Enlightenment Ideals + Objectivism = Second Renaissance

Foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, today is a very special day for Martin and I. It is our 100th

episode of the Secular Foxhole podcast.

So congratulations, Martin.

Yes, congratulations, Blair.

Yay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Soon to be published.

And that's a milestone.

That is a milestone.

I know.

Hopefully you'll get it out tomorrow.

But my fourth, that'd be wonderful.

I know you're busy.

Yeah, I will do that.

So we could celebrate for Independence Day and

we'll talk a little bit about that today.

And we have had guests that have been very

knowledgeable in this area,

and we try to come up with different for this hundred episodes and Independence Day.

So. And we will continue with this.

And I also will then talk about the future

scheduling and publishing and also call some call to action and some statistics and also

doing some talk list, so to speak.

And we could talk about it, but I see that every episode have been important and

interesting to listen to and especially with guests.

And I think.

And you and I have had some new sandwich and

topics and.

Yeah. And we hope you listener out there have enjoyed it.

So.

So kick it off.

Blair, about your thoughts about this day.

Right.

This again, I wanted to do this episode.

I want to echo the Objectivist conference that's being held right now in Boston,

Massachusetts,

where they are integrating Enlightenment ideas and Objectivism.

And hopefully if those two ideas,

as far as the Enlightenment ideas, if they are reintroduced wider in the culture and if

Objectivism also dovetails, that.

That it'd be wonderful being our lifetime.

But eventually it would lead to a second

Renaissance,

certainly in the United States.

But I wanted to go, okay,

yeah, you will continue.

But I will say that the Independence Day is very important day.

And I think now it's interesting when it's in Boston, as I've said it in previous episodes,

that the Boston Tea Party, the.

That should be also a holiday Remembrance Day,

because that was the kickoff, you could say that ignited this.

That will come along some years later.

You know, I really like that idea, Martin.

I think that I'm not sure how to start a groundswell movement to get the idea across

to.

Yeah, that could be a challenge.

But.

Yes,

but the Boston team,

the ship there, for example, now it's the museum.

It's now up and running again.

I remember I visited that in 98 at the

conference there.

And I think it was.

Yeah. And.

But then over sometimes, over some years, it was in.

How to say.

In.

It was closed for.

I think it was for planning, probably.

Remodeling or whatever, restoration, things like that.

Yes, certainly.

Yeah.

Yeah, well,

yeah, that's, I, I, I wholeheartedly endorse that idea to make that a national holiday.

So. But again, I wanted to, I, again, I'm,

I'm not an expert on the Enlightenment, but I wanted to kick off the show with a tribute to

that era and talk about four or five key figures from that era that have contributed

mightily to the United States and to Western culture in general.

But let's, I want us, of course, John Locke, I think, is the central figure.

He advocated for natural rights,

the rights of life,

liberty and property,

and he laid the groundwork for liberal democracy,

which we have today in most countries.

And I want to talk about another figure of note would be Adam Smith,

the father of modern economics.

He certainly championed free markets in the wealth of nations, although, again,

I think his drawback was that he tied it to altruism.

And we have,

although I am not a fan of this gentleman,

Jean Jacques Rousseau,

he promoted the idea of the social contract,

which I think is part of our constitutional heritage.

And then there's,

and again, I do not include,

although he is included in the Enlightenment era,

I don't include him.

And Mishran does not include him.

Immanuel Kant,

he is considered an Enlightenment philosopher, but I think it's widely seen by Aristotelians

like us that he aborted the Enlightenment with his Critique of Pure Reason.

And we have to also pay tribute to Thomas Paine.

He called for a revolution and he called for individual rights in his books Common Sense

and the Rights of Man.

Do you know if that statue is now erected and foundation.

We have talked with Thomas Paine institutes and defenders of Thomas Paine and in different

ways.

Right. No, I, you know, I didn't have time to look that up and I should have.

That's okay.

So that's something we'll do in the future when we have either the Free Thought

people or the Thomas Paine Institute people back on with us.

Y.

We will, we will see if that statue is prominent to wherever that was going to be

unveiled.

But I also.

Go ahead.

Yeah. What now, I interrupt your thought, but I saw in the program on Okon, one

figure there was Franklin.

Ben Franklin.

Yeah. I think talking about.

Also.

So.

Well, certainly he and Thomas Jefferson and obviously most of the others brought the

Enlightenment ideals to the American Revolution.

I'm, I'm starting to read more about Mr.

Franklin.

I think he's very fascinating and often overlooked.

And I think that is that I, the little I've read so far has kept my interest and I, I will

Continue to,

continue to find interesting books about him.

I think he also wrote an autobiography, so

that has to be, that has to be on my list.

But other, again, there's some other great figures from the Enlightenment.

Voltaire comes to mind.

He is a fierce critic of religious dogma and

he was staunch advocate of freedom of speech.

And although I didn't know this, Montesquieu introduced the idea of the separation of

powers in government, which has served us well at least until the last few decades here in

the United States.

But and also Enlightenment thinker Isaac Newton, although he was a scientist, I think

his ideas shaped, they were fundamental, they shaped civilization.

You know, they shape the modernity, if that's the right word.

Let's go over some of their major achievements.

I mean, obviously I want to talk about John Locke in 1689, his Two Treatises of

Government,

where he discussed natural rights, again, life, liberty, property.

And obviously that inspired the Declaration of Independence.

And then Montesquieu in 1748, the spirit of the laws again shaped the US Constitution with

our separation of powers.

What else? Voltaire, Candide, I read that many, many

decades ago and it was a satire but,

and good, it was good stuff.

But again, a social.

Jacques Rousseau with his Social Contract,

he was certainly an Enlightenment figure, but I,

I,

I'm not again, I'm not a fan of his.

And of course, Adam Smith, the Wealth of nations was still, it's still read widely read

everywhere.

Then we have the Rights of Man and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man and his common Sense.

Those are bedrocks or they should still be bedrock if, if they've been probably in our

Marxist universities have been long forgotten.

But again, so what needs to happen to finish the Enlightenment in the American Revolution?

I mean, we,

to rekindle the Enlightenment and to finish what they started with the American,

those men started with the American Revolution.

And that we come to Ayn Rand and her obviously her philosophic achievements,

her incredible novels,

her philosophic achievement of some of the highlights that she brought to the forefront.

I want to talk about,

I'm going to borrow this from Dr. Harry Benzwanger's book,

Ayn Rand's Philosophic Achievement.

He lists six things that she six landmark achievements that she introduced to the world.

The primacy of existence.

In other words,

existence is the base of knowledge and the act of grasping that implies that we exist and

that we know we exist because of our conscious minds.

I think that's a very poor way of describing and maybe you can do better,

Martin, but the next Thing he enlists is her theory of concepts, which concept formation,

abstractions,

epistemology, I believe is the best way to cover that subject.

How we know what we know.

And her theory of free will, which I think is revolutionary,

which is,

if you will, the freedom to think or not to think or the ability to think or not to think.

And I think that once that kicks in in culture, that'll be amazing.

And another achievement that she gave us was include man's life,

your own life, as the standard of morality.

You have to understand this revolutionary concept that you don't serve others as your

primary goal in life.

You exist to pursue your own happiness.

Yeah.

Put that in as a key thing in when we did this declaration,

the pursuit of happiness.

It's no guarantee, but.

And then of course about property, for example.

Yes, well, unfortunately they left that part out, but that was it.

So there was again these things.

I know that.

Again my experience with introducing her novels to as many people as I have.

Again, of the 40 plus people over the years that I've introduced her stuff to, only one or

two have rejected it.

So again, I hope that her ideas continue to grow.

I think that what the institute is doing is incredible and I hope they get to continue on

that path.

But in summary, I guess that's my,

that's my echoing of the.

The actual conference that's going on in

Boston right now.

Yeah. And there.

And there we have it.

That's good.

I got from one of listeners,

Roland Horvath, he said Bradley Thompson's lecture in the revolutionary Revolutionary

Constitutionalism was definitely highlight.

And now Brandon Leesy's lecturing on the grandfather of Atlas Shrugged plot idea Ms.

Rand had when she was 18 was a precursor of.

Adler shrugged.

So he's there in Boston at a conference.

Roland Horvart,

one of our listener loyal listeners and true Appreciate that.

And we'll hear more of that later on.

And as I said right now is many institutes,

think tanks and others that are trying to spread the good word.

So that's good.

And I was thinking about the place in Boston and you walk this.

Is it called the Freedom Trail in Boston?

Yes, yes it is.

And a bit to be joking, but also be serious at the same time because I like

microbrewery now.

It's a big brewery, but you know, Samuel

Adams.

Yeah.

And John.

It had this connection there with John Adams.

It's interesting to see how it that Freedom Trail and with people who traded and joined

this fight to become independent from the.

Especially from the King in a way that also

could Be,

you know, a warning sign to think so.

Not the president is starting acting like a king also.

That's something to think about.

Yeah.

That was one of the important thing, I think that was that they didn't.

They were so afraid about it.

So they didn't for a long time.

And still is that you're not,

you don't have the right to become a president if you're born in a foreign country.

Is that true still?

That's still true, yes.

And in a way, if you are American in spirit like me, you should be able to become a

president of American spirit, United States of America.

I think I don't,

you know, strive for that,

but I know why they had it because they were afraid that it was some infiltration or some,

you know, British spies or whatever you want to call it or that tried to do a coup or take

power.

Yeah. So. So I understand the history historical thing and that would be interesting

to know if it was any fear or real danger of that could happen.

But also now not take it for granted.

Now Americans celebrate.

What do they celebrate and what we see here now with the presidential powers and how they

want to change and whatnot.

So you don't act as this kingpin and starting to do things that way or not we the people

anymore.

It's something else.

And that's important to spotlight and point out,

I think.

Oh, it's most certainly.

Yes, it's most certainly important.

I think that the hidden aspects of the big beautiful bill that was just squeaked by

apparently last night have gutted people's protection against government encroachment.

Again,

he is Trump is.

I fully expect these ICE raids to not only continue, but grow in intensity,

sadly.

And as I said in our last podcast, today it's the Venezuelans, tomorrow it'll be atheists.

Yeah.

Unless this is stopped,

we'll see what will happen.

Luckily, and I don't know when was that from the beginning that the president could only

sit for two periods or in total eight years.

Yes, it was.

But FDR was the only one that.

I'm jumping to a totally different topic here.

Maybe we could invite the expert on that.

I was thinking now on a trial and a case, a

euro.

And how important is that you should have

people in the uri that is so called or should say they don't have any.

That they are how to say pressured or in some way.

So I would like to talk about that and get more insight and information because it's a

case right now.

You wonder what's going on it was like this

how to say artist music artists that have been on a trial here and it's very hard for them to

get you remember because everyone knows about this person so it's hard for them to set up.

I'm not sure what you're.

What is this PDD or what is called.

Oh, okay. Sean Diddy Combs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So. So I would like to.

I mean because it.

The good thing with America is this balancing system of powers but also what have happened

in.

In with different legislation in even recently

and so on.

So. And also what's going on in the belt wave and the pressure groups and whatnot.

Yeah.

So.

But still we should celebrate on, on on this day and I wanted if you.

If that's okay we'll do soon a wrap up but we are toggling away here and going have around

seven listeners or downloads every day.

In total it's like 11,000 or something like that that have listen in downloads and like

6,000 unique listeners.

That's great.

And my call to action is to go to TrueFans FM and register for free.

And then you could support us in different ways.

You could become a fan of a podcast.

You could donate monthly amount.

You could stream satoshis, you could send booster grams or super comments,

et cetera.

And now we have an iOS Apple app in the Apple

App Store.

So go and download TrueFans FM if you have an

iPhone and the Android will soon come also.

So I think that is a great,

great news here.

So I will do a listing of so called top list, maybe 10 or whatever in downloads and we could

have some personal favorites and so on and do like a playlist of that the listeners out

there because now 100 episodes.

Do you have a favorite? Do you have several favorites?

What are we missing?

Who should we have as a guest in the future? Any topic you want to discuss or listen to and

whatnot.

So yeah.

And again, how could you celebrate

Independence Day in different ways?

Yes.

Well, I know for myself I'll probably read some of the Declaration and I'll probably read

take the Ayn Rand lexicon and go through that not only on about America but about other

things that'll pop up like you know,

individual rights and so on and so forth.

But I had something in my mind that I wanted to mention real quick.

Oh.

As far as going forward,

I want to introduce our new logo and I've been, I've been trying to figure out how to

put that on on the blog.

Yeah.

So I'll. When once I figure that out.

I'll put that out there.

And I think we should use that new logo.

Okay.

From now on.

Although obviously we can interchange.

Yeah.

Because I do like, I mean I sort of designed first one and then you had the artist

make it better.

Yeah.

And this.

But this I will,

I will confess that our new logo is AI generated but I really like it.

And so that's something that we'll be integrating into our shows from now on.

And I have some ideas also and I think we could talk openly with that regarding new

jingle and so on.

I know Jim Johnson with created has been

looking into new endeavors and so on.

Oh cool.

I have an idea about the logo with some of the activists that we know that are skillful in

this area and we'll see what we could do.

But I like your attempt there and I like the

symbolism there with the fox.

With a microphone.

Yeah. So we'll talk about that.

And with this new Podcasting 2.0 initiative,

you could have different chapters as it's called like section in a podcast.

Like we have a new segment, you have a guest, you, you could have some call to action and

then you could in every segment that you think could be separated like a book, a chapter, you

could have an illustration.

So that's something, something we could try to incorporate.

I, I want to find the podcasting flow for that when, when you work with editing and post

production and how could you add chapters?

But I think that could be for example, when you have an author you could have book covers

and a link directly to the book and, and whatnot.

Right, right.

So. So I want to look into more of that in, in the future.

So and also that we could say that for the record, I mean we have.

I've said that we now with 100 episodes we have roughly had and published a new episode

every two weeks like on bimonthly or fortnightly scheduled.

But sometimes have been a bit far.

Oh yes.

Lately it's because sometimes it has been several episodes per month.

So I would say and that we could so called promise to do it at least once a month now

when we have done reach this milestone.

But we will hope to do it more often because sometimes we get this so called catch up

effect with lots of guests in the pipeline and that what I want to also introduce an

onboarding guest, future guest and old guest on these true fans and value for value model

because then the guest could get us added to the split.

Well that's great.

That's right.

So we will continue with that.

Anything else you Want to say no, no.

I will email you the show title and yeah, a couple of notes I want, I also want to

point out to you Martin, and to our listeners.

The Institute is publishing pamphlets lately back.

In the old day I had pamphlets.

This is their latest one.

Okay.

Why can't professional philosophers get Rand right by Mike Masda?

Well, that's a good one.

And it's 40 something pages.

30 something pages.

Let's see.

Here we go.

No, sorry, it's only.

But nonetheless it's 20 something pages of

very brilliant.

And then there's.

Could you get that? Is it buying from their bookstore or.

No, this was, this was Amazon.

They don't have Kindle versions, they have

these little pamphlet pamphleteers.

I will look into how much it will cost to send to,

to Sweden because if it's like fin book then it's not so expensive.

So that's good.

But I remember the pamphlets that they had, for example, different topics.

For example,

the reprint of Playboy into you with Rand.

Right? Yes. Yeah.

This kind of thing I still think is valuable and should be enhanced of individuals

especially at campus and at universities and schools and also to have that as this one.

Did you get it right?

Because I'm for Internet and for everything that you could find on the net.

But it's good to have something in your hand also.

And we could maybe to joke, we could maybe learn from the religious people there,

you know, they have their holy scriptures and they give something, you know, to you.

Oh certainly read here.

And we want some donation.

Right.

You know, that was a Hare Krishna thing.

They gave something free and then they waited and you could joke about.

They have,

I mean they have often their pamphlets, I don't know see how much it's in your area.

But here in Sweden, in Gothenburg, you see people from what is called both were Mormons

that they are standing with their, you know, it's the last day.

Wait.

But they have no, of course I, I used to work down in, when I lived in other parts

of the country, I, I, I, I worked downtown and I would go out to lunch and there would be,

you know, people doing that kind of thing and so on and so forth but I haven't worked in a,

in the city for so long.

I don't know if that's still going.

On or not if that's happening.

I mean I,

it's funny because again back in that time era when I worked downtown there'd be a news crew,

they did the man in the street interview and I got interviewed a couple of times over the

years about certain things.

And that was great.

That was fun.

But yeah, I haven't seen that kind of thing in a long time.

But otherwise, let me think really.

Thank you again, Martin, for all you've done

for.

For me and for this podcast and.

So you save the same to you there.

Thank you.

I hope to.

I've.

I've reached out to a couple of people, but they're both at the conference, so that's

probably why they haven't responded.

Yeah.

That's okay as far as speakers, but after the conference is overall I. I'll try to

reach out to them again, but that's all I've got.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Blair.

And have a happy independent day.

Thank you.

And celebrate and have fun and enjoy.

We'll do so re.

Read the material that you wanted and I will do that in my way also.

I mean we have had that here in Got my.

With friends like celebration with

Independence Day in different ways.

And as I said again, we have had this tradition of celebrating Boston Tea Party for

a long time also.

Great.

Great.

It's all good.

So.

So Happy Independence Day, America, the most moral nation in human history.

Yeah.

Not. Not because of our Judeo Christian heritage, but in spite of it.

Yeah. And. And we will come to.

Back to that topic also.

And as the last thing.

Robot, you know, Robert B. Robert B.

Okay.

Yeah. And they will celebrate by reading.

Yes, that's right.

Declaration.

So that's a nice initiative.

And they have done that for a long time.

And you told me about the conference.

You have that with Connecticut, right?

Yes. Yeah. They did it.

We did it for.

I know that well.

Well, I know.

I certainly know that some time ago now.

But we did it every year.

Yeah. Whether it be on Zoom or live together stand, you know, being together in outside

somewhere.

But anyhow, that was.

That was before people had to leave or move or

this or that or you know, the next thing.

So anyhow.

But yes.

So that's again, happy birthday.

Happy Independence Day, America.

Yeah.

And that's all I got.

Yep. Have a good one, Blair, and talk to you soon again.

All right.

Thanks, Martin.

Sam.