I've just finished listening to a twenty-five minute interview of the Ayn Rand Institute's Board Chairman Yaron Brook. The interview was conducted by an Englishman named Thor Holt. I have never heard of Holt, but he does a good job given the limited time available.
The first fifteen minutes of the interview provided me with some brief, false hope. Holt asks good questions and Brook actually sounds reasonable. The first part of the show is dedicated to Brook explaining the rudiments of Objectivism. Holt hasn't studied the philosophy and doesn't have any critical follow up questions. So, Brook handles this part of the interview well. He then is asked about his book Equal is Unfair. He presents the standard liberal argument that it's irrational to expect equal outcomes based on the free choices and actions of unequal individuals. Although, it was rather churlish of Brook to not even mention his co-author on the book Don Watkins.
Brook makes a few surprising remarks on the current refugee crisis. At around the eleven minute point he says that "I don't believe in mass migrations." He elaborates that it's absurd to expect countries to take-in and absorb such massive influxes. He even states that Africans have a "responsibility to bring about a free society in Africa" in order to make it a place worth living in. So far so good. The first half of this interview is the most reasonable Brook has ever sounded in all the lectures I've heard from him. Alas, it is not to last. At around the fifteen minute mark, he goes off the rails.
Holt asks Brook about his travels around the world giving lectures on Objectivism and capitalism. Holt specifically brings up Brook's recent visits to Hungary and Red China. In response, he extols the virtues of the "vibrant" Chinese people. He is effusive in his praise of the hard-working, brilliant Chinese. He criticizes the Communist dictatorship. However, the nature of Red China's Communist regime has not prevented him from supporting "free trade" with this odious and dangerous tyranny.
Brook has nothing good to say about Hungary or its people. Although he has visited the country on two occasions, the ever churlish Brook doesn't mention his hosts or qualify his condemnation with some positive statement on the place or people. What set Brook off was Holt's statement that many Europeans believe that the rest of the continent should follow Hungary's example for dealing with the "migrant" invasion. Brook's not having any of that and launches into an amazing diatribe beginning at around the eighteen minute point. Only an extended quote can do it justice:
"If you want to be poor. If you want to have no free speech. If you want to have no independent media. If you want elections to be rigged by an authoritarian. Hungary's the way to go ... No, Hungary is anti-Western. Hungary represents everything the West is opposed to. It represents authoritarianism. It represents ethnic tribalism, really ... It's not a police state yet. But, it has all the characteristics of a country heading in that direction ... He [Viktor Orban] uses the threat of the immigration to clamp down ... If you think about Hungary, Hungary was never at risk of being flooded with Muslims. All those Muslims [were] coming in to Hungary to get to Germany. Not a single one of those Muslims wanted to stay in poor, pathetic Hungary ... Nobody wants to be in Hungary."
One thing Hungary also doesn't have is massive Moslem rape gangs and constant jihad attacks upon its citizens. Of course, freedom of speech is under much greater attack in Western Europe. The governments of England, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands are at war with free speech and political dissent in order to suppress their own people's desires to emulate Hungary's immigration policy.
Yaron Brook stated his opposition to mass migrations. But, any country (except Israel) that does anything to stop such invasions will earn his undying enmity.
Original post here with links: https://militaryreviews.blogsp...
Interview here: http://writewithcourage.libsyn...