people who underestimate it, aren't they?
	Like, look, no one really believes that this, you know, whatever crazy statement the left has come out with.
	It's like, you wouldn't say it if you didn't.
	Right.
	You know, because if you didn't think that was a true statement, you would then think, oh, well, everyone's going to consider me to be a lunatic.
	And they'd be like, why are you saying these things?
	Yes.
	No, they do have genuine convictions.
	But anyway, let's skip to the final couple of tweets, John, just because we're running out of time.
	So these are just some beautiful photos you took in Hungary.
	I mean, that is gorgeous.
	It is beautiful.
	It's a bit of a tourist trap.
	This is the Noj Charnok next to the university.
	Sorry, how do you pronounce that?
	Noj Charnok.
	I'm not going to try.
	And a big market.
	And that's where you go to get all kinds of produce and things like that.
	And at the top level, they used to have a wonderful tokoi bar where you can sit at all hours.
	You can just drink tokoi wine and sip on it.
	It's usually old men playing chess or whatever.
	And it was a great scene.
	It sounds wholesome.
	Right.
	So if you look in the photo, if you look closely, you see there's really no trash.
	Yeah, this was something I noticed in Poland when I went to Warsaw.
	It just, okay, you know, like, hey, look how uncrowded the streets are as well, right?
	You go to London, and there's rubbish all over the streets, and people are packed in like sardines.
	Whereas, you know, just look at this.
	It just looks relaxing.
	It's uncrowded, but it never feels desolate.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, which is how you want it to be.
	Yeah, exactly.
	There are people around, obviously, but I don't have to jostle through huge crowds of global nomads.
	To get anywhere.
	And the people obviously care about the place in which they live.
	As you say, look at the streets.
	They look clean.
	You know?
	It just looks lovely.
	And the architecture is beautiful.
	I love all the old European architecture.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Picture the hotel you're at.
	Can we get some of those up, John?
	I mean, that is just staggering, isn't it?
	Yeah, that was the first night, and then a couple photos that I found online because they kind of better represented what was going on.
	That's the outside.
	And today it's a hotel.
	I didn't stay there, but today it's a Hyatt.
	If you want to stay there, you can stay there.
	And they don't require any COVID testing to get into Hungryd.
	So they do not.
	And I think maybe 10 or 12 masks I saw in the whole country for a week.
	Because I've not been vaccinated and I haven't even had a test and I refuse to go anywhere that requires me to even have a test.
	I think you can get away with going to Hungary.
	Right, okay.
	I'm definitely tempted.
	Anyway, so to finish off, let's talk about, with friends like these, who needs leftists, which, you know who I'm talking about, is David French.
	It's the Blue Republicans, which I'm very, very tired of, and they keep constantly, constantly, voting for those things that Democrats want.
	Why?
	Why?
	Well, there's a big issue.
	There's the big overarching issue.
	Then there's the specifics and the specific things that they vote for or support.
	I mean the last big thing that was a really beautiful, almost pitch-perfect dividing line between them was DeSantis putting pressure on Disney.
	Yeah.
	All of the folks who were – at the end of the day, they were not on the right.
	They were actually right liberals.
	They went crazy because, oh my god, this is not the place of the government to do this.
	So at the end of the day, they're not – Bad people in the sense that they do not understand the importance of a civilization and family and wholesomeness and all the things that we want.
	But at the end of the day, they're resigned to the fact that culture is always in decline and their attachment is – Their imperative is not, hey, we have to pass laws or do things – strong things sometimes in order to fix these things in order to maintain our civilization.
	They see it as, well, it's kind of over.
	We're going to keep our hands off, make sure that the machinery of the way government works is perfectly pristine.
	And if we lose the civilization, we lose the civilization.
	But at least we're very happy with ourselves that we didn't violate our own moral code.
	And I think the problem with this is the very philosophy that they are laboring under is deeply confused about what it should be.
	And this, in fact, goes to a Contemplations episode that...
	Josh and Thomas did on Lotacies.com, talking about, well, what is the problem with Western philosophy?
	And there is a lot wrong with Western philosophy, unfortunately, because, like we were discussing earlier, it comes from the presupposition that there is a universal man, that we can create a doctrine that will apply to all universally, and that's simply not true.
	And the other problem that they cover is the fact that it's not become about finding truth.
	It's become about industrial production and a kind of self-propagating machine because people's entire career is now academic.
	It's like, okay, well, what are you going to do to justify your position if not continue to pump out just nonsense, even if it's obviously nonsense?
	So if you'd like to support us, you can go to lucidus.com and check that out.
	But I want to talk about David French.
	I don't like David French.
	Few do.
	He used to be a Republican, until Trump.
	Yes, he was.
	He was one of these people who were broken.
	Well, no.
	Well, yes, he used to be a Republican, in fact.
	But what Trump has exposed – and no, you know what?
	I don't want to even say that because that puts the onus on us.
	I want to say the fulfillment of the leftist project, the conclusion of the long march, what that has revealed is that – it's revealed all these little cleavages within what used to be the right.
	Yeah.
	And David French is one of those people who is closest to the left.
	And his entire argument, say, in this Atlantic article, which we'll go through because I think it's fascinating, is essentially the right should do nothing to prevent the long march of the left.
	Yes.
	It's essentially, it's like, David French is like chloroform for the right.
	He's just like, just breathe it in and go to sleep and let the people around you do what they're doing.
	And it's awful, right?
	So he begins by whining about the anti-grooming bill in Florida.
	Now, I can't see how anyone on the right or even the center left could complain about the anti-grooming bill.
	It seems to be only radical progressives who complain about it.
	And he says this, The American right has lost the plot on free speech.
	The passage of Florida's House Bill 1557, which bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, in a manner that isn't age-inappropriate or developmentally appropriate in all grades, is merely the latest in a string of what free speech advocacy organization PEN America has called is merely the latest in a string of what free speech advocacy organization Sorry, if we can't pervert your children, We're being gagged.
	Well, David French famously called Drag Queen Story Hour one of the blessings of liberty.
	And it's very consistent.
	Oh, yeah.
	He's known.
	Oh, yeah.
	It's a meme now.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because there were, I think, you know, I think it was Chris Ruffo was highlighting how in some schools they have Drag Queen Story Hour.
	And he said, no, it's actually a blessing of liberty.
	Okay, well, that's your opinion, David.
	French is disgusting.
	So, I mean, I have yet to see French tackle seriously about the problem of what happens when you have – I mean, when the left runs wild with the sexualization of children and all these things.
	I mean, okay, what are you going to do?
	Well, I mean, he literally is arguing that the Republicans should do nothing and that they should allow the left to control morality.
	And if he thinks that Drag Queen Story Hour is one of the blessings of liberty, well, then you can see exactly how he's arrived at this point, right?
	Yes.
	Listen to this.
	As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and the limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, which is a fascinating statement, It is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, in private corporations.
	Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing the tactics it once opposed.
	So if you think that it's wrong to pervert children, to sexualize kindergartners, then you are against free speech.
	I don't think that's a free speech issue.
	I think that's a propriety issue.
	And it could go either way.
	If they were, say, in kindergarten, getting them to Heil Hitler and do the Nazi salute, I wouldn't be like, oh, you're going to allow them to do that?
	Because otherwise it'd be a violation of their free speech.
	That would be ridiculous.
	Right.
	Well, he – the only ground – one reason we on the right in the U.S. hate David French is because – One of the – One of my 95 theses.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean I tried not to spend so much time thinking about these people.
	I wrote a piece called Stop Yelling Stop on my sub stack where I was just like, let's just move on from this because they're not worthy or serious interlocutors.
	They're not going to be persuaded either.
	They're not going to be persuaded.
	With all of them in common, they're sneaking around issue by issue, trying to find a way to short-circuit the things that the right wants.
	Yes, and David French has completely fallen into this trap.
	If I can't teach disgusting adult material to your children, then you're against free speech.
	This is not a free speech issue.
	The government is not preventing leftists from being degenerate leftists in their private lives.
	That's the free speech issue.
	If the government was saying you can't have pink news or something, we're going to ban that.
	You're not going to be able to have your pride parades or whatever it is.
	They would be free speech issues, sure.
	But the education of children, this is not a free speech issue.
	This is about what is appropriate for children, and adult content isn't.
	And also in there is the – I mean which is kind of the other slippery thing that they do which is that they're fine with censorship in all but name.
	Yes.
	As long as the government is not doing it, it's fine.
	You can be run out of house and home.
	You can have anything horrible happen to you.
	You could be banned from Twitter because it's a private – my private corporation is something that they love to do.
	But notice – thankfully, you probably haven't spent as much time on Dave French as many of us have.
	They're always for it.
	It's private, corporate, right.
	But the point there, the government control of the economy and morality, it's like, well, the left is always demanding government control of morality.
	This is what hate speech law is.
	Right.
	Well, it is what the left is.
	Exactly.
	It's a proposition for a moral program.
	Exactly.
	And so if one side is prepared to enact a moral agenda and David French sleeps, and then the Republicans are like, maybe we should protect the innocence of children.
	David French, how dare you, sir?
	Right.
	You know, are you going to prevent drag queen story?
	Who's going to win?
	Yeah.
	You know, which side advances and which side recedes?
	So French is also, I mean, French has a kind of weird, I think, with a lot of these people, I think we miss the mark when we deal with them exclusively in political or ideological terms.
	I think for a lot of these people, it is, yes, they have been broken and there's a weird psychosexual element.
	There's a weird personality disorder thing.
	I mean, it's clear when we see folks on the left, we say, no, this isn't radical politics.
	It's radical politics married to like, you're completely out of your mind.
	It's a radical personal preference.
	Yes.
	So with David French, David French loves to be attacked because he has a martyr complex.
	Oh, really?
	Yes.
	He loves it.
	So I'm not an expert.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So you would see on Twitter, not only that, count the number of articles he and his wife have written that boil down to Twitter's being mad to me.
	People on Twitter are being mad at me.
	They're saying ugly things.
	They're doing this.
	He was...
	I mean, people do say ugly things on Twitter to everyone.
	That's the nature of the thing.
	That's why it was fun.
	Right.
	But every time it happens, he feels like he needs to...
	I mean, 2016 was like the height where he probably wrote four or five articles about all the hate he gets.
	And it empowers him.
	And so all this stuff is personal.
	He hates the right because he feels attacked.
	And the more that they attack him...
	The more he takes positions like this, which just go around the wheel.
	So he can't see the difference, though, between what he describes, how he was the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which I just want to be clear, I fully support.
	I think it's an excellent foundation.
	Back in 2016, 2017, they were doing great work against the censorious cultural revolutionaries of the left on college campuses.
	But this is not the same as indoctrinating children into a particular ideology.
	This is very, very different.
	And for some reason, David is incapable of drawing this distinction.
	He says, when I was the president of FIRE, we launched a project that evaluated speech policies at hundreds of colleges and universities.
	At the same time, conservative activists attempted to pass legislation that would open up the campuses to free expression.
	The combination of litigation and legislation proved remarkably successful, which means, in David's mind, that we must teach children leftism and perversion in the name of free speech.
	Yes.
	He literally links these two things.
	It turns out that all too many Republicans want to maximize their own freedom and minimize their opponents.
	Why?
	For many of the same reasons advanced by the architects of campus speech codes.
	Some ideas are allegedly too dangerous to be shared.
	Well, the other part of this, which is interesting, is that what is his solution to some of this stuff?
	Oh, fight in the courts.
	As if the legal system in America, as if the judicial system in America has not been completely corrupted, as if we haven't had years of, let's say, Obama judges, Biden judges, who do not care about the law.
	You did just get Roe v.
	Wade overturned, so maybe there's hope.
	Right.
	Well, you know, I mean, we'll see about that.
	But, yeah, I mean, for a litigator to say, hey, let's take things to court, you know, I mean, that's an answer...
	But moreover, why should it be decided by the courts when, say, Florida parents are like, I don't want you trying to pervert my children?
	That's exactly right.
	I need a legal verdict on that.
	So I thought you were for democracy?
	Do citizens have the right to make these decisions, to make moral decisions?
	Clearly, the left has that right.
	Clearly we do not, in David French's eyes.
	Exactly, isn't it?
	That's exactly it.
	The repressive tolerance is always extended to the left, but not to the right.
	But notice what he's doing here.
	He's saying, you know, it's for the same reasons that the campus speech codes were put in place, that the children in Florida universities aren't to be taught that white people are evil, right?
	And he says, these are the same things.
	It's like, okay, but you're not dealing with the same people, David.
	When someone goes to university, they are a legal adult.
	How old's a kindergartner?
	Five?
	And this is where David's philosophical confusion really comes into play, because he is treating a five-year-old as the equivalent of an adult.
	He is saying the free speech has to be extended to the left so they can teach radical ideas that the five-year-old can't challenge.
	Why?
	Because for him, he cares about the rights of the teacher.
	The voters care about the child.
	Exactly.
	The child never enters into it from French's point of view.
	And you'll notice there, though, but what rights does the teacher have in teaching what the child will learn?
	Zero.
	Exactly.
	None.
	This is not a free speech issue.
	The teacher can stop being a teacher or go in their private time, say whatever they want to whoever they will listen.
	But they don't have the obligation.
	It's my free speech right to be paid by the state, meaning the taxpaying parents, to indoctrinate their children into anti-white racism or weird sexual deviancy.
	That's not a right.
	That's not a free speech right.
	And yet David French has completely married the two.
	Being like, look, you don't want gangs of communists attacking you on college campuses?
	Oh, you must be in favor of Drag Queen Story Hour then.
	Right.
	It's like, no, David.
	Well, this is – things like this, when you see French doing this kind of thing, and then when you see politicians who are stupid, who are GOP politicians, you know – I think it's to the good because we're separating.
	We're identifying the people who cannot be counted on.
	Oh, yeah.
	And those people who are essentially married to the left, even if they haven't got the bravery to admit it.
	Because what David French is saying here, I mean, look at this next quote.
	It's fascinating, right?
	Educational gag orders represent only a part of the right-wing censorship wave.
	So that's not censorship to say that children can't be taught a certain thing, right?
	It's not censorship, right?
	But anyway, apparently, PEN America issued a report detailing 1,586 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,145 unique book titles.
	Now, look at that framing.
	Books being banned.
	You think, oh my god, that means no one in Florida can read a copy of Abraham X. Kendi's Anti-Racist Baby.
	No, just not present in the classroom.
	And by this logic, right, if some teachers in Florida were like, yeah, okay, so we're going to just start reading from Mein Kampf today, five-year-old kindergartners, David French would be like, listen, you're not going to be a censor, are you?
	You're not going to stop them from literally reading out Hitler in this classroom.
	Oh, no, but he would.
	You know he would.
	Exactly.
	You know exactly that he would.
	How could you allow this teacher to indoctrinate children into Nazism?
	So yeah, that's a great question, isn't it, David?
	And why doesn't it go the other way into Communism?
	Anyway, so he is complaining that this is censorship.
	This is not censorship.
	Curating what schools have in their texts is not a form of censorship.
	And basically he ends with, look, if leftists can't groom kids, we're Nazis.
	That's literally where he's coming from here, right?
	Right.
	He ends up...
	The question of the term groomer, of course, is one thing...
	Oh, that pisses them off.
	Oh, I love it.
	It's so good.
	Because it's true.
	It's true.
	It's absolutely true.
	And they know it's on the money.
	And so he says, look, censorship is inconsistent with American pluralism.
	Speech codes and book bans undermine one of the core purposes of American education.
	Or to groom children.
	I don't think that's what the core purpose is, David.
	He's lost, basically.
	And he has thoughts.
	Yeah.
	This type of thing is so soy and ridiculous.
	I mean, I have a thing where I say you need to know what time it is.
	It's very far outside of where we're at in terms of time.
	But a hopeful point is the venue.
	He used to be a writer at National Review.
	He got run out of National Review because the donors revolted and said, this is ridiculous.
	Why is this guy constantly crapping on our readers every column?
	So he ran to The Atlantic, which The Atlantic is one of the venerable left-wing It's completely radicalized, completely far left at this point.
	I've seen some ridiculous takes.
	Right, right.
	Ridiculous.
	But that's where he has found his home, which is significant.
	That and the dispatch.
	Yeah.
	In 2017, I was in Los Angeles visiting some people.
	And I was at a house party with Tim Pool, Luke Radowski, and Lauren Southern.
	And there was an Atlantic journalist there.
	And he must have thought I was a Nazi, right?
	Because he introduced himself saying, by the way, I'm Jewish.
	And I was like, Well, that's weird.
	And then he, like I said, he thought I was a Nazi, so that's how he's presented himself.
	I was like, look, I'm a liberal, and now I'm, you know, a liberal conservative, but like, I'm, your publication is BS and produces ridiculous stuff.
	And he's like, no, no, no, we don't.
	And so I just got this article that was an article about, there was a solar eclipse or something, and the progress of the sun was going across a bunch of states, and they tied that to racism.
	In the solo clips.
	And he was – I can't believe he published that.
	It's like, yeah, but you did.
	Yeah, but – right.
	You did.
	That's what your publication is.
	And there are 15 more that I can find if you give me 10 minutes.
	This was just the most recent – oh, my God.
	It struck me.
	But anyway, I don't want to dwell too much longer on David French.
	But the thing I think is interesting is – Is his response to the Buffalo shooting.
	Now, obviously a tragedy.
	If we can go to the tweet, this is a fascinating and very, very revealing statement.
	He says, How is that not the left-wing position that leads to censorship?
	If you say, I'm not for censorship, but then you're for censorship, David.
	Sure.
	And would he make this argument about any of the left-wing terrorism?
	Right.
	Or even the grooming stuff.
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's like, look, I'm not necessarily against Drag Queen Story Hour.
	But these guys take it to some ridiculous places.
	And then you've got the Loudoun County, the trans rapist in the bathroom and things like this.
	And it's like, look, are you going to accredit any of that to the trans activism that goes on in the mainstream media all day, every day?
	Right.
	Well, these guys got, I mean, these guys got very, you know, excited sexually when this, this Buffalo thing happened, which is, you know, right.
	And you never read that the perpetrator was a legitimate head case.
	Yeah, no.
	And it doesn't matter.
	And even if he wasn't, even if he was like, you know, the Christchurch guy, where it's not like he's got a history of mental illness, he's an ideologue, right?
	Right.
	Okay, let's assume that that's the case.
	But that doesn't matter because I can't think of a movement that doesn't have a mass shooter at this point.
	Yes.
	There was a furry Antifa mass shooter, but there have been two trans mass shooters.
	Like, there's been free speech mass shooters.
	You know, there's a mass shooter for everything because the mass shooting appears to be a...
	There was a vegan YouTuber.
	Yes.
	Iranian shooter, right?
	Who attacked YouTube.
	Yes.
	I mean, if that's not a politics, I don't know what is.
	I'm not going to say anything more about that because she got demonetized.
	Oh.
	That's why she did it.
	Oh, that's horrible.
	Yeah, it is horrible.
	But anyway, the point is, I think that the mass shooting phenomena is just a characteristic of American culture, unfortunately.
	And it's one of those things where it's because people get siloed in online conditions and then repeatedly see the same narrative over and over and over.
	And eventually, there's only one thing I can do, go and do something terrible.
	And there's one for each faction, each political faction.
	And so there's no point trying to make political hay saying, oh, look, your ideology leads to a shooting.
	So yeah, but yours does too.
	And theirs does.
	And theirs does.
	So it's not about the ideologies themselves.
	It's about a lack of a commitment to the democratic process, which necessitates free speech, which is what you guys are all against.
	Right.
	Well, if he can take a cheap shot against the right, he will take it.
	In fact, every Sunday on his Sunday piece, he takes a shot at American evangelicals.
	Of course he does.
	Every single Sunday.
	Not on Tuesday or whatever, but on Sunday.
	Of course he does.
	Now, I'm not a Christian, but I am upset and insulted on behalf of my Christian friends when I see that.
	Man, this guy is...
	But he's doing it because he knows that...
	He's in a weird relationship with the amount of hatred that he gets.
	Every time he can poke the bear, he takes the chance.
	And you know the only support he's going to get is from people who are on the left.
	Right.
	He's not going to get any support from conservatives.
	But anyway, I think we're...
	Sorry, guys.
	I know we're not going to have any video comments or many comments today, but I don't normally get such a brilliant guest in.
	So I'll go through a few of the comments, though.
	Callum says, is Dave really talking about Hungary or some beautiful dream that we will have for the future and our descendants?
	Because his description about Budapest is a little, well, alien to us.
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	One of the things that is immediately apparent about stepping into Budapest is that for once you get the idea of the city that you're going to.
	You have this idea of – maybe it's the Epcot Center, Walt Disney World idea of France or London or something and then you show up in reality and it's like, oh my god, we have Mogadishu plus this plus that.
	But you have an idea of what Budapest will be like and is like and that's what you get.
	So that's unique.
	That's new.
	That doesn't even happen in the US anywhere.
	Kevin says, speaking of Elon Musk, oh, they've deleted the article.
	Oh, sorry.
	Is this a now delete?
	Oh, right.
	John's showing us this article.
	Oh, beautiful.
	I did not know that.
	Honorable.
	So honorable.
	What year was this published?
	2021.
	Yeah, he was convicted in like 2012 of being a pedic.
	Anyway, Kevin says, Well, don't talk too soon.
	I mean, he hasn't won yet.
	It's a long struggle.
	Yeah, it's going to be a long battle.
	But eventually, God willing, I'll get my Twitter account back.
	Chipotle Aristotle says, Elon Musk, burning money to redpill the masses and stick it to the Dems.
	Try taxing this wealth now, suckers.
	The mad lad is literally lowering his tax bracket before our eyes because he was bored.
	With balls of steel that large, he must need to drive two Teslas side by side just to go anywhere.
	Benjamin says, I think it's very interesting.
	I think that he's just...
	Because what he did is force them to undergo various internal reviews.
	So now it's like Praag, Agrawal and the rest have to go through internal processes and produce reports that say, oh no, because they never showed evidence that it was 5%.
	Or fewer.
	And so Elon being, it's a very Trumpian tactic actually.
	Oh no, it's 20%.
	Doesn't it feel like 20% everyone, come on, look at this.
	And now they're on the back foot scrambling, wasting resources and time and emotional investment and things like that.
	I think it's just a really clever tactic from Musk.
	Yeah, and you've got to wonder how much information Musk has on the inside from sympathetic, you know, one or two sympathetic leakers who are telling him, hey Elon, push on this and see what happens.
	And then once he has a conversation about this and he's got someone on the inside, he can see people.
	He can see what is happening to the algorithm in real time.
	Absolutely.
	Mr.
	Tucker says, Elon is right when he calls out the Democrat attack strategy.
	I first personally saw it laid bare when Harry Reid made false allegations about Mitt Romney in 2012.
	When asked why he did it, even though he knew it wasn't true, Reid smirked and said it worked, didn't it?
	These people are snakes and we need more people to regard them as such.
	Amen.
	Hammurabi.
	Good guy.
	Yeah, good guy.
	Back from the dead.
	It says, rather than hurting him like planned, these attacks only seem to make him elongate further.
	I'll see myself out.
	Yes, well done, Hammurabi.
	But no, that's good.
	I do think that Elon knew this was coming and that's why he was like, yeah, I'm a Republican now, which is fine.
	But I think...
	And then as you said correctly, he's a showman.
	He understands.
	And when you are under attack, you can take it and cower or you can put on a show.
	Yeah, you can redirect the energy.
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And Elon's done a really good job of this.
	And the fact that he just keeps posting memes that are like anti-feminist offensive memes.
	Amazing.
	Yeah, you know he's doing it deliberately to wind up the right people as well as support his own base.
	Anyway, let's go on to the next subject.
	So, Longshanks, a lot of historical figures in our comment sections today.
	Ambient depravity is the best short summary of the aesthetic of Western globalist cities I've ever heard.
	That's a great phrase.
	Thank you.
	I'm going home right now to trademark it.
	No, but it is ambient depravity.
	I'm going to use it.
	That is fantastic.
	Well, wait until I write an article called Ambient Depravity and then we can, you know, just for the SEO. Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Final comment from Andrew.
	Not being familiar with the fellow, it sounds like David French is a stereotype of a radical libertarian rather than a true conservative.
	Freedom without consequences.
	Would that be apt?
	Sure, sure.
	But he considers himself very religious, which puts him outside of the libertarian kind of universe.
	And for him, the hate that he gets, he also sees in it some type of religious martyrdom situation.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	But in all intents and purposes, yes, that's the effect.
	He's a Christian, right?
	Yes.
	He claims it.
	Yes, yes.
	And then on Sunday, he gets out his typewriter.
	And makes sure he insults the flock for not living up to the standard set by David French.
	Anyway, I think we're out of time there, folks.
	So thank you very much for joining us.
	If you want more from us, you can, of course, go to locities.com and subscribe, which is how we keep the lights on, how we keep the show running, and how we get great guests like Dave.

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