Nationalism Debate: Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony | Lex Fridman Podcast #256

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony. This is Yaron's third time on this podcast, and Yoram's first time. Yaron Brook is an objectivist philosopher, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, host of the Yaron Brook Show, and the co-author of Free Market Revolution and Equal Is Unfair. Yoram Hazony is a national conservatism thinker, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation that hosted the National Conservatism Conference. He's also the host of the NatCon Talk, and author of The Virtue of Nationalism and an upcoming book called Conservatism: A Rediscovery. Allow me to say a few words about each part of the, uh, two-word title of this episode, nationalism debate. First, debate. I would like to have a few conversations this year that are a kind of debate with two or three people that hold differing views on a particular topic, but come to the table with respect for each other and a desire to learn and discover something interesting together through the empathetic exploration of the tension between their ideas. This is not strictly a debate, it is simply a conversation. There's no structure, there's no winners, except, of course, just a bit of trash talking to keep it fun. Some of these topics will be very difficult, and I hope you can keep an open mind and have patience with me as kind of moderator who tries to bring out the best in each person and the ideas discussed. Okay, that's my comment on the word debate. Now, onto the word nationalism. This debate could have been called nationalism versus individualism, or national conservatism versus individualism, or just conservatism versus individualism. As we discuss in this episode, these words have slightly different meanings depending on who you ask. This is especially true, I think, for any word that ends in -ism. I personally enjoy the discussion of the meaning of such philosophical words. I don't think it's possible to arrive at a perfect definition that everybody agrees with, but the process of trying to do so for a bit is interesting and productive, at least to me, as long as we don't get stuck there as some folks sometimes do in these conversations. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now here's my conversation with Yaron Brook and Yoram Hazony.

Lex Fridman 2:37 I attended the excellent debate between the two of you yesterday at UT Austin. The debate was between ideas of conservatism, represented by Yoram Hazony, and ideas of individualism, represented by Yaron Brook. Let's start with the topics of the debate. Yoram, how do you define conservatism, maybe in the way you were thinking about it yesterday? What, to you, are some principles of conservatism?

Yoram Hazony 3:02 Let me define it and then we can, we can get into principles-

Lex Fridman 3:05 Let's do it.

Yoram Hazony 3:06 ... i- i- if you want. When I, when I talk about political conservatism, I'm talking about, uh, a political sp- standpoint that regards to the recovery, elaboration, and restoration of tradition as the key to maintaining a nation and strengthening it through time. Okay, so this is something that if you have time to talk about it, like we do on this show, it's worth emphasizing that conservatism, uh, is, is not like liberalism or Marxism. Liberalism and Marxism are both, uh, kind of universal theories, and they claim to be able to tell you what's good for human beings at all times and all places. And conservatism is a little bit different because it's going to carry different values, uh, in every nation, in every tribe. Y- you know, even every family you can say has, uh, somewhat different values and the, the, the, these loyalty groups, they compete with one another. Uh, that's the way human beings work.

Lex Fridman 4:04 So it's deeply rooted in history of that particular area of land?

Yoram Hazony 4:08 Well, I wouldn't necessarily say land. You write that many forms of conservatism are tied to a particular place.

Lex Fridman 4:16 So how does the implementation of conservatism, to you, differ from the ideal of conservatism? The implementations you've seen of political conservatism in the United States and the rest of the world, just to give some context. 'Cause, uh, it's a loaded term, like most political terms, so when people think about conservative in the United States, they think about the Republican Party. What... Can you kinda disambiguate some of this? Like, what are we supposed to think about?

Yoram Hazony 4:42 Yeah, that's a really important question. Um, usually the word conservative is associated with, uh, Edmund Burke and with the, uh, with the, the English common law tradition, uh, going back, you know, c- centuries and centuries. There's kind of a classical English conservative tradition that goes Fortescue, Hooker, uh, Coke, Selden, Hale, Burke, uh, Blackstone before Burke. Um, if you take that kind of as a, as a, as a benchmark, and you compare it, then you can compare it to things like the American Fe- Federalist Party at the time of the, the American founding is, in many respects, very much, very much in keeping with that tradition. Um, as you go forward, there's uh, inc- an increasing mix of liberalism and conservatism, and I think, I, I think by the time you get to the 1960s with, uh, William Buckley and Frank Meyer, you know, the, the jargon term is fusionism. By the time you get there, um, it's, it's arguable that their conservatism isn't very conservative anymore, that it's kind of a, uh, a public liberalism mixed with a private conservatism. So a lot of the debate that we have today about, you know, what does the word conservatism actually mean, a lot of the confusion comes from that, comes from the fact that, um, that on, on the one hand we have people who use th- use the term I think properly historically to refer to this, this common law tradition of which Burke was a spokesman.... eh, but, but there are lots of other people who, when they say conservative, they just mean liberal. Uh, and, um, I, I think that that's a big problem. I mean, it, it's a, it's a problem just to have an intelligent debate is difficult when, uh, when people are using the, the, the word almost in two antithetical.

Lex Fridman 6:39 What would you say the essential idea of conservatism is? Time? You mentioned your father's a physicist.

Yoram Hazony 6:44 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:44 So, a lot of physicists, when they form models of the universe, they don't consider time. So, everything is, uh, dealt with instantaneously. A particle is represented fully by its current state.

Yoram Hazony 6:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:57 Velocity and position. You're saying, so you're arguing-

Yoram Hazony 7:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:01 ... um, with, with all of physics and, and, and your father, as we always do, uh, that their time matters, uh-

Yoram Hazony 7:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:09 ... in conservative. So, that's a fundamental element, is the full history matters, and you cannot separate the individual from the history-

Yoram Hazony 7:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:16 ... from the roots-

Yoram Hazony 7:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 7:18 ... that they come from.

Yoram Hazony 7:19 The parallel in political theory is, uh, is what's called rationalism. I guess we'll probably talk about that some. Rationalism is kind of an instantaneous, timeless thing. Before I mentioned that liberalism and various enlightenment theories, they don't include time at all. Their goal is to say, look, there's such a thing as universal human reason. All human beings, if they reason properly, will come to the same conclusions. Um, if that's true, then it removes, uh, the time consideration. It removes tradition and context, because everywhere where you are at any time, you ought to be able to use reason and come to the same conclusions about politics or morals. So, that's a, that's a theory like, uh, uh, Immanuel Kant or, uh, John Locke is an example. Hobbes is an example. Um, tha- that kind of political theorizing really does say, at a given instant, we can know pretty much everything that we need to know, at least the big things. Uh, and conservatism is the opposite. It's a f- it's a, it's a traditionalist view, exactly as you say, that, uh, that says that history is crucial.

Lex Fridman 8:33 So, Yoram, you say that, uh, history is interesting, but perhaps not crucial if in, in the context of individualism?

Yaron Brook 8:42 No, I mean, I think, I think there's a false dichotomy he presented here. And th- and that is that one view holds that, uh, you can derive any- anything from a particular historical path, and a kind of an empirical view. And if we know the history, we know where we should be tomorrow. We know what, what, where we should stand today. And the, the other path is, we ignore history, we ignore facts, we ignore what's going on. We can derive from some a priori axioms. We can derive a truth right now. And both are false. Both of those views, in my view, are false. And, uh, you know, uh, Ayn Rand and I, I reject, uh, uh, both of those views, and I think the better thinkers of the enlightenment did as well, although they sometimes fall into the trap of appearing like rationalists. And Yoram and I, uh, agree on one thing, and that is that Kant is, is, is one of, uh... You know, we've, we've, we've talked about this in the past, uh, Lex.

Lex Fridman 9:35 There's not many-

Yaron Brook 9:35 But we both hate Kant.

Lex Fridman 9:36 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 9:36 We both think Kant is, is a, I at least think Kant is probably the, the, the most destructive philosopher, uh, since Plato (laughs) , uh, who was pretty destructive himself. But, um, and part of the problem is that Kant divorces reason from reality. That is he divorces reason from history. He divorces reason from experience because we don't have direct experience of reality according to Kant, right? We're, we're, we're, we're removed from that direct experience. But I, I, I view Kant as the anti-enlightenment. That is, I view Kant as the destroyer of good enlightenment thinking. And, and Yoram and e- and I acknowledge a lot of, um, history of philosophy, uh, people who do history of philosophy view Kant as the embodiment of the enlightenment. That is the, the ultimate. But I, but I, I think that's a mistake. I think both Rousseau and Kant are, are fundamentally, their goal, their mission in life is to destroy the enlightenment. So, my view is neither of those options are the right option. That is, uh, the true reason-based... Uh, reason is not divorced from reality. It's quite the opposite. Reason is a tool. It's a faculty of identifying and integrating what? It's identifying and integrating the facts of reality as, as, as, as we know them through, uh, sense perception or through the study of history, through what actually happened. So, it's the integration of those facts. It's the knowledge of that history. And then what we do is we abstract away principles based on what's worked in the past, what hasn't worked in the past, the consequences of different ideas, different paths, different actions. We abstract away principles that then can be universal. Not always. We make mistakes, right? We can come up with a universal principle that turns out that it's not. But if we have the whole scope of human history, we can derive principles as we do in life, as individuals. We derive principles that are then truths that we can live by. But you don't do that by ignoring history. You do that by learning history, by understanding history, by, by understanding, in a sense, tradition and where it leads to, and then trying to do better. And I think good thinkers are constantly trying to do better based on what they know about the past and what they know about the present.

Lex Fridman 11:46 What's the difference between studying history, uh, on a journey of reason, and tradition? So, you mentioned that Burke understood that reason begins with inherited tradition yesterday. So, what's the difference between studying history, but then being free to go any way you want, and tradition, where it feels more, um, not, I don't wanna say a negative term like burden, but it's, uh, there's more of a momentum that forces you to go the same way as your ancestors?

Yaron Brook 12:18 It's the recognition that people are wrong (laughs) . Often are wrong. And, and-

Lex Fridman 12:23 Even your parents?

Yaron Brook 12:24 ... including your parents, including your, your teachers, including everybody. Everybody is potentially wrong and that, that you can't accept anybody just because they happened to come before you. Uh, that is, you have to evaluate and judge, and you have to have a standard by which to evaluate and judge the actions of those who came before you, whether they are, uh, your parents, whether they are, uh, the state in which you happen to be born, whether they are, uh, somebody on the other side of Planet Earth. You can judge them if you have a standard. Now, my standard, and I think the right standard, is human wellbeing. That is, that which is good for human beings, core human beings, uh, y- you know, is, is the standard by which we judge. So, I can say that certain periods of history were bad. They, they happened. It's important to study them. It's important to f- understand what they did that made them bad, so we cannot do that again. And I can say certain cultures, certain periods in time were good. Why? Because they promoted human wellbeing and human flourishing. That's the standard. Then derive from that, "Okay, what is it that made a particular culture good? What is it that made that particular culture positive in terms of human wellbeing and human flourishing? What made this bad?" And hopefully from that, I can derive a principle. "Okay, if I want human flourishing and human wellbeing in the future, I wanna be more like these guys and less like those guys. I wanna derive what is the principle that will guide me in the future?" That's, I think, how human knowledge ultimately develops.

Yoram Hazony 13:47 I think people often make a mistake j- just ... I, I'm not saying Yaron, but lots of people, you know, don't actually read the original sources. And so what happens is, uh, people will attack conservatives assuming that conservatives think that whatever comes from the past is right. And a- actually, it's v- it, it's very difficult to find a thinker who actually says something like that. The, the ... Seldon or Burke, the big, the, the, the big conservative theorists. Uh, Hooker. They're, they're all people who understand that the tradition, uh, carries with it mistakes that were made in the past. And, uh, and, and this is actually, I, I think, an important part of, of their empiricism is that they see the search for truth as something as a society does, uh, by trial and error. And what that means is that in any given moment, uh, you have to be aware of the possibility that things that you've inherited are actually false. And the job of the political thinker or the jurist or the, the, the, the philosopher is not to dig in and say, "You know, whatever it is that we've inherited is right." Uh, the, the job is to look at, uh, the society as a whole and say, "Look, we, we have this job of f- first of, f- first of all conservation, just making sure that we don't lose good things that we've had. And s- and, and second, seeing if we can repair things in order to, uh, to, to improve them where it's necessary or where it's possible." And that process is actually a creative process. Th- this is a way in which I think it is similar to Yaron's philosophy, that you take the inherited, uh, tradition and you look for a way that you can shape it in order to make it something, uh, better than it was. Th- that's, that's a, that's a baseline for, for what we call conservatism, it's ... Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:29 Just a comment. So the trial and error, the errors is, uh, you're proud of the errors. It's a, it's a feature, not a bug. So the, uh, you mentioned trial and error a few times yesterday. It's a really interesting kind of idea, is basically accepting that the journey is going to have flaws-

Yoram Hazony 15:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 15:46 ... as opposed to saying ... I mean, the, uh, the conclusion there is the current system is flawed and it will always be flawed-

Yoram Hazony 15:54 It will always be flawed.

Lex Fridman 15:55 ... and, and you try to improve it. When you listen to Yaron talk, there's much more of a optimism for the system being perfect now or potentially soon, or could be perfect. And to me, uh, the way I heard it is almost like accepting that the system is flawed and through trial and error will improve. And, uh, Yaron says, "No. We can have a perfection now."

Yoram Hazony 16:25 That's the way it sounds to me.

Yaron Brook 16:27 Yeah.

Yoram Hazony 16:27 Go ahead.

Yaron Brook 16:28 And, and I think that's right. I, I think the difference is that at some point, just like in science, I think, one can stop the trial and error and say, "I can now see a, a pattern here. I, I can see, you know, that, that certain actions lead to bad consequences, certain actions lead to good consequences. Let me try to, let me try to abstract away what is it that is good and what is it that are bad and build a system around what is good and, and reject what is bad." I, I think ultimately, if you, if you read the Founding Fathers, and whether we call them conservatives or individualists, it ... What the Founding Fathers actually did, all of them, I think, is study history. They all did. They all talk about history. They all talk about examples of other cultures, whether it's ... Uh, w- w- whether they go back to, uh, uh, to the republic in Venice or back to the ancient Greeks or ... Um, they, they studied these. They, they learned lessons from them. They, they tried to figure out what has worked in the past and what hasn't and tried to derive principles. Now, in my view, they got pretty close to what I would consider kind of an ideal, but they didn't get it completely right. And, and here we sit 200 and something years after, uh, the Declaration and after the Constitution. I think we can look back and say, "Okay. Well, what did they get right? What did they get wrong based on how is it done and, and where are the flaws and where the ... and we can improve on it." Um, I think we can get closer to perfection. Um, and, uh, and, and based on those kind of observations, based on that kind of abstraction, that kind of discovery of, of what is true, just like at some point you do the experiments, you do the trial and error, and now you come up with a scientific principle. It, it is true that 100 years later you might discover that, "Hey, I missed something. There's something, uh ..." But to not take the full lesson, to insist on incrementalism, to insist on "We're just gonna tinker with the system," instead of saying, "No. There's something really wrong with, I don't know, having a king. There's something really wrong with, uh, not having any representation," or, or whatever the, the, the standard needs to be, I ... In the name of, "We, we don't wanna move too fast," I think is a mistake. And the problem with trial and error in politics (laughs) -... is that we're talking about human life, right? So, so there was a big trial around communism. And, you know, 100 million people paid the price for the trial. I could have told them in advance, as did many people, that it would not work. There are principles of human nature, principles of, of... that we can study from history, principles about economics and, and other aspects. Well, we know it's not gonna work. You don't need to try it again, you know? We've, we've had communal arrangements, uh, throughout history. There, there was an experiment with fascism and, and, and there've been experiments with all kinds of political systems. Okay. We, we, we've done them. Sad that we did them because many of us knew they wouldn't work, but we should learn the lesson. And I think that all of history now converges on one lesson, and that is... What we need to do is build systems that protect individual freedom. That is the core, that's what ultimately leads to human flourishing and human success and, and, and, and human achievement. And to the extent that we place anything above that individual, whether it's the state, whether it's the ethnicity, whether it's the race, whether it's the bourgeois, whether it's whatever it happens to be, the, a class or whatever, whenever we place something above the individual consequence of negative, that's one of these principles that I think we can derive from studying two, you know, 3,000 years of civilization. Uh, and, and it, it, it's tragic, I think, because we're gonna keep experimenting, sadly. I, I, I see it, right? I'm not winning this battle. (laughs) Uh, I'm losing the battle. We're gonna keep experimenting with different forms of collectivism, and we're gonna keep paying the price in human life and in, uh, missed opportunities for human flourishing and human success and human wealth and, and prosperity.

Yoram Hazony 20:20 Well, look, if we... Let's take communism as a good example. None of the, the major conservative thinkers would say, "You know what's a good idea? A good idea would be to experiment by raising everything that we've inherited and starting from scratch." I mean, that's

Yoram Hazony 20:35 the conservative complaint or accusation against, uh, uh, rationalists. I mean, as opposed to empiricists. I'm u- using rationalism. L- l- let's take, you know, let's take Descartes kind of as a, as, as a benchmark.

Lex Fridman 20:47 Can you also maybe define rationalism?

Yoram Hazony 20:49 Uh, yeah, these are two terms that are in philosophy, espe- especially in epistemology. They're often, uh, compared to one another. Y- Yaron said that it's an, uh... that, that it's, uh, a false dichotomy. And, and maybe it is a bit exaggerated, but that doesn't mean it's not useful for, for conceptualizing the, the domain. So, uh, uh, rationalist is somebody like Descartes who says, um, "I'm going to set aside... I'm gonna try to set aside everything I know, everything I've inherited. I'm gonna start from scratch." And he explicitly says, you know, uh, uh, in evaluating the, the inheritance of the past, he, he explicitly says, "You take a look at the histories that we have, they're not reliable. You take a look at the moral and the scientific writings that we receive, they're not very good." His baseline is to look very critically at the past and say, "Look, I'm evaluating it. I, I think all in all, it's just not worth very much. And so whatever I do going, uh, uh, beginning from scratch is gonna be better as long as," and here, here's his caveat, he says, "'as long as I'm proceeding from, uh, from self-evident, uh, assumptions, from self-evident premises, things that you can't argue against-"

Lex Fridman 22:01 I think, therefore I am.

Yoram Hazony 22:02 Right. And then from there, deducing what, what he calls infallible conclusions. So that model of self-evident premises to infallible conclusions, I'm, I'm calling that rationalism. I think that's kind of a-

Yaron Brook 22:15 Agree.

Yoram Hazony 22:15 ... kind of a standard, you know, academic, uh, uh, jargon term. And it's opposed to, uh, empiricism, which is, uh, a thinker, I, I think, in universities, usually, the, you know, the empiricist is, uh, is David Hume. And, uh, David Hume, uh, will say, "We, we can't learn anything the way that Descartes said." I mean, there is nothing that's that self-evident and that infallible. So, so H- Hume proposes, based on, uh, Newton and, and Boyle and, you know, the, the, the, uh, the, the new physical sciences. So Hume, Hume proposes a science of man, and the science of man sounds an awful lot like what Yaron just said, which is, "We're gonna take a look at human nature, at the nature of societies." Uh, human nature, we're gonna try to abstract towards, uh, fixed principles for describing it. Human societies, we're gonna try to do the same thing. And from there, we get, you know, for, for ex- for example, contemporary economics, uh, but we also get, you know, sociology and anthropology, which, which cut in, in a different, different direction. So, um, that's rationalism versus empiricism.

Yaron Brook 23:23 Can I, can I just say-

Yoram Hazony 23:24 Yeah, go ahead, please.

Yaron Brook 23:25 Yeah, just... I agree with that. I think, I think it's a... I think empiricism... The one thing I disagree is that I think empiricism rarely comes to these abstractions. I mean, they, they, they want more facts. It's always about collecting more evidence and, and the abs- But this is where, you know, I think Ayn Rand is so unusual and where I, I think there's something new here, right? And, and that's a bold statement given the history of philosophy, but I think Ayn Rand is, is something new. And, and she... So she says, "Yes, we agree about rationalism and that it's inherently wrong. Empiricism has the problem of, of, okay, where does it lead? It's, it's... You never come to a conclusion, you're just accumulating evidence." There's something in addition, there's a third alternative, which she is positing, which is using empirical evidence, not denying empirical evidence, recognizing that there are some axioms, there's some axioms that we all, uh, uh... at the base of all of our knowledge that, that, that are starting points. We're, we're not rejecting axiomatic knowledge. And integrating those two and identifying the fact that based on these axioms and based on these empirical evidence, we can come to truths. Just again, like we do in science, we have certain axioms, scientific axioms, we have certain experiments that we run, and then we can come to some identification of a truth. And that truth is always gonna be challenged by new information, by new knowledge, but as long as that's what we know, that is the... that is what truth is. So truth is contextual in the sense that it's contextual, it's based on-... that knowledge, uh, that, that surrounds it. So-

Lex Fridman 24:59 Is it okay for it to change if you get new facts?

Yaron Brook 25:02 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 25:02 New data.

Yaron Brook 25:02 It's always, it's always available to change if the facts that you get, and, and they really are. I mean, the, the, the burden of, of, of, of changing what you've come to a conclusion of truth is high, so you'd have to have real evidence that it's not true, but that happens all the time. So it happens in science, right? We discover that what we thought was true is not true. And, and, and it can happen in politics, in ethics, even more so than in science because they're much messier, uh, fields. But, uh, uh, the idea is that you can come to a, a, a, a truth, but it's not just deductive. Most truths are inductive. We, we learn from, from obser- observing reality and, and again, coming to principles about what works and what's not. And here, I think, it, this is... Ayn Rand is different. She, she doesn't fall into the... and, and she's different in her politics and she's different in her epistemology. She doesn't fall into the conventional view. She's sh- she's an opponent of Hume and she's an opponent of Descartes. Uh, and she's certainly an opponent of Kant. Um, and, uh, and, you know, I, I think she's right. Right? So-

Lex Fridman 26:04 If it's okay,

Lex Fridman 26:05 can we walk back to, uh, criticism of communism? You're both critics of communism, socialism. Why did communism fail? You started to say that conservatives criticize it o- on, on the basis of, like, rationalism, that you're throwing away the past, you're starting from scratch. Is that the fundamental description of why communism failed?

Yoram Hazony 26:27 I think the fundamental difference between rationalists, uh, and empiricists is the question of whether you're throwing away the past. That's the argument. And it cashes out as a distinction between abstract universal rationalist political theories and, uh, empirical political theories. Empirical political theories are, are... they're always going to say something like, um, "Look, uh, there are many different societies. We can say that some are better and some are worse, but the problem is that, uh, y- you know, that, that, that there are many different ways in which a society can be better or worse." There, there, there's an ongoing competition, and we're learning on an ongoing basis what are the ways in which societies can be better and worse. That creates a kind of, I'd say, a mild skepticism, a moderate skepticism among conservatives. I don't think too many conservatives have a problem looking at the, at, at, at the Soviet Union, which is brutal and murderous, ineffective in its, uh, e- e- e- economics, totally ineffective, you know, spiritually, and then collapsed. Okay. So (laughs) , so, so I think it's easier for us to look at a system like that, uh, and say, "You know, what on earth? What, what should we learn from that?" But the main conservative tradition is pretty tolerant of a diversity of different kinds of society and is slow to insist that France is so tyrannical it just needs a revolution because what's gonna come after the revolution is gonna be much better. The assumption is that there's lots of things that are good about most societies and that a, a clean slate leads you to, uh, to, to throw out all of the inherited things that, that y- y- you don't even know how to notice until they're gone.

Lex Fridman 28:18 Could I actually play devil's advocate here and, uh, address something you also said? Can we, as opposed to knowing the empirical data of the 20th century that communism presented, can we go back to the beginning of the 20th century? Can you empathize or steel man or put yourself in a place of the Soviet Union where the workers are being disrespected? And can you not see that the conservatives could be pro-communism? Or, like, communism is such a strongly negative word in modern day political discourse that you can't... like, you have to put yourself in the mind of, uh, people who like red colors-

Yoram Hazony 29:00 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 29:01 ... who, who like-

Yaron Brook 29:02 That's what it was (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 29:03 It was-

Yoram Hazony 29:03 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 29:03 So it's all about the branding, I think. Um, just, but also, like, the ideas of solidarity, of nation, of togetherness, of, uh, respect for fellow man. I mean, all of these things that kind of communism represents. Can you not see that this idea, uh, is actually, uh, going along with conservatism? It is in some ways respecting the, the deep ideals of the past, but proposing a new way to raise those ideals, i- im- implement those ideals in a system?

Yoram Hazony 29:38 Yes, I'm gonna try to do what, what you're suggesting. But historically, we actually have a more useful option, I think, for both of our positions. Instead of, you know, pretending that we like the actual communists, um, we, we have conservative statesmen like, uh, Disraeli and Bismarck who initiated, um, uh, social legislation, right? The, the, the, uh, the, the first step to- towards saying, "Uh, look, we're one nation. We're undergoing industrialization." That industrialization is important and positive, but it's also doing a, a lot of damage to a lot of people, and in particular, it's doing damage not just to, to individuals and families, but it's al- it's doing damage to the, to the social fabric. The capacity of Britain or German to remain cohesive societies is being harmed. And so it's these two conservative statesmen, Disraeli and Bismarck, who, who actually take the first steps, uh, in order to legislate for, you know, for what today we would consider to be minimal social programs, uh, pensions, and disability insurance, and those kinds of things. So, for sure, conservatives do look at industrialization as a rapid change, and they say, "We, we do have to care about the nation as a whole, and we have to care about it as a unity." And y- and, and I assume that Yaron will say, "Look, that's the first step towards the, the, the catastrophe of communism." But, uh, le- b- b- before Yaron drives that nail into the coffin (laughs) , let me try to make a distinction, because when you read Marx...You're reading an intellectual descendant of Descartes. You're reading somebody who says, um, "Look, every society has, uh, consists of oppressors and oppressed, right?" And, and, and that's an improvement in some ways over l- liberal thinking, because at least he's seeing, he's seeing groups as a, as, as a r- real social phenomenon. But he says, "Every society has an oppressor class and oppressed class. There are different classes, there are different groups, and whenever one is stronger, it exploits the ones that are weaker." All right, tha- that is the, the foundation of a revolutionary political theory. Why? Because the moment that you say that the only relationship between the stronger and the weaker is exploitation, the moment that you say that, then y- you're pushed into the position, and Marx and Engels say this explicitly, you're pushed into the position where you're saying, "When will the exploitation end?" Never until there's a revolution. What happens when there's a revolution? You eliminate the oppressor class. It's annihilationist. I mean, you, you, you can, i- immediately when you read it, see why it's different from, from, uh, Descartes or Bismarck, because th- they're trying to keep everybody, you know, somehow at peace with one another, and Marx is saying, "There is no peace. That oppressor class has to be annihilated." And, and then they go ahead and do it. And they, and they, and, and they kill 100 million people. So, I, I, I do think that despite the fact your question is, is good and right, there are certain similarities and concern, but still, I think you can tell the difference between us.

Lex Fridman 32:43 That extra step of revolution to you is where the problem comes. Like that extra step of let's kill all the oppressors, that's the problem.

Yoram Hazony 32:52 Right.

Lex Fridman 32:52 And then to you, Yaron, (laughs) the whole step one is the problem.

Yaron Brook 32:56 Well, it's all a problem, b- y- first, I don't view communism as, um, as something that radical, in a sense that I, I think it, it comes from a tradition of collectivism. I think it comes from a tradition of looking at groups and, and measuring things in terms of groups. It comes from tradition where you expect some people to be sacrificed for the greater good of the, of the whole. Uh, I, I think it comes from a tradition where mysticism, uh, or revelation as, as the source of, of truth is accepted. I view Marx as, in some sense, very Christian. I, I, I don't think he's this radical rejecting... I, I think he's just reformatting, uh, Christianity in a sense. He's replacing, in a sense, he's replacing God with the proletarian. Uh, knowledge, you know, you have to, you have to get knowledge from somewhere, so you need the dictatorship of the proletariat, and you need somebody, the Stalin, the Lenin, who, who somehow communes with the spirit, the, the spirit of the proletarian. There's no rationality, not rationalism, there's no rationality in Marx. There is a lot of mysticism, and there is a lot of, uh, hand waving, and there's a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of original sin in the way he views humanity.

Yaron Brook 34:08 So I view Marx as, as one more collectivist in, in a whole string of collectivists, uh, you know, and, and I think, I think the, the, the, the Bismarckian response, which Bismarck, I mean, Bis- uh, I know less about Disraeli, so I'll focus on Bismarck. I mean, Bismarck is really responding to political pressures from the left, and, and, and, uh, he's responding to the rise of, of communism, socialism. But what Bismarck is doing, he's, uh, putting something alternative, he's presenting an alternative to the proletarian as the standard by which we should, uh, we should measure the good. And the s- and what he's replacing it is the state. He's replacing the proletarian with the state. And, and that has exactly the same problems. That is, first, it requires sacrificing some to others, which, which is what the welfare state basically legitimizes. Um, it, it, it places the state above all, so the state now becomes, I think, the biggest evil of Bismarck, and I, I, I definitely view him as a negative force in history, is, uh, public education. I mean, I mean, the Germans really, uh, dig in on public education and really develop it. And really, the American model of public education is, is copying the, the German, the Prussian, uh, Bismarckian public education.

Lex Fridman 35:21 Can you speak to that real quick, why the public education is such a root of moral evil for you?

Yaron Brook 35:27 Well, because it now says that there's one, uh, standard, and that standard is determined by government, by, by a bureaucracy, by, by, uh, whatever the government deems is in the national interest. And Bismarck's very explicit about this. He's training the workers of the future. Uh, you know, they, they need to catch up in, in, you know, with England and other places, and they need to train the workers, and there's gonna be a, uh, he's gonna train some people to be the managerial class. He's gonna train other people to be... And he decides, right? The, the, the government, the bureaucracy is gonna decide who's who and where they go. There's no individual choice. There's no individual, uh, uh, showing an ability to break out of what, what the government has decided is their little box. Uh, there's very little freedom. Uh, there's very little, uh, you know, ultimately, there's very little competition. There's very little innovation, and this is the problem we have today in American education, which we can get to, is there's no competition and no innovation. We have one standard fit all, and then we have conflicts about what should be taught, and the conflicts now are not pedagogical. They're not about what works and what doesn't. Nobody cares about that. It's about political agendas, right? It's about what, uh, my group wants to be taught and what that group wants to be taught, rather than actually discovering how do we get kids to read? I mean, we all know how to get kids to read, but there's a political agenda about not teaching phonics, for example. So, a lot of schools don't teach phonics, even though the kids will never learn how to read properly. So, it, it becomes politics, and I, I don't believe politics belongs in education. I think education is a product, it's a service, and we know how to deliver products and services really, really efficiently at a really, really low price, at a really, really high quality. And that's leaving it to the market to do.

Lex Fridman 37:04 But your fundamental criticism is that the state can use education...

Yoram Hazony 37:09 ...to, uh, further his authoritarian aims.

Yaron Brook 37:13 Well, or whatever the aims do. I mean, think about the conservative today critique of American educational system, right? It's dominated by the left. Yeah, what did you expect (laughs) , right? If you leave it, if you leave it up to the state to fund, they're gonna fund the things that promote state growth and state intervention, and the left is better at that. It has been better at that than, than the right. And, and, and they now dominate our educational institutions. But look, if we go back to Bismarck, my problem is placing the state above the individual. So if, if communism places the, the, the class above the individual, what matters is class, individuals are nothing, they're cogs in a machine. Bismarck, the, the, certainly, the German tradition, much more than the British tradition or the American tradition, the, the, the German tradition is to place the state above the individual. I think that's equally evil and, and the outcome is fascism and the outcome is the same. The outcome is the deaths of tens of millions of people, uh, when taken to, to its ultimate conclusion. Just like socialism, the ultimate conclusion of it is, uh, communism, uh, uh, you know, nationalism in that form, kind of, the Bismarckian form, the ultimate conclusion is, uh, is, uh, Nazism or some form of fascism, um, eh, because you don't care about the individual. The individual doesn't matter. I think this is one of the differences in, in the Anglo, uh, you know, Anglo-American tradition, where

Yaron Brook 38:30 the Anglo-American tradition, even the conservatives (laughs) have always acknowledged, and, and it goes back to a- your 100 written-

Yoram Hazony 38:36 Especially, especially the conservatives.

Yaron Brook 38:37 Yes, well-

Yoram Hazony 38:38 The conservatives were there first.

Yaron Brook 38:39 They, they acknowledged, well, well, you've, you've defined conservatives to include all the good thinkers of the distant past, and they're all good thinkers. We agree on that.

Yoram Hazony 38:47 I'm defining conservatism the way that Burke does. I'm just, uh, eh, look, this is a very simple observation. Burke thinks when you open Burke and you actually read him, he starts naming all of these people who he's defending. And it's bizarre, I'm sorry, it's just in- intellectual sloppiness for people to be publishing books called Burke, The First Conservative, The Founding Conservative, The Found... I mean, th- this is nonstop. It's a, it's a, it's a view that says Burke reacts to the French Revolution, so conservatism has no prior tradition, it's just reacting to the French Revolution. And this is, I mean, this, this is just, uh, absurd. It's- Can I ask a quick question s- on conservatism?

Yaron Brook 39:23 Yeah, please, yeah.

Yoram Hazony 39:23 Are there any conservatives that are embracing of revolutions? So are they ultimately against the concept of revolution? Yes, Burke himself embraces the Polish Revolution, uh, which takes place almost exactly at the same time as the French Revolution. And the argument's really interesting because there's... A common mistake is assuming that Burke and conservative thinkers are always in favor of slow change. I, I think that's, that's also just factually mistaken. Um, Burke is against the Fr- French Revolution because he thinks that there are actually tried and true, uh, things that work, things that work for human, human flourishing, f- and freedom included as, as a very important part of human flourishing. Um, he, like many others, takes the, uh, takes the, uh, the British, uh, the, the English Constitution to be a, uh, uh, a model of something that works. You know, so it has a king, it has various other things that, that, you know, maybe Yaron will say, "Well, that, that's a mistake." But still, for centuries, it's the leader in many things that I think we can easily agree are human flourishing. And Burke says, "Look, what's wrong with the French Revolution? What's wrong with the French Revolution is that they, is that they have a system that has all sorts of problems, but they could, they could be repairing it. And instead, what they're doing by over- by, by overthrowing everything is they're moving away from what we know is good for, for human beings." Then he looks at the Polish Revolution, and he says, "The Poles do the opposite. The Poles have a non-functioning traditional constitution. It's, it's too democratic. It, it's impossible to get, uh, to, to, to raise armies and, and, and to defend the country bec- because of the fact that, that every nobleman has a veto." So the, the Polish Revolution moves in the direction of the British Constitution. They repair their constitution through a quick, a rapid revolution. They install a king along the model that looks a lot like Britain. And Burke supports this. He, he says, "Th- th- this is a good revolution." So it's, it, it's not, um, the, th- the need to quickly make a change in order to save yourself. That, that's not what a conservatives are obje- objecting to. What they're objecting to is in- instead of looking at experience in order to try to make a slow or quick improvement, a measured improvement to achieve a particular goal, instead of doing that, you say, "Look, the whole thing has just been wrong. And what we've really gotta do is annihilate a certain part of the population and then make completely new laws and a completely new theory." That, that's what he's ob- objecting to, that's the French Revolution, and that then becomes, you know, the model for, for communist revolutions.

Yaron Brook 42:01 And for me, the, I mean, the French Revolution is clearly (laughs) , uh, uh, a real evil and wrong, but it's not that it was a revolution and it's not that it tried to change everything. I mean, let's remember what was going on in France at the time. I mean, people were starving and the monarchy, in particular, was completely detached, completely detached from the suffering of the people, and something needed to change. The, the, the unfortunate thing is that, that, uh, uh, the change was motivated by a, a, uh, an egalitarian philosophy, not egalitarian in the sense that I think the Founding Fathers talked about it, but egalitarian in the sense of real equality, equality of outcome, uh, motivated by a, a philosophy, by Rousseau's philosophy. And it inevitably led... You could tell that the ideas were going to lead to this, to, to massive destruction and death and, and the annihilation of a class. Uh, y- you can't... Annihilation is never (laughs) an option. That is, it, it, it's not true that... A good revolution never leads to mass death, uh, of just whole groups of people because a good revolution is about the sanctity of the individual. It's about preservation of liberty of the individual.

Yoram Hazony 43:04 Hmm.

Yaron Brook 43:04 And, and again, that, that goes back to... And, and the French Revolution denies, and Rousseau denies really, that in civilization, there is a value in a thing called the individual.

Yoram Hazony 43:13 I think this is a good place-

Yaron Brook 43:15 (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 43:15 ...to have this discussion.

Lex Fridman 43:18 ... the founding fathers of the United States, are they, um, individualists or are they conservatives? So in this particular revolution that founded this country, at the core of which are some fascinating, some powerful ideas, were those founding fathers, were those ideas coming from a place of conservatism or did they put primary value into the freedom and the power of the individual? What do you think?

Yoram Hazony 43:47 They were both. I, I mean, this is, I, I, this is something that's a little bit difficult for, sometimes for, for, for Americans. And I mean even very educated Americans, they lo- they, they talk about the founding fathers as though it's kind of like this-

Yaron Brook 43:59 Monolith. (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 44:00 ... this, yeah, this, this collective, you know, uh, e- entity with w- with a single brain and a single, single value system. But I, I think at the time, that's not the way they, uh, (laughs) they, they, not the way any of them saw it. So roughly there's two camps, and they map onto the rationalist versus traditionalist empiricist dichotomy that I proposed earlier. And the, um ... So on the one hand, you have real revolutionaries, like, uh, Jefferson and Paine. These are the people who Burke was writing against. These are the people who supported the French Revolution. And-

Lex Fridman 44:33 So when you say real, so when you say Paine, you're referring to revolutionaries in a bad way, like, this is a problem.

Yoram Hazony 44:40 These are people who will say history up until now has, has, has been, you know, like with, with Descartes, but applied to politics, history up until now has been, you know, just a story of ugliness, foolishness, stupidity and evil. And, uh, if you apply reason, we'll all come to roughly, we'll all come to the same conclusions. You know, and, uh, Paine writes a book called The Age of Reason, and The Age of Reason is a, a manifesto for here is the answer to political and moral problems throughout history. We have the answers. And it's in the same school as Rousseau's, uh, The Social Con-

Lex Fridman 45:18 (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 45:19 No, you don't like that?

Yaron Brook 45:20 Not at all.

Yoram Hazony 45:21 Oh, I thought it was opp-

Yaron Brook 45:22 I think they're, I think they're the opposites.

Yoram Hazony 45:23 Okay, so, so lemme-

Lex Fridman 45:24 Just to throw in a-

Yoram Hazony 45:25 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 45:25 ... quick question on, uh, Jefferson and Paine. Do you think America would exist without those two figures? So, like, uh, how, how important is spice in the, uh, in the flavor of the dish you're making?

Yoram Hazony 45:39 I don't want to try to run the counterfactual. I d- you know, I don't have confidence that I know the answer to the question.

Lex Fridman 45:44 But it's so much fun. (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 45:46 Y- you know what? Le- I'm, I'm gonna offer something that I think is more fun, more fun than the counterfactual is America had two revolutions, not one, okay? At first, there is a revolution that is strongly spiced with, uh, this kind, this kind of rationalism, um, and then there's a 10-year period after the Declaration of Independence, there's a 10-year period under which America has a constitution, its first constitution, which today they call the Articles of the Confederation. But there's a constitution from 1777, and that constitution is based on, in a lot of ways, on the hottest new ideas. It has, instead of the traditional British system with a division of powers between, you know, an executive and a bi-cam- bicameral legislature, inst- instead of that traditional English, uh, model, which most of the states had as their governments, instead of that they say, "No, we're gonna have, uh, one, uh, elected body, okay? And that body, that congress, it's going to be the executive, it's going to be the legislative, it's going to be, it's gonna be everything and it's gonna run as a big committee." Th- these, these are the ideas of the French Revolution. You get to actually see them implemented in, uh, in Pennsylvania in the Pennsylvania Constitution and then l- and then later in the National Assembly in France. It's a disaster. The thing doesn't work. It's completely made up. It's not based on any kind ... It's, it's neither based on historical experience nor is it based on historical custom, on what people are used to. And what, what they succeed in creating with this first constitution is it's wonderfully rational, but it's a complete disaster. It doesn't allow the raising of taxes. It doesn't allow the mustering of troops. It doesn't allow giving orders to, to, to soldiers to fight a war. And if it, if that had continued, if that had continued to be the, the, the, uh, the, the American constitution, America never would've been an independent country. There, I'm willing to do that counterfactual. W- what happens, uh, during those years where, uh, where, uh, Washington and Jay and Knox and Hamilton and Morris, there's, like, this group of conservatives, they're mostly soldiers and lawyers. Other than Washington, most of them are from, you know, from Northern cities. And this group is much more conservative than, uh, than the, uh, than the Tom Paine and, and Jefferson school. You c- some, some historians, some historians call them the Nationalist Party. Uh, hi- historically, the, they give up the word nationalism and they call themselves the Federalists, but they're basically the, the Nationalist Party. What does that mean? It means on the one hand that their goal is to create an independent nation, independent from Britain, but on the other hand, they believe that, that they already have, uh, national legal traditions, the common law, the, the forms of government that have been, uh, i- imported from, from Britain, and of course Christianity, which they consider it to be, you know, part of their inheritance. This, this Federal- Federalist Party is the conservative party. The- these are people who are extremely close in, in ideas to Burke, and these are people who wrote the Constitution of the United States, the second constitution, the second revolution in 1787 when Washington leads the establishment of a new constitution, which, you know, may- maybe technically legally it wasn't even legal under the old constitution, but it was democratic. And what it did is it said, "We're going to take what we know about"... English government, what we've learned by appl- applying English government in the States, we're gonna create a national government, a unified national government that's going to muster power in its hands, enough power to be able to do things, like fighting wars to defend a unified people. Those are conservatives. Now, it, it, it's reasonable to say, um, "Well, look, there was no king, so how conservative could they be?" But I think that's a reasonable question. But don't forget that the American colonies, the, the, the English colonies in America by that point had been around for 150 years. They had written constitutions. They had already adapted, for an entire century, adapted the English constitution to local conditions where there's no aristocracy and there's no king. You know, I think you can see that as, as a positive thing. On the other hand, they have slavery. That's an innovation that, that's not English. So it's a little bit different from the English constitution. But those, those men are conservatives. They make the, the minimum changes that they need for the, to, to the English constitution, and, and they, they largely replicate it, which is why, uh, the Jeffersonians hated them so much. They called them apostates. They say they've, they've betrayed, uh, uh, e- equality and liberty and fraternity by adopting an English-style constitution.

Lex Fridman 50:38 So, I would imagine, Yaron, you would put emphasis of the success of the key ideas at the founding of this country elsewhere, at the, at the freedom of the individual, so the-

Yaron Brook 50:48 Yeah, I mean, I-

Lex Fridman 50:48 ... as opposed to the tradition of the British Empire.

Yaron Brook 50:50 I mean, uh, the one thing I agree with Yoram is, is, is the fact that, yes, the Founding Fathers were n- not a monolith. I mean, (laughs) they argued, they debated, they disagreed, they, they vote against each other. I mean, th- Jefferson and Adams for decades didn't even speak to each other, though they did make up, uh, and, and, and had a fascinating, fascinating relationship after.

Yoram Hazony 51:07 Y- you and I are making up too.

Yaron Brook 51:08 There you go. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:09 (laughs) It's like the Founding Fathers.

Yaron Brook 51:12 Uh, y- you know, there's, there's, there's, there's massive debate and, and discussion. I, I, but I don't, I don't agree with the characterization of Paine and, and Jefferson. I don't think it's just to call them rationalists, 'cause I don't think they're rationalists. People who've looked at history, uh, at the problems in history ... And, and remember, this is th- the 18th century, and they, uh, w- w- were coming out of, 100 years earlier, some of the bloodiest wars in all of human history were happening in, in, in Europe, uh, uh, m- many of them over religion. Um, y- you know, they had seen what was going on in, in France and other countries where, where people, where, where people w- were starving, uh, and where, where kings were frolicking in, in palaces in spite of that. Uh, y- they were very aware of the relative freedom that the British tradition, uh, had, had, had given Englishmen. I think they, (laughs) they knew that. They understood that. Um, and I think they were building on that. They were taking the observation of the past and trying to come up with a more perfect system, and I think they did. In, in that sense, I'm a huge, uh, fan of Jefferson. I- you know, there are two things that I'm, I think unfortunate about Jefferson. One is that, uh, he continued to hold slaves, which is, which is, which is, uh, very unfortunate, and the second is his, his early support for the French Revolution, which I think is a massive mistake. Uh, and, and I wouldn't be surprised, uh, if he regretted it later in life, given the consequences. But, y- you know, they were trying to devise principles by which they could establish a new state. And yes, there was some, uh, there was pushback by, by some, and there was disagreements, and the c- and the constitution in the end is, is, to some extent, a form of compromise. It's still one of the great documents of all of human history, political documents-

Lex Fridman 52:55 The Constitution?

Yaron Brook 52:56 ... the Constitution. Uh, although I think it's inferior to the Declaration. I, I'm, uh, I'm a huge fan of the Declaration, and I think one of the mistakes the conservatives makes, one of the cons- uh, mistakes the Supreme Court makes and American judiciary makes is assuming the two documents are separate. I think Lincoln is absolutely right. You can't understand the Constitution without understanding the Declaration. The Declaration what set the context and what sets everything up for the Constitution. Individual rights are the key concept there. And it, and, and one of the challenges was that some of the compromises, and a- and, and compromise is not necessarily between groups, but compromises that even Jefferson made, and others made, regarding individual rights, set America on a path that, uh, we're suffering from today. Uh, and, and, uh, I mentioned three last night. Uh, one was slavery. Obviously, that was a, a, a horrific, uh, compromise, one that, uh, American not just paid for with a civil war, 600,000, uh, young men, uh, died, uh, because of it, but the suffering of Black slaves for all those years. But then the whole issue of racial tensions in this country, uh, f- for, for, for a century, and to this day, really, uh, is a consequence of that initial compromise. Who knows what would have, what the counterfactual is in America if, if there's a civil war right at the founding, right? 'Cause it, there would have been a war no matter what. But if it had happened in the late-18th century, early-19th century, rather than waiting till, till, till 1860s... But then second was, um, uh, Jefferson's embrace of, uh, of public education, uh, his founding of the University of Virginia, which, which I think is, is a great tragedy, and, um, wh- which nobody agrees with me on, so, so th- that's one of the areas where I'm, I'm pretty radical. And then they embrace, both by Jefferson and by Hamilton, uh, for different reasons, but an embrace by both of them, of government role in the economy. And, you know, I'm, I do finance, so I, I know a little bit about finance, and the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton about banking is, is, is fascinating. But at the end of the day, both wanted a role for government in banking. They both didn't trust ... Uh, Jefferson didn't trust, uh, uh, big financial interests. Hamilton wanted to capture some of those financial interests for the state. And as a consequence, w- we set America on a path where, you know, in my view, regulation always leads to more regulation. There's never, never a case where regulation decreases. And we s- we started out with a certain regulatory body around banks, and a recognition that it was okay to regulate the economy. So once we get into the late-19th century, it's fine to regulate the, the railroads, it's fine to pass antitrust laws, it's fine to then continue on the path of where we are today.... which is heavy, heavy, heavy, massive involvement of government in every aspect of our economy and really, in every aspect of our life because of education. So, uh, I, I think the country was founded on certain mistakes, and we haven't been willing to question those mistakes. And in a sense, the, w- we've only moved in the opposite direction. And now America's become ... Uh, whereas I think it was founded on the idea of the primacy of the individual, the sanctity of the individual, at least as an idea, even if not fully implemented, I think now that's completely lost. I don't think anybody, uh, i- i- really is an advocate out there for individualism in politics or for true freedom

Yaron Brook 56:12 in politics.

Lex Fridman 56:12 We'll get to in- individualism, but let me ask The Beatles and The Rolling Stones question about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. What-

Yaron Brook 56:19 Rolling Stones?

Lex Fridman 56:20 Well, 'cause it's like which document-

Yaron Brook 56:21 Right.

Lex Fridman 56:21 ... Beatles or Rolling, which document is more important. And so-

Yaron Brook 56:24 It's obviously The Beatles, right?

Lex Fridman 56:25 Okay. (laughs) It's, it's-

Yaron Brook 56:26 No question. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:27 Is there even a question? But let me then even zoom in further and, and ask you to pick your favorite song. So what ideas in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence do you think are the most important to the success of the United States of America?

Yoram Hazony 56:43 I'll answer the question, but before answering the question, I want to dissent from, register a dissent from Yaron's-

Lex Fridman 56:49 (laughs) Is it the public education? Is it which, uh-

Yoram Hazony 56:51 No, no, no. Actually, w- w- we're, we're not so... Look, we're not so far apart on, on, on, on public educat- I'm actually kind of s- I'm actually kind of surprised that you're so anti-Bismarck because his public school system wa- his national public school system was created in order to stick it to the Church. It was the Church that ran the schools before then. And, okay, but so that's a different-

Yaron Brook 57:11 I'm all for sticking it to the Church-

Lex Fridman 57:12 (laughs) Right?

Yaron Brook 57:13 ... (laughs) at any opportunity, but not-

Lex Fridman 57:14 Right.

Yaron Brook 57:14 ... now when the alternative is the nation.

Lex Fridman 57:15 Right, I see. Yeah, no.

Yaron Brook 57:16 I, I, I, I'd rather see, I'd rather see free educational system, you know, where freedom is in, in education.

Yoram Hazony 57:21 Okay. So, so, um, I, I want to register a dissent about, uh-

Yaron Brook 57:25 (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 57:25 ... Lincoln. Look, Lincoln is an important figure and a great man, and he was presiding over a country which at that point was pretty Jeffersonian in terms of its, uh, self-perception. He said what he needed to say. I'm not gonna criticize him. But I don't accept the idea that the, that the Declaration of Independence, which starts one revolution, is, uh, is of a piece with the Constitu- the second Constitution, the Constitution of 1787, the Nationalist Constitution, which is effectively a counter-revolution. What happens is there is a revolution. It's based on certain principles. There are a lot ... It, not exactly, but in many ways resembles the, the, the later i- uh, ideas of the French Revolution. And what the Federalist Party does, the National- Nationalist Conservative Party does, is a counter-revolution to reinstate the old English constitution. So these documents are, if you're willing to accept the evidence of history, they are in many respects contrary to one another. And, uh, so if, if I'm asked what's the most important values that are handed down by these documents, I don't have an objection to, uh, you know, to, uh, life, liberty and property, all of which are, are really important things. I do have an objection to the, the, to the, uh, pomp- the pompous overreach of, uh, these are self-evident, which is absurd. They h- they can't be self-evident. If they were self-evident, then somebody would have come up with them, you know, like, like 2,000 years before. It's not, it's not self-evident. And, and so, so that's damaging. I, I like the conservative preamble of the Constitution, which, uh, describes the purposes of the, of the national government that's being established. There, there are, are sev- seven purposes. Uh, a, a more perfect union, which is the princi- the principle of cohesion, justice, uh, domestic peace, uh, common defense, the general welfare, which is, is, uh, the, the welfare of the public as a, as a thing that's not only individuals, but there is such a thing as a general welfare. Liberty, which we agree is absolutely crucial, and posterity, the idea that the purpose of the government is to be able to sustain and grow this independent nation, and not only to guarantee rights, no matter what happens.

Lex Fridman 59:45 But you don't like the, "We hold these truths to be self-evident"? So you're definitely a Beatles guy. You don't want the, you don't want the pompous... You don't need that revolutionary strength.

Yoram Hazony 59:55 Well, no, look, I, I, I, look, I, I just, I think that that expression, self-evident truths, it does tremendous damage because it, it, it, uh, instead of a moderate skepticism, which says, "Look, we may not know everything," it says, "Look, we know everything. Here it is."

Lex Fridman 1:00:12 That would be a good opening.

Yoram Hazony 1:00:13 "Here's what we know. We know."

Lex Fridman 1:00:14 We don't know everything-

Yoram Hazony 1:00:15 We, we, no, we-

Lex Fridman 1:00:15 ... but we think. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:00:17 So, so I, you know, I'll agree with Yoram. I don't like self-evident. I, I don't like self-evident because he's absolutely right. It's not self-evident. These are massive achievements. These are massive achievements of, of, of enlightened thinking, of studying history, of understanding human nature, of deriving a, a truth from 3,000 years of histo- of, of historical knowledge and a better understanding of human nature and, and, and, and the capacity. It's using reason in some ways better than any human beings have. And I mean, the Founding Fathers are giants, historically, in my view, uh, because they came up with these truths. I do think they're truths. But they're certainly (laughs) not self-evident. I mean, if, if they were, Yoram is right, they would have discovered them thousands of years earlier or, or everybody would accept them, right? I mean, how many people today think that those, what they state in that document is true? Pretty much, you know, five people? I don't know.

Lex Fridman 1:01:11 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:01:12 I- i- it's, it's, it's very, it's very-

Lex Fridman 1:01:13 That's your criticism of modern society. Yes, we'll get there.

Yaron Brook 1:01:16 It's, it's, it, it's very, very few people recognize that. If they were self-evident, bam, everybody would have become, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, would have accepted American Revolution as, as truth and, and that was it. A lot of work has to go into understanding and describing and convincing people about those truths. But, but I, I (laughs) completely disagree with Yoram about, uh, this idea or I'll, I'll voice my dissent as, as we said, about-

Lex Fridman 1:01:40 Register your dis- official dissent. (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:01:42 A- about, about A that this being two different revolutions and, and B that the American Revolution was at any similarity to the French Revolution. I, I, I-

Yoram Hazony 1:01:49 Y- y- you know that Jefferson and Paine...... were, th- they were in France-

Yaron Brook 1:01:53 Oh, I know, I know.

Yoram Hazony 1:01:54 ... ru-running a, running a different revolution.

Yaron Brook 1:01:55 I know, but they, but they were-

Yoram Hazony 1:01:56 But they were

Narrator 1:01:56 I agree, too.

Yaron Brook 1:01:57 ... they were waiting constantly. I mean, they were in communication with Madison. They were-

Yoram Hazony 1:02:00 No, I, I, I, I, I, I know.

Yaron Brook 1:02:00 There was a lot of input going on.

Yoram Hazony 1:02:02 And, and Jefferson's sitting there in Paris, pulling his hair out because Madison, Madison has come under the influence of these nationalists.

Yaron Brook 1:02:08 (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 1:02:08 And he can't believe it.

Yaron Brook 1:02:09 Uh, the reality is that the difference between the French Revolution and, and the, and the American Revolution is, I- is, is vast, and it is a, a, a deep philosophical difference, and it's a difference that expressed, I think, uh, between the differences. Uh, you know, Yoram, uh, in his writings, lumps Rousseau with Locke and with Voltaire and with others, and, and I think, I, I think that's wrong. I think Rousseau is very different than the others. I think, again, Rousseau is an anti-Enlightenment figure. Rousseau is a, is, in many respects, hearkening back to a past, a, an ancient past, a, a, and I think, and I think a, a completely distorted view of human nature, of human mind. He, he rejects reason. I mean, Rousseau is on the premise that reason is the end of humanity, reason is the destruction of humanity, reason is, is how we get civilization, and civilization is awful because, because-

Yoram Hazony 1:03:00 I, I, I, I, I, I don't disagree. We're, we're, we're only talking about different texts.

Yaron Brook 1:03:04 Yes, yes.

Yoram Hazony 1:03:04 I, I, when I say Rouss- I, I'm just talking about the social contract.

Yaron Brook 1:03:06 Yeah, but the so- social contract, he ke- there's similarity between others.

Yoram Hazony 1:03:10 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:03:10 But he takes it in a completely different direction, and we agree, social contract is, is-

Yoram Hazony 1:03:12 Yeah, we-

Yaron Brook 1:03:13 ... a bad idea. But i- i- i- you can't have a contract that you don't actually voluntarily accept. But Rousseau is the French Revolution. Rousseau is about destruction and mayhem and chaos and anarchy. He is the spirit behind the French Revolution. I, I think the American Revolution is a complete rejection of Rousseau. Uh, I think Jefferson is a complete rejection of Rousseau. I don't think Jefferson is a fan of Rousseau. He is of Voltaire, and he certainly is of Montesquieu. If you look at the... And if you look at the Federalist Papers, the, the intellectual most cited in the Federalist Papers, I think, uh, in terms of just the number of times cited, is Montesquieu, you know? So, I think the, the American Revolution is an individualistic revolution. It is a revolution about the rights of the individual. The French Revolution is a negation of the rights of the individual. It's a collectivistic revolution. It's, it's not quite the Marxist revolution of the proletarian, but it, it, it's defining people in classes, and it's a rebellion against a certain class. And, and yeah, kill 'em all, right? Off with their heads. And it, it is a negation. Uh, it's about egalitarianism in the sense of equality of outcome, not in a sense of, of equality before the law or equality of rights, which is the Jeffersonian sense. So, I think it's, it's, it's, it's wrong to, to, to lump Jefferson into the, uh, fraternity, uh, you know, egalitarian, uh, notion of, of the French, which is far more similar to, to what ultimately became socialism and Marxism, uh, or, or, or, uh, in, in, uh, in, in kind of that tradition. It's anti-individualistic, uh, the French Revolution is. Whereas the American Revolution, the first one, uh, is, is individualistic. It's all about individual rights. And, and while there's certain phrases in the Declaration of Independence that I don't agree with, uh, you know, it's, it's beautifully written and it's a magnificent document, so it's hard for me to say I don't agree, but who am I, right? These were, these were giants. Uh, self-evident is one of them. You know, I'm not particularly f- uh, uh, crazy about endowed by the creator. Um, but I like the fact that it, it, it's creator and not God, or not a specific creator, but just a, kind of a more general thing. But putting those two ashes aside, it's the greatest political document in all of human history, in my view, by far. Nothing comes close. It i- it is, it is a document that identifies the core principles of political truism, of, of truth. That is, the role of government is to preserve and to protect these rights, these inalienable rights. And, and that is so crucial, that these rights are inalienable. That is, a majority can't vote them out. Uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, revelation can't vote them out. Th- this is, uh, this is what is required for human liberty and human freedom, the, the, the right, that is, the, the, the sanction, the freedom to act on your own behalf, to act based on your own judgment, to as... And as long as you're not, you know, interfering with other people's rights, you are free to do so. That is such a profound truth. And that, to me, is the, is the, is the, is the essence of political philosophy. That's the beginning, you know? And, and it's, it's based on, just, just to not to fall into... Yoram's gonna say, uh, it's a rationalist. It's based on a whole history of what happens when we negate that. It's based on looking at England and seeing, to the extent that they practiced a respect for individual liberty, of property, of, of, of, uh, of freedom, good things happened. So, let's take that all the way. Let's not compromise on that a- let's, let's be consistent with the good and reject the bad. And when England goes away, distances itself from the rights of man, from the idea of, of, of, of a right to property and so on, bad things happen, and when they go t- Let's go all in, and I'm (laughs) , I'm all in on, on the right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. And I think the idea of pursuit of happiness is profound because it's a moral statement. It's a statement that says that sanctions and, and, and says that ultimately people should be allowed to make their own judgments and, and live their lives as they see fit, based on how they view happiness. They might be right, they might be wrong, but we're not gonna dictate what happiness en- entails and dictate to people how they should live their lives. We're gonna let them, uh, uh, let them figure that out. So, it, it has this self-interested moral code kind of embedded in it, so I think it's a, it's a beautiful statement. So, I think the declaration is key, and I, I, I think there was an experiment, and the experiment was p- uh, post, uh, in that period of, of, uh, before the Constitution, where the experiment was let's let the states... Let's have a con- a kind of a loose confederation. Uh, let's let the states experiment with, with setting up their own constitutions and we'll all govern, and we won't have any kind of unity. And I think what they realized, I, and I think even Jefferson realized, is that that was not workable because...Many of the states were starting to significantly (laughs) violate rights. There was nothing to unify, there was nothing to really protect the, the vision of the declaration. You needed to establish a nation, which is what the constitution does, it establishes a nation. But the purpose of that was to put everybody under one set of laws that protected rights. The, the, the, the focus was still on the protection of rights, and I agree with six of the seven of the principles, right? I, I, and I, and-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:32 Well, which, which do you disagree with?

Yaron Brook 1:08:34 The common welfare, which, which the general welfare-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:36 The general, general welfare.

Yaron Brook 1:08:36 ... which I worry about, right? I think in the way the founders understood it, I think I probably agreed with it, but it's such an ambiguous-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:43 I, I'm, I'm sure you don't agree.

Yaron Brook 1:08:44 Maybe I don't, maybe I don't.

Yoram Hazony 1:08:45 It, it's just-

Lex Fridman 1:08:45 Can you state the general welfare principle?

Yaron Brook 1:08:48 Well, the idea that part of the world of government is to secure the general welfare-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:51 So the-

Yaron Brook 1:08:52 ... is, is something-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:53 Look-

Yaron Brook 1:08:53 ... is something that-

Yoram Hazony 1:08:53 Look, look, th- this is something we, we, we didn't get to it in the debate, we really should have-

Lex Fridman 1:08:57 (laughs)

Yoram Hazony 1:08:57 ... is the question of whether there is such a thing as a, a common good, or a public interest, or a national interest, or a general welfare. Do these words, do these terms mean anything other than the good of all of the individuals in the country? That, that's an imp- Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Yaron Brook 1:09:14 Yeah, so, so-

Yoram Hazony 1:09:15 Yeah.

Yaron Brook 1:09:15 ... so that's right, so that's why... So I object to it because I think it's too easy to interpret it as. So I interpret it as, well, what's good for the, you know, a general, a group, a common, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, people, or just a collection of individuals, so what's good for the individual is good for the common welfare. But I understand that that (laughs) is a, that's something that is hard for people to grasp and, and not the common understanding. So I wa- so I, I would have skipped the general welfare in order to avoid the fact that now the general welfare includes the government telling you what gender you should be assigned to. So, so I would have, I would have wanted to have skipped that completely. Um, so I think the, the, the constitution is completely consistent with the, the declaration, with a few exceptions, the general welfare, but, you know, perfection is, uh, is, is a difficult thing to find, particularly for me-

Yoram Hazony 1:10:01 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:10:01 ... right? Politically. But it's, it's a magnificent document, the di- the constitution. It doesn't quite rise to the level, I think, of the declaration, but it's a magnificent document because, uh, you know, and this is the difference, I think, with, between the English constitution. Here's, here's what I see as the difference. The difference is that the, the constitution is written in the context of why do we have a separation of powers, for example? We have a separation of powers in order to make sure that the government only does what the government is supposed to do, and what is the government supposed to do? Well, fundamentally, it's supposed to protect rights. I mean, all of those seven, or at least six (laughs) of the seven are about protecting rights. They're about protecting us from foreign invaders. They're about protecting, uh, uh, uh, you know, peace within the country. They're about preserving this protection of rights. And why do we have this separation? To, so, so that we make sure that no one of those entities, the executive, or the legislature, judicial, can violate rights 'cause there's always somebody looking over their shoulder. There's always somebody who can veto their power. But there's a purpose to it, and that purpose is clearly, uh, uh, signified and characterized, and that's why I think the Bill of Rights was written in order to add to the clarification of what exactly we mean, what is the purpose? The purpose is to preserve rights, um, and that's why we need to, to elaborate what those rights... And, and Madison's objection to the Bill of Rights was to say not that he objected to having a, a, a protection of rights, but to listing them because he was worried that other rights that were not listed would not be, and, and his worry was completely (laughs) justified 'cause it's exactly what's happened. It's like, uh, the only reason we have free speech in America is we, we've got it in writing as a First Amendment. If we didn't have it in writing, it would have been gone a long time ago. And th- the reason we don't have, for example, the freedom to negotiate a, a, a, a, a contract, uh, y- you know, independent of government regulation is that was, that was not listed as a right, uh, in the bill, even though I think it's clearly covered under the constitution and certainly under the declaration. So there was a massive mistake done in the Bill of Rights. They tried to cover it with a Ninth Amendment, but it never really stuck, uh, this idea that the, the, uh, uh, non-enumerated rights that, that, that are still in place. So I don't see it as a second revolution. I think it's, it's a, it's a, it's a fix to a flaw that happened. It's a fix that, uh, allowed the expansion of the protection of rights to all states by creating a national entity to protect those rights. And that's what ultimately led to the, to, to slavery going away. Uh, you know, under the, under the initial, uh, uh, the initial agreement, slavery would have been there in perpetuity because states were sovereign in, in a way that under the new constitution they were not. And in a sense, the constitution sets in motion, uh, the declaration and then the constitution set in motion the, the Civil War. The Civil War has to happen because at the end of the day you cannot have some states with a massive violation of rights. What, what's more of a violation of rights than slavery? And some states that recognize it's not, it, it inevitably leads to the Civil War.

Yoram Hazony 1:13:01 Yoran was j- just saying that, you know, other than the general welfare, these principles are about individual liberties. I, I, I think, I just don't think you can read it that way. The first stated purpose of the constitution of 1787 is in order to form a more perfect union. A more perfect union, what it, what, what it's, it's describing a characteristic of the whole. It is not a characteristic of any individual. If you look at how the individuals are doing, you don't know whether, whether their union is more or less perfect.

Yaron Brook 1:13:29 I-

Yoram Hazony 1:13:30 So what they're doing is they're, they're looking, they're looking at the condition in which, uh, in, in order to be able to fight the Battle of Yorktown, they have to s- s- somebody has to write a personal check in order to be able to move armies. A more perfect union is a more cohesive union. It's the ability to get all of these different individuals to do one focused thing when it's needed, necessary to do it.

Yaron Brook 1:13:52 Well, it's, it's more than that, right? So, so I agree with that. But for what purpose? That is f- f- and this is why I, I, you know, this is why it's so hard with these historical documents 'cause there's a, there's a context and there's a thinking that they can't write everything down, right? Which is sad because I wish they had.What's the purpose of a more perfect union? The purpose of the per- more perfect war- union is to preserve the liberty of the individuals within their union.

Yoram Hazony 1:14:16 No, how do you know-

Yaron Brook 1:14:17 And, and-

Yoram Hazony 1:14:17 How, how do you-

Yaron Brook 1:14:17 Because, because if you look, what's the rest? So what is the common defense? The common defense is, is to protect us from foreign invaders who would now disrupt what the rest of the Constitution is all about. All of the Constitution is written in a way as to preserve, find ways to limit the w- the ability of government to violate the rights of individuals. That it, uh, th- the, the beauty of this Constitution, and again, its connection to the Declaration and, and tradition, right? What came before it? What came before it was a, was a document which they all respected, which was the Declaration. Which set the context for this. And now the union is there in order to provide for the common defense, great, because we know that foreign invaders can violate our rights. They, that's what war is about. To, to protect us from peace, to, to establish peace and justice within a country, that's based on law, the rule of law and, and again, uh, uh, uh, uh, individual liberty. So it, to me, when you read the founders, when you read The Federalist Papers, when you read what they wrote, what they're trying to do is figure out the ki- right kind of political system, the right kind of structure to be able to preserve these liberties. A- and, and not all of them had a, from my perspective, perfect understanding of what those liberties entailed, but they were all, even the conservatives that you call conservatives, were all in generally in agreement about the importance of individual liberty and the importance of individual-

Yoram Hazony 1:15:39 Of course. Because almost all of these rights are traditional English rights, they exist in the English Bill of Rights and the English Petition of Right, in, they exist in-

Yaron Brook 1:15:47 Of course.

Yoram Hazony 1:15:48 ... course you-

Yaron Brook 1:15:48 Of course.

Yoram Hazony 1:15:48 All, all of these are traditional-

Yaron Brook 1:15:49 And what they're trying to do is perfect that. They're trying to take the British system-

Yoram Hazony 1:15:52 But-

Yaron Brook 1:15:52 ... and perfect it. And what-

Yoram Hazony 1:15:53 But you, you keep leaving out that, that they wanna be like England in that they wanna have an independent nation. An independent nation is, is not a collection of individual liberties.

Yaron Brook 1:16:04 The thing is-

Yoram Hazony 1:16:04 An independent nation, the first sentence of the Declaration of Inde- Independence is the declaration that there is a collective right, that we as a people are breaking the bonds with another people and we're gonna take our place at our equal station among the nations of the earth.

Yaron Brook 1:16:18 That it, for what purpose? The purpose is to protect individual rights. And there's no collective rights here.

Yoram Hazony 1:16:23 No, your-

Yaron Brook 1:16:23 There's no collective...

Yoram Hazony 1:16:24 ... your argument is completely circular. You're not allowing the possibility that there could be-

Yaron Brook 1:16:29 S-

Yoram Hazony 1:16:29 ... that there could be great and decent men that you and I both admire-

Yaron Brook 1:16:33 Mm-hmm.

Yoram Hazony 1:16:34 ... who wanted the independence of their nation, not, not because that would give individuals liberty, but because the independence of their nation was itself a great good.

Yaron Brook 1:16:45 So we clearly disagree on this, because I, I don't think the independence of the nation is a good in and of itself, because it's... And, and this is what-

Yoram Hazony 1:16:51 But did they think it was?

Yaron Brook 1:16:52 I don't think they did. I, I, and this is why they tried so hard not to break from England, and, and why many of them, wa- ne- many of them, uh, uh, struggled, really, really struggled with, with having a revolution, because England was pretty good, right? English was the... England was the best, and this is where I, uh, you know, we should get to the universality of these things, because I, I do think England was the best, and universally and, and, and a- and absolutely was the best system out there. And what they were tr- uh, they struggled to break from England because they didn't view the value of having a nation as the primary, but what they identified in England is f- certain flaws in the system that created situations in which their rights were being violated, so they figured the, uh, o- only option in order to secure these rights is to break away from England and secure a nation. Now, I am not an anarchist as (laughs) -

Yoram Hazony 1:17:41 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:17:41 ... Lex Mao says, because we've discussed it. I believe you need nations. You need nations to secure those rights. That is, the rights are not... You can't secure those rights without having a nation. But the nation is just a means to an end. The end is the rights. And I think that's how the founders understood it and that's why they created this kind of country.

Yoram Hazony 1:18:01 I think this is a good place to ask about common welfare and cohesion. Let me, uh, say what John Donne wrote, that, quote, "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." He went on, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." So, let's talk about individualism and cohesion, not just at the political level, but at a philosophical level for the human condition. What is central? What is the role of other humans in our lives? What's the importance of cohesion? This is something you've talked about. So Yaron said that the, the beauty of the founding documents is that they create a cohesive union that protects the individual freedoms, but you have spoken about the value of the union, the common welfare, uh, the cohesion in itself. Uh, so can you maybe elaborate on what is the role of cohesion and the collective, not to use that term, but multiple humans together connected in the human condition?

Yaron Brook 1:19:25 Sure. I keep getting the feeling that Yaron and I are, are actually having an, uh, a disagreement about empirical reality, because I think that-

Yoram Hazony 1:19:32 (laughs)

Yaron Brook 1:19:33 ... enlightenment rationalist political thought features the individual, it features the state, uh, there isn't really a, uh, a nation other than the, the, the nation, the people is, as a collective, is created by the state. And when the state disappears, then the collective disappears. Now, I think that when conservatives, uh, of all stripes look at this kind of thinking, that there's the individuals and then there's the state, and there really isn't anything else, when they look at that, they say, even before you get to consequences, it's a terrible