Dan Snow's History Hit - Small Men on the Wrong Side of History

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Dan chats with journalist and author Ed West about Ed's conservative views, which make him an anomaly among his peers. They explore why conservatives have lost almost every political argument since 1945, and why Ed worships on the altar of Edmund Burke.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm enjoying my first day of voluntary isolation in my own home, which, for a podcast host and occasional writer, feels much like a normal day. Except this time I've got children at home. Actually, I've got my youngest, Orla, on my lap now. How are you doing, Orla? Good. I'm just doing perfect. Blah, blah, blah. But I'm just doing perfect. Blah, blah, blah. Well, perfect, I think, is an exaggeration. I think Orla inherited the Snow Family broadcasting hyperbolic tendency. But she's behaving adequately, let's just say that.

Adequately, Orla. How about that? I'm adequate to you. Blah, blah, blah. Right. I like the way she entered everything in. I like the way you entered everything in blah, blah, blah. That's what you think your daddy does for a living and actually sometimes i think she's

probably right um if you wish to go and take advantage of our unbelievable sale on history hit.tv new programs being added all the time spent monday just before the lockdown filming at winter castle some great programs there for you you to watch when they come out on historyhit.tv. You can go and use the code POD3, you get a month for free, and then you get three months for just one pound, euro or dollar for each of those three months. And frankly, who knows where we're going to be

in four months' time, everyone. So that doesn't sound like a bad trade. You can watch the World's Best History Channel for four months for just three pounds, euros or dollars by using the code POD3HISTORYHIT.TV. You will see interviews such as this one. I recorded this interview with Ed West just as the coronavirus was getting into its stride. We discussed his political affiliation, which was somewhat unusual for some of his generation. He is an avowed conservative and we had a fun chat about why he thinks conservatives are right, but perhaps also why they're destined to keep

losing. His book, Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, is out now. Enjoy this podcast. Please go and check out historyhit.tv and use the code POD3. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. This is unfashionable. You're self-identifying a conservative. You're a young, otherwise normal millennial guy. What is a conservative?

I should say I'm actually just the last year of Generation X, but yeah, I'm fairly young. So am I, but let's not worry about it. Yes, I suppose the point of my book was a form of self-therapy in a way because most of my contemporaries, my age group, are obviously of the centre-left, progressive-left, university-educated, London-based. And I've always been slightly different.

And as I've got older, I've always been a bit more conservative. But as I've got older, I just assumed everyone else had become more conservative with me, because that's always how it happened. And as I got older, in fact, the opposite. Most people are actually on social issues becoming more liberal, more left-wing. And that suddenly occurred to me as I hit my mid-30s that there was actually something quite different happening, a change in our culture. And the more I looked at it in actual studies, both in the States and Britain, the old thing about people becoming more conservative in their

30s is no longer happening. I mean, there's a big change. So the kind of spur for this was finally I'd worked on this book for a while, then when 2017 came and, you know, the Corbyn lost, but stories did so badly amongst young people, and not just young people, but quite middle-aged people our age, and, well,

young and middle-aged. Prime of life sort of time. Prime of life people, and they were all still completely repulsed by conservatism. Lillian liked Corbyn either and he managed to basically sabotage my book by massively losing two years later. But I suppose the essence of conservatism is

I suppose it's a mixture between a psychological make-up and a political ideology that dates back to Edmund Burke who I come back to. So it's a mixture of that and a sort of political ideology that dates back to edmund burke who i come back to so it's a mixture of that and a sort of predisposition towards a certain i suppose pessimism is a core part uh a belief in the limits of human nature you know i start with cassandra the ancient greek myth said you know by the way that the greeks are gonna destroy us don't don't listen to that idea they don't want peace it. It's all a disaster. And, you know, she was right.

And so since then, you know, pessimists have always been quite annoying to be around. But they're often... All right, so right down to the modern age, you know, from the French Revolution to communism. And to a certain extent, modern progressive left ideas, which I think have a utopian... Well, let me pick you up on that, because that's weird, isn't it? Because we all have a tendency to be a bit pessimistic. But actually, look at the reality of what we've done. I don't want to be whiggish here, buddy,

but we are sitting in a city with an unimaginable quality of life compared to 200 years ago. Unimaginably low. Young men, sadly, still too often stab each other in the face. But unimaginably small numbers compared to medieval Oxford, famously from that study.

Healthcare outcomes extraordinary. We're flying around that study. Healthcare outcomes, extraordinary. We're flying around the world. I mean, there are big problems, but you can see, you can't say that pessimism, people have been right. If you were pessimistic in 1780 and got the whole world going shit, that's not entirely accurate, is it? No, of course. I mean, it comes down to, I mean, Burke was the original pessimist.

Burke was pessimistic about the French Revolution, and he turned out to be completely right. And there are times when pessimism is needed because natural human disposition is towards optimism in some sense, because otherwise life would just be unbearable. And to go back to the Greek myth, the Pandora's box, like hope leaves last because we all need hope. That's why we embark on great visions and projects.

And that's why you need conservatives, pessimists to say, actually, I think that's a very good idea. I don't think beheading the king and just starting completely from scratch is a great idea. So the Whig history is obviously... I mean, you're a Whig and there's nothing wrong with that. And you're going from barbarism and sort of medievalism towards this great new sunny uplands.

The conservatives, I i suppose would say well once we become wealthy yes we become more liberal that's the direction of travel i mean and i think that's the major driver of why we've become more liberal since the 60s we're just much much more wealthy okay um i would say it goes that direction rather than the other way around okay let's park social liberalism for a second uh and i want to get back to like so the political conservatism so you're burke the idea that time-hallowed institutions are better than ones that we can just dream up on the back of a fag packet in costa yeah um what is interesting about the modern world is is that trump and johnson are not conservatives right i mean in that by that definition are they i mean

they're just burn it all down double the national debt i mean they're kind of isn't that part of the problem of the even the the words words that we're using now? I would say, I mean, Boris is probably more of a Whig than anything. I might say he's a liberal conservative. Trump is more, I mean, he's such a psychologically interesting person that it's hard to say, but he has a certain revolutionary aspect to him. It's that kind of revolutionary conservatism, which is, I think, this is what I did in the later chapters,

when institutions are core to conservatives, but when they tend to move to the left, institutions become captured by liberals, and that's what happens in the English-speaking world. Most of our higher institutions are overwhelmingly liberal. They would vote remain. Everyone would tend to be Democrat in the States and left-leaning over here.

Then conservatives tend to become... anti-institutions become kind of unmoored. They become sort of revolutionary conservatives, which is a bit of what populism is about, especially in Trump's thing. I mean, Trump and the whole Trumpism thing is partly about sort of burning down whole institutions. It's because they're just infested with...

That doesn't feel very Burkean, though, does it? No, that's not very Burkean. And that sort of forms a split in conservative thought because some conservatives are more the status quo ones. And this came in Brexit as well. So I started off as quite pro-Brexit beforehand because of the idea of national sovereignty. But as it got on, there came sort of a division amongst a lot of conservatives

because I'm more of a status quo conservative and I always think, well, however bad bad things are whoever follows is probably going to be even worse and once they start become you sort of have this sort of radical populist talk of you know attacking goldman sachs that sort of unnerves me because i just think these guys are so right yes but i think you might not like them but their institutions and that the alternative is going to be worse right so some of some of the brexiteers are sort of status quo conservatives but some of them are actually quite you know radical revolutionary want a new i know that is the kind of contradiction i was a bit i was a remainer right and i'm walking around going i feel like the only conservative in the

room i'm walking around a country that's one of the richest countries in the world has achieved a level of peace from a active insurgency that was going on in part of this country until the 1990s um where there's work to do was going on in part of this country until the 1990s um where there's work to do but living standards are one of the highest in the world it's people like living here people satisfaction index very high why are we why are we torturing it all like you know it's a bunch of small c conservative both sides in a way think they're trying to stop a revolutionary change i mean both brexiters will say like we want our country back because all the changes that have happened to our country well curiously romain has always

said i want my country back and i think that's something to do with the difference of the psychology of the two but they both talked exactly you know the way that you could vote has taught in 2011 is how a lot of romainers talk in 2018 you know why have these guys changed everything everything's going fine right so um okay i mean it's often in politics people think don't realize the other side are actually thinking similar things about them that they're thinking of. And that's kind of the paradox of our politics. So do you think that people that were conservatives, from Burke onwards, you've got the Duke of Wellington in the 1820s going, the British Constitution is perfect.

He stood up in the House of Commons and it ended his premiership. Because it was what we have inherited. It seems to work. Let's not smash it up. Do you think, from the title of your book, do you think conservatives are sort of destined to lose out to this natural optimism and naivety and utopianism that the rest of us all have? I think, I don't know, I think it comes and goes.

And some issues, things move back. I mean, education, when I was growing up, education was very progressive, much more radical, and that's moved back a lot. And on that issue, progressives have sort of conceded. I mean, in the state, particularly the issues of crime have gone back a little bit. In the 60s, everyone had very liberal ideas about,

you know, we just have a few people in prison, everything will be fine. I mean, almost no one in the States really believes that now. I think another issue is the idea of human nature, which has been very influenced in the late 20th century by blank slate ideas, which is behind a lot of progressivism that were basically all formed by, you know,

the environment around us rather than our genes. I think that's coming unstuck a lot. I sort of allude to that, but it's sort of outside my area of science, so I don't really want to get stuck into it. But, I mean, that's the Rousseau kind of idea that we're all victims of society. I think that's swinging back as well. So some conservatized ideas do win out,

but I think the main problem is because liberalism tends to correlate with openness, so obviously the art, that's the main problem is because liberalism tends to correlate with openness which also, so obviously the art, that's the main reason why the arts will always be left of centre. Since the days of Shelley the arts has been, in particular, has been very sort of, you know, left wing. And so the liberal story gets told much better, you know, in plays, in novels, in films. So their story is the one that gets remembered by the Conservatives. I mean, look at the idea of the 60s. Even though the Liberals in the States basically lost most of the arguments,

people voted for Nixon, most people hated it, and the word Liberal became a dirty word over there. All the films we remembered, all the plays, basically tell the Liberal narrative. I mean, maybe from that period, Death Wish is the only Conservative film there is, but that came at a period of huge fear about crime, so that was unusual. But when you look, I don't want to be all Panglossian,

but when you look at the last 200 years since Burke, conservatives can, what is the point of conservatives? They can warn and slow the pace of change, but ultimately it's hard to think of a field in which they've successfully... I guess you could argue that conservatives like someone like Peel is somebody who respects the past, is up for reform and change,

but with a sort of duty, obligation to bring the best bits of the past with them. Sure. I mean, I wouldn't say conservatives have lost. I mean, Britain is the most politically conservative in the true sense of the past with them. Sure, I mean I wouldn't say Conservatives have lost. Britain is the most politically Conservative in the true sense that our Constitution is pragmatic, it's make-do, it's and that's why any sort of...

It's what we've done before. Yeah, so while the Constitution of other states like France are basically theoretical, they're utilitarian and they are sort of un-Conservative. And the British state has been fantastically successful the last 200 years, so it's an for um conservative views and not just compared to the terrible disasters of communism and fascism all these other kind of things but even even you know the french example i mean unfortunately now the british state seems to be going through a

sort of a crisis point because we don't know you know it's all been a sort of gentleman's agreement up to this point and now we don't know what's going on now the gentlemen have left the room but you know britain has been conservatively ruled and i mean even our sort of uh even our labor tradition is very small c conservative and was until atlee was a kind of conservative and then a lot of former labor voters sort of very nostalgic about that idea of the small c sort of social conservatism and labour. And yet Britain has been transformed beyond all recognition from 100 years ago, right?

So you're comfortable with the present. You don't wish that we were living in a Edwardian social setting. No, I mean, because nothing beats medical technology, nothing beats dentistry, dating apps, very useful

infinite mortality is a third of what it was even when i was growing up so i mean there are there are huge changes and progress but i don't think these necessarily depend on liberal ideas liberal ideas i think tend to come from them because when um we're less when we're more comfortable and less fearful we tend to become naturally more liberal i mean one of the interesting things is one of the theories i mean i don't go into because it's like with psychology so many of the the ideas are now being blown apart but um you know one of the theories was that is to do with germs and the more susceptible to germs we are the more conservative because the more sort of fearful we are of outsiders and things and so as all our germs have been

defeated over 20th century, we've become much more liberal. So that will test the theory the next few weeks if things get really terrible. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Do you feel that to be a conservative is to be on the you know on the why do you feel it's on the wrong side of history is it because the dominance of liberal storytellers and artists

and creatives yes i think you know the quote is from barack obama he's talking about al-qaeda obviously i'm not comparing the modern conservative movement to but I just list all the if you just wanted to list all the cool people in politics and you know the films and in culture generally they tend to be on the left because they are better at telling a story and better at being cool

so but it's also a reference to the basic Christian elements of the left so you know modern liberalism is basically a heresy of Christianity and lots of people have come up with this analogy up to Tom Holland's brilliant book about Christianity. So they've inherited this Christian idea that things are going better until the final days

when, you know, all good will triumph over evil and communists believe this and liberalism in its modern form sort of believes this and that's why they talk about the wrong side of history about conservatives their argument is like we're going to win you're going to look like a big in the future whatever your argument is you know you're going to be the loser um and that's where you come to oh why do you have so many women in your cabinet you know trudeau's argument oh it's because it's 2015 it's that sort of argument it's always just the current. So we have to be progressive.

So I'm sort of doing that sort of tongue in cheek. Say, okay, yeah, right. We're the baddies. That's our role in this story. But I think it's not an entirely fair one. I remember Lord Salisbury, who was a famous conservative prime minister. Great man.

Well, I thought he might be a fan. And he goes, it's best, given that when you do things, they're likely to go wrong. It's best not to do anything at all. But that's conservative from the point of view of an extraordinarily wealthy man at the apogee of British political power, which was itself at the apogee of its kind of imperial domination.

So isn't there a problem with conservatives? And it sort of depends, it very much depends, I mean, well, I said all the policies, where you're sitting. I mean, it's... Of course. I think he has certain... I don't know. Salisbury, I don't know if I like him ironically

or if it's now non-ironically. But I think his thing about change is always for the worse. Again, after the referendum, I felt this. How much worse would it have been if we had not done that? That's my view of a lot of things, especially innovation and politics. A lot of the time we could just, like, let's do nothing and things will, you know, be better.

But isn't it funny? Like, am I making the same mistake Salisbury made? Like, am I saying, oh, the modern world's brilliant and in 200 years' time they'll laugh at us because they'll think, look at those idiots. They were still living with chronic, you know, massive social inequality and they had poor health outcomes, they had mental health problems.

So shouldn't we be trying more actively? I mean, why am I right about Remain, and why was Salisbury right at that time? Because it looks absurd to us now. Late 19th century Britain was in, you know, need of dire reform and development, wasn't it? You measure society by what it's inherited, I think. I mean, and so the Victorians, this is...

Victorian Britain has always used an example of how terrible it was, but if you look at the society the Victorians inherited, it was appalling. And the one they left behind was incredibly improved. I mean, it was so much better in every way. They'd managed to reduce all the bad indices of life and made a much healthier, happier society. And that was essentially a pretty conservative one. So I think you have to just judge people by what they inherit, you know, so that they can do the best they can. I mean, I think there are lots of progressive

ideas. I think in the future, people, 100 years might laugh at a lot. But I mean, the fact is, I don't even dare about laughing about them now. Because in the 16th century, you don't laugh at the church. Have you got any examples of conservative politicians you admire who left better situations behind them? That was Kenneth Clarke, definitely. I mean, everyone in my generation got a job because he was a good... But, you know, he was a slightly controversial figure, I suppose, these days.

He's divisive because of that issue. You know, he was never going to agree with this party. I mean, the interesting thing about politics is, you know, we always think at the time, oh, who are these sort of pygmies? I remember in the mid-90s, everyone thought that our politicians are idiots. And now, looking back, they seem like giants compared to people now. But maybe in, mid-90s everyone thought that our politicians are idiots and now looking back they seem like giants compared to people now. But maybe in 30 years time when who knows what we find.

The Ed Miliband fan club is resurgent. Miliband might be back you never know. So things can always get worse that's my message. Things can get worse. What I find fascinating about conservatism as it's used on the internet now and in North America and liberalism is the words have almost detached any's used on the internet now and in North America,

and liberalism, is the words have almost detached any kind of meaning. To be conservative in North America is to be kind of... have strong views about women's reproductive rights and gender identification. Why are these things... And yet not really care about smashing up constitutional norms. Is that a problem for you? The words, the definitions going,

is it impossible to write this book, surely? I don't know. I think abortion is... I mean, America is much more religious than Britain. Abortion is a big issue. I think it's a genuine conservative issue, if you believe that. I suppose...

I mean, abortion is an interesting one because it became... It's the one kind of cultural issue in America where the right actually haven't lost. they maintain the same state in public opinion the public opinion you know issue and beliefs on that have not changed over like 30 40 years while on every single other issue conservatives have sort of hemorrhaged support and you know the liberals have basically won um generally i mean conservative is i mean all politics is basically an alliance between lots of disparate groups right so in the states for a while it was a kind of mixture of

sort of reaganite small states you know economic liberals and these social conservatives and that's with trump has sort of smashed up he's there's a sort of shift going on now there uh it's been called the great realignment i don't know who coined that phrase but i think it's a great one and i think i mean the same things happen in britain basically you see the conservative party is becoming much more working class we don't really have the same social conservatism because we don't really have the same amount of religion but you know the conservative the right wing party is becoming much more economically statist and culturally conservative while the left-wing party becomes much more economically right-wing

while being socially liberal. And that party becomes the party basically of the elites, just as the Democrats now have all the wealthiest districts in the States. So, you know, Trump is sort of a conservative but he's a sort of populist conservative. I mean, you know, it's hard to talk about

political ideology with him because he's not... I mean, I don't think he's read a book before. So, I mean, he's not... He wants everyone to watch Sunset Boulevard and Gone With The Wind. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, so this is where the comparisons of Boris, I think, are, you know, not fair because Boris Johnson is whatever his sins. You know, he does think about things. He's well-read. He does have an ideology, I think. You know, I think his London mayor time as mayor was probably his truest ideology i think he's a sort of liberal conservative to a certain extent he's pragmatic so he thinks this is the way things are going and that's so what's the big realignment so the great realignment is now between is it is

it that um so theresa may hinting at it and donald Trump talking about globalists is this idea of people that are willing to accept these gigantic changes in terms of movement of people right pan-national culture it's about, I mean it's globalisation versus you know nationalism that's the big

divisive point where in the past there might have been economics I mean class was the big issue in the past the British politics was about a sort of middle class alliance between liberals and conservatives opposed to a sort of socialist working class. And in 1945, people in Britain voted incredibly strictly on class lines. The overwhelming majority of working class people voted Labour. Most middle class people voted Tory. Now that's completely changed around. More working class people vote Tory and more middle class. If you go to nice areas of London now, everyone has a Labour flag

outside them. You can predict someone's opinion. And just as if you go to many young, one class guys in particular will vote for the Tory party because politics is about identity. It's essentially, it's a kind of continuation of religion almost. But that is a problem for the conservative narrative though, isn't it? Because then if the conservative big C is just not being,

I mean, what if it is just about reimposing movement of, you know, reimposing barriers to trade and movement of people and ideas and students?

I mean, this is something that Britain, if Britain's stretching all the way back to the 17th century has been a sort of entrepot of trade

and ideas and things going on, and armies going off concrete. Sure, but free movement of people is a very recent... Britain has never been... No, but London was always this incredibly dynamic city full of immigrants, full of people. It's always had very small numbers of immigrants

relative to post-97. I mean, that is a new thing. That is the modern world. Sure, I know, but... OK, so then you're... But if the remedy, quote-unquote, to that is to build quite a different kind of British state, that doesn't feel very conservative, though, does it?

I mean, it depends what you mean by conservatism. I would say there's a split, right? So there's the conservative paradox. I think it was David Willits. I mean, all ideologies have complete paradoxes, because people want everything, right? So he's saying that the free market uh sort of neoliberal economics is you know i don't like the phrase but that's what's used they do sort of destroy everything conservatives hold dear i mean they make change they make radical change everything becomes um

different and this is so if you go back to all those radical movements like the luddites they were basically conservative they didn't want change they wanted to keep their old jobs they didn't want this mechanization so under Thatcher Britain became far far more liberal because the city of London became dominant and there's nothing more liberal or liberalizing than finance it's like the free movement of money if you go into financial words now you know you know briefly I for various reasons worked at a finance company and these you know they were just devastated by brexit they're all i mean for financial and emotional reasons right because they're they are an international community they have overwhelmingly liberal values there's like one brexiteer in the company and he was like in his 60s um and it was considered

sort of like a darling eccentric because it was so unusual i mean that is that is the most liberal world imaginable and that's all down to thatcher I mean, that is the most liberal world imaginable and that's all down to Thatcher's revolution. So that's the kind of contradiction at the heart of conservatism. And I think Brexit is going to bring huge difficulties to that because there are two visions of Brexit, right? There's the weak vision, which is like we're sort of buccaneering. There's a lot of, you know, pirate talk about we're going to go on the high seas

and, you know, and basically it's the 19th century liberal vision of free trade well then there's a sort of more tory brexit which is basically like you know it's like people want to live and retire to hobbiton to the shire they want like a their own community their own 1945 labor consensus exactly right so stuff made in britain and stuff the fact that you know the 1940 of labor very Labour were very US-sceptic and for very similar reasons, and they would fit perfectly in with modern-day, the sort of, I don't know, the Red Wall, new Tories who are all going that way.

So these two visions of Brexit, right, it will take a very skilled politician to bridge those and satisfy both camps. I don't know how it's going to happen. Yeah. So we're going to call it contemporary politics. Coming back essentially to what conservatism is and why you are one um what what is what is it so it's essence it's a sense that the world is fine as it is change may bring catastrophic results right no i mean that conservatism so

i wait to go back to the i started beginning with a basic sort of description of what it is and the main difference people have between conservatives, what they misunderstand is they mix up with what Jerry Muller, the American academic, calls orthodoxy. So orthodoxy means nothing should change because it's a preordained, almost always a religious reason. This is how things are. You must not question that. So conservatism has always embraced change to a certain extent.

I mean, then Burke says, you know, society that doesn't change is unable to improve itself. And conservatives just believe, like, institutional proof. So if an institution is there, it's given some proof that it has a reason for its there. So the burden of proof is on the people to change. I mean, this is why, like, Blair was so disliked by a certain section of conservative thoughts because he loves up the meddling instincts as um you know they wanted to

get rid of yeah get rid of the house of laws change of things like and you know like it's fine like it's been there for a long time so like why change it because of your you know your first priority is this doesn't make sense in theory so i have to change it so conservatives believe that the burden of proof on people changing stuff has to be well you have to prove why your your you know new world is going to be better because a lot of the time that's not going to be the case right um and just the general principle you know like again i don't want to go into biology because a sort of scientifically illiterate conservative using those analogies is always a bad idea. But, you know, in evolution, small, tiny mutations are usually often an advantage. That's how evolution works.

But huge mutations are almost always terrible. They're catastrophic results. Huge change, by its definition in history, has always been bad, almost always. While I think the small, tiny, incremental changes are the other way forward. So it's basically, I mean, someone said, you know, Conservatives are basically liberalism with a speed limit on. I loved that. Well, thank you very much indeed. Your book

is Small Men on the Wrong Side of History. Thank you. Thanks very much, Ed West. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.

He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well. I have faith in you. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber

or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.