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

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. 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?

Let me define it and then we can, we can get into principles-

Let's do it.

... 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.