America Needs to Be Energy Independent - Will & Amala LIVE

that is good evening in dutch i'm practicing my dutch so there you go today and i'm giving you that because amla is not here today but today it is will and alan estrin live alan how you doing great i'm doing great will so alan should be here if you guys don't know alan you might have seen him on some of our other shows or any of the other things we do here at prageru and if you haven't seen him there you've definitely felt his influence with everything with prageru allen has essentially prageru was was your brainchild is your development so everything that we have now prageru is because of you and i can't deny well no you can't listen you don't have to be modest all the time okay sometimes it's it's fine but this is this is true and it's a big deal because of what it's prageru has done and well you're here so for that alone for i'm alone right the whole thing's been a giant victory right none of us have to be modest we cannot we can all feel very proud about what we've done but i wanted to bring you on today he's the executive director here at prageru and so i wanted to bring you on today because i mean you know anytime i'm having questions about a lot of the stuff that's going on in the news things that i don't really understand things where it seems like no one is actually saying the truth you go on twitter and you can't find out what's actually happening that's true and that's what's been going on right now at this russian ukraine crisis that i've come to you and we've had a few long conversations about this and i said why don't we get alan on the show to actually talk about it because i don't think anybody has any clue what's going on and i'm seeing people right now who are people who i really respect in the conservative space the political space even just the cultural space who i've really respected who are coming out with these these bogus takes on what's happening in russia and ukraine where people are coming and thinking they're these huge foreign policy experts now and it seems like from every side of the political aisle i mean you're hearing nothing but but some sort of propaganda or some fabrication of the truth and i guess my question is to you what do you think is really going on with this whole crisis what is the the the basis of the problem well what you started to talk about at the beginning you're really describing what there's a concept makes a lot of sense called the fog of war there's so much we don't know what's going on because you have propaganda efforts on behalf of the russians they're putting out propaganda so are the ukrainians which is what happens when a war is on so there are there's so much that's so confusing flying all over the place and per usual amplified over social media not easy to know what's actually happening on the ground you sort of have to just piece it together the best you can on the other hand there is some enormous clarity going on and that is in the frame of russia putin bad guys ukrainians the good guys that part is very clear you can't roll tanks into a across a country's border and then think that people are going to believe you've done something good for some very vague reason that no one can figure out except you and now you we're in a situation where all kinds of wild crazy things are happening for instance putin just says out of the blue we're putting our nuclear deterrent on alert what what's that all about what's this nuclear deterrent what does that have to do with ukraine are you going to stop start firing missiles at who so it's it's the deeper you get into a war situation the deeper the fog gets and that that's where we are right now do you think that it it comes down to uh i mean what you're seeing from the left right now especially and a lot of the i guess you could call them neo-conservative types is it seems like a big push for getting you know maybe it's america involved more than it already is where people are saying you know something has to happen america has to get down there or europe has to go and do something nato has to do something to do this when you when you hear these types of claims what do you think do you think that there is more involvement on the us's part that we should be doing i don't think the us should be doing more than it's doing now it's act it's actually doing the only thing more that the u.s should be doing is giving as far as i can tell is giving arms to the ukrainians to help them fight they're up against they're certainly overmatched militarily so i i see no disadvantage we've done it many times in the past this is a as clear a case as i can see to helping arm someone a a country that who who's in a conflict that we support their side over the other side so that aside from that the other very interesting thing about this is that the world even the left and the right are more united in general opposition to russia and what putin is doing than they have been on anything since i i have to say since 9 11. yeah do you think that there's i'm looking at the world right now out of the lens of covet and from looking at the lens of covet and then seeing everything that when i was a liberal or amla was a leftist and then becoming conservative and seeing how much we've been lied to right and i saw george soros today i don't know if he saw this he tweeted support of ukraine yeah any time any time look this is where it it gets confusing on the one hand and it is a a sign of unity as it were on the other when george soros says something you immediately your immediate reaction is i i have to believe the opposite of whatever he's saying so if he says something and you agree with it that truly is cognitive dissonance but it's possible it's possible in the in rare cases you could find yourself on the same side of george soros and this looks to be one i mean otherwise what what is the what's the alternative to say hey and and and people on the right i'm not i don't know what the left is saying on this but people on the right have been saying look let's just stay out of it it's 6 000 miles away who cares we it doesn't involve the us i don't want to send money i don't want to send certainly don't want to send troops which i don't think anybody does right but it's it's very as i said at the outset a very clear-cut case of who's good and who's bad you don't get that v all that often in world affairs but it seems to be the case here yeah you brought it up earlier about the levels of propaganda and i think that i mean you can look at stuff on ukraine and think propaganda you think look at stuff on russia and think propaganda i mean there's that picture that was posted of this supposed ukrainian model i don't know if you saw this and she was holding a rifle and the rifle ended up being an airsoft gun and then some ukrainian girl was supposed to be apparently fighting in in the war or something it seemed there was a lot of those kinds of things i mean we could go through examples and so i guess asking about that you're saying talking about russia being the bad guy and this is where we are russia is definitely the bad guy there's no doubt about that but do you think that there could be kind of more of a i guess maybe a nuanced approach that says hey ukraine isn't all that great either russia isn't that great is it even necessary for america and all these americans to even pick a side well in this case i think it is i think i think america does have to pick a side and it's not hard it's just not hard in this case i mean tanks rolling across a border uh totally unprovoked i mean there was no what if you ask anybody what was the precipitating incident what convinced russia that they had to go across the ukrainian border nobody could tell you what it is they just did it and that kind of naked aggression is very rare and in this case completely from a western point of view inexplicable and in doing so the guy shattered a understanding that had existed for 70 years 75 years following world war ii there's been no no example of one country in europe attacking another country in europe since since uh since world war ii since since the nazis went into win across europe starting with poland so it's hard to tell but when you're when you're talking about this and you're talking about putin i mean do you think that this is according to plan do you think it's going how he thought it was going to go or do you think that it's all kind of turned into shambles and no one really knows what's going to happen well i certainly don't think is this is going the way he thought it would go right i think it's been an utter disaster for russia on every possible front i think militarily i think i'm i mean of course i'm just guessing i think he thought he was just going to roll in and he underestimated the ukrainian people he underestimated zelensky he underestimated i think the european response i think he thought he had all this leverage with with the natural gas because germany is getting 40 percent of its its natural gas from which it desperately needs from russia that he had all this leverage i the unit the way europe has unified against russia where you have germany for the first time since the end of the war sending arms to another country never it hasn't done that before the germans have been just just this side of pacifistic since world war ii yeah now they just suddenly even increased their defense budget the switzerland is is uh cutting russia out of its banking system all these everybody's kind of jumping into this effort to stop stop russia where it goes is a very difficult question to ask because depending on on russian reaction i mean i don't know what other cards putin has to play but if he goes if he really has lost his marbles and there's no one to speak frankly to him how bad the situation situation is it's i don't know where it's headed but i can tell you this it's gonna the russian people are gonna be very quickly going to be suffering a lot of pain well we know somewhat where it's headed because we were talking i mean our administration was talking with china and then china was relaying that information to russia essentially going behind our back i don't know if you saw this on tucker carlson the other night where we were talking to china and then they were relaying information back to russia so it seems to me that this whole thing is giving confidential information presumably yes giving confidential information to russia and it seems like this you know it might be easier to believe putin is not knowing what he's doing but then when you have that happening in china and russia potentially merging into some type of partnership it seems like they do know a little bit more that that is going on that maybe we've been led to believe that that could be certainly it could be but that doesn't mean that the infra just because they have information or confidential information of if in fact that's true that it's it makes any difference once you start a war you don't know where it's going to go this is this is a big part of the risk of getting into any conflict whether you're on the right side of the wrong side let me ask it seems you know we're doing all these sanctions all these european countries have come across and they've said hey we're going to sanction we're going to send arms to to ukraine we got the the energy stuff happening all these different things the swift in in switzerland but you're not hearing about anyone doing that with china china has committed horrendous human rights violations killed a lot more people than russia has in ukraine over the last week i mean 400 million people just in abortions from from the chinese government right and so no one is is sanctioning any of them or doing anything to china does that make you somewhat think that maybe what america or these other countries are doing when it comes to russia is not really for a moral reason that it's more for some sort of economic or cultural or or power sustainability well in this case it really doesn't i mean the world's a very complex case a very complex the world is very complex there's a term real politic where which essentially means you have to make all kinds of decisions which contradict your position you make a decision about this circumstance contradicts your position over here it's it's just really the way the world works the thing that is so distinguishing about this particular conflict is it's it truly is so black and white which is why you have this unbelievable unity across the world it's the world against russia even china has sort of stepped aside and there have been these these interesting unexpected silver linings we talked about one the fact that germany is now muscling up militarily they've kind of recognized they've been playing patty cake with with with russia for decades now all of a sudden they see russia as a as a real threat that's that's probably a good thing the other interesting thing that i don't think anybody's talking about is that i think this situation in the ukraine has made the i any chinese plans for attacking or taking over taiwan much less likely because the chinese have seen how the world has united against russia has made russia a pariah nation do you think there's more reliance on china around the world than there is for russia the world is much more reliant on china yes than russia i think it would be a different scenario if yeah the world may be well the and china is very very reliant on the world because china is an exporting nation right and they can't cut off markets around the world right i i think it's much there's much less of a chance that you're going to see china move on taiwan at the beginning of all this do you remember everybody was saying well taiwan is next it's going to happen i don't think it's going to happen now and the chinese have ironically learned a lesson from from russia i mean putin as it were went first didn't it hasn't gone well right how do you think he's going to get out of this i don't know i mean i i'm hoping i didn't hear about what happened with the peace talks i don't think they've released everything that happened but i mean if everything nobody announced i as far as we know no one's announced even a cease-fire no i have no idea what's happening in belarus and everything i have no idea so i again just like we said last week when we were looking at this i mean we had no idea what would have even happened right i think that's a great point i think it's a great point so we're we're talking now what's happening five days in yeah ten days in may the situation may be totally different right maybe maybe russia consolidates its position as in total control of ukraine in five more days i mean i don't know no one knows you can't nobody can predict the future and this situation has certainly been unpredictable right and for all the viewers who are watching i think it's very important right now that you know even that i'm doing with alan right now i mean i'm asking some more difficult questions and i think what most people are just thinking in the mainstream or the mainstream conservative answer i think that everyone who's watching right now has to be able to ask difficult questions about this situation well i think you make it's a great point will you you need to ask difficult questions you need to look for answers to these difficult questions but and at the same time you have to keep an open mind because things are very fluid you certainly can't trust much of anything you hear because as i said this this concept which is very important the fog of war you'll he'll you will hear all kinds of things that will later turn out not to be true right but to make the situation even more complex you do need to to ask yourself who's right and who's wrong and if to the extent you can you can lock into that position then you should you should frame your viewpoint along those lines and in this case as i keep stressing it's pretty straightforward i don't think the us reaction is about uh economics i i think we are taking a moral position which is russia has done something very wrong they have upset the world order for no good reason and the idea that they need i mean you hear all all these reasons why putin did what he did because he's he believes that ukraine is part of russia okay and they need ukraine because they need the the land boundary in case they're what invaded by by germany hungary england's going to invade russia i mean it's it's it's real it's absurd right and i don't think we should excuse putin's actions by saying well you have to see it from his point of view okay you could see it from his point of view that doesn't mean his point of view is correct or makes any sense he may have a point of view it doesn't mean it's right what do you think about the americans reacting to it because i'm going on social media and i think it's been pretty terrible what i've seen out of americans especially when it comes to how the left is reacting to it where leftists are coming and saying ukraine i'm so glad that they now have arms to defend themselves i'm so glad that ukraine is defending its border i'm so glad that ukraine is defending its history and its sovereignty but then when it comes to america or a western country then it's it's no you can't defend your borders you can't have firearms you can't uh defend your history and sovereignty but for some reason when it comes to ukraine that's totally fine yeah this kind of hypocrisy is very tough to take and there's no excuse for it on the same hand we have to be able to separate each issue out from the other issue on the one issue of ukraine and russia okay so maybe we find ourselves in agreement with the left that's that's not a bad thing it's a good thing if we can have unity on on this one issue uh i'm okay with that i don't i don't have to oppose the left if the if the left moves to a position which i agree with okay then we then we agree on the issue of the southern border where we so utterly disagree that's that's a separate issue is it hypocritical that they the left says great ukraine is defending its borders that's what any country should do any country has the right to do and then we let millions of people in our southern border this affect effectively we have no border control we don't essentially have a southern border no that that it's it's obviously contradictory it's a paradox it's it's whatever you want to call it it's not good i mean that's what makes me skeptical of everything when you see that because what's happening on our southern border i mean you could you could classify it as an invasion what is happening i mean and not just because people are looking for a better life i mean they're bringing many of them drugs child sex trafficking human trafficking gang members crime all sorts of things that are coming on the southern border not all of them but there's i mean all the i think it's like what four out of five women who come over the southern border or are sex trafficked you know those are terrible numbers that are happening there and and to see that happen and for many of these people to know because i mean you go back in history and look at obama bill clinton hillary clinton they said we should have a border wall they knew it back then but now they're changing their position it seems like they know the moral implications of what they're doing but for some reason it's like uh oh well we forget about it now and that to me is is is what makes me so skeptical of everyone and then the covet stuff and and everything with climate change which we'll get into in a little bit with energy independence but it's it's hard it just it's so hard to know you know it just makes me not want to trust anything i tweeted about this today that my my go-to now is to look at something as a lie until i can actually prove that it's true and i hate that i think that way i hate that i'm so cynical about everything in the news right now but it's just gotten to a point where i just don't know i don't know what to trust at all well let me ask you then because my my position here is that uh i'm separating out ukraine russia from every other issue i'm just saying it's the issue of the moment there's general agreement on what the course of action should be and i'm focused on that you know do you disagree it's totally fine with me of course if you do but do you find fault with what is happening vis-a-vis the u.s policy toward ukraine the ukraine russia situation putting everything else aside if we were just to isolate this one issue would you do anything differently than we've done now no i mean i think the sanctions were actually very harsh as we talked about before i mean i think that that many of those things were good it's just from my point of view when i look at our administration the media and the people in charge it's it's hard for me to do that and to separate it from these other things because my trust was already hanging by a thread for any of these people to think that they could put out anything credible you know but i think that in terms of the the american uh reaction to all of this it hasn't been as terrible as as many of us expected as many conservatives expected it to be right well we we there there's one area where maybe this is a good transition one area where i think the administration has been very remiss in its response to the ukraine russia situation yes and that is this this would be a great time for the administration to say look energy independence is obviously of paramount importance to us and to europe right yeah what's going on yeah so now let's reassess we the left let's reassess our position on energy and instead of shutting everything down meaning stopping fracking wherever we can shutting down the keystone pipeline that no it's clear we need we need as much energy as possible so we're going to change our policy as a result we we've sobered up as a result of seeing what has happened just the opposite is happening the the administration's position has been well this just demonstrates that we need more solar panels and more wind turbines which we know cannot in any way shape or form provide us with the energy that we need right if you wanted to power just the state of texas with wind and solar it would be the size of houston's entire county just to power it i mean it's just right that even that wouldn't work because we don't have the batteries to store the power and obviously power doesn't help airplanes or cars or anything having to do with transportation not to mention the oil is involved in so many things making it manufactured to even mine the ingredients of course you have to yeah yeah because you have to have the big those big uh trucks and shovels to to get the the materials out of the earth right i think one thing that these people or maybe they do realize that again there's no i'm so skeptical about all this stuff but carbon levels have capped in european union and in america right if you look i mean if if europe and america were to shut off their their all their energy today for the next year i mean energy output would still be basically the same from india and china for the next you know 10 years or so right co2 right exactly yeah yeah the us has actually very little with to do same with europe yeah you know but these are the ones who are the most worried about it right for for god knows why but again i want to get we can get into this article real quick this one uh that came out from the guardian today or a couple days ago about the climate crisis report as what is at stake in short everything so it's about a new ipcc study the intergovernmental panel on climate change which came out uh is based on this this is this actually came out today oh this came out today yeah yeah so what they say in the the new ipc study which they i it seems like they do this like once every month or so well you have to read the study because the last ipcc study that everyone referenced and said hey the world's going to end didn't say that it didn't say that the world was going to end it said that right if you actually this is this steve kunin argument yeah yeah uh the the the obama administration uh science advisor who actually read the report right which n these people in the guardian never do no but the amazing thing about this is that that report came out i wasn't it was like three months ago yeah so this is a new report that says the world is going to end again in in some in indeterminate future is it we're we're all doomed unless we change the world our ways and and it's all in 2100 so right not to mention look i mean we're now in aren't we in year four of the twelve years the twelve years so we've got like eight years left this this report says that we have to keep the world under below 1.6 centigrade i don't know i can't remember what how to convert that to fahrenheit but it's i don't know like three degrees fahrenheit or something um by 2100 2100 so like i'm i'm worried about 2100 sorry i'm not right and the whole thing is but but as we were talking about um before the show it and it so often happens when you actually read the full article you you get to what it's all about and that comes about three quarters into this article maybe maybe we can post it yeah yeah we can i can read it out um let me just say one thing real quick yeah they're talking in this article about rising sea levels right which is one of the most laughable things right thinking that people can't move or that that it's just going to be tsunamis everywhere i mean the netherlands would even just from the netherlands she knows this better than anyone right i mean they live under sea level right right and they were able to manage their society and be able to be just yeah they they reclaimed land yeah of course the the airport is under under under uh under sea level the airport the international airport right right innovation can solve many of the problems human beings are very adaptable we've always adapted to climate conditions around us we'll continue to adapt right but back in the day like the ancient cultures if you look at ancient cultures of history you'll find that many of them had climate gods because at that time they couldn't control the climate so they would sacrifice or pray to climate gods to control it well it's not even clear we can control it i mean i know you know we can control the climate control the the implications and the best way to control it is by building machines and moving people around right which requires massive amounts of energy of course you know i mean if uh if if we have to move further inland because the seas rise we can do it right of course it's not like it can't be done or you you do some sort of dredging operation there are all kinds of things you could do right and but it requires energy this is the amazing thing i mean bjorn lomberg makes this point and alex epstein makes this point all the things that we need to do to make the earth more livable to begin with involved energy we've made the war we've we've tamed nature as it were but if we're going to have any control which it's it's us versus nature that's the way it's always been right takes massive massive amounts of energy we need more energy not less right alex epstein he even makes the argument that if climate change is real and it's and it's by this 1.6 centigrade that they're talking about right that's actually not even a bad thing because you're actually opening up a lot of places that are uh uh not sustainable for farming actually becoming more tropical actually it's better yeah you actually open up more land and more rainfall in some of these places to actually help more aaron well this is again you know patrick moore another guy right by the way we have prageru videos from all these people which are great yeah five minute videos you guys can check them out yeah sure but patrick moore makes the point and i think alex epstein agrees that more co2 just means more green parts of the earth right more places where you you can grow stuff right this is where the leftists come in and say we're just shilling for the fracking billionaires here but but in this article they they get to the real yeah yeah it's the real core here's what they say so the ipcc report is also crystal clear that adapting to the climate crisis is as much a social problem as a scientific say what what the best way to give effective and lasting protection from climate chaos is through action that addresses inequities such as those based on gender ethnicity disability age location what does that have to do with the climate the global warming gender i think it goes on it goes on you gotta you gotta keep reading you gotta keep reading targeting a climate resilient sustainable world involves fundamental changes to how society functions including changes to underlying values world views ideologies social structures political and economic systems and power relationships yeah i don't what is a power relationship by the way do you have any idea what that means uh all i can think about it is in kind of a you know like a fetish yeah i i that's a good that's as good a guess as any yeah this may feel overwhelming at first but the world is changing anyway climate resilient development offers us way to drive to drive change to improve well-being for all yeah so let's just get rid of capitalism that's all that's all we have to do this is just like this is truly undiluted pure marxism yeah i mean it's right out of the world economic forums yeah i mean every day there's something new whether it's the economy that needs to be changed the climate change but they never tell you how why exactly how much how much is it going to cost who's going to be dislocated who has to pay there's never never did they give you one single detail well klaus schwab i don't know if you just saw his latest that came out this is about two weeks ago and it was all about climate change klaus schwab if you guys don't know is world economic forum guy and he put up the global reset guy yes yes the great reset guy yeah so he just did a great reset he just put out a new one that was about i forget the name of it someone maybe in the comments will understand but it was about climate change and he said that one of the problems is that we have to the sun is so bright we have to blot out the sun we have to find a way to make sure that americans can control the sun by blotting it out i mean it's just nuts he actually says that something very akin to that i can send it to you yeah after this but it's it's quite flat out the sun but the worst again in that article which is so important which again is why i get so skeptical about things is because he's by name calls out groups of people who are these climate deniers who also you know are the same people who who deny mask wearing for covid and yeah and uh are these religious extremists all these types of people right you know when they're talking about really just conservatives or people i love freedom the white house has just convened or about to convene a conference in which the panelists are going to discuss how they can combat climate climate denialism and denial lists because they they're so convinced that a catastrophe is waiting for us that we we we really don't want to hear anymore right from these climate change skeptics well they're going to work directly with with facebook and instagram and twitter i mean they already do i mean yeah they already do i mean did you see there was that article about those those fact checkers for facebook some of them are from the national posted this one where those fact checkers from facebook where this group of pakistani guys yeah who were like high school dropouts basically and they're these fact checkers they're supposed to go through and check this stuff yeah and and they're the ones who are working with our government to make sure that people have the right information on social media you know one of the biggest videos that i ever got in trouble for on the prageru facebook that got us in in trouble for what three months taylor you remember this the polar bear video yeah the polar bears yeah i remember the other where i said more polar bears we got do we get suspended for yeah yeah yeah i think we i even did the interview with the scientists who did the study yeah who literally for lack of a better description went out there susan uh susan crockford i think yeah yeah something like that close it's close yes she literally counted the polar bears yeah i mean it doesn't get well you know she did it and and and like a decade before i i remember reading a piece in the wall street journal where someone else had done it and had reported that the polar bear bears were not only doing okay from a population point of view they were and it's still a problem i mean for for people in those regions these polar bears come into a town they just wreak havoc right no they're a nuisance for people it's a lot like the wolves argue yeah i myself have a very big soft spot for animals yeah that's what i was going to do before i got into politics is work with large animals like that as a veterinarian oh i didn't know that yeah so it still makes me sad i hear about dead polar bears you know but i think it would make anyone sad but because it's lies it's hard to you know it's it's hard for me to get behind it or anything of course because it's lies but i can get why normal people they say oh this polar bear is on this chunk of ice that's the size of you know this table that we're at and it's the last of its kind of course they're going to all come out in support of a radical action against climate change no one wants to see polar bears die you know no one wants to see the great barrier reef be destroyed which is one thing that you know as michael shellenberg will admit is actually something that's a problem that humans could do better and and there are things when it comes to the climate that humans can do better there are things definitely when it comes to environmental issues there's no doubt i i hate the argument that's just you know the leftist cut and dry argument that conservatives are trying to kill the earth i mean in any ways we care more than than them i agree i agree on all points we there's there's much that we can do but it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to we don't have to arrest human progress it's just the reverse i mean we have to put all our ingenuity into into place to solve the problem i mean one people are doing very i know some some of these people they're doing very interesting research on small nuclear power plants this this should be a major uh major national effort but nobody wants to hear about it because the environmentalists hate nuclear power right no they'd rather see solyndra go 500 million dollars bankrupt that's more important to them because it's about ideology it's not about actually helping because they're not changing their lifestyles at all you know they think about something like the the the flash drive now the flash drive was created and because of something like that so simply you can put your files on it you go and save millions of trees all this paper right right and this is just some guy this is that's a great it's a great example of innovation free market makes it happen right it's not through some government program like solyndra or any of these subsidies anything like that it is through innovation of people who want to make a product that's going to help people and that people actually say hey this helps the environment i'm all about it like that search engine ecosia have you heard of that it's kind of like a competitor i haven't i it's i've heard heard about it but i haven't used it yet yeah i don't know how well it works in terms of politics or anything like that but still you know it's some sort of alternative by the market that says hey anytime you search on our platform we're going to try and plant some trees you know it's like those types of things can be created but it takes the the the the government to get rid of regulation enough to say hey you can actually go out and do these things without being taxed to death as a small business to try and start something as a new innovation right but we just don't have that anymore so i want to get back to the issue of russia because it and ukraine because it you've raised such an interesting point that i really hadn't considered and that it's it's really uh we're in a just at this moment we're in a unique situation it's the argument i'm making and the argument you're making so you have made the point that you're you are so distrustful and i agree with you about what the news reports that you aren't totally clear understandably as to what your position is on the ukraine russia situation that's exactly right so the the to me why this is so interesting is because the media the news media has completely destroyed your trust of them so when there is a situation which in my opinion is black and white you understandably say wait a second they are they basically lie about everything i can't trust them from anything so why am i suddenly supposed to make a a turn here and and trust that they're they're doing the right thing now or they're telling me anything resembling the truth now this this shows you how pernicious it is to have a media which is so tilted to one side of the political spectrum i mean ideally you want a media that's essentially right down the middle reports the facts they can have an opinion side but on on the reporting side you want it to be you just you want to know the information you need to know and you want to be able to more or less to the extent it's possible trust that information but you can't do that anymore no not at all i mean even the wall street journal i mean i i've been reading the wall street journal since i was you know in high school well you have to you have to draw a distinction between the wall street journal opinion page and the wall street journal reporting on the reporting side they're they're like pretty much like everybody else on the opinion side they're they're center right i mean they're obviously been dubious about some things we're not dubious about right but and and that's been a little disturbing but but yeah but overall it's the damage done can't be undone by one clear example of an issue where it's a black and white situation i think there's a good guy and a bad guy and and and it's pretty easy to tell who is whom i think socially as a country when we look at at how people respond to things and every person who's in college right now or high school who's some leftist they hear something on the news and there's conservatives too conservative is the same way they hear something on the news and they think oh my goodness i better pick and pick a side and pick some sort of opinion right now otherwise i'm not going to be accepted into my uh majority political group or my majority socially morally accepted group and i think that because of social media has exacerbated that and so instead of people taking a step back and looking more at things you have all these people who are just jumping on it and saying oh it's all ukraine or some you know weirdo people saying oh putin like whatever but you have people just jumping on something so quick because they're scared of the alienation of not choosing a side and myself i'm coming and saying i don't care about the alienation i don't care about you know what other people are thinking i care about the truth and for me just with everything that's happened i just have not been able to discern what the truth is and i can't make a clear distinction on myself to say what is really going on and if i can't do that then i'm not going to come out and act like i have some some strong stance you know well i think that's good fine you know you're waiting for more information before you you make your decision we disagree only in the sense i think there's there is enough information now to to make a determination on again who's right and who's wrong in this single case right but i i understand your ambivalence based on what all the all the untruths all the fabrications all the lies that have been told before this issue yeah yeah especially the covet stuff i mean my political ideology since starting at prageru versus when the covet stuff really started getting off has changed dramatically you know because of everything that it was told by the media and everything that other people were doing and seeing the reactions and how we were treated and how the people reacted to that treatment i mean it really was a life-changing well i situation yeah i agree yeah i agree with you i agree with you there it it it shattered a lot of beliefs that i held and those beliefs have changed and i've had to reorient myself because of that yeah but i'd like to say on behalf of prageru and people listening and watching that's what we want to do what we want to help our audience do is determine the truth for themselves and we're only interested in presenting the truth the as we see it backed up by the facts that we have gathered right but ultimately it's up to you the the viewer the listener to decide where where you come down and all where we've ever been interested is in is having a fair debate you want to come down on a side that disagrees with prageru because you've weighed the evidence fine our our contention is that rarely is the evidence weight it's just there's just one side presented that so young people especially have just literally been surrounded three a 360 force field and in which they've only received one point of view we're trying to we're trying to to penetrate that force field and and get what we think is the truth to you you decide whether you agree with us right no i mean that's exactly true that's what happened the basis for the show your show right exactly and the basis of all the five-minute videos we do and every everything we do yeah i think when i was when i was talking a little bit before about you know being rocked by covet and my opinions on things changed and everything i think you can tell me if this is true for you but i think for a lot of people that the things that that we were talking about in the political debate before kovid looking now seems they seem a lot less important with the more that you learn about how the world works and things going on right like there's a lot of issues that we kind of talked about that just weren't as important when you actually look at it from a bigger lens and see oh my goodness here's what the government can actually do to a people here's here there's a lot more intricacy intricacies to the free market and how it works with with our our lobbying system in america like all sorts of things right because everything became just was so intensified i mean crony capitalism was a was a serious issue before covid right and then during covert this whole issue of where the government favored big big business and completely shut down small business it was so shocking you just you didn't think such a thing could happen yeah certainly couldn't happen in the us and then it did right well let's put the left-wing populist and the right-wing populace in the same camp now i mean a lot of ways i feel like i have more similarities in a lot of my political beliefs to someone who is more of a left-wing populist than to you know mitch mcconnell or something like that you know how do you feel well this this is kind of the basis of the this the kind of this new blue-collar working-class aspect to the republican party it's not the country club anymore that where the where the party's base has has moved it's to working people it's always been small businessmen because small business people because they know that basically they're on their own and all they ever want is for the government to leave them alone so much of small business is just the effort of pushing the government off you so you can actually do something worthwhile but now with and this is something that president trump plugged into clearly that the the working class person the person who's just trying try is making a living has a good job in a in a factory or in a mine or whatever they happen to be doing is just simply an afterthought to big government a forgotten people yeah definitely yeah and that's that's a lot what my next book is going to be about is about this this type of how people who are this middle class or not middle class but middle of america type of people have been forgotten in this country in favor of the big business in favor of the cosmopolitan type of of person who's focused on social media issues and moral leftist issues versus you know real values that we teach here at prageru in a lot of ways i think i think that that seems to be the fight that we're heading towards the most important thing i think when it when it comes to this world economic forum stuff and the covet and russia ukraine i think that most people coming together can agree that just our government is too big and they're too in line with these big businesses and that shouldn't be a right and left issue anymore it should be something that we should be able to come together on to say as an average american you should be able to live on one income with your family uh provide for them uh uh not have your your price of education be so high none of your price of healthcare be so high all of these things you know you agree yes i agree and i i look i think there could be it's very easy to be pessimistic about the future i tend to be more optimistic there's my favorite social thinker george gilder has a great phrase which i cite all the time which is people change as fast as minds change and i think we're at a point where a whole bunch of stuff has happened and people's minds are being changed and they recognize that we just drifted way way too far that the left has dragged the country to a place where most of the country just simply does not want to be and the government i was just reading kind of i'm just reading a a biography of of warren harding and the author of because we're doing a prageru video on harding and the author was making a very interesting point that before the really the wilson administration the average citizen almost had nothing to do with the federal government the federal government was just not a part of the citizens life i mean it could be the city government maybe maybe there's something with the state government but not the federal government now you there's nothing the federal government isn't involved in one of the forgotten things that i thought president trump wanted to do obviously didn't get a chance to do it was move all these departments out of washington like the agricultural department they wanted to move it to kansas i mean stuff like that would be a great idea yeah or just fire everyone either one or just fire everywhere yeah at all yeah you know i i don't know if you read democracy in america tocqueville yeah yeah and just talking about the administrative state that that was his biggest fear that right and it's happening definitely yeah to a greater degree than i think he could have even imagined but you know he talked about in that book that that the country is saved by religious values right you have a religious people and you won't have these types of issues that he would foresee and i think that as america itself and especially western europe has has lost a christian those types of values from the bible judeo-christian values it's turned us into this way we've put so much reliance on the government but so much reliance on big business to take care of us that we no longer feel like we have any sort of meaning well de tocqueville made a big big point of saying uh talking about about the end the individual but he didn't mean in the individual in terms of being selfish he meant the individual in terms of being self-reliant right america the whole purpose of the constitution is just to protect the individual's right to make his way in the world that's the whole that's what they set up so people could be free to do what they wanted obviously within the bounds of the law now we're we're all tied up with endless red tape and it's harder and harder for the individual to make his way in the world on on his own merit on his own reliance right yeah i talk about this with craig and he always says that i'm being a baby because i talk about you know the realities of of where we are as a country when it comes to the middle class dying to the red tape to to the cost of housing and medical care and all these different things that have gone up exponentially right the the way past inflation right and then also inflation and you know he said that you know there's always a way that people can still make it even with all the obstacles you don't want to complain and i agree with them in a sense that there is a level of of still there's some complaining aspect when it comes to all this kind of stuff but to deny that it has gotten harder is also an admission of of false it's also false to say i agree i mean i i agree look there's there's uh the guy who created home depot bernie marcus has said on many occasions there's no way he could have created home depot today there's just too many too many government regulations couldn't have done it right so we we definitely need to down size the government yeah people we need people to rely more on themselves there's this hierarchy of the individual to the family to the community to the state to the country and then to the world we need we need to sort of re-establish of that yeah when people say you know we have to do this from the left all the time we have to do this for society we have to do this for society for the greater good it's like what is society it's just a group of individuals right if you make good individuals right you'll have a good sense of that pretty much sums it up yeah yeah the healthy individual creates a healthy family which creates a healthy society which creates a healthier state healthier country before we go alan give everyone if you if you have anything a word of encouragement for for the future because you said you're optimistic you know which is different than what dennis says so i i would i'd be curious to know your message of optimism well i do i i i have an abiding faith in the american people i just i just believe in the american spirit i don't think it's been extinguished and the left has tried very very hard to do just that but we see examples of the american spirit the true american spirit flourishing everywhere all the time it's like you can't fully suppress it to your point about covet they they have they this is the all this is the ultimate this has been the ultimate attempt i didn't think it was possible that they would go as far as they did and i think people were many people were caught off guard and then for people like you and me we were also very disappointed that there wasn't there wasn't more resistance to these mindless restrictions that simply had nothing to do with science had everything to do with power and politics but it you can repress it for a while but not for for long so you the obvious examples are uh what happened in virginia and what happened in loudoun county what's happening at school boards all over the country that people are getting are prepared to reclaim their lives and what they love about america i i think i think it's possible and i actually think it's possible it can happen faster than we realize we need to reach a certain kind of critical mass i mean this is prageru is all about trying to educate people in the basic values that you talked about judeo-christian values american values that are responsible for creating the most prosperous most opportunity laden it's still for all its flaws it's still i mean people are lining up in embassies like they always have all over the world to come to the us legally right let alone illegally right so the country still is a beacon there is a reason it hasn't been extinguished and if we work very hard and and people join with us in the fight we can we can reclaim our american heritage which is a wonderful thing yeah and you're right it's not just about economic things that people are lined up to come into america it's the values people understand what this country represents this country is hope for the world and that's that's really a beautiful thing and it is exactly what you're saying nobody should get nobody should give up on it no and even though the result cannot be guaranteed what can be guaranteed is the effort to fight for it right what can be guaranteed is your personal effort to fight for it because it's just worth preserving this is the best place in the world to live i'm not i'm for one not prepared to just step aside and say okay leftist you you you you take control because we know what happens when they take control right right there's examples all over the place right throughout history and and right now yeah i said i've said this before on the show but this is a revolution of normal people it's a revolution of normal americans who are sick of what they see so it's again just because it's on my mind because we're doing this just after we finish today i'm going to be meeting with amity schles who's going to be presenting these videos the it's funny that uh warren harding not you wouldn't you wouldn't have thought well that warren harding would get into this conversation today but so warren's heart warren harding his uh administration his campaign slogan this is after wilson and world war one and terrible inflation his slogan was return to normalcy and will he won this is warren harding one of the least appreciated presidents of all our presidents he won the his election in 1920 by the largest margin of any president up to that point he got 60 percent of the vote i think people are pretty tired of wilson i can assume they were tired of wilson and they wanted normalcy they wanted to go back to the way the world was without all these because wilson was the guy who really brought in the he he really introduced in a major way the administrative state and people said no we that's not what we want that's not america and they elected harding who was not a major political figure before his nomination right i think that's how 2024 is gonna be i can only assume that's what's gonna look like i mean already we shouldn't uh count any any chickens but it could happen right it could happen return to normalcy maybe maybe we need it listen that's gonna be my campaign slogan i'm not the most normal guy it could work yeah well it could work yeah return to normalcy thank you alan i appreciate well it's a pleasure always a pleasure and guys if you're here watching the show if you're up make sure you go to the will and amla live channel on youtube if you're here on prageru you can go to that youtube channel subscribe there because i don't know in a couple of months couple of weeks we're going to be moving solely over to that channel on youtube so we'll no longer be on the prageru channel also though you can get our podcast on spotify apple podcast google play wherever you listen to podcasts make sure you like this video comment your thoughts down below we're gonna see you tomorrow