← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
This Is What Happens When We Worship Victims Instead Of Heroes | Douglas Murray - PT 2
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- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
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- [00:31]
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- [00:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Book with vrbo I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to my incredible conversation with the relentless truth seeker and best selling author Douglas Murray. We're tearing off the veil and getting to the truth about Israel, Hamas and the future of the West. In part one, we laid out the raw facts of what happened on October 7th. But in part two we get into the ideological fallout, how elite institutions are failing, why cowardice is masquerading as compassion, and what happens when the west loses its moral compass. Douglas not hold back. And this half of the conversation may be even more incendiary than the first. Let's jump right back in. All right. By way of over simplifying this ridiculously so I do want to reveal my thinking on this, which is the closest thing that there is, I think, to solving this problem long term is you have to get everybody in the region to focus on making my child's life better in this life here on earth better than mine, and that their kids have an opportunity to make their lives better than their parents. And so when I look at this again, knowing this is oversimplified, but believe that this is the thing that you can begin sort of pulling things apart until you don't have the revolutionary spirit and until people go, I want my kids life to be good here on earth. I don't see a way out of this. But if you do solve that now, you at least have a North Star that forces you to ask, okay, what has done that around the world? And you end up, even if you want to Go to just the Chinese system where it's still authoritarian, fine, but it's like, okay, we're gonna turn the economic engine on and off as we see fit. But like, we get that that's how you get people out of poverty. You give them this goal oriented mindset and now things begin to work. That feels like again, recognizing it is oversimplified, but nonetheless is true. If they were running that algorithm, they then you at least begin the very long slow process that has led the Western world over time to correct the wrongs.
- [03:04]
Douglas Murray
I agree, and I think it's unlikely. But yes, any system of thought that, any system of morality that seeks the improvement of, I'm trying to keep away from any theological or political language, but seeks the improvement of the lot of the next generation would not indulge in what Hamas and others indulge in. I think this is the same with, I think that is one of the reasons why you can identify totalitarian mindsets and death cult mindsets is that they, they simply have demands which are so unreasonable in the present, but are also highly undesirable in the long term. They believe in our view or nothing. They believe in death or nothing. And I say repeatedly, and I say in the book that, you know, and by the way, this is, I'm not the first person to say this. Many other people, Golda mayor among them, have said this. But the moment at which there could be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be the moment when the Palestinians realize that for their children to lead better lives, they should put their energies into creating a state for their children rather than trying to kill the children of the state next door. If they put, if they had put their energies into building a state in Gaza rather than trying to destroy the state next door, the history of the last 19 years would be very different.
- [04:51]
Tom Bilyeu
When you debate people at that moment, what is their answer? Is it the open air prison, apartheid? Where do they go? Because that seems so self evident.
- [05:00]
Douglas Murray
Yeah, they do all those things. They throw lie after lie and misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. But I mean, there are plenty of Palestinians, Arabs and others who've identified exactly the same problem in their own society. That the, you know, the onus on Palestinian leaders to actually accept their Jewish neighbors, that that's not where they feel they're. They, that's not where they go. I mean, Yas Arafat, famously terrorists though he was, I mean he, he had the opportunity again and again, Bill Clinton said this recently, again had the opportunity at Camp David 25 years ago now to get 99% of what he had asked for all his life. And he walked away, not actually because he wanted that one extra percent, but because he knew that if he made an agreement he was over, he'd be over the, his own people would reject it. And this is, this is a very deep problem. And I think that it's one worth staring in the face. I'd love to see it solved. I'd love to see. I'd love to be able to dream the same dream that many of the people in the kibbutz, the communities in the south, and indeed the young people at the Nova party dancing in the early hours of the morning. I'd love to be able to dream the same dream that they dreamed, that they always dreamed of living in peace with their neighbors. Many of them were, but they didn't get it.
- [06:48]
Tom Bilyeu
Given how much you're steered by moral clarity when you look at this moment, what's the calculus that you run? Because at the end of the day, when you look back all through human history, you, the only way that you're going to get peace is if you win a decisive military victory. Now that doesn't stop you from having insurgencies, that is for sure. But that's just how these things have been settled all throughout human history. You just break the will of the other side to fight. And when I look at what's going on in Israel, Gaza, I think a lot about America. And so for people that don't know their own American history, and I'll give it to you in the world's tiniest nutshell, we run up on a country that already has people on it. We, through disease and warfare, knock out the first group and then we get to basically Mexico, but it's in the form of California, et cetera. And President Polk is like, yep, I want that too, and has his run of four years and literally displaces them. And his own generals were like, this is a stain on America that we'll never be able to wash off. But hey, don't worry, people have very short term memories. We've washed it off and now we have a country. And the crazy thing is when I say that, I'm like, like that's so icky. And yet if, if China rolled up on the California coast where I live, I would fight. So I'm like, okay. And I would fight and I would be screaming from the rooftops, decisive military victory. So when I look at Israel, I'm familiar enough, obviously people could drag me into the weeds and be like, I don't know, but I'm familiar enough with the history to know that there's a very similar rollout that's like, hey, if we can get enough people here to this area for reasons that obviously make all the sense in the world Post World War II, like, we've got to go somewhere. They go. And at first it's like, well, now we can be economically powerful, we can start being politically powerful. And you just get to the point where you've got enough people that you're the dominant culture at that point, and then from that you end up building the state. And honestly, man, when I look at the uk, I'm like, guess what playbook is being run on you guys? It's that playbook. You've got a bunch of Muslim people coming in, they're not assimilating. And, and on a long enough timeline like that, just seems that's a question of demographics. Who's having more babies, uh, and then what are they teaching their children? If they teach our children English values, great. If they don't, then whatever they teach them, if they become the dominant culture, then that's what that nation becomes. And so, man, I hate to have this super detached thing because these are human lives and I, I don't want to diminish any of that. But when I look at this, the, the thinking of, okay, we've got two issues. We've got real people are dying because bombs are going off, guns are being fired. And then we have the ideological battle of, but we also want to win international support. We don't want to end up getting isolated. That's going to matter. So if you're advising Israel, how do you do that? One, two step of, okay, there are going to be people that feel some kind of way about the formation of the state always and forever, just as people feel some kind of way about the way that America started. But you're here, so now that you're here, do they not need to pursue total military victory, full stop, period, End of story. Regardless of what the international pressures are.
- [10:18]
Douglas Murray
Not totally regardless, but they need to do, as any country does, what they what is best in the security and safety of their own people. And always with that remembrance. I mean, you mentioned people coming from Europe to Israel, but only one third of Israelis are of European ancestry and descent. Most are totally indigenous to the region. It's always interesting to hear people talking about indigenous peoples. They don't talk about indigenous peoples in Britain. You notice, by the way, after the
- [10:53]
Tom Bilyeu
break, we'll talk about Europe's rising Anti Semitism and why Douglass believes it's far worse than anyone wants to admit.
- [11:01]
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- [12:02]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in. But even just to really make this difficult, and I hear you and that we, we should come back to that, but to stare at the hardest parts of this. If Mexicans, and literally I'm looking at Mexicans right now, if they came to California, not. Not came to get. They've been here forever. From an ancestral standpoint, if they were like, okay, we are not interested in assimilation anymore. We want to bring our family over. We want to de. Americanize this. We want now California, Arizona, New Mexico, we want that to go back to a Mexican state. We feel way more kinship with Mexico. I would fight against that. And I would say, hey, if you're coming to America, you've got to assimilate. But I'm not blind to the fact that we just want to won. So we won a war. And now there's a trip that flips in my brain that says, hey, you've got something. You've built a country here. And now it's full steam ahead. And I'm married to a Cypriot whose family lost their land when Turkey invaded. I've actually marched in the streets of London saying, you know, the Turkish troops need to get out of Cyprus. But the reality, my actual belief is like, it's. It's done. Move on to loop endlessly there makes no sense to me.
- [13:20]
Douglas Murray
I'm very glad you went on that demonstration. I feel very passionately about the Cypriot cause, and I'm always startled by the fact that the Fact that a NATO member state is still occupying half of an EU member state, that Turkey is still occupying northern Cyprus, seems to me a great injustice. And although you are about the first person I've ever spoken to in America who is marched for that cause, it stands out because you do not see American students or any massive movement on American streets saying nothing in the world will be sorted and righted until the Turks give up northern Cyprus. Nobody says that, but that's a real occupation. That's real colonialism that the Turkish government is doing right there. The thing with wars is that there is a misunderstanding in the modern age, a misunderstanding of one of many, but one of the most profound is that most wars finish with a sort of compromise around the table. And that's just historically not true. As I say in the book, most wars end because one side's won and one side has lost. There's an important follow on point, which is the side that's won needs to know it's won, and the side that loses needs to know it's lost. The only way in which we destroyed Nazi fascism was that it happened on the battlefield and on the realm of ideas. These two were as one. It was destroyed on the battlefield and destroyed as an idea never goes away completely, but is pretty much chased out. Communism was not destroyed as completely on the battlefield, but it was. And it wasn't completely destroyed in the realm of ideas. Not as much as some of us would like, but it was almost completely destroyed. The Hamas death cult ideology must be destroyed, to my view, not only on the battlefield, but in the realm of ideas. It must be made clear that any Palestinian who wants any kind of future for their people must accept the Jewish people as well, that they will not be able to continue to. They will never thrive as a people so long as they want to annihilate their neighbor. And I really hope that after this last round of conflict, which I've often said is must not be the latest Gaza war, but the last Gaza war war, not the third Lebanon War, but the last Lebanon War. My hope is that this death cult, it can be destroyed on the battlefield and in the realm of ideas. But for that to happen, the Palestinian peoples and anyone who supports them and is on their side abroad must encourage them to realize that the annihilation of their neighbors is deadly for their neighbors and deadly for them.
- [16:27]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, there's no doubt now going back to Cyprus. So I'm not sure if it came through in what I was saying. I marched in that, but I marched in that basically to show love to my in laws. And to be honest, I didn't even understand it. It was, I, I will say I felt very good about it. But the reality is now, as I get older, and I am trying to be morally consistent about how I think these things ought to go, I look at America, it took its land by force. And I love this country and am proud to be an American and just accept that this is the way of the world. And so I look at Israel, same thing, and I go, hey, it's the way of the world. They were able to, even if you're just going to give them politically, they were able to politically come in and unify the land under their banner and then win, attack. They were able to win those wars. And, and so, right. They've got it. And so to be consistent with that, when I see Turkey's been there for 50 years, I'm like, kids, it's over. Like, if you're either, you gotta fight back, which would be obviously a horrible loss of life. And I would not advise it because we're 50 years later, things have settled, people have moved on. But to continue to loop on that, like, that doesn't make sense to me. That's exactly from where I'm at. And you can tell me I'm crazy. I totally hear you on the death cult thing. It gives it a totally different energy. And if the Turks had death cult energy or the Greeks had death cold energy on Cyprus, that whole thing would be a different ballgame. But my takeaway is you fight until you're not willing to fight. And then if you're saying, all right, we're done, we're out of this, that to spend the rest of your life like in this, killing each other a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here, a little bit there, like there's, it's just no way to live, man. I don't, I, I can't wrap my
- [18:24]
Douglas Murray
head around that it isn't a good way to live. But in the case of Israel, this is, it's 80 years since the reformation of the state, the re. Establishment of the Jewish state and Jewish homeland. And if after 80 years, almost 80 years now, some people don't accept it in the west, in other parts of the west and also in the region, that is to their great detriment, because there is. The state of Israel is not going anywhere.
- [18:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Agreed. And I think they should go Ham. But my question directly to you is I see Israel in the way that I see Turkey in Cyprus, not the way That I see Greece. Do you see Israel as Greece, Greece or Turkey equivalent?
- [19:12]
Douglas Murray
I wouldn't say I see it as being either equivalent for lots of reasons. First of all, Turkish expansionism is its own thing. Turkey and the Ottoman Empire has historically been very good at expanding way beyond its borders and wishing to build up an empire. It has been historically a very colonialist and expansionist power. Although there are.
- [19:42]
Tom Bilyeu
And that's a red line for you ethically.
- [19:45]
Douglas Murray
Doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be. I'm broadly against it, yes, but I believe in nation states. But I also believe that nation states, borders can change. But you, as you say, you better be up for that if you're going to do it. Israel's borders are, are disputable in three arenas, have been disputed in three arenas, principally the Gaza, the Golan and Judea Samaria. I see all of that as stuff that can be sorted out. The Golan is Israeli, Gaza is a mess, west bank negotiate and again, we'll see. But I do think that something which everybody has to realize about the region is, is that first of all, it is the place. It is the one place that is a Jewish homeland. Muslims have many different homelands, like Christians have many different homelands. The Jews have one homeland. They're in it. And as Golda Meir famously said to Joe Biden, they have a secret weapon which is they have nowhere else to go. And the people who sometimes fantasize about Israel's enemies winning a victory over Israel should realize that. Should, should recognize that. I think it's just, it's a very strange thing. I'm glad you brought up Cyprus. It's a very strange thing the world to fixate the amount that it does on this one particular territorial dispute, which is a real territorial dispute. But it's telling that it's the one that gets the world's attention. The Western Sahara question does not. Cyprus does not. There are many territorial disputes around the world. It is a very interesting one, this one. And one of the reasons I think it is so important is because I think that the anti Israel people have chosen their target well. They have realized correctly that the Jewish state, Judaism, foundational to Judeo Christian tradition, which is obviously, whether you like it or not, foundational to the foundation of the West. They realize that if they take out Israel, they can take out something very fundamental to the West. I think they are right, but I simply don't want them to succeed.
- [22:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think of then the Israel conflict as a flag bearer for the Western world and it's like, hey, you've got this in our region. And so we're treating this like a splinter. Because literally until that sentence came out of your mouth, I would have said, certainly for my own sake, that this is about Jews and has nothing to do with Jews as representative of the West. Just because when I look back in history, I remember one of my earliest awakenings to patterns of history was my sister, who was obsessed with Russian history, was telling me about pogroms, and I'm like, why always the Jews? Like, I don't understand so. And you confront that in your book. So I suppose my, my question is two parts. One is, what's going on in Israel from an international perspective, them as harbinger of the west, irrespective of being Jews, or is what's going on over there? Jews just represent something, man, that for a long time has wound people up.
- [23:37]
Douglas Murray
I think it's both. I think since the west is based, everyone knows, on Athens and Jerusalem, you would not want to take out the legacy of Jerusalem any more than you'd want to take out the legacy of Athens. But either would be devastating to the Western tradition. And at the same time, Judaism, the Jewish people are their own thing. And they, as you say, throughout history, have come in for disproportionate amount of hatred. And as I say in the book, there are very, very clear reasons for that. And I think, among other things, that the human desire to find a scapegoat, which Rene Girard, among others, wrote about so eloquently, it's absolutely hardwired into us. The Jews are almost perfect as a scapegoat for absolutely anyone. They could be a scapegoat for the Christian world, and they can be a scapegoat for the Islamic world. They can be a scapegoat for the rich and for the poor, for the. For people of left and right politically. And I go into the reasons for that, and I believe, but I believe that the moments when societies become filled with this sort of noxious thing of anti Semitism is a thing when you can tell the society itself is starting
- [25:07]
Tom Bilyeu
to go rotten and they're looking for someone to blame.
- [25:12]
Douglas Murray
It is, as I said, it's a mirror for the failings of anyone who indulges in it. As I quote Vasily Grossman, tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll tell you what you're guilty of. You might be amused, of course, to know that that works for governments as well as for individuals. The Turkish government calling the Israelis Occupiers is one that particularly amuses me because all it does is tell us about the Turkish government.
- [25:40]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's. The whole idea of projection is very, very interesting. Why this moment, what's going on right now that is resurfacing an unbelievable amount of anti Semitism.
- [25:58]
Douglas Murray
It is, as I say, a demonstration of a failure in society and failings that are going on. I believe that the, the anti Semitism we've seen the last 18 months, it's not, is. Isn't to say I should stress, I always stress it isn't the case that any criticism of Israel is anti Semitic, but treating Jews by standards is. And I believe that much of what we've seen, not all of it, but much of what we've seen is anti Semitic. In, in its origins and its nature. I think it tells us that our societies are febrile, more febrile than we might wish them to be. And that when, as, again, as Grossman said, when systems in your own society go wrong, you search for other things to do. It's not just the scapegoat thing, but it's, it's, it's. It's startling historically to look at the way in which anti Semitism is. I mean, for instance, and we see it in America today, Jews can be hated for being rich and for being poor, for being religious and for being secular. But most interestingly, they can be hated for being absorbed and integrated into a society and for not being absorbed and integrated into a society. And that is a sign of, as I say, you can anti Semitism tells us it holds up a mirror to the person who feels it. It holds up a mirror to the failings of the personal social structure that feels it. And it only tells us about them. It tells us never anything about the Jews.
- [27:47]
Tom Bilyeu
You want to hear what Douglas says next? It's a brutal takedown of what he calls the new morality infecting college campuses and global diplomacy.
- [27:57]
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- [28:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it. I had a conversation with a guy that does a Jewish podcast, and we were talking about that. And my hypothesis is really simple. One, you have a. And the only sort of stick in the spokes is that I had never thought about how they have been historically in Europe, persecuted for being poor. But my thinking was always okay, you have a really powerful strategy, which is that you help each other. That's. That's unreasonably useful. When I think about what makes a nation work, you all work together against the rest of the world. What makes the family work, you all come together against everybody else. Makes the team work. Same thing. And so they have a tradition of really helping each other. But it's extremely hard to convert to their faith. It's not impossible, but it's very hard. So there's this sense of you're being kept out of a club, and a club that historically has been very successful so they can come into an area fleeing the previous pogrom, have to rebuild from scratch, are able to do it. I was talking to Jordan Peterson at one point, and I was like, what do you think it is? And he was like, well, they almost certainly have a standard deviation above the norm iq. And he's like, look, that's controversial, but if you have an insular group that, for better or worse, is a standard deviation ahead of the average from an intelligence perspective, and they're really good at helping each other. So now you drop them in and basically anywhere they go, they're going to be successful. And if you just understand economies, you know, you want to put yourself at the heartbeat of that there's a reason Alexander Hamilton, who was not a Jew, understood, I want to be Secretary of Treasury. Like, that's where I want to be. I'm essentially going to invent this country on the back of controlling how money works. And even saying that phrase, controlling how money works sounds evil, but read Hamilton, you'll be like, oh, damn. Like, thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude. This is unbelievable. I live in this incredible society because you had these insights into how to balance it. Like, they didn't even have the word velocity of money, but he intuitively understood the need to address that. Oh, my God. Anyway, brilliant. So they find themselves at the heartbeat of a thing that people really care about. So I look at that and I'm like, yeah, if your society is beginning to degrade, things are not going well. But you can see a group that sort of keeps you out and they're doing well almost regardless of where we're at in society. It is like this perfect storm married with what you've been talking about, about the death cult mentality that can, through time, for totally different reasons, just absolutely take over the operating system of the human mind. Utterly fascinating.
- [31:57]
Douglas Murray
My own people, the Scots, were also big bankers back in the day. And it was for reasons that the historian Neil Ferguson has written about. Scots and Jews were very similar in their organization and money. And one of the explanations for it has nothing to do with genetics or iq. It's to do with high trust. It's to do with high trusting. But you could be, if you're a Scottish banker or Jewish banker, you were in a community where if you, if you were to cheat somebody, it's not just that you're cheating them out and they could legally get you, you are going to damage your own reputation in the circuit, the community of trust. And that's not worth it anyway. However, fortunately, from my point of view, the Scottish people are not currently being held responsible for all of the woes of the world.
- [32:55]
Tom Bilyeu
That is a nice switch.
- [32:58]
Douglas Murray
Yeah.
- [32:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Now, going to put a bow on the book part of this conversation. You end on an optimistic note. What do you want people to take away from what was really. This really feels like the most honest word from my n of one experience. It was confrontational. Reading your book was confrontational. I realized how much I had pushed some of those early ideas of what was going on to the back of my mind. And I didn't want to think about them. And just carrying those through and hearing stories one after another, it really was like, oh, I'm being asked to look at evil and to ask the question, does evil exist? If it does exist, can we come up with a universal definition? And then if we all agree, even if we can't agree there's a universal definition. If we do agree that evil exists and that almost biblical dialogue is the right way to understand what's going on, how do we get on the other side?
- [34:08]
Douglas Murray
People will have to read the book to see what I think about that, obviously, and I don't sum everything up, but I do believe, and have believed even more since my reporting coverage of the last 18 months. I do believe that a force exists in the world, condescend in the world, which you can only really use the theological term of evil to describe. I, I don't believe that they're just simply people who are misunderstood. And of course that's sometimes the case. I don't believe it's just people who had bad childhoods. Lots of people have bad childhoods. I think there are forces in the world you should be able to use the dated but necessary language of evil about. It's unconquerable as a force in the world. But I suppose that, I mean, one of the ways in which people have always understood this problem is to recognize that it is something that runs through the center of every human heart. And everyone must fight their own battle with internally as well as externally. When it comes to what I really want people to take away from this, it is quite a lot of things, not just a better understanding of the areas I'm writing about, the people I'm writing about, the problems I'm writing about. But I think of a problem which I think America in particular must address. I discussed that issue of the greatest generation and the way in which everybody who came after the Generation of the 1940s weighs themselves against that generation. And we almost always presume that we will not rise to the task if in your example, California were to be invaded or America were to be invaded or. It sounds preposterous to say that, of course, because it's not something that's ever likely to happen by, by sea. Europe is in a different position now, particular Eastern Europe. The further east you go in Europe, the more people are fearing that some kind of kinetic land war is possible. Nevertheless, one of the things that I've taken away from my last last 18 months of war has been that the time of trial can come about. And some people unexpectedly rise to the moment. And they do so for lots of reasons. One is events, but another is that they are well cultured, well instructed. You know, they don't have to be well educated. They have to be well created, good human beings who orient themselves in a particular direction. And I say toward the end of the book that when I, when I've been with the young men and women who older Israelis thought had gone weak and were just wanting to party in Tel Aviv and beyond Instagram and TikTok, when this young generation stared real evil in the face and realized it had to defend its people, they have not only stepped up, they've been extraordinary. And I think constantly of their counterparts in America and Britain and elsewhere. And they've been, to a great extent, we talked about this a bit earlier. They've been indoctrinated into a. Into a culture of victimhood where the greatest victim wins, where to be oppressed is almost the greatest good. And I believe, I've always believed that this is a very bad idea. I said this in the strange death of Europe. It was an undercurrent in the war on the west and the madness of crowds. But I believe that there's an answer to this problem, and it is literally to decide whether you want to orientate your society and yourself towards courage or whether you want to orientate it and yourself towards victimhood. And in my last book, in the War in the West, I talked about the perils of the victimhood mentality. And in this book, what I finish on is the admirable nature of courage, of true human courage. And I hope that people take from the book Remorseless, though you describe it as being, in parts, a courageous and optimistic ending.
- [38:40]
Tom Bilyeu
It's one of the most engaging books you've written and I'm pretty sure I've read all the books that you've put out. Uh, yeah, it, it is, it's unflinching in something that I resonate with, which is making me look at the truth of the human condition. All I care about is accurately mapping what this life is really like so that I can navigate it well for myself. Any larger structure that I'm a part of that I can do my little bit to nudge it in a direction that makes sense. Um, yeah, it, it is a message that I think this generation needs very badly. Now, this is where my lens maybe becomes a little bit more. More paranoid than the average person. I look at the world and I, I really believe what I said in the intro. This is a period of renegotiation the likes of which no one alive has seen before. I mean, this is really, really. Everything is up in the air from what is morality? People can't decide on that. Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? People can't decide on that. How should war be played out? People don't agree on that. It's just. There's a lot of things all the way down to ought America let China simply quietly pass it economically and not ruffle feathers? Avoid Thucydides trap by accepting second place? Or do we fight back? So, man, there's going to be a lot happening right now. But there was this incredible meme that was such a Gut punch to me that your book is very much the antidote to, which is the meme was, oh, so you want to bring manufacturing back to the US and it shows these morbidly obese people moving really slowly, non dexterously on these sewing machines. And you just see a bunch of people doing that. Clearly they don't know what they're doing. They're like fumbling with, you know, like screwdrivers and stuff. And then it's like, make America great again. And I was like, oh, man, that is a little too real in terms of we've just lost that. The like, fighter spirit. The people that came and were. And I'm going to say the words that people are going to hate. The people that came here and literally conquered a completely wild land. And that sense of, like, adventure, of danger, of not being able to guarantee survival, but you had a shot that nobody was going to be able to stop you. You were going to be able to build what you could build, and if you were willing to fight for it, you could have it. And I felt that coursing through the veins of America until about maybe 10 years ago. And then it just, you could feel it, like, flagging and you're like, wait a second, what's going on? Like, you get such a different vibe from kids. So anyway, hearing your book talking about this young generation as basically the punchline being every generation will realize what they're capable of when they're called. And I certainly hope nobody's ever called. I don't want that for people. I am certainly not pro war, pro violence. I don't want to see it pro readiness, pro love of whatever team you're on. I don't expect everyone to be on Team America. I want them to be on their own team. But that, like, energy of innovation, of trying to like, really do the extraordinary, it's just I don't feel in the gas tank right now.
- [41:50]
Douglas Murray
We have been through a period of what I've described in my previous books as being deliberate innovation. Innovation that is deliberate exhausting. We've been put through a period in the west of deliberate exhausting of our energies to the most fundamental level. We've been having to spend years talking about the most fundamental thing that we knew as a species, boy or girl, man or woman. We pretended this was an impossible conundrum and that nobody could say this is deliberately de energizing. I would like to think that America is better than that and that this country, our society, can be re energized. But for that to happen, A lot of crap's gonna have to be pushed out of the way and a lot of people are gonna have to get going now with the thing they should do with their lives.
- [42:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. And we're gonna see if there's something that can be put out into the culture that's going to spark that. Certainly Trump, is the attempt at voting someone in that captures that energy. Do you think that populist figures like him and others around the world are going to light that spark, or are they a wrecking ball that's just going to make a mess of things?
- [43:15]
Douglas Murray
Sitting awfully close to him currently in D.C. we'll see. We'll see.
- [43:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. This is, this is certainly a moment. Douglas, I can't thank you enough for your time, man. I cannot thank you enough for the books you write, for the wars that you cover, and for your dogged tenacity. Now, I did promise a friend that I would ask a point blank question of you. And that friend, I'll let him remain nameless. Says, what is your favorite thing about Michael? Malice. And I just.
- [43:51]
Douglas Murray
If you gave me all day, I couldn't think of a single thing. He's a man without any qualities or attributes. It's. It's very sad for him and it's tough to watch. Many friends,
- [44:06]
Tom Bilyeu
it's tough to watch. All right, I'll pass it on, brother. Thank you, man. Hopefully this is the first of many. And I wish you the best on the rest of your book tour. And yeah, please let the people know where they can find you.
- [44:18]
Douglas Murray
Yes, you can find me on X. Douglas K. Mari, you can find me my books. All available at every place where books can still be bought. Barnes and Noble in the us, Waterson's in the UK and of course, Amazon everywhere.
- [44:33]
Tom Bilyeu
I love it. Awesome, guys. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care of.