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Confessions of a Black Conservative | Glenn Loury — Transcript

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0:00Look at this cops and
0:01young black men, cops killing young
0:03black men. I mean, what an absurd
0:05narrative. When the real violence on the
0:08streets of America today is is a
0:10these miscreants and these
0:12t h u g s
0:14running around with automatic weapons
0:16firing them aimlessly out of automobiles
0:17at their gang rivals and stuff like
0:19that. I mean, and and you don't have any
0:22engagement with that problem. Instead,
0:25you convert it into a
0:28white domination problem. So, that's the
0:31kind of truth that a black president
0:34needed to pull the covers off of and he
0:36failed to do it. Glenn Loury is an
0:38esteemed American economist and public
0:40intellectual whose research and
0:41commentary delves into the intersection
0:43of economics, race, and social policy.
0:45Born on the South Side of Chicago,
0:46Loury's academic prowess led him to
0:48become the first black tenured professor
0:50of economics at Harvard at the age of
0:5133. Now as a professor at Brown
0:53University, his research has challenged
0:55conventional wisdom and sparked critical
0:57discourse on issues like affirmative
0:59action, criminal justice reform, and
1:00racial inequality. Loury's salient
1:02commentary on the Glenn Show on Substack
1:04and as a fellow at the Manhattan
1:05Institute highlight his depth of
1:06knowledge and often heterodox views. In
1:08his recent memoir, Late Admissions:
1:10Confessions of a Black Conservative,
1:11Loury reflects on his experiences in
1:13academia, moments of personal turmoil,
1:15and his political shifts over the course
1:16of his career. In today's episode, we
1:18discuss the difficulty of political
1:20messaging and policy crafting around
1:21racial inequality, the trajectory of
1:23American race relations since the Obama
1:25administration, and Glenn's relationship
1:27with religion. We also discuss what
1:29Glenn views as the real tragedy of race
1:30in America and the lasting damage from
1:32the national racial reckoning of the
1:34summer of 2020. Stay tuned to hear Glenn
1:36Loury's profound insights on these
1:37issues and much more on this episode of
1:39the Sunday Special.
1:49Glenn, thanks so much for joining me. I
1:51really appreciate it. I've been a big
1:52fan for a long time of an extraordinary
1:54amount of your work. You You brand new
1:55book out called Late Admissions:
1:56Confessions of a Black Conservative. I
1:58want to get into all of that. First I
2:00kind of want to start, I mean it does
2:01cover the topic of your book obviously,
2:03with with sort of your history
2:04politically because here you call
2:06yourself a black conservative. For a
2:07long time you considered yourself a
2:09moderate or a liberal mugged by reality.
2:12So now in the title of the book you're
2:13calling yourself a conservative. What do
2:14you think that means?
2:16Uh well, I I could approach it in a
2:18number of ways. As an economist I could
2:20talk about kind of libertarian ideas on
2:22the economy, markets, property prices,
2:25limited government,
2:27free trade, that kind of thing.
2:29As a person who is a born-again
2:31Christian at one point in my life and
2:34very fervent believer,
2:37uh less so now but still with great
2:39respect for these traditions of
2:40religious
2:42uh of search for meaning in life, uh you
2:44know, I tend to be conservative on the
2:46cultural side.
2:47Uh but from the racial point of view,
2:50the vote conservatism has mainly to do I
2:53think with
2:54embrace of a kind of autonomy,
2:57self-determination, personal
2:59responsibility,
3:00uh
3:01not blaming the white man, more Booker
3:03T. Washington kind of, you know,
3:05bootstrapping
3:07kind of uh
3:08response to the existential challenge
3:12that being the descendants of slaves
3:14confronts black Americans with. And I my
3:16reaction to that
3:18problem, the problem of what do you do
3:20what do you do now? Do you have your
3:22hand out? Do you go around talking about
3:23racism and reparations or do you get
3:25busy your own community?
3:28That makes me conservative too. So I
3:30would say on all three of those,
3:32economics, culture, and black
3:34self-determination,
3:36I I have finally
3:38at this late stage in my life
3:40come to embrace a conservative identity.
3:43Uh obviously that's a dangerous
3:44political move because you can be as
3:46groundbreaking a thinker as Thomas
3:48Sowell and just get completely
3:49marginalized from the public debate,
3:50treated as though you basically don't
3:52exist if you are openly declared a
3:54conservative early enough. I mean, I've
3:56been saying literally my entire
3:57political lifetime, which now goes back
3:59about 20 years, that if I could pick one
4:00person to be president of the United
4:01States, it would be Professor Sowell.
4:03But Professor Sowell in sort of
4:04mainstream economic discussions is never
4:06even mentioned despite so much of his
4:08amazing work on things ranging from race
4:11and discrimination to just basic
4:13economic knowledge and decisions type
4:16work. Why do you think it is that that
4:18black conservatives, particularly in the
4:20economic sphere, or people who even are
4:22perceived that way, you know, you, say
4:25Roland Fryer, why why does that
4:27marginalization happen?
4:29That's such a good question, uh Ben, and
4:31I'm so glad you mentioned Thomas Sowell,
4:32who's a great man, who is an epic figure
4:34of the 20th century, one of the great
4:35intellectuals of our lifetime.
4:38Uh I mean, you know, you can name book
4:40after book, and Jason Riley's written a
4:42pretty good biography of him and
4:44whatnot, but Thomas Sowell is a towering
4:46figure.
4:47I keep saying he should get the Nobel
4:48Prize, just like they gave it to
4:49Friedrich von Hayek, and they gave it to
4:51Gunnar Myrdal. They can give it to a
4:53generic thinker. He doesn't have to be a
4:54technical,
4:56you know, kind of mathematics, uh kind
4:58of fetishizing, and you know, he's a big
5:00thinker and and
5:02Yeah. But anyway, I I'm not answering
5:03your question, and uh
5:05I think there's a certain expectation
5:07that if you're black, you have a
5:10kind of uh
5:12progressive, what they're going to call
5:14progressive, or kind of critical, you
5:16know, that you have to be in a
5:18in a anti-system mode, that that that
5:22there there's some kind of rebellion
5:23that's part of the authenticity. And so
5:26when you see somebody comes along who's
5:28uh
5:30you know, but
5:32uh
5:33whose whose uh worldview is grounded in
5:36something other than
5:38resistance to struggle or domination,
5:40who kind of embraces the reigning
5:43cultural paradigms and whatnot, then
5:45they they they want to marginalize them.
5:48I don't know, did that make any sense?
5:49I'm not sure I understand the problem
5:51since I'm kind of in a way a victim of
5:53the same set of forces
5:56forces myself. Yeah, one of the things I
5:58wanted to ask you and what I want to get
5:59to your critiques of the left which of
6:01course have, you know, made you very
6:03controversial. But one of the things
6:04that I think that's fascinating from
6:06what I've read about your book and and
6:07what I've listened to you talk about
6:08with John McWhorter and other people is
6:10is sort of your take on why the right
6:13has been historically unable to reach
6:16out to the the black community or to
6:18black voters so to speak in in some of
6:21the
6:22in some ways that are kind of unique. So
6:24when I when I hear you talk about race
6:26very often or when you write about race,
6:28you write about race in in a way that
6:30that you've talked about here as as
6:33essentially it should be made less
6:35relevant to the question of personal
6:36autonomy and responsibility that that
6:39people should be taught that the
6:40decisions to make their life better are
6:42effectively in their own hands because
6:43teaching them anything else is
6:45counterproductive and and useless. And
6:47yet one of the things that you've talked
6:48pretty openly about is that
6:50conservatives when they speak that
6:51language are not speaking that language
6:52properly and then when they speak to
6:53black Americans very often about that
6:55sort of stuff it comes off less as an
6:58act of of sympathy and pragmatism and
7:01more as a sort of alienating language
7:04with regard to with regard to black
7:06Americans. How how it's said is maybe
7:07not how it's heard.
7:09I I've heard you talk about that and I
7:10wonder if you could talk a little bit
7:11about what do you think are the main
7:12obstacles to a conservative or
7:14libertarian message in speaking to to
7:17black Americans.
7:19I think that's a hard question, at least
7:20it's a hard one for me.
7:23Um the thing that came to my mind, I
7:25don't care what you know until I know
7:26that you care. This is an old aphorism,
7:28you know.
7:30You can't really get my attention and
7:33tell me anything that I might otherwise
7:34be disinclined to believe that I'll take
7:36credibly and until I'm persuaded that
7:39your basic commitments
7:41are consistent with my flourishing and
7:43not antagonistic to it.
7:46So, the suspicion that the motive is
7:48racist, that or a lack of concern
7:51altogether, that
7:53the prescription might be
7:55free market, bootstrap,
7:58responsibility.
7:59But, the motive for it might be
8:01indifference or hostility to the person
8:03as opposed to a desire that they
8:05flourish and a a thinking that this is
8:07the best way to do it.
8:09Uh
8:09and I you know, if I were a white
8:12conservative being told that I had to
8:15curry favor with the sentiment of this
8:17population in order to get them to take
8:19me seriously, I might I might balk at
8:21that. Uh I remember back in the '90s
8:24when I started pulling away from
8:26conservatism a little bit for a period
8:28of time,
8:29being at a meeting where uh the great
8:31William F. Buckley said,
8:34in effect, the metaphor was,
8:36"You can't say that the the doctor
8:38doesn't care uh when he's dealing with a
8:41terminal patient and and he moves on to
8:43the next case."
8:45And and I thought at the time, "Oh, how
8:46horrible that was, how horrible it is."
8:48He was merely saying,
8:51you know, what Daniel Patrick Moynihan
8:53in a way was saying to Richard Nixon in
8:55that famous uh
8:56mo- uh benign neglect. He says, "I think
8:59it's time for the race question to
9:01endure period of
9:02benign neglect." Meaning, you know,
9:04let's move on to other stuff.
9:06And people get from that the message
9:08that you don't care.
9:10You know, I want to go back to to that
9:12period in your life cuz I find that
9:13particularly fascinating. I'm going to
9:14get kind of the before and then the
9:15after, also. But, that period which you
9:17do talk about in your new book, that
9:18period where you moved away from
9:20conservatism, I think is instructive for
9:22conservatives in speaking about race.
9:24So, maybe you can talk a little bit
9:25about, you know, what were the forces
9:27that propelled you away from
9:29conservatism and and toward a sort of
9:32view of yourself as more moderate or
9:33even left leaning.
9:35Okay. Uh some of those forces were uh
9:38not as flattering to me as others. I
9:40mean, so the unflattering was like
9:44I was a feeling alienated from other
9:46African-American intellectuals, and I
9:47wanted to be rehabilitated, you know, in
9:49other words, I'd been out in the
9:50wilderness with Thomas Sowell and Walter
9:52Williams and people,
9:53and I kind of wanted to get back in the
9:55good graces, and I and with the likes of
9:58the Cornel West and the Henry Louis
10:00Gates Jr.'s and the Anthony Appiahs of
10:02the kind of what I call the Negro
10:04cognoscenti in my book. I mean, the the
10:05kind of
10:07intellectual elites amongst
10:08African-Americans because
10:10you know, being from the South Side of
10:11Chicago, being a black guy, I mean,
10:13having a certain identity, I I wanted to
10:14be and and you know, I was getting
10:16pressure from all over the place, even
10:17from my own family, even from my own
10:19children, you know, I was getting
10:20pressure about my politics.
10:22So, maybe I was succumbing to that a
10:24little bit. The mass incarceration
10:26issue, there was a while where I was
10:28very agitated about the sharp increase
10:31in the size of the prison population and
10:33the racial disparity in it and and all
10:36of that, and I leaned left in those
10:38years on on those issues.
10:40Uh
10:41but there were also other things that
10:43were going on. So, The Bell Curve came
10:45out. I had a real problem with it, you
10:47know, the speculation about the
10:49intrinsic intellectual inferiority of
10:51African-Americans. I mean, I you know,
10:54forgive me. As I told my friends at
10:56Commentary when I went to write a
10:57critical review of The Bell Curve, and
10:59this is Norman Podhoretz and Neal
11:00Kozodoy, they said, "No, thank you, cuz
11:02we're not piling on Charles."
11:04And I felt, you know, bad about that
11:07because, you know, I I felt like I was
11:08protecting my people, you know, I mean,
11:10I you know, there was this kind of
11:12thing. Uh other stuff happened.
11:16Uh I as I said, became a Christian and
11:19was, you know, moved in a way about
11:22social justice kind of questions from
11:24that point of view. It was an
11:25African-American congregation, AME.
11:28Uh pretty conservative theologically,
11:31but uh also a sense of responsibility
11:34for
11:35uplifting the the black community kind
11:37of thing. So, there were various
11:38pressures and stuff that were
11:40There were some books I write about in
11:41my book, my reaction to The Bell Curve,
11:44to Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's book
11:46America in Black and White, and to
11:49Dinesh D'Souza's book The End of Racism.
11:53Uh I had problems with those books,
11:55which I could go into, but we don't want
11:57to waste our time on that kind of thing.
11:59Well, actually, I might want to waste my
12:00time for at least 5 minutes on that sort
12:01of thing, because I think that it's
12:02instructive as to the approach that
12:04conservatives should take when they
12:06discuss these sorts of issues. Because
12:07obviously, you're not only somebody
12:08who's open to conservatism, you're
12:09somebody who is conservative, and yet
12:12you found the messages of those books
12:13particularly alienating. And I think
12:15that that is something that's that's
12:16worth conservatives, people who very
12:18like very like listen to my show,
12:20talking about. Like, well, what exactly
12:22is the best way to discuss issues that
12:24were being taken on by Charles Murray or
12:26the Thernstroms
12:28uh or or D'Souza in in in those books?
12:30And how do they differ from your message
12:32with regard to race, which is a message
12:34of taking ownership of of your own life?
12:37What what what is the distinction there?
12:39Okay. Well, I don't have to be right
12:40about this. This is just my opinion, and
12:41this is 25, 30-year-old stuff in a way,
12:44going back to the '90s. But, I already
12:46said my problem with Murray and
12:48Herrnstein, which was in a way a kind of
12:50defense of the race. It was a kind of
12:53respect The intellectual agenda here is
12:56hostile to the essential interests of
12:58African Americans to characterize our
13:01subordinate social status as the result
13:04of
13:04intrinsic or inborn deficiency.
13:08Now, Charles Murray, who is a friend of
13:10mine, would say, uh "That's not what I
13:12would say."
13:14But, certainly, that message was in the
13:16air, and there was a a disquiet that I
13:18had with that whole with that whole
13:20project. Uh Dinesh,
13:23he has a long career now to uh stand on,
13:27and you can look at his uh corpus of
13:29work. That book, The End of Racism, I I
13:31and I wrote a review in the Weekly
13:33Standard about the book. I thought it
13:34was just snide.
13:36I I thought it was a smirk. I thought it
13:38was too clever by half. I I thought he
13:41was kind of dancing on the graves of
13:43people. I mean, he's a young immigrant
13:46from is he from Mumbai?
13:48He he Dartmouth. He had this
13:53political correctness book
13:55illiberal education which I thought was
13:56a good book.
13:57And then he comes along with this and he
14:00undertakes to sort of summarize from a
14:0320-something
14:05conservative intellectual
14:09uh
14:10you know, activist kind of perspective.
14:13And I I thought he made light. I mean, I
14:14could go into details and some of it was
14:16maybe personal. Some of it was my
14:18reaction to him at that stage in his
14:20life, but I had a problem with the book.
14:22I wrote that
14:23review in the Weekly Standard and as far
14:25as American Black and White is
14:26concerned, it was
14:28sort of
14:30his point that I made earlier which is
14:32you know,
14:34are we going to stop caring about
14:37whether we get this problem right? The
14:39problem being the residual subordinate
14:42status of African Americans given
14:44slavery and Jim Crow and all that. Or
14:45are we just going to move on? And
14:47in a way I thought
14:49they wanted to move on and I didn't want
14:50to move on. So uh
14:53I took the opportunity of a long review
14:55in the Atlantic which
14:57cost me their friendship
14:59to say that.
15:01So, let's talk about the residual
15:02effects of racism in American history.
15:05It seems very often when we have this
15:06conversation that two sides almost talk
15:08past one another.
15:10I have this conversation a lot. I've
15:11debated this question a lot. And it's
15:13it's I can be fully sympathetic and
15:16agree with the argument that history has
15:17consequences because of course it does.
15:19And of course things that are baked into
15:21the cake for for hundreds of years are
15:23going to have long tails. There's
15:25nothing new about that. But but the task
15:27of any policy maker is to determine,
15:29number one, what would be the most
15:31effective corrective to that if it can
15:33be corrected without violating the
15:34rights of others. And two, trying to
15:36actually
15:38create some sort of metric whereby you
15:40can determine how much of a given
15:42disparity is a result of past
15:44discrimination. And that one is really
15:46really hard. It seems as though the
15:48conversation goes, "Okay, I fully
15:49acknowledge that the the terrible
15:52history of early redlining, let's say
15:54the '30s, '40s, and '50s, that that has
15:56tail effects in terms of fam- familial
15:58wealth. But how does that measure into
16:00today's income disparities? How does
16:02that measure into today's wealth
16:04disparities?" And even if you
16:04acknowledge that it measures in a
16:06certain percentage in today's wealth
16:08disparities, how do how is that wealth
16:10disparity corrected for by, say, bad
16:13mortgage policy as opposed to increased
16:15income trajectory, which would lead
16:17presumably to future wealth? I mean, the
16:18reality is that there are a number of
16:20minority groups who had literally no
16:22familial wealth when they arrived in the
16:23United States and now have tremendous
16:25wealth because of those income
16:26trajectories that actually generate
16:28wealth generationally. You know, it it
16:29it seems like whenever you get down to
16:31those brass tacks,
16:32very often people want to avoid that
16:34second question. They want to go back to
16:36the original question and then suggest
16:37that you're just not acknowledging the
16:39reality of historic discrimination and
16:41its aftereffect in modern life. And then
16:44they conflate that with the idea that
16:47there is current discriminatory policy,
16:49which, as you talked about even in
16:51Anatomy of of racial inequality, the
16:53idea of of contract racism, the idea
16:56like legal racism, that's been gone for
16:58a long time in the United States. There
17:00might be contact racism, as you talk
17:01about, just how people interact. That's
17:03not the same thing.
17:04I agree up and down the board. I agree
17:06100%
17:08uh on this uh the overhang of history. I
17:11mean, of course it's there.
17:13Uh there's no disputing it. It's also
17:15very difficult to determine, as you
17:16suggest, what the what proportion of any
17:18given disparity that you see today is
17:20due to that as opposed to other things.
17:23Uh in economics we have this concept of
17:25stocks and flows, you know, the stock is
17:27the wealth at you have at hand, the flow
17:29is what you're incrementing and adding
17:31to that on each annual or monthly basis.
17:35And the long-term disposition of the
17:37stocks depends upon the flows. So,
17:40people are looking at a wealth disparity
17:42and they're saying, "See, history has
17:43bequeathed us this." But they're not
17:44asking where does wealth come from?
17:45Wealth doesn't fall from the sky, it has
17:47to be created. So, there's a kind of
17:49fallacy there. If you don't get the
17:51flows right, the stocks are are going to
17:53revert back to their disparate condition
17:56in in the long run anyway. You're not
17:57going to really solve the problem.
18:00Uh wealth creation I think is the issue,
18:02not wealth inheritance. I think too much
18:04emphasis is is placed on inheritance.
18:06But I want to say this to
18:08African-Americans and anybody else who's
18:09listening, we're in the 21st century and
18:12to live looking backward and to base
18:16your argument on what you owe or are
18:19owed, what what, you know, repair,
18:21repair for the historical as opposed to
18:23the forward-looking, which is the 21st
18:26century where, you know, China is coming
18:28and is here, technology is moving,
18:31telecommunications, politics is so
18:33fluid.
18:34Uh I I I think this backward focus on
18:38and is is both kind of analytically
18:42wrong. The issue is going forward. But
18:45it's also kind of corrupt. I mean, it it
18:47it it's a politics of dependency.
18:50Who is the audience when you say wealth
18:53disparity?
18:54It it's the people who have wealth whom
18:56you're asking to give you some. You you
18:58empower them with the ability to
19:01determine
19:02uh whether or not you flourish when it's
19:04really your responsibility whether or
19:06not you flourish. Now, that last point
19:08that you're making there obviously has
19:09been made by people like Shelby Steele,
19:10which is that, you know, when it comes
19:12to the the sort of white guilt
19:13community, so much of this politics is
19:15not being aimed at black Americans. A
19:18huge percentage of this politics is
19:19being aimed at upper-crust white
19:20liberals who seem to regain moral
19:22superiority by declaring that only they
19:24can can correct this problem. If you
19:26just give them enough power, then they
19:28will correct all the wealth disparities.
19:30And so, they're very happy to use the
19:31revolutionary fuel of of this sort of
19:33argument in order to generate power for
19:36themselves because then only they can
19:37fix They gain both moral superiority in
19:39the sense that they have
19:41beaten their chests and talked about the
19:42historic the historic discrimination of
19:44the country, but not me. I'm dissociated
19:46from that. And also, if you give me the
19:47power, I I alone can fix.
19:50I agree. I agree 100%. I like that
19:52characterization of Shelby. And I but
19:54I'd ask the question, if you were on the
19:56victim side of that, why would you give
19:57them that kind of power? Over Why would
20:00you want them to have that kind of power
20:01over you? You you willingly accept the
20:03position of a helpless client. Why would
20:06you do that? That's undignified. That
20:07that That's not manly. It's what my
20:10friend Harvey Mansfield would say. It's
20:12it's you know,
20:14stand up straight with your shoulders
20:15back. I mean, come on.
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21:19So so when when I look at the kind of
21:21the state of racial America right now
21:23one of the things that's happened even
21:24in my lifetime and I'm still relatively
21:27young I'm 40 and so you know even in the
21:29course of my lifetime I feel like the
21:30the sort of apex of racial harmony in
21:32the country was approximately 2007 2008.
21:36And and you can see this in the polling
21:37data that that about 2008 there starts
21:41to be
21:42a slight decrease in sort of how
21:44Americans are feeling about race and
21:45then it just dives off the table in 2014
21:47in 2013 2014 it just falls completely
21:50off the table. You opposed Barack Obama
21:53for president in 2008.
21:55I did also I I you know when I read
21:57Dreams from My Father on an ideological
21:59level it seemed to me that he was
22:01arguing for a a pretty Marxist
22:04materialist view of the world that the
22:05reason that people do bad things is
22:07because of wealth inequality.
22:09That he has a section in in the
22:11introduction to Dreams from My Father
22:13that I still cite as I think one of the
22:14most damaging things that he ever said
22:16that nobody ever noticed where he says
22:17that you know when I see the despair in
22:20whether it's in Jakarta Indonesia or
22:21whether I see it in in young
22:23dispossessed terrorists basically in the
22:25Middle East or whether I see it in the
22:26South Side of Chicago it's always coming
22:28from the same sort of feeling of
22:29material dispossession. I thought that's
22:31a bizarre argument you know the the
22:33notion that that you know black
22:35Americans in the South Side of Chicago
22:37are
22:38committing terror acts in the same way
22:39as a radical young Muslim who's who's 18
22:42living in the Gaza Strip or something.
22:44First of all lumping all that together
22:45in sort of this Marxist materialist way
22:47is bizarre but it then led to him
22:48creating in 2012 in that campaign a sort
22:51of coalition of the dispossessed and
22:53we're still seeing that politics played
22:55forward today. I've I've made the
22:57argument that basically 2012 broke the
22:59country and we're all living in the
23:00after effects of 2012. That that Barack
23:02Obama was elected by a a large margin in
23:052008 on the promise that he would be a
23:07post-racial president, that he in his
23:09very person by uniting black and white
23:11was going to move America beyond the key
23:13issue of division in the United States,
23:15that of race. And now we were going to
23:17be one America, not white America and
23:18black America, just just America, not
23:20red America and blue America, right?
23:22That whole stick. And then it turns out
23:24in 2012, when he was a pretty unpopular
23:25president, he decided to start saying
23:28things like Trayvon could have been my
23:30son, and Henry Louis Gates, the officer
23:32acted stupidly. And and he started
23:34pretty obviously pandering to particular
23:36racial constituencies, not just black
23:38Americans. He also started making
23:39overtures to Latino Americans with
23:42policies on illegal immigration. And it
23:43was basically, I'm going to cobble
23:45together this coalition of non-white
23:46Americans and college-educated white
23:48liberal women, and that will be the
23:50winning coalition from here on in. And
23:51when he actually lost votes between '08
23:53and '12, and then he won the presidency
23:55over the most milquetoast human being
23:57ever to run for president, Mitt Romney,
23:59characterizing him as a vicious racist
24:01in the process, that that actually set
24:03up this bizarre
24:05nether region we've been inheriting
24:06politically since 2012, in which
24:08Democrats believe that they can just get
24:10out the racial base by pandering over
24:12and over. And Republicans in response
24:15have said, "Okay, fine. Well, if you're
24:16going to turn white people into a racial
24:17constituency, then I guess they're a
24:19racial constituency now." And so you you
24:21have this this, you know, really bad
24:23racial dynamic that was set up in fact
24:26by a politician who's afraid of losing
24:27re-election.
24:29Okay, that was a mouthful. Yeah, it was.
24:31Let me see what I think about that. 2012
24:33is the hinge year. Well, it was Trayvon
24:34Martin, and you're right, he did say "If
24:36I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."
24:37And Eric Holder was there whispering in
24:38his ear, and so was Michelle, and all
24:40these other things.
24:42He wasn't a what looked like it could
24:44have been
24:45a more challenging re-election campaign
24:47than it turned out to be, but I agree
24:50about milktoast Mitt
24:52Mitt Romney.
24:54So,
24:55a strategy that the Democrats have
24:57doubled down on. I don't know if Biden's
24:59craven, obscene kind of pandering to the
25:03black folk with this very insulting and
25:08infuriating
25:09patronization and and this dwelling on
25:12you can't make it in America 10 times
25:14better. You have to be 10 to you know,
25:16the Ku Klux Klan is coming to get you
25:17and I'm the only thing that will save
25:19you from it. Look, I mean I you know,
25:21and maybe it does have its origins in
25:232012. I never really thought about that.
25:26So, my take on Obama was what's the
25:28point of having a black president if he
25:30doesn't tell the country the truth about
25:31race.
25:33You have an opportunity, I mean, to
25:35really move the needle on race and
25:38actually race relations get worse not
25:39better after he serves.
25:42Uh
25:43and my account for that was I never
25:45thought about the 2012 effect that
25:47you're talking about. My account for
25:48that was more forward-looking. It was
25:50like he's only 60 or 60 58 or whatever
25:53he is when he leaves the presidency.
25:55Uh he's going to be ex-president a lot
25:57longer than he was president and he's
25:59got a kind of reputational management
26:02problem. You know, he he can't be that
26:03guy
26:05who pulled the cover off of the fraud
26:08which is the racial narrative of white
26:10supremacy and structural racism when the
26:13real story is
26:15a failure to seize opportunity opened up
26:18historically at the end of the 20th
26:19century and to take advantage of the
26:22possibilities of developing acquiring,
26:25accumulating, building, and achieving
26:28on the part of African-Americans. I
26:30mean, yeah.
26:32I mean, look at these cops and I'm
26:34sorry, I don't mean to digress, but look
26:36at these cops and
26:38young black men cops killing young black
26:40men. I mean, what an absurd narrative.
26:42When the real violence on the streets of
26:44America today is is a
26:46these miscreants and these
26:48thugs
26:50running around with automatic weapons
26:52firing them aimlessly out of AUTOMOBILES
26:53AT THEIR GANG rivals and stuff like
26:55that. I mean, and and you don't have any
26:58engagement with that problem. Instead,
27:02you convert it into a
27:04white domination problem.
27:08Uh
27:09so that's the kind of truth that a black
27:12president needed to pull the covers off
27:14of and Obama was as far away from doing
27:16that as you could possibly be. Al
27:18Sharpton, he brings Al Sharpton into his
27:21White House as a ambassador to black
27:23America.
27:24He has contempt for the historic
27:27responsibility which was bequeathed to
27:29him when he was elected president to
27:31change the conversation on race in this
27:33country. He could have done it and he
27:35failed to do it.
27:37Yeah, I think that there are also some
27:38political after effects from 2012 to to
27:41give my hinge theory, you know, some
27:42more meat on the bones. The the the
27:45theory that Obama trotted out
27:46politically which was that there would
27:47be an emerging minority majority
27:50coalition that would be undefeatable for
27:52the rest of time. When he beat Romney, I
27:54think the Democratic Party swallowed
27:55that line wholesale. And so Hillary
27:57tried to campaign on that same
27:58coalition. The problem for Hillary is
27:59that there was no way she was going to
28:01generate the kind of turnout numbers
28:02that Barack Obama did in the black
28:04community. And so when she lost, instead
28:06of them saying Hillary was a uniquely
28:08bad candidate and Obama was uniquely
28:10good candidate in many ways, instead the
28:12Democratic Party said, "Well, this must
28:14be racial revenge. This must be America
28:17rejecting the legacy of Barack Obama and
28:19swinging over to this
28:21you know, racialist, racist, terrible
28:24white supremacist Donald Trump." And
28:27meanwhile, on the Republican side of the
28:28aisle, because there was this buy-in to
28:30the idea that Democrats would now win
28:32every election from here on out because
28:34of the demographic changes in the
28:35country. When Trump won, it became he's
28:37a miracle worker because only a miracle
28:38worker could defeat that machine. And so
28:40that meant when you fast forward to
28:412020, the Democrats kept doubling down
28:44on the same Barack Obama strategy from
28:452012, but all the rules had changed
28:47because of all the early voting and all
28:48of this. And meanwhile, when Trump said
28:51"I didn't lose." A lot of Republicans
28:52went, "Well, of course he didn't lose.
28:53He's a wizard. I mean, wizards don't
28:55lose. He's a miracle worker. So, there's
28:57no way that he lost, right? He had to he
28:58he had to have been cheated." And so,
29:00now you fast forward to 2024. Biden's
29:02running the same campaign, except he's
29:04been president for 3 and 1/2 years and
29:05been terrible at it. And he is
29:07experiencing the the Hillary 2016
29:09effect, which is people don't want to
29:10vote for him. People aren't going to
29:11show up for him. And meanwhile, Trump
29:13has the right believing that he's a
29:15miracle worker. So, we're now set up for
29:16a situation in which either way the
29:18election goes,
29:19there's a high probability, I would say,
29:22of significant chaos.
29:24I wish I could argue with that,
29:26uh
29:28but I can't.
29:29I I wanted to say something about
29:30something you said earlier, which was
29:32that
29:33they make uh the
29:36uh with the affirmative action and the
29:38structural racism narrative and the
29:41uh white supremacy
29:43uh shibboleth.
29:44Uh they make whiteness into this
29:46bugaboo. Then, when white people start
29:49actually trying to defend themselves,
29:50they call it racism.
29:53Okay, those were not your words, but
29:54that was something I took from what
29:55He starts to feel that way. If you keep
29:57labeling people a constituency group,
29:59they start to actually see themselves as
30:00a constituency group. You can be forced
30:02into a room with other people. If
30:03everybody outside the room is clamoring
30:05for you, that they're coming after you,
30:07you're going to start to see some
30:08solidarity emerge inside that room.
30:10Uh uh you're the interviewer, but I
30:12almost want to ask you uh whether you
30:15think Trump is going to win the election
30:16here in 2024. So, I do think that he's
30:20going to win I mean, listen,
30:21I don't I wouldn't put money on this
30:22election, you know, not for hell or high
30:25water. Although, I have I went from a
30:27person who did not vote in the 2016
30:28election because I was so dissatisfied
30:30with the candidates to a person who
30:32voted for Donald Trump in 2020, knowing
30:35all of his flaws, to a person who
30:36literally fundraised for Trump this time
30:38around, largely because of Joe Biden.
30:41Right? Number one, I know what Trump
30:43looks like as president, and I do
30:44believe that the system has done a
30:45pretty good job of keeping Trump in
30:46check. This is why when people talk
30:48about Trump's a threat to the democracy,
30:49the only person who's been
30:50institutionally checked in my lifetime
30:52is Donald Trump, actually. For good and
30:55for ill, as it turns out in this latest
30:56criminal conviction case, where the
30:58institutions are being militarized
30:59against him for ridiculous reasons.
31:02Joe Biden, because he actually knows how
31:04the system works, that what
31:06he's an actual dangerous
31:08potential tyrant. I mean, I think the
31:09the amount of tyranny that he's been
31:11able to to actually pursue as president
31:13of the United States is so far beyond
31:15anything that Trump pursued. Whether
31:17you're talking about using the
31:18Occupational Safety and Health
31:19Administration to try to cram down
31:21vaccines on 80 million Americans, or
31:23whether you're talking about the
31:24militarization of of the DOJ to go after
31:28Donald Trump, while simultaneously the
31:30DOJ is exonerating him for the same kind
31:32of stuff Trump did on classified
31:33documents by claiming that he's senile.
31:35But then he goes out and rips his own
31:36DOJ for saying he's senile, or the DOJ
31:38trying to let his son like Joe Biden, to
31:41me, because he knows how the government
31:43operates, and because there are so many
31:44people sympathetic to him inside the
31:45executive branch, I think I think a lot
31:47of I think a lot of poison slipped
31:49through the crack. The way I tend to
31:50think of it if in metaphorical terms, is
31:52that if American government American
31:53institutions act as sort of a sifter,
31:56right? They they they they they are
31:57designed to sift out the worst elements
32:00and let the sand that's okay kind of
32:02drop through. Well, Trump is like a case
32:04in point of a person for whom the sifter
32:06works beautifully, because everything
32:07that he does that's incredibly dumb is a
32:09giant rock. Everything that he does
32:11that's incredibly dumb is like, "The
32:12election was stolen. I'm I'm not
32:14leaving." And then it turns out the
32:15institutions are built for that. And so
32:16the rock just remains in the sifter. And
32:18so what you end up in the after effects
32:20of Trump's presidency are pretty good
32:21economic policy, really good foreign
32:23policy, too much spending, but nothing
32:25that is really kind of earth-shattering.
32:27Whereas for Biden, because all of his
32:29sins are ground down to fine dust, it
32:32just goes right through the sifter into
32:35whatever the politics are. And so he's
32:37able to to get away with an enormous
32:39amount because he's doing kind of smart
32:42people corruption as opposed to stupid
32:43people
32:45extremism.
32:46Well, okay.
32:48Uh
32:49I have a hard time forgiving Trump not
32:51stepping aside uh
32:53at the the uh 2020 election. That was
32:55standing the fact that I
32:57agree that there were irregularities and
33:00there were dynamics at work in that
33:02election that
33:04uh he had every right to feel he was,
33:07you know, unfairly uh dealt with by. I
33:08mean, the suppression of that laptop
33:10story, the
33:12uh the massive uh
33:14uh mail-in voting and stuff, the delay
33:16in announcing uh the outcome of
33:19I mean, anyway, he he had his day in
33:21court. It didn't work out. He should
33:22have stepped aside. That's my opinion.
33:23That's my humble opinion. I agree with
33:25that, by the way.
33:26Holding that against him in 2024, people
33:29are going to have different opinions
33:30about that. I haven't really decided
33:32what I'm going to do. I'm not voting for
33:34Joe Biden, though. I could tell you
33:35that. Yeah. I mean,
33:37and by the way, I think that's an
33:38enormous number of people. And that's
33:40why I think RFK Jr. is polling in the
33:42double digits. I think that there's a
33:44huge number of Americans who are just
33:46going to stay home this time. This is
33:47why I think that Trump does have some
33:49systemic advantages. People who really
33:50like Trump, especially people who are
33:52now militarized by what just happened in
33:55New York in this criminal trial. I I
33:57think that those people are going to
33:58walk over broken glass to vote for him.
33:59That that includes me. I mean, I'm going
34:01to I'm Again, I went from somebody who
34:02did not vote for either candidate in
34:042016 to somebody who literally donated
34:05money to Trump's campaign in 2024 and
34:08co-hosted a fundraiser for him
34:09specifically because
34:11Joe Biden is a terrible, awful, no-good,
34:13very bad president, and he cannot be
34:15president. This is why I say like the
34:16institutions of the country, when people
34:17say that it was a coup, well, typically
34:19a coup requires you to actually have
34:20control over the military to the extent
34:22that you're going to like walk into
34:23Congress and just declare that Donald
34:24Trump is remaining president. Nobody was
34:26doing that. Nobody was doing that. I
34:28mean, what you had was a was an a a
34:30that got out of control. Many of the
34:32people who went in
34:34actually were just kind of foolish and
34:36wandering around. I mean, I know some of
34:37the people who went in and literally,
34:39you know, not everybody who went into
34:40the building even like treating all
34:41those people as though they were
34:42committing the same criminal offense is
34:43ridiculous. But, you know, the the the
34:46the idea that that was on par with like
34:48the Civil War, for example, that to me
34:50is such a deep misread and it's now
34:52being used to justify such exorbitant
34:55use of the institutions to stop Trump
34:57that this is the kind of political
34:59dynamic that looking historically really
35:01does scare me is that when when when you
35:02have a political dynamic where the other
35:04side is so quote unquote dangerous that
35:07literally any and all means at your
35:08disposal are useful and necessary and
35:10okay, morally justifiable in order to
35:12stop that side, nothing good comes from
35:14that ever. Ever. I mean, the the the
35:17instruments of tyranny typically
35:18preexist the tyrant. And this is what
35:20I'm seeing is that the the instruments
35:21of tyranny are being created in real
35:23time. The militarization of law
35:24enforcement, the expansion of executive
35:26orders, the willingness to end around
35:28the Supreme Court. Like all these things
35:29are being created in real time and we're
35:31watching it happen. And both sides are
35:33now just figuring out, okay, who can I
35:35elect to use that against the other guy?
35:36That's incredibly dangerous.
35:38Well, this might be a biased opinion,
35:40but I think the left are much more
35:42sinners and with respect to the trashing
35:44of institutions for short-term political
35:47gain than the right. I think the the
35:50effort to delegitimize the Supreme Court
35:53because of this abortion issue is a it's
35:56just horrible. It it it it's you know,
35:59they want to you know, uh pack the
36:01court. I mean,
36:03uh
36:05I I think the uh lawfare thing, we're
36:08we're going to disqualify Trump how did
36:10my partner whom I disagree with
36:12strongly, John McWhorter, at the Glenn
36:13Show uh disagreed and he said uh tie his
36:16shoelaces together, just you know,
36:18encumber him. And I said, "You're
36:20messing around with the with the rule of
36:21law. YOU'RE GOING TO MESS AROUND WITH
36:23THE rule of law in order to handicap a
36:24candidate?" I mean, think about the
36:26trade-off there. That's horrible, man.
36:29But they're doing it. Uh
36:31I don't trust anything I read in the New
36:32York Times. Not not because I'm a
36:34conspiracy theorist, but because the New
36:36York Times sold its soul to the devil.
36:39Uh to to keep Trump from being able to
36:42get president be president or to run the
36:43country once he became president.
36:46So, uh
36:48they they've created a bonfire of their
36:50own credibility and they're and they're
36:52sacking the institutions
36:54along the way. And largely to keep the
36:56populist sentiment that Trump embodies
36:58from finding its expression at the top
37:00of American government.
37:02Get some more on this in a moment.
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38:04today.
38:05I mean, I I totally agree with that. And
38:06And one of the things that I find
38:08hilarious is there's all this attempt to
38:09intellectualize Trump or Trumpism. Like,
38:12what is Trump or Trumpism? And what it
38:14is is an impulse against these people.
38:16That's what it is. It's just an impulse,
38:17right? Donald Trump is a giant
38:18pulsating, throbbing orange middle
38:20finger. That That's That's what he is to
38:22all of these people who believe that
38:24it's totally okay for them to to
38:27rip the guts out of the institutions and
38:28wear their faces around like Hannibal
38:30Lecter. And and You mentioned it
38:32earlier, that vaccine mandate thing. I
38:34mean, I remember that speech. I remember
38:36feeling chills run down my spine when I
38:38heard him give that speech. I said,
38:39"This is a demagogic uh you know,
38:44it really really unsettled me. It's a
38:46pandemic of the unvaccinated?
38:49Yeah. I mean And and and and to have
38:51history prove them absolutely wrong on
38:53the medical facts. Right. I mean,
38:55between between that speech and the the
38:57worst speech I've ever seen a president
38:59give, Biden in front of Independence
39:00Hall declaring his political enemies
39:02basically traitors to the country. Yeah,
39:04this is this kind of language is never
39:07good in any country ever. I mean, truly,
39:09when you have both sides declaring that
39:11this is the final election. Like this is
39:13a change from from when I was growing up
39:15even. I don't remember Republicans
39:17saying about 1992 or 1996 or even 2000
39:20or 2004. If if John Kerry wins in 2004,
39:23there will never be another election for
39:25president in the country. I don't
39:27remember that in 2008 either.
39:29It was maybe maybe a tinge of it in
39:312012, but it was really in 2016, I
39:33think, when when Trump was running. You
39:35started to get the
39:36this is literally the end of the there
39:38will never be another election. Now,
39:39nobody Here's the thing, nobody in
39:40America actually believes that. No one
39:42in America believes that. If you
39:43actually believe that, you would have a
39:44you would have a physical duty to go out
39:46and do something to the candidate of the
39:48other party. If you truly thought that
39:49person was Hitler, you would actually
39:51have a moral duty to go out and do
39:53something about it. If what you thought
39:55you were prohibiting and stopping was
39:57tyranny. But, I'm I'm afraid that that's
39:58actually where we're going, is that if
39:59you if you keep saying it over and over
40:01and over, then an era of political
40:03violence that looks more like the late
40:04'60s and and early '70s,
40:06I don't think that we're that far away
40:08from from all of that. When I when I The
40:10only thing I think that's preventing
40:11that is weakness and laziness, frankly,
40:13on the part of the radicals.
40:15Well, let's be responsible in our
40:18position as public spokespeople to know
40:20that even when we talk about it
40:21hypothetically, we kind of feed into
40:23something
40:25that's that's not at all healthy for our
40:26body politic. I mean, I'm not I'm not
40:28criticizing you. I'm just saying it.
40:30I I hear you loud and clear and I'd just
40:32assume not talk about it.
40:35Yeah. No, I mean, so what what this
40:37raises is if we're looking at, you know,
40:39the issues that face the country right
40:40now,
40:41given the polarization, given the fact
40:44that now so many institutions have been
40:46thoroughly corrupted in the minds of
40:48whichever
40:49party is sort of out of power, that if
40:51you're if you're a Republican, you think
40:53that the media are completely corrupt
40:55and so you just don't believe anything
40:56they say, not just some of what they
40:57say, anything they say. You look at the
40:58university system and you say, not only
41:00do I hate the universities, I'm not
41:03sending my kids there anymore. I might
41:04not hire from those universities
41:05anymore. And if you're on the left, and
41:07right now the Supreme Court is
41:09controlled by by people who are
41:10originalist,
41:11you look at the Supreme Court and you
41:12say, I'm not going to pay any attention
41:13to to those institutions. So, if we
41:15don't have our institutions in common,
41:17and we don't have the federal government
41:18in common, and we don't have religion in
41:20common cuz religion has largely fallen
41:22away in American public life, then where
41:26where do we go from here? Because, you
41:28know, you
41:29I don't know if you're by nature an
41:30optimist or a pessimist, to me it seems
41:31the only way that that anything can be
41:33rebuilt here is delegation of as much
41:34power as as humanly possible to the most
41:37local level possible. Because it seems
41:39to me that that community and social
41:41fabric can only be built ground up, and
41:42we just keep fighting over who gets to
41:44try to wield the baton to build the top
41:46down.
41:47Yeah, I'm going to be a little bit more
41:48conservative in the small c sense about
41:51the institution. I mean, here I am at
41:52Brown University, so I'm embedded within
41:54the Ivy League and this whole machine
41:56that is, I think sometimes rightly
41:59characterized as over the top and beyond
42:02the pale and unredeemable and so on, cuz
42:05there's there's a lot of there are a lot
42:07of problems here.
42:08On the other hand, you know, I have some
42:10amazing students here at Brown and you
42:13know, they're not just whip smart but
42:15they're really hungry to be liberated
42:17from the
42:19party line. They they they long for
42:23engagement that's
42:24you know, challenging and whatnot. They
42:26may come in with a certain set of
42:28predictable views but they they love to
42:31be challenged about them. I do have
42:33those kind of students.
42:34So I I I I'd hate to see it that we
42:39in in a revulsion at the elites
42:42throw out the baby with the bathwater so
42:44to speak because there's a lot of
42:46potential good here.
42:49Um
42:50but I don't have a solution
42:52to the problem. So maybe I should just
42:53shut up.
42:54I know. I mean I think that nobody
42:56really has I mean there have been a few
42:58solutions positive. Frankly, I'm glad to
43:00see some of the donors putting pressure
43:01on the schools to actually start trying
43:03to live up their supposed original
43:05principles as opposed to simply playing
43:07an inside outside game with radicals on
43:09campuses we've been seeing over the past
43:11few months. I mean the the insanity to
43:13me of you have people who are violating
43:15the law who are who are you know,
43:17sitting on campus. We know that if their
43:19cause were a a right-wing or or racist
43:23cause for example, that those people be
43:25cleared out forthwith. There certainly
43:26wouldn't be full-scale negotiations with
43:29the with the
43:30boards of the colleges. And and so when
43:33you see people like that, I'm I'm very
43:35glad the donors are starting to wake up
43:37to that. Hopefully that sort that will
43:39have some sort of impact on the running
43:40of these institutions. But it really is
43:41sad. I mean again, if you're if you are
43:44you know, sort of
43:45I would say in your soul conservative,
43:47you don't like the idea that all the
43:49institutions are to be trashed. And you
43:51are seeing the right react with the sort
43:53of unbridled willingness to rip down the
43:56institutions
43:57and say that they are unsalvageable. And
43:59some of them I agree are unsalvageable,
44:01but I think we got to be really careful
44:03before we declare everything
44:04unsalvageable. And that that that that I
44:05think is a real danger.
44:07I've
44:08I've been pleased to to call myself now
44:10I I'm mostly pleased cuz I got to use
44:12the word non-ironically an
44:13anti-disestablishmentarianist.
44:15Right, like they
44:17Right, like all these people are are
44:18disestablishmentarians. They they just
44:20want to get rid of the establishment and
44:22I'm anti that. I think that it has to be
44:23it has to be you know good. There has to
44:25be a good reason to get rid of the thing
44:27and a plausible alternative to
44:28substitute for the thing before you can
44:30just get rid of the thing.
44:31Now, that's from the UK, right? Isn't
44:34that the the religious wars? Yeah,
44:36exactly.
44:37Also also the longest word in the
44:38English language other than
44:39pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,
44:41right? So, I'm pleased to use it.
44:45Yeah, so let So, let's talk a little bit
44:47about So, a lot of your book in late
44:49admissions is about sort of the the
44:51combination of the personal and the
44:52political.
44:53And that's really a fascinating thing
44:55that nobody else has done. It's a It's
44:56an audacious book in the sense that you
44:58really sort of bare your soul in the
45:00book. And and so, you know, can you talk
45:02a little bit about what you think that
45:04relationship is? Because, you know,
45:06those of us who are in the realm of
45:06ideas, you know, and do it
45:08professionally, we like to think that
45:10the thing that's driving us is the
45:11ideas. It's the It's It's the thoughts.
45:13It's the philosophy. But in your book
45:15you make very clear that that's not
45:16always the case.
45:17How should we think about
45:19politics and philosophy in in sort of a
45:21more realistic sense
45:23in terms of how does that cross streams
45:25with just life and how and how we
45:27actually live?
45:28Gosh, I don't know if I have anything of
45:31general importance to say about that. I
45:33mean, I could only be anecdotal. I could
45:34only kind of talk about my own
45:37experience and uh you know, I was on the
45:40right then I moved left then I moved
45:41right again and I've talked about that a
45:43little bit already here with you.
45:45Uh
45:46I mean, uh
45:48I used to be a technical theoretical
45:52economist, an academic in the purest
45:55sense of the word, who wrote abstract
45:57mathematical modeling type economic
45:59theory papers for the academic journals
46:02and talked to 500 people around the
46:03world about those papers and that was my
46:05life and my graduate students.
46:08And I got a job at Harvard a young
46:12talented black economist. I was the
46:13first black to have tenure in the
46:15economics department at Harvard in 1982
46:18and had the anticipation that I was
46:20going to go on in that vein as an
46:22academic theorist but I had a crisis of
46:24confidence. The ideas weren't coming. I
46:27wondered if I was good enough. Maybe I
46:28had a little imposter syndrome. Maybe
46:29there was this affirmative action kind
46:32of boomerang thing that happens when you
46:33know, you move somebody along so fast
46:35and whatever but the bottom line is
46:37I kind of lost confidence in my ability
46:40to succeed in that kind of work at
46:42Harvard and I moved over to the Kennedy
46:44School of Government and became a more
46:46applied policy oriented political
46:50economist and the race issue was rife.
46:54It was something that I had worked on in
46:55my thesis something that I had an
46:57interest in as an African-American and
46:59so I became
47:01what fully developed as a black
47:03conservative social critic of the
47:05neo-conservative stripe in the 1980s.
47:09So how how does that relate politics and
47:11personal in a way
47:14I became more political because of a
47:16personal professional crisis that I was
47:18having
47:20which relates to politics in a way cuz
47:21it's linked to affirmative action and
47:23the fact that I was brought in
47:25subconsciously as an African-American to
47:27take that position at Harvard and that
47:29influenced the way that I handled those
47:31responsibilities or failed to handle
47:33them as the case may be.
47:35And we've already talked about how I
47:37broke with some of my friends on the
47:39right like Dinesh D'Souza and Abigail
47:41and Stephen Thernstrom and Charles
47:42Murray about what was going on in the
47:4490s and about how that had also personal
47:47connections for me because my identity
47:50you know, longing to be to come home
47:52again and to be embraced
47:54caused me to
47:56I think be more antagonistic to some of
47:58my conservative compatriots than I
48:02otherwise might have been.
48:04You know, when I get asked the question
48:06about how my personal life should affect
48:09my politics,
48:11I want to
48:13I want to try to advocate for staying
48:17true to the
48:19sense of the
48:20intellectual framework that you're
48:22committed to and not being pulled by the
48:26tug-of-war that goes on with popular
48:28popularity, audience capture, appealing
48:30to other people, you know, going along
48:33to get along.
48:34You know, even if you're cutting against
48:35the grain, you know, stay true to what
48:37you think is the actual
48:38right thing. I mean, that's kind of the
48:40lesson that I draw from my various
48:42vacillations. I've ended up back
48:44on the right and I think I was right all
48:46along
48:47to be on the right. I mean, I I think
48:50the
48:52institution of the family is the
48:53foundation of modern civilization.
48:57I think we know who men and women are
48:59based on their chromosomal inheritance.
49:00And I think the idea that you would have
49:02try to undermine that subtle
49:03understanding in human culture is
49:05pernicious in the extreme. And I think
49:07the idea that that
49:09project of undermining that subtle
49:11understanding within human culture, the
49:13fact that it could go without being
49:14criticized within the academy in a
49:16systematic way without seeing it for
49:18what it is in the long-term
49:20historical context, that terrifies me.
49:23That's a kind of corruption of our
49:25intellectual life.
49:27Stuff like that. Anyway, I know I I
49:28digress a little bit, but I mean, I was
49:30right in in my conservative instincts
49:32all along and I regret that I strayed
49:34from them in order to curry favor with
49:36my co-racialists.
49:37So, you mentioned a little bit earlier
49:39your kind of journey religiously
49:41to to Christianity and then you you you
49:44said that you're to some extent a
49:45believer now.
49:46But what
49:47how how does religion play into all of
49:50this? Yeah, I've made the case
49:52I had a book
49:53now it's a few years ago called the
49:54right side of history that was really
49:56about sort of the history of Western
49:57civilization and how predicated Western
49:59civilization was on certain fundamental
50:01religious precepts. Things like made in
50:04the image of God, equal before God, free
50:06will, the idea that you have a mind
50:07capable of grasping actual objective
50:10truth, which is a point that Alvin
50:12Plantinga made. This this this sort of
50:14idea that there is no such thing as
50:15abstract truth that is graspable from an
50:17evolutionary standpoint. That if you
50:19believe in abstract or objective truth,
50:21that's actually a religiously held jump
50:23that you have to make that there is a
50:25truth and that your mind as like a piece
50:27of meat is capable of grasping that
50:29truth. And that that these are all
50:31religious principles. How much do you do
50:33you believe that that your religious
50:35belief plays into your belief system and
50:37where where do you hold religiously?
50:39You know, you're making me think about
50:40this wonderful book called A Certain
50:43Ambiguity. A Certain Ambiguity. It's It
50:45basically posits a confrontation between
50:48a Hindu and Indian immigrant to the
50:51United States who is a mathematician
50:53atheist
50:55and an American jurist uh who is a
50:58Christian believer uh but uh is a
51:01open-minded man who is ends up in a
51:04dialogue with the Indian.
51:06And the point of view the the the the
51:08the the
51:09sort of punchline of the book is
51:11they all have to have assumptions.
51:13Axioms. They have to have starting
51:15points of unquestioned commitment from
51:17which they then can deduce whatever they
51:19think of as true.
51:21And religion is kind of like that. And
51:23the idea that you would have to have
51:25some such
51:27embrace of an unproved first mover kind
51:30of
51:31primal commitment before you could even
51:33have anything that you called logic. I
51:36mean I I you know, I think that's a nice
51:37and interesting idea.
51:39Uh in my own on my own case I I was at a
51:43point in my life of crisis. I you know,
51:46was trying to
51:47stop using cocaine. I I had a real
51:49serious drug problem. I was in recovery
51:52and whatnot. I was vulnerable. I crawled
51:54into the church on my hands and knees.
51:56My marriage was on the rocks. I had
51:58you know,
51:59scandalized my wife with an extramarital
52:02affair that became public and it was
52:03all, you know, awful. Read the book if
52:05you want to know all the bloody details.
52:07And and I needed respite from the noise
52:11of the world and from myself. I I needed
52:14to surrender to something.
52:16And I I think that made me more
52:18credulous than I otherwise might have
52:19been, you know, being a high-flown
52:21academic who doesn't believe in magic.
52:23You know, you tell me a man was dead and
52:25now he is raised from the dead and he
52:27lives on and you know, that's the
52:29vehicle that that connect me to the
52:30creator of the universe. That's asking a
52:32lot from, you know, a guy with a PhD
52:35from MIT who thinks of himself as a
52:37modern man.
52:39But I but I did come to believe and and
52:41it did really revolutionize my life and
52:44it's a long story, perhaps longer than I
52:46can tell here as to how it is that I
52:48came to have doubts. The doubts became
52:50creeping in the crevice became got
52:52bigger and bigger and suddenly I
52:54couldn't find my faith and I I try to
52:57talk about that
52:59uh in the book. But I I say even here in
53:01my I'm in my eighth decade of life. I'm
53:0375 years old. I'm not going to live
53:05forever, you know, mortality and all of
53:07that.
53:08Uh
53:09I I think it's kind of an open question.
53:12I think I don't want to be so arrogant
53:13to presume that I know the answer to the
53:15question, you know, about the existence
53:17of God and and and uh
53:19so on. I, you know,
53:22So, anyway, that's I'm going to I call
53:24me an agnostic at this stage in my life,
53:26but I have great respect for the fact
53:28that people are grappling with this
53:30enormous
53:32uh issue of what is the meaning of life.
53:35What what's the foundational belief that
53:38grounds all of our our strivings. You
53:41know, I I
53:42I I think there's nobility in the quest
53:45for an answer to that question.
53:47So, when it comes to, you know, go back
53:49to the the racial issue briefly, when it
53:50comes to the racial debate, it seems
53:52like the racial debate has gotten
53:53markedly stupider over the course of my
53:56lifetime.
53:57You know, when when I was at Harvard
53:59Law, one of my professors there was
54:00Randall Kennedy. Randall's a really
54:02interesting guy, right? He has his very
54:03heterodox
54:04Yeah, Randy's a great guy. Yeah, I mean,
54:06there and and there is this kind of
54:08fascinating conversation among racial
54:11academics that has completely been
54:12sidelined in favor of Ibram X. Kendi and
54:16Kimberly Crenshaw and Ta-Nehisi Coates,
54:18the most overrated writer I've ever read
54:20in my entire life, bar none. The idea
54:22that Ta-Nehisi Coates is some sort of
54:24phenomenal author, he is so purple, his
54:27metaphors are mixed. I I just I I can't
54:29I can't stand it. But, you know, it's
54:31not just that I hate his writing. Like,
54:33I I think that his his thinking is
54:34incredibly messy and deliberately
54:36attempting to obfuscate issues. And and
54:39I feel like to to to that end, I
54:41actually would prefer Ibram X. Kendi who
54:43just says the dumb thing out loud.
54:45Ta-Nehisi seems to sort of paste over
54:48the dumb thing with with layers of
54:49colorful adjectival use.
54:52And and Ibram X. Kendi is just like,
54:53"Nope, I'm going to say the thing right
54:55here in front of you." But, it does feel
54:57like our racial debate now is incredibly
55:01incredibly dumb and I don't know whether
55:03that's a good thing because maybe that
55:04means that it's clarifying in a certain
55:06sense and we've reached sort of apex
55:07woke and now we're receding or that we
55:09kind of keep sliding down that shoot.
55:12Well, I have an interested position in
55:15this debate. I am also a contributor uh
55:19on the questions that people like
55:21Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi
55:23address and I have issued my
55:26very negative assessments of both of
55:28those authors and on many occasions in
55:30the past. I won't try to
55:32recount it here. I like your formulation
55:33though. At least Ibram X. Kendi is
55:35straightforwardly done. Ta-Nehisi Coates
55:37has to
55:38give me a long set of paragraphs and
55:40metaphors uh in order to uh make the
55:42same dumb point. I think there's merit
55:45in that assessment.
55:48Uh is it getting dumber? Yeah, uh it's
55:50definitely getting dumber. I'm doing my
55:51best, man. I you know, uh I'm I'm hoping
55:54that uh the memoir will raise my profile
55:56a little bit. That's Late Admissions,
55:58Confessions of a Black Conservative,
55:59everybody. Just out from Norton.
56:02Uh and uh we'll see, you know, God's not
56:05finished with me yet, but uh it's
56:07definitely an uphill it's definitely an
56:09uphill struggle.
56:11Uh
56:13You know, we said what we said about
56:14Obama. I I think all of this Michael uh
56:18Michael
56:19uh
56:20Brown, uh
56:21Trayvon Martin, uh
56:23George Floyd stuff.
56:27Uh I mean, riots in the cities. I mean,
56:29people have no idea what that's costing
56:31politically to the country.
56:33Uh they talk about January 6th, but the
56:35summer of 2020, I I think towers over
56:38January 6th in terms of the
56:40damage to the fiber of the country that
56:43the
56:44the
56:45serial disorder, defund the police, the
56:49Anyway, uh I could go on for a long time
56:51about that. Yeah, no. I mean, I I think
56:53that, you know, the the summer of 2020,
56:55which is the great ignored period in
56:57American history because it is clearly
56:59the most it it
57:00between the COVID lockdowns and the
57:02giant riots in the middle of the summer,
57:04it is clearly the most it it is an
57:07inflection point in American history,
57:08the summer of 2020. Uh and the the
57:10willingness to sort of gloss over it as
57:12though it never happened and to pretend
57:14that none of it ever happened, the
57:15lockdowns never happened, that that you
57:17didn't have Kamala Harris talking about
57:18bailing people out of jail. The fact
57:20that the Democratic Party was kind of
57:22complicit in in those riots and and
57:24trying to use that as as as I've said
57:26before, the revolutionary jet fuel in
57:28the engine of the of the Biden election.
57:30You want to talk about breaking trust
57:31with the American people that I don't
57:33think has has really ever been repaired
57:35or even attempted to be repaired.
57:38That's it. I mean like it it it led to
57:40serious life changes for people. Summer
57:41of 2020 is the reason I live in Florida,
57:43right? I grew up in Los Angeles. I lived
57:45my entire life in Los Angeles. They
57:47locked us in our houses starting in
57:49March and then they would not let us
57:50come out unless we were rioting on
57:52behalf of George Floyd. And so at about
57:54the time that my wife was being
57:57double locked down because we weren't
57:59allowed to leave our house there was
58:00curfew because of the riots that were
58:02happening blocks away and she was
58:03hearing the helicopter swirling over our
58:05house in a fairly nice area of Los
58:06Angeles. And we were also locked down
58:08because of the lockdowns. It was about
58:10that time she turned to me and said,
58:11"Maybe we ought to take a look at
58:12Florida." And I don't feel like I'm
58:13alone in that. I mean that that that
58:15sort of
58:16that's and the sort again that the the
58:18willingness to just pretend that none of
58:19this ever happened or that it was normal
58:21is the part that's astonishing to me.
58:23Yeah, and I think you have to blame the
58:25journalist
58:27uh establishment and and the academy
58:30because these are really fundamental
58:31things in American history. I mean,
58:33here's an anecdote. So Jacob Blake Jacob
58:36Blake was a guy who got shot in the back
58:39by cops in Kenosha, Wisconsin and it
58:41caused riots.
58:42The circumstances of him getting shot by
58:44cops was
58:45long story short, he was kidnapping his
58:48girlfriend's children, who may have been
58:50his own kids, in her car without her
58:52permission and she called the cops. He
58:54had a knife.
58:56He was resisting arrest and not
58:58responsive to commands to cease and
59:00desist. He turned with the knife in his
59:02hand and the cop shot him.
59:05Now, to make a long story short, Kamala
59:08Harris and Joseph Biden called his
59:10bedside in the hospital
59:12to inquire of his well-being.
59:16That's despicable.
59:18And it goes without commentary. It's
59:20forgotten. If I hadn't told you, you
59:22wouldn't even know about it, audience.
59:25So that's just to say I agree with you,
59:26Ben.
59:29Well, Glenn, you're out there doing
59:30God's work. The good news is you're 75,
59:31which means that if you run for
59:32president, you're young. You're a spring
59:34chicken.
59:35So, maybe that's still in your future. I
59:37I'd vote for your nomination more than
59:39pretty much anybody else out there.
59:40Glenn, really appreciate your work.
59:41Really appreciate the new book. Folks,
59:42go check out Late Confessions right now.
59:45Glenn, thank you so much. You're
59:47welcome, Ben. God be with you.
59:56The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is
59:57produced by Savannah Morales and Matt
59:59Kemp. Associate producers are Jake
1:00:01and John Crick. Editing is by
1:00:03Jim Nickol.
1:00:04Audio is mixed by Mike Coremina. Camera
1:00:07and lighting is by Zach Ginta. Hair,
1:00:08makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola
1:00:10Christina. Title graphics are by Cynthia
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1:00:22Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily
1:00:24Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire
1:00:262024.

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