December 6, 2024 • 40 mins
In this, the second half of our conversation with Peter Thiel, the discussion delves into Thiel’s reflections on ancient prophecies, particularly the concept of the Antichrist as outlined in biblical and literary sources. Drawing from thinkers such as Cardinal Newman and fiction by Vladimir Solovyov and Robert Hugh Benson, Thiel explores how apocalyptic ideas remain relevant today, particularly in light of global challenges like technological risks, nuclear threats, and international governance. The conversation examines the tension between fears of Armageddon and the dangers of a one-world government, emphasizing Thiel’s call for critical thinking, balanced globalization, and the need to integrate historical and contemporary insights into a coherent framework for action.
Recorded on October 8th, 2024
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>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
One of the most sophisticated men in America.
Brilliant urbane,an immensely successful entrepreneur.
One of the most sophisticatedmen in America taking ancient
prophecies seriously,Peter Thiel on Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
(00:27):
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
I'm Peter Robinson.
Peter Thiel received his undergraduate andlaw degrees here at Stanford.
He co-founded PayPal, became the firstoutside investor in Facebook and
co-founded Palantir andremains an important tech investor.
He has also established himselfas a remarkable thinker,
a self-described contrarian.
(00:48):
Peter Thiel has never proven more contrarythan in taking seriously the biblical
framework for probing the meaning ofhistory and what ancient prophecies
might help us to think,to understand about our predicament today.
I should note that although viewers willfind this second conversation interesting
(01:09):
enough on its own, I'm sure of thatthe conversation may prove even more
striking if they've alreadywatched our first conversation,
which you'll be able to find on YouTube.
Peter welcome back.
The Antichrist.
Cardinal Newman, the great 19thcentury author and theologian,
writes that it is the duty, that's a quotefrom Newman, the duty of believers,
(01:32):
quote, ever to be watching forthe end times quote.
And above all to keep in mindthe great and awful sign of which St.
Paul speaks to the Thessalonians.
The emergence of, quote,the very image of Satan, the fearful and
hateful Antichrist, close quote.
As I understand your argument,you hold one, that the prophecy
(01:55):
of an Antichrist in one way oranother remains valid or at least useful.
Two, that it remains our duty,again Cardinal Newman's word duty,
to watch forthe signs that it might emerge.
And three, that that duty is now almostentirely neglected and forgotten, fair?
>> Peter Thiel (02:15):
Yes, yeah.
>> Peter Robinson (02:17):
Okay, go ahead.
>> Peter Thiel (02:22):
I mean, there's so many different things one can say about.
There's a, I think it was Ivan Ilyich whosaid that in the time before Christ there
were many forerunners to Christ.
In the time after Christ there'll bemany forerunners of the Antichrist.
So in some sense it's a type.
So Nero was a type of the Antichrist or
(02:45):
maybe Napoleon was a typeof the Antichrist.
It's someone who aspires forworld domination,
the creation of thissort of one world state.
In some ways Alexander the Great wassort of a pre-Christ prototype of
the Antichrist.
It's very parallel to Christ.
They both die at 33.
Alexander conquers the world,Christ saves it.
(03:07):
So sort of a compare and contrast.
But in some sense the Antichristas an idea is something that
really comes into being inthe world after Christ.
And then there's a lot of thingsabout it that are mysterious.
In some ways,the Antichrist copies Christ,
the Antichrist pretends to be greaterthan Christ, hyper Christian,
(03:30):
ultra Christian, and then maybe onlyultimately, deeply anti Christian.
>> Peter Robinson (03:37):
Go ahead. >> Peter Thiel
then you can think of it as a system wheremaybe communism is a one world system.
So it can be an ideology or a system.
And then, of course,you can also think of it as Newman did,
where it's sort of the final dictator ofthe one world state, where it's still.
(03:57):
You stress it more as a person.
You can think of it as a type,a system, a person.
It has something to doin this post Christian.
It's something that's sort of apossibility in this post Christian world.
It is in some ways, and it's relatedto Christ in a very complicated way.
So the theological question you can alwaysask, is it possible to be too Christian?
(04:21):
And in theory, no.
But in practice, if you think you're moreChristian than Christ, you're in trouble.
From a prophecy 2000 years old to our own times,
you draw attention to two portrayals,
fictional portrayals of an Antichristfrom about a century ago.
Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian mystic,in 1900, wrote a book or a novella,
(04:45):
a short tale of the Antichrist and thena 1905 novel by a Roman Catholic English
priest called Robert Hugh Benson,and the novel is Lord of the World.
In both of these fictional accounts,
the Antichrist emerges as a charismaticfigure, a kind of superman.
Soloviev quote, there was a remarkableperson, many called him a superman.
(05:05):
He believed in God, but in the depthsof his soul, he preferred himself.
In Benson, the Antichrist is portrayedagain as a charismatic figure.
He becomes President of Europe.
Then in some mysterious way,he's elected President of the world.
But in both of those fictional accountsof a century ago, there's a plot hole.
(05:27):
We're not given the mechanismby which this strange
charismatic figure achieves dominance.
And your argument is, again,if I understand it correctly,
that now, today,a century after Soloviev and
Robert Hugh Benson,we can understand a mechanism,
(05:49):
we could imagine, a mechanism bywhich such a figure might emerge.
>> Peter Thiel (05:55):
Yeah, by the way, those are both fantastic books.
I have a preference for the Soloviev one.
But Benson andSoloviev are both terrific books.
There are all these extraordinary waysthat they still resonate 100 years later.
So Soloviev envisionsthe United States of Europe, so
sort of a European Union,the sort of super state, in Benson,
(06:20):
the Antichrist is a Jewishsocialist senator from Vermont.
And so I was a little bit nervousabout Bernie Sanders, but
there sort of are elements of them where.
>> Peter Robinson (06:31):
By the way,
you're not quite the only personI noticed in reading up on this,
Benedict XVI several times mentionedapprovingly the Robert Hugh Benson book.
And Pope Francis over andover again has referred to it.
So two popes and Peter Thiel.
>> Peter Thiel (06:47):
So there's some all sorts of parts of it where they have this
feeling being near great literature.
But the plot hole is sort of like,
how does this sort of worldtake over actually happen?
And it's kind of not a deus ex machina,but like a daimonium ex machina.
(07:09):
It's like the Antichrist just givesthese hypnotic speeches where nobody can
remember a word and then sort of justswindles people's souls out of them and
they submit to this totalitarian state orsomething like this.
And I think if we were to speculateon how to solve that plot hole,
(07:29):
we have an answer in the worldafter 1945 that people are.
In 1900, early 20th century, people werenot yet scared of apocalyptic weapons.
They could not imagine anything of thescale that we'd have by the second half
of the 20th century.
And so the Antichrist takes overby talking about Armageddon.
>> Peter Robinson (07:53):
Let's show this a brief video which we will edit into the show,
of course.
>> Peter Thiel (07:58):
One world or none.
>> Peter Robinson (07:59):
Exactly.
>> Leslie Richard Groves Jr (08:01):
[SOUND]
There is no
secret.
When a neutron strikes, the atom is split.
Release neutrons, split other atoms,the result is atomic energy.
(08:21):
[SOUND] Shall the people ofthe world use this energy for
the destruction orthe betterment of mankind?
>> Peter Robinson (08:35):
So that's a 1946 video.
Everything about it, the images,the tension in the narrator's voice,
the background music, is to be scary.
The choice is this or one world.
That dates from 1946, as I said.
But here's a quotationfrom just a few years ago.
It's from a paper titled the VulnerableWorld Hypothesis by the very hip techno
(08:59):
philosopher Nick Bostrom.
Quote, what is needed to solveproblems that involve challenges of
international coordination, challengessuch as nukes, pandemic dangers,
techno threats, what is neededis effective global governance.
Franklin Roosevelt designed the Unitednations to serve in some way as
(09:22):
a kind of world parliament afterthe end of the Second World War.
The United Nations didn't work.
But maybe FDR was just ahead of his time.
>> Peter Thiel (09:33):
Yeah, well, it is the same.
Look, this is the plot holein Solovyov and Benson.
And it's an interesting question.
What is the difference between,
we have this very secular language,one world or none, and
then there's the sort of overly religiousquestion, Antichrist or Armageddon?
(09:56):
And my thesis, they are somehow the same.
And if I had to say what the differencebetween those two ways of
asking the questions are,is, Antichrist or
Armageddon, it sounds likethey're both bad options.
And that way of asking the question,it pushes us to find a third way and
(10:19):
not to just steer from one into the other.
One world or none,those sound like they're exclusive, but
they're also exhaustive possibilities.
And since we don't want to have no world,we want the one world.
>> Peter Robinson (10:35):
Harvard Law School, Adrian Vermeule, wants big government.
He has already argued forcontinent-wide government,
which would represent a steptoward global governance.
And his view is that if the governmentis based on some understanding of
Christian ethics and you make surethat it reflects subsidiarity,
the principle that problems should besolved by the smallest unit possible.
(11:00):
Then big government,international coordinate,
this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
And you just don't buy that?
>> Peter Thiel (11:08):
I do not buy it.
I think, I don't know,
I'm much more in the Lord Acton campthat absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And it would be a power with no check.
There would be no outside left.
In a sense, it would be the biggest crowd,it would be the biggest bubble.
(11:29):
Probably a place where the Bible differs
from enlightened rationality.
Enlightened rationality believesin the wisdom of crowds.
The Bible believes inthe madness of crowds.
And if you have a world state that'sin some sense the largest crowd,
(11:50):
it's the whole humanityclosing in on itself.
>> Peter Robinson (11:54):
Global mob.
>> Peter Thiel (11:55):
It's a global mob.
So there are sort of are these intuitionsthat are probably adjacent to ideas about
the fallen nature of man and
original sin that make me nervousabout the one-world state.
Subsidiarity is good in theory andpractice.
The devil is in the details.
And too much of the powerhas to be at the top level.
(12:23):
If you absolutize things like climatechange or nuclear weapons control or
things like this,that has to all be at the top echelon.
It's not gonna be decidedby the city of Palo Alto or
by some kind of a subsidiary layer.
I have sort of more prosaic intuitionswhere I sort of wonder what
(12:44):
would be the marginal taxrates in a one-world state
where people couldn't move, and->> Peter Robinson: High.
I suspect they would be quite high.
It sort of would be likeEast Germany with no escape, and-
>> Peter Robinson (12:57):
You couldn't move to
Texas or Florida andget a zero income tax rate.
>> Peter Thiel (13:01):
And then I think California would push them higher, and
the US would push them higher, andthe limit of that seems quite bad.
And then, of course,if you go down the Bostrom argument yet,
you need effective global government andextremely effective global policing.
(13:22):
And so if you think aboutthings like AI technology,
it's just we have to stopanyone from programming the AI.
And so you have to, in some sense,monitor every keystroke everywhere.
So sort of something that's powerfulenough to control the whole world.
>> Peter Robinson (13:38):
So this goes back to your argument in the first part of this
conversation, that forthe first time in history,
we can actually imagine humanbeings destroying the world.
That's quite a plot.
Now, also we have the mechanismsthat would make world government.
A gigantic global surveillancestate is plausible.
>> Peter Thiel (13:59):
That seems plausible, too.
And then I think, again, to come backto the Solovyov-Benson plot hole,
on its own,they both seem not that desirable.
Why would we have a crazysurveillance state?
Why would we do this?
But if you're scared enough,
(14:19):
if you're scared enough of these things,that's the weapon.
And this is sort of where my speculativethesis is that if the Antichrist
were to come to power, it would be bytalking about Armageddon all the time.
And->> Peter Robinson: Peter Thiel,
the antichrist would talkabout Armageddon all the time.
(14:41):
He'll scare people andthen offer to save them.
Yes, it's the 1 Thessalonians 5:3.
The slogan of the Antichrist is peace andsafety,
which is nothing wrong with peace andsafety.
But you have to sort of imaginethat it resonates very differently
(15:02):
in a world where the stakes are soabsolute, where the stakes are so
extreme, wherethe alternative to peace and
safety is Armageddon andthe destruction of all things.
And then that's where peace and
safety gets you way morethan it would have in 1750.
>> Peter Robinson (15:22):
Rene Girard, in I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning,
one of his books, the Antichrist boastsof bringing to human beings the peace and
tolerance that Christianity promised buthas failed to deliver.
>> Peter Thiel (15:38):
Yeah, I think there are all these elements where
it's downstream from Christianity.
You can think of the poor shall inheritthe earth, Sermon on the Mount.
Marxist theory is, we're gonna be moreChristian, we're gonna accelerate it,
we're gonna bring it about faster.
So there is, yeah,the Antichrist probably Presents
(16:01):
as a great humanitarian,it's redistributive,
it's an extremely great philanthropist,
as an effective altruist,all of those kinds of things.
And these things are notsimply anti-Christian, but
it is always when they getoverly combined with state
(16:25):
power that something is very wrong.
There are sort of ways Christwants to unify the world.
You have the parableof the Good Samaritan,
where you should take care of peopleeven if you're not related to them.
And it's good to act likethe Good Samaritan and
to take care of people who are not justin your family or tribe, or country.
(16:46):
But then, if you force everyoneto be a Good Samaritan and
you force a borderless world,somehow it's an intensification,
but it's somehow alsovery much the opposite.
>> Peter Robinson (17:02):
Okay, Scylla and Charybdis, and we come here.
It'll take me another moment toset this up, but we come here.
We depart now from Peter Thiel's analysis,and
we come to Peter Thiel's exhortation,what needs to be done.
Step or two to complete the analysis andthen leads to what needs to be done,
(17:27):
the questions at leastwe need to be asking.
Scylla and Charybdis,Odysseus is on his way home, and
he has to sail past two sea monsters.
Scylla is a six-headed monsterwho will devour sailors.
And Charybdis is a whirlpool that swallowsships whole and then spits them back out.
(17:47):
And of course, they stand forsort of the horns of a dilemma.
That's the way Scylla andCharybdis get used the phrase Peter Thiel.
Everyone is worried about the Scyllaof Armageddon, nukes, pandemics, AI.
Everyone is worried aboutthe Scylla of Armageddon.
We're not worried enoughabout the Charybdis of one
(18:09):
world government, the Antichrist, explain.
>> Peter Thiel (18:18):
This just seems obviously correct.
[LAUGH] If you think aboutthe language that we've been
using in this program,Armageddon is not that taboo.
And we just talked about thatby referencing the newspapers.
>> Peter Robinson (18:34):
Right.
>> Peter Thiel (18:35):
We are sleepwalking into Armageddon, maybe not in the Ukraine or
the Middle East, butmaybe with Taiwan and China.
So there are all these->> Peter Robinson: Everybody
feels the dread.
We can use Armageddon, and maybe it's literal and
maybe it's metaphorical.
But that's totally acceptable.
So that tells you that'snot the thing that's taboo.
Antichrist is like, wow,what planet are you from?
>> Peter Robinson (18:57):
Right. >> Peter Thiel
the existential risks are veryselective of the sort that we've given.
And the fears about a one-worldstate are downplayed because
they are the solution to the other ones.
That is the self-governing, politicallyatheist humans governing themselves.
(19:21):
Solution to Armageddon is,it's what Bostrom says,
it's effective world governmentwith extremely effective
policing to stop dangeroustechnologies from being developed.
And to force people to not havetoo diverse a set of views,
because the diversity of views is what'sgoing to push some scientists to develop
(19:42):
technologies they shouldn't be developing.
And so we are just sogrooved to the Antichrist solution.
We don't worry about itbecause it presents itself as
the solution to all these others.
And then my intuition isthat what that tells me is
(20:03):
that we should worry about both.
But if you had to prioritize them,you should be way more worried about
the Antichrist because noone's worried about it.
And of course, I don't know how literallyone should take these biblical accounts,
but in the biblical accounts,the Antichrist comes
first because people are more scared ofArmageddon than the Antichrist, perhaps.
(20:24):
The Antichrist comes first,It doesn't quite work,
the one world state doesn't work,it still goes haywire.
Maybe you have a fantasticcommunist government, but
somehow the AI still goes mad andyou still get to Armageddon.
But that's what comes first.
As I understand it, you see three possibilities here.
(20:46):
Now we begin to movetoward what is to be done.
One is to end globalization outright,end world trade.
But that would produce a dramatical, allbut unthinkable drop in living standards.
So end globalization, butthat's all but unthinkable.
Two, permit globalization to continuein an unfettered manner, but
(21:07):
that would be likely tolead to world government.
Three, permit globalization to continue,
but only in a permissible,good, salutary way.
Limited, tame it, make sure itnever supplants nation states.
Peter Thiel,our only chance of achieving good
(21:30):
globalization is to becritical of globalization,
to recognize the narrowness of the path,Peter.
>> Peter Thiel (21:39):
Well, the way I would frame that is it's certainly
hard to see how things can workif we completely deglobalize.
If you go back to this worldthat's completely separated and
with no trade, no flow of ideasbetween different parts of the world.
>> Peter Robinson (22:02):
Eliminate the Internet and container shipping, and you've got it.
>> Peter Thiel (22:07):
I don't think that's easier said than done.
>> Peter Robinson (22:09):
If much, yes.
>> Peter Thiel (22:10):
It's easier said than done.
But then, it's precisely because wecan't simply turn the clock back on all
globalization that we end up having whatI would call this Stockholm Syndrome.
And is globalization more good than bad?
(22:31):
Is it just of a corruptracket where North Korea
exports plutonium andcounterfeit $100 bills and
imports Swedish prostitutes and whiskey or
whatever they import?
If you have this view that,no globalization can't be an option,
(22:54):
you will have two Panglossianview of globalization.
This is my critique of the Fukuyama,Clinton, Bush, WTO.
>> Peter Robinson (23:03):
The New World Order, free trade, it'll all take care of itself.
>> Peter Thiel (23:06):
It was always abstracted.
Everything takes care of itself.
It will all work out for the best.
And at a minimum,you need to just always think,
there are somany bad forms of globalization,
our only chance of getting to a goodone is to realize how tough it is.
Maybe we should have trade treaties,we should negotiate them.
(23:27):
They should always be negotiated bypeople who don't believe in free trade.
If you have someone lives in free trades,we don't need to pay attention to
the details,it always will work out for the best.
So, yes, there's a way I think oneshould try to negotiate these treaties.
But you always want someone on your sidewho deeply doesn't believe in it and
(23:49):
who is going to hold out forall sorts of terms.
And that's sort of how wemight get our way through,
but, But yeah,I think we had all these versions of this.
I think there's the strange Chimerica,the sort of mythical fusion of China and
(24:12):
America that is maybe 28years from Bush 41 to Obama,
from something like 88 to 2016.
And yeah, we don't wanna goto a nuclear war with China,
we don't probably don'twant to go to a major war.
But it's a very complicated wayto manage this relationship.
(24:35):
And simply the Panglossianintuitions that everything
will automatically work outprobably don't quite make it.
There's always a book I liketo reference from 1910,
the Great Illusion by Norman Angel.
This is a pre-World War I book, 1910.
And it is the world is connected throughtrade and finance that there cannot
(24:57):
be a world war because it would justdestroy more than it would create.
And it was massive bestseller in 1910.
Angel actually gets a Nobel Peace Prizefor the book in 1933,
even though sort of spectacularly wrong.
But one of the lines in it was Britaingoing to war with Germany makes as much
(25:17):
sense as London invading Hertfordshire,the adjacent county to London.
And it was just the stock market wouldgo down, more couldn't do this and
everyone would lose,and yet that happened.
And so, the sort of glib globalizationI think is not gonna work.
And we need to just ask a relentlessnumber of hard questions about it.
>> Peter Robinson (25:40):
Got it.
>> Peter Thiel (25:42):
But then yes, it's always in the details.
I think we have to find some way totalk about these technologies where
the technologies are dangerous.
But in some sense it's evenmore dangerous not to do them.
It's even more dangerous to havea society where there's zero growth.
(26:04):
If we go full on with the clubof Rome limits to growth,
we have this fully Ludditeprogram that again,
my intuitions is that that willend very badly politically.
It's gonna be a zero sumnasty Malthusian society and
it will push towards somethingthat's much more autocratic,
much more totalitarian,because the pie won't grow.
(26:27):
People will be much nastier.
>> Peter Robinson (26:29):
So what you're asking for, well, okay, so
let me ask what you're asking fora little bit here.
You said at the Cambridge Unionearlier this year that you were
going to stay out of politics this time.
So I won't ask you about politics exactly,but you are arguing
that we should be supportingcandidates who put America first.
(26:54):
Is that roughly where we're going here?
Skeptics of free trade, this all tendstoward one side of the political argument?
Or are you simply, is this an X or 2?
Are you aiming your?
Are you aiming this at universities andsimply calling for
renewed, far more practical debate,far more alive,
(27:16):
to the dangers that we now face that havenever been faced by humanity before?
>> Peter Thiel (27:22):
Well, my starting answer for all these things is always,
surely the first step is to thinkabout these things really hard.
And->> Peter Robinson: Ask the questions that
are not being asked.
Ask the questions that are not being asked questions that
are not being asked.
Maybe the way I framethem are too dramatic.
But if that's what it takes forus to ask these questions,
(27:43):
that's better than being stuck in,
I don't know, in some weird,silly groundhog day game.
I think my intuition is the stakesare very high, the political
stakes are high because there are a lotof crazy things that can happen.
(28:03):
It's hard to evaluate which ofthese candidates are better.
It's not just about the price of eggs or
marginal inflation rates orthings like this.
It is about maintainingfreedom in the US and
also not sleepwalking into Armageddon.
>> Peter Robinson (28:27):
Peter, I have a confession to make.
In my mind, when you firststarted talking about Scylla and
Charybdis, this analysis, I wronged you.
I thought to myself,this is Peter being Peter.
He loves building intellectual models,
he has the kind of mind that goes inthat direction Hegel, Weber, Strauss.
(28:52):
Reality is of second order.
The real importance here is the model,the intellectual model,
because you enjoy it for its own sake.
And I do think that you do have a mindthat looks for structures and frameworks.
All right, but here, then, I come acrossthis passage from our old friend Rene.
This is Rene Girard in 2009,
(29:13):
the more probable the apocalypse becomes,the less we talk about it.
Therefore, we have to awakenour sleeping consciences.
And I thought,this is not a game for Peter.
You are taking, this is serious to you,you believe that.
You see questions that need to beasked that are not being asked, and
(29:37):
you are trying to awakenour sleeping consciences.
Will you accept that compliment?
>> Peter Thiel (29:43):
I'll take that. >> Peter Robinson
you'll accept that confession.
All right, so, Peter Thiel,I'm quoting you now.
What I hope to retrieveis a sense of the stakes,
of the urgency of the question,the stakes are really, really high.
It seems very dangerous thatwe're at a place where so
few people are concerned aboutthe Antichrist, close quote.
(30:05):
Yeah, it's all the reasons we've gone through.
>> Peter Robinson (30:07):
Okay, what kind of response have you been getting,
by the way, you haven't written a book.
I understand you're thinking about a bookon this, but you haven't written it yet.
You're still going throughvarious iterations,
talking to small groups of people.
I heard you give a seriesof talks on this.
What has the response been?
>> Peter Thiel (30:23):
It's certainly.
It takes a while for people to get intothe frame and then people are extremely
engaged and there is,it's not like the anxiety doesn't exist.
It's not like people think everything
(30:46):
is quite as normal as it should be.
And then I think the point of it isnot to be in some sense defeatist,
this is just inscribed in the future.
The point of it is to startthinking about what can be done,
what some of the choices are.
(31:08):
And Antichrist orArmageddon, that framing,
we can envision a third way,one world or none.
That's pretty hard toenvision a third way.
And so, that's where I thinkthe biblical language,
it sounds crazier, butit's actually more hopeful.
(31:28):
One world or none, those are the twooptions if you're a political atheist.
>> Peter Robinson (31:32):
Right.
>> Peter Thiel (31:33):
We have human self-government or human self-destruction.
And it's a choice of two incredible evils,and
I don't think these things are,I'm not a Calvinist.
I don't think these thingsare determined- Predestined.
(31:54):
Predestined, I alwaysbelieve there's a space for
human agency, For us to shape the history.
And the first step has to be not tojust bury our heads in the sand or
whatever the equivalent is.
>> Peter Robinson (32:10):
So, the United States, two quotations, Ronald Reagan.
It's always been my belief thatby a divine plan this nation was
placed between the twooceans to be sought out and
found by those with a special brand ofcourage and love of freedom, close quote.
So, could it be that the United Statesis itself a catacon,
(32:32):
a restrainer, a force that by itseconomic power and military might and
the example it sets to the world,holds back the chaos?
I would like to believe that, you andI aren't that far apart in age,
we both grew up when the countrystill worked under Reagan.
Here's the second quotation,this is Peter Thiel, quote.
(32:55):
One obvious candidate forthe antichrist is the United States.
>> Peter Thiel (33:00):
Well, I think the US- >> Peter Robinson
breaking my heart, please.
I think the US is a natural candidate for
both, and certainly the Cold War history,49 to 89,
I think Christiandemocracy was catacontic.
I think anti-communism was
(33:20):
the supranational ideology
that stood against the one
world state of communism.
Again, this is very speculative, but
if you think the one worldstate is a military power,
(33:42):
it's a financial, economic power,somehow an ideological power.
There still is a natural way where ifthings go wrong in the US it would
be the fulfillment of FDR's vision ofthe New Dealers running the world.
And sothe US is ground zero of globalization and
(34:03):
it's ground zero of the resistanceto bad globalization, we're both.
That's why it matters so much,
the President of the United Statesmaybe is the catacomb,
maybe it's a type of antichrist,but presidential elections matter.
They don't matter,President of Europe, and
I think the intuition that theymatter in the US is correct.
(34:26):
I'm not saying that will be the case forall time, but
certainly second half ofthe 20th century and still today.
>> Peter Robinson (34:34):
A couple of last questions here, Rene Girard, again,
in 2009.
Quote, to make the revelationwholly good and
not threatening at all,to eliminate this fear, this dread,
humans have only to adopt the behaviorrecommended by Christ, close quote.
Rene himself, as you know,
(34:54):
ended his life as a very devout Catholic.
Has this analysis had any effecton your own religious life?
Or is it in some way a kindof cop out to say, no, no,
all we need to do is all practicepersonal holiness as best we can?
>> Peter Thiel (35:14):
Girard always said you just need to go to church,
and I try to go to church.
>> Peter Robinson (35:22):
[LAUGH] Rene would be very happy, somewhere he is pleased.
>> Peter Thiel (35:29):
And then at the same time I think that there
is some part of it that is political, or
social, or something like that.
And maybe it's always a way in which I'm
not as much of a saint as I should be, but
(35:53):
I keep thinking we have to also try.
I wanna always try some of both,both the personal and the political.
I think Mother Teresa wasa greater saint than Constantine.
But there's still a part ofme that has a preference for
the Christianity of Constantine,we still need something like that.
>> Peter Robinson (36:15):
All right, Revelation is a very frightening book,
in my judgment.
In any event, we've got plagues andbeasts and the end of the world.
But at the very beginning,I went back to prepare for all of this,
I went back andlooked at Revelation again.
At the very beginningof the vision that St.
(36:36):
John describes in the Book of Revelation,here's what we get.
Then I turned to see the voice thatwas speaking to me, and on turning,
I saw one like a son of man.
His voice was like the sound of rushingwater, and his face shone like the sun.
When I saw him,I fell at his feet as though dead.
But he laid his right hand upon me,saying, fear not.
(36:59):
Fear not I died, andbehold I am alive, close quote.
So what are we to do with this fear not?
You've mentioned this a number of times,this notion.
It's always the problem intrying to understand history.
What's going to happen nomatter what we do, and
(37:20):
what scope is there for personal action?
Fear not is an injunction in the bookof Revelation from Christ himself.
So Christians are meant totake it very seriously, but
you could easily take it as a kind of,it'll all work out.
There's nothing I need to do.
There's nothing any of us need to do,it's out of our hands, it'll all work out.
(37:44):
What do you do with fear not?
>> Peter Thiel (37:47):
Well, this is sort of starting to get way, way,
way above my theological pay grade.
But I think it means something,I think God will work it all out,
no matter how bad the choices are we make.
And so in some sense, in the end,God will work it out.
(38:12):
And then at the same time, I'm notsure that we should always be looking
at it from God's point of view and from ahuman point of view Human agency matters.
It surely matters a lot.
>> Peter Robinson (38:25):
All right, last question.
Let me quote you one final time.
Quote, maybe people think about this stuffa lot more than they let on, close quote.
So what do you have to say tosome bright 20-something who
does think about this stuff?
What should some young American read?
(38:47):
What should he or she do?
What advice about how to lead a good life
when we think we may bein the end of times?
What advice do you have fora young Peter Thiel?
>> Peter Thiel (39:03):
I'm always so bad in this department, but-
>> Peter Robinson (39:06):
Stumble through it.
>> Peter Thiel (39:09):
I think if it's too high a lift to go to church or
something like that.
I would say that it's important to try to
find a way to integrate your life to just
fragment in all these different ways.
(39:32):
And to integrate the knowledge,to connect what we think is
going on in your life with history,with our society.
We need to somehow not have thispostmodern MTV like incoherence,
and there's some way thatasking these questions,
(39:53):
we need somewhat more integration.
We need to somehow pullthings back together.
It's what the universities weresupposed to do, don't think
they will do it, but you have to figure->> Peter Robinson: After years of
deconstruction, you're calling foran act of reconstruction.
Yeah, it may not happen, the progressive cult that
is the university, but still it isreally a time for reconstruction.
>> Peter Robinson (40:17):
Peter Thiel, thank you.
For Uncommon Knowledge ofthe Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
[MUSIC]
One of the most sophisticated men in America.
Brilliant urbane,an immensely successful entrepreneur.
One of the most sophisticatedmen in America taking ancient
prophecies seriously,Peter Thiel on Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
(00:27):
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
I'm Peter Robinson.
Peter Thiel received his undergraduate andlaw degrees here at Stanford.
He co-founded PayPal, became the firstoutside investor in Facebook and
co-founded Palantir andremains an important tech investor.
He has also established himselfas a remarkable thinker,
a self-described contrarian.
(00:48):
Peter Thiel has never proven more contrarythan in taking seriously the biblical
framework for probing the meaning ofhistory and what ancient prophecies
might help us to think,to understand about our predicament today.
I should note that although viewers willfind this second conversation interesting
(01:09):
enough on its own, I'm sure of thatthe conversation may prove even more
striking if they've alreadywatched our first conversation,
which you'll be able to find on YouTube.
Peter welcome back.
The Antichrist.
Cardinal Newman, the great 19thcentury author and theologian,
writes that it is the duty, that's a quotefrom Newman, the duty of believers,
(01:32):
quote, ever to be watching forthe end times quote.
And above all to keep in mindthe great and awful sign of which St.
Paul speaks to the Thessalonians.
The emergence of, quote,the very image of Satan, the fearful and
hateful Antichrist, close quote.
As I understand your argument,you hold one, that the prophecy
(01:55):
of an Antichrist in one way oranother remains valid or at least useful.
Two, that it remains our duty,again Cardinal Newman's word duty,
to watch forthe signs that it might emerge.
And three, that that duty is now almostentirely neglected and forgotten, fair?
>> Peter Thiel (02:15):
Yes, yeah.
>> Peter Robinson (02:17):
Okay, go ahead.
>> Peter Thiel (02:22):
I mean, there's so many different things one can say about.
There's a, I think it was Ivan Ilyich whosaid that in the time before Christ there
were many forerunners to Christ.
In the time after Christ there'll bemany forerunners of the Antichrist.
So in some sense it's a type.
So Nero was a type of the Antichrist or
(02:45):
maybe Napoleon was a typeof the Antichrist.
It's someone who aspires forworld domination,
the creation of thissort of one world state.
In some ways Alexander the Great wassort of a pre-Christ prototype of
the Antichrist.
It's very parallel to Christ.
They both die at 33.
Alexander conquers the world,Christ saves it.
(03:07):
So sort of a compare and contrast.
But in some sense the Antichristas an idea is something that
really comes into being inthe world after Christ.
And then there's a lot of thingsabout it that are mysterious.
In some ways,the Antichrist copies Christ,
the Antichrist pretends to be greaterthan Christ, hyper Christian,
(03:30):
ultra Christian, and then maybe onlyultimately, deeply anti Christian.
>> Peter Robinson (03:37):
Go ahead. >> Peter Thiel
then you can think of it as a system wheremaybe communism is a one world system.
So it can be an ideology or a system.
And then, of course,you can also think of it as Newman did,
where it's sort of the final dictator ofthe one world state, where it's still.
(03:57):
You stress it more as a person.
You can think of it as a type,a system, a person.
It has something to doin this post Christian.
It's something that's sort of apossibility in this post Christian world.
It is in some ways, and it's relatedto Christ in a very complicated way.
So the theological question you can alwaysask, is it possible to be too Christian?
(04:21):
And in theory, no.
But in practice, if you think you're moreChristian than Christ, you're in trouble.
From a prophecy 2000 years old to our own times,
you draw attention to two portrayals,
fictional portrayals of an Antichristfrom about a century ago.
Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian mystic,in 1900, wrote a book or a novella,
(04:45):
a short tale of the Antichrist and thena 1905 novel by a Roman Catholic English
priest called Robert Hugh Benson,and the novel is Lord of the World.
In both of these fictional accounts,
the Antichrist emerges as a charismaticfigure, a kind of superman.
Soloviev quote, there was a remarkableperson, many called him a superman.
(05:05):
He believed in God, but in the depthsof his soul, he preferred himself.
In Benson, the Antichrist is portrayedagain as a charismatic figure.
He becomes President of Europe.
Then in some mysterious way,he's elected President of the world.
But in both of those fictional accountsof a century ago, there's a plot hole.
(05:27):
We're not given the mechanismby which this strange
charismatic figure achieves dominance.
And your argument is, again,if I understand it correctly,
that now, today,a century after Soloviev and
Robert Hugh Benson,we can understand a mechanism,
(05:49):
we could imagine, a mechanism bywhich such a figure might emerge.
>> Peter Thiel (05:55):
Yeah, by the way, those are both fantastic books.
I have a preference for the Soloviev one.
But Benson andSoloviev are both terrific books.
There are all these extraordinary waysthat they still resonate 100 years later.
So Soloviev envisionsthe United States of Europe, so
sort of a European Union,the sort of super state, in Benson,
(06:20):
the Antichrist is a Jewishsocialist senator from Vermont.
And so I was a little bit nervousabout Bernie Sanders, but
there sort of are elements of them where.
>> Peter Robinson (06:31):
By the way,
you're not quite the only personI noticed in reading up on this,
Benedict XVI several times mentionedapprovingly the Robert Hugh Benson book.
And Pope Francis over andover again has referred to it.
So two popes and Peter Thiel.
>> Peter Thiel (06:47):
So there's some all sorts of parts of it where they have this
feeling being near great literature.
But the plot hole is sort of like,
how does this sort of worldtake over actually happen?
And it's kind of not a deus ex machina,but like a daimonium ex machina.
(07:09):
It's like the Antichrist just givesthese hypnotic speeches where nobody can
remember a word and then sort of justswindles people's souls out of them and
they submit to this totalitarian state orsomething like this.
And I think if we were to speculateon how to solve that plot hole,
(07:29):
we have an answer in the worldafter 1945 that people are.
In 1900, early 20th century, people werenot yet scared of apocalyptic weapons.
They could not imagine anything of thescale that we'd have by the second half
of the 20th century.
And so the Antichrist takes overby talking about Armageddon.
>> Peter Robinson (07:53):
Let's show this a brief video which we will edit into the show,
of course.
>> Peter Thiel (07:58):
One world or none.
>> Peter Robinson (07:59):
Exactly.
>> Leslie Richard Groves Jr (08:01):
[SOUND]
There is no
secret.
When a neutron strikes, the atom is split.
Release neutrons, split other atoms,the result is atomic energy.
(08:21):
[SOUND] Shall the people ofthe world use this energy for
the destruction orthe betterment of mankind?
>> Peter Robinson (08:35):
So that's a 1946 video.
Everything about it, the images,the tension in the narrator's voice,
the background music, is to be scary.
The choice is this or one world.
That dates from 1946, as I said.
But here's a quotationfrom just a few years ago.
It's from a paper titled the VulnerableWorld Hypothesis by the very hip techno
(08:59):
philosopher Nick Bostrom.
Quote, what is needed to solveproblems that involve challenges of
international coordination, challengessuch as nukes, pandemic dangers,
techno threats, what is neededis effective global governance.
Franklin Roosevelt designed the Unitednations to serve in some way as
(09:22):
a kind of world parliament afterthe end of the Second World War.
The United Nations didn't work.
But maybe FDR was just ahead of his time.
>> Peter Thiel (09:33):
Yeah, well, it is the same.
Look, this is the plot holein Solovyov and Benson.
And it's an interesting question.
What is the difference between,
we have this very secular language,one world or none, and
then there's the sort of overly religiousquestion, Antichrist or Armageddon?
(09:56):
And my thesis, they are somehow the same.
And if I had to say what the differencebetween those two ways of
asking the questions are,is, Antichrist or
Armageddon, it sounds likethey're both bad options.
And that way of asking the question,it pushes us to find a third way and
(10:19):
not to just steer from one into the other.
One world or none,those sound like they're exclusive, but
they're also exhaustive possibilities.
And since we don't want to have no world,we want the one world.
>> Peter Robinson (10:35):
Harvard Law School, Adrian Vermeule, wants big government.
He has already argued forcontinent-wide government,
which would represent a steptoward global governance.
And his view is that if the governmentis based on some understanding of
Christian ethics and you make surethat it reflects subsidiarity,
the principle that problems should besolved by the smallest unit possible.
(11:00):
Then big government,international coordinate,
this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
And you just don't buy that?
>> Peter Thiel (11:08):
I do not buy it.
I think, I don't know,
I'm much more in the Lord Acton campthat absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And it would be a power with no check.
There would be no outside left.
In a sense, it would be the biggest crowd,it would be the biggest bubble.
(11:29):
Probably a place where the Bible differs
from enlightened rationality.
Enlightened rationality believesin the wisdom of crowds.
The Bible believes inthe madness of crowds.
And if you have a world state that'sin some sense the largest crowd,
(11:50):
it's the whole humanityclosing in on itself.
>> Peter Robinson (11:54):
Global mob.
>> Peter Thiel (11:55):
It's a global mob.
So there are sort of are these intuitionsthat are probably adjacent to ideas about
the fallen nature of man and
original sin that make me nervousabout the one-world state.
Subsidiarity is good in theory andpractice.
The devil is in the details.
And too much of the powerhas to be at the top level.
(12:23):
If you absolutize things like climatechange or nuclear weapons control or
things like this,that has to all be at the top echelon.
It's not gonna be decidedby the city of Palo Alto or
by some kind of a subsidiary layer.
I have sort of more prosaic intuitionswhere I sort of wonder what
(12:44):
would be the marginal taxrates in a one-world state
where people couldn't move, and->> Peter Robinson: High.
I suspect they would be quite high.
It sort of would be likeEast Germany with no escape, and-
>> Peter Robinson (12:57):
You couldn't move to
Texas or Florida andget a zero income tax rate.
>> Peter Thiel (13:01):
And then I think California would push them higher, and
the US would push them higher, andthe limit of that seems quite bad.
And then, of course,if you go down the Bostrom argument yet,
you need effective global government andextremely effective global policing.
(13:22):
And so if you think aboutthings like AI technology,
it's just we have to stopanyone from programming the AI.
And so you have to, in some sense,monitor every keystroke everywhere.
So sort of something that's powerfulenough to control the whole world.
>> Peter Robinson (13:38):
So this goes back to your argument in the first part of this
conversation, that forthe first time in history,
we can actually imagine humanbeings destroying the world.
That's quite a plot.
Now, also we have the mechanismsthat would make world government.
A gigantic global surveillancestate is plausible.
>> Peter Thiel (13:59):
That seems plausible, too.
And then I think, again, to come backto the Solovyov-Benson plot hole,
on its own,they both seem not that desirable.
Why would we have a crazysurveillance state?
Why would we do this?
But if you're scared enough,
(14:19):
if you're scared enough of these things,that's the weapon.
And this is sort of where my speculativethesis is that if the Antichrist
were to come to power, it would be bytalking about Armageddon all the time.
And->> Peter Robinson: Peter Thiel,
the antichrist would talkabout Armageddon all the time.
(14:41):
He'll scare people andthen offer to save them.
Yes, it's the 1 Thessalonians 5:3.
The slogan of the Antichrist is peace andsafety,
which is nothing wrong with peace andsafety.
But you have to sort of imaginethat it resonates very differently
(15:02):
in a world where the stakes are soabsolute, where the stakes are so
extreme, wherethe alternative to peace and
safety is Armageddon andthe destruction of all things.
And then that's where peace and
safety gets you way morethan it would have in 1750.
>> Peter Robinson (15:22):
Rene Girard, in I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning,
one of his books, the Antichrist boastsof bringing to human beings the peace and
tolerance that Christianity promised buthas failed to deliver.
>> Peter Thiel (15:38):
Yeah, I think there are all these elements where
it's downstream from Christianity.
You can think of the poor shall inheritthe earth, Sermon on the Mount.
Marxist theory is, we're gonna be moreChristian, we're gonna accelerate it,
we're gonna bring it about faster.
So there is, yeah,the Antichrist probably Presents
(16:01):
as a great humanitarian,it's redistributive,
it's an extremely great philanthropist,
as an effective altruist,all of those kinds of things.
And these things are notsimply anti-Christian, but
it is always when they getoverly combined with state
(16:25):
power that something is very wrong.
There are sort of ways Christwants to unify the world.
You have the parableof the Good Samaritan,
where you should take care of peopleeven if you're not related to them.
And it's good to act likethe Good Samaritan and
to take care of people who are not justin your family or tribe, or country.
(16:46):
But then, if you force everyoneto be a Good Samaritan and
you force a borderless world,somehow it's an intensification,
but it's somehow alsovery much the opposite.
>> Peter Robinson (17:02):
Okay, Scylla and Charybdis, and we come here.
It'll take me another moment toset this up, but we come here.
We depart now from Peter Thiel's analysis,and
we come to Peter Thiel's exhortation,what needs to be done.
Step or two to complete the analysis andthen leads to what needs to be done,
(17:27):
the questions at leastwe need to be asking.
Scylla and Charybdis,Odysseus is on his way home, and
he has to sail past two sea monsters.
Scylla is a six-headed monsterwho will devour sailors.
And Charybdis is a whirlpool that swallowsships whole and then spits them back out.
(17:47):
And of course, they stand forsort of the horns of a dilemma.
That's the way Scylla andCharybdis get used the phrase Peter Thiel.
Everyone is worried about the Scyllaof Armageddon, nukes, pandemics, AI.
Everyone is worried aboutthe Scylla of Armageddon.
We're not worried enoughabout the Charybdis of one
(18:09):
world government, the Antichrist, explain.
>> Peter Thiel (18:18):
This just seems obviously correct.
[LAUGH] If you think aboutthe language that we've been
using in this program,Armageddon is not that taboo.
And we just talked about thatby referencing the newspapers.
>> Peter Robinson (18:34):
Right.
>> Peter Thiel (18:35):
We are sleepwalking into Armageddon, maybe not in the Ukraine or
the Middle East, butmaybe with Taiwan and China.
So there are all these->> Peter Robinson: Everybody
feels the dread.
We can use Armageddon, and maybe it's literal and
maybe it's metaphorical.
But that's totally acceptable.
So that tells you that'snot the thing that's taboo.
Antichrist is like, wow,what planet are you from?
>> Peter Robinson (18:57):
Right. >> Peter Thiel
the existential risks are veryselective of the sort that we've given.
And the fears about a one-worldstate are downplayed because
they are the solution to the other ones.
That is the self-governing, politicallyatheist humans governing themselves.
(19:21):
Solution to Armageddon is,it's what Bostrom says,
it's effective world governmentwith extremely effective
policing to stop dangeroustechnologies from being developed.
And to force people to not havetoo diverse a set of views,
because the diversity of views is what'sgoing to push some scientists to develop
(19:42):
technologies they shouldn't be developing.
And so we are just sogrooved to the Antichrist solution.
We don't worry about itbecause it presents itself as
the solution to all these others.
And then my intuition isthat what that tells me is
(20:03):
that we should worry about both.
But if you had to prioritize them,you should be way more worried about
the Antichrist because noone's worried about it.
And of course, I don't know how literallyone should take these biblical accounts,
but in the biblical accounts,the Antichrist comes
first because people are more scared ofArmageddon than the Antichrist, perhaps.
(20:24):
The Antichrist comes first,It doesn't quite work,
the one world state doesn't work,it still goes haywire.
Maybe you have a fantasticcommunist government, but
somehow the AI still goes mad andyou still get to Armageddon.
But that's what comes first.
As I understand it, you see three possibilities here.
(20:46):
Now we begin to movetoward what is to be done.
One is to end globalization outright,end world trade.
But that would produce a dramatical, allbut unthinkable drop in living standards.
So end globalization, butthat's all but unthinkable.
Two, permit globalization to continuein an unfettered manner, but
(21:07):
that would be likely tolead to world government.
Three, permit globalization to continue,
but only in a permissible,good, salutary way.
Limited, tame it, make sure itnever supplants nation states.
Peter Thiel,our only chance of achieving good
(21:30):
globalization is to becritical of globalization,
to recognize the narrowness of the path,Peter.
>> Peter Thiel (21:39):
Well, the way I would frame that is it's certainly
hard to see how things can workif we completely deglobalize.
If you go back to this worldthat's completely separated and
with no trade, no flow of ideasbetween different parts of the world.
>> Peter Robinson (22:02):
Eliminate the Internet and container shipping, and you've got it.
>> Peter Thiel (22:07):
I don't think that's easier said than done.
>> Peter Robinson (22:09):
If much, yes.
>> Peter Thiel (22:10):
It's easier said than done.
But then, it's precisely because wecan't simply turn the clock back on all
globalization that we end up having whatI would call this Stockholm Syndrome.
And is globalization more good than bad?
(22:31):
Is it just of a corruptracket where North Korea
exports plutonium andcounterfeit $100 bills and
imports Swedish prostitutes and whiskey or
whatever they import?
If you have this view that,no globalization can't be an option,
(22:54):
you will have two Panglossianview of globalization.
This is my critique of the Fukuyama,Clinton, Bush, WTO.
>> Peter Robinson (23:03):
The New World Order, free trade, it'll all take care of itself.
>> Peter Thiel (23:06):
It was always abstracted.
Everything takes care of itself.
It will all work out for the best.
And at a minimum,you need to just always think,
there are somany bad forms of globalization,
our only chance of getting to a goodone is to realize how tough it is.
Maybe we should have trade treaties,we should negotiate them.
(23:27):
They should always be negotiated bypeople who don't believe in free trade.
If you have someone lives in free trades,we don't need to pay attention to
the details,it always will work out for the best.
So, yes, there's a way I think oneshould try to negotiate these treaties.
But you always want someone on your sidewho deeply doesn't believe in it and
(23:49):
who is going to hold out forall sorts of terms.
And that's sort of how wemight get our way through,
but, But yeah,I think we had all these versions of this.
I think there's the strange Chimerica,the sort of mythical fusion of China and
(24:12):
America that is maybe 28years from Bush 41 to Obama,
from something like 88 to 2016.
And yeah, we don't wanna goto a nuclear war with China,
we don't probably don'twant to go to a major war.
But it's a very complicated wayto manage this relationship.
(24:35):
And simply the Panglossianintuitions that everything
will automatically work outprobably don't quite make it.
There's always a book I liketo reference from 1910,
the Great Illusion by Norman Angel.
This is a pre-World War I book, 1910.
And it is the world is connected throughtrade and finance that there cannot
(24:57):
be a world war because it would justdestroy more than it would create.
And it was massive bestseller in 1910.
Angel actually gets a Nobel Peace Prizefor the book in 1933,
even though sort of spectacularly wrong.
But one of the lines in it was Britaingoing to war with Germany makes as much
(25:17):
sense as London invading Hertfordshire,the adjacent county to London.
And it was just the stock market wouldgo down, more couldn't do this and
everyone would lose,and yet that happened.
And so, the sort of glib globalizationI think is not gonna work.
And we need to just ask a relentlessnumber of hard questions about it.
>> Peter Robinson (25:40):
Got it.
>> Peter Thiel (25:42):
But then yes, it's always in the details.
I think we have to find some way totalk about these technologies where
the technologies are dangerous.
But in some sense it's evenmore dangerous not to do them.
It's even more dangerous to havea society where there's zero growth.
(26:04):
If we go full on with the clubof Rome limits to growth,
we have this fully Ludditeprogram that again,
my intuitions is that that willend very badly politically.
It's gonna be a zero sumnasty Malthusian society and
it will push towards somethingthat's much more autocratic,
much more totalitarian,because the pie won't grow.
(26:27):
People will be much nastier.
>> Peter Robinson (26:29):
So what you're asking for, well, okay, so
let me ask what you're asking fora little bit here.
You said at the Cambridge Unionearlier this year that you were
going to stay out of politics this time.
So I won't ask you about politics exactly,but you are arguing
that we should be supportingcandidates who put America first.
(26:54):
Is that roughly where we're going here?
Skeptics of free trade, this all tendstoward one side of the political argument?
Or are you simply, is this an X or 2?
Are you aiming your?
Are you aiming this at universities andsimply calling for
renewed, far more practical debate,far more alive,
(27:16):
to the dangers that we now face that havenever been faced by humanity before?
>> Peter Thiel (27:22):
Well, my starting answer for all these things is always,
surely the first step is to thinkabout these things really hard.
And->> Peter Robinson: Ask the questions that
are not being asked.
Ask the questions that are not being asked questions that
are not being asked.
Maybe the way I framethem are too dramatic.
But if that's what it takes forus to ask these questions,
(27:43):
that's better than being stuck in,
I don't know, in some weird,silly groundhog day game.
I think my intuition is the stakesare very high, the political
stakes are high because there are a lotof crazy things that can happen.
(28:03):
It's hard to evaluate which ofthese candidates are better.
It's not just about the price of eggs or
marginal inflation rates orthings like this.
It is about maintainingfreedom in the US and
also not sleepwalking into Armageddon.
>> Peter Robinson (28:27):
Peter, I have a confession to make.
In my mind, when you firststarted talking about Scylla and
Charybdis, this analysis, I wronged you.
I thought to myself,this is Peter being Peter.
He loves building intellectual models,
he has the kind of mind that goes inthat direction Hegel, Weber, Strauss.
(28:52):
Reality is of second order.
The real importance here is the model,the intellectual model,
because you enjoy it for its own sake.
And I do think that you do have a mindthat looks for structures and frameworks.
All right, but here, then, I come acrossthis passage from our old friend Rene.
This is Rene Girard in 2009,
(29:13):
the more probable the apocalypse becomes,the less we talk about it.
Therefore, we have to awakenour sleeping consciences.
And I thought,this is not a game for Peter.
You are taking, this is serious to you,you believe that.
You see questions that need to beasked that are not being asked, and
(29:37):
you are trying to awakenour sleeping consciences.
Will you accept that compliment?
>> Peter Thiel (29:43):
I'll take that. >> Peter Robinson
you'll accept that confession.
All right, so, Peter Thiel,I'm quoting you now.
What I hope to retrieveis a sense of the stakes,
of the urgency of the question,the stakes are really, really high.
It seems very dangerous thatwe're at a place where so
few people are concerned aboutthe Antichrist, close quote.
(30:05):
Yeah, it's all the reasons we've gone through.
>> Peter Robinson (30:07):
Okay, what kind of response have you been getting,
by the way, you haven't written a book.
I understand you're thinking about a bookon this, but you haven't written it yet.
You're still going throughvarious iterations,
talking to small groups of people.
I heard you give a seriesof talks on this.
What has the response been?
>> Peter Thiel (30:23):
It's certainly.
It takes a while for people to get intothe frame and then people are extremely
engaged and there is,it's not like the anxiety doesn't exist.
It's not like people think everything
(30:46):
is quite as normal as it should be.
And then I think the point of it isnot to be in some sense defeatist,
this is just inscribed in the future.
The point of it is to startthinking about what can be done,
what some of the choices are.
(31:08):
And Antichrist orArmageddon, that framing,
we can envision a third way,one world or none.
That's pretty hard toenvision a third way.
And so, that's where I thinkthe biblical language,
it sounds crazier, butit's actually more hopeful.
(31:28):
One world or none, those are the twooptions if you're a political atheist.
>> Peter Robinson (31:32):
Right.
>> Peter Thiel (31:33):
We have human self-government or human self-destruction.
And it's a choice of two incredible evils,and
I don't think these things are,I'm not a Calvinist.
I don't think these thingsare determined- Predestined.
(31:54):
Predestined, I alwaysbelieve there's a space for
human agency, For us to shape the history.
And the first step has to be not tojust bury our heads in the sand or
whatever the equivalent is.
>> Peter Robinson (32:10):
So, the United States, two quotations, Ronald Reagan.
It's always been my belief thatby a divine plan this nation was
placed between the twooceans to be sought out and
found by those with a special brand ofcourage and love of freedom, close quote.
So, could it be that the United Statesis itself a catacon,
(32:32):
a restrainer, a force that by itseconomic power and military might and
the example it sets to the world,holds back the chaos?
I would like to believe that, you andI aren't that far apart in age,
we both grew up when the countrystill worked under Reagan.
Here's the second quotation,this is Peter Thiel, quote.
(32:55):
One obvious candidate forthe antichrist is the United States.
>> Peter Thiel (33:00):
Well, I think the US- >> Peter Robinson
breaking my heart, please.
I think the US is a natural candidate for
both, and certainly the Cold War history,49 to 89,
I think Christiandemocracy was catacontic.
I think anti-communism was
(33:20):
the supranational ideology
that stood against the one
world state of communism.
Again, this is very speculative, but
if you think the one worldstate is a military power,
(33:42):
it's a financial, economic power,somehow an ideological power.
There still is a natural way where ifthings go wrong in the US it would
be the fulfillment of FDR's vision ofthe New Dealers running the world.
And sothe US is ground zero of globalization and
(34:03):
it's ground zero of the resistanceto bad globalization, we're both.
That's why it matters so much,
the President of the United Statesmaybe is the catacomb,
maybe it's a type of antichrist,but presidential elections matter.
They don't matter,President of Europe, and
I think the intuition that theymatter in the US is correct.
(34:26):
I'm not saying that will be the case forall time, but
certainly second half ofthe 20th century and still today.
>> Peter Robinson (34:34):
A couple of last questions here, Rene Girard, again,
in 2009.
Quote, to make the revelationwholly good and
not threatening at all,to eliminate this fear, this dread,
humans have only to adopt the behaviorrecommended by Christ, close quote.
Rene himself, as you know,
(34:54):
ended his life as a very devout Catholic.
Has this analysis had any effecton your own religious life?
Or is it in some way a kindof cop out to say, no, no,
all we need to do is all practicepersonal holiness as best we can?
>> Peter Thiel (35:14):
Girard always said you just need to go to church,
and I try to go to church.
>> Peter Robinson (35:22):
[LAUGH] Rene would be very happy, somewhere he is pleased.
>> Peter Thiel (35:29):
And then at the same time I think that there
is some part of it that is political, or
social, or something like that.
And maybe it's always a way in which I'm
not as much of a saint as I should be, but
(35:53):
I keep thinking we have to also try.
I wanna always try some of both,both the personal and the political.
I think Mother Teresa wasa greater saint than Constantine.
But there's still a part ofme that has a preference for
the Christianity of Constantine,we still need something like that.
>> Peter Robinson (36:15):
All right, Revelation is a very frightening book,
in my judgment.
In any event, we've got plagues andbeasts and the end of the world.
But at the very beginning,I went back to prepare for all of this,
I went back andlooked at Revelation again.
At the very beginningof the vision that St.
(36:36):
John describes in the Book of Revelation,here's what we get.
Then I turned to see the voice thatwas speaking to me, and on turning,
I saw one like a son of man.
His voice was like the sound of rushingwater, and his face shone like the sun.
When I saw him,I fell at his feet as though dead.
But he laid his right hand upon me,saying, fear not.
(36:59):
Fear not I died, andbehold I am alive, close quote.
So what are we to do with this fear not?
You've mentioned this a number of times,this notion.
It's always the problem intrying to understand history.
What's going to happen nomatter what we do, and
(37:20):
what scope is there for personal action?
Fear not is an injunction in the bookof Revelation from Christ himself.
So Christians are meant totake it very seriously, but
you could easily take it as a kind of,it'll all work out.
There's nothing I need to do.
There's nothing any of us need to do,it's out of our hands, it'll all work out.
(37:44):
What do you do with fear not?
>> Peter Thiel (37:47):
Well, this is sort of starting to get way, way,
way above my theological pay grade.
But I think it means something,I think God will work it all out,
no matter how bad the choices are we make.
And so in some sense, in the end,God will work it out.
(38:12):
And then at the same time, I'm notsure that we should always be looking
at it from God's point of view and from ahuman point of view Human agency matters.
It surely matters a lot.
>> Peter Robinson (38:25):
All right, last question.
Let me quote you one final time.
Quote, maybe people think about this stuffa lot more than they let on, close quote.
So what do you have to say tosome bright 20-something who
does think about this stuff?
What should some young American read?
(38:47):
What should he or she do?
What advice about how to lead a good life
when we think we may bein the end of times?
What advice do you have fora young Peter Thiel?
>> Peter Thiel (39:03):
I'm always so bad in this department, but-
>> Peter Robinson (39:06):
Stumble through it.
>> Peter Thiel (39:09):
I think if it's too high a lift to go to church or
something like that.
I would say that it's important to try to
find a way to integrate your life to just
fragment in all these different ways.
(39:32):
And to integrate the knowledge,to connect what we think is
going on in your life with history,with our society.
We need to somehow not have thispostmodern MTV like incoherence,
and there's some way thatasking these questions,
(39:53):
we need somewhat more integration.
We need to somehow pullthings back together.
It's what the universities weresupposed to do, don't think
they will do it, but you have to figure->> Peter Robinson: After years of
deconstruction, you're calling foran act of reconstruction.
Yeah, it may not happen, the progressive cult that
is the university, but still it isreally a time for reconstruction.
>> Peter Robinson (40:17):
Peter Thiel, thank you.
For Uncommon Knowledge ofthe Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
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