The Book Club: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with Sen. Ted Cruz | The Book Club 

Be notified when new episode of The Book Club drop: www.prageru.com/series/book-club/

“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Brave New World is like 10x creepier than 1984.

That story about Castro and the candy sent chills down my spine...

I didn't know Ted Cruz to be such a vivid storyteller. I recently read the book and enjoyed this conversation immensely. The parallels between Brave New World and our current reality in the United States is quite chilling indeed.

Huxley and Orwell were influenced by Yevgeny Zamyatin, who wrote "We" in 1920-21 and had it smuggled out of the Soviet Union to be published. Zamyatin lived it.

As an English teacher, I’m really impressed with Senator Cruz here. The level of nuance and attention to detail in his analysis of the book is stunning. He could honestly be a great English teacher. Bravo.

Brave New World Revisited is even more relevant. Huxley refined the concepts.

The part when John wants to see his dying mom and the kids are playing around her death bed is one of the most profound part of any books I’ve read

I hated that book and that dystopian utopia, but whenever I hear it analyzed I find new details about the progressive dream that terrifies me even more.

So interesting what you are saying about beauty (flowers). I have been observing for some time how beauty is being taken from us. I first noticed many years ago how buildings tend to be getting uglier--offensively ugly! There used to be a pride in craftsmanship and details--glass door knobs, etc. Fashion is trending downhill. Even the human faces! When I was young in California, almost everyone was attractive. I almost never saw anyone who was truly irredeemably unattractive at any age, and now, some 50 yrs later, it's not at all unusual. Even simple things like Kleenex boxes. They used to be gorgeous, with big cabbage roses or interesting geometric designs--almost too beautiful to throw away .... but now they are practically hideous! They HAVE to be doing this on purpose!! I think it's because beauty brings refreshment to the soul. The Evil behind this trend doesn't want us to have ANY respite. But Jesus told us to "Look UP!"

I’m really glad my English teacher forced me to read this and 1984. I never cared as a teenager but it has taught me so much as I’ve revisited them and looked at the world now.

Feeling so grateful to Prager U for making this video. I read BNW about a year ago and it blew my mind how exactly it described where we are today. It makes me feel a little bit crazy to know that this book forecasted the present day so well, but even with that information made available to us, we haven’t been able to avoid it. In all the times I’ve raised BNW in conversation, not once have I heard back any awareness of its relevancy and value. So this book club video has done nothing less than increase my sanity! Thank heavens that some people ARE having this conversation! How do I find people who get this in my real life?! I crave these kinds of connections, so I don’t feel so isolated in my awareness of things like modern society being an enactment of prophetic fiction.

I knew that Sen. Cruz was a gifted orator and incredibly intelligent, having argued several times in front of the Supreme Court, but it was a pleasant discovery to learn that he has a poetic bent.

Once again I recommend Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. A great book on the cancel culture.

"Sexual libertinism means 'we want LESS love.'" That's valuable insight for young men & women who are starting to make profound decisions for their lives.

This may not be the only place we can watch you two interact, but you two so need to do this again!

I just Audibled this book for the first time, and the thing that horrified me the most was the sexual play. Children in their society are taught to act out sex acts pre puberty in order to encourage the notion that sex has no real meaning and deter loyalty. The only thing Huxley got wrong was the orientation. Pride parades are hyper sexualized, and I see kids at them. Books are being distributed to kids to normalize LGBTQ relationships. I see sexual play entering our schools. I'm not religious, but I intend to send my kid to Catholic school specifically to avoid this stuff.

Read it in high school, who knew it'd be so relevant today.

I haven't read this book, but I certainly would like to. The analysis alone made me look back and feel so lucky and thankful for my humanity. Thank you, kind sirs.

This Book Club idea is great. It would be great to know what title is coming up for the upcoming episode.

Thanks Ted and Michael.

I am so glad that you decided to have this book on The Book Club. I read this book for the first time just a couple years ago and did not find it easy to understand but that was before I became aware of all of this dystopian stuff in our own present day society. I still have the book I think so I may reread it if I can find the time. I think that Sen. Cruz is the perfect person to tell of the things his grandmother and parents experienced under Fidel Castro's Cuba. Thank you again. Praise God. Selah

I have this book, but hadn't read it.. maybe I should.

Funny I read the girl's name like Sen. Cruz said. I read this book in my attempt to self-educate when I was 19. I was totally scandalized by this book. So glad to hear you discuss it.

Had to pause to comment. Brilliant discussion, especially when Ted is discussing the part about the promiscuity not being about screwing but rather about not loving because if you love what would you not do for your loved ones. My favorite Prager U Book Club discussion so far! Phenomenal!

It’s a great read! We should make every high school kid read this and 1984! And some others!

Read this is highschool AP English, I want to read it again now hearing this two decades later. It's great! Thanks for book clubbing it.

We had to read this book in R.N. school in 1987...I keep thinking of this book in what's happening in our society today!

If Ted Cruz could be this relaxed and was able to portray this side of him better, I think more people would see that he’s a legit presidential candidate. He’s brilliant and genuine. Too bad most people don’t see that.

I didn't realize a book club could be so engaging. Thanks! ^_^

Please continue this show!

Great Show Thank YOU Gentlemen🗽

Whatever happened to “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend with my life your right to say it.” ?

I like Ted more each time I see him. Michael, I have always loved you

I always toss in an oblique reference to BNW in my books and while it sails over most of my readers heads, every so often one catches it and DMs me. Makes my day when that happens. Huxley's book is grossly underrated IMO. Should be right up there with 1984 and Animal Farm. And today's Soma is likes on an IG/Twitter post.

Uuuuh, Huxley and Orwell were socialists. Orwell even fought for anarcho-socialist syndicate in Spain. Huxley thought that capitalism was just as terrifying as totalitarianism because of its use of advertisements as propaganda and the need for even more propaganda to sedate the working class into not asking questions. Huxley wrote, "Certain educators, for exam­ple, disapproved of the teaching of propaganda anal­ysis on the grounds that it would make adolescents unduly cynical. Nor was it welcomed by the military authorities, who were afraid that recruits might start to analyze the utterances of drill sergeants. And then there were the clergymen and the advertisers. The clergymen were against propaganda analysis as tend­ing to undermine belief and diminish churchgoing; the advertisers objected on the grounds that it might undermine brand loyalty and reduce sales." But Capitalist propaganda is just as controlling as a totalitarian state: "In a capitalist democracy, such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country's working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feel­ings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of Winston Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by so few. We are far in­deed from Jefferson's ideal of a genuinely free society composed of a hierarchy of self-governing units -- "the elementary republics of the wards, the county repub­lics, the State republics and the Republic of the Union, forming a gradation of authorities." While he did despise the the totalitarian government of the USSR, remember that Karl Marx believed the goal of communism was to dissolve the state, not give it total power. Lenin, for complicated reasons, decided authoritarian control was necessary for a time. Obviously, Lenin was mistaken. Nonetheless, Huxley even names his character in this book "Marx" after Karl Marx (who he was a fan of). The biggest irony is that PragerU is the kind of pseudo-intellectualism that is essentially the kind of propaganda Huxley was warning us about. They just did an analysis of a book without any understanding of its deeper meaning or the intellectual history that grounds the works meaning. PragerU pretends to offer analyses of literature, philosophy, economics, etc, but none of the contributors have the sufficient level of expertise to formulate accurate analyses. For example, Ben Shapiro's analysis of John Locke gets some openings arguments right, but utterly fails to draw the correct conclusions. He ignores the vast majority of Locke's philosophy and cherry picks small parts he can use to manipulate you all into agreeing with his ideology. In sum: unsubscribe from PragerU and Ben Shapiro is a sophist.

It’s very interesting that they don’t mention how the savage reservation is broken although the have all the “freedoms” of family, Christianity, and conservative ideals... Huxley purposely includes this to show that both spectrums lead to different types of pain.

Senator Cruz, here is my critique. I did not like the lengths you went to against Donald Trump during the 2016 primary. I especially did not like the way you used your Christianity as currency in that bid. With that said, i really appreciate the way you have been a solid ally to the Constitution, the Nation, and President. You have not just made Texas proud. You made America proud by just doing your job as a Senator. You have set good example. Thank you Senator Cruz. I still remember your sleepless fillabuster that the news media mocked you for. I was proud of you.

Finished reading it last night. Huxley was ahead of his times back in 1931 when he wrote this book. Excellent review, gentlemen.

Great book. Good work, Mike. Cruzer is the man.

That story about Communist Cuba and his grandmother was chilling...

I read "Brave New World" when I was in high school in the 70's, but I didn't read it in Literature class. I read it in Sociology class. Most of my classmates dug the book, but I was horrified by it. The promiscuity, the atheism, the self medicating all made me feel really bad for the characters in the book. Even though it has been many years since I last read it, listening to these two gentlemen discuss the book brings back much of a revulsion I felt on reading it as a teenager.

I’ve read 1984 and Brave New World these past few months along with other dystopias (currently reading Animal Farm) and I found these things to be common in all of them 1- family is distorted/destroyed 2- speech is controlled

Freedom starts with freedom from sin.

I never knew Ted Cruise was so intelligent. We need to keep him in Washington.

This is the best one of these so far.

I have become a huge fan of Senator Ted Cruz over the last few weeks. Thank you, sir, for all you are doing for freedom and our country.

Demolition Man Edgar Friendly: You got that right. See, according to Cocteau's plan, I'm the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener". You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau's way. What he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death

This book is more applicable than 1984 change my mind

I remember when we read this and 1984 in high school in 2002, our teacher asked us which world we would rather live in and the class unanimously said Brave New World. The teacher was shocked and asked why and the majority of the class said they didn’t see anything bad about it and that it seemed pretty great. Im not a wise man so I couldn’t have known how foreboding that was at the time but I do remember thinking “that’s weird, I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be a dystopia.”

I read this book when I was 13 (1968) and just recently bought it to read again. I have been comparing our society to this book for some time. I wish more people would read it.

THE ISLAND BY ALDOUS HUXLEY !

How odd, I just finished reading this book three days ago. I often hear that we're entering the world of 1984, but Aldous Huxley didn't think that was sustainable, and believed that we were hurtling toward Brave New World very quickly, where stability is maintained through bread and circuses.

amazing ep!

Cruz attended two private high schools: Faith West Academy, near Katy, Texas; and Second Baptist High School in Houston, from which he graduated as valedictorian in 1988. During high school, Cruz participated in a Houston-based group known at the time as the Free Market Education Foundation, a program that taught high school students the philosophies of economists such as Milton Friedman and Frédéric Bastiat.After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree. While at Harvard Law, he was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review. Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said: "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant." At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.

Surprising Ted brings up 1984, brave new, and animal farm. Those books were needed for my high school summer reading as well as Lord of the Flies!

Read this book last week. Great Timing.

I take and read 'Brave New World' and '1984' on holiday every year. I couldn't go on holiday this year so I looked out of the window instead. . .

I never noticed the Lenina thing until right before Ted mentioned it. Can't believe I missed that.

I've listened to 3 minutes and already I LOVE it! 🤣

Thank you so much for this. This remains on my grade 11 reading list. A great, insightful discussion.

It was very good. Senator Ted Cruz, I am a fan. Thank you!

This was excellent. Thank you to all who helped make it.

In keeping with 1984 and Brave New World, I would recommend "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler. Another depressing book, but an interesting analysis of the future, leading to a discussion of how to avoid depression and fragmentation of a person's life and soul.

Soon Americans will be using the "Don't talk about it and we the Hague won't prosecute you for it" the same way the former surviving Yugoslavians still do. Simply because the court cases will take longer than any of us has time left to live.

I haven’t read animal farm or brave new world yet, but watching/reading 1984 around 10 years ago was plenty for me to see the parallels with our society. I have both of those books, and hope to read them soon. I’m too busy building greenhouses and caring for food animals in our current society, so that I can be prepared for the one that’s obviously coming. Teaching my family too.

Finally! A book I've actually read instead of just heard a lot about. This was the first book my book club read. It was probably our most spirited discussion.

Please do Animal Farm next or Lord of the Flies! :) Also, really enjoyed your discussion!

I love this show. Keep them coming.

I think it was about 20 years ago I coined the term 'Brave New 1984'. I'm pretty proud of that. It is the most succinct description of the state of the modern world I can come up with. Of course you have to have read both books to get it. It's perfect really. But this is just philosophy. Real truth is spiritual truth. So many of us just don't want to see the world, the state of man, as God sees us. That's truth. So many young people you see on 'conservative' website comments are finding good philosophy but are still entangled within worldly philosophy and their hearts are littered with gross, even prurient and debauched thinking. Theirs only one path to real Truth. No amount of man's philosophy can discover it. Set your minds on things above as Paul of Tarsus explained. You will find Truth.

I read this book, 1984 and Farenhight 361, way back as a teen in the 60s!!! So good to know that as we are living in such a dystopia these great books are coming back! The only one I'd add to the list of must reads is: The Politics of Obediance, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, by Etienne de LA Boetie... it explains how we got to this moment ... though it was written by a young French college student 500 yrs ago it is so alive today!

I love Ted Cruz so much now! This was so awesome. I read this 20 years ago, now I'm reading it again. Awesome job guys!

If Cruz ever runs for president again, will Knowles be his running mate lol

Great discussion! Came over from Sir Roger Scruton's Hoover Institution discussion on How to be a Conservative. It seems from here, the rest will be history for me.

The moment you realize you’re older than Ted Cruz. I am only a year older, but I had a man tell me back in 1992 when Bill Clinton got elected that he was officially old because his dad told him you are old when you’re older than the president lol. I’ve never forgotten that conversation. My day has not come yet!

Braving the New Horrible Normal.

I'd love to hear your takes on "Short story of Harrison Bergeron' by K. Vonnegut.

Great analysis I just finished it today December 2020. I also read it as Senator Ted Cruz .

Excellent! Thank you.

I love the book club. It’s still political, but kind of a break from the endless world of today into the minds of the great authors and their works

This is such a good book, I remember reading it in high school and this was probably the only book from then that stuck with me. Its funny going back to it now because i was a libral back then and mow im conservative

Great Birthday gift! Thanks!

Excellent Book Choice!

The show is pretty interesting too. It adds a newer, fresher layer of technocratic domination, and I'd like to see their commentary on it too

Hey! Jus' wait a doggone minute. You said that in BNW, that the word "mother" is an obsenity. That is sooo funny. In the Congress of the former Home of the Free and the Brave, a new bill has been proposed banning the use of the words mother, father, etc. They must have read the book! That is so funny! 😂🤣😳

Just finished 1984, currently into BNW and will read AF next. Great discussion Gents - BRAVO TED CRUZ KEEP UP THE RIGHT FIGHT.

I just read 1984 and Brave New World. I’m planning on reading Animal Farm or Fahrenheit 451 next!

it’s in my top 10 fave books. (once you get past the 1st chapter!!!) brave new world and 1984 + animal farm

I read that book last year. The response to Covid, the legalization of weed efforts. Wow

I read this book one summer, somewhat out of boredom, but probably also because a teacher had mentioned it. Possibly also because I was a fan of the band "The Police" at the time. One song, "Wrapped Around Your Finger" refers to another Huxley novel, which my dad would have certainly been horrified to know I read at the age I did. Lol I found this book a much more worthwhile read. It opened my eyes wider to underlying movements in society.

How can we find out about the next book so we can read it beforehand?

“When I was a boy television was called books!”

Once upon a time, people argued whether 1984 or Brave New World would be the one to actually happen. No one expected it to be both...

I just finished the book this morning. Enjoyed listening to this podcast. Great book with interesting topics and themes. Can’t wait to read more by Huxley.

Excellent quickie discussion of a great piece of literature. Just reread both Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. Just started a reread of Animal Farm.

They’re called “Feelies” because people who are caught up in ‘feeling’ are not ‘thinking’...

Aldous Huxley would loathe PragerU

Brilliant discussion.

I’m surprised Amazon hasn’t banned this book yet!