In my experience most people accept that voluntary interaction with other people is morally good, and coercing innocent people is morally bad. If I have a dollar and you have a pen and I want your pen more than my dollar and you want my dollar more than your pen, then we can make a trade where I get your pen, you get my dollar, and we both feel better off by the result: we both got what we wanted, and we would both say we're better off than we were before our trade. People only engage in voluntary interactions when both parties will benefit from the result (where benefit is understood in the broadest sense). Even charity benefits both parties because the person giving is deriving some psychological or other benefit from the act of charity at the same time the person receiving charity is getting some (usually) tangible benefit.

The beauty of voluntary interactions is that they almost by definition require both parties to benefit (sans mistakes). If one or both parties would not benefit from the interaction, why would they choose to engage in such interaction voluntarily? Obviously they wouldn't. Voluntary interactions demonstrate our preferences through the choices they actualize.

If I hold a gun to your head and demand that you give me your money or else I'll kill you or lock you in a cage, virtually nobody thinks this is moral. Coercion is immoral because it violates individual rights. Even if I used some of the money I took from you by force to help orphans, this would not make my act of coercion any more moral. Coercion is wrong because it's an immoral means, regardless of what the ends are. This is easy to see when we talk about a man robbing people at gunpoint.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, if we add in a voting process to the previously mentioned example of robbing people at gunpoint many if not most people seem to think robbing people at gunpoint becomes moral. If everyone in our neighborhood votes on whether or not to send people with guns to take money from everyone by force and the majority favor it then most people seem to accept that. Why is that? In part I think the answer is that humans have an innate respect for authority. So when a person or institution claims to have authority we are likely to accept their claim by default. Another reason for this is our pervasive bias in favor of the status quo, whatever it is (slavery was regarded as perfectly normal and acceptable by most people for most of human history). As far as I know the only rational way of coming to question the status quo is by becoming educated in rationality, ethics, and maybe history. Since few people have taken the time required to seriously study such things most people are likely to accept however things already are. Acceptance of the status quo is further facilitated by plausible-sounding myths in popular culture and by outright propaganda used by those who might mean well but are poorly informed, or more cynically, by those who benefit from the status quo.

Does voting about something change the morality of that thing? No. If 99% of everyone in your neighborhood voted to kill the remaining 1%, would that be moral? Obviously not. What if 99.99999% vote to kill just 1 innocent person -- would that be moral? No. No matter the breadth of a majority, the morality of an action is unchanged. If voting is allowed to have unlimited scope, unlimited power, then it is nothing but the tyranny of the majority. In a just and moral society it's absolutely essential that minorities be protected because by definition they lack the numerical strength to protect themselves. The smallest minority is the individual. A just and moral society protects individual rights no matter how many people vote to violate those rights. Should we let a majority white population vote on whether to keep black slaves? No. Should we let two wolves and one sheep vote on whether to have mutton for dinner? No. The legitimate scope of power for what voting can do, or what government can do more generally, is not unlimited. In a just and moral society the proper role of voting and government is limited to protecting individual rights. Every inch moved beyond this is an inch in the direction of tyranny. Whether tyranny by government or tyranny by the majority, it's tyranny nonetheless -- even a well-meaning tyranny is still a tyranny. Any system that gives itself the power to violate individual rights -- even for well- meaning ends -- is a system of tyranny and oppression that we should all oppose.

If a healthy patient walks into a doctor's office for a routine checkup and the doctor has waiting 5 other patients in desperate need of a heart, liver, kidney, etc. Should the doctor murder the one healthy innocent patient to save the 5 who need organs? No. Even if the net number of lives saved is 4, the ends don't justify the means. So it is with voting and government policy. The ends can never be used to justify any means, because if you take that approach it can be used to justify any horror you can imagine, even murdering an innocent stranger for the purpose of harvesting their organs. Even ignoring the principled ethical argument, just consider the practical horror of ends that are desired but never achieved. In Soviet Russia they desired some kind of Utopian nation and used this goal to justify mass starvation, gulags, countless arbitrary executions, etc. So if you take the approach of saying the ends justify the means you can quite literally justify killing millions of people and still never actually achieve your goals. And again, that's ignoring the principled ethical argument against the ends justifying the means which says actions must be ethical, and so no matter the end-goal, the methods of achieving it must be ethical. Or in other words: the ends can't justify the means -- we must evaluate the ethics of each action, not just the desired outcome.

I'm going to guess that you the reader agree that voluntary interactions are good, forcing people to do things at gunpoint is bad, that voting to kill innocent people is unjust even if a large majority of voters agree that they want to kill innocent people, that harvesting the organs from an unwilling and innocent person even to save several others is not just, and that ends cannot justify the means no matter how well-meaning the ends are. Though watch what happens to your own emotions when I bring up forced wealth redistribution in state welfare programs. Do you think it's just and moral for people with guns to come take your justly acquired private property by force? No. But what if they use some of the loot they took to help poor people -- is it moral then? No. What if the people with guns are representatives of the government -- is it moral then? Do the ends justify the means in this instance? Why is that? How can you justify your position without engaging in a logical fallacy like special pleading, appeal to consequences, appeal to emotion, appeal to expediency, etc? I'll save you the trouble: you can't. It's simply not possible to make a philosophically robust, principled argument in favor of coercing innocent people.

Yet many people do argue in favor of coercing innocent people in some cases. How do they do it? They rationalize. They change the subject. They throw out red-herrings. They use vague or misleading language to cloak their position in a way that makes it seem morally respectable. They give examples of what amounts to how two wrongs make a right. They appeal to systems of ethics that might sound good, but in the final analysis depend on evasions or errors in reasoning. They hem and haw about a "social contract" that nobody signed. They engage in victim-blaming and tell you that if you don't like having your individual rights violated you should move. In other words they respond with emotions, not reasons. Just as you probably are right now (link1: "When our beliefs are threatened by facts, we turn to unfalsifiable justifications").  Remember earlier when I said to pay attention to your emotions as I talked about this? How do you feel now? Are you upset? Do you feel repulsed by what seems like a cold apathetic maybe even malevolent attitude toward poor people? But wait: we're not talking about poor people, we're talking about the just and moral use of force against innocent people and how voting interacts with this. I picked this example to provoke emotions and demonstrate how it is that we justify coercing innocent people. We justify such things not with sound ethics and reason and evidence, but with emotions. Then later we rationalize our emotions with increasingly clever arguments that we find endless support for because of our confirmation bias -- we seek out information that supports whatever it is that we already believe (link2: "Selective Exposure Theory", link3: "How facts backfire"). Is that what you're doing right now? Are you currently screaming at the page with your favorite rationalizations? Have you decided that the implication of what I've written is such that you think I'm an amoral psychopath and thus you feel justified dismissing whatever I've written? I encourage you to ask yourself: do you have rational arguments against what I've written, or does it simply make you uncomfortable and thus you desire to reject it? Are you engaged in careful rational deliberation about the facts of the matter, or are you letting your emotions get the better of you? Is it possible even in principle if you're mistaken? Is it possible there are things you don't know? Is it possible you've been misled? Is it possible there is a compassionate "third way" that doesn't involve letting children starve nor violating the individual rights of innocent people? I will not answer such questions here, I raise them only to encourage you to open your mind (link4: "Why Are Unfalsifiable Beliefs So Attractive?").

The key moral problem with Soviet communism, or Nazi socialism, or any number of lesser attempts at socialism or "mixed" economies is that people are forced into the system. With such systems you either accept the diktat of the people in charge or you risk execution or imprisonment. If a group of people willingly join together to create their own communist commune for just their own members and violate no individual rights in the process, I say good for them. Or if a business owner wants to make their business by owned by the workers as in socialism, so long as they're not violating individual rights in the process that's a fine thing too. What people choose for themselves is none of my business or anyone else's so long as any harm is restricted to consenting adults. The trouble comes in when people want to impose their will on innocent people by force. This is why voting and governments must have very limited scope: to help ensure nobody can initiate violence against or enslave their innocent fellow man. To help ensure no ideology (no matter how well-meaning) can be imposed by force on unwilling people.

So what are government-mandated welfare programs? They are programs created by usually well-meaning people that accept using violence as a legitimate means of achieving their goals. Either accept this violation of individual property rights and involuntarily pay into the system or we'll send people with guns to your house and put you in a cage. This is an example of well-meaning tyranny, but tyranny nonetheless. It's also a poorly informed policy in terms of how well it does what it aims to do (lookup the goals of the war on poverty vs. the outcome 5), what kind of unintended consequences it has (subsidizing poverty rather than eliminating it), etc. And it's astonishingly short-sighted: are the key problems that are attempting to be addressed by welfare programs the best place to take action? If you only look at a snapshot of the present world you might think struggling children are the key issue in need of being helped. But why are there struggling children? If you look one level deeper it becomes clear that the key problem is actually parents making the immoral choice to have children they can't take care of. Parents without the skills, material means, environment, etc are having children that they won't be able to raise on their own to be well-adjusted. So really the problem is parents. Parents are the moral agents making the implicit or explicit choice to have children they can't provide for.

Should the immoral choices of others be sufficient to justify harming innocent 3rd parties? Clearly the answer is no: forcing innocent people to pay for the immoral choices of others is a bad system. And yet that's the system we have. People defend it because they are used to the status quo, and because they can see no better option. But appealing to the status quo is not an argument, it's a logical fallacy.

Nobody wants to see children suffer. Children are not to blame for their parents bad choices. I think most people would agree that progress toward protecting individual property rights can't take a path that involves children currently benefiting from welfare starving to death. But for the purpose of this essay I will not address possible solutions to this problem and instead will confine myself to a discussion of our perception of morality and how it changes when voting is involved.

Here's where I think we usually go wrong in such discussions. We tell ourselves that "sure initiating violence is in principle wrong, but in practice there are a few careful well-meaning limited exceptions." This is a mistake. What we should be doing is questioning our assumptions. We should be working to discover the principles that maximize human flourishing. Once we have those principles we should work on plotting a gradual course in the direction of that ideal of human flourishing. The right answer is not that we accept poorly defined principles and only apply them sometimes. The right answer is that we define better principles and better paths to achieve our principles. To many this sounds unnecessarily rigid or dogmatic, but recognize the fork in the road we're discussing: one path uses reason and evidence to maximize human flourishing. The other uses emotion instead of reason, popular myths instead of evidence, and moves only chaotically toward a future that may be better or worse. If you want to build a rocket that can send people to the moon or you want to build a microchip, emotionalism and a lack of evidence are not successful attributes. So it is for working towards a better world for all of humanity in the realm of ethics and politics. My argument here is not saying we should ignore emotions and let robots make all our choices -- not at all. My argument is that rationality and evidence enable us to be most successful at whatever our goals are. If we don't have a firm grasp of the principles that do (or should) guide us or we don't have principles that work in practice (i.e. we need various exceptions), then this is a sign that our principles are not as good as they could be and that we're relying on intuition (chock full heuristics and biases and all the problems that entails!) and thus making less progress toward the ideal of human flourishing than we could be making.

Should we ignore evidence? Deny rationality? Reject ethics? Of course not. No matter what our goals are, we need ethics and rationality and evidence to make good choices that enable us to best achieve our goals. What is true for designing a spaceship is true for designing government policies. Emotions are an input, a factoid, a piece of data: not a reliable decision-making technique by itself.

Conclusion

There's nothing magic about voting. Voting cannot trump ethics and rationality. If we want to live in a better world we need a better understanding of ethics, rationality, and the legitimate (limited) scope for the power of voting. We need to reflect very carefully about how democratic voting has acquired an almost mystical quality in popular culture, and we need to question our assumptions about such things.

Today, I want to take the time of my colleagues to set the record straight yet again about an FBI investigative report that's been generated that goes by the number 1023. And I do this because the breathless media is misreporting requires that I come to the floor to give a historical reorientation of the facts and the evidence. As I've said all along on the center floor, I and Chairman Comer of the House made the 1023 document public for this single purpose. That purpose is to force the FBI to do what the taxpayers pay the FBI to do. And that is investigate, in this case, the information contained in that document that goes by the number of 1023. It's all pretty simple. I didn't promote or vouch for the allegations in 1023 as the truth, like some confused Democrats in the partisan media, have falsely said. I pushed the FBI to do their job because that's my responsibility to the taxpayers and the people of Iowa. Now some confused Democrats and partisan media have returned to their favorite line, falsely saying that our effort to get the FBI to do their job is somehow peddling Russian disinformation. It's kind of like a nervous tick to all of them. For years, they falsely said the same thing about my and Senator Johnson's Biden family investigation, even though our investigation was based on Obama, Biden, administration records, and really on authentic bank records. Some Democrats in the partisan media apparently don't care about observing and reading the facts. Well, this senator does care about that. So let's discuss the facts of the matter that they either missed or more likely are choosing to ignore because it doesn't fit their narrative. The whistleblower's within the Justice Department, who came to me, said the FBI had this document, the 1023, in their position now three years ago, June of 1920, three and a half years ago, in fact, because that document is dated June the 30th, 2020. Those whistleblowers that came to me were right. The whistleblower said the FBI considered its confidential human source to be credible. That confidential human resource, source, which I'll simply describe today as the FBI source, formed the basis of the 1023. If you're following television, we now know the name of that FBI source, but until he was arrested, I did not know his name. The FBI said the same to Congress and used the credibility of that source, the credibility assessment of that individual as he accused to even withhold the 1023 from Congress when we first asked for it. Even ranking member Raskins of the House committee confirmed that the FBI told Congress that the FBI source was credible. The FBI found their source so credible that the FBI gave their source the authority even to engage in illegal activity for the FBI's criminal investigation. And yes, I want to make clear. The FBI said that he could do illegal things in his work for the FBI. The FBI told him that he may even have to testify in court based on the information he provided. In fact, the FBI said that this source was so credible that the public release of the unclassified 1023 could put his life at risk. And then when they used the excuse, it could put his life at risk for releasing it is another excuse that they used. Now let me be clear. The FBI consistently and publicly vouched for their source. Then the other week, the Biden justice made this source's name public for the world to see. So if you watch television, you'll get his name off of television. Apparently the FBI's excuse to withhold the document from Congress, as you can see, was pure smoke. However, the FBI said releasing the 1023 could put their employees a confidential human source, life in danger. The FBI's conduct is of course obviously observed, observed, and a disservice to the American people, that means a disservice to the American people when the FBI doesn't do its job of following up on investigative reports as they did in this case for three years. So you can see those same whistleblowers were right about the FBI believing that their source was credible. The FBI's source served as a source for many years, dating to the Obama administration, roughly 2010 as I recall. According to the Justice Department indictment, the FBI source worked for the federal government and was paid by the federal government. So again, those whistleblowers injustice were right. Whistleblores said the FBI failed to investigate the allegations in the document. So let me refresh this history by giving you the timeline. According to the Justice Department indictment, the FBI finally interviewed the FBI source on September 27th last year. We made the 1023 public just a few months prior to July 20th, on July 20th, 2023. Clearly, the FBI finally acted because of our release of the document. In other words, we embarrassed them. And by that time, as I've said, by my timeline, the document was over three years old. Three years they didn't do their job that the FBI ought to have been following up on. So the 1023 sat with the FBI collecting dust until we and Congress acted. My releasing the 1023 got the FBI to do its job that they should have been doing three years before. So I think it's legitimate in this political climate we're in this year, a presidential year, to ask the question, would special counsel Jack Smith have waited years to act if the 2010-23 was about former President Trump. Those whistleblores were right about the FBI's failure to investigate. I started my oversight relating to the FBI's failure to investigate the 1023 on October 13th, 2022. So I didn't have the document in my possession. I knew about it from the whistleblores, but what information I got from the whistleblores without actually reading the document, I sent a letter to Attorney General Garland, Director Ray, and U.S. Attorney Weiss to ask this very simple question. And I quote from the letter, "What has the FBI and the Justice Department to include U.S. Attorney Weiss done to investigate." I also asked for an array of documents, including travel documents, that the Justice Department has used to indict the source. And I also asked before I had read the document, for the same records again, this would have been after we released the document. So I correct myself. I asked the same records again on October 24th, 2023. I said this on May 3rd, a year earlier. What we don't know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. I asked on May 5th, 2023, about the 1023, quote, "I wish I could say that I knew it was true or untrue," end of quote. On May 9th, 2023, I said quote, "My focus right now is on the FBI and the Department of Justice. What have they done with this document?" Meaning 1023, end of quote. On June 1st, 2023, I said quote, "We're responsible for making sure the FBI does its job, and that's what we want to know," end of quote. I came to this floor in the Senate on June 12th, 2023, to say to my colleagues this, and I quote, "Here, with this 1023 document, I've been referring to throughout my remarks, the Biden Justice Department, FBI, must explain to Congress and the American people what, if anything, they've done with this information, and they need to show their work. We're not accepting their word for anything. We're seeking documentary proof of what they did to investigate the matter or their failure to do so," end of quote. Even after Comer and I publicly released the document, I said this on July 25th quote, "I want to make sure what my oversight focus is, and we'll be holding the Biden Justice Department and the FBI accountable to explain to the American people what they did to investigate and what they found. What did the Justice Department and the FBI do to investigate the information contained in 1023? Did the Justice Department and the FBI follow normal investigating process and procedure or try to sweep all this under the rug because of political bias? More precisely, did the FBI and DOJ seek to obtain the evidence referenced in the document? Did the Department of Justice and FBI seek to interview individuals relating to the 1023? And if not, why not? If so, one way or the other, what did they find? And that's end of the quote from what I said here on the floor of the Senate last year on this very subject. Let me say that one line again, so everyone hears me, one way or the other, what did they, meaning the FBI, find? All these partisan media outlets, if they had a shred of intellectual honesty and decency, could report those facts and hold the FBI accountable for their failures. And of course, our congressional request after another, one congressional request after another, when unanswered to the Justice Department and the FBI. So considering that deafening silence and the FBI's assertion that the source was credible, we made the 1023 public to force the FBI to do what they're paid to do to do their job. They were supposed to be investigating this matter three years ago and doing it, not for Chuck Grassley, but for the American people. If Congress didn't ask for transparency and accountability, in other words, us in the Congress doing our oversight work, we'd break faith with the American people just like the FBI didn't do its job and broke faith with the American people. And you know what else? The Biden administration hasn't answered. My and Senator Johnson's oversight request. Let's not forget, there's a larger investigative picture here other than just 1023. Senator Johnson and I released two reports in 2020 as part of our Biden family investigation. We gave a series of floor speeches, introducing bank records, connecting the Biden family to communist China financial interests. Then on October the 26th, 2022, we sent hundreds of pages of those bank records to use the U.S. attorney vice. So then this question is appropriate. To my Democrat colleagues and more importantly, the partisan media that's not doing their job are those authentic bank records that Johnson and I made public. Is that Russian disinformation? How Chairman Comer, Jordan and Smith have built on, built and advanced upon the foundation created by Senator Johnson and this Senator. So here's the question. Where's the Biden justice department regarding those bank records and potential money laundering? Where's the Biden justice department regarding Biden family members registering under the Foreign Agents Act? Another question, the Biden justice department appears to, appears concerned about their FBI sources contact with national, for nationals. So where's that same concern regarding the Biden family foreign connections? Are the justice department and the FBI sitting on it just like they did with the 1023 for at least three years? Here's another question to pose to the media and my colleagues. If we didn't make the 1023 public would the FBI have interviewed the FBI source or would he remain on the taxpayers payroll for another 10 years continuing to misinform the FBI and by misinforming, I presume that's the reason he's sitting in jail now in Las Vegas, waiting trial or waiting whatever they have to do to follow up on the arrest? What will happen to the defendants if this sources information was used for a conviction or a plea deal? This is really quite the mess for the justice department and the FBI and it's one of their own making. My oversight investigations are done without regard to power, party or privilege. And I backed that statement up with asking you to remember I'm the senator that did a transcribed interview with Donald Trump Jr. when Donald Trump was president of the United States. That's when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I also ordered my staff to interview other Republicans during my crossfire hurricane investigation. And you know what? If I had the gavel today, I'd bring more Biden's to Congress to testify because the American people really deserve the kind of nonpartisan oversight that I've been conducting for years. And remember this and it's pretty simple. If the FBI came clean years ago about this document 1023, we wouldn't have had to release that very document. I wouldn't have had to rely on whistleblowers to make this public. So this guy still could be working for the FBI for another 10 years. Instead, these people played games, withheld the document from Congress and provided false and misleading information to Congress and the American people to not want to come clean on what they did with 1023. We all know that transparency in government brings accountability. Now folks are being held accountable because of my congressional oversight. My oversight will continue. The FBI has a lot of explaining to do for their continued shortcomings and actions in this case. When will the media ask the FBI to explain? I've just explained it for the American people. I'd like to see the media cover this instead of talking about rights and disinformation when this issue is discussed in print media and on television. Mr. Chairman, I yield before.

 So this is from a few days ago, Ben Shapiro, our good friend, who does many segments on me, always make sure to mention me by name and send his audience over here, and I appreciate that. He did an episode kind of laying out his foreign policy positions and how he sees world events and how they've transpired. And it was just, I thought it was such a great opportunity to kind of contrast his neo-conservative view of the world, versus the more, say in our case, non-interventionist libertarians, or even the America first, or just the "I'm a sane person who doesn't want to blow up people and destroy the world," like from that perspective, very different from Ben Shapiro's. I know Ben Shapiro doesn't self-identify as a neo-con, but he is a neo-con any time it matters. Anyway, let's go through this and respond. One of the great qualities of dictatorship is that dictators can hold the line even as democracies start to fade. That, of course, is the theory of pretty much every dictator across history, when faced with a democratic rival. That is certainly the theory of Vladimir Putin today, whether it is in Ukraine, or whether it's with regard to him just killing the people who oppose him, people like Alexei Navalny. And it's becoming very clear this week that Vladimir Putin is now settling all family business. This is the week where he has the ability to build a set of people. Okay, so I don't know if you saw this thing about this Navalny guy, Rob, but it just came out that one of the top Ukrainian intelligence guys said that he died of a blood clot. This is so, already you have this scenario where Ben Shapiro doesn't actually know what he's talking about. He's just deciding that Putin is taking care of all family business right now. That does not seem clear at all. And in fact, it was a little bit suspicious of the timing of it, right? Like it's like the timing like while the U.S. is debating over this additional $60 billion, Vladimir Putin decides now is the time to do this assassination. Like it's possible that he's just the dumbest person on the planet, or is possible that this isn't at all what's going on. And just like when everybody was jumping on the story about the ghost of Kiev, or the story about how Vladimir Putin was dying, or the story about how he was about to be overthrown by that militia that he pissed off, people jump on these stories because they suit their narrative. And none of it's actually clear that that's happening at all. I got to ask Alex Mulvaney, I know this is crass, but him dying in prison, this is not an endorsement of Putin sending him to a work colony, or whether or not he had him killed in that prison, or if maybe the blood-cock condition was escalated by harsh conditions. Does that change anything to our relationship with Russia or view of Putin? Is that a reason for more or less warfare? It's just the fact that a dictator took out a political enemy. They're trying to turn Donald Trump into a political predator's here. They're not having a lot of success with it. What does it mean to change in any way? Yeah, because the Western countries or the U.S. would never kill somebody for a political outcome that they wanted to see. We would never. Anyway, it's just kind of childish and silly. I'm looking for the Clinton's friends. The Clintons just have a lot of coincidences. Alright guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, brand-new sponsor who were thrilled to have on board, and that is my Patriot supply. Listen, things have been a little bit wacky over the last few years, and I'm not trying to be an alarmist and say that everything's falling apart, but I do think I speak for a lot of us when I say I'm more aware and concerned of making sure I have what I need to keep my family safe in the event that things could get worse. If that's you, go check out MyPatriotSupply.com. They've helped millions of American families prepare for the uncertain future. Many of them start with four-week emergency food kits by ReadyHour. With 16 food and drink varieties, there'll be no food boredom. With over 2,000 calories per day, there'll be no starvation. And sealed inside ultra durable packaging, these meals last up to 25 years in storage. Stock up on all the food kits your family needs at the website at MyWebsightPrepareWithSmith.com. Get each ReadyHour four-week food kit for $60 off and also get free shipping. Protect yourself, protect your people. You're not ready if it's not ReadyHour. Start preparing at PrepareWithSmith.com. One more time that's PrepareWithSmith.com. All right, let's keep playing. What it is that he wants, and the reason he feels that way is because of a combination of splits on the right in the United States and a combination of splits on the left in the United States, as well as splits in the European coalition with regard to Russia. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, there was pretty much unanimity that this was not something that the West could allow to stand. You couldn't have Vladimir Putin simply waltzing into Kiev, taking over the country, killing Vladimir Zelensky, and essentially setting up a puppet dictatorship and turning Ukraine into a second Belarus. You couldn't have that because it would put- Let's just pause it right there. I mean, it's just pretty funny that it's like, well, I mean, is it acceptable in 2014 when there's a violent street push backed by the West that overthrows the democratically elected president, Yanukovych. By the way, his elections were monitored by the EU, and they said they were legit elections, and so the democratically elected president being overthrown by a violent coup backed by the West and installing a pro-Western regime. Is that okay? So anyway, I mean, I know that's a fact that these guys don't like to grapple with, but yeah, that happened 10 years ago, which is not that long ago. Anyway, let's keep on it. Russia directly on the borders of a wide variety of NATO countries, including Hungary and Poland. Okay, I'm sorry. This is going to take us a long time to get through, but it's so funny. Isn't it so funny? I mean, we can't have Russia right on NATO's borders. It's just like you can't even like, how can you say that out loud? It does like, it's like the jokes. Like you see these like memes on Twitter and stuff, but they'll be like, well, if Iran wasn't a hostile government, why would they put their country right next to all of our bases? Wait, what? Yeah, okay. Well, like NATO is the one who's been expanding East, okay? And that NATO expansion. If you're going to say we can't have Putin right on NATO's borders, well, then how would it not be reasonable for Vladimir Putin to be like, I can't have NATO's NATO right on my borders. And the NATO expansion began way before the Russian war in Ukraine. So again, this is just, I don't know, this is all silly. It also, you know, if Ben Shapiro started saying, okay, Vladimir Putin's taking care of all this family business now. And why is he doing that? What's his mindset? And then gets into all these things when it's not even clear that he's taking care of family business right now. So not only are you getting the thing, I mean, maybe, maybe that's what happened, but we don't know that. We don't know that for sure at all. And like when Ukrainian intelligence officials are saying we think it's a blood clot, it's reasonable to assume, like they would be in, they would be incentivized to say he killed this guy. And he's going to assume that that's plausible, that that's what happened. And anyway, it's so now he's going off on this whole thing based on what Putin's mindset is. But he's not doing this based on like Putin has said this. See, anytime one of someone like me who's been a huge critic of this war from the very beginning, anytime someone like me will say, look, Vladimir Putin has said over and over and over again, these are my issues with the West. These are my security concerns. These are my demands. This is my red line. And then people will be like, oh, that's just what he says, but blah, but then they just go, no, this is really what he wants. But they're not even looking at what he says. They're just getting inside of his head. Like I'm not claiming that like I can read Putin's mind or I know what's in his heart. I'm telling you what he said over the years and what's reasonable and what's not reasonable in what he said. But Ben Shapiro is just telling you, this is how he, this is what he thinks based on nothing. Anyway, let's keep playing. But certainly threatened former Soviet satellite states like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of which are deeply fearful of a Putin led incursion into their territory, Finland as well. You couldn't have it because Ukraine actually is a relatively major producer of products like wheat and oil. And mostly you couldn't have it because Vladimir Putin has interests that are antithetical to those of the West. For all of the talk about over the last 25 years about how Vladimir Putin was just on the cusp of moderating how there was going to be a moment when Vladimir Putin was welcomed into the family. And then just one more point. With the, as far as the stuff goes, like kind of a similar point that I was making to the, the, the coup in 2014 in Ukraine, but you know, think about this argument that Ben Shapiro's making that we couldn't have Russia intervening in Ukraine. We couldn't allow that because, because like they make wheat, you know, so like we couldn't allow the Vladimir Putin to go into Ukraine. But think about that argument when at least what Vladimir Putin has been saying this whole time is that he can't allow us to intervene in Ukraine. And I don't know like how good you are at geography. You could like picture a map in your head, but Ukraine is a lot closer to Russia. And also like, if we're going to sit here in the United States of Americans and say we can't have him intervening in Ukraine, isn't it totally reasonable then? And if then statement, if we can't allow that, then it's pretty damn reasonable for him to say he can't allow that. Okay. Just like the most basic point, but all right, let's keep on. That never happened. Every single president of my lifetime has tried a reset with Vladimir Putin. George W. Bush famously looked into Putin's eyes and thought he had a sense of his soul. And then you had Barack Obama who literally sent Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state to Moscow to give them a button that didn't actually say reset, but was supposed to be a reset button. And then you had Vladimir Putin being offered flexibility by Barack Obama in 2012 in the lead up to the 2012 election. And then Donald Trump came into the office and the basic assumption was that Donald Trump was going to lead to a warm relationship with Putin. And I have Joe Biden who came into office and was immediately pretty soft on Russia in terms of sort of geopolitical, strategically, as George W. Bush once put it. Now that that take has been false. Sure. I've got a lot to say about this, but go ahead. That sounds like, what is that, four presidents in a row that didn't really have a fight or a war with Russia. And I don't remember any hostilities or incredible turmoil between us and Russia for the last 20 years. Yeah. Well, he started that conversation with Bush. That's eight years. Then you got Obama for another eight. So that's 16. Yeah. But the problem is a Trump that's four. So that's 20 years of no problems. But the problem with Ben Shapiro's summary of all of this is that it's just so superficial. Like he's going, well, Bush said he looked into his eyes and saw that he was a good man. And Hillary Clinton went over there with her reset button. And Donald Trump talked about having gay talent with Russia and being friends with them. And Joe Biden, I don't even know what he means by this. Wasn't it war with him for the first year of his administration or something like that? And it's like, look, all of that is true. But that's right. If you only pay attention to what they said and don't cover it all what any of them did, then you'll get you could be left with that impression. But let's go through a little bit more of this. And this is just some of what was done. Okay. With some of what the American presidents have done during all of this time period. Okay. George W. Bush also tore up multiple treaties that we were in with Russia. Every single one of the presidents that he just named oversaw NATO expansions moving east. George W. Bush also put dual use rocket launchers into Poland when his justification was that they were there to make sure that Iran can't nuke Europe with the nukes that they don't have. But Vladimir Putin saw this as a direct security concern. He's mentioned it over and over and over the latest of which was in the interview with Tucker Carlson. He's talking about this in almost every speech he's given that I've read or listened to over the last 10 years. Okay. So there's George W. Bush and I'm just rattling off some. We could go up on this for a long time. Barack Obama attempted to overthrow in allied government of his in Syria and he successfully backed the overthrow of the government in Ukraine. These are kind of big deals. They didn't even mention an arm in the jihadist in Chechnya, but whatever. So Donald Trump got us tore up the INF treaty or withdrew from the INF treaty. Donald Trump sent weapons into Ukraine while they were in the middle of a civil war that was a direct result from the coup in 2014 that Barack Obama and Joe Biden backed. You can go listen to the Victoria Newland phone call right when she's talking about that. She goes, we're in play. We got to glue this thing. She says, there's going to be in the new government. Here's who's not going to be in the new government. And who do they say is going to get on the phone to give him an ad a boy? She says Joe Biden, the vice president at the time who was very involved in the Ukrainian policy. Part of the reason why his son got such a sweetheart deal from that barista, my Ukrainian gas company. So yes, I mean, Ben Shapiro, if you just want to have the most superficial way, like if your understanding of politics is like, I watch the view once a week, then yes, this would be what you know that the president said nice things about Putin. If you actually like read books and know what actually happened, no, they were all taking more and more aggressive aggressive postures toward Vladimir Putin. And Putin during this time was over and over again, asking them to stop, even asking to join NATO at one point. They're like Vladimir Putin for much of his time was kind of asking like like the other side to all of these these points is like he had Hillary Clinton there. And I wasn't Putin who did it, but it was like Clinton and one of his guys and they pushed that button together and he met with George W. Bush and he was giving us information and offering his services after 9/11. If you recall, it was Vladimir Putin who warned the United States of America about the Boston Marathon bombers and was like, keep your eyes on these guys. These are radical jihadists and of, you know, we didn't do a good job with that information we were given. But anyway, it's just it there's much more to this than Ben Shapiro is, is, you know, explaining. And of course he's doing this because as all these war hawks do, they start from their conclusion and then they work backward. The conclusion is we want to support this war. So now let's work back from there. Oh, look, all these presidents were nice to Putin and look, it still ended up being this. So then as Joe Biden comes back into office, you can't remove it from the context that Joe Biden was the guy, you know, back in 2014, it was kind of the point man on this Ukrainian operation. So that's something that Vladimir Putin sees too. And meanwhile, all along this whole time, he had always maintained as I've talked about at nauseam, but the there's the net means net memo that you can read yourself, which was a private cable that Julian Assange leaked. That's the only reason we know about it. This was not for the public. This was for this was Burns who was the Russian ambassador sending a cable back to the then secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in which he explains in no uncertain terms that Ukrainian entry to NATO is Putin's red line. And like it's the memo is in diplomatic language, but he's basically saying this is his red line and he's not bluffing. This is the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vladimir Putin and he will go to war over this. And he says in the memo that he doesn't want to because he doesn't want to go to war, but he will he will feel like he has to if you if you put Ukraine and NATO. And a couple months after that at the Bucharest summit, they announced that they were putting Georgia and Ukraine and NATO. Okay. And this is the very beginning of real trouble in that relationship. And essentially, though, I mean, we can get into more of this later, but this is what the fights all been over and people who pretend it's not are diluting themselves. It's just it's the evidence is overwhelming. And we'll probably get into more of this as we keep playing. But yeah, let's go back to Benny boy. It's time and time again. Vladimir Putin is a highly intelligent, highly skilled adversary of the United States. His interests do not align with the interests of the West. The chief Russian motivation and this has been true for literally centuries is territorial ambition. This has been true since the time of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. And if you want to go back even further, this has been true. Okay, it's by the way, I don't care whether it's Vladimir Putin when he opens his 30 minute interview with Tucker Carlson talking about what the Ukrainian relationship with Russia was in the year 1300. I don't care if it's the Zionists who go back 2000 years ago and say the Jews were the ones living there. I don't care if it's Ben Shapiro who's saying Russia's um Russia's motivation is territorial expansion. And then he goes back, oh, we can go back hundreds of years or thousands of years. All of these arguments are ridiculous just on their face. It's always when people don't want to deal with the recent history and what's actually been happening there. You cannot say that because in the year 700, the Russians were an expansionist country there, therefore Vladimir Vladimir Putin's motives must be that. This would be ridiculous and nobody would ever apply this logic to the United States of America or to any of the countries that are their allies. Oh, well, like, I guess, I guess then that must be England's motivation to, right? I mean, hey, England and France, they're funding the war with us. Look at their history. What have they done? They've been imperialist colonizers. So then they must be this is all ridiculous. It doesn't mean anything. And no, it's not clear at all that Vladimir Putin's main goal. In fact, there's no evidence to suggest that Vladimir Putin's main goal here is to expand his territory. And in fact, in 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, they when they had a plebiscite in the Donbass region, now you can trust this or not. Okay, this isn't my point. Maybe they weren't legitimate. These were not like verified by the EU, not that the EU is the end all be all, but they did they held elections and Donbass voted again. Maybe you think it's illegitimate. That's actually beside the point here, but they voted to be part of Russia to leave Ukraine and be part of Russia. And Vladimir Putin said no. So if his motivation really was territorial expansion, he would have taken the Donbass region then when he had the perfect cover, which was, hey, look, they voted. This is what they want. It's a large percentage ethnic Russians in that region. So hey, and they had already basically attempted to secede from Ukraine. That would have been the time to do it if this was just his if that was his real motivation here. But what he's been saying the whole time and what tracks is that actually it was security concerns. And that actually he had basically come to a place where the West was going to give him no assurances that his brightest of red lines would be crossed. And they had kind of already crossed it. They were already doing NATO joint military exercises with the Ukrainian military, and they were already shipping weapons in to Ukraine. And that he's like, well, I mean, if you're doing joint military exercises and you're shipping weapons and they're basically a de facto member of NATO. That is the motivation here. Vladimir Putin has been explicit about this as have even Western leaders when they were being honest. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, Oxygen Health Systems. Now you can jumpstart your health and wellness with a hyperbaric oxygen. Benefits include a boost in energy levels, decreased inflammation, anti aging benefits, improve your memory and your overall brain function and it increases melatonin for better sleep. Owning a home hyperbaric chamber from oxygen health systems is now within your reach and oxygen health systems chambers integrate progressively advanced technology with amazing new features. Fits comfortably in your home. The Lux Air hyperbaric chambers from oxygen health systems is unique in the industry and considered the Tesla of portable hyperbaric chambers. Take advantage of the $500 savings on Lux Air hyperbaric chamber today at oxygen health systems.com and make sure to use the promo code problem at checkout one more time. That's oxygen health systems.com promo code problem at checkout. All right, let's get back into the show. But anyway, let's keep playing. The fact is that if you look at Russian history or have any sense of Russian history, Russia's great leaders are always measured by the amount of land they control, which makes a certain amount of geopolitical sense if you are Russia because again, Russia is a giant step, meaning it is open to invasion from all sides. And so if you're Russian, one of the things that historically you have attempted to do is expand your borders so as to prevent invasion from all sides. Now, at a certain point that defensive justification becomes an offensive strategy in which you're invading sovereign nations that exist all around you and attempting to control top down, Russia has always been an empire since the time of Muscovy. And now you are watching as Vladimir Putin tries to expand the boundaries of what he sees as his new empire in himself compared himself to Peter the Great just a couple of years ago after the invasion of Ukraine. Yeah, let's pause it there. This just sounds like the dumbest analysis I've ever heard that the proof that Putin wants to expand is that historically, so like we expanded West, can you say the exact same thing about the foundations of America? Well, yeah, it's like if a rising and expanding. Yeah, like if if Trump compares himself to Andrew Jackson, that's not proof that he's going to scalp an Indian. You know what I mean? This is the dumbest argument ever. And even by his own argument, if he's going, well, look, Russia has been invaded many times and they're concerned about that. It's like, oh, maybe then they'd be concerned about their largest, most important strategic neighbor being a part of a hostile military alliance. Like, how is that not reasonable? All right, let's keep playing. And when you watch the interview that he did with Tucker Carlson, where the first 35 minutes is dedicated to his idea of Russian claims to Ukraine, which he actually sort of makes the claim that Russia has claims to Poland and Hungary as well, when he says that sort of stuff, we actually didn't actually stoned out what he actively thinks. Now, there are a bunch of people on the left who think that Vladimir Putin is doing this because he is offended by the muscularity of the West that if only the West had been more conciliatory toward Vladimir Putin, then Russia would not in fact be an adversarial force. Everything that Vladimir Putin does is blow back to the West. That is the theory of people on the left who are very much vacillating with regard to what Vladimir Putin is trying to do. And then there are a couple of theories on the right. And those theories range from the blowback theory, people ripping that off from John Miraschimer, the foreign policy scholar who I think is wrong about a great many things. John Miraschimer has sort of theorized that it's NATO's expansion that drove Putin to invade South Ossetia, for example, in Georgia, or drove Putin to invade Crimea and that on Basir region. Okay, so hold on, let's just pause for a second. And first off, John Miraschimer is 100% right about all of this. And John Miraschimer has forgotten more about Russian history in while we're recording this show than Ben Shapiro ever knew. And you should, I highly recommend people go listen to him and read him. He is all over this stuff. Look, the stuff in South Ossetia, there were so what happened there was this was like a breakaway province in Jordan. And there had been Russian peacekeepers there for years. And I had mentioned the Bucharest Summit in 2008 when it was the NATO announced that both Ukraine and Georgia would be would be come members of of NATO. And they didn't give a timetable for it or they didn't like officially start the paperwork, but they announced that this was going to happen. And this was George W. Bush who pushed it through. And it was Angela McCordle, a geez, what am I? Angela McCordle. It was Merkel in Germany who like opposed it. And this is why they weren't actually brought in there. They just they settled on this compromise of world announced that they're coming in. And why did Germany oppose it? Because they were terrified that it would provoke the Russians. This isn't like just some abstract theory that Mirasheimer has here. This is like, look, so anyway, they announced Georgia and Ukraine were coming in to NATO. And then Georgia got got ballsy and attacked South Ossetia. And then Vladimir Putin responded and went to war with Georgia to pretend that that had nothing to do with the fact that it had just been announced that they were going to join NATO is ridiculous. Anyway, we'll get it. Let me let him finish his point here, but getting into the idea that there's this that blowback is somehow a leftist theory. Let's just let him play because he says a little bit more on that originally in 2014 and then invade the rest of Ukraine in 2022. That theory again, is and did anything else happen in 2014? Oh, Vladimir Putin. See, so the story is that there was a bloody street push that overthrew the democratically elected government in in the democratic, critically elected president in Ukraine, who had just decided to not join the EU and instead do a deal with Vladimir Putin. And then he got overthrown in a violent street push that was backed by the West. And then because the people in the eastern part of the country, that was their guy, they tried to break away. And we're like, screw this, this government's not legitimate. And then a civil, a civil war broke out and Vladimir Putin essentially sent special ops in like this, this story, this is what happened. Then Shapiro's retelling of it is in 2014, Vladimir Putin sent special ops in like, how can you just leave out that whole other part? That was pretty big. And even if the people want it, you know, like the people out there who try to argue that like, no, it wasn't a US backed coup. That was a totally organic, a totally organic revolution paid for by Soros NGOs or whatever, you know, like, it's like, okay, you're right. It was a totally organic revolution that just happened to have US senators and state department representatives in the middle of it. You know, Victoria, Newland just happened to be handing out sandwiches to the protesters, but there's no US involvement in that. Like, okay, come on, let's let's operate in the real world here. All right, here, let's keep playing is coincident with the left wing blowback theory of American foreign policy that dates all the way back to people like Howard's in a non Chomsky. We'll get some more on this. And then you can kind of go through this from our sponsors. No, I don't. He's doing well enough for those sponsors. He doesn't need our help. But this is just, look, this is the tactic that people use this like left, right game. So Ben Shapiro, of course, is speaking to a self identified right wing audience. And so he's like, Oh, this is all a bunch of lefty stuff. Blowback at all. It dates back to Howard's in. And so this is the lefties. And now some of these right wing people are actually believing the lefties. Do you know who coined the term blowback? The CIA are central intelligence agency. Those lefties at the CIA are the ones who coined the term blowback. And what blowback means is that there are unintended consequences to covert American policy. And what's interesting about it is that because the policies are covert, and so the government's not telling the American people that they're doing them, when the blowback comes, the American people have no way to note it's like, why does Iran hate us so much? Why does the Iranian government hate us so much? It must be because they're radical Islamists. But it's like, Oh, no, you don't know that our CIA overthrew the government in Iran. And that's why they hate us. The idea of blowback is as simple as understanding that there are reactions to things. It's in say it's not a left wing idea. It's it's the most basic human understanding of how human beings work. Do you think the war on terrorism had anything to do with 9/11? Did 9/11 make us want to make more of the people willing to support politicians to go on these into these wars? Of course, it would be insane to pretend like if someone were to tell you they go, no, no, no, Americans didn't support George W Bush invading Afghanistan and Iraq because of 9/11. It's just their, you know, Christian, you know, expansionist mindset. And look, I could tell I could think of examples in the year 1300s where Christians were killing some people. So clearly that's all it was. It's like, no, this event, you kill a bunch of people somewhere and that pisses a lot of people off. And now they're ready to come kill some of your people. That's essentially blowback. And the idea that it, you won't even entertain the idea that expanding a military alliance that was started with the purpose of opposing Russia. Okay, that has started many aggressive wars, many of which were not in Russia's interest, that they're expanding that all the way up at encircling Vladimir Putin would, you're just discounting that that would have a reaction. He doesn't actually care about that. He's screaming at the top of his lungs that he does care about that, but he doesn't actually care about that. Here, let me just in case, because I mean, there's so many sources on this, but let me just, as Ben Shapiro is saying that, that there's no, you know, there's blowback is just like some left wing theory that this is just like, I mean, there's this John Meersheimer guy. And I think Howard Zinn said something about it, totally leaving out that like also Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and lots of people on the right have acknowledged blowback because you're insane not to. Now, how's this? Let's hear from NATO's secretary general, Jen's Stoltenberg, I might be mispronouncing that name. But I don't know if you remember this rub, but this was from late last year. He kind of, you know, every now and then where they say the thing they're not supposed to say. So here, here, this is the, again, this is the head of NATO who's saying this. This is the secretary general of NATO. Quote, President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us and was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that. He went toward to prevent Nathan continuing this is the head of NATO speaking, was not the lefties or John Meersheimer. He went toward to prevent NATO more NATO close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. So you can see Stoltenberg here is he's, he's still trying to sell the thing and he's saying, well, look, he wanted no more NATO and look now NATO's expanding even more because these countries are scared that he's going to invade them. So he was trying to make the point that Ahov Vladimir Putin so dumb and we're so smart because we're getting what we want and he's not getting what he wants. But he kind of gave away the game while he was doing it, didn't he? He totally admitted that Vladimir Putin all for and look, I know dude people will say when you talk about this, are you defending Vladimir Putin? Why are you you seem to be disagreeing with the guy who's criticizing Vladimir Putin and correcting the record on his behalf? But it's not a defense of Vladimir Putin because he's still wrong to invade the country. But this is what happened. The head of NATO is telling you he oh, he just wanted us to promise that his biggest neighbor would not be an our military alliance. That's what the whole thing was over. Not territorial expansion, not something that happened in the year 1300. It was that simple. The request was I don't I can't have Ukraine in your military alliance. They can be neutral, but just promise me you won't put them in NATO. I need that in writing and the and that here is the head of NATO telling you and we said, nope, suck on that. We're never putting that in writing too bad. And if you're promising to not invade, if we if we put this in writing, the answer is no. That's what happened here. Sorry. Might be a bitter pill to swallow if you've been eating up all this propaganda, but that's what led to this war and the fucking head of NATO admits it himself. So it's not just that Vladimir Putin's been saying this for years and it's totally plausible. I mean, let's get real dude. Like just all you have to do is ask this question and just asking the question answers the question. Does Mexico have a right to be in whatever military alliance they want to? Does Canada have a right? I'm not saying should they have a right. I'm saying do they? What would the US do if Mexico joined a military alliance with Russia or China? What do you think the US government would do about that? And we all know the answer. They would overthrow that government the next day and install a government that we liked better that wouldn't be in that military alliance. And you could say that, well, I think Mexico ought to have that right. And it would be wrong for the US to do that. Okay. Fine. Fair enough. Maybe Ukraine ought to have the right to join whatever military alliance they they want. But we ought to have the right to not join a military alliance with them. So why is it in America's interest? If the biggest nuclear superpower on the country is making a pretty reasonable demand, which is like, you know, I can't have your military alliance all the way over here, a demand that we ourselves would make of any other country as well. Why wouldn't we just I'm just saying, put it in writing. You could have avoided this entire war. Not only could you have avoided the war, if you had allowed the negotiation process and not sent wars, Johnson there to kill that, but that you could have avoided the war altogether. And you know, people can come back and say, well, Vladimir Putin could have just not invaded and that would have avoided the war too. And like, yeah, okay, fine. But he did. And you got to be honest and say, even the head of NATO is saying he offered you the only thing he was asking for was just tell me you're not going to do this. Because you know, basically what is Vladimir Putin saying at this point? All the way back in 2008, he's been on record telling the Americans like this is the brightest of I'm not fucking around red lines for me. You can't do this. And what's he telling them in late 2021 when he sends them this written request to put it in writing that you want he's saying, Hey, it sure looks like you're fucking doing the thing that you said, you know what I mean? That I said was my bright line. Can you please put it in writing? And the head of NATO even says explicitly that this was his condition to not invade the country. You remember at the very beginning of the war when the whole like a Pentagon kept telling us there was going to be a false flag attack and then Vladimir Putin was going to invade and all this stuff. It's like, Oh, yeah, they never mentioned this today. They never went, Oh, well, here's the thing. As he said, he wouldn't invade if we would just do this thing and we told him to go fuck himself. So by the way, he might do the thing pretty soon. Anyway, let's let's keep playing for a few more minutes, see if there's anything else worth shredding. Russia is actually a bulwark against secular leftism. That Russia actively is is a highly religious country that is that is very anti much of the left wing ideology with regard to say gender and sex and sexuality that the West has fallen for. And so they've built up in their minds a lot of people the idea that because Russians are socially conservative as a general matter, which they are, that this is somehow what Vladimir Putin represents as opposed to he has a population that is socially conservative and also that is not his actual ambition. His actual ambition is not in defense of say social conservatism. His ambition is in defense of Russian territorial ambition. It's a category error. In other words, for many people on the right, maybe on the right have made that same category error, for example, with sharia law countries in the Islamic world. It's suggested that because those countries are quote unquote socially conservative, that somehow those countries have a commonality with say American conservatism, American Christian conservatism. All right, you can just pause it right there. So I don't know who Ben Shapiro is talking about. I have seen like some people on Twitter say stuff like that. I cannot think of any influential right wing person who's said that like, yeah, sharia law, that's the way to go. Those guys, this way, you know what I mean? You have traditional relationships and you don't have LGBTQ plus stuff going on. I've heard some some right wingers on Twitter say stuff like that. And yes, I think it's pretty stupid. Sure. Yes. North Korea doesn't have problems with a fucking I don't know, like degeneracy on the streets, but you know, they actually have problems that's a whole lot worse than that. So, but that's not a good way to go. We could just have our government stop subsidizing all of this insane stuff and they'll probably clean itself up. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is small batch cigars. Many years ago buying cigars online wasn't as easy as they've made it with small batch cigars. Well, you could find a great selection. You never knew how the cigars were treated before they arrived on your doorstep. The process was less than ideal, but Andrew set out to revolutionize the experience in 2012. And what he created was small batch cigars above vet a pack included in every box. Now you can get the cigar you want. It's shipped the right way. They were the first online vendor to provide free shipping on every order along with a free beveda pouch in every package to ensure freshness. Their customers also earn 5% rewards points on almost every order. If you are a cigar aficionado, a tobaccoist, you got to go check these guys out. Small batch cigar.com has been the destination for boutique cigar enthusiasts for over a decade now, servicing tens of thousands nationwide. Small batch cigar is the online extension of Maximar Ultimate cigars, providing the same luxurious cigar experience as their brick and mortar in Southern California to enthusiasts from coast to coast. Go check them out smallbatchsegar.com. Problem 10 is the discount code for 10% off plus 5% reward points. All right, let's get back into the show. Again, I guess I agree with Ben Shapiro on this one. I just don't know who he's really responding to. And the argument that Putin is because he cracks down on the gaze. Therefore, he's like an ally of the conservatives. I honestly, I all I heard was John Stewart claim that Tucker Carlson believes this even though he's never said it. I don't know who else is actually making that argument. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know who's showing me the prominent right way or who's making that argument. Let's keep playing. Servitism, American Christian conservatism. And the answer there is no, they really don't. Their ambitions are not the same as your ambitions. And what this really reveals is a schism in the United States broadly writ and in the West broadly writ Europe as well. A schism about whether the West has any sense of internal solidity. What are the values of the West? Because if Putin is able to split the West on the basis of perceived values or perceived anti Westernism. And that says there are a lot of people in the West who really don't like the West very much on the one hand. And a lot of people in the West who believe that the greater threat to the United States might be their neighbors who disagree with them about social politics as opposed to people like Vladimir Putin, not the Vladimir Putin is a direct threat to people in the United States like right this instant. But he's a very large indirect threat to people in the United States because geopolitics actually matters. And he cut off shipping routes when you destroy the sources of international friends. By the way, let's just pause it there. And I think by the way, this always this is always what the war hawks have to fall back on. It's like, well, okay, sure, he's not a threat in any like conceivable way that you could think of, but geopolitics matters. Shipping lanes. I always yell that one out. Shipping lanes. We got now trade, right? That's really important shipping lanes. Shipping lanes. That's why war because of the shipping lanes. By the way, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this from the war hawks. So let me just say these, as I just read to you, right, however you feel, maybe you think Ukraine should be a NATO. I don't know how you still think that after listening to this show, but probably my audience doesn't really think that. But let's just say you thought that you could still acknowledge that like, I mean, we should have just agreed to not put them in because if you care about Ukrainian defense, that turns out not agreeing to not put them in NATO was not the best thing for the defense of Ukraine. And in fact, the country's been decimated as a result of your refusal to guarantee that you wouldn't admit them. Okay, so this war is a goddamn disaster. If you care about Ukraine, you should be opposed to this war. The fact that peace negotiations were thwarted intentionally to continue the war, the fact that we've funded it so they can continue it, so more Ukrainians can die has been an utter disaster. Obviously, what's going on in Gaza right now is just a humanitarian catastrophe. Every damn day, I see another thing of some baby dying, being suffocated to death under rubble. It's just horrible. None of these war hawks can defend the war in Iraq. John McCain, John McCain admitted in his memoir that the war in Iraq was a mistake. The war in Afghanistan was a 20 year catastrophe that just saw the Taliban have more control and cooler weapons than they had when we launched the regime change war against them. The war in Syria led to 500,000 people dying and failed to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. It also led directly to the rise of ISIS. Libya, just a nightmare. The country is still in shambles after that. Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world for seven straight years. And oh, by the way, now we pissed the Houthis off so much that they're picking a fight with our shipping lanes. Okay, but see, none of these guys can defend any of these wars when they actually take on what's going on here. I mean, they could do what Ben Shapiro is doing here and just bullshit about what happened in this war in Ukraine, but they can't actually take on the issues and defend them. They can't defend any of these wars, but then they'll go geopolitics, shipping lanes, as if the conversation is really about whether we should maintain shipping lanes or not, or somehow it follows that if we should maintain shipping lanes, then we also have to go on mass murder campaigns and drop bombs on people and fund every war around the country. Like there's any connection between the two, but I'll just leave it with this. And then we'll wrap up. Just think, listen, maybe I can't convince everybody who's listening on a anarchal capitalism or a pure stateless libertarian society. You should be convinced that they're starting to freeze pretty bad. God damn it. How about now? It seems to smooth out. Okay, maybe I can't sell you on full libertarian anarcho capitalism or something like that. But just think about this. Okay, let's say we drastically reduced the size and scope of governments. Think about how much more profit there is in business now without all of the taxes and regulations, right? Businessmen are making a lot more money now. And think about how much money is on the line, having international shipping lanes open. I think the incentives would probably take care of this. I think these business interests would be they'd be pretty incentivized to make sure they paid for some security, make sure they kept some shipping lanes open. It is such a bullshit, non-existent problem that market forces would solve very quickly. And think about the enormous amount of monetary burden that taxes and regulations put on business. If you just removed that, there'd be plenty of money to even just buy people off to give you access to their shipping lanes. This is all just a nonsense argument. Sure, I can't defend any of the wars, but shipping lanes, geopolitics matters. Yeah, geopolitics matters. Nobody's saying it doesn't. Like, it really matters that the West refused to guarantee Ukraine wouldn't be admitted to NATO. It really matters, particularly to Ukrainians. All right, that's