#421 Joe Lonsdale - Palantir Co-Founder Reveals What's Destroying America

I'm from the UK, you're from the USA.

What is your general view of what is happening? I know it's a huge question of what is going on with Western civilization.

You

know, I was just, when you just arrived, I was downstairs with someone, a friend of mine from the Reagan Foundation and Ronald Reagan, I think was a pretty good defender of our civilization with Margaret Thatcher.

And I think he understood a lot of the principles and values and spoke to him in really inspiring ways.

And I don't think we've had a leader for a while since then that speaks to those values in the same way.

I do think we've had leaders that are fighting.

I do think there's leaders fighting for law, the right principles.

But to really go to the core principles of Western civilization, I think you have to have an understanding of the Enlightenment.

I think you have to have an understanding of the great Enlightenment thinkers, whether it's Hume, whether it's Locke.

whether it's Adam Smith.

I think you have to understand what natural rights are.

I'm not going to even teach these things anymore.

You have to understand what were the lessons that led the founders of America to build our government, to check its power the way it did.

Why does it matter that government power is checked in such clever and interesting ways? What were they doing? And then you have to understand going further back, what are the lessons from...

I think there's really three pillars.

There's the Enlightenment, I think it's Judeo-Christian principles and, you know, the dignity of all humankind.

I mean, Judaism was like the first major religion that kind of also gave it to Christianity and others.

The idea that we are created in the image of the divine, that each human life truly matters.

Because if you don't have that, then you have Roman gladiator battles, which might be awesome, but it's not my values.

I'm not going to bring people fighting to death.

I mean, I get why it's cool.

I have all the Roman stories.

But I think these values are important.

And then you have classical civilization.