Discussing Roger Scruton's "How to be a Conservative"

We are live now on the conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host John Harris. We have a discussion today on a book called how to be a conservative by Roger Scruton and This is a book that I read well I actually listened to on audiobooks the first time around a few years ago and it was I think the second or third Maybe a second book I had read from Roger Scruton.

I also watched his documentary I think I was the first introduction I had was his documentary. I Think it's called why beauty matters and Roger Scruton is a philosopher he knows a lot about political philosophy and writes about it, but I think he's probably more prominently known as a I don't even know what the word would be like someone who knows about beauty and And architecture and those kinds of things aesthetic I don't know if it said assist is the word for it.

But that's the branch of philosophy that he's into aesthetics more than anything else. But he's become he's not around anymore. He died a few years ago, but he's become somewhat of a major figure on the right and He's he has a broad appeal.

So people who even consider themselves neo-conservative some of them even like Roger Scruton. But I think he's more often categorized Among more old right paleo conservative types, although he's British.

So the politics is a little different in Great Britain than it is in the United States but he's very smart very honored today in conservative circles and I've heard someone I don't remember who described him as a modern Edmund Burke.

Like if Edmund Burke was around today he would probably sound somewhat like Roger Scruton and of course Edmund Burke by is considered by many to be the father of Political and and maybe even cultural conservatism.

So that's his importance. He was also a Christian. He was an Anglican I thought he was a Catholic but I looked it up before the interview just because I wanted to make sure or the or the discussion and he was a member of the Church of England and Actually wrote books about the Church of England and that does come through a little bit in this particular book.

So it's one of many books. It has like any book It has some weaknesses, but it has a lot of strengths and for me I'll just speak for myself first the strength that I thought that I that was in it and the reason that I wanted to discuss it is because The chapters I'll just read for you.

The chapters proceed this way. He gives a personal story His kind of political journey, but then he starts off with Chapter two starting from home talks about home being the basic political unit and then The next chapters are the truth in nationalism the truth in socialism the truth in capitalism the truth in liberalism the truth in multiculturalism the truth in environmentalism the truth in internationalism the truth in conservatism and then he's got three chapters to close the book that prescribe in more detail what he would recommend for society, so What you'll notice in those chapters is he takes a lot of ideologies and social movements and some of them aren't even associated with conservatism or conservative thinking and he says there's actually some truth in this and this helped me see something that I was already coming to understand but that a Lot of the isms out there and an ideology would probably a better word a lot of the ideologies out there that are very rigid that Really don't adapt to circumstance that well that boil everything down into basic premises and very basic principles and don't see the whole picture.

We would call those ideologies that each one of those things generally gets something right somewhere along the line they're tapping into a truth, but they dismiss a whole lot of other things and and So I think Scruton helped me understand that actually the conservative instinct can look at something even something like environmentalism and see that there's actually Even in that there's a truth Really, we would call it conservation probably in the United States, but there's a truth Implicit in or a good motive that some people might have in that movement to want to preserve Nature to preserve their communities and the pollution that they see happening but the problem is they make it into an ideology and they want to force it upon everyone and they want to make it they want everything to be related to this and they want the government and international governments in the case of Climate change in those issues to make decisions and force them upon everyone else so he gets into the problems with modern environmentalism, but to pick that just one example, he shows that there's actually something there and so Conservatives today.

I'll be brief here to say I Think most quote-unquote people on the right in conservatism in the modern sense tend to also be ideological whether that's in a libertarian way where they look at free markets and individual choice and and the liberal society as the as really the high point and the thing we should all strive for and it doesn't matter if Local communities are out of step with that.

We just need to force them to conform or there tends to be a if it's not libertarianism you can have even kind of a Soft, I guess the only word I can think of is like socialism. It's a soft socialism or slash fascism that Exists in certain quarters of the right that has the same problem where it will take perhaps the people or the state and make them inflate them to a Level of importance that doesn't really belong to them and so it ends up doing the same thing and Squashing traditions and local communities that have taken time to develop and to develop some true and valuable things and so Christianity obviously plays a part in all of this as it's developed in the United States and in England our common laws and The really the social mores by which we operate and of course, the church has also played a very prominent part in society and These other ideologies don't seem to have a place for the church.

And so this is a book that helped me understand in its fullness What conservatives what conservatism or is how it's an instinct and the importance of place? So anyway, that's my little intro to why this is important to me and what I think that maybe you can glean from it And we'll discuss it as we go on.

So to join me. I have my father Scott Harris he's a pastor in upstate New York, and then I have my brother David who is a ESL teacher in Tennessee and they This is the third one I think right we've discussed two other books if I'm not mistaken try to remember now.

Oh, I have you on mute. I'm sorry. Hold on. I Was wondering why I couldn't hear what'd you say David?

We did the ideas have consequences and then we did the Christian and civil government. Oh.

The Pierre Baret, I was forgetting about that one. That's right. All right, so this is the third one so I guess I'll just ask you both for your general impressions and then we can talk about maybe specific things that Were eye-opening and Applicable to people in the United States today who are Christians.

So why don't we go with you first David?

Sure, so I'm gonna tell a story really quick that kind of highlights The impact that a book like this had on me and this is directly related to ideas of consequences. So So I'm a teacher. I still am a full-time teacher doing a lot of extra things on the side, but when I started my career full-time teaching when I was 22 I taught history government and economics and I was teaching for a private school in New York and I had a lot of Chinese students that were coming over To do like the foreign exchange program.

Only one way I've actually never seen an American student go to China for that, but it only works in one direction but these Chinese students were over here and There was one student I had that was really interested in Economics and government and I was teaching You know, I I was on a steady drip of Ben Shapiro at the time.

I listened to Ben Shapiro every single day I was reading a lot of Thomas Sowell, which you know still love Thomas Sowell, but you know I was getting a very very sort of I guess normal conservative kind of I was reading the things that I was hearing on Ben Shapiro and just kind of that's where I was getting a lot of my Perspective when I was teaching economics and government and this particular student He was actually the son of an undersecretary for a provincial governor and one of the larger provinces of China so his dad was kind of a big deal in China and He sort of came to a place where he had made a profession of faith in Christ and He was we had a lot of conversations.

We got to go on a trip to Washington DC Together and at the time I was teaching him economics. So he was in my economics class and so we were kind of talking about communism and capitalism and at the time I had been using a lot of libertarian sources for my Teaching because libertarian libertarians produce really high quality like John Stossel, you know, they the the libertarian YouTube channels and stuff.

They produce a lot of high quality content that are really easy to use in the classroom. So that's kind of what my students were getting influence with and the student told me he said, you know Mr. Harris, I Think that capitalism works better in China.

Because the government can just make it happen better and I kind of looked at him like confused and I was like, no, no. No, that's not what I that's not where I wanted you to go with this like I wanted you to believe in personal responsibility and free market system and you know kind of go through the you know and Constitutionality and all these things and that was the first time where I realized That our two different cultures meant that we were going to come to different Places and assessing these economic theories and so when I read ideas have consequences.

That was kind of the first it was around the same time and that was like, oh, all right. So clearly economics is not all there is like everything does not just boil down to economics like culture is important, too.

So this book and I know we're gonna get into the specifics, but this book when I read it. I was like, oh This is that like this is what I was missing. This was the missing piece. This is why culture matters.

This is why people matter and why politics is about people not about systems merely so and how system serve people not just people serving the system, so.

Yeah. Yeah. One person said what's good for the market isn't always good for the people and. Yeah, so. So dad, what is was your overall impression?

Well, I read it last year and then I've read it again in the last week and I I took quite a few notes here so. Well, you may not. Don't expect we'll get through all of it. The first read through I was confused.

I agree with you that I like the how it is approached to say here's a truth and then Demonstrating how it was taken beyond that or twisted or perverted by Some other group into something that it's not and he does that with every chapter that part.

I really like I Did notice right at the beginning. Okay, he's Anglican. His father was in the Liberal Party until he ended up having to defend some things as local hometown labor. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Labor Party. I'm sorry and He was born 1944. So he ends up being influenced by liberals in college, but there was that home aspect that got him to move towards conservatism. And even more so I I got more.

Is that right at the beginning? He says he is going to be focused throughout the book on the empirical manifestation of conservatism. And he's not going to deal with the metaphysical aspects though. He mentions a lot of that actually throughout the book.

And definitely is an Anglican that doesn't necessarily believe scripture. So, I don't know if that's high Anglican or exactly where he is. But I found his comments usually ended up going against what we would conservative Christians in America are.

Especially more in the fundamental Direction Evangelical would understand Christianity to be and I found it kind of undercut him in quite a few places in his argument because he ends up with a different foundation even.

You know we get to the end of the book that he ends up with a conclusion that I find as it actually isn't very conservative. So I will probably have some critique throughout of it. But it's my critique is going to keep going back to there's a better foundation than what I think he was trying to lay and so it definitely shows the influence he had from His education philosophy and other things interesting he had mentioned that he had gone and study for bar and that's what actually gave him a real good understanding and a love for English common law which he talks about throughout the book too, and it's important.

So there's a lot I think you can't pick up from them. But like any book I think you need to be a little careful in discerning see where the strengths and weaknesses are. But I would overall agree with your your initial assessment.

Yeah, I didn't pick up where he had said he didn't believe in Scripture. He uses a lot of biblical imagery and stuff. Yeah and Yeah, and I mean I caught where in the preface he said he talks about. Or is it the preface or maybe it's the first chapter I think where he he says he kind of alludes to maybe Christianity's not necessary for he says actually it no way depends how it's on page 17 having said that I Acknowledged that the conservative philosophy that I summarized in what follows in no way depends on the Christian faith.

The relation between them is subtler and more personal than that implies. But the thing like if you read what he says before that though He he's arguing that his conservative philosophy is rooted in Christian teaching.

So yeah, whether it's Christianity or not, he and he admits this at multiple points later in the book and and it seems to me to that he's contrasting with Islam because if the context at the time is You have a lot of these Muslim immigrants coming in and so he's got to deal with this somehow and contrast what makes us different than the Sharia law.

And and so. It's worth giving him a little bit of grace just because he died in 2018. So he didn't get to see the the 2014 book was written. Yeah.

So yeah, I wonder if it would have been a little different had he written it now. But he certainly there was a point later in the book to it towards the end where he laments how Christianity leaving the scene is going to create all these problems and disrupt our communities and.

So clearly he thinks Christianity is necessary in some way, even though he says That it doesn't depend on the Christian faith. I Wondered whether he worded that poorly and maybe he meant that it's it's more than It.

So it's not just the Christian faith as like in the way you would think of Islamic Sharia law where it's just a top-down. Everyone's forced into conformity where where this is more broad prudential judgments that are made on a local level and the law is then Distilled and applied through culture right to the a Christian.

Yeah, right the end the book in his conclusions. He'll make a case that his understanding of Christianity is that it actually will submit itself to secular law to the state and View that as higher. So his understanding there is definitely skewed by the Anglicanism.

And I agree with you. He's definitely reacting to Islam that keeps popping up of what he sees when he talks about religious. It is a it's Islam and the Sharia law that he has seen that that's negative.

He definitely was affected. He went to Czechoslovakia in 1979 and That affected his understanding of communism because he saw it firsthand and the oppression. So I again I'll say there's a lot I think you can glean from this but be discerning and and careful.

Like yeah any book? Well, we will go through it sequentially then and start with maybe chapter 2 since. His personal story while somewhat interesting isn't really his argument. The first chapter. Well, I guess I'll ask this first.

What was your favorite chapter and where did you think he made the best case? And then where did you think he made the worst case? Like what was your least favorite chapter?

Chapter 2 is my favorite. So my favorite chapter at least the one that kind of hit me the hardest. Was the environmentalism one?

Chapters that chapter. Oh, I actually.

Possibly my least favorite. Yeah, I have the most highlighted there. I have the most circled. I think because I was thinking a lot about that when I was reading.

Actually multiculturalism was my least favorite. So Environmentalism though was not my was it wasn't up there in my mind.

But yeah, my least favorite was the one where he was talking about when he was doing kind of comparative Islam and Christianity. I thought it was kind of confusing but.

Yeah. Environmentalism, you know, it only speaks to people in Michigan. In our country really probably we don't have the the Islam that is so prevalent now where I think it was. Last month Westminster Abbey actually flew an Islamic flag in celebration of Ramadan.

Yeah, so I was in London. I've been to London once and I I Was only there for eight hours. I took a train into Paddington station, which is right in the center of London and I got out and I walked. I just picked a direction.

I like I like to travel without plans. So I just walked in one direction and I within about 15 minutes I felt like I was somewhere in the Middle East. It was just a chilly version of the Middle East. Everybody was wearing you know Islamic garb and It was really really weird so I walked the other direction.

Until I got to roughly Buckingham Palace around that area and it was very different but and that was over 10 years ago. So it's only it's it's increased tons since that tons since he died like England is way more Muslim now than it was before he passed away.

Yeah. So, all right. Well dad, what was your. If you have a favorite and a least favorite chat? I'd probably like chapter 2. Giving that.

Kind of blend together the understanding of the importance defending your home. He makes that statement early on of Everybody's conservative when it comes to something they know that's what they want they want to preserve what they know and Could be liberal on other things, but they preserve their own home, even if they won't let anybody else preserve theirs.

So I think he made a good case. I thought his One on internationalism was probably the weakest.

Yeah. Yeah, that was a that was another one. It it seemed to get a little weaker as he went like That yeah, this chapter 6 seemed like his last best chapter and then they're all good. But yes, if they get a little weaker alright, well starting from home then is the second chapter, but it's the first one where he makes his argument and He says on Page 20 the error of reducing political order to the operations of the market parallels the error of revolutionary socialism.

I thought that was fairly provocative, especially if you were to walk into the blaze or the Daily Wire or Salem Network any of the large conservative talk radio or media companies and you were to say this they would probably look at you funny because You know even listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for years how often do you hear the term free market and that being the main dividing line between liberals and conservatives and what he's saying here is actually if you make the market.

If you treat it like a god and make its operations The whole point and purpose of the political order then you're really not much different than Revolutionary socialism, so I don't know if any of you want to expand on that, but I think that's kind of a red pill or a fourth for the younger people, but it's it's a.

Eye-opening moment. Yeah, I have this highlighted because that that was this was the first place in the book where I was like, oh Okay, that yeah, that makes direction. It actually makes sense and it kind of fills in that I Even going back to when I was teaching there was something about teaching economics that felt so incredibly Indifferent just everything comes down to market forces every assessment of somebody's worth is on their market value and I mean, I I still believe in free markets.

I think it's a good it's a good system. It's it's it's just natural. It's kind of the way that God Made us and I do think that it's it's the only system that really uses man's evil in a for good, but I Hadn't really ever heard.

I guess that's why Scruton is is kind of special in my mind because he Like you can read most conservative. You know any pop conservative book that's coming out today you won't get this like you're not gonna hear this you're gonna hear well Here's why the you're just gonna get a series of systemic arguments.

Here's why this system is better than that system. That's about it. And this is kind of where he's getting to it's actually about people and he says that in the same paragraph Burke saw society as an association of the dead the living and the unborn.

Yeah, so and and that you know, it's like how do you make the argument for why you shouldn't rip down a monument? Based on just market forces, you know. Because well, this isn't gonna be good for the market in the long run.

So yeah, I think this is a really strong.

I think that's why Nikki Haley actually took if you want to Put the genesis of the monument craze ripping them down in her lap, which I think you can. You think it was like 2003 when she took down the flag over the Confederate Monument in South Carolina Statehouse and that was her reasoning if I remember correctly that was that we want investors and People from the north and people from other parts of the world to invest money in South Carolina.

And this is a detriment to that that that was at least what she said as I remember at the time and so she used a market argument and of course you can use you if you apply the free market to social issues like marriage then or Sexuality in general then you come up with what we're facing now, right?

So there has to be a limitation somewhere or a moral conscience. So I don't want to do all that speaking though.

That's why I thought that chapter 2 is probably one of his past chapters because he explains that I liked his character homo economicus. Yeah. All right. We'll give this guy a name. Because from that he's just going to keep going through and through the rest of book.

He's going to keep hitting this is that this idea of free market you do whatever you want, whatever the market bears. How are you make your decisions of the idea that it is maximizing your own utility regardless?

The cost the rest is poor. And so the statement he makes about it's those in the past those were dead and those unborn your decisions have to include those but that means there has to be societal traditions that you were following there has to be a Something that ties the past.

Nikki Haley's decision was made because she's not a southerner. She has no idea the history. She rejects all that stuff because that's not who she is. That isn't something that belongs to her. So she rejects the history of the South but also then cuts it off from those who are coming in the future the unborn so she makes an economic decision of something she thinks good for a state and loses the culture and That too many of the things that people who claim to be conservatives.

They miss that part of it because they're not tied to something stronger and I think he makes a very good case throughout that whole chapter. One of the things he states he'll deal with this later conservatism about making oikos the home the family.

That is the foundation of society. That's a keen insight. We'll bring that out later. It makes it really stronger. He talks about social contracts the paradigms of Obligations that we have which really should be the basis of law and he'll make that case later, too.

Which means I am a member and I have relationships with an agency. And then that extends to the future generations as well. So I really do think this is probably the strongest chapter which you keep springing up and a lot of the other stuff I think he brings up in the book emphasizes Coming back to these basic principles.

He says on page 25 that in contrast to homo economicus We must love the best our love and desire and things to which we assign an intrinsic rather than an instrumental value. So that the pursuit of means can come to rest for us in the place of ends.

That is what we meant that mean by settlement putting the oikos back in oikonomia. And that is what conservatism is about so he's essentially saying That economy the word economy comes from oikonomia and the oikos means home.

And that conservatives are invested in putting the home at the center of the economy and that the economy exists to serve A place and and that's the end. It's it's a means to an end. That's what the economy is.

It's not an end in and of itself and that's the mistake I think more libertarian ideologies that place the market as supreme make when they they say that The free market can is the solution for everything or they want to apply free market Solutions to every problem and there's some problems that do not have free market solutions because people choose evil and people don't value the right things and and so I I think to it's important maybe to Create some parallels that I don't think he does it wasn't his purpose, but he doesn't do it with what scripture says about these things.

I When I read scripture, I think it's assumes this that It doesn't assume an economic system. It talks about private property being important, but the commands that are given to different relationships within the home seem to assume the unit the basic unit of a family and the importance of Preserving that and making that successful.

And so I think this is right in line with what the Bible would assume and What traditional cultures have really always assumed until about five seconds ago, I suppose.

It'd be nice if all the libertarians would read at least this chapter. Yeah.

If you want to skip the whole book and just want one sentence, it's basically libertarianism is really stupid. No, it's not.

Not really stupid. It's just got it. It lost its foundation. Libertarianism. Yeah.

The third chapter is called the truth and nationalism and This one the title I suppose would be controversial in some circles because nationalism now is viewed as. Well, especially I'm thinking Christian nationalism in Christian circles is viewed as a dividing thing a Terrible movement by some and then a great thing by others.

But he obviously lived before that became the debate in the American context.

Is this is this where cuz on the first page of this chapter, right? He says You know post-world War two a kind of consensus emerging Among a new political class. Is that did he coin that term?

I don't know if he coined it I think most people Get it from a book called the return of the strong gods by Reno Because he talks a lot about the post-war consensus, but that book He does after that was written after that.

Yeah, this book predates that so I Tend to think that this was a just a known thing that there was a new establishment after the war or a new understanding That Nationalism was a bad thing. But to be honest with you.

It's we say post-war consensus and You think World War two, but really this goes back to Wilsonian League of Nations stuff that it's been with us for a while I suppose so. But yeah, I caught that too that you know on Twitter especially now people talk about the post-war consensus all the time and And Scruton is accurately describing what they're talking about here but I guess that does kind of bring us into what nationalism is to Roger Scruton, he's talking about a System or a it's not a system.

I shouldn't say that but it's really a more of a natural outgrowth of the way that people Associate with each other they tend to do so in groups and one of those larger groups is nations and That Nations are actually a part of he doesn't say it this way.

I wish he did is one of the this is what the thing I think is missing from us much of the book if I Had to add something. The natural order really is because what he's saying.

Exactly that way. It's page 32 a couple quotes there. One what nationalism he says as an ideology is dangerous in just the way that ideology dangers it. Occupies a space vacated by religion. So there's that tie back you recognize it, but then going down the same paragraph.

Ordinary people that's you and me and that's me. Living in free association with their neighbors the nation means simply the historical and the continuing allegiance that unites them in a body politic right.

Anything.

He says on the next page He kind of defines the nation-state because he says as we now can see that the is the nation-state is the byproduct of human neighborliness shaped by an invisible hand from the countless agreements between people who speak the same language and live side-by-side, which I Highlighted that because like you said John I am an ESL teacher.

So I teach English as a second language and It's chaotic when you take a bunch of people who don't speak the same language and just insert them Into a culture in society and just say well, you know, this will work.

Doesn't work and language is I think language is the most important thing probably binding thing. If you don't have communication, you really don't have anything, right?

Yeah, he definitely emphasizes language and region in the whole book. He trends to Try to. He like Lenny. He doesn't use the word lineage I don't think anywhere in the book. And when he talks about race, he just says that that's not equivalent to nation which.

Yeah, go ahead. Someone. Yeah, he does do that. That's later in the book in this case. He says, let's see page 34. He talks about ethnic religious minorities from in this territory they have adjusted to the nation-state so he's even though he's writing from Europe he's writing about the u .s.

And what has happened here. Well, he says in the beginning of the book in the prologue.

He says I'm writing this primarily for the English-speaking world. So this whole he says this whole argument is for English speakers. Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of it seems like it's it's geared toward the United States, but I guess it fits England as well. Same pit 34. Unless that and until people identify themselves with the country its territory and its cultural inheritance.

And something like the way of people identify themselves with the family the politics of compromise will not emerge. And that politics of compromise. It's what he's going to keep arguing is what's necessary for conservatives to function.

Which maybe at the end we can talk about whether that actually is still a viable. Yeah, I have my doubts a little bit but. That's that's the mechanism he wants. So I was just gonna say on the race thing though that I think this is probably.

Where I I don't know if I'm where he is exactly or not as far as. Like I always viewed and I use the word lineage on purpose because I think of it right what he said in chapter 2 that you have a bond with the past and the future and That only comes from some kind of a lineage that has like uses the Constitution.

We the people he says what people and it's obviously Ourselves and our posterity. It's the people who are gonna come after us and you can. Immigrants can come in and be part of that it as long as they adopt.

He says later in the book the sacrifices or the the cost the social cost. They're not just you know get given free rides, which is what's happening in the United States. So, I mean, I like that word and I consider that to be part.

I suppose of a culture like you could have Two people two groups of people living side by side that share the same genetics by and large. But they they might speak different languages or they might be part of different Lineages and that like one uncle went one way and you know a lot in Abraham and so the lineage to me is the important part and I was just gonna say that I think.

The debates online right now about they're not really debates, but they're the freakouts that people have over quote-unquote kin ism. This is kind of what I would want to say to them something that scrutiny is saying where he's saying that.

It's more complicated than that, it's not you can't just take a genetic test to find out if you're like someone but. Because because there's language and there's region and there's these other factors a religion really too I mean he kind of alludes to it, but doesn't want to say it.

But but I would put lineage in that category. So when he does talk about religion usually his critique is a A Sect of religion that everything has about of that sect and that it would be a well that was a problem in England.

You know here. Yeah, the Puritans are a negative example to him.

Well, because it's the same time you had those still pushing Roman Catholicism like Charles the third and stuff that was driving the Puritans and the Presbyterian doubt. Right in the 1600. So there's a negative there.

He sees a negative Islam of this. But at the same time if you don't have a national identity of religion. You've already lost something your culture. England was able to move forth as it had a national identity as a Christian nation.

America did the same thing in the u .s. As a Christian nation now that that's being lost part of our culture identity is lost. Who are you as a people? So there's some of that you're talking about lineage, but a lineage can also be from the spiritual standpoint.

I have Adopted into it in in Christianity, of course, that's being adopted in the body of Christ, but in Nationalism in America it would be as Emmerich comes in and adopts in. Identify not just what's currently here, but adopting the history of saying yes.

George Washington was a great man, and I'd like to emulate him and you know, I'll name my children after him.

He'll name him George. Well, he does talk about that the The myths in 38 the importance of myth. He says the myth of sacrifice has given way to the myth of emancipation and the history books rewritten yet again.

But he talks about the importance of these myths and so before Great Britain would especially during colonial times took a lot of Inspiration from these myths these stories of courage. I mean and it doesn't mean it's not true.

It just means these are Important stories that were supposed to point to something higher and. And then he says and it same things happen in the United States now it's the myth of emancipation it's and he says Britain now this history of Britain begins with the Emancipation of the slaves and moves the emancipation of the workers and so this is the myth that's keeping them Somewhat I suppose stable and joined to each other and he doesn't argue this but I would argue and they probably would agree with Me that that's actually a much weaker National myth.

Actually, he does argue this. I don't know if it's in a chapter though, but he does argue that. Yeah, that that's sort of that's a negative. These are negative examples and you can't draw the same kind of inspiration that you do from positives.