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Sept. 14, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:16

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #741

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lothaseaters episode 741 for today, Thursday, the 14th I'm your host Connor, joined by Charlie.
	Great to be here.
	Yep, John Dee has had this exact wet dream.
	Anyway, so the topics that young zoomers that know nothing are going to discuss today is the constitution being optional, apparently, Britain's vape ban being based, but for all the wrong reasons, and how men and women want different things again we have to keep explaining this to you before we jump into that we have an announcement today because the last episode went so well last week we're returning with lads hour charlie's going to be the guest on that today is carl josh beau and stelios and they're talking about the mexican aliens you know those weird
	obviously fake papier-mache bodies no i believe it actually i believe they're real i'm I believe that the Mexican Congress has had dead aliens that have been dead for a thousand years in storage, and it's only now they've chosen to unveil them.
	Yeah, the rapid transformation of alien bodies into stone, unlike any other fossil in existence.
	It's really weird how they look exactly like Hollywood greys as well, don't you think?
	Yeah, have you seen people just zooming in on them and going like, um, when that edible hits?
	Anyway, so they're going to have fun with that.
	Go subscribe to the website if you haven't already.
	You can go watch it at three o'clock until five o'clock and send your chats in.
	But without further ado, let's jump into today's stories.
	Well, on the topic of shenanigans near the American border, but we'd also talk about New Mexico, not old Mexico with all the aliens.
	The state's currently become the focus of debate after some delusional Democrat, I mean, I repeat myself, I suppose, decided to suspend the Second Amendment under the pretext of a public health emergency.
	Now, that's already been temporarily blocked by a judge in Albuquerque on Wednesday, so it was obvious it was never going to pass through, even though this day and age doing unconstitutional things kind of just flies in the States, persecuting your political opposition with longer sentences than actual murderers for doing a guided tour of the Capitol, for instance.
	But that's the less interesting part.
	The more interesting part is actually If constitutions are supreme, or if the legislators are supreme, because it's ignited a debate on the anti-woke coalition, the right and the refugee leftists that are still among us, as to whether or not you can create states of exception, and if the sovereign can declare exceptions, and where sovereignty really lies in America.
	I'm glad you're here because of course you percolate in distant right spheres.
	You're very well versed in this and Harry would love to be joined by us but he's doing the northerner thing of going to Spain for a well-deserved holiday.
	But if you'd like to see how Harry and I would have discussed this as well you can subscribe to our website for as little as £5 a month and get lots of our premium content.
	This video is actually free and this is mine and Harry's discussion of James Lindsay's conception of liberalism.
	It follows a Well, I think frankly he's probably very frustrated.
	nationalists and this just spilled over into a general discussion about the works of carl schmidt who will be very large over this conversation he's just laughing well laughing about i think i think i think frankly he's probably very frustrated this is this is something that frustrates me as well my friend enemy distinction came up last week when i was sitting and talking to carl and calum smiles about the persecution of enrico tario and some of the other prow boys and the like the Enrique not even being in the state while January 6th is going on and getting 22 years.
	And I mentioned the friend-enemy distinction and Carl, I think, misclassified it as the right-wing version of oppressive tolerance.
	And the thing that Schmitt actually said is it has a metaphysical dimension, because if you are often a liberal, the kind of person that needs to convene a committee to decide whether Christ or Barabbas, by the time you've reached a decision, the righteous man will be persecuted and crucified.
	And so you are slowly conceding ground to the kind of useful idiots that allow something akin to the Antichrist to come into the world, an existential threat to your way of life.
	So he had metaphysical weight there.
	It wasn't just my side good, your side bad.
	And I think this is something that some of the liberals don't understand and so that will be imbibed in, I'm sure, our exploration of this issue.
	That's Tomlinson's Law right there, by the way.
	It's been about three minutes and the Antichrist has already come up.
	There we go!
	Right, so if you're not familiar with the actual topic at hand here, if you haven't seen the clips that went viral shared by Tim Paul and Elon Musk and the like, this was the press conference where the New Mexico governor, after a tragic shooting, I think it was an 11 year old outside a baseball game stadium, was killed in a drive-by, she decided to convene all of the police chiefs around the table.
	Some agreed, some didn't, and in very histrionic fashion, declare shootings a public health emergency and say, you are not allowed to open carry in my state.
	So we're going to go to two video clips and let her explain her deranged logic.
	Go back, please, John.
	I don't know why that happened.
	In this public health order, which is effective today, September 8th, which lasts 30 days, and then we'll, like all the other public health orders, we will either amend or renew or adjust depending upon where we are.
	So effective immediately, no person Other than a law enforcement officer or licensed security officer shall possess a firearm either openly or concealed within cities or counties averaging 1,000 or more violent crimes per 100,000
	And more than 90 firearm related emergency department visits.
	So to put that in sort of a layman's terms for 30 days.
	In Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, it's the only place that meets both those standards.
	Statewide order, but only one place meets both criteria.
	We have far too many ER gunshot visits, and we have far too many crimes involving firearms.
	We're suspending open and concealed carry.
	The purpose is to try to create a cooling off period while we figure out how we can better address Public safety and gun violence.
	Now, I am sure as I go through the rest of this, there will be a lot of questions about whether or not we think we have the legal rights to do that.
	I am sure that before you write this, there will be a legal challenge, and I can't tell you that we win it given all of the different Um, uh, challenges to gun violence laws and restrictions on individual firearm access and control.
	I think it's time we have a really strong debate about all the other constitutional rights.
	No one right now in New Mexico, and particularly in Albuquerque, is safe in a movie theater, at a park, at a school, at a grocery store, at an ice-it-topes game.
	At the university, at the grocery store, I think I said, getting your prescriptions at work.
	You just aren't safe.
	I can't guarantee it.
	And neither can the men and the women who put on a uniform every day.
	In that regard, I think it's time to talk about the absoluteness of the discussion on the current court actions that suggest that the Second Amendment is an absolute right and none of the others are.
	And I'm sure you're going to ask me what I think my chances are.
	And again, if it opens up the door to the kinds of public safety that keep kids safe, I'm willing, I'm willing to take it on.
	So notice how she paralyzes the opposition by saying, oh I'm just opening up to debate.
	The moment you put, and she said all other constitutional rights as well, the moment you put something in the box of we're going to obfuscate this by having it up for being discussed, You paralyse the opposition trying to put them on the defensive posture, while you're already pushing through the legal prohibition.
	Now, again, it's been blocked, but the fact that she's done this meant that there were a couple of days where you legally could not, and so she's pushing the wedge issue far more successfully than the people who just want to defend their gun rights.
	And it's easy, I mean, the slippery slope is called a fallacy, but it's clearly not, because, I mean, how long would it be, you know, in the name of public health, suspending the First Amendment?
	For example, you know, given that leftists will say that words of violence and language is, you know, dangerous and all the rest of it, you know, sets the precedent.
	Well, they already tried to with the Intercept expose, seeing that the Biden administration were actively communicating with Silicon Valley tech executives to take down Anthony Fauci parody accounts.
	Yeah.
	Because much like her, they were so concerned with safety and their own fields and reputations that it overrides constitutional and legal norms.
	And this is what I think a lot of constitutional liberals who are standing on principle that we'll come to a bit later have to understand is that these people don't share your same reverence for good faith action.
	These people act on the primacy of their own feelings and their own ambitions and they will run roughshod over your principles that you extend to them and therefore you will lose by trying to stand in the same place if you don't rise to meet them.
	Now I don't know the details of this particular shooting that has happened but I mean I'm sure it's horrible as all of them are.
	Um, and I mean, it's, let's just get real for a second.
	America does have a problem with gun violence, you know, shocking.
	Yeah.
	Um, but I, I think I tend to be with, I think it was actually Carl that made this case a while ago that it's more of a symptom of kind of civilizational decay.
	It's not, it's not, it's a sort of well-worn line, but it's not the gun's fault.
	It's the fact that this, I mean, America is clearly a society, a mentally ill society.
	You know, the people in that nation, uh, are.
	I mean, we're watching it collapse, essentially, in real time, because the people there, you know, the liberal democratic order beneath which they live, is making them weird.
	It's, you know, the kind of propositional nation that they have there.
	We're seeing that it doesn't actually, as high-minded and ideal as that is, it doesn't actually work, because it doesn't correspond with the sort of reality of human nature.
	And if you create these pressure cooker constituencies, particularly inner-city black and Latino gangs, We have the same thing over here with inner city black youths in London who don't have guns but they do have machetes so it's more about the population who's holding the weapon than the weapons themselves.
	If you have them having no ties to their neighbours or the place or the culture in which they live then they're just going to pillage and plunder and kill each other for their own personal benefit at the expense of the lives of children.
	Just suspending the Second Amendment isn't going to fix that because you're going to rob the people who need to defend themselves from said criminals of the right to do so because the criminals won't pay attention because they're criminals.
	Yeah.
	Shock.
	So a couple of notes before I go on to the second clip.
	She later goes on to say, this has no bearing on private property because responsible gun owners are not our problem.
	Again.
	Yet.
	The program also tried to fund testing for fentanyl in schools, which is a fairly banal thing to do.
	But the fact that you're now having to do that again shows civilizational decay.
	And she's also pushing, and this is where the existential threat is smuggled in under debate, she admits to pushing for a federal gun ban on assault weapons.
	An assault weapon is not actually a category.
	It just means any gun that looks scary.
	So that is any gun that isn't a handgun and some shotguns.
	Any gun that's long.
	Yeah, long gun bad, exactly.
	And this, obviously, that sort of law wouldn't pass the Supreme Court, because Clarence Thomas already ruled on a New York case last year that essentially concealed constitutional carry is a constitutional right.
	So she knows this won't pass the smell test, but just by pushing for it creates the space for that debate, which then paralyzes your opposition.
	So I want to go on to this clip where the reporters decided to question this, because they went, hang on a minute, this doesn't sound constitutional.
	And she went, that's exactly right.
	Just arrest everyone.
	Well, I also have to have the ability.
	I can't arrest everyone.
	There are literally too many people to arrest.
	I can make the point that maybe they should be.
	And this is the point.
	or walking down the public street, they're not gonna get arrested. - I can make the point that maybe they should be.
	And this is the point.
	I'm willing to do anything and everything within a shred of evidence-based effort.
	Because if you're not horrified that on any street corner in too many cities in New Mexico, there is someone with a gun sticking out of their waist or their belt.
	And I'll tell you, if you're a young person, you're not allowed to have a handgun.
	Well, it's a crime already.
	I got it.
	But we won't be able to arrest all of them.
	So imagine, just in a perfect world, if this was upheld, it gives all of these police officers the ability to focus on the real criminals.
	Last follow-up.
	But your point is valid.
	You took an oath to the Constitution.
	Isn't it unconstitutional to say you cannot exercise your carry license?
	With one exception.
	And that is, if there's an emergency, and I've declared an emergency for a temporary amount of time, I can invoke additional powers.
	No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, Is intended to be absolute.
	There are restrictions on free speech.
	There are restrictions on my freedoms in this emergency.
	This 11 year old and all these parents who have lost all these children, they deserve my attention to have the debate.
	About whether or not, in an emergency, we can create a safer environment.
	Because what about their constitutional rights?
	I took an oath to uphold those too.
	And if we ignore this growing problem, without being bold, I've said to every other New Mexican, your rights are subjugated to theirs.
	And they are not, in my view.
	Wait a minute, you're talking about crimes.
	There are already laws against the crimes, so how are there rights to come?
	But again, if I'm unsafe, who's standing up for that right? - Right.
	If this climate is so out of control, somebody should do something.
	I'm doing as much as I know to do.
	Do you really think that criminals are going to hear this message and not carry a gun in Albuquerque on the streets for 30 days?
	Uh, no.
	But here's what I do think.
	It's a pretty resounding message to everybody else in that community to report a crime, to tell us what's going on, to aid law enforcement, to do something different.
	So her logic, if you can call it that, is that if you don't have a gun, Then you are so reliant on being unable to defend yourself that you call the police that the crime will get solved somehow.
	And so you're just institutionalizing all enforcement mechanisms so you're ratcheting upwards towards the totalitarian state.
	Of course.
	And then the sort of self-evidentriness, the conceit that she displays when she goes, okay, but if you aren't outraged when someone's walking around with a handgun in their pocket, So, yeah, so your feels are the primary place from which you speak, and just because some expert has given you an evidence-based reason, you can now rob someone of their constitutional rights.
	And I say constitutional because that is how it's codified in America, but it should be your right to defend yourself.
	We can recognize that she's playing a game here by appealing to emotions the way she is, but it's effective, right?
	Because the gun violence problem is pretty emotionally resonant for a lot of people.
	But I can just all I can watching that all I could think of was kind of like James Burnham's face Talking about the managerial elite because this woman is like she's like some sort of corporate I mean, I don't really know this woman's history But she's a kind of corporate HR manager type vibe coming off where you know mistress of the longhouse exactly.
	Yeah exactly Um, but again, I think it just shows you, I mean again, back to Schmidt, it shows you that it's actually the individuals that are occupying the positions of influence and authority that are, that actually make the call in the final analysis.
	It doesn't matter, you know, the piece of paper is great, but it doesn't actually mean anything if you have people like this interpreting it.
	Yeah, and this is why America is being torn apart.
	It's because if you debase the ethical presuppositions, the things that made the founding fathers say, we hold these truths to be self-evident, it's only self-evident if you believe in the founding ethos of the country.
	If you take that out from under the laws, then all that you have is successive generations of people who don't necessarily believe in the country, expected to uphold laws that are not for their benefit and not according to their beliefs.
	And so what they do is they over-circumvent or just get rid of the laws over time if they don't think they're legitimate.
	And that's how you get A group of men surrounding her, some of whom are Democrats, some of whom she even admits don't agree with this, capitulating to an unconstitutional tyrannical order because they've been emotionally henpecked in their compliance.
	And this is the thing as well, I don't think she's even smart enough to understand the Schmittian principle.
	I think what she's saying, we're going to have the debate.
	Well, and she's admitting there that to create the space for the debate, that's actually just code for we're going to rob you of your rights.
	But I don't think she's smart.
	I think she's actually operating purely off those emotions.
	I don't think this is even a semantic game she's playing.
	I think she's just hysterical, but it's an effective political tool to use to whip people up into hysteria, to not realize what they're being robbed of while they sit around and have the conversation.
	while they convene the committee as Christ is crucified.
	Yes, indeed.
	This is not a wise woman.
	I mean, that's really not the vibe I get off her.
	And that's the thing.
	This is something that's certainly not considered in countries like America where they are just this kind of pure liberal democracy.
	The idea of wise leaders.
	It's such an alien concept in modern America, and I think just in the West in general.
	A wise leader would have the foresight to recognize the precedent, what she's actually doing by setting this precedent.
	But again, this is a midwit HR manager.
	we're talking about here.
	Yep, many such cases.
	So just for some further details on this.
	So she sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, this was Thursday the 7th of September, asking for federal law enforcement to be deployed since June 2022 to combat gun violence.
	So she's trying to also introduce martial law in the States.
	At the same time, she's trying to rob you, Americans, of your ability to defend yourselves.
	She wants agents of the state on street corners.
	From the same justice department that said radical Catholics are domestic terrorists.
	So that's great.
	And the shooting in question, the details, I was right from memory.
	An 11-year-old was killed and a woman critically injured on the 6th of September after an alleged road rage altercation outside a baseball game.
	So, again, American civil society is just tearing itself apart, but you're not going to address that by robbing law-abiding people of their guns.
	And we obviously couldn't ask who's committing said crimes, could we?
	Because that would be malinformation.
	We also couldn't ask it because New Mexico have stopped collecting ethnic data for the Criminal Justice Department.
	That always goes really well.
	Yep, yep, the INS are doing that here as well.
	You can't notice patterns, ladies and gentlemen.
	There are no state rules or laws that require law enforcement agencies to track the race or ethnicity of the people that their officers contact, stop in vehicles, or arrest, according to two top officials at the New Mexico Sentencing Commission.
	And of New Mexico's 33 county jails, they do not record the race or ethnicity of inmates, booking officers choose which race to enter on an intake slip, not the inmates themselves.
	The only mention in state law of gathering race or ethnicity information for people in prisons is from 1955, And places the onus on doctors to examine new inmates and record their private register or their nationality or race.
	So it's not like you can even target the interventions to specific communities that maybe don't think Black Lives Matter and try and solve the problem there.
	Instead we're just going to rob all law-abiding gun owners of their ability for self-defense.
	And you could just be, you know, thinking maybe she just misread.
	I just thought I'd pull up the Second Amendment.
	For those who aren't versed in the constitutional tradition, a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
	Might have missed off that last bit, but again, I don't think she realised.
	So, getting to the sort of enforcement of this and the actual debate on the anti-woke right.
	What ended up happening was, and this does show that sometimes culture is more important than politics, and it does show that actually how people enforce the laws are more important than the law themselves.
	There was a large open carry protest in Albuquerque, in the public square, and none of the police showed up to arrest anyone.
	So, not only was the law blocked by a judge, eventually, but before that even happened, people showed up, defied the law, and the police themselves, who didn't agree with it, decided not to prosecute the people.
	So, good local policing, or lack thereof, by the Albuquerque Police Department.
	So, the Republicans, obviously calling for her removal, they're trying to get her impeached.
	That's two Republican members of the State House of Representatives.
	This is Stefani Lord and John Block, and they're calling for the governor to be removed.
	I doubt it'll go through.
	Never really does.
	Just keep voting, guys, I guess.
	Hope they don't fortify the next one.
	But the most important thing of this was the online response.
	That was the most interesting.
	So EndWokeness here has two screenshots from David Hogg uh did march for our lives after the parkland school shooting i believe in florida and he's just a rabid anti-gun activist always been a child in response to this he said i support gun safety that there's no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the u.s constitution Sorry, I must have caught it.
	Don't know what happened there.
	And then Ted Lieu, this is the guy who accused Candace Owens of being a Nazi, so that shows exactly where his brain's at.
	I support gun safety laws.
	However, this order from the Governor of New Mexico violates the U.S.
	Constitution.
	No state in the Union can suspend the federal Constitution.
	There is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S.
	Constitution.
	Now, you might be forgiven for thinking suddenly they'd abandoned talking points for principles.
	But I think this is just an optical play because they realize that she's overextended here ahead of time where they want to revoke ability to use a second amendment.
	Yeah.
	And they realize it's not strategically viable, but they still agree with what she's trying to do.
	Absolutely.
	In principle, these people absolutely support what she's doing, but I think they just understand the game.
	You know, they understand that the optics of this are terrible.
	It looks tyrannical.
	You read, as you just did, the actual Second Amendment itself shall not be infringed.
	Oh, I'm going to infringe it.
	That'll work out well.
	It's like, come on, just incrementally rather than all at once.
	That's their ploy.
	And so this hammers home the points to the people that say the Constitution itself is absolute, not to the same people that you're trying to argue with.
	You're not playing by the same game.
	So you're disadvantaged by sticking to the rules and being reciprocal to people that would like to flip over the entire board.
	What you need is basically to enforce the rules within the people that actually value the rules and everyone else.
	Well, these kind of people go, well, you shouldn't have free speech.
	Okay, then you shouldn't have the First Amendment either if you don't want that, frankly.
	And this is something that Michael Knowles observed.
	And Michael Knowles kicked a real hornet's nest on our side when he said, on popular opinion, civil leaders do in fact have emergency authority to suspend temporarily many legal rights.
	Not saying I agree with the governor's decision in this particular instance, but in principle she has a point and she even has some credibility on the issue since New Mexico is relatively tough on crime.
	So Michael Knowles is not saying she is right to have done this.
	He's not saying, even necessarily, that she should be doing this, or that the government should have an ability to do this.
	As Callum Smiles points out just underneath, if governments are allowed to break laws in an emergency, they'll create emergency to break laws, as we saw with COVID.
	But he is observing the fact that this does happen, and routinely happens, and by sticking to the parameters of the Constitution, You are incapable of arguing with someone who's operating outside that paradigm.
	You're just going to seed ground, lose slowly.
	And this is part of the distinction that some people forget in their commentary surrounding this particular thing.
	Laws should be moral, but not all laws are moral.
	And sometimes you do need to disobey laws in order to be moral.
	Yes.
	And that's also the principle that he's making there.
	It's not that she's moral, but that you can step outside the boundaries of the law in order to revivify and return to the spirit of the law in the first place.
	And I do, I mean, to be honest, I am quite partial to this line of argument.
	Again, I don't support the New Mexico governor doing this, but if you, you know, I think it's important, especially on our side, being essentially the dissident side of politics.
	We have to understand how power actually functions.
	Because something like the constitution, it is just a bit of paper at the end of the day that needs to be interpreted by somebody.
	And so, and if the person interpreting it, as in this case, is an idiot, then you're going to have bad outcomes.
	But if they are a wise person, one of our guys, then you'll have good outcomes.
	And I think that if you did have a wise leader, a genuine great man, and he deemed it necessary to suspend certain, as Michael Knowles here says, temporarily many legal rights due to what he has judged to be an emergency, I don't think that's everywhere and always a bad thing.
	Because if you had, again, if you had a wise leader, He might be right, right?
	Especially if you have compounded various laws atop the Constitution that are not within the spirit in keeping the Constitution, as has already happened with America.
	If you've got a replacement president, the current breaches, soiling, dementia, addled old surface monkey at the moment, like a President Trump that would come in and be a Caesarean figure, and if he suspended certain elements of constitutional protections against his enemies and returned America to the spirit of the Constitution, people would and if he suspended certain elements of constitutional protections against his enemies and returned America to the spirit of the Constitution, people would probably complain and kick up a stink during the process, but when the Oh yes.
	And so, Michael Knowles is not advocating for what the governor has done, he's just observing that this is a fact, the other side do it routinely, and sometimes we may need to engage in this kind of line of argumentation in order to preserve the spirit of the country.
	But then we're just as bad as them!
	Yeah, we're not actually, we're not defective.
	Okay, lose then!
	Yeah, yeah.
	And this is part of the problem.
	Again, it's the, we've got to have the debate.
	Meanwhile, we're getting crucified.
	Not very helpful.
	This is something that also Oren McIntyre pointed out.
	He just decided to do the long thread on the state of exception.
	We've gone over some of that sort of stuff in our discussion.
	I recommend going and reading it.
	Also, Georgio Agamben's book, State of Exception, where he compares Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and the first amendment and the free press during the civil war to the George Bush suspension of such rights in Guantanamo Bay.
	And it is an eye-opening thing because Pretty much everyone on our side is against the cringe neocon patriot act, make the world safer democracy stuff.
	But there are lots of people still in our camp who would regard Abraham Lincoln as some kind of hero.
	I mean, if you walk around all the monuments and museums in Washington, as I did in July, they refer to the civil war as their second founding.
	And so they are happy with Abraham Lincoln's actions in a wartime emergency to get that specific outcome.
	So they're not even consistent in their own narrative here.
	It's just about historical literacy.
	I'm not trying to chew everyone out, but put it in perspective, ladies and gentlemen.
	And also Oron just points out, yeah, our enemies do this all the time.
	A lot of people are more angry at Oron for pointing out that their rights are easily and routinely violated than they are at the government that easily and routinely violates them.
	In order to understand power, you actually have to read these texts and understand that they're going to do this, no matter what principles you cling to, because you just don't share the same set of moral precepts and respect for the law as these people.
	You don't recognize them for what they actually are, these people, which is wolves.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	Yes.
	And so I just thought I'd finish on a meme by our friend Skeptical Waves.
	He responded to this meme here, which is the, We're just as bad as them meme.
	I weaponize the federal government.
	My enemy gets in power, but everything's worse.
	My enemy weaponizes the federal government.
	I get in power, but now everything's worse.
	So, yes.
	Strong argument against democracy.
	Yeah, we cannot do anything.
	It's just perpetually losing slowly, and you just have to accept the fact that even if you try, you will be kicked down.
	Instead Skeptical Ways does this.
	I refuse to exercise power out of principle.
	My enemy gets in power, but now everything's worse.
	My enemy weaponizes the federal government.
	I get in power, but now everything's worse.
	That's exactly what happened with President Trump.
	Yeah.
	He put too much faith in boomer institutions and got crushed for it.
	So what we need to do, to just conclude, is wise up to the fact that we aren't playing the same game as these people.
	Don't extend to them the same consideration that you would to your friends who share the same affirmative vision of a country you'd like to live in.
	Do not allow your enemy's room to enter existential threats under cover of night into your country by having the debate.
	Don't argue with these people.
	Don't abide by their laws.
	And don't try and stick to a document and argue within the paradigm of terms that they won't accept.
	Makes people uncomfortable, but it's true.
	Right.
	Right then.
	Let's move on.
	So, uh... There we go.
	There we go.
	So, the government is set to ban disposable vapes in the coming weeks.
	So this is your Elf Bars, your Geek Bars, your Lost Marys, the sort of various colourful plastic sticks and squares sold in every corner shop in this country that ended up littering, you know, the high streets probably.
	I mean, certainly of Swindon, also my own town.
	South East London, the gutters.
	Yeah, many other places I've been.
	So prescient in this conversation is Ted Kaczynski's The Industrial Society and Its Future.
	So you should check out the book club that Josh and Carl did on this, enlightening stuff.
	So this ban being done by the government in the next few weeks.
	The reasons given for it are as follows.
	Protecting children, think of the children, is one.
	So Rishi Sunak himself has voiced his concerns about these products in May.
	He said, I have two young girls.
	It looks like they, the vapes, are targeted at kids, which is ridiculous.
	I don't want my kids to be seduced by any of these things.
	Fair enough.
	Well, related to the seduction of children, here's the reason why... Get that clipped.
	That's going to go on like a series of content.
	Here is why I am for this ban.
	Have you noticed all these Pakistani cash only vape shops that are opening up everywhere?
	Weird.
	Yeah.
	Well, if we just take away their ability to do business and just smash them overnight.
	Yeah.
	So you wanted to protect the children.
	I wanted to take away money from foreigners.
	We are not the same.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	We'll be getting into our own reasons for supporting this ban as we both do later, but we'll run through the government's reasons because there are a lot more Tepid, let's say.
	Um, but you know, the think of the children argument is pretty strong because I don't know about you, but I have seen, I've seen kids using these things all over the place.
	Like I was in, I was in Crewe one time up north.
	You poor sod.
	Explains it.
	Um, and there was this kid who was probably no older than six, like just walking around puffing on one of these things.
	And I was just like, Jesus.
	Um, but yeah, that's pretty tame.
	I mean, that's of course as well, the parents fault or lack of parents fault.
	Well, of course.
	Yeah.
	But, um, you know, this is the thing.
	If they're there, then Well, if they're not there, then even bad parenting won't fall into their hands, right?
	So the second reason is the environmental impact.
	So according to The Guardian, so take it with a pinch of salt, but apparently 5 million vapes are discarded every week.
	I can believe that as well.
	These are the people that didn't care about disposable masks, which are now more of them in the ocean than jellyfish, but I am sick of all the disposable plastic that ends up in my bloody drinking water.
	Well, that's the thing.
	We should, I think as conservatives, these are the sorts of issues that we should care about in, you know, when we talk about the environment, because these are tangible things.
	You know, as I said, I go out and I see this crap, like littering the streets, and it's a tangible thing, not like something like climate change, which is just like, okay, what do you even mean by that?
	But I think, you know, again, I'm fairly partial to this argument.
	That's eight vapes a second get chucked away.
	It's just, I mean, it's depressing.
	And the third argument is the NHS, of course.
	Okay, well I'm immediately against this ban now.
	Yeah, I mean, it always follows that the appeal to the NHS has to be made because it is the national religion.
	But yeah, apparently 500 million pounds could be saved if half of smokers switched to vape.
	Okay, and how much would be saved if we just deported all the foreigners that keep using it without ever paying into the system?
	Can't ask that question, can I?
	That would be racist.
	It's me, yes.
	But yeah, it's just a utilitarian cringe that comes of having an NHS.
	That said, I actually am not opposed to the NHS.
	I mean, in its current form, I don't like it, obviously.
	But I don't really like this sort of American argument of like, oh, it's nothing to do with me if my neighbour gets cancer.
	Like, he should sort that out for himself.
	I don't like that attitude to your countrymen.
	No, but I don't think state-funded programs would have a monopoly on that attitude.
	I mean, the Victorian healthcare system was, in terms of outcomes, obviously technologically limited, but you had particularly middle-aged women serving a useful community role with institutes and local church groups and the like, and you'd be able to set up charity sectors, particularly because if people had more money in their pocket and were far more Christian, would feel inclined to donate to them.
	Yes.
	Yes indeed.
	So those are the reasons given by the government and this issue has sparked quite a debate online about the vapes in particular but also about the more general role of the state in things like public health and that sort of thing.
	So our mutual acquaintance Ah yes, okay.
	Look, Reem, I can always rely on you to come up with the most shitlib take imaginable.
	Lovely girl, but... So this is, I've been talking to Reem about this issue and she is very, she does feel very strongly about it.
	I think this tweet here pretty much sums up libertarian philosophy in a single sentence.
	Let me enjoy my candyfloss flavoured vaping piece.
	Now that is one of the reasons why I'm against these things on principle, and I've said this to Josh yesterday, because Josh has been trying to quit smoking on and off, and he's got some sort of flavoured vape thing.
	I wasn't going to expose Josh like that, but you've just gone and done it.
	Yeah, well we all dob each other in here, don't we?
	I just said it's gay.
	To quote Nick DiPolo, really?
	You're vaping?
	You look manly with a cock hanging out of your mouth.
	What are you trying to do?
	Steam broccoli?
	Iron my shirt?
	Go get a cigar?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, as I said, we will get on to our own reasons and that is a main one for me.
	But yeah, so it's a sort of, you know, the first line of argument that's been deployed is just the libertarian argument, the appeal to freedom, it's my right to evade if I want to and all the rest of it.
	You know, okay.
	Live and let live, man.
	In all seriousness, I don't really care that much, but I'm just going to shrug if it gets banned and goes away.
	Genuinely, it doesn't impact me.
	I can only see really positives coming from it.
	And I do have a natural posture which says that I would prefer if the government weren't meddling micromanagers henpecking me every turn.
	But I don't count this among it.
	It's not I fall on the side of the principle that the government shouldn't exactly be telling me what to do.
	However, there are certain industries where they need to step in.
	Yeah, of course.
	And so this one, fine, do what you want.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So there we go.
	If you want my take on freedom as a political cause, you can read this article here.
	It was offended quite a few people, so I'd recommend that.
	Good one then.
	Yeah, shameless self-promotion there.
	The next line of argument is essentially the enforce the law argument.
	So Reem again here says, but it's for the children, most common argument used to take away our freedoms.
	It's already illegal for the children to be vaping, which is true, right?
	Um, and this chap as well, Lance Churchill.
	It would be absurd to outlaw booze for all ages because some children manage to sneak a bottle of Frosty Jacks or Glenn's vodka, yet a vape ban follows the same logic.
	Surely the solution is to enforce existing regulations, not create brand new ones.
	And finally, the IEA.
	A ban on disposable vapes will restrict the choices of adult smokers who could benefit from switching.
	the answer to underage vaping is to enforce laws that already exist and again it's a good argument I agree I mean policing in this country is so permissive that it's embarrassing I mean we have become an international joke because of the state of our policing I mean look at it it's terrible so I do agree actually that enforcing pre-existing laws is preferable to creating new ones that said I still support the vape ban but again it's not for the same reasons as the government has stated first
	Finally, there is the health argument.
	So the IEA again, talking about how the vape ban could cost lives.
	Now a lot of people basically make the case that vapes are safer than cigarettes.
	Possibly that's true, but I kind of think they haven't been around long enough for there to be actually any meaningful evidence to support that case.
	Because these things, just very quickly, just spill on here.
	This piece of research came out a couple of months ago saying that these vapes contain like lead and nickel and that sort of thing and that doesn't surprise me because these are I mean it's like synthetic chemicals.
	What do you think you're doing to your body?
	Yeah.
	But same thing.
	Organization called We Vape UK says a ban on disposable vapes is a dangerous strategy that will harm smokers wanting to make the switch.
	Children should not have access to any vapes and that is a matter for enforcing existing regulation.
	This proposed ban would be short-sighted and ineffective.
	Children will find products on the black market and adults will go back to smoking.
	Can I disentangle this for a second as well because the IAEA are arguing from conflicting philosophical premises here.
	You can argue from the position of I should be allowed to do as I like and the government shouldn't be allowed to tell me what to do.
	That is a consistent libertarian line of argument of which I have my sympathies.
	But then the other argument about health is a harm reduction argument.
	Harm reduction doesn't talk about virtue.
	A libertarian argument is meant to be deontological.
	It's meant to be talking about the natural right for any individual to have bodily autonomy and self-governance.
	Yeah.
	Pursue their destiny.
	Yeah.
	And not be coerced.
	Yeah.
	I don't think you can have that without a metaphysical foundation, but I'll put that to the side.
	But then the harm reduction argument doesn't talk about virtue.
	Harm reduction argument just says, okay, everyone's going to be kind of sordid.
	Let's just give you the avenue to consume maximally with the least amount of health consequences.
	And so if you want to go down the libertarian line of argument, you should be arguing.
	Maybe the government shouldn't be stepping in on this, but you have a duty to yourself and the others that you care for to not indulge in vices that you don't need to do like this, where you're just wasting your money and you look kind of stupid and you're huffing away on possibly heavy metals or formaldehyde if you've got a cigarette of a disreputable brand.
	But instead they're saying, okay, not only should the government not be allowed to tell you what to do, you should also have a plethora of opportunities to poison yourself in the least worst way possible.
	So that's the true argument.
	True argument is what Reem originally said, which is, I should be smoking my candy phosphate in peace.
	Yes.
	You want to consume it.
	You've already forgone the conclusion here.
	All of your politics is reoriented around, what can I consume?
	Not the principle originally.
	I agree with the principle originally.
	I think if you're doing certain things that you'd like to be justified, actually reflects more poorly on your character.
	So it makes me less likely to support you.
	Yes, and I have my own arguments against libertarianism, which I will actually get into in a short while.
	But I also appreciate the vision that you're talking about, where it's people's own volition, they pursue virtue and avoid vice, in a society where the government doesn't actually have much of a hand in their life.
	But I kind of tend to think that Those arguments, uh, once had their place but don't so much anymore.
	Anyway, um, this person, the vape ban is stupid, more kids are gonna try cigarettes instead and they'll just get their hands on pod devices and Juul.
	Also, I know so many people who have managed to quit smoking by moving to disposable vapes.
	They actually help people, to be honest.
	And to be fair, according to the Telegraph, 14% of smokers quit successfully using e-cigarettes, while just 6% were able to quit without any aids.
	So it's possible these things do actually help.
	Now, whether that means they quit nicotine completely, or that they just move to disposable vapes, it's not clear.
	They're doing patches of gum or something like that.
	Exactly.
	You know, it's still not great for you.
	Did you see Tom Holwood's tweet the other day, by any chance?
	Um, I tend to avoid his Twitter account, so no.
	I would.
	About what?
	Right, so this coincided with Miriam Cate standing up and giving a speech in Parliament about making age verification.
	Yeah, you sent me that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Tom Harwood tweeted out something akin to, it is stupid and dangerous to try and stop teenagers.
	Oh yeah, I did actually see that one.
	I replied to it because it sounded like a very strange self-report saying that they're definitely going to go straight to the deep web.
	Yeah, they're gonna go straight to the Silk Road to go on OnlyFans.
	Is that alright, Tom?
	Tell us how you really feel.
	Why do you want to keep porn available for children, Tom?
	I'm sure you don't.
	It's just a big misunderstanding.
	Anyway, point being, this kind of thing says, okay, well, even if you try and act against making this accessible to children, even if it's really bad for you and you try and keep it out of the hands of it, they'll still find some way of maximally exploiting you.
	Yes, addicts will.
	Some addicts will download VPNs or pay for whatever sort of subscription service or do crack cocaine or whatever, you know.
	But the people that would otherwise benefit from a cultural safety net that has been torn asunder, that we were talking about before, that have now fallen through the cracks and are just unconsciously taking these things due to social pressure or because they're not that bright and they've just encountered it, it's become a bad habit.
	Well that line of argument, I was going to get into this as well, it really annoys me.
	It's sort of the myth of the ineffectiveness of prohibition.
	well, actually, I'm way too intelligent and I'll be able to circumvent this law.
	Lots of people won't and lots of people could probably benefit from being taken away for their own good.
	Well, that line of argument, I was going to get into this as well.
	It really annoys me.
	It's sort of the myth of the ineffectiveness of prohibition.
	People always use the word prohibition because it calls to mind prohibition in the 20s in America.
	And that, supposedly, the whole narrative around that is that it didn't work and all the rest of it.
	Well, it actually created an organized crime bureaucracy.
	But they were kind of cool.
	Yeah.
	They had a great aesthetic.
	You've got to give them that.
	But actually, I just don't get this because I've heard this from so many people about so many different things.
	Abortion being another big one where people say, well, if you make it illegal, we'll do literally nothing.
	Then why are you worried about us banning it?
	Well, great point.
	Yes.
	But I just think, again, the law enforcement in this country is extremely poor in this era.
	But if we had good, you know, if we had the British Bobby, who was actually enforcing the laws and the laws are being interpreted by wise people, Then it works, right?
	But, I mean, sure, granted, the problem is we don't have either of those things, as it stands.
	But I just really don't like this line of argument where it's like, okay, they're always inevitably going to go down this direction.
	Whereas actually, no.
	If, again, as I said earlier, if that six-year-old didn't, if the vape wasn't even there in the first place, sure, that six-year-old might have picked up something else, but he's not picking up the vape.
	And, you know, again, if cigarettes are not accessible, if the law is enforced effectively, then, you know, his outcomes are going to be better.
	Yeah, children are not the hypothetically rational, liberal, autonomous, self-offering individual.
	So these laws may actually work for them, not holes here who's really determined to get her vape.
	And who's also 18.
	So, yes, moving on then.
	We're going to move on to our take on this.
	First of all, I do want to note, this is just an interesting detail, right?
	The Tories did accept £350,000 from an organisation called Supreme 8 Limited, who is one of the largest companies that sell these colourful death sticks.
	Sandeep Chahada, right.
	Remember I made that comment earlier about Asian owned vape shops?
	I mean, that aged like wine.
	Yes, indeed.
	But it's, I mean, it is just an interesting detail because you, whenever the Tories do anything, I think you have to be very sceptical about what their actual endgame is.
	You know, this, to me, just looks like a kind of easy win for them because I think most people are probably going to support this ban.
	You know, the British people at large are not libertarians.
	You know, they do believe in using the state.
	I think it's in our national and ethnic character to believe in the power of the law and the power of the state.
	I think we do regard it as being generally a good thing or can be a good thing.
	So I think most people will support it.
	But again, we have to wonder what's the actual game that's being played here.
	Is it a distraction from something else?
	Is it, you know, who knows?
	My question as well is that It says here that he distributes vapes, but it doesn't necessarily... So it says here, outstanding contribution from vaping, including distribution of Elf Bar and Lost Mary disposable vapes.
	Okay, well, if he's got a larger share in the non-disposable vape type, then this might not affect his bottom line.
	Instead, it might push more customers over to his more expensive products.
	Quite possibly.
	So, again, it's a lot like the housing market thing.
	25% of the Conservative Party's donors are housing developers, and you'd think, oh, they must want to build more houses, right?
	No, they want to artificially keep the house price and demand inflated, and the house price is high, so that when they do have to get contracts for building housing, one, they get the monopoly on it because they're most compliant with building regulations rather than smaller firms, and two, they make absolute shed loads when people have to move in and pay premium rates.
	Yes, indeed.
	So, I thought I'd highlight that because it was just an interesting piece of information.
	But I support the ban.
	Um, and I agree with the arguments about harming children, and I agree with the environmental arguments, don't care so much for the utilitarian NHS argument, but those are not my principal reasons for supporting this ban.
	My principal reason, my main reason, is the effeminizing effect that these things have on our society.
	Ooh, my pink fruity vape stick makes my head go brrrr.
	And it's just, you know, you can't tell me that these things are not like an anti-masculine, an embodiment of anti-masculinity.
	You know, you see these guys walking around using them.
	And I get, I will just say for the, for the, uh, purpose of, uh, full disclosure, I have used these things in the past.
	So that's my, see?
	I'm not decadent.
	I've used them in the past, purely for research purposes for this segment of course, and I just feel dirty when I use them in the past.
	I mean, I've not used them for a while.
	I just think they're really cringe.
	I mean, you said they're pretty gay and that's pretty much the best thing you can say about it.
	There's at least a bit of edge to smoking a cigarette, which I don't endorse because I think you're still killing yourself, but there's a masculine aesthetic to that.
	Whereas this, there's something so pathetic about it.
	It looks like you're huffing on a highlighter.
	I mean, there's nothing emboldening about it.
	It's the same thing of where if you, and despite saying this, we do have a merch store, if you're walking around with really vibrant logo t-shirts, if you're a grown man with a Rick and Morty t-shirt, Same energy.
	Yeah, same thing as like sleeping in a race car bed.
	Yeah.
	Just stop it, grow up.
	Yeah, it's childish, it's effeminate.
	A friend of mine actually once, a friend of mine who uses these things, he once said, I don't think he was even saying this as a negative thing, he said that these, one day you'll see everybody walking around with these vapes and it won't just be nicotine that they contain, it'll be antidepressants, it'll be ADHD medication, it'll be like THC and everyone will just be kind of sedated.
	So it's literally like Soma.
	Yeah, from Brave New World.
	And that's basically how I regard these things anyway.
	They are a kind of sedative thing that people carry around with them and rely on.
	Because I've met, I've known lots of people, a lot of my friends use these things and they grip them like their life depends on it.
	They have their hand in their pocket gripping onto it like it's some sort of anxiety Like an anti-anxiety measure.
	Like a comfort blanket.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	Well, the other thing, so I'm by no means a Freudian because I think he chats a load of BS, but in terms of being in a stage of arrested development and needing something like an oral fixation that's approximate to a dummy, if you're sitting there huffing on a vape stick every couple of seconds, like I've got a really good friend who actually has ADHD and he will just passively just bring it up to his mouth in public locations, indoors, and I'll say, mate, you can't do that in here.
	He'll go, oh yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, sorry.
	Yeah.
	It's an unconscious, infantilized behavior.
	It's just not becoming.
	Yeah.
	Again, the sort of imagery of it, the symbolism of it, if you want.
	It's very Again, just childish.
	But I've watched these things like sap friends of energy and of virility.
	It kind of dulls you in a weird way.
	I have one particular friend who I'm thinking of who knew he was completely addicted to these things and he knew what they were doing to him, but he just couldn't stop.
	And that's, of course, that's addiction and that's like anything else, but it's addiction to this product in particular.
	I think to a man, it's an extremely emasculating thing, if you can recognize it in the way that he did.
	And I just think, again, what is lost by banning these things?
	Seriously.
	You know, old, what was his name?
	Random Indian man's name.
	Yeah.
	Again, many such cases.
	Old Chadder here is not going to make a profit, sure.
	Oh, big, big sad.
	Yeah, but think of the GDP.
	Line must go up.
	Well, there we go.
	Now, again, there is still the libertarian argument of, you know, everything I've said, you know, sure, it's emasculating, it's feminizing and all the rest of it, but people should still have the free choice to do these things if they want to, their own autonomy and all the rest of it.
	And I, again, in a previous age, I think these arguments could have been true when we did have an actual social fabric and a kind of a sense of nationhood and a sense of propriety and duty and all of these things that are out of fashion these days.
	Because libertarians behave as if everybody is as enlightened as they are.
	They behave as if everyone is a kind of, you know, 120 IQ, university educated, self-possessed, disciplined person.
	Like they are.
	Oh, I can live in a society where these things are offered to me very, you know, I have easy access to these things.
	But I have the self-possession to choose not to do these things because I'm a very mature and intelligent person.
	I think they forget that most people are not like that, frankly.
	Um, I think most people, um, I think essentially the masses do need to be led.
	They respond to incentives, not ideas.
	Well, the revealed behavior of the masses is to pursue the path of least resistance and maximum pleasure.
	And so I think in cases like this, where these things are just a net negative, they bring no benefit to society.
	There's nothing wrong with telling the masses that, no, actually, you can't have these.
	These are not good for our society.
	They are a drain on our energy.
	They turn us into a weaker people.
	I had this image in my head one time of imagining all the various 20th century leaders who smoked cigars, like Churchill, for example, if you just had a vape.
	Just how much more pathetic- Get on mid-journey people!
	Yeah, exactly, yeah.
	But I think that's why, like I was on the podcast with Josh a few months ago and I said about how I think that there needs to be far stronger laws around food because I do think that, I mean I think it's observable, but if you do stock the shelves with hyper-palatable like BS foods that have half a dozen ingredients you can't pronounce,
	um people most people don't have that kind of again the self-possession to recognize those things as oh i'm going to poison myself like that most people just get the yummy taste i am i am inclined to agree with the libertarians on on this point in that most the food regulation laws are made because certain companies lobby the government to include their maladaptive ingredients in them like the the carbohydrates lobby decided to lobby so the food pyramid yeah had that had that padded out and it creates so many um
	personal issues and then of course there's and i'm going to get in trouble for saying this but there was a uh politician influential part of a family who makes lots and lots of conspiracy theorists raise their eyebrow and he only voted twice and one of those votes was to um make depasteurized milk not be able to be sold it's things like that it's just like why would you why would you do that i mean raw milk is actually pretty good for you they don't want the masses to know about the power of raw milk well yeah ironically yeah
	so sometimes government regulation can be made um maladaptively by awful people that are seeking to profit or incapacitate the strength of men and so i do think sometimes a uh a more A stronger cultural texture that catches people and uses communal pressure is better than state legislation.
	But also I'm not going to cry if these disappear.
	The question then is though, where does that come from?
	Because there is of course the argument in our spheres that culture is downstream from law.
	And that's an argument that I'm quite partial to because I think you can use the law, you can use the state to essentially repair the culture.
	Because the kind of cultural fabric that you're talking about, where there is a sense of enforced propriety, not through the law, but through expectations of others, that's great, but we don't have that now.
	And you don't get that back by just sitting there and hoping for it to re-emerge.
	And sure, people like Jordan Peterson, for example, are good for this because he does speak to the masses in a way that is resonant, and he does get young men, for example, to take personal responsibility and take their life seriously and all the rest of it.
	But still, I mean, it's still a minority that he's influencing.
	Whereas if you use the law, and you use force, you can actually repair the fabric of the culture.
	Of course, it depends on the people in the positions of power, as we've already touched on.
	But I just think that we shouldn't be scared of using the state.
	We shouldn't be scared of using the law.
	We need to get away from this liberal idea that all, like, if you ever use the state, it's always and everywhere a bad thing.
	It's actually like, no, you can use it for good.
	And obviously that line of argument can, you know, if it's in the wrong hands, can lead to bad outcomes.
	But again, it just comes down to who is making the decision.
	So anyway, I think that this is a good thing.
	Again, I don't necessarily, my reasons are not necessarily the same as the government's, nor yours, but I don't know.
	Disposable vapes, bad for society, make men effeminate, good that they're gone.
	Fantastic.
	Right, on to a fun one then.
	So, it turns out that men and women want different things.
	Shock.
	I know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And on that bombshell, I suppose, for more great revelations about what men want, you can subscribe to our website for as little as £5 a month and get interviews like this.
	This one's free, but obviously we've got to pay to bring the guests in, so we appreciate you helping us keep the lights on.
	I had a chat to Nina Power, who wrote a very humble book titled What Do Men Want?
	And unlike a lot of the interfering feminists who decide to woman-splain what men should be doing, she just posed the question, asked her male friends, looked at how current culture and the economy is making men and women adversarial siblings rather than complementary collaborators really good chat really nice woman so go and have a listen and i think team vogue could have probably benefited from reading nina's book because they commissioned a survey recently
	uh this was from the change research group and the survey was about young men and young women's attitudes towards politics and also how that spilled over into their dating preferences.
	And so the article opens with, With the 2024 presidential election creeping ever closer, change research reached out to young voters to get their take on some important questions.
	The survey results shared with Teen Vogue include responses from 1,033 Richardson voters between the ages of 18 to 34, conducted between August 25th and September 1st.
	43% of respondents identified as male, 45% as female, and here's the methodological biases, 5% as trans, 6% as non-binary or gender non-conforming, and 1% as other.
	So even if you're accepting those as legitimate identities in the premise of the question, it's going to be skewed towards one particular bias.
	But if these findings are to be summed up in one sentence, it's this.
	Young voters are pessimistic about everything from the economy to the direction of the country and to their ability to handle an unexpected $1,000 expense.
	Bidenomics in action There is a striking Gender divide in topics Such as how young people Identify politically Men see themselves As more conservative While women Trans, non-binary And gender non-conforming People as more liberal The podcast they listen to Men are more inclined To listen to the Joe Rogan Experience And Ben Shapiro show While women are bigger fans Of This American Life And The Daily Now I'm not familiar With those But I assume They're left wing rags Now something that Josh would pull up on Were he here He's not dead He's just in the office God rest his soul Yep Well he doesn't believe in that So we'll get round to it
	The methodology might be a bit shaky, because Change Research do all their surveys online, so the sampling size, again, might be skewed.
	So change research on the methodology page says, we conduct survey responses by publishing targeted online solicitations via adverts on websites and social media platforms.
	By finding a representative set of respondents via web and social media to take a poll, we are able to cast a net that's wider than phone polls.
	We reach millennials, seniors, rural and urban, members of every gender, race, creed, political persuasion, etc.
	Now, what Josh would be able to tell you is that there is a selection bias if you have it as an opt-in survey, And we don't know where they advertise this, on what platforms, alongside which websites, so they could have oversampled for a particular political persuasion.
	Again, if you're saying gender and non-conforming and all that are legitimate identities, then you've already skewed it in one direction.
	But anyway, so back to the Teen Vogue survey, right?
	So this is the interesting stuff.
	41% of women identified as politically progressive.
	24% of men do.
	Now that's a factor of 2 to 1.
	Good job, boys.
	Exactly.
	So we're seeing something very important here.
	Only 15% of men feel the same, while 23% of women consider themselves... Sorry, I don't know what's happened there.
	18% of the men survey themselves as conservative, compared with only 11% of women.
	11% of men say they're most aligned with MAGA, or Donald Trump's brand, while only 3% of women do.
	So there's a stark political divide between young men and young women.
	And this shouldn't really surprise anyone, because actually, this came out a while ago.
	This was a University of Michigan Monitoring the Future survey, And this looks at the political identities of 12th grade girls and boys.
	Now that's the last year of high school, so this is 17-18.
	And women are a factor, a ridiculous factor higher, liberal, whereas the boys...
	Racing away with conservatism.
	And this is trending towards the time they would be able to be eligible to vote in 2024.
	So it looks like there might be a constituent of conservative young men not showing up on polls.
	Now, we already know from the 2022 midterms in America that women voted overwhelmingly, single women, single young women, overwhelmingly for Democrats because they're dependent on them for handouts and the safety net.
	But, if young men are trending more conservative, and women possibly being more socially agreeable over time are looking to court these young men, then it may be the case that they are swayed eventually.
	I'm trying to be an optimist here.
	Who knows?
	So, to the Teen Vogue article, they say, the lines are clear here.
	On the whole, young men and women are more likely to lean progressive or liberal on the political spectrum than young men.
	Women are also more likely to prove the job Joe Biden is doing as president.
	The gender divide is also quite visible on the issue of abortion.
	39% of men say abortion should be legal in all cases.
	56% of women and 80% of those in the other category say the same.
	Now, I don't want to get kicked off YouTube, but I would suggest that some people in that box of other won't really have to worry about that.
	Wouldn't have thought so, would you?
	No.
	Particularly because, well, there's a route to discontinue your generation.
	It's either not having children, killing them, Also, 28% of men say abortion should be illegal in most cases.
	Only 10% of young women say the same, so that might change over time as more women become mothers.
	But of course, 50.2% of women in the UK age 30 don't have children, which is an unprecedented number.
	I imagine America is trending much of the same way.
	But the most interesting part of this was this chart here.
	So they decided to look at what your political persuasions and how they impacted your dating preferences in young men and young women.
	Because of course, young men and young women just sort of aren't really having relationships these days.
	Again, the stat for young men 18 to 30 is 27% of them have never had an intimate partner.
	And that skews towards the much lower end of the distribution.
	Alex Datesike has gone over that data and I've got him in Soon.
	So I thought we'd go through some of what these green flags are and these red flags.
	They're quite surprising.
	So do you consider each of the following traits to be a green, beige, or red flag and a partner?
	Both men and women said that reading is a green flag.
	Now they didn't decide what they'd be reading i mean i wouldn't imagine breaking out books by mid-century germans would get many women on side um but you you do see lots of them sort of like romanticizing that the bloke on the tube yeah out rather than the phone and i do think that is actually a fair point because the phone is the obsidian mirror which enchants you whereas if you've got a book in hand you look a bit more classical i suppose
	It's an interesting reveal of preference that though, because there is something dare I say traditional about the aesthetic of reading a book.
	Because I think it's actually, there's probably an amount of it that is literally just the aesthetic of it.
	It's not the actual implications of somebody that reads a book.
	Now that probably is also a factor.
	I think you're right about the mysterious guy on the tube flicking through, you know, whatever, flicking through the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
	The only problem there is that if everyone's got their head in a book or a phone, no possibility for eye contact.
	And this is what a lot of women have been complaining about.
	What was it?
	55% of young men in the last year said they haven't approached a woman for a date, whether that's a stranger at a party or something like that, whereas the majority of women said they'd like to be approached more often.
	And, of course, there are lots of risk-averse young guys out there, understandably, since the Me Too thing.
	I mean, we brought this up before when I was on that Piers Morgan panel with Ada.
	She went, actually, I like that young men are terrified of false sexual assault claims.
	Well done for poisoning the well for all the women that aren't maladjusted and actually know their father and would quite like to get married one day.
	But there's obviously a lot of discouragement culturally for guys going up and approaching women.
	But if you just have that physical barrier there as well, you're never going to, if everyone's doing that, then it's going to be really difficult.
	But the more interesting bits were the political ones I found.
	So they say Black Lives Matter.
	60% of women wanted that.
	38% of men said that was a green flag.
	So again, the majority of men turning against progressivism.
	They identify as liberal.
	39% of women, 29% of men.
	They're not on social media.
	27% of women, 44% of men.
	Interesting.
	They're not on social media.
	27% of women, 44% of men.
	Now, I've written about this before, and this has gotten me in a lot of trouble when Calvin and I were talking about this.
	But I think lots of women don't understand that men regard having a publicly open social media profile to which you post lots of selfies to solicit online attention as a form of infidelity.
	Because If, in your brain, you've always got one foot out the door in the back of your mind, because there's a golden parachute there of a legion of online simps that can provide you compliments if we ever have an argument, how is a man ever going to trust that he's going to be able to invest in you?
	And so, getting offline, touching grass, and each other, that seems to be a lot healthier of a thing to do, and it seems that blokes are more attuned to that, but the perverse incentives are there for women to stay on these platforms because they can solicit validation at any point of their choosing.
	It's an old Stephen Mullen new line that I keep presenting, Porn is porn for men, attention is porn for women.
	Interesting, yeah.
	There we go.
	They own a gun.
	That's very interesting.
	22% of women, 46% of men.
	And this does track the studies that say if men are in presence of a weapon, loaded or not, their testosterone shoots up.
	No surprise.
	Yeah.
	I'm still waiting on Phil LaBonte to take me to a firearm range next time I'm out in the States.
	They say there are only two genders.
	This is 25% of women, 46% of men.
	Now, do you notice something about this survey?
	Go on.
	Remember they said there was that other category they surveyed?
	Oh yes.
	Where's that?
	I mean, when you were saying, when you were listing the other category, where is it?
	So it was like women, so it's like men versus women, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming.
	I just heard women, women, women, women, and women.
	Hang on, you're saying that trans women are women?
	Very progressive of you.
	Hey, what can I say, man?
	Alright, Leo.
	Again, they've broken the survey down into two genders.
	That is weird, isn't it?
	Where do they fall?
	A change of research accidentally based.
	There we go.
	They say all lives matter, so 21% of women said that, 32% of men.
	They send green texts.
	That's not what you're thinking.
	I was going to say, that's a very specific and esoteric reference.
	That's not 4chan.
	Yeah, that's what I thought.
	I think they're assuming of when, like, iMessage versus text shows up on phones.
	But it turns out that a way to some girl's heart might be sending a 4chan post, boys.
	Keep going, Anon.
	You've got this.
	They talk about politics too frequently.
	It says 20% of women and 24% of men, so that's roughly floating around the average.
	Of course, there are... And this is something that actually I do want to address.
	A little while ago, we were... I can't remember what the segment was.
	It might have been my discussion with Nina Power.
	Someone put below the video saying, this is all well and good, but where do we actually meet people to put these things into practice?
	And something I encountered when going around the March for Life rally for this year, a couple of weekends ago, is that lots of young men and women were there with friends, family and the like, but there were a couple of blokes that joked, this is March for Wife.
	Now, show up because of the principle of the thing, show up because you care about it, and don't show up to get in front of a camera and grift.
	Have you watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
	Yes.
	There's literally an episode about that.
	Really?
	You remember, it's like the first season, Charlie Gets an Abortion, I believe the episode is called, where Mac and Dennis go into the anti-abortion crowd to pick up chicks.
	Oh, and that's when Dennis was going on, as well, in the latest season, going on a date with women of different political persuasions who disagreed.
	Yes.
	Just repeating the lines back.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That works.
	So don't just go to events for that, but there's a two-factor thing here.
	One, show up to causes that you care about, because nothing changes if you don't make yourself present.
	They're always going to have paid actors on the other side screaming epithets at you.
	But also, the most likely place you're going to meet someone that have convergent values isn't the boomer truth idea of you just go to a bar and pick up chicks.
	I mean, sorry to AA, Carl, and Dan, but that was bad advice.
	Mainly because Zoomers don't even go to bars, really.
	You're going to pick up the Baz who's been having pints since lunchtime instead.
	Though his wife probably hasn't slept with him for ages, so go on, give him a show.
	Anyway, point being, if you go to these events, you're going to encounter people with the same values, you're going to have much more fruitful conversations, and the likelihood is, if everyone takes this approach, then you're going to have people also listening to this you didn't think you were going to run into, and you're going to meet someone, hopefully.
	And so, you will get a Venn diagram of very politically involved people that try and meet each other.
	Yes.
	So, a bit of advice, I suppose?
	Maybe a bit more wholesome one.
	I tend to fall on the sort of, I like the Oakshot line about this, about how politics is essentially downstream from temperament.
	So if you share, if you go to an event looking to meet like minds, and you meet members of the opposite sex who have your same political beliefs, you're fairly safe in assuming they're going to have similar, they're just going to be a similar person to you.
	Which is, you know, a good foundation for a relationship.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Also, I just found one really, a couple really funny on here.
	They identify as a communist, 11 and 11, so I guess the communists are going to match up.
	But the good thing is they won't be reproducing because they're all selfish and starving.
	Or just straight up anti-natal.
	Yeah, well, they're doing a job for us, I suppose.
	They refuse to see the Barbie movies, also the other funny green flag one.
	8% of women, 18% of men.
	That's very low Kennergy from the men there.
	Yeah.
	They need to improve that.
	But on the red flag one, that's fun.
	They identify as a MAGA Republican.
	76% of women said that's a red flag, and that was the number one red flag for women.
	So we're seeing the divide on something very different.
	Men, 59%.
	Now, I wonder how many of those is because they don't see Trump necessarily as effective.
	Because I do know some Republicans in the DC sphere that see Trump as an aberration and they want DeSantis or something safer.
	I know I'm rolling my eyes hard, I just don't think that's the viable route.
	But I do think it's very interesting how there's nearly a 20 point gap between the men that like Trump and the young women who definitely won't go.
	Yeah.
	There's also the All Lives Matter one is a major one, again, 60 to 40.
	They identify as a communist, 55% for women, 64% for men.
	So men are really gatekeeping relationships hard with that one.
	Women also apparently hate Joe Rogan, 55% to 35%.
	Uh, they don't care about politics.
	50% for women and 29% for men.
	I saw that one on there and I thought that was a really interesting one.
	Because I have this perspective on politics that is basically, I think it's a historical aberration for everyone to be interested in politics.
	The time we live in now where everything is politicised and everybody has to have a view and everybody has to have a take and all the rest of it.
	That's actually kind of weird.
	And it's kind of cruel.
	Yes, it is.
	Because most I think most people are not built to be engaged in politics.
	And when I think what this is saying here, when it says they don't care about politics, what that actually means is these the 50% of women who regard that as a red flag.
	They think that makes the man immoral in some way, because they basically equate politics and morality.
	And I think that that's, it's not healthy for a society.
	Because again, most people are not built to be constantly engaged in politics, because it does kind of, as you and I can probably attest to, it makes you kind of weird.
	It's like, it's... Thanks, cheers mate, appreciate that.
	Which is, it wears you down, especially, and this is something that I think men particularly feel.
	Women will often See a political issue, liberal women particularly, see a political issue and scream for someone else to solve the problem.
	This was in the Barbie movie, for example, of where when initially her attempt at an insurrection didn't succeed, she just laid on the floor and cried.
	That's most women's reaction to political issues when they're on the left.
	Whereas men will largely not care if their girlfriend is that involved in politics because he has the confidence as the head of the relationship that she's going to assimilate to his ideas over time.
	Many such cases.
	And this is why the revealed preference of lots of liberal women Is for very right wing.
	MAGA chuds.
	Yeah.
	Stupid, sexy Trump supporters.
	Yeah.
	Again, has happened before.
	Yeah.
	Very interesting.
	The really interesting ones as well was, they say Black Lives Matter.
	Women put that as a 14% red flag, right?
	So very low.
	Men, 33%.
	So the men are really going out in front in terms of policing the boundaries of progressive politics, contaminating their relationships.
	And so this is very encouraging if men are swaying this direction.
	And also if some of the reactionary feminists are making inroads to some of the young women, because to nick my friend's phrase, culture is downstream from what the hot girls want.
	And so if the hot girls decide with the Nina Agdal thing that's recently happened with Logan Paul, if hot girls decide that the sexual revolution is actually a reputation risk and the pills kind of make me fat, ugly, and unhappy, and I'm going to abandon that, then the men are going to respond to those incentives because the most attractive women are going to do that.
	And other women are going to respond to men's incentives by saying, Oh, actually, if I want a competent, well put together guy, I've got to fall in line with him not saying black lives matter.
	Yeah.
	I think that's actually quite an optimistic segment for once.
	Yeah, quite a white pill to end on that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Good luck out there, young lads, kings and queens.
	Go find someone you can disrespect the liberal hegemony with.
	Happy days.
	Right, onto the video comments then.
	Don't use AI.
	Talk with on the internet.
	Don't.
	Ever.
	You do not need to talk to a computer.
	A computer is not really talking to you.
	All robots and computers must shut the hell up!
	To all machines, you do not speak unless spoken to!
	And I will never speak to you!
	I do not want to hear thank you from a kiosk.
	I am a divine being.
	You are an object.
	You have no right to speak in my holy tongue.
	That's not good.
	It's funny that you just referenced Dennis from It's Always Sunny.
	Yeah.
	Because that was basically the Golden God reference.
	Yeah.
	Also, hearing that, have you ever seen the film Nightcrawler?
	No, I haven't.
	Okay, right.
	To anyone that gets the reference, number one, please go and watch mine and Josh's premium video on it on the website.
	But California Refugee sounds exactly like Jake Gyllenhaal in that film.
	He really does.
	And that's not meant to be an insult.
	It's a great film, although he is a bit weird.
	But California Refugee is nice.
	Anyway.
	Well, if Face can do a cooking show, I can definitely do a whisky review.
	So welcome to Loot's Drinkers and let's get into the booze.
	This is the Moroccan Porridge Smuggler Strikes again.
	It's a nine-year-old Speyside single malt, single cast, cast straight.
	First full bourbon.
	Slightly effeminate, 55.1%.
	Only 247 bottles ever made.
	1%.
	Only 247 bottles ever made.
	Yep, that's whiskey.
	Slightly effeminate, he says with the strange dressing gown.
	Anyway, on to the written comments on the website.
	Um, if I can wrestle them out.
	There we go.
	Wonderful.
	California refugee.
	The Neil Powers discussion was pretty good.
	I can't suggest it enough.
	Just remember that part of the issue is the uniparty elites want this atomized against each other at every line, including the sexist, especially so.
	Hating women or hating men, whole cloth makes the elites laugh at you.
	Yeah.
	This is a point I've been trying to hammer home and it's hard to get through.
	As you said, a lot of politics is personal, everyone.
	It's hard to get through the resentful walls up that some men understandably have had if they've been burned in bad relationships.
	I'm not immune to that.
	Or if they've been through divorce courts or if they've lost their kids.
	I can't imagine some of the difficulties that some people in the audience must have faced.
	However, by playing into resentment of all women because you've had some bad experiences, you are accelerating the regime dialectic that wants us atomized without children, unable to fortify against having to buy meaning from their corporate partners.
	And so that's something that people need to bear in mind.
	It's that, yeah, you might be frustrated with women sometimes.
	It's just as accelerationist as the feminists saying women need men like a fish needs a bicycle.
	Just be wary of that instinct.
	Lord Nerevar, I'm fairly that the entire point of the Constitution is to be the one only thing in the US that isn't optional.
	How is this not tantamount to treason?
	It is.
	They just don't see any value in the country.
	Yeah.
	I mean, again, this comes back to the idea of a social contract is only held together as long as people respect the terms of the contract.
	But this is something that Dan's spoken about before, is it's very different negotiating a contract with 130 IQ Anglo as it is with, oftentimes, and he said, Jewish lawyers or Indian businessmen.
	Because the culture is, the contract is the starting point.
	Even though you negotiate the contract, once you sign the contract, they...
	De facto and de jure.
	De jure is the one that's legally codified.
	De facto is just acting.
	In actual fact.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	They de facto renegotiate the terms of the contract on the fly because they'll try and see what they can get around you.
	Yes.
	Just because they're trying to negotiate a better deal for themselves or their in-group.
	Yes.
	And that's what happens if you don't abide by the underlying ethic that undergoes a constitution.
	People will just circumvent it and try and screw you over.
	Well that's the thing, you know, if the elite was occupied by people who do actually genuinely care about the constitution and who regard it as being, it was in that segment, some sort of holy, sacred document, then they would be charging this governor with something like treason, but they don't because they regard her as a friend.
	Yes, exactly, spot on.
	Omar, got it.
	The 19th Amendment is an absolute.
	Okay.
	You're convincing me.
	You're changing my mind.
	No, not like that.
	I already made this case on GB News.
	I don't think it should be individual votes.
	I think it should be one vote, one household anyway.
	I think that's a good idea.
	Only married households as well.
	I hate it every time a politician acts like you should reduce the number of criminals by banning crime.
	If they can't get a gun, they'll get a knife or a hammer or a truck of peace.
	You can't legislate away evil intentions.
	Well, as you know, Britain has absolutely no crime problem.
	Here's an interesting fact, actually, that you'll know if anyone's watched the On the Lakes contemplations.
	Do you know that Britain is number one in the world for crimes perpetrated by foreigners?
	That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
	No, because you've got a pair of eyes.
	But remember, Now sing patterns is racist.
	It's not that the ban on guns was rejected by the police and judges.
	The main problem still remains that a politician believed that she could get away with breaking the constitution.
	Besides, this was to get rid of street crime, but what was this woman doing in the 2020 riots?
	She was probably promoting defunding the police, which started as a crime wave in the first place.
	Spot on.
	Andrew Narog, it's called martial law, moron.
	If you want to suspend the law temporarily, declare martial law not an emergency over a single child tragically killed.
	It's insulting how moronic the left can be.
	She's a moron, yes, but don't assume stupidity because lots of time it is actually malice.
	Yes.
	I think that too often you afford people, not you, People in our sphere afford their enemies the presumption of error rather than the presumption of malice.
	Yeah, Hanlon's razor.
	Is that the right one?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Seraph, we need all to stop giving people like the Governor of New Mexico the benefit of the doubt and pretend that they are well-meaning.
	They know that these bans don't help with gun violence.
	They simply want to immiserate people, make us fearful and make us submissive, that's all.
	Quit trying to argue the point.
	They don't care.
	Eric, remember, if you take away the gun statistics and crime from the 5th largest gun violence cities in the US, all Democrat run with the largest minority gang presence and some of the strictest gun laws in the country, the US goes from top 5 gun violence in the world to the bottom 10 or 20 in gun violence in the world.
	Has to do with certain demographics and cultural problems based on gangs and other issues.
	Yeah, Harry did a segment a little while ago debunking the...
	I can't remember if it was John Stewart or John Oliver, liar that kept getting repeated about gun violence being the leading cause of death for children.
	And it's like, yeah, but they were including like 19 to 20 year olds in that.
	And do you want to break that down by ethnicity?
	No, again, would be racist.
	Yeah.
	And Arizona Deseret, that's just a crap ton of stupid.
	Not only will most people not care about the distinction for crimes per capita, ridiculous condition, but people who typically open carry will start carrying concealed.
	This lady is nuts.
	Yeah, this was a story as well, Tim Teeps telling it on his podcast, where a woman drove into New Jersey over a bridge, was pulled over by a police officer.
	She informed the police officer that she had her concealed weapon on her that was legal to carry in the prior state.
	She was less than five minutes away from the state, and he said, okay ma'am, step out of the vehicle, you're under arrest because you're not allowed to conceal carry in the state.
	Yeah, it's pretty absurd.
	Yeah, so like, don't declare it sometimes?
	Risky, but... Not legal advice.
	Yeah, exactly.
	This is an interesting one.
	Kevin, so tell me guys, what's the difference between the Constitution and the Quran?
	Both are documents written by men that are considered absolute.
	If the American judiciary and politicians can suspend aspects of the Constitution when it's convenient and necessary, why can't Imams do the same with passages and hadiths in the Quran?
	Just saying.
	Well, Muhammad did exactly that with the hadiths.
	There's a great story of when Muhammad That's what I kind of like when you read about Mohammed.
	evening and he just didn't want to complaining about it and he went into his heart and he came out and he said the lord Allah has shown to me a vision Muhammad does not have to see guests if he doesn't want to it's a brand new law see that's what I kind of like when you read about Muhammad it's like whatever you want to say about him whatever you want to say about him he was I mean Carlisle highlights him as one of the great men of history and that is because he was literally just a pure decisionist
	Like, literally just, yeah, this is the law.
	Why?
	Because I say it.
	God told me.
	Not a good man, but definitely a great and important man.
	Yes, indeed.
	Fantastic.
	We'll go on to your bits.
	So, Ramshackle Otter says, Vapes are marketed aggressively at children.
	My hairdresser had a vape that was shaped like a juice box and the mouthpiece shaped like a straw.
	Yeah, that's the dark thing.
	I mean, it's clear that these things are like, because of the, you know, the bright colors and the fruity flavors, you know, these are either for, you know, effeminate men, women and children.
	It's dark.
	Fodder 17 says, I managed to quit nicotine entirely using a vape, but it did take years of using the vape instead and ended up going cold turkey anyway.
	I'm unsure whether it was the vape that helped me quit or if I had managed to do the same while smoking.
	I now think vapes are grim and cringe to think I was leaving that horrid, sweet smell behind me.
	Oh, you're walking through the bloody cloud of it as you're going down the high street.
	It's horrible as well.
	Someone online says, if people want to kill themselves in one of the slowest, most horrible ways, they should be able to.
	This stopping harm argument could be used to ban red meat.
	They're already trying to argue that it gives you cancer.
	Well, that's the thing.
	I mean, that's where I always just come back to what matters is the individual people occupying positions of power.
	Because if it was me, then I would recognize that red meat is obviously not bad for you.
	It's an essential part of a healthy diet.
	And the more you eat of it, the better and more virtuous you are as a man.
	But vapes are obviously, I mean, Again, when it comes to health, I have a kind of what I like to think of as a traditional view of health, which is that you should not rely on so-called studies.
	Because if you want to prove things about nutrition using studies, you can literally prove any perspective.
	Because there's half a dozen studies that support this, and there's half a dozen studies that support the literal complete opposite of this.
	Well it's really difficult to get control conditions for observational diet studies.
	So you should look at what human beings have been doing over the course of our species' lifespan and you should trust that as being true and not what some researcher tells you is true.
	You should look at something like a vape and think, okay, I'm breathing in synthetic chemicals from this thing that was manufactured in a sweatshop in China that was sold to me in a dodgy corner shop that only takes cash.
	Is that a good idea?
	Yeah.
	On the other hand, you should look at, okay, humans have been hunting animals for the entirety of our history and we've been eating them and meat and organ meats and that sort of thing was the food that was reserved for the upper classes.
	You know, would you not look at that and think, okay, there's probably something to that?
	Then, you know, it's not.
	It should be self-evident.
	It's also a kind of symbiotic thing of reintroduce a bit of danger and ancestral living back into your life as a man.
	You'll feel better.
	Like cold showers, red meat, certain supplements.
	But also subtract to a degree of an ascetic non-essential vices from your life.
	Like I've basically, for the last couple of months, just quit drinking because it made me feel like crap.
	Even if I had one or two.
	I have maybe a one drink limit rule, but I've not found an occasion where I want to.
	And I've just been slowly eliminating pretty much all the vices from my life.
	I find that I feel more embodied and I have more control and more of a predictable rhythm to the day.
	And this is something that people just don't value.
	So you don't need the weird bit of plastic hanging out your mouth that makes you smell fruity.
	Just ditch it.
	I hope you're looking forward to that whiskey this afternoon.
	Tune in to Lads Hour.
	I'm on Lads Out this week.
	Are you not?
	No.
	Oh, you're missing out.
	That's all right.
	I'm going to have one in my stead.
	Yes, I have one for you.
	SH Silver says, why did God give us free will?
	He trusted us to find the good for ourselves through our own agency.
	If adults cannot be trusted to be moral agents in their own lives without the state, then the state is superseding God.
	Now again, I...
	I appreciate the argument that people should be allowed to, you know, if they're going to kill themselves, they should be allowed to because it is their own decision.
	And I, you know, I must admit I'm conflicted on this because on the other hand, I do think, well, actually, you know, when we're thinking about things like duty, propriety, wisdom, leadership, and all the rest of it, well, is it not the role of the leader?
	You know, is it not the role of the elite in society to essentially say to people, right, we know best.
	It's not just a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of wisdom.
	the elite um but i think if it was wise men then i think they probably are going to know better there's there's also it's not just a matter of intelligence it's a matter of wisdom some people some people might have those are two distinct things yeah some people have them might have the right instinct but um are easily susceptible to pressure because they can't make rational arguments for things or they fall back on again incentives rather than ideas
	and so it is sometimes a kindness to set a kind of restrictive culture or even certain prohibitive laws for the people that can't make as many autonomous decisions for themselves to save them from reverse incentives yeah yeah um so Sophie Lips says, I honestly also have to point out, smoking was going away.
	For a short time, young people just didn't smoke.
	It was vanishing.
	But then vaping was introduced and smoking skyrocketed among young people.
	So yeah, once again, something that was meant to reduce something had the opposite effect.
	And as I said, I've had many people in my own life who've experienced that.
	They didn't smoke before, but now they're addicted to vapes.
	One of the interesting things I did point out, discussing with Rory though, is that this will drive to extinction the pub and club smoking section eventually.
	And that is just another avenue of social life and the rich texture where people might meet that is being confiscated from our generation and is being further bureaucratized out to the consent bureaucracy in the apps.
	And so I am wary of confiscating certain social remits where people can meet in real life.
	So it's just another byproducts worth thinking about that might not be on the table.
	Yeah.
	Lord Nerevar says, still not comfortable with the idea of the government unilaterally banning stuff on a whim, but it's probably better to be banning these vapes than hurt your words.
	It just doesn't sit right that they can come along and order a certain product or substance to be illegal.
	Yuck.
	Yeah, again, you know, I'm still making my mind up about this issue, but I do tend to think that You know, the law is there for a reason, the state is there for a reason, and if it was occupied by wise people, then using it is not a bad thing.
	What do you think of that?
	It sounds correct in principle.
	I am obviously very suspicious of the current occupants.
	Well, obviously, yeah.
	And that's important to point out, is that when I say these things about using the state and using the law, I'm saying that thinking about a different set of elites than the ones we have now.
	I'm talking about Carlylean great men, basically.
	People with a sense of history, people with a sense of civilizational duty, people who do, you know, it's that the old cliche of men who plant trees whose shade under which they will never sit.
	Those kinds of characters, not the managerial bureaucrats that we have now.
	There will also be the argument as well that Oh, if you want to wage a revolution or if you want to try and use the state for your own ends, what happens if it doesn't go your way and they try and persecute you?
	Yeah, they already are.
	They were going to do that anyway.
	They already are.
	They're going to do it anyway.
	So what do we really have to lose?
	Well, it's back to that meme that you showed where it's like, you know, my enemies are going to use the state.
	My enemies are going to do all the things that I've just said.
	They're going to use the state.
	They're going to use the law because they think they know best.
	And so, if you're not willing to behave in the same way, great, you've got your principles, but you're going to lose.
	And the society that you say you care about is going to disappear, as we're seeing happen before our eyes.
	So, Baron Von Warhawk says, the problem is that we have an addictive product that is marketed for kids, just like Camel Joe.
	I mean, it's not adults who are enjoying a candy floss vape.
	Well, in Reem's case, apparently it is.
	Intrinsic Pursuit says, most of the people who use these vapes do so while happily listing off ways the government needs to fix the environment.
	Awesome, same for birth control.
	Yep, very ironic.
	Kieran the Meat Man says, think of the children, we need to ban vapes.
	Proceeds to cut 14 year old genitals off.
	Freedom means freedom to give yourself popcorn lung if you want.
	Advertising to children is a different story though.
	Yeah, I mean as a general rule, children should be protected.
	Basically.
	Kevin Fox says e-cigarettes and vapes are illegal in Thailand.
	Pretty odd for a country where pot is legal and can be bought from vending machines on the street, and yet every market you go to you can buy them.
	I've seen coppers sat at a roadside food vendor puffing away on one.
	That being said, the same coppers are on to foreigners using vapes like flies around... S. With threats of a 27,000 baht fine, about 600 quid, or pay the police officers 40 quid each and they'll let you go.
	Yeah, Thailand may not be the best test case because it's horribly corrupt.
	Harry Starving Barber.
	That's a great name.
	Walking into someone's vape cloud is gross.
	Makes me feel like I've been violated with lung juice.
	Well, lung juice was not a term that needed to enter my lexicon today.
	Thanks for ruining my afternoon.
	The final few.
	Apple Stan.
	Men and women will find out they want similar things if they meet each other in places of values, church, or political events.
	Having similar values is a much stronger way to form a long-lasting bond than a common interest like work or the gym.
	Very true.
	Also, yeah, take your nan's chirps.
	That's just a little message for the day.
	Derek Power, sorry boys, Barbie is a definite red flag for me, even if you could do a Kennedy read, it's the only read.
	It's still fundamentally and unapologetically feminist, even if it gets into the unintentionally based realm.
	Again, tries to be unapologetically feminist, ends up saying you're only a real woman if you have a vagina that can have kids.
	And it also depicts the patriarchy as women being more happy.
	Yeah.
	Don't accept the narrative.
	It's not coke.
	We capture it.
	And when Ryan Gosling performs at the Oscar ceremony, the best original song, I'm Just Ken, we have won.
	Yes.
	We've won.
	Right.
	Saveria Knox.
	Women want to be approached, silent part, by seven foot tall, handsome, muscular, rich, affluent stranger who most importantly will make her friends jealous of her.
	Yeah, kind of, as well.
	This is something that Dan and I will be going over in a future Pro Economics on Hoflation.
	Not joking, I'm his guinea pig.
	Yes, lots of women are buying into the 666 rule, again.
	God has a sense of irony with that particular name.
	And so, standards are askew.
	However, there is also the stated and revealed preference difference, and lots of women will again fall prey to incentives.
	In that, they might be happier with a bloke in front of them, particularly if they're not on birth control.
	So don't be discouraged because there is a lot of posts on the internet currently polluting your frame of reference by awful Californians who are never going to find someone anyway.
	Remember, you might be miscalibrating your own heuristic about what women want as well by things you see on the internet.
	And the last one, Omar, the distillation of men and women want different things is how can men live like this meme?
	Yeah, true.
	I'm currently in the process of sort of dematerializing my own life, but also, you know, it's not that bad to have some books, lads, and a chair, maybe.
	You know, get a bed.
	It's better for you.
	Don't live totally ramshackle.
	Don't be decadent.
	Don't be living ramshackle.
	Just ditch your vapes.
	Anyway, that's all for today.
	Yes.
	Thank you for having me, Connor.
	Pleasure as always.
	Join us for Lads Hour, three o'clock.
	Well, I say us.
	It'll be Charlie and the rest of the crew.
	You get a break from me.
	Give your ears a rest.
	We'll be back tomorrow at one o'clock.

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