RE-BROADCAST – The Gulag Archipelago/One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn w/Jesan Sorrells

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Hello. Normally I put the ad reads at the back end of

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the podcast so that you can hear the good stuff and not have to listen

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to me shill pointlessly for two minutes. Just so you know,

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I do this intentionally in our production because even I object to

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commercials as much as the next podcast listener. However,

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at this moment I would ask that you indulge me because I’ve got a book

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coming out on April 30, 2022 on

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Amazon and I’d like you to go ahead and place your order right now.

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The book’s title is 12 Rules for Leaders the foundation

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for Intentional Leadership, and it’s a collection of 13

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essays on leadership. In the book

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I address the 12 leadership areas that we have found leaders need to be the

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most effective in, and then I throw in an extra essay

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there the back end from establishing a foundation

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of leading teams through managing conflict effectively all the way through

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leading teams through change. Knowing what to do and why to do

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it, I believe, can help you become a better leader.

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This book wasn’t written just over the course of the last two years,

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and this isn’t another fly by night leadership development book here

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today and gone in the wind in the next month.

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12 Rules for Leaders represents a continuation of the work we’ve been

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doing here at HSCT Publishing with our leadership training and

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development products and services from Leadership Toolbox to Leading

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Keys, and it also represents the distillation of lessons

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we’ve learned, absorbed, and transmitted to others from

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training and developing around 15,000 managers and supervisors over

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the course of the last 10 years.

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This is no slouch of a book, but it’s written in an

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easy to understand and easy to read direct format with practical

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tips that you can implement today, not no matter your leadership problem,

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your leadership situation, or your leadership circumstances.

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It’s kind of like getting coaching from me directly without having to

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pay my full coaching rate. I

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fundamentally believe that this is the book right now for

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right now, because leaders like you are

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positioned to do great work during the truly revolutionary times we

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are living in. Well, right now. And

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sometimes you need a book as a guide to help you

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through the work. So head on

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over to LeaderShipToolbox us and scroll down the

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homepage, click on the link and add your name to the pre order list

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for 12 rules for the foundation for Intentional Leadership

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and look for the book in hardcover, paperback and Kindle

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format on Amazon or on April 30,

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2022. By the way, we’ll be talking

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about the rules in 12 rules for leaders in our podcasts,

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both the long and the short, throughout the months of May and June.

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So you don’t want to miss out on that. And well,

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that was three minutes. So that’s it for me.

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Out. Hello, my name is Hasan

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Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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podcast, episode number 16 with

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our book Today Our Author Today,

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this Guy. Today we are going to

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be reading insights and excerpts

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that are the results or

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that are about documenting the results of oppression,

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suppression and the loss of the freedom

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of speech. Sure, freedom was

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restored, but as we have

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as we wrap up the month, as we come to the end of a month

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focused on writers of Russian descent,

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where we have covered Lenin and Chekhov and

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Dostoyevsky on the podcast, we’ve arrived

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at the clearing at the end of the

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totalitarian path. And

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there in the clearing at the end of that path

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stands a monumental giant of 20th

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century literature. Whether you agree with his

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conclusions or not, the anti

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communist writer Alexander

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Solzhenitsyn.

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From the Gulag Archipelago.

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That’s what rest is. It’s a blinding

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flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly

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into the past and the impossible into omnipotent

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actuality. That’s all.

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And neither for the first hour nor for the first day will you be able

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to grasp anything else except that in your

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desperation the fake circus moon will blink at you. It’s a mistake.

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They’ll set things right. And everything which is

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by now comprised in the traditional, even literary

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image of an arrest will pile up and take shape not in your own

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disordered memory, but in what our family and your

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neighbors in your apartment remember

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the sharp nighttime ring or the rude knock at the door,

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the insolent entrance of the unwiped jackboots of the

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unsleeping state security operatives,

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the frightened and cowed civilians witness at their backs.

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And what functions does this civilian witness serve? The

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victim doesn’t even dare think about it, and the operatives don’t remember, but that’s what

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the regulations call for. And so he has to sit there all night long and

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sign in the morning for the witness jerked from his bed. It is

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torture too, to go out night after night to help arrest his own neighbors

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and acquaintances. The

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traditional image of arrest is also trembling hands packing for

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the victim, a change of underwear, a piece of soap, something to

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eat. And no one knows what it is that is needed, what is

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permitted, what clothes are best to wear. And the security

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agents keep interrupting and hurrying you. You don’t need anything,

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they’ll feed you there. It’s warm There it’s all

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lies. They keep hurrying you to

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frighten you. The traditional

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image of an arrest is also what

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happens afterward, when the poor victim has been

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taken away. It is an alien,

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brutal and crushing force, totally dominating the

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apartment for hours on end. A breaking, ripping

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open, pulling from the walls, emptying things from wardrobes and desks

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onto the floor, shaking, dumping out and ripping apart, piling up mountains of litter

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on the floor, and the crunch of things being trampled beneath

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jackboots. And nothing is sacred in the search.

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During the rest of the locomotive engineer in Ocean, a

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tiny coffin stood in his room containing the body of his newly

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dead child. The

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jurists dumped the child’s body out of

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the coffin and searched it. They shake sick people

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out of their sick beds, and they unwind bandages to search beneath

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them for those left behind after the

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arrest. There is the long tail end of a wrecked and

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devastated life, and the attempts to go and

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deliver food parcels. But from all the windows,

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the answer comes in barking voices. Nobody here by

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that name. Never heard of him.

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Yes, and in the worst days in Leningrad, it took

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five days of standing in crowded lines just to get to that window.

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And it may be only after half a year or a year that the arrested

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person responds at all. Or else the answer

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is tossed out, deprived of the right to correspond.

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And that means, once and for all, no right to

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correspondence. And that, almost

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for certain, means has been

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shot.

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That’s how we picture arrest

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to ourselves.

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Sam.

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In the west in 2022,

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shockingly enough, freedom of speech is on the ropes

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everywhere you look. Speech is confused with

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physical violence. Speech is confused with

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intent. Speech is confused with

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hurting my feelings.

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And this is not the

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legacy of the West. This is not

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what people fought and died for in the West.

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People fought and died in the west, and quite frankly in the east, for

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the right to speak and the

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responsibility to accept the consequences.

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All of them, not just the ones we feel comfortable with, of

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such speech. We can talk

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about platforms and public squares versus private

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all we want, but fundamentally, at the end of the day,

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speech is really the only thing that we have.

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And as a person who makes his living

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talking, speech is very

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valuable to me.

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When we think about freedom of speech, we have to think about where the suppression

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of that speech ultimately winds us up at, and it should

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scare the living hell out of us. And I don’t say that

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lightly. There are consequences

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to the suppression of free speech, and I don’t care if you’re a

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soft totalitarian or a hardcore one. The

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totalizing impact of Suppressing speech, the totalizing

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impact of oppressing views you don’t like

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does have an impact on the future

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on this podcast. While we are not political, we are about leadership.

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And leadership does eventually intersect with politics and culture and

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family and everything else, even creation itself, just

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as speech does. Leaders need

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to speak freely in order

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to lead effectively.

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Remember I said in the west, the freedom of speech is on the ropes. Well,

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it’s on the ropes for three reasons, and I’ve kind of gilded the

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lily a little bit. I’ve kind of gleaned over them a little bit, but I

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want to go in depth about all three of them. Freedom of speech

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is on the ropes because freedom of speech is inherently socially unjust.

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There is no room for social human

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justice inside of the freedom of speech. As a matter of fact, that’s a

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construct that doesn’t even exist.

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The other reason freedom of speech is on the ropes is because it exposes

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those in power, regardless of their ideologies,

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who would seek to be our betters. It

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exposes them to ridicule. I was. I was watching the

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Adventures of Robin Hood, a ironically enough

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Disney movie, the other day, and. And King John

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was undone by freedom of speech.

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As a matter of fact, the only way he could suppress the speech was by

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locking everybody else who was speaking, all

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the other animals anyway in prison, including

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the rooster who was strumming

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the bandolier. So free speech is inherently

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socially unjust. It puts the people in power, regardless of

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their ideology, in danger of being exposed as the

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tyrants that they actually are. And finally, freedom of

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speech exposes to the raw,

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sanitizing light of day the contradictory

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nature of systems of all types, but mostly of a

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system, the current system we are living in, in 2022, that

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promises material comfort, but that can

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only really deliver genuine inequality.

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And we don’t like that. We don’t like that at all.

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If you’re looking for a reason for why freedom of speech must exist beyond the

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ones that I’ve just mentioned and why it must be robustly defended.

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It’s because if words lead to the hearer feeling

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hurt, demoralized, or disempowered, it doesn’t mean that

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those words can be conflated with actual physical violence.

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And I want to hit on that quite hard today,

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because actual physical violence is what happens when you

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seek to curb speech. And we will see that today

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throughout not only our readings here, but also

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through the observations of others who have written about

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these readings that we’re going to read on this podcast today.

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Totalitarians and tyrants don’t like to be critiqued.

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And, and they have feelings, you know, they’re, they’re

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people. They can be, they can be hurt, they can be wounded.

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Yes, I’m at the top of the hierarchical ladder, but do I

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not bleed? Do I not also hurt?

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Well, yeah, you do. And you’re the ideal. And because you’re at

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the top, well, we see your butt, all of us

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below you. Freedom of speech encourages humility

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in leaders. Fortunately

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for us, there are books that you can still get, and I would

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recommend buying them before you can’t get them

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anymore, that expose the outcomes of both

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suppressing speech and they show the power of speech

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unleashed, how it can completely and utterly

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destroy totalitarian institutions if even

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just a drop of it is allowed to exist, which is why

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totalizing ideologies seek to curb it everywhere

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they can. The best

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of these kinds of books

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include 1984 and Animal Farm, Brave New

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World. But in the late 20th century, in the

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late 20th century, the

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Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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really was the drip of acid

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that followed a first drip of acid one day

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in the life of Ivan Denisovich that began

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to slowly and surely

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corrode away and eventually destroy the,

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the totalizing ideal that Lenin

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had created in his revolution

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all those decades ago.

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One other point about free speech that I want to make here before I go

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and back it up with the rest of this podcast today. When leaders

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seek to build a heaven on earth in the philosophical and

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the theoretical and even in the rhetorical, they

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00:16:26,090 –> 00:16:29,690
usually wind up in the practical, building hell

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00:16:29,690 –> 00:16:33,170
instead. And then those same leaders

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will dare to put up a sign, metaphorically and

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00:16:37,330 –> 00:16:40,490
rhetorically, designed to convince the

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denizens trapped within their own

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hells that they are in fact in

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heaven. And all of these

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lies need to be exposed

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through free and unfettered speech.

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Sam,

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Back to the Gulag

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00:18:10,320 –> 00:18:14,130
Archipelago. The version that we are

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00:18:14,130 –> 00:18:17,930
going to be reading from today is the Perennial

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00:18:18,090 –> 00:18:21,610
Library version, a little bit different than the Vintage Classic

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00:18:21,610 –> 00:18:24,970
version. This version of the Gulag Archipelago

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00:18:25,130 –> 00:18:28,970
was published in by Harper

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and Rowe Publishers back in the day

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in 1973. So if you

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have the edition most recently released by

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Vintage Classics that has the introduction

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00:18:44,700 –> 00:18:48,500
from Dr. Jordan Peterson, an introduction that we will

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be reading some selections from today, it may not match

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00:18:52,380 –> 00:18:55,660
the version that we’ve got. We have some interesting information here,

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particularly in this book in, in chapter

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00:18:59,260 –> 00:19:02,900
two that we are going to be reading from today, the

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chapter entitled the History. Let me pull off the

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little thing here. The history of our Sewage

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Disposal System. An

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00:19:13,740 –> 00:19:17,460
ironic title for a chapter in literature,

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if there ever was one.

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And I quote directly from the Gulag Archipelago from

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1973. In compiling this list, the most difficult thing is

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to begin partly because the further back into the decades one

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goes, the fewer the eyewitnesses who are left and the therefore the light

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00:19:35,730 –> 00:19:39,570
of common knowledge has gone out and darkness has set in, and the written chronicles

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00:19:39,570 –> 00:19:42,450
either do not exist or are kept under Locke

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and Key. Also, it is not entirely fair to

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consider a single category the especially brutal years of the civil war

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and the first years of peacetime, when mercy might

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have been expected.

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But even before there was any civil war, it could be seen that Russia, due

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to the makeup of its population, was obviously not suited for any sort of

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socialism whatsoever. It was totally

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polluted. One of the first blows of the dictatorship was

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directed against the cadets, the members of the Constitutional

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Democratic Party. Under the Czar they had

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constituted the most dangerous ranks of the revolution, and under the government of the proletariat,

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they represented the most dangerous ranks of the reaction.

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At the end of November 1917, on the occasion of the first

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scheduled convening of the Constituent assembly, which did not take place,

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the Cadet party was outlawed and arrests of its members

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began. About the same time,

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people associated with the alliance for the Constituent assembly and

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the students enrolled in the soldiers universities were being

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thrown in the jug.

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Knowing the sense and spirit of the revolution, it is easy to guess that during

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these months such central prisons as Kretsky in Petrograd and the

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Buchiri in Moscow, and many, many provincial prisons like them were filled with

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00:21:04,570 –> 00:21:08,290
wealthy men, prominent public figures, generals and officers, as well

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00:21:08,290 –> 00:21:12,120
as the officials of ministries and of the state apparatus who refused

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to carry out the orders of the new authority. One of the first

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00:21:15,760 –> 00:21:19,600
operations of the Cheka was to arrest the entire Committee

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of the All Russian Union of Employees. By the way, the

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00:21:23,560 –> 00:21:27,280
Cheka. The Cheka is the nkvd, which would later

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00:21:27,760 –> 00:21:30,960
be called the kgb, which would much later

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have a person working in it that you may know

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00:21:35,280 –> 00:21:38,310
by the name of Vladimir Putin.

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00:21:42,310 –> 00:21:45,110
Back to the history of our sewage disposal system.

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One of the first circulars of the NKVD in December 1917

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stated, quote, in the view of sabotage by officials,

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use maximum initiative in localities, not excluding

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confiscation, compulsion and arrests.

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And even though V.I. lenin, at the end of 1917, in order to

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establish, quote, unquote, strictly revolutionary order,

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demanded, quote, merciless suppression of attempts at anarchy on the

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part of drunkards, hooligans, counter revolutionaries and other persons,

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in other words, Foresaw that drunkards and hooligans represented the principal

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00:22:21,160 –> 00:22:24,800
danger to the October Revolution, with counter revolutionaries

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00:22:24,800 –> 00:22:28,120
somewhere back in third place, he nonetheless put the problem more

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00:22:28,120 –> 00:22:31,720
broadly. In his essay how to organize the

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00:22:31,720 –> 00:22:35,540
competition, January 7th and 10th, 1918.

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V.I. lenin proclaimed the common united purpose of purging the

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00:22:39,480 –> 00:22:42,400
Russian land of all kinds of harmful insects, unquote.

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00:22:43,360 –> 00:22:47,120
And under the term insects, he included not only all class

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enemies, but also workers malingering at their

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work. For example, the typesetters of the Petrograd Party

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00:22:54,640 –> 00:22:58,400
printing shops. That is what time

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00:22:58,480 –> 00:23:02,320
does. It is difficult for us nowadays to understand how workers would just

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00:23:02,320 –> 00:23:06,140
become dictators, were immediately inclined

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00:23:06,140 –> 00:23:08,860
to malinger at work they were doing for themselves.

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00:23:10,460 –> 00:23:14,180
And then again, in what block of a big city, in

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00:23:14,180 –> 00:23:17,460
what factory, in what village, are there not saboteurs who call themselves

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00:23:17,460 –> 00:23:20,540
intellectuals? True,

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00:23:21,340 –> 00:23:24,900
the forms of insect purging which Lenin conceived of in this

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00:23:24,900 –> 00:23:28,740
essay were most varied. In some places they would be placed

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under arrest, in other places set to cleaning latrines. In some,

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after having served their time in punishment cells, they would be handed yellow

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00:23:37,560 –> 00:23:40,000
tickets. In others,

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00:23:40,560 –> 00:23:42,720
parasites would be shot.

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Elsewhere you could take your pick of imprisonment or punishment

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at forced labor of the hardest kind.

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Even though he perceived and suggested the basic directions punishment should

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00:23:56,240 –> 00:23:59,840
take, Vladimir Ilyich proposed that

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00:24:00,530 –> 00:24:04,170
communes and communities should compete to

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00:24:04,170 –> 00:24:07,170
find the best methods of

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purging.

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00:24:25,820 –> 00:24:38,540
Sam.

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00:25:02,630 –> 00:25:06,430
There are different versions of the Gulag Archipelago.

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00:25:06,430 –> 00:25:10,270
I want to address this versions question right off the bat

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00:25:10,270 –> 00:25:14,070
or concern. If you’re thinking about this as I. As we read

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00:25:14,070 –> 00:25:17,190
from these various versions and put things together, I want to address this because up

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00:25:17,190 –> 00:25:20,470
front, because this can be somewhat confusing and it can also

360
00:25:22,160 –> 00:25:25,880
cause people to question the validity or the credibility of the argument that

361
00:25:25,880 –> 00:25:29,640
Solzhenitsyn is making in the Gulag Archipelago. Not in One Day in the

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00:25:29,640 –> 00:25:33,280
Life of Ivan Denisovich that seems to be a pure manuscript,

363
00:25:33,280 –> 00:25:36,720
but this version,

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00:25:36,800 –> 00:25:40,640
this book, seems to have struggled to get it right.

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00:25:40,800 –> 00:25:44,600
And I don’t mean that Solzhenitsyn struggled to get it right. But

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00:25:44,600 –> 00:25:48,000
there’s different versions because of the problems

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00:25:48,160 –> 00:25:51,840
that arise, because many on the political

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00:25:52,080 –> 00:25:55,860
left worldwide, they had

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00:25:55,860 –> 00:25:59,380
problems with Solzhenitsyn’s assertions about the nature of

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00:25:59,380 –> 00:26:02,980
communism in the Soviet Union. And of

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00:26:02,980 –> 00:26:06,580
course they control, and still do in many

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00:26:06,580 –> 00:26:10,020
cases globally, the the dissemination of

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00:26:10,020 –> 00:26:13,660
culture, including literature, across the globe. And

374
00:26:13,660 –> 00:26:17,260
so, because they couldn’t confirm the things that Solzhenitsyn was

375
00:26:17,260 –> 00:26:21,040
saying, they waited and they then

376
00:26:21,040 –> 00:26:24,280
sought to counterbalance Solzhenitsyn’s assertions

377
00:26:25,080 –> 00:26:28,680
in his book the Gulag Archipelago against

378
00:26:28,920 –> 00:26:32,720
what the KGB and other declassified documentation

379
00:26:32,720 –> 00:26:36,520
about communism stated about the system In a post

380
00:26:36,520 –> 00:26:40,280
1989 context, in the context we all live in

381
00:26:40,280 –> 00:26:43,640
now. Now, the problem with

382
00:26:43,720 –> 00:26:46,840
counterbalancing the the

383
00:26:46,920 –> 00:26:50,520
unclassified documents with what Solzhenitsyn

384
00:26:50,820 –> 00:26:54,500
saying that the problem there lies in the fact that

385
00:26:55,140 –> 00:26:58,740
the entire dialectic of Marxism is

386
00:27:00,260 –> 00:27:02,660
fundamentally and foundationally

387
00:27:03,780 –> 00:27:06,900
founded in perpetual grievance and

388
00:27:06,900 –> 00:27:09,780
extremely sophisticated manipulation

389
00:27:10,500 –> 00:27:14,180
of language, which the common people

390
00:27:14,180 –> 00:27:17,950
call lying. Marxism

391
00:27:17,950 –> 00:27:21,750
is basically a lie. Actually, there’s no basically to it. It is

392
00:27:21,750 –> 00:27:25,550
a lie. And communism was built on the foundation of Marxism.

393
00:27:25,950 –> 00:27:29,310
Did Marx get to some truth about the historical forces

394
00:27:29,710 –> 00:27:32,990
that are between groups of people? Sure.

395
00:27:33,310 –> 00:27:37,150
But even a wrong clock is right at least once a day.

396
00:27:37,710 –> 00:27:41,550
That doesn’t mean that it’s right the rest of the time,

397
00:27:41,550 –> 00:27:45,270
though. And so, in adopting this counterbalancing of

398
00:27:45,270 –> 00:27:48,810
Solzhenitsyn public intellect, individuals of all

399
00:27:48,810 –> 00:27:52,650
stripes on both the right and the left have sought to whittle

400
00:27:52,650 –> 00:27:55,530
down Solzhenitsyn into something else.

401
00:27:56,810 –> 00:28:00,090
However, there is a person who has chosen to take

402
00:28:00,090 –> 00:28:03,730
Solzhenitsyn at his word and has looked at the

403
00:28:03,730 –> 00:28:07,290
history of oppression and has chosen to

404
00:28:07,290 –> 00:28:10,810
stare at the facts as they are and tell the

405
00:28:10,810 –> 00:28:14,360
truth. And this would be the Canadian psychologist who

406
00:28:14,590 –> 00:28:18,350
author, podcaster and public lecturer Dr. Jordan Peterson.

407
00:28:20,110 –> 00:28:23,790
From Dr. Jordan Peterson, from the introduction to

408
00:28:23,790 –> 00:28:27,470
the new version of the Gulag Archipelago, the vintage classics

409
00:28:27,470 –> 00:28:30,990
version of the Gulag Archipelago, and I quote extensively,

410
00:28:31,790 –> 00:28:35,630
it was Solzhenitsyn who demonstrated that the death of millions and the devastation of

411
00:28:35,630 –> 00:28:38,910
many more were instead a direct

412
00:28:38,990 –> 00:28:42,720
causal consequence of the philosophy. Worse,

413
00:28:42,720 –> 00:28:46,440
perhaps, the theology driving the communist system,

414
00:28:47,800 –> 00:28:51,400
the hypothetically egalitarian universalist doctrines of Karl

415
00:28:51,400 –> 00:28:54,360
Marx contained hidden within them sufficient hatred,

416
00:28:54,680 –> 00:28:58,360
resentment, envy and denial of individual culpability and

417
00:28:58,360 –> 00:29:01,720
responsibility to produce nothing but poison and death

418
00:29:02,040 –> 00:29:04,360
when manifested to the world.

419
00:29:05,880 –> 00:29:09,320
For Marx, man was a member of a class, an economic

420
00:29:09,480 –> 00:29:13,100
class, a group that and little more, and history

421
00:29:13,180 –> 00:29:16,860
nothing but the battleground of classes of groups. His

422
00:29:16,860 –> 00:29:20,660
admirers regarded and continue to regard Marx’s doctrine as

423
00:29:20,660 –> 00:29:23,900
one of compassion, moral by definition, virtuous by

424
00:29:23,900 –> 00:29:27,380
fiat. Consider the working classes in all their

425
00:29:27,380 –> 00:29:31,060
oppression and work forthrightly to free them. But

426
00:29:31,060 –> 00:29:34,300
hate may well be a stronger and more compelling motivator than love.

427
00:29:35,420 –> 00:29:39,060
In consequence, it took no time in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution for

428
00:29:39,060 –> 00:29:42,690
solidarity with the common man and the apparently laudable demand for universal equality

429
00:29:43,240 –> 00:29:46,520
to manifest its unarticulated and ever darkening shadow.

430
00:29:47,640 –> 00:29:50,600
First came the most brutal indictment of the class enemy.

431
00:29:51,160 –> 00:29:54,880
Then came the ever expanding definition of that enemy until every single person

432
00:29:54,880 –> 00:29:58,680
in the entirety of the state found him or herself at risk of encapsulation within

433
00:29:58,680 –> 00:30:01,480
that insatiable and devouring net.

434
00:30:02,920 –> 00:30:06,720
The verdict delivered to those deemed at fault by those who

435
00:30:06,720 –> 00:30:10,240
elevated themselves to the simultaneously held positions of judge, jury and

436
00:30:10,240 –> 00:30:13,620
executioner. The necessity to eradicate the

437
00:30:13,620 –> 00:30:16,940
victimizers, the oppressors, in toto without consideration

438
00:30:16,940 –> 00:30:20,660
whatsoever for reactionary niceties such as individual

439
00:30:20,900 –> 00:30:24,460
innocence. Let us

440
00:30:24,460 –> 00:30:28,300
note as well, this outcome wasn’t the result of the initially pristine Marxist

441
00:30:28,300 –> 00:30:32,100
doctrine becoming corrupt over time, but something apparent and present at the very

442
00:30:32,100 –> 00:30:34,020
beginning of the Soviet state itself.

443
00:30:35,140 –> 00:30:38,900
Solzhenitsyn cites, for example, one Martin Latsis,

444
00:30:39,140 –> 00:30:42,260
writing for the Newspaper Red Terror, November

445
00:30:42,670 –> 00:30:46,230
1, 1918, quote, we are not fighting against

446
00:30:46,230 –> 00:30:49,630
single individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class.

447
00:30:50,350 –> 00:30:54,030
It is not necessary during the interrogation to look for evidence proving that the accused

448
00:30:54,270 –> 00:30:58,030
opposed the Soviets by word or action. The first question

449
00:30:58,030 –> 00:31:01,190
you should ask him is, what class does he belong to? What is his origin,

450
00:31:01,190 –> 00:31:04,990
his education, his profession? These are the questions that will determine the fate of

451
00:31:04,990 –> 00:31:08,270
the accused, such as the sense and essence of Red

452
00:31:08,430 –> 00:31:11,960
Terror, unquote.

453
00:31:16,200 –> 00:31:19,760
It is necessary to think when you read such a thing, to

454
00:31:19,760 –> 00:31:23,600
meditate long and hard on the message. It is necessary to recognize, for

455
00:31:23,600 –> 00:31:27,200
example, that the writer believed that it would be better to execute 10,000

456
00:31:27,200 –> 00:31:30,920
potentially innocent individuals than to allow one poisonous member of the oppressor class to

457
00:31:30,920 –> 00:31:34,600
remain free. It is equally necessary to pose the question,

458
00:31:34,920 –> 00:31:38,600
who precisely belonged to that hypothetical entity, the bourgeoisie?

459
00:31:39,760 –> 00:31:43,040
It is not as if the boundaries of such a category are self evident. There

460
00:31:43,040 –> 00:31:45,200
are, therefore the mere perceiving,

461
00:31:46,640 –> 00:31:49,680
they must be drawn. But where

462
00:31:49,840 –> 00:31:53,400
exactly? And more importantly, by whom? Or by

463
00:31:53,400 –> 00:31:57,040
what? If it’s hate inscribing the lines instead of love,

464
00:31:57,200 –> 00:32:00,960
they will inevitably be drawn so that the lowest, meanest, most cruel and useless

465
00:32:00,960 –> 00:32:04,680
of the conceptual geographers will be justified in manifesting the

466
00:32:04,680 –> 00:32:07,860
greatest possible evil and producing the greatest possible

467
00:32:07,940 –> 00:32:11,780
misery. Members of the bourgeoisie, beyond all

468
00:32:11,780 –> 00:32:15,620
redemption, they had to go as a matter of course. What of their wives,

469
00:32:15,940 –> 00:32:18,580
children, even their grandchildren?

470
00:32:19,860 –> 00:32:23,660
Off with their heads too. All were incorrigibly

471
00:32:23,660 –> 00:32:27,060
corrupted by their class identity and their destruction, therefore ethically

472
00:32:27,780 –> 00:32:31,500
necessitated. How convenient that the darkest

473
00:32:31,500 –> 00:32:35,060
and direst of all possible motivations could be granted the highest

474
00:32:35,670 –> 00:32:39,310
moral standing. That was as

475
00:32:39,310 –> 00:32:42,830
true. That was as true. A marriage of heaven and

476
00:32:42,830 –> 00:32:46,190
hell. What

477
00:32:46,190 –> 00:32:49,710
values, what philosophical presumptions truly dominated

478
00:32:49,710 –> 00:32:51,830
under such circumstances?

479
00:32:53,350 –> 00:32:56,710
Was it a desire for brotherhood, dignity

480
00:32:57,110 –> 00:33:00,870
and freedom from want? Not in the least. Not

481
00:33:00,870 –> 00:33:04,480
given the outcome it was instead, and obviously the

482
00:33:04,480 –> 00:33:08,280
murderous rage of hundreds of thousands of biblical

483
00:33:08,280 –> 00:33:11,480
Cains, each looking to torture,

484
00:33:11,880 –> 00:33:15,720
destroy and sacrifice their own private

485
00:33:15,720 –> 00:33:19,000
ables. There is simply

486
00:33:19,640 –> 00:33:22,520
no other manner of accounting

487
00:33:26,200 –> 00:33:27,320
for the corpses.

488
00:34:28,770 –> 00:34:32,210
The primacy of the importance of the

489
00:34:32,370 –> 00:34:35,890
individual to be seen either by the nation

490
00:34:35,970 –> 00:34:39,770
state or by the corporation, it matters

491
00:34:39,770 –> 00:34:43,250
not, is the struggle of genuine

492
00:34:43,730 –> 00:34:45,699
intentional leadership.

493
00:34:47,219 –> 00:34:50,899
Leaders seek to bend the apparatus of a

494
00:34:50,899 –> 00:34:54,699
truly ethical state, including the apparatus of a

495
00:34:54,699 –> 00:34:58,299
nation state, right? It could be any state that they’re in, could be the state

496
00:34:58,299 –> 00:35:00,379
of their family, could be the state of their community, it could be the state

497
00:35:00,379 –> 00:35:03,899
of their company, any state. They seek to bend the

498
00:35:03,899 –> 00:35:07,739
apparatus of that state away from the work

499
00:35:07,739 –> 00:35:11,579
of hiding, away from the individual. And

500
00:35:11,579 –> 00:35:14,960
they seek to move, they seek to push. They seek to bend the

501
00:35:14,960 –> 00:35:18,640
apparatus of the institution, the organization, the

502
00:35:18,640 –> 00:35:21,960
systems that they are in toward acknowledging the

503
00:35:21,960 –> 00:35:25,560
consequences of the responsibilities that the individual

504
00:35:25,560 –> 00:35:29,400
carries. And this is a fundamental thing that is missing in Marxism. It’s

505
00:35:29,400 –> 00:35:33,000
a fundamental thing that is missing in Communism. It’s a fundamental thing that is

506
00:35:33,000 –> 00:35:36,600
missing underneath cries

507
00:35:36,840 –> 00:35:38,950
for social media justice

508
00:35:40,230 –> 00:35:42,950
rather than an acknowledgment of

509
00:35:43,910 –> 00:35:45,510
individual responsibility.

510
00:35:47,910 –> 00:35:51,630
When leaders don’t do this work, when instead they follow the

511
00:35:51,630 –> 00:35:55,350
crowd, when instead they, they do what the crowd wants,

512
00:35:57,590 –> 00:36:00,150
that, that the acts of

513
00:36:01,110 –> 00:36:04,550
moving the apparatus towards

514
00:36:05,280 –> 00:36:09,040
actual individual justice become blocked, they become, they

515
00:36:09,040 –> 00:36:12,720
become cordoned off. There’s barriers, there’s impasses.

516
00:36:13,280 –> 00:36:17,080
And moving and ameliorating these blocks,

517
00:36:17,080 –> 00:36:20,720
these impasses and these barriers becomes the true work of an

518
00:36:20,720 –> 00:36:24,520
intentional leader. And of course, one of the biggest blocks, one of the

519
00:36:24,520 –> 00:36:27,680
biggest barriers in

520
00:36:28,560 –> 00:36:32,360
moving the inertia of a nation state away from

521
00:36:32,360 –> 00:36:36,170
repression, towards, towards freedom and maintaining it

522
00:36:36,170 –> 00:36:39,250
in the direction of actual freedom is this idea.

523
00:36:39,810 –> 00:36:42,930
It is a big idea, but it is this idea of protecting

524
00:36:43,250 –> 00:36:47,050
speech. Look, repression inside

525
00:36:47,050 –> 00:36:50,570
of totalitarian systems isn’t a bug, it’s an actual

526
00:36:50,570 –> 00:36:54,290
feature. And if you’re too naive as a leader to believe

527
00:36:54,290 –> 00:36:57,410
that, or you’re too willing to only look at the

528
00:36:57,810 –> 00:37:01,040
bright side of humanity and miss the dark side

529
00:37:01,040 –> 00:37:04,720
entirely, you will always be taken by surprise by how dark

530
00:37:04,720 –> 00:37:06,840
human beings can actually become.

531
00:37:09,080 –> 00:37:12,560
Leaders must overcome laziness and willful blindness and

532
00:37:12,560 –> 00:37:16,280
arrogance and a sense of entitlement in order to bend the arc of the

533
00:37:16,280 –> 00:37:19,240
organization away from apathy, away from,

534
00:37:19,720 –> 00:37:23,480
hey, can’t we all just get along towards,

535
00:37:24,040 –> 00:37:26,280
can’t we all just take some responsibility?

536
00:37:29,130 –> 00:37:32,410
And in order to do that, leadership requires a robust

537
00:37:32,650 –> 00:37:35,610
social and public defense of free speech.

538
00:37:37,370 –> 00:37:40,210
Now, there’s a couple of points here I want you to Consider as you think

539
00:37:40,210 –> 00:37:43,570
about this as a leader, as we turn towards one day in the life of

540
00:37:43,570 –> 00:37:46,970
Ivan Denisovich for a fictionalized example of

541
00:37:47,210 –> 00:37:50,170
what this repression practically looks like.

542
00:37:51,210 –> 00:37:55,020
Leadership does require leaders to know where the line

543
00:37:55,020 –> 00:37:58,780
of propriety is in speech and to be prepared to define that line clearly for

544
00:37:58,780 –> 00:38:02,380
their followers. I’m not saying you can yell fire in a

545
00:38:02,380 –> 00:38:06,020
crowded theater, and I’m not even saying that speech doesn’t have consequences. Matter of fact,

546
00:38:06,020 –> 00:38:09,780
I believe that speech does have consequences. But we socially

547
00:38:09,780 –> 00:38:13,580
negotiate what those consequences are, and we all have to agree on the

548
00:38:13,580 –> 00:38:17,180
deal. It’s not that one extreme or another

549
00:38:17,180 –> 00:38:20,740
extreme gets to set the tone for the conversation.

550
00:38:21,580 –> 00:38:25,260
It is indeed the moderate middle that should

551
00:38:25,260 –> 00:38:28,980
be in charge. And leadership requires the

552
00:38:28,980 –> 00:38:32,420
ability to emotionally and psychologically address the

553
00:38:32,420 –> 00:38:35,500
consequences of free speech. Look,

554
00:38:37,580 –> 00:38:41,380
you probably can’t have real equality and

555
00:38:41,380 –> 00:38:44,780
you probably can’t get to real equity

556
00:38:44,860 –> 00:38:47,980
here in this world with these

557
00:38:48,300 –> 00:38:52,070
fallen humans. But both the

558
00:38:52,070 –> 00:38:55,630
theories of equity and equality have the same premise

559
00:38:56,190 –> 00:38:59,950
at the bottom and in the basement. And it is a Marxian premise.

560
00:39:00,430 –> 00:39:04,030
And it’s this idea that man and man alone

561
00:39:05,310 –> 00:39:09,030
can successfully adjudicate all matters of justice and

562
00:39:09,030 –> 00:39:12,430
mercy without any guidance, without any

563
00:39:12,510 –> 00:39:16,310
external boundaries placed on them by a

564
00:39:16,310 –> 00:39:18,350
transcendent morality.

565
00:39:20,960 –> 00:39:24,480
We talked about this in our podcast episode this month with

566
00:39:25,520 –> 00:39:29,320
David Baumrucker in looking at the work of Fyodor

567
00:39:29,320 –> 00:39:33,120
Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment, a book written,

568
00:39:33,280 –> 00:39:37,040
oh gosh, well over, or not well over,

569
00:39:37,040 –> 00:39:40,800
close to 100 years before 1 day in the life of Ivan

570
00:39:40,800 –> 00:39:44,600
Denisovich came out. And just as Solzhenitsyn knew the Russian

571
00:39:44,600 –> 00:39:47,920
people weren’t ready for socialism, Dostoevsky knew the same thing.

572
00:39:49,460 –> 00:39:53,180
He knew they weren’t ready for a glorious revolution. He thought they needed

573
00:39:53,180 –> 00:39:56,340
a Christian God before they needed

574
00:39:56,660 –> 00:40:00,500
a Marxist humanistic

575
00:40:01,060 –> 00:40:04,820
revolution. He thought they couldn’t get there

576
00:40:04,900 –> 00:40:08,020
from here. Potentially.

577
00:40:08,980 –> 00:40:10,340
Potentially, he was right.

578
00:40:12,900 –> 00:40:16,500
From one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich at five o’ clock

579
00:40:16,500 –> 00:40:20,280
that morning, reveal was sounded as usual.

580
00:40:20,280 –> 00:40:24,080
Reveille sorry was sounded as usual by the blows of

581
00:40:24,080 –> 00:40:27,840
a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters.

582
00:40:28,720 –> 00:40:32,280
The intermittent sounds barely penetrated the window panes on which the

583
00:40:32,280 –> 00:40:35,920
frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as

584
00:40:35,920 –> 00:40:39,640
they’d begun. It was cold outside and the camp guard was reluctant to

585
00:40:39,640 –> 00:40:42,160
go on beating out the revelry for long.

586
00:40:44,170 –> 00:40:47,970
The clanging ceased, but everything outside still looked like the middle of the night.

587
00:40:47,970 –> 00:40:51,730
When Ivan Denisovich Shukov got up to go to

588
00:40:51,730 –> 00:40:55,530
the bucket, it was pitch dark except

589
00:40:55,530 –> 00:40:58,730
for the yellow Light cast on the window by three lamps,

590
00:40:59,290 –> 00:41:02,650
two in the outer zone, one inside the camp itself.

591
00:41:04,490 –> 00:41:07,130
And no one came to unbolt the barracks door. There was no sound of the

592
00:41:07,130 –> 00:41:10,960
barrack orderlies pushing a pole into place to lift the barrel of

593
00:41:10,960 –> 00:41:12,600
excrement and carry it out.

594
00:41:14,360 –> 00:41:18,000
Shukov never overslept reveille. He always got up at

595
00:41:18,000 –> 00:41:21,840
once for the next 90 minutes until they assembled for work belonged to him,

596
00:41:21,840 –> 00:41:25,440
not to the authorities. And any old timer could always earn a bit by

597
00:41:25,440 –> 00:41:28,920
sewing a pair of mittens for someone out of an old sleeve lining,

598
00:41:29,000 –> 00:41:32,800
or bringing some rich loafer in the squad, his drive a lanky right

599
00:41:32,800 –> 00:41:36,240
up to his bunk so he wouldn’t have to stumble barefoot round the heap of

600
00:41:36,240 –> 00:41:39,920
boots looking for his own pair. Or going the

601
00:41:39,920 –> 00:41:43,680
rounds of the warehouses offering to be of service, sweeping up this or fetching

602
00:41:43,680 –> 00:41:46,800
that, or going to the mess hall to collect bowls from the tables and bring

603
00:41:46,800 –> 00:41:50,520
them stacked to the dishwashers. You’re sure to be

604
00:41:50,520 –> 00:41:54,320
given something to eat there, though there were plenty of others at that game. More

605
00:41:54,320 –> 00:41:57,760
than plenty. And what’s worse, if you found a bowl with something left in it,

606
00:41:57,760 –> 00:42:01,520
you could hardly resist licking it out. But Shukov had never

607
00:42:01,520 –> 00:42:05,210
forgotten the words of his first squad leader, Kuzeomin,

608
00:42:05,290 –> 00:42:09,130
a hard bitten prisoner who had already been in for 12 years by

609
00:42:09,130 –> 00:42:12,970
1943, who told the newcomers just in

610
00:42:12,970 –> 00:42:16,250
from the front as they sat beside a fire in a

611
00:42:16,330 –> 00:42:19,050
desolate cutting in the forest,

612
00:42:21,290 –> 00:42:24,970
here, men, we live by the law of the taiga, but even

613
00:42:24,970 –> 00:42:28,770
here people manage to live. The ones that don’t make it are

614
00:42:28,770 –> 00:42:32,330
those who lick other men’s leftovers, those who count on

615
00:42:32,330 –> 00:42:35,850
doctors to pull them through, and those who squeal on their

616
00:42:36,250 –> 00:42:36,890
buddies.

617
00:42:40,090 –> 00:42:43,930
As for the preachers, he was wrong there. Those people were sure to

618
00:42:43,930 –> 00:42:47,530
get through camp alright, only they were saving their own skin

619
00:42:47,530 –> 00:42:50,650
at the expense of other people’s blood.

620
00:42:53,450 –> 00:42:57,130
Shukov always arose at revelry, but this day he didn’t.

621
00:42:57,860 –> 00:43:01,540
He had felt strange the evening before, feverish with

622
00:43:01,540 –> 00:43:05,340
pains all over his body. He hadn’t been able to get warm all

623
00:43:05,340 –> 00:43:09,060
through the night. Even in his sleep, he had felt

624
00:43:09,060 –> 00:43:12,780
at one moment that he was getting seriously ill, at another that he

625
00:43:12,780 –> 00:43:16,100
was getting better. He had wished morning

626
00:43:16,500 –> 00:43:17,620
would never come.

627
00:43:21,700 –> 00:43:24,680
But the morning came as

628
00:43:25,000 –> 00:43:25,640
usual,

629
00:43:48,930 –> 00:44:01,010
Sam.

630
00:44:19,340 –> 00:44:22,540
The morning came as usual.

631
00:44:25,420 –> 00:44:29,260
There is justice, but not the kind of

632
00:44:29,260 –> 00:44:33,020
cosmic dealing, not the kind

633
00:44:33,020 –> 00:44:36,380
of cosmic reckoning that we

634
00:44:36,620 –> 00:44:40,460
want in our hearts. The language of justice

635
00:44:40,460 –> 00:44:44,010
employed by people who want justice for their enemies, but only mercy

636
00:44:44,320 –> 00:44:47,920
for themselves, tends to cast a dark shadow

637
00:44:48,560 –> 00:44:52,160
in light of the fact that the sun rises on the just

638
00:44:52,320 –> 00:44:54,720
and the unjust alike.

639
00:44:56,640 –> 00:45:00,279
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was released

640
00:45:00,279 –> 00:45:04,000
before the Gulag Archipelago, as I mentioned previously, and it

641
00:45:04,000 –> 00:45:07,480
landed like an atomic bomb in Russian culture and Soviet

642
00:45:07,480 –> 00:45:10,840
culture after Khrushchev’s equally shocking public

643
00:45:10,840 –> 00:45:14,440
repudiation of Stalin’s cult of personality at the

644
00:45:14,440 –> 00:45:18,200
22nd Party Congress in the late 1950s,

645
00:45:18,200 –> 00:45:21,200
early 1960s. This book

646
00:45:21,840 –> 00:45:25,680
details a day in the life of a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich, in

647
00:45:25,680 –> 00:45:29,400
a Gulag. It is raw, it is unfiltered, and it reflected

648
00:45:29,400 –> 00:45:33,240
in an emotional way the experiences that Solzhenitsyn

649
00:45:33,240 –> 00:45:36,440
had himself that were further fleshed out and

650
00:45:36,440 –> 00:45:39,290
ID’d in the gulag Archipelago.

651
00:45:41,450 –> 00:45:45,050
The book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich lays out to critique

652
00:45:45,210 –> 00:45:46,890
the previously unmentionable.

653
00:45:49,050 –> 00:45:52,570
And it lays out the results at a social contract level of a

654
00:45:52,570 –> 00:45:56,010
fully realized totalizing vision of what an

655
00:45:56,010 –> 00:45:59,210
organized culture where lies, fear and machinations

656
00:45:59,770 –> 00:46:03,090
serve as the Marxist driven concrete underpinnings,

657
00:46:03,640 –> 00:46:06,680
an utterly rotten superstructure.

658
00:46:10,600 –> 00:46:14,280
When leaders think about Ivan Denisovich, we have to think

659
00:46:14,280 –> 00:46:18,120
honestly about the results and the consequences of speech and what that gets

660
00:46:18,120 –> 00:46:21,880
us. And the fact of the matter is,

661
00:46:22,280 –> 00:46:25,880
leaders must have the willingness to die socially,

662
00:46:25,880 –> 00:46:29,680
culturally. Yeah, that means getting canceled. Yes, that may

663
00:46:29,680 –> 00:46:33,530
mean losing jobs. Yes, that may mean not having food

664
00:46:33,690 –> 00:46:37,490
to put in your kid’s mouth. Leaders have to have a

665
00:46:37,490 –> 00:46:41,250
willingness to die to protect the word of truth, to

666
00:46:41,250 –> 00:46:44,090
protect the ability to even say that truth.

667
00:46:46,410 –> 00:46:50,130
But leaders also, concomitantly

668
00:46:50,130 –> 00:46:53,970
or co. Commitmently, or however you want to frame it, leaders also must

669
00:46:53,970 –> 00:46:57,650
have a willingness to extract the highest meaning from the words they

670
00:46:57,650 –> 00:47:01,190
speak and then have the guts to speak those words and speak that

671
00:47:01,190 –> 00:47:04,750
meaning out. Now, the kinds of

672
00:47:04,750 –> 00:47:08,390
folks who don’t like that, the kinds of folks who find that to be

673
00:47:08,390 –> 00:47:11,830
threatening, are folks at an individual level who

674
00:47:11,990 –> 00:47:15,110
are, as Dr. Peterson mentioned earlier,

675
00:47:15,670 –> 00:47:19,230
at the lowest, most mean spirited point in

676
00:47:19,230 –> 00:47:22,950
their own experience. They are experiencing jealousy, they are experiencing

677
00:47:22,950 –> 00:47:26,260
rage, they are experiencing hatred. They are. They’re not

678
00:47:26,260 –> 00:47:30,100
experiencing love of any kind, although they may use the words

679
00:47:30,100 –> 00:47:33,180
of love, they may use the words of justice, they may use the words of

680
00:47:33,180 –> 00:47:35,940
mercy, but that’s not what they actually mean.

681
00:47:39,140 –> 00:47:42,980
Amateur tyrants do not possess a totalizing

682
00:47:42,980 –> 00:47:46,820
vision other than the vision of totally

683
00:47:46,900 –> 00:47:50,380
controlling other people and other people’s

684
00:47:50,380 –> 00:47:54,130
responses to them all the way down to the

685
00:47:54,770 –> 00:47:58,610
social contract level. And in

686
00:47:58,610 –> 00:48:02,450
case you think I’m crazy, think of the last person you

687
00:48:02,450 –> 00:48:06,090
saw being yelled at for either wearing a mask

688
00:48:06,090 –> 00:48:09,650
or not wearing a mask in public. During the last

689
00:48:09,730 –> 00:48:11,250
two years,

690
00:48:14,450 –> 00:48:17,650
back to one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.

691
00:48:20,020 –> 00:48:23,500
Ah, but not simply to report as usual to the authorities for the daily

692
00:48:23,500 –> 00:48:26,740
assignment. Now this is after Shukov gets up and he’s moving around the camp.

693
00:48:27,060 –> 00:48:30,700
Zhukov remembered that this morning his fate hung in the balance. They wanted to

694
00:48:30,700 –> 00:48:34,540
shift the 104th from the building shops to a new site. The socialist

695
00:48:34,540 –> 00:48:38,300
way of life settlement. It lay in open country covered with

696
00:48:38,300 –> 00:48:41,380
snowdrifts, and before anything else could be done there, they would have to dig holes

697
00:48:41,380 –> 00:48:44,780
and put up posts and attach barbed wire to them, wire

698
00:48:44,780 –> 00:48:47,740
themselves in so they wouldn’t run away.

699
00:48:50,060 –> 00:48:53,780
Only then would they start building. There

700
00:48:53,780 –> 00:48:57,500
wouldn’t be a warm corner for a whole month, not even a doghouse. And fires

701
00:48:57,500 –> 00:49:01,220
were out of the question. There was nothing to build them with. Let your

702
00:49:01,220 –> 00:49:04,780
work warm you up. That was your only salvation.

703
00:49:06,700 –> 00:49:10,100
No wonder the squad leader looked so worried. That was his job, to elbow some

704
00:49:10,100 –> 00:49:13,930
other squad, some bunch of suckers into the assignment instead of the

705
00:49:13,930 –> 00:49:17,570
104th. Of course, with empty bands, you got nowhere.

706
00:49:17,810 –> 00:49:21,050
You’d have to take a pound of salt pork to the senior official there, if

707
00:49:21,050 –> 00:49:24,810
not a couple of pounds. There’s never any harm in trying. So

708
00:49:24,810 –> 00:49:27,369
why not have a go at the dispensary and get a few days off if

709
00:49:27,369 –> 00:49:31,210
you can? After all, he did feel as though every limb was out

710
00:49:31,210 –> 00:49:34,890
of joint. Now we’re

711
00:49:34,890 –> 00:49:37,970
gonna switch down a little bit. We’re gonna move forward a little bit.

712
00:49:38,370 –> 00:49:42,050
Shukov is now tasked with with performing a

713
00:49:43,230 –> 00:49:47,070
task in the gulag. And. Well, it’s, It’s.

714
00:49:47,070 –> 00:49:50,790
It goes directly to. Well, well, cleaning

715
00:49:50,790 –> 00:49:54,630
sewage. The top

716
00:49:54,630 –> 00:49:57,350
of the well was so thickly coated with ice that he only just managed to

717
00:49:57,350 –> 00:50:01,030
slip the bucket into the hole. The rope hung stiff as a

718
00:50:01,030 –> 00:50:04,710
ramrod. With numb hands, he

719
00:50:04,710 –> 00:50:07,830
carried the dripping bucket back to the guard room and plunged his hands into the

720
00:50:07,830 –> 00:50:11,670
water. It was felt warm. The

721
00:50:11,670 –> 00:50:15,430
tartar was no longer there. The guards, there were four now stood in a

722
00:50:15,430 –> 00:50:19,270
group. They’d given up their checkers and their nap and were arguing about how

723
00:50:19,270 –> 00:50:22,910
much cereal they were going to get in January. Food was in short supply at

724
00:50:22,910 –> 00:50:26,630
the settlement, and although rationing had long since come to an end, certain articles

725
00:50:26,630 –> 00:50:30,270
were sold to them at a discount, which were not available to

726
00:50:30,270 –> 00:50:34,070
the civilian inhabitants. Shut that door, you

727
00:50:34,070 –> 00:50:37,600
scum. There’s a draft, said one of the guards.

728
00:50:40,240 –> 00:50:43,200
Now we’re going to switch to the Gulag archipelago for just a moment.

729
00:50:44,480 –> 00:50:48,240
And how is it the genuine religious believers survived in camp? As we

730
00:50:48,240 –> 00:50:52,040
mentioned, more than once in the course of this book we have already mentioned

731
00:50:52,040 –> 00:50:55,720
their self confident procession through the archipelago, a sort of silent

732
00:50:55,720 –> 00:50:59,560
religious procession with invisible candles. How some among them were

733
00:50:59,560 –> 00:51:03,320
moved down but were mowed down by machine guns and those next in line

734
00:51:03,320 –> 00:51:06,890
continued their march, a

735
00:51:06,890 –> 00:51:10,290
steadfastness unheard of in the 20th century

736
00:51:11,250 –> 00:51:15,010
and it was not in the least for show. And there weren’t any

737
00:51:15,010 –> 00:51:18,490
declamations. Take some, Aunt Da Silas

738
00:51:18,490 –> 00:51:22,050
Chamille, a round faced, calm and quite illiterate old woman.

739
00:51:22,930 –> 00:51:26,490
The convoy guards called out to her, shamil, what is your article? And she

740
00:51:26,490 –> 00:51:29,930
gently, good naturedly replied, why are you asking, my boy? It’s all written down there.

741
00:51:29,930 –> 00:51:33,490
I can’t remember them all. She had a bouquet of sections

742
00:51:33,490 –> 00:51:36,890
under Article 58 and we’re going to talk about article Pause for just a moment.

743
00:51:36,890 –> 00:51:40,170
We’re going to Talk about Article 58 coming up here in just a few

744
00:51:40,330 –> 00:51:43,850
moments. Back to the Gulag

745
00:51:43,850 –> 00:51:47,610
Archipelago selection. Your term, Auntie Diocese

746
00:51:47,610 –> 00:51:51,130
Auntie Dusia side She wasn’t giving such

747
00:51:51,130 –> 00:51:54,850
contradictory answers in order to annoy the convoy. In her own simple hearted way

748
00:51:54,850 –> 00:51:58,610
she pondered this question. Her term. Did they really think it was

749
00:51:58,610 –> 00:52:01,270
given to human beings to know their terms?

750
00:52:02,550 –> 00:52:06,150
What term? Till God forgives my sins. Till

751
00:52:06,150 –> 00:52:09,870
then I’ll be serving time. You are

752
00:52:09,870 –> 00:52:13,350
a silly, you silly. The convoy guards

753
00:52:13,350 –> 00:52:16,990
laughed. Fifteen years you’ve got and you’ll serve them all and

754
00:52:16,990 –> 00:52:20,230
maybe some more besides. But

755
00:52:20,870 –> 00:52:24,350
after two and a half years of her term had

756
00:52:24,350 –> 00:52:27,830
passed, even though she had sent no petitions,

757
00:52:28,800 –> 00:52:31,760
all of a sudden a piece of paper came release.

758
00:52:34,080 –> 00:52:36,640
How could one not

759
00:52:37,440 –> 00:52:39,120
envy those.

760
00:53:46,270 –> 00:53:49,950
Leaders who oppose the power of

761
00:53:49,950 –> 00:53:52,190
free speech, who are frightened by it?

762
00:53:53,710 –> 00:53:57,070
Either they fail to understand, or they understand all too well

763
00:53:59,310 –> 00:54:03,070
the totalizing nature of

764
00:54:03,230 –> 00:54:06,990
a Creator. And they may indeed really be

765
00:54:06,990 –> 00:54:10,110
in rebellion against that Creator. And that rebellion

766
00:54:10,510 –> 00:54:14,170
exposes itself as an opposition to genuine

767
00:54:14,330 –> 00:54:18,170
free speech. People of Christ,

768
00:54:19,450 –> 00:54:23,250
people of the Christian religion who genuinely understand their

769
00:54:23,250 –> 00:54:27,050
religion, understand this fact, although they may not

770
00:54:27,050 –> 00:54:30,730
know how to articulate it. There’s

771
00:54:30,730 –> 00:54:34,370
something very basic built into Christianity that

772
00:54:34,370 –> 00:54:38,010
demonstrates that God loves liberty and God

773
00:54:38,090 –> 00:54:41,000
loves freedom and God loves

774
00:54:41,400 –> 00:54:45,240
true speech. Let me quote directly from the

775
00:54:45,240 –> 00:54:48,520
Book of Genesis in the event that you’re not really buying this.

776
00:54:49,080 –> 00:54:52,920
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now

777
00:54:52,920 –> 00:54:56,560
the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the

778
00:54:56,560 –> 00:55:00,240
surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering

779
00:55:00,240 –> 00:55:03,640
over the waters. And God

780
00:55:03,880 –> 00:55:07,060
said, let there be light. And there was light.

781
00:55:07,780 –> 00:55:11,060
God saw the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness.

782
00:55:11,700 –> 00:55:15,420
God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and

783
00:55:15,420 –> 00:55:18,020
there was evening and there was morning the first

784
00:55:18,900 –> 00:55:22,620
day. You can go

785
00:55:22,620 –> 00:55:25,300
back to Genesis and read the rest of it, and I’d recommend doing that in

786
00:55:25,300 –> 00:55:28,500
the event that you haven’t. Because the freedom to speak

787
00:55:29,140 –> 00:55:32,730
is freedom from the Creator. The Creator is

788
00:55:32,730 –> 00:55:36,530
pro liberty. The Creator is also pro

789
00:55:36,530 –> 00:55:39,930
judgment, pro consequence, and pro mercy.

790
00:55:40,890 –> 00:55:44,050
Freedom of speech requires leaders insisting on the

791
00:55:44,050 –> 00:55:47,690
responsibility of individual people to form a society and a

792
00:55:47,690 –> 00:55:51,530
culture from the words of the truths that they speak.

793
00:55:53,210 –> 00:55:56,450
But very often when a society is taken over by a

794
00:55:56,450 –> 00:56:00,220
totalitizing ideology, there are

795
00:56:00,220 –> 00:56:03,740
rules and regulations and boundaries that are put around this speech

796
00:56:05,420 –> 00:56:09,180
that stop it from occurring and that works in the

797
00:56:09,180 –> 00:56:13,020
totalitarian tyrant’s favor. You

798
00:56:13,020 –> 00:56:16,780
know, the one who’s in rebellion against creation

799
00:56:16,940 –> 00:56:17,580
itself.

800
00:56:20,620 –> 00:56:23,820
Back to the Gulag Archipelago the History of our Sewage

801
00:56:23,900 –> 00:56:27,350
Disposal system from the 1973

802
00:56:27,350 –> 00:56:30,670
Perennial Classics edition by Harper and Rowe

803
00:56:32,670 –> 00:56:36,510
Paradoxically enough, every act of the all penetrating, eternally wakeful

804
00:56:36,510 –> 00:56:40,030
organs over the span of many years is based solely on one

805
00:56:40,030 –> 00:56:43,710
article of the 140 articles of the non general division of the criminal code of

806
00:56:43,710 –> 00:56:47,510
1926. One can find more epithets in praise of

807
00:56:47,510 –> 00:56:50,830
this article than Turgenev once assembled to praise the Russian language, or

808
00:56:50,830 –> 00:56:54,320
Nekrasov to praise Mother Russia, great,

809
00:56:54,320 –> 00:56:58,000
powerful, abundant, highly ramified, multi form, wide sweeping 58

810
00:56:58,480 –> 00:57:02,200
which summed up the world not so much through the exact terms of

811
00:57:02,200 –> 00:57:04,880
its sections as in their extended

812
00:57:05,040 –> 00:57:07,440
dialectical interpretation.

813
00:57:09,280 –> 00:57:12,320
Who among us has not experienced its all encompassing embrace?

814
00:57:12,960 –> 00:57:16,720
In all truth there is no step, thought or action

815
00:57:16,880 –> 00:57:20,640
or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by

816
00:57:20,640 –> 00:57:24,220
the heavy hand of Article 58. The article

817
00:57:24,220 –> 00:57:27,860
itself could not be worded in such broad terms, but it proved it possible

818
00:57:27,860 –> 00:57:31,700
to interpret it this broadly. Article 58

819
00:57:31,700 –> 00:57:35,220
was not in that division of the Code dealing with the political crimes, and nowhere

820
00:57:35,220 –> 00:57:39,020
was it categorized as political. No, it

821
00:57:39,020 –> 00:57:42,060
was included with crimes against public order and the organized

822
00:57:42,060 –> 00:57:45,460
gangsterism in division of crimes against the state.

823
00:57:47,220 –> 00:57:50,740
Thus the Criminal Code starts off by refusing to recognize

824
00:57:50,900 –> 00:57:53,770
anyone under its jurisdiction as a political offender.

825
00:57:54,640 –> 00:57:58,320
All are simply criminals. Article

826
00:57:58,320 –> 00:58:01,680
58 consisted of 14 sections.

827
00:58:03,040 –> 00:58:06,560
In section 1 we learned that any action and according to article 6 of the

828
00:58:06,560 –> 00:58:10,400
Criminal Code, any absence of action directed toward

829
00:58:10,400 –> 00:58:13,520
the weakening of state power was considered to be counter

830
00:58:13,680 –> 00:58:17,480
revolutionary. Broadly interpreted, this

831
00:58:17,480 –> 00:58:20,760
turned out to include the refusal of a prisoner in camp to work when in

832
00:58:20,760 –> 00:58:23,590
a state of starvation exhaustion.

833
00:58:24,550 –> 00:58:28,310
This was a weakening of state power and it

834
00:58:28,310 –> 00:58:30,710
was punished by execution,

835
00:58:32,310 –> 00:58:35,750
for instance, the execution of malingerers during the war.

836
00:58:37,750 –> 00:58:41,390
From 1934 on, when we were given back. The term motherland

837
00:58:41,390 –> 00:58:45,045
subsections were inserted on Treason to the motherland. 1a, 1b,

838
00:58:45,135 –> 00:58:48,870
1c, 1d. According to these new subsections, all actions directed

839
00:58:48,870 –> 00:58:52,070
against the military might of the USSR were punishable by

840
00:58:52,070 –> 00:58:55,780
execution, one battle or by 10 years imprisonment. 1a. But

841
00:58:55,780 –> 00:58:59,380
the lighter penalty was imposed only when mitigating circumstances were present and

842
00:58:59,380 –> 00:59:01,100
upon civilians only.

843
00:59:02,860 –> 00:59:06,500
Broadly interpreted, when our soldiers were sentenced to only 10 years for

844
00:59:06,500 –> 00:59:09,740
allowing themselves to be taken prisoner. Side note,

845
00:59:09,740 –> 00:59:13,340
Solzhenitsyn had a little bit of trouble in the

846
00:59:13,500 –> 00:59:17,340
Soviet military with the Germans. Back

847
00:59:17,340 –> 00:59:21,180
to the book. Actions injurious to Soviet military might. This was

848
00:59:21,910 –> 00:59:24,790
humanitarian to the point of being illegal.

849
00:59:25,830 –> 00:59:29,350
According to the Stalinist Code, they should have been shot on their return home.

850
00:59:30,550 –> 00:59:34,190
Here is another example of the broad interpretation. I remember well an

851
00:59:34,190 –> 00:59:37,710
encounter in Bukiri in the summer of 1946. A certain

852
00:59:37,710 –> 00:59:41,470
pole had been born in Lemberg, when that city was part of the Austro

853
00:59:41,470 –> 00:59:45,310
Hungarian Empire. Until World War II he lived in his

854
00:59:45,310 –> 00:59:48,870
native city, by then located in Poland. Then he went to Austria where he entered

855
00:59:48,870 –> 00:59:52,710
the Service, and in 1945 he was arrested there by the Russians. Since

856
00:59:52,710 –> 00:59:56,510
by this time Austrian Lemberg had become Ukrainian Lvov, he received

857
00:59:56,510 –> 01:00:00,030
a tenor under Article 51 1A of the Ukrainian

858
01:00:00,030 –> 01:00:03,750
Criminal Code, that is for treason to his motherland, the Ukraine.

859
01:00:05,270 –> 01:00:08,950
And at his interrogation, the poor fellow couldn’t prove that treason to the Ukraine

860
01:00:08,950 –> 01:00:11,990
had not been his purpose when he went to Vienna.

861
01:00:13,270 –> 01:00:17,110
And that’s how he conned his way into becoming

862
01:00:17,110 –> 01:00:20,700
a traitor. One

863
01:00:20,700 –> 01:00:24,300
important additional broadening of the section on treason was its application via

864
01:00:24,300 –> 01:00:27,020
Article 19 of the Criminal Code, via intent.

865
01:00:28,300 –> 01:00:32,140
In other words, no treason had taken place, but the

866
01:00:32,140 –> 01:00:35,940
interrogator envisioned an intention to

867
01:00:35,940 –> 01:00:39,740
betray, and that was enough to justify a full term,

868
01:00:39,980 –> 01:00:43,420
the same as for actual treason. True, Article 19

869
01:00:43,420 –> 01:00:47,090
proposes that there be no penalty for intent, but

870
01:00:47,090 –> 01:00:50,570
only for preparation. But given a dialectical

871
01:00:50,570 –> 01:00:53,730
reading, one can understand intention as preparation.

872
01:00:54,610 –> 01:00:58,330
And preparation is punished by the same way, that is with

873
01:00:58,330 –> 01:01:01,970
the same penalty as the crime itself. In

874
01:01:01,970 –> 01:01:05,690
general, we quote, we draw no distinction between intention and

875
01:01:05,690 –> 01:01:09,410
the crime itself. And this is an instance of the

876
01:01:09,410 –> 01:01:13,170
superiority of Soviet legislation to

877
01:01:13,410 –> 01:01:16,770
bourgeoisie legislation.

878
01:01:38,140 –> 01:01:53,660
Sam.

879
01:02:27,830 –> 01:02:30,950
Tyranny inevitably arises

880
01:02:32,710 –> 01:02:36,470
when the ideological purists of a totalizing

881
01:02:36,470 –> 01:02:40,310
system turned their lidless all seeing

882
01:02:40,310 –> 01:02:43,750
eye, as Sauron did in Lord of the Rings,

883
01:02:43,750 –> 01:02:47,350
toward individuals who refused to go along. Like religious ones,

884
01:02:47,350 –> 01:02:51,030
genuinely religious ones who refuse to get in line, like just

885
01:02:51,030 –> 01:02:54,550
the rebellious no folks and those

886
01:02:54,550 –> 01:02:58,390
folks who refuse to toe the line or who are

887
01:02:58,390 –> 01:03:01,670
confused about where exactly the line is, because it keeps shifting.

888
01:03:03,790 –> 01:03:07,510
This is again, not a bug of

889
01:03:07,510 –> 01:03:10,910
tyranny. This is a feature

890
01:03:11,870 –> 01:03:15,350
from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s introduction to the Gulag Archipelago Vintage

891
01:03:15,350 –> 01:03:17,470
Classics edition. And I quote,

892
01:03:19,390 –> 01:03:23,150
is this not a, or even the essential point of difference between

893
01:03:23,150 –> 01:03:26,710
the west, for all its faults, and the brutal, terrible

894
01:03:26,710 –> 01:03:30,070
egalitarian systems generated by the pathological communist

895
01:03:30,070 –> 01:03:33,490
doctrine? The great and good framers of the American

896
01:03:33,490 –> 01:03:37,330
Republic were, for example, anything but utopian. They took full

897
01:03:37,330 –> 01:03:41,170
stock and full measure of eradicable human imperfection. They

898
01:03:41,170 –> 01:03:44,970
held modest goals derived not least from the profoundly

899
01:03:44,970 –> 01:03:48,770
cautious common law tradition of England. They endeavored to establish

900
01:03:48,770 –> 01:03:52,610
a system. The corrupt and ignorant fools we all are could not damage too

901
01:03:52,690 –> 01:03:55,490
vainly. That’s humility.

902
01:03:56,620 –> 01:04:00,460
That’s clear headed knowledge of the limitations of human machination and

903
01:04:00,460 –> 01:04:04,260
good intention. But the communists, the

904
01:04:04,260 –> 01:04:08,020
revolutionaries, they aimed gradually and admirably, at least in theory, at

905
01:04:08,020 –> 01:04:11,740
a much more heavenly vision. And they began their pursuit with hypothetically

906
01:04:11,740 –> 01:04:15,020
straightforward and oh so morally justifiable enforcement of economic

907
01:04:15,420 –> 01:04:19,140
equality. Wealth, however, was not

908
01:04:19,140 –> 01:04:22,620
so easily generated. The poor could not simply become

909
01:04:23,020 –> 01:04:26,550
rich, but the riches of those who had anything more than the

910
01:04:26,550 –> 01:04:30,270
greatest pauper, no matter how pitiful that more actually

911
01:04:30,430 –> 01:04:33,830
was, that could be redistributed or at least

912
01:04:33,830 –> 01:04:36,990
destroyed. That’s equality too,

913
01:04:37,390 –> 01:04:41,150
that sacrifice in the name of heaven on earth. And redistribution was not

914
01:04:41,150 –> 01:04:44,110
enough. With all its theft, betrayal and death,

915
01:04:45,390 –> 01:04:49,190
mere economic engineering was insufficient. What emerged as well was the

916
01:04:49,190 –> 01:04:52,590
overarching and truly totalitarian desire, and to

917
01:04:52,590 –> 01:04:55,910
remake man and woman as such, the

918
01:04:55,910 –> 01:04:59,630
longing to restructure the human spirit in the very image

919
01:04:59,630 –> 01:05:02,070
of communist preconceptions,

920
01:05:03,110 –> 01:05:06,950
attributing to themselves this divine ability, this transcendent wisdom.

921
01:05:07,270 –> 01:05:10,910
And with unshakable belief in the glowing but

922
01:05:10,910 –> 01:05:14,550
ever receding future, the newly minted

923
01:05:14,550 –> 01:05:18,390
Soviets tortured, thieved, imprisoned, lied and

924
01:05:18,390 –> 01:05:21,990
betrayed, all the while masking their great evil with virtue.

925
01:05:23,830 –> 01:05:27,510
From the Gulag Archipelago directly, and I quote from Aleksandr

926
01:05:27,510 –> 01:05:31,310
Solzhenitsyn, this was the nub of the plan. The peasant’s

927
01:05:31,310 –> 01:05:35,110
seed must perish together with the adults. Since Herod

928
01:05:35,110 –> 01:05:38,670
was no more. Only the vanguard doctrine has shown us how to destroy

929
01:05:38,670 –> 01:05:42,270
utterly, down to the very babes. Hitler

930
01:05:42,270 –> 01:05:46,110
was a mere disciple, but he had all the luck. His

931
01:05:46,110 –> 01:05:49,810
murder camps have made him famous, whereas, and no one has any

932
01:05:49,810 –> 01:05:52,210
interest in ours at all.

933
01:05:56,450 –> 01:06:00,170
Social proofing is powerful when you can get everyone to go along with a

934
01:06:00,170 –> 01:06:03,770
totalizing creed or a creed

935
01:06:03,770 –> 01:06:07,530
based on liberty. Social proofing has power. And

936
01:06:07,530 –> 01:06:10,530
this is what both the Founding Fathers knew and Karl Marx.

937
01:06:12,850 –> 01:06:16,690
But the Founding Fathers knew something about human nature that Marx rejected

938
01:06:16,690 –> 01:06:19,410
and Lenin found to be a fool’s errand to even consider.

939
01:06:21,020 –> 01:06:24,860
The founding fathers knew, and leaders have to know that words

940
01:06:25,180 –> 01:06:28,780
at the individual level mean more than they do even at the nation

941
01:06:28,780 –> 01:06:32,380
state level. But they also knew that leaders

942
01:06:32,380 –> 01:06:35,939
use their words to challenge the frontiers of

943
01:06:35,939 –> 01:06:39,580
social proofing. They use their words to put together a podcast like this and

944
01:06:39,660 –> 01:06:43,060
read books like we’ve read during the month, and make arguments and

945
01:06:43,060 –> 01:06:46,510
assertions like we’ve made during this month about these works,

946
01:06:47,300 –> 01:06:50,660
and to comment on current cultural tropes and

947
01:06:50,740 –> 01:06:54,580
trends without fear, without shaking, without

948
01:06:54,980 –> 01:06:58,700
wavering, to plant a flag

949
01:06:58,700 –> 01:07:02,340
and take a position. This is what leaders do.

950
01:07:02,820 –> 01:07:06,300
They do it in their small businesses, they do it in their medium sized

951
01:07:06,300 –> 01:07:09,460
entities. And even more importantly, leaders must do it in their

952
01:07:09,460 –> 01:07:13,140
gigantic mega corporations where they all hang out

953
01:07:13,140 –> 01:07:16,810
trying to build us a better world, one technological

954
01:07:16,810 –> 01:07:18,890
gee whiz advancement at a time.

955
01:07:21,130 –> 01:07:24,850
Leaders also use their words to defend the boundaries of propriety. And I’m

956
01:07:24,850 –> 01:07:26,810
looking at you, cultural leaders.

957
01:07:29,210 –> 01:07:32,970
If politics is downstream from culture, culture is downstream from

958
01:07:32,970 –> 01:07:36,410
religion. And religion, well, religion is the actual

959
01:07:36,970 –> 01:07:40,730
root of everything. But if you’re rejecting that root, if you

960
01:07:40,730 –> 01:07:44,290
don’t even know if you have that root, or if you’re in open rebellion

961
01:07:44,290 –> 01:07:48,000
against that root, well, you’re going to tear down

962
01:07:48,000 –> 01:07:51,760
the boundaries, you’re going to remove them, or you’re going to pretend that they

963
01:07:51,760 –> 01:07:55,440
never really existed anyway. And this is a fundamental

964
01:07:55,440 –> 01:07:59,000
flaw in your speech. It’s a lie,

965
01:07:59,080 –> 01:08:02,880
and you need to stop. Because on the other

966
01:08:02,880 –> 01:08:06,120
side of that lie is someone taking you very

967
01:08:06,120 –> 01:08:09,400
seriously and listening to you very, very

968
01:08:09,560 –> 01:08:13,280
closely. And someone who might be willing to

969
01:08:13,280 –> 01:08:16,730
take your lie as a marching order to reinforce

970
01:08:17,450 –> 01:08:20,970
or to support a resentment or an envy that they are nursing

971
01:08:21,130 –> 01:08:22,810
in their heart.

972
01:08:25,290 –> 01:08:28,650
Totalitarian leaders, whether benevolent or tyrannical,

973
01:08:28,890 –> 01:08:32,730
rely on the power of your social proofing from your words. Leaders

974
01:08:32,970 –> 01:08:35,050
to reinforce totalizing control.

975
01:08:36,890 –> 01:08:39,930
They rely on it just like bread

976
01:08:40,250 –> 01:08:43,539
relies on. On butter, if

977
01:08:43,939 –> 01:08:46,579
you can get it.

978
01:09:06,670 –> 01:09:22,110
Sam.

979
01:09:34,760 –> 01:09:38,600
Back to one day in the life of Ivan

980
01:09:38,840 –> 01:09:42,640
Denisovich. No sense in getting your

981
01:09:42,640 –> 01:09:46,200
boots wet in the morning. Even if Shukov had

982
01:09:46,200 –> 01:09:49,080
dashed back to his barracks, he would have found another pair to change into.

983
01:09:49,880 –> 01:09:53,440
During eight years imprisonment, he had known various systems for allocating footwear.

984
01:09:53,440 –> 01:09:56,800
They’d been times when he’d gone through the winter without Valenki at all, or leather

985
01:09:56,800 –> 01:10:00,250
boots either, and had had to make shift

986
01:10:00,410 –> 01:10:04,090
with rope sandals or a sort of galoshes made of

987
01:10:04,090 –> 01:10:07,690
scraps of motor tires. Chetzeses they called them. After

988
01:10:07,690 –> 01:10:11,290
the Chiabinsk tractor works, now the footwear

989
01:10:11,290 –> 01:10:15,010
situation seemed better. In October, Shukov had received, thanks to Pavlo, who

990
01:10:15,010 –> 01:10:18,650
he trailed to the warehouse, a pair of ordinary, hard, wearing leather

991
01:10:18,650 –> 01:10:22,370
boots big enough for a double thickness of rags

992
01:10:22,370 –> 01:10:26,140
inside. For a week he went about as though he’d been given a

993
01:10:26,140 –> 01:10:29,980
birthday present, kicking his new heels. Then, in December,

994
01:10:29,980 –> 01:10:33,300
the Valenki arrived and oh, wasn’t life

995
01:10:33,780 –> 01:10:37,540
wonderful? But some devil in the bookkeeper’s

996
01:10:37,540 –> 01:10:41,020
office had whispered in the commandant’s ear that Valenki should be issued only to those

997
01:10:41,020 –> 01:10:44,700
who surrendered their boots. It was against the rules for a prisoner to

998
01:10:44,700 –> 01:10:48,380
possess two pairs of footwear at the same time, so Shukov had to

999
01:10:48,380 –> 01:10:52,190
choose. Either he’d have to wear leather throughout the winter, or

1000
01:10:52,190 –> 01:10:56,030
surrender the boots and wear Valenki even in the thaw. He’d taken such good

1001
01:10:56,030 –> 01:10:59,870
care of his new boots, softening the leather with grease. Ah, nothing had been so

1002
01:10:59,870 –> 01:11:03,510
hard to part with in all his eight years in camps as that pair

1003
01:11:03,510 –> 01:11:06,990
of boots. They were tossed into a common

1004
01:11:06,990 –> 01:11:10,830
heap. Not a hope of finding your own pair in the

1005
01:11:10,830 –> 01:11:14,550
spring. Now Shukov knew what he

1006
01:11:14,550 –> 01:11:18,360
had to do. He dexterously pulled his feet out of

1007
01:11:18,360 –> 01:11:22,080
the Valenki, put the Valenki in a corner, stuffed his foot rags into

1008
01:11:22,080 –> 01:11:25,920
them. His spoon tinkled on the floor. Though he’d made himself ready for the guardhouse

1009
01:11:25,920 –> 01:11:29,160
in a hurry, he hadn’t forgotten his spoon and barefoot,

1010
01:11:29,160 –> 01:11:33,000
sloshed the water right under the guards. Vilenky. Hey there,

1011
01:11:33,000 –> 01:11:36,560
you slob. Take it easy. One of the guards shouted, putting his feet on a

1012
01:11:36,560 –> 01:11:40,040
chair. Rice, another went on.

1013
01:11:40,120 –> 01:11:43,080
Rice is a different category. You can’t compare cereal with rice.

1014
01:11:44,400 –> 01:11:48,000
How much water are you going to use? Idiot? Who on earth washes like that?

1015
01:11:49,200 –> 01:11:52,800
I’ll never get a clean otherwise. Citizen Chief. It’s thick with mud.

1016
01:11:54,560 –> 01:11:57,440
Didn’t you ever watch your wife scrub the floor? Pig.

1017
01:11:58,880 –> 01:12:02,720
Shukov drew himself up, the rag dripping in

1018
01:12:02,720 –> 01:12:06,240
his hand. He smiled ingenuously, revealing the gaps

1019
01:12:06,400 –> 01:12:09,920
in his teeth, the result of a touch of scurvy at

1020
01:12:09,920 –> 01:12:13,280
OOST Ishima in 1943.

1021
01:12:14,000 –> 01:12:17,760
And what a touch it was. His exhausted stomach wouldn’t hold

1022
01:12:17,760 –> 01:12:21,200
any kind of food, and his bowels could move nothing but a bloody fluid.

1023
01:12:21,760 –> 01:12:25,120
But now only a lisp remained from that old trouble.

1024
01:12:26,240 –> 01:12:30,080
I was taken away from my wife in 41, Citizen Chief.

1025
01:12:30,880 –> 01:12:34,560
I’ve forgotten what she was like.

1026
01:12:43,290 –> 01:12:45,770
Citizen Pig.

1027
01:12:47,130 –> 01:12:50,650
Idiot. I’ve forgotten

1028
01:12:50,809 –> 01:12:53,370
what she was like.

1029
01:12:56,570 –> 01:13:00,250
The ties that bind society together are woven together for the gossamer of

1030
01:13:00,250 –> 01:13:04,070
truth. No matter what you may think of that gossamer, it

1031
01:13:04,070 –> 01:13:07,910
does bind society together. And when that truth is

1032
01:13:07,910 –> 01:13:11,310
no longer protected or actively dismembered by those with the intent to

1033
01:13:11,550 –> 01:13:15,070
build a quote unquote better world, it doesn’t take long for

1034
01:13:15,070 –> 01:13:18,790
man’s inhumanity to man to appear in even the

1035
01:13:18,790 –> 01:13:20,990
most inhumane situations.

1036
01:13:22,430 –> 01:13:26,190
It also doesn’t take long for those situations to morph into the actual hell

1037
01:13:26,780 –> 01:13:30,300
verbalized in insults, degradations, and bureaucratic apathy

1038
01:13:30,380 –> 01:13:34,060
that encourages leaders to stick with the totalizing lie

1039
01:13:34,460 –> 01:13:38,140
rather than break it and destroy it in favor of the

1040
01:13:38,140 –> 01:13:40,140
freeing absolute truth.

1041
01:13:42,700 –> 01:13:46,380
Leaders understand this, and leaders have the courage, and it

1042
01:13:46,380 –> 01:13:49,820
is a courageous act to break and

1043
01:13:49,820 –> 01:13:53,500
restrain the ties that bind with their language, their

1044
01:13:53,500 –> 01:13:57,210
speech and their words. They raise the alarm,

1045
01:13:57,210 –> 01:14:00,850
and they recognize when those ties are being cut,

1046
01:14:00,850 –> 01:14:04,210
and they identify who’s doing the cutting very

1047
01:14:04,210 –> 01:14:07,570
clearly. And then they go about the process

1048
01:14:07,970 –> 01:14:11,770
of reweaving back the fabric not only of

1049
01:14:11,770 –> 01:14:15,170
the social contract, not only of the

1050
01:14:15,170 –> 01:14:18,690
society, not only of individual entities, but they go back to

1051
01:14:18,690 –> 01:14:22,370
reweaving the fabric of the social contract, the fabric

1052
01:14:22,370 –> 01:14:25,930
of life together itself. And they

1053
01:14:25,930 –> 01:14:29,050
take this role very, very

1054
01:14:29,450 –> 01:14:33,130
seriously, even, and especially

1055
01:14:33,530 –> 01:14:37,210
now, innocuous leaders in

1056
01:14:37,210 –> 01:14:40,170
innocuous places in the.

1057
01:15:44,280 –> 01:15:48,080
So why am I going on and on about this? Why am I

1058
01:15:48,080 –> 01:15:51,880
lecturing into the void? Why is there no guest on the podcast? Why do I

1059
01:15:51,880 –> 01:15:54,680
not have an Amen corner on this one?

1060
01:15:57,160 –> 01:16:00,320
Because quite frankly, I don’t need it. And I want to be

1061
01:16:00,320 –> 01:16:04,160
unambiguously clear. I am pro free speech, and I don’t care

1062
01:16:04,160 –> 01:16:07,530
if you’re white or black. I don’t care care who you sleep with or

1063
01:16:07,850 –> 01:16:11,490
where you are at about your gender. I don’t care what country

1064
01:16:11,490 –> 01:16:15,130
you came from, and I don’t care what ethnicity you have. I don’t even

1065
01:16:15,130 –> 01:16:18,890
care what God you serve or choose not to serve. I don’t

1066
01:16:18,890 –> 01:16:22,490
care. I am for untrammeled free speech. Now,

1067
01:16:22,490 –> 01:16:25,890
with that being said, I’m also for untrammeled

1068
01:16:25,890 –> 01:16:29,530
consequences for that speech. And by the way, those

1069
01:16:29,530 –> 01:16:33,160
consequences, as I’ve already previously said, must be

1070
01:16:33,400 –> 01:16:37,160
socially constructed. And that’s what we

1071
01:16:37,160 –> 01:16:40,360
did in America. That was the American experience.

1072
01:16:40,680 –> 01:16:44,440
Gosh, up until probably about six years ago,

1073
01:16:45,640 –> 01:16:49,280
when everybody kind of just went crazy because a

1074
01:16:49,280 –> 01:16:53,120
guy with a bad haircut came down an escalator and said

1075
01:16:53,120 –> 01:16:54,200
he was running for president.

1076
01:16:59,040 –> 01:17:02,640
But we’ve been going crazy a little bit before that, and he was just a

1077
01:17:02,800 –> 01:17:05,600
symptom of a much larger disease.

1078
01:17:06,800 –> 01:17:10,240
And the disease is a loss of faith in the promise of

1079
01:17:10,240 –> 01:17:14,040
America, a loss of a belief in the Republic, a

1080
01:17:14,040 –> 01:17:17,520
decline of cultural confidence. And I’ve said this on other

1081
01:17:17,520 –> 01:17:21,200
podcasts in other places, but I’ll say it on this one. Our

1082
01:17:21,200 –> 01:17:24,960
literature reflects our cultural confidence and our ability to

1083
01:17:24,960 –> 01:17:27,960
read literature and understand hard literature as leaders

1084
01:17:28,280 –> 01:17:31,920
reflects and shapes our ability to actually say

1085
01:17:31,920 –> 01:17:35,240
hard truths out loud and know what underpins them.

1086
01:17:36,360 –> 01:17:40,120
If you don’t know what underpins your speech, you will abandon it in

1087
01:17:40,120 –> 01:17:43,920
a heartbeat for any ideologue that comes along. And I firmly

1088
01:17:43,920 –> 01:17:47,400
believe that. And by the way, the ideologue can be from the right

1089
01:17:47,640 –> 01:17:51,270
politically, or the ideologue can be from the left politically, but you will

1090
01:17:51,270 –> 01:17:55,030
abandon it, and you will abandon it in lies and betrayal. And

1091
01:17:55,030 –> 01:17:58,870
the abandonment won’t start in the voting booth. The abandonment will start

1092
01:17:58,870 –> 01:18:02,430
in your home, in your school,

1093
01:18:03,390 –> 01:18:05,470
in your neighborhood.

1094
01:18:08,670 –> 01:18:12,230
How can innocuous leaders this is the other thing I’m worried about. How can

1095
01:18:12,230 –> 01:18:15,310
innocuous leaders in a modern Western culture,

1096
01:18:16,180 –> 01:18:20,020
surrounded by the disturbingly unserious and influenced

1097
01:18:20,020 –> 01:18:23,700
by the peculiarly lightweight, how can they avoid the path of

1098
01:18:23,700 –> 01:18:27,300
least resistance and do the actual hard things, walk the hard

1099
01:18:27,300 –> 01:18:31,060
path and do it in a way that will perhaps make them happy, but that

1100
01:18:31,060 –> 01:18:34,860
for sure will create a better world. In essence, how can leaders tell the

1101
01:18:34,860 –> 01:18:37,380
truth in a time of untruth and unseriousness?

1102
01:18:39,140 –> 01:18:42,900
You want to know why some training programs in some sensitive

1103
01:18:42,900 –> 01:18:46,090
areas like diversity and inclusion don’t work?

1104
01:18:47,530 –> 01:18:51,250
They don’t work because we’re not telling the truth. We’re

1105
01:18:51,250 –> 01:18:55,090
merely passing along ideologies. You

1106
01:18:55,090 –> 01:18:58,730
want to know why books and movies that

1107
01:18:58,730 –> 01:19:02,530
have cultural tropes shoehorned into them about what you should believe or what

1108
01:19:02,530 –> 01:19:05,210
you shouldn’t believe? You want to know why those fail at the box office or

1109
01:19:05,450 –> 01:19:09,290
fail to pull ratings or fail to pull subscription numbers? Well, they fail because they

1110
01:19:09,290 –> 01:19:12,760
aren’t telling the truth. The truth is

1111
01:19:12,760 –> 01:19:16,040
complicated and messy, but it is the truth.

1112
01:19:18,200 –> 01:19:21,880
And the truth of situations, the truth of life, the truth of

1113
01:19:21,880 –> 01:19:25,520
circumstances is multifaceted. It’s not all one thing or

1114
01:19:25,520 –> 01:19:29,080
another. Everyone is neither hero nor villain. As a matter of fact,

1115
01:19:29,240 –> 01:19:32,920
Solzhenitsyn said, infamously enough, that

1116
01:19:33,080 –> 01:19:36,790
the line of good and evil passes through

1117
01:19:36,790 –> 01:19:40,510
each and every human heart. We are all

1118
01:19:40,830 –> 01:19:44,590
sinful, and we have all fallen short of the glory of God.

1119
01:19:44,990 –> 01:19:47,790
We are all our brother’s keeper.

1120
01:19:50,190 –> 01:19:53,830
These are principles that I hold, and these principles

1121
01:19:53,830 –> 01:19:57,670
undergird this podcast, and these principles undergird the books that

1122
01:19:57,670 –> 01:20:01,310
we read on this podcast. I do not come

1123
01:20:01,310 –> 01:20:05,150
to this work from an unprincipled, wavering Cultural position.

1124
01:20:05,230 –> 01:20:08,100
I actually care very little about

1125
01:20:08,740 –> 01:20:12,580
that. I care very much though, about rock ribbed principles

1126
01:20:12,580 –> 01:20:16,260
and making sure that you all understand exactly where we stand

1127
01:20:16,260 –> 01:20:19,820
and where I stand over here. And

1128
01:20:19,820 –> 01:20:23,540
leaders, leaders have to be clear about where

1129
01:20:23,700 –> 01:20:27,540
they stand and where they stand and stay on the

1130
01:20:27,540 –> 01:20:29,540
path based on principles

1131
01:20:31,540 –> 01:20:33,860
rather than on temporarily held positions.

1132
01:20:36,830 –> 01:20:40,590
You want to stay on the path as a leader? Start saying

1133
01:20:40,590 –> 01:20:44,430
no. It’s very simple. Just start

1134
01:20:44,430 –> 01:20:47,710
saying no to a lie that you know is a lie. And it doesn’t have

1135
01:20:47,710 –> 01:20:51,470
to be a big lie, it doesn’t have to be a medium sized lie.

1136
01:20:51,630 –> 01:20:55,070
Usually the lies you have to start saying no to are lies in your own

1137
01:20:55,070 –> 01:20:58,670
house, lies in your own business, lies in your own

1138
01:20:58,670 –> 01:21:01,370
relationships, lies in your own communities.

1139
01:21:02,570 –> 01:21:05,850
Say no to lies and say the truth.

1140
01:21:07,370 –> 01:21:10,810
That is true liberty and that

1141
01:21:11,050 –> 01:21:13,290
is true free speech.

1142
01:21:14,730 –> 01:21:18,370
Sure, the humorists and the politicians

1143
01:21:18,370 –> 01:21:22,210
may want to own that space, but it really begins the

1144
01:21:22,210 –> 01:21:25,370
ownership of that space and the protection of that space really begins with you.

1145
01:21:29,220 –> 01:21:31,700
And then there’s the ever present now, right?

1146
01:21:32,740 –> 01:21:36,340
Staying on the path requires rational engagement with the ever present

1147
01:21:36,340 –> 01:21:39,700
now, as well as intentional preparation for the ever

1148
01:21:39,700 –> 01:21:43,460
arriving future. The future is coming,

1149
01:21:43,940 –> 01:21:47,780
no matter how you feel about, is

1150
01:21:48,020 –> 01:21:51,540
agnostic to your emotions, but it is not

1151
01:21:51,540 –> 01:21:55,230
agnostic to your preparing for it.

1152
01:21:56,670 –> 01:22:00,470
And so staying on the path requires that rational

1153
01:22:00,470 –> 01:22:04,190
engagement. And the only way you can rationally engage is if you have the freedom

1154
01:22:04,190 –> 01:22:07,750
to speak the truth, if you have the freedom to

1155
01:22:07,750 –> 01:22:11,030
not worry about being thrown into a

1156
01:22:11,030 –> 01:22:14,630
gulag for pointing out that the emperor, whether the

1157
01:22:14,630 –> 01:22:18,350
emperor is the emperor of Amazon or Walmart, or the

1158
01:22:18,350 –> 01:22:22,070
emperor of the United States or China, or the emperor of the

1159
01:22:22,070 –> 01:22:25,020
bank down the street and or the emperor of your family

1160
01:22:25,580 –> 01:22:29,140
pointing out that the emperor, wherever he may show up or

1161
01:22:29,140 –> 01:22:32,860
she may show up, pointing out that they are naked while

1162
01:22:32,860 –> 01:22:34,940
everyone else claims that they are clothed.

1163
01:22:37,980 –> 01:22:41,020
Staying on the path requires leaders to engage with ideas, words,

1164
01:22:41,740 –> 01:22:44,300
speech, and concepts that they might find to be

1165
01:22:44,860 –> 01:22:48,620
personally objectionable, but that

1166
01:22:48,620 –> 01:22:52,230
in principle must be aired to protect

1167
01:22:52,230 –> 01:22:55,750
one of the two types of diversity that really actually

1168
01:22:55,830 –> 01:22:59,350
do matter. And that’s diversity of viewpoint.

1169
01:23:00,310 –> 01:23:02,710
And the second is diversity of mindset.

1170
01:23:04,070 –> 01:23:07,790
We all don’t think alike, nor should we. We all

1171
01:23:07,790 –> 01:23:11,510
don’t have the same viewpoint and nor should we. And we need the

1172
01:23:11,510 –> 01:23:15,190
freedom to air our viewpoints and air

1173
01:23:15,190 –> 01:23:18,420
our mindsets without fear of a

1174
01:23:18,420 –> 01:23:22,260
totalizing ideology clamping down on us.

1175
01:23:25,540 –> 01:23:29,100
Staying on the path means that leaders are emotionally and psychologically prepared for the

1176
01:23:29,100 –> 01:23:32,580
consequences of speech against the potential

1177
01:23:32,580 –> 01:23:36,020
totalizing power of the mob

1178
01:23:38,180 –> 01:23:41,740
and that’s really what you’re all afraid of, isn’t it? You’re afraid of the

1179
01:23:41,740 –> 01:23:44,190
mob. Well,

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01:23:45,230 –> 01:23:45,950
don’t be.

1181
01:23:49,310 –> 01:23:51,390
The mob is fickle.

1182
01:23:52,990 –> 01:23:55,790
Julius Caesar found that out.

1183
01:23:58,670 –> 01:24:00,270
Leaders protect free speech

1184
01:24:02,670 –> 01:24:05,550
no matter where it shows up.

1185
01:24:09,160 –> 01:24:11,240
And that’s it for me.

1186
01:24:13,800 –> 01:24:17,080
Listen and subscribe to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast

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the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. Look, we

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need those reviews to grow and it’s the easiest way that you

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tell all your friends if you want to get

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started down the leadership path. Our products at from

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So check out our training webinars, our coaching services and

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we’ve got books that will help you and your team grow. So pick up a

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copy today of my boss doesn’t care 100 essays on disrupting your

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Workplace by disrupting your boss. And subscribe to the Little

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Red podcast we launched earlier this year with the same name

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as this Little Red book, my boss doesn’t care

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100 essays on disrupting your Workplace by disrupting your boss.

1205
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And of course pick up my Most recent book, 12 Rules for Leadership

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the foundation of Intentional Leadership, written with Bradley

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Madekin. You’re going to want to pick up a copy of that in April

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2022 and you can get both of these books in

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paperback, hardcover or as ebooks on Amazon,

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Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and any other place you

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order books on demand. Finally,

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we are on YouTube. Or I’m on YouTube. Or someone around here

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is on YouTube. YouTube. So like and subscribe to the video

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version of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast on the

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HSCT publishing channel on YouTube. Just search for

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subscribe button to get updates. Every single time we upload a new video,

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which we do that at least once a week and

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subscribe to the Hay Sans Sorrells Presents Audio Experience podcast.

1220
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Yes, I have three podcasts on YouTube where I

1221
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talk more casually with a wider range of people

1222
01:26:27,010 –> 01:26:30,770
about all matters that matter in the world today. Everything

1223
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from fatherhood to criminal justice, Christianity to artificial

1224
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intelligence. We cover the entire plethora of things

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that are floating around in my mind and that’s why it’s called

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an audio experience. Alright,

1227
01:26:45,610 –> 01:26:47,650
well that’s it for me

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01:26:49,090 –> 01:26:49,490
out.