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Meritocracy Isn’t Racist. Lowering Standards Is. - Heather Mac Donald — Transcript

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0:01Heather McDonald, welcome to Dad Saves
0:03America. Thank you so much, John. It's
0:05an honor to be with you. So, I I've been
0:08excited to have you on for a while, but
0:10I post election, I feel like we might be
0:13living in your moment.
0:16I would never claim that, but uh I'm
0:19still curious as to what the hell
0:21happened. Uh I'm I don't want to be too
0:24optimistic, but it's in my nature to be
0:26pessimistic. I've lost four stake bet
0:28dinners on the outcome of the election.
0:30But I actually find myself thinking if
0:32we could hold on to the White House for
0:3412 years, we really could correct the
0:37country and return it to merit
0:39excellence and get rid of the hatred for
0:41white males
0:43right off the bat. We're getting right
0:45to it. So I what this is why so why I
0:48say this is this um you know in this
0:51right of center universe there's a lot
0:52of voices from sort of cosmopolitan
0:56libertarian types to uh fairly hardcore
1:00in the culture war voices and in that
1:04domain you are the most I think rigorous
1:07and hard to beat of the culture warriors
1:11you have taken on the hard issues around
1:15DEI and diversity around the whole
1:18discourse about policing and the cops
1:21and and you have done so
1:24unflinchingly. And I think one way to
1:28look at what happened this November is a
1:32surprising number of Americans, a more
1:34diverse number of Americans than one
1:36would have expected, more or less
1:40said, I think I might be more with you
1:43or at least I'm not with them. Yeah. So,
1:46is that how you see things? And what am
1:49I making any sense? Sure. I I would love
1:51to believe that. I think we have to take
1:54the polls at face value when they say
1:56the economy was the big deal in
1:57inflation. But one wants to believe that
2:00one's favorite issues are also those of
2:02the voters. And I would say if if there
2:05was a a backlash against these larger
2:08cultural forces, it would be we refuse
2:12to tear down civilization. We refuse to
2:15accept the proposition that standards of
2:18behavior, that standards of excellence
2:21are by definition racist, which is what
2:23the left tells us, if they have a
2:26disperate impact on blacks. I I have to
2:28say that I see a lot of our world up to
2:31now having been distorted by what is at
2:35present a
2:37unjustified guilt about current racism.
2:40That's why we're tearing down law
2:43enforcement because we don't want to
2:44have a disperate impact on black
2:46criminals. It's why we're tearing down
2:48medical college standards, uh, licensing
2:51standards because we don't have a
2:52disperate impact on blacks. We were
2:54racist. We were white supremacist. We
2:57are not that country today. And I've
3:01been waiting for some kind
3:03of backlash against the
3:07unfair tearing down of our
3:10civilizational standards. And and maybe
3:12that's partly what we're seeing now.
3:16Okay, I'll keep this quick. Be sure to
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3:35really helps us out. And thanks for
3:37watching. Now back to the show.
3:40So what my goal for our conversation is
3:44to in some sense offer an entry point
3:46into your thinking for people who
3:48haven't come across you and also to
3:51explore where we might disagree because
3:52I tend to be I'm I'm more
3:54libertarian-minded. So there's certain
3:56things where maybe I disagree a little
3:57bit kind of sort of but mostly not
3:59actually. Um, but your most recent book
4:03on merit and race, just lay out your
4:06thesis for that so people kind of can
4:08kind of get an on-ramp onto the work
4:10you've done and and the arguments you're
4:12making for merit and against
4:16this, I guess you'd say, affirmative
4:19action style of approach to helping
4:24people, right? and helping people of
4:25color, helping people who have been
4:28historically at least
4:31their their forebears, if not
4:33themselves, uh who have been oppressed,
4:36right? So, what's your argument? Well,
4:38uh helping people of color, you don't do
4:41so by tearing down standards. You don't
4:43do so by having double standards and
4:45saying we don't expect the so-called
4:47marginalized groups but above all blacks
4:51uh to live up to the same standards as
4:53white and Asians. We'll have a set of
4:56double admission standards. We'll have a
4:58set of double hiring, double promotion
4:59standards. That's not the way you help
5:01people. It's condescending and it means
5:04that you are for sure going to stunt
5:06people's ability to live up to their
5:08highest potential. The book uh uses as a
5:12sort of core concept an an idea that
5:15arose in the law called disperate
5:17impact. And this grew out of a Supreme
5:20Court case in the 1970s that looked at
5:24the fact that traditionally America's
5:26anti-discrimination law says you
5:29employer may not intentionally
5:32discriminate against blacks. You can't
5:34say I'm not going to hire people because
5:36I don't like the color of their skin.
5:38that intentional discrimination violates
5:42now belatedly finally at long
5:45last what were our and should be our
5:48founding ideals of equal treatment for
5:50all. So we had the Civil Rights Acts in
5:54the
5:541960s. We said it's about time we're
5:58going to start treating people equally.
6:00By the
6:0270s most of that overt discrimination
6:06had disappeared. employers were really
6:08living up to their obligations under the
6:10law. And
6:12yet you didn't yet have workplaces that
6:16were
6:16proportionally black and white. You
6:19know, blacks are 13% of the population.
6:22And so the expectation was if you were a
6:25Google uh tech lab, if you were doing
6:29artificial
6:30intelligence, you should have 13% black
6:33nanotechnologists or AI researchers.
6:36that wasn't happening. And so the courts
6:40said, "Well, there's we we want to kind
6:42of expand the scope of the civil rights
6:44laws and we're going to get rid of
6:46intention as something that is legally
6:50impermissible." Now, if an employer has
6:53a perfectly colorblind neutral standard
6:57that he never intended to use to
6:59discriminate, but it has a disperate
7:01impact on blacks. So for instance, if a
7:05uh this was a a power company, Griggs
7:08power company, it said it wanted its
7:10employees to be able to read to a
7:12certain level in order to be able to
7:15read power manuals and you know how to
7:18how to work an a utility
7:20plant. That neutral basic standard meant
7:25that more blacks were being disqualified
7:27for employment. They weren't meeting the
7:29standard. And so the court
7:31said, if you have a neutral standard,
7:34but it negatively affects blacks, we're
7:37going to call that discrimination, even
7:40though that's not your intent. So now we
7:42have this idea that a standard that is
7:45not intended to discriminate. It can be
7:48colorblind, objective, but it means that
7:50you're disqualifying more blacks. That's
7:52bad. And we've taken that concept and
7:55we've gone around to every meritocratic
7:59institution again to law schools, to
8:02medical schools. If the LSATs, the law
8:05school admissions tests, if blacks do
8:07more poorly at those, we're going to
8:09throw those out. If blacks do more
8:12poorly at the medical college admissions
8:14tests, we're going to throw those out.
8:16At medical licensing, we're going to
8:18throw those out because they have a
8:19disperate impact on blacks. This is a
8:22concept that destroys excellence. It
8:25destroys achievement. We see it in the
8:28arts where expectations of a certain
8:32proficiency of of for instruments if
8:35that has a disperate impact, we're going
8:37to throw that out. We're throwing out
8:39literature. Um and and we're seeing it
8:42in the law, too. I'm sorry. In criminal
8:44law, right? That's why we're getting rid
8:46of prosecution. That's why we're getting
8:48rid of incarceration because those laws
8:50also have a disperate impact on black
8:51criminals. One example of this change
8:56that I've heard about is um I think it
8:59is in the symphony the way that there
9:02was um blind uh rehearsal or um tryyouts
9:09that in order to take away racial or
9:13identity preference in the decision-
9:15making, you would have the people try
9:17out and you just hear their music and
9:19you'd not see them. You wouldn't know
9:20anything about them.
9:22And so that seems like definitionally
9:23the like all right perfect. It's
9:25literally like a blind test on the basis
9:28of the output alone. And I as I
9:31understand it this mentality you're
9:34talking about has led to the reverse. So
9:36now we're going to actively make sure
9:38that we put your race and your identity
9:40at the foreground of our decision-m. How
9:43would that not just Well, I guess I
9:47Kendi says that we need to have active
9:49discrimination to counter past
9:51discrimination, right? That's his
9:53anti-racism model. No, we need to
9:55actually actively say less of you, more
9:59of you, right? Because that happened in
10:02the past, right? And that kind of
10:05forever. Like we're always going to be
10:06doing that, right? Is that is that a
10:09fair articulation of the other side's
10:12perspective? Yes, this was uh George
10:15Floyd race riots resulted in mass
10:17psychosis across the country. Every
10:19elite institution declared itself
10:22racist. You had art museums saying we
10:25are racist. 5,000 years of Western
10:27civilization is racist. Our new mission
10:30per the Met Metropolitan Museum of Art
10:32in New York is anti-racism. You had
10:35restaurants saying we're racist. You had
10:37law firms saying we're racist. You had
10:39the mathematical association saying math
10:42is racist. Um, and it was all this idea
10:46that uh a standard that has a disperate
10:49impact is racist. And Anthony Thomasini,
10:52who was the lead classical music critic
10:54of the New York Times, he called for
10:56what's called
10:58deblinding orchestral auditions that
11:00were they were blind. You wouldn't know
11:02the identity. He said, "I can't stand."
11:06And and Alex Ross of the New Yorker, his
11:08their their lead music critic. This
11:10breaks my heart. These people, these
11:13classical music critics who are
11:15presiding over a dying tradition that
11:18they should know contains some of the
11:21most profound expressions of human
11:25aeros, sorrow, longing, joy that's ever
11:29been created.
11:31they should be selling this art. And
11:34here was Thomasi, here was Alex Ross,
11:36here was the BBC music magazine after
11:39the George Floyd during the his the
11:41summer of 2020, the summer of mass
11:43psychosis saying, "I can't stand going
11:47to a concert hall and listening to white
11:49male composers and having whites in the
11:52audience. This is giving young people an
11:55excuse to avoid this beauty." So Thomasi
12:00said deb blind orchestral auditions so
12:02that we can make sure that we can
12:03racially engineer the um the the
12:06composition of orchestras. Composer
12:09conductors are not discriminating.
12:12Nobody is discriminating. Even if you
12:13didn't have blind auditions, all that a
12:16conductor cares about is he doesn't want
12:18the first horn in a Strauss tone poem to
12:21blow his solo. He's looking for
12:23excellence. He is looking for
12:24perfection. If it was an all black
12:27orchestra and they were the best, that's
12:28what he would choose. The idea that
12:31conductors or music managers are
12:33discriminating against the most
12:34qualified classical musicians is absurd.
12:38Here's how absurd it gets, John. Again,
12:40you would
12:41think, how can a blind audition where
12:45you don't know the identity, how can
12:48that be racist? Here's what else is
12:50racist under a disperate impact
12:51standard. Speeding cameras. It turns out
12:55speeding cameras are racist. If they
12:58tell us, which they do, that blacks
13:01speed at higher rates, they're racist
13:04cameras. The mayor of Chicago, Brandon
13:08Johnson, waged a war against a
13:10technology called Shot Spotter. And I
13:13don't know whether you know our your our
13:15libertarian, non-libertarian differences
13:17will show up here. We'll see. Shot
13:19Spotter is an audio technology that
13:22picks up the sound of of shootings of
13:25driveby shootings. Okay, which is
13:27important because it turns out in the
13:30inner city, which is where almost all
13:32driveby shootings occur at a at an
13:35absolute barbaric rate, 80% are never
13:38called in for various reasons. And so
13:42Shot Spotter picks it up and alerts the
13:45police and at the very least allows
13:49first responders to get there quickly
13:52where they may never get there at all
13:54without this technology.
13:57Well, Shot Spotter tells us again that
14:01most shootings are occurring in a very
14:03small portion of Chicago on the south
14:06and west sides in sort of known hotspot
14:09corners in overwhelmingly in black
14:12neighborhoods. So, it turns out that
14:15this audio sensor is racist because it
14:18tells us a message we don't want to
14:20know. So, Brandon Johnson said, "I want
14:22to get rid of Shot Spotter except for
14:24the DNC." He want shot spotter said,
14:27"Okay, you don't like us. We're out of
14:28here." They were gonna pull out in
14:30February of 2024. Brandon Johnson said,
14:34"Not so fast. Leave in September, but
14:37stick around for the convention." And
14:39sadly, Shot Spotter agreed with this
14:41annoying and incredibly insulting
14:43conditions. But that's where we've
14:44gotten to is that a camera, a computer,
14:48a nonscentient being is racist. So, I
14:53want
14:54to explore some term setting.
14:58Um, there is a tiny part of me that
15:01feels like shot spider sounds like the
15:02surveillance state. I knew it. I knew
15:04it. Good. Excellent disagreement. Part
15:06of me that's like, I don't know about
15:07this. I don't know about the robots. Are
15:09the drones going to just start becoming
15:11Judge Dread? Um, but we'll set that
15:13aside for now. I'm going to come back. I
15:15want to parse this a little bit between
15:17the the race and equity things. They're
15:19deeply connected and and the police
15:21issues which are the two areas where
15:23you've spent so much of your time. Yeah.
15:25But first I want to um I want to pose a
15:28question and help which is is this all
15:32overblown make the case that this sort
15:36of woke DEI desperate impact explicit
15:42racism as the replacement for
15:43colorblindness Yeah.
15:45ideology. make the case that this is
15:48broad-based and happening in places
15:51beyond Columbia University's campus and
15:55a couple of whack jobs at Disney. Like,
15:57how how much of a problem has this
16:02actually been in the broad institutions
16:04of America for real? Make make your
16:06argument for that. Well, broad
16:08institutions of America, I would say in
16:10every professional school, your your
16:13viewers, if they have white male sons
16:16and they've applied for graduate school,
16:19I would bet a very large proportion of
16:22those white males, if they're not in
16:24some LGBTQ category, have not gotten
16:27into their first choice or second choice
16:30or third choice for medical school or
16:32law school because they are the bottom
16:35of the totem pole. There is no more uh
16:39reviled creature in an academic
16:42environment today than a straight white
16:44male. Um and that occurs as well in the
16:49professions
16:51uh in law firms. Black law school
16:55graduates are catapulted way ahead of
16:58their GPA ranking uh into associate
17:04positions way ahead of their white and
17:07Asian colleagues. The press uh hires on
17:11the basis of race publishing good luck
17:14publishing a book if you're a white male
17:18non-LGBTQ author. uh the media, we've
17:23seen that
17:24government, the Oscars is a good example
17:27in the media space, which is they've now
17:28made explicit race quotas for your crew.
17:31Like if there aren't if there isn't
17:33sufficient diversity in the people
17:34behind the camera, you're not qualified
17:36to get an Oscar now now as of like I
17:38think this year, right? It's it's
17:39unbelievable. and and Broadway after
17:42again during the George Floyd race,
17:43there was this movement called I see
17:45you, white American theater that had the
17:48most hilariously
17:50uh
17:51hysterical
17:53hyperbolic
17:54manifesto basically blaming theater for
17:57having the gall to ever mount a a play
18:00written by a white male. And they've
18:03just this group aren't most of them. No,
18:06I mean seriously, aren't like most of
18:07the historical plays, musicals, cancel
18:10it. So the after George Floyd like every
18:12new play on Broadway that year was by a
18:15black author. So and and you have I I
18:18wrote about in the book the um amazing
18:21institute at Giuliard, which is one of
18:23the premier arts conservatories in the
18:26country for classical music, but also
18:29for theater and dance. and the black
18:31students there just had this
18:34incredibly self-involved, narcissistic
18:37meltdown
18:39uh when they were asked to listen to a
18:41Zoom uh reenactment of the African slave
18:45trade in order to increase the empathy
18:49of all students towards what blacks went
18:51through. and and and out of out of
18:55that centuriesl long experience of
18:58sorrow and oppression came black music
19:02and black theater. But the black
19:04Giuliard students said, "How dare you
19:06subject us to this?" And and they had a
19:08complete meltdown. And they too demanded
19:11we should Wait, what were they melting
19:12down about? This was black. This was
19:14historically black music that they were
19:16melting down about listening to. This
19:17was a 3day workshop that Giuliard had
19:21brought
19:22in run by a black theater professional
19:26at
19:28NYU that was going to be an immersion in
19:33black art in above all musical theater,
19:37spirituals, jazz. And the on the opening
19:42day, this black theater professional,
19:44Michael
19:46Mccelroy, had the students watch by Zoom
19:50because we were all socially distanced
19:53at that point. um a reenactment of the
19:58African slave trade that whose dialogue
20:00came out of the the TV series and book
20:04Roots by Alex Haley, black
20:07author. And during this
20:11reenactment, the black students were all
20:14texting each other about how this was
20:17just too oppressive and how dare they
20:19appropriate our history. I it's it's
20:21impossible to understand. Do not ask me
20:24to explain this, John. Okay. It's it
20:26can't be explained. No, no, that but the
20:28Giuliard capitulate. And so these
20:30students went on a rampage. They had
20:33their manifesto saying it is racist to
20:36ask us to learn the general American
20:38dialect. Uh it is racist to ask us to
20:41ever go outside of our racial identity.
20:44But of course, the rule is usual double
20:46standard. So blacks can play white
20:48roles, but whites can't play black
20:51roles.
20:52Um, and so they claimed that that they
20:56were oppressed by having to just be in a
21:00environment where, as you say, sorry,
21:02it's a European
21:04tradition. We were Caucasian
21:08demographically. That's a
21:10reality. There were no blacks on the
21:13European continent for very long time.
21:16And when they arrived, they were very
21:17few in numbers. You can't expect that
21:19culture to have a whole tradition from
21:22the start of black art. Just as we don't
21:24expect
21:26China in its Chinese classical opera
21:29tradition to have African writers,
21:32China's not going around apologizing for
21:34its classical opera because it doesn't
21:37have blacks. India is not going around
21:39apologizing for its classical epics
21:41because they were written by Indians and
21:44not by Africans. The West is the only
21:47civilization engaged in this
21:50pathetically
21:51ungrounded self- flagagillation.
21:55You don't pull punches. I'm sick of it.
21:57I'm sorry because it is it is perverse.
22:01This is the question that I've been
22:02pondering for months. What is with the
22:05West that is it is uniquely
22:08self-cancelling at this point? I I want
22:10to come back to that question because
22:12it's actually a profound question and
22:14you point it out in truth
22:16because we are America is a uniquely
22:21culturally diverse society relative to
22:23all of human existence and most of the
22:25planet. So, and everyone I I I've
22:28traveled more than most Americans, which
22:30is not hard because we don't travel that
22:32much abroad as a as a people. We're the
22:35obviously the least racist country on
22:37planet Earth, right? Like it's and um
22:40it's it's it's like literally obvious
22:42and it's and it manifests um uh uh um my
22:47former guest, his name is escaping me,
22:49Wilfrid Riley, uh had brought up a
22:51survey about perceptions around things
22:53like interracial marriage and all kinds
22:55of other things that would indicate the
22:57level of kind of racial prejudice,
22:59right? And we in America was like top of
23:02the charts for tolerance of all the
23:04things that you would think suggest
23:07we're pretty good on race.
23:09Um and we beat each beat ourselves up
23:12the worst. But isn't that also because
23:15we had a uniquely horrible chatt
23:19slavery and it is you said okay the
23:22civil rights act in 1960 in the
23:251960s and and the changes and then by
23:281980 it's done to play devil's advocate
23:33that sounds crazy. You're telling me in
23:3515 years we solved racism and we should
23:37move on. That doesn't sound reasonable
23:39or fair after hundreds of years of
23:41oppression and segregation and
23:42redlinining and Jim Crow and and a
23:46culture that says blacks are secondass
23:49citizens are not even human in its worst
23:51form. Um, you can't tell me 20 years we
23:55solved that problem. Isn't this just
23:58maybe an overcorrection, but still
24:01a reasonable and
24:05necessary rebalancing that's going to
24:07get it wrong at the margins, going to
24:09overplay its hand a little bit, but
24:10still fundamentally the right thing to
24:12do? Well, first of all, I'll answer your
24:15question about is by 1980s is enough
24:18change. But remind me to return to your
24:22claim that we had a uniquely barbaric
24:25system of cattle slavery. But but it's a
24:28very valid question as to whether from
24:3264 to 1980 you could have a
24:35transformation of the culture and and
24:37that one would right be right to be
24:40suspicious. Nevertheless, I would
24:43say when you're looking at a very
24:46specific issue like a literacy, minimal
24:51literacy test that applies to everybody
24:54for employment or going to high school.
24:58I mean, I guess you could say, of
25:00course, we know that literacy tests were
25:02used to exclude blacks,
25:06uh, and poll tests, but at some point, I
25:09would say, when the standards themselves
25:12are so colorblind and they have no idea
25:15who is taking that exam, at some point
25:18you have to say, regardless of what the
25:21ambience may
25:23be, we're not going to tear down those
25:25standards and continue and have double
25:28standards because we don't think blacks
25:29can make them. But I I would agree
25:33that it would have been impossible to
25:36predict the degree of sea change in
25:39Americans identity. And I I went on an
25:43audible listening tour for a year or two
25:46of catchup to a lot of black literature.
25:49Um, you know, Frederick Douglas, Native
25:52Son,
25:54uh, Claude Brown, Manchild in a Promised
25:57Land. And it is truly sickening the
26:01degree of gratuitous nastiness that
26:05characterized American whites for a long
26:07time. I I am perfectly sympathetic to
26:10Malcolm X calling the white man a devil.
26:14uh given the long history of what would
26:19seem to be a white supremacist
26:23identity because whites would go out of
26:25their way to simply put blacks down when
26:28it was not even necessary in in just the
26:30most heartbreaking ways. It it it is so
26:34painful to see pictures in the 1940s of
26:37Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington
26:40dressed to the nines living up to
26:42bourgeoa norms of
26:44self-presentation and still being told
26:48to go to a different hotel or a
26:50different restaurant. The the cruelty
26:53was just unfathomable. Um, so you can
26:56understand people who say the the the
27:01truly oppressive aspects of our culture
27:05when it comes to race just aren't that
27:08long ago. Like like for someone my age,
27:10it can be like my parents were being
27:13called these things. I'm not saying me,
27:14but I'm just to play the role of
27:16somebody today who might be, you know,
27:18in their 20s, let's say, right? And or
27:20at Colombia. Um, so you understand where
27:24they're coming from, of course. And
27:28um, you know, I think racism was
27:32pervasive, but the South in particular,
27:35I mean, like these, who are these
27:38people? What was going on in the 50s and
27:4160s? They're they're the savages with
27:45the beating up children so they can't
27:48come into a schoolhouse. I I was I was
27:51alive then. when I was a child, but I
27:52was not aware of it. And I don't I think
27:55there was a a backlash obviously in the
27:58north, but one would have felt like who
28:02are these Americans? This is absolutely
28:05barbaric. Um, but I would ask people to
28:10simply empirically observe our reality
28:13today. We're supposed to believe in
28:15white privilege.
28:17I'll believe in white privilege when I
28:20hear about a black high school senior
28:23who puts his race down as white applying
28:26to college because he thinks that will
28:27give him an
28:29advantage. If if if there is such a
28:32student, he's completely deluded. He has
28:35no idea about the world. Because today
28:38it's being black which will catapult you
28:42into graduate school, into law school,
28:44into medical school, into business
28:46school ahead of what your qualifications
28:50would suggest. And that's true. Getting
28:53employed as well, getting a a an opera
28:56role, getting hired in Hollywood, being
28:59black is the key. being white is the
29:03disadvantage today. So it would have
29:06been
29:07unfathomable to imagine this degree of
29:11sea change. But I would say it has
29:14occurred. And I would also say to to
29:17your point about Americans being the
29:18least racist, we are so ready to be
29:22post-racial. Americans now, they're just
29:24kind of like nice. They're just nice
29:26people. They just want to get along. And
29:28there's been one love fest after another
29:31from white Republicans towards black
29:34Republican
29:35politicians. These so-called MAGA
29:38Republicans, they don't give a damn
29:40about somebody's race. They care about
29:42his values. So, they love Alen Keys.
29:44They love Allen West. They love Ben
29:46Carson. They love Colin Powell. Most
29:48recently, they've loved some of the
29:50crazies out there. Uh but again, it's
29:53quite some of the crazies uh that
29:55haven't done Who are the crazies? Name
29:57some names on these crazies. Well, we've
29:58had recently, I mean, I I sort of love
30:00the guy that the uh lieutenant governor
30:02that was running for governorship in was
30:05it Virginia or West Virginia that was
30:07very very uh conservative theologically.
30:10Um and then there was the uh football
30:14player Burgess
30:16Owens. Um I I've heard him. He was a
30:19good speaker. But anyway, he spoke to
30:21white. They they loved him. But let me
30:24return if I may to your original claim
30:26about uniquely horrific child slavery
30:29system. Pin it for just a sec. Okay.
30:32Because I I I'll come back to it for I
30:34won't forget. Um one
30:38uh one
30:40argument I want to I want to do because
30:43we broadly agree. So I want to do my
30:45best to represent the other side and
30:47play devil's advocate here.
30:50One other argument for essentially this
30:53equity
30:54um uh disproportionate sort of like
30:57tilting the scales in the other
30:58direction would be go something like
31:00this as I understand
31:02it. It's almost like a foreign aid. It's
31:05like you have a culture that has um not
31:10been on the ladder of success in
31:14multigenerationally the
31:16way white Americans have. Hasn't been
31:20able to pass down homes acrue
31:23intergenerational
31:24wealth. And so sure we could go to
31:29colorblind governance and and I don't
31:33know your name. I don't know your I
31:36don't know your race. I have a pure sort
31:39of metrics merit system whenever it's
31:42physically
31:44possible, but it's just going to be too
31:46slow to catch up to build literally the
31:50cultural and and financial capital in
31:53black families and family
31:56lines to get to a place where you do get
31:59to earn it. So you know we could say hey
32:01you like it cuts to the question
32:04of how
32:06much merit is acred to the individual
32:11and how much do we have to account for
32:13the fact that I do have certain
32:16privileges. I don't care about the white
32:17part but I had two parents who raised me
32:20and loved me and they did send me to
32:23school and so I do have a bunch of
32:24privileges now. Um and that set me up
32:30for acrewing the benefits sort of like
32:33um compounding interest and you have to
32:37start the compounding process and and we
32:40have some catchup to do. So may So this
32:42is maybe temporary, but isn't that what
32:45do you how do you respond to that kind
32:47of argument for all of these efforts as
32:52hamfisted and flatfooted and often
32:54ridiculous as they might seem? Well, I
32:56love your analogy to foreign aid. Uh
32:59we're we're I stuck in a bomb by by
33:03putting it in there, by the way. So keep
33:04going. We've just been through the uh
33:08COP 29, the uh latest climate change
33:11grift where we're supposed to the the ch
33:14the demand is that we transfer another
33:16trillion of dollars uh into the global
33:20south now because of glo climate change.
33:22It's unbelievable. It will go down the
33:25same sinkhole of corruption and
33:27mismanagement as before. And because
33:29governments are not willing to cough up
33:32the trillions, they're saying, "Well,
33:34now we've got to figure out a way to get
33:35it from private sector." But anyway, so
33:37foreign aid is a good example of
33:39something that we're supposed to say,
33:41well, it's well-intentioned. I guess it
33:42is uh that has had absolutely zero
33:46effect most by and large on uh on uh
33:49development in the third world.
33:52uh several
33:55responses. This claim of you can't
33:59expect people that have been held back
34:02uh
34:03for generations and centuries. This was
34:06Lynden Johnson. You take the chains off,
34:08they're not going to be ready to
34:09compete. So, we have to have what was
34:12called affirmative action. I prefer the
34:14term racial preferences because
34:16affirmative action still has the
34:17ambiguity that all is meant is do more
34:20outreach. you know, just make sure that
34:22you're casting a wide net. No, that's
34:24never what it's meant. It is meant a
34:26system of double standards that you we
34:29we don't expect whites to meet the
34:31standard, blacks rather, to meet the
34:32standards. We're going to admit them
34:35with much lower skills.
34:37Um, but that was back in in in ' 64
34:4265. It's a long time later now. So is
34:46that when as as Sandra de O' Connor said
34:50in upholding in one of the early
34:53preposterous just uh incoherent Supreme
34:57Court decisions upholding racial
34:59preferences and admissions said well in
35:0125 years we're not going to need this.
35:03Nothing has changed. The skills gap is
35:05not closed.
35:08Um, I would say as a philosophical
35:13matter, you simply are not helping
35:16people by saying, "We don't expect you
35:18to meet
35:19standards." We have people from the
35:22entire global south that are flooding
35:24into the United States because they
35:27think this is where they have the most
35:28opportunities. These are people of
35:30color. This has always been, by the way,
35:32not to interrupt, but this has always
35:34been the biggest own on the we're such a
35:37racist country is
35:40why would people of color be flooding in
35:44to hell? It doesn't make any sense. It
35:47can't. It's like an instant game over to
35:50the argument empirically. Like people go
35:53to places where their life will be
35:55better, not worse, right? It's
35:58shameless. The ACLU is shameless. In the
36:01morning, their line is oppression,
36:03oppression, oppression. This is
36:05systemically endemically racist country
36:08for people of color. The afternoon line
36:11is open borders. You may not have any
36:14kind of immigration controls. Every
36:17person of color the world over has an
36:19absolute entitlement to come into what
36:21in the morning it was saying is is
36:24lethally racist, you know. So, it's
36:27amazing that they get away with that
36:29utterly contradictory, inherently
36:32illogical stand. But my final response,
36:34John, is it turns out that double
36:39standards hurt their alleged
36:41beneficiaries. This is the whole theory
36:44known as mismatch that was developed by
36:47this wonderful law professor at UCLA
36:50who's a progressive. He's all in favor
36:52of public housing and and housing uh
36:56assistance. Richard Sander, he's done
36:59very uh rigorous empirical work. It
37:02turns out that if you admit people into
37:06institutions for which they're not
37:08competitively qualified, they struggle
37:10to keep up. And let's take it out of the
37:12race uh arena which is so difficult for
37:15Americans. It makes us so uncomfortable
37:17to talk about skills gaps and put it
37:20into gender terms, sex terms. If if MIT
37:25decides it wants more females in its
37:27class because of gender equity, and it
37:30admits
37:31me and I have a 650 on my math SAT on an
37:35800point
37:37scale, and my peers who have been
37:39admitted not based on their gonads, but
37:42based on their mathematical capacities.
37:45Yeah. and they're averaging the average
37:48SAT score in math at MIT is 800. So
37:51there I am brought into this peer group
37:54of really math whizzes. I mean they're
37:56above 800. 800 like the the ranking is
38:00is so imprecise. They're they're way at
38:02the curve. What's going to happen to me
38:05my first year in freshman calculus?
38:07You're going to get flushed out. I mean
38:09I'm going to I'm going to flunk out now.
38:11Am I going to flunk out? No. Because the
38:13diversity bureaucracy at MIT is going to
38:15run up to me and says, "Well, you're
38:17feeling out of place. You're
38:19struggling." The reason is misogyny.
38:22You're in a rap culture. And and and
38:24it's going to latch on to me to be one
38:27of its victims that it can now leverage
38:29for more diversity hiring because I need
38:31more uh people to run interface between
38:34me and this unsafe environment. But I am
38:36going to really struggle if I can and
38:38I'll likely change I'll likely ch change
38:41my major aspirations from engineering to
38:44maybe gender
38:45studies. This is what happens to blacks.
38:49It's the one group that is really
38:52systematically subjected to the handicap
38:56of being catapulted into an academic
38:58environment for which they're not
39:00competitively qualified. People who
39:02oppose racial preferences are not saying
39:06blacks shouldn't go to college. By no
39:08means. What we're saying is blacks
39:11should go to college under the same
39:12conditions as everybody else. If your if
39:16your profile fits you for Boston
39:20College, then go to Boston College with
39:23peers that share your academic skills
39:25because the teaching will be pitched to
39:28that level. but to catapult you instead
39:31of going to Boston College to MIT or
39:34Harvard just because Harvard's president
39:36and MIT's president wants to look over
39:39at student body and feel the warm glow
39:41of no bless obligation righteousness
39:44because it has a suitably diverse that's
39:46cruelty to those alleged beneficiaries
39:49of racial preferences. So the real
39:51argument as far as I'm concerned is that
39:54those double standards hurt their
39:57alleged beneficiaries.
39:59What is your definition at at the most
40:04abstract level of two words that you've
40:07used that I think are important? Merit
40:10and excellence. How would you define
40:12those two words so we're talking about
40:13the same thing?
40:16I I I think we know it when we see it. I
40:19would say that there are professions
40:22that over the centuries understand what
40:26are the skills necessary to be on the
40:28cutting edge of cancer research. What
40:33people in science they know uh what a
40:37scientific mind at its best can
40:39understand
40:41u I think you know we're we're far too
40:43susceptible. We've all been kind of
40:46deconstructed and brought into
40:48postmodernism. So our instinct is to be
40:50skeptical and and problematize as they
40:53say in academia
40:55uh what these standards are if if if we
40:58didn't have a racial skills gap and and
41:01let me just throw in here what I'm
41:03talking about and why it is ludicrous to
41:06expect as the left tells us to expect
41:09that absent racism you would have
41:11proportional representation in
41:14meritocratic institutions that are are
41:17interested in skills Here's the reality.
41:19And again, this is very difficult to
41:21talk about. It violates racial
41:24etiquette. And most Americans are
41:25allegedly white supremacist, white
41:27Americans, turn their eyes away because
41:29it makes them very uncomfortable. We
41:31don't want to talk about these things.
41:33But given that the discourse is going
41:35around talking about racism, racism, and
41:38racism, we have to fight back with the
41:40facts that that undercut the argument
41:44that only racism explains ongoing racial
41:47disparities. Here's the facts. According
41:49to this nationwide test called the
41:53National Assessment of Educational
41:55Progress, 66% of black 12th graders do
42:00not possess even partial mastery of 12th
42:04grade math skills, defined as doing
42:09arithmetic or reading a graph.
42:1266% of black 12th graders possess no
42:16mastery of those very no mastery. No,
42:19they don't have even partial mastery.
42:22They're below basic the the way the
42:25rankings work and it's getting I hope
42:27not too complicated. No, please
42:30basic defines basic
42:34level is partial mastery.
42:3966% of black 12th graders are below
42:43basic. So they don't possess even
42:46partial
42:47mastery of arithmetic.
42:51How does that compare? Because our
42:53schools in my view suck universally for
42:56everyone. How does that compare to white
42:59students? White students are
43:01about 30 28 30% below basic. It's really
43:05bad. Okay. So, so the schools are
43:08failing. The schools are failing white
43:09kids and parents are failing. I mean,
43:11it's the I'm the schools and it's the
43:13parents. Yeah, there's a lot to it. But
43:15just to put these basic numbers in
43:18perspective. So, if you've got a
43:19population just is is 13% of the
43:22population. So, you got 13% versus um uh
43:26you know 87%. Right. Did I do that math
43:29right? Yeah. For everybody else. For
43:31everybody else. Whites are about
43:3362%. Yeah. But the Asians and all the uh
43:36with all the white adjacent all lump in
43:38together. So
43:41you're talking about right there at just
43:43proficient math proficiency,
43:47you're not going to have you can't
43:50you're not going to have the 13% ratio
43:51if 60% of the 13 there relative to a
43:55third. They're not even they're not even
43:57there. I mean, if you're talking about
43:58Google or you're talking about getting
44:00into engineering school, you're not it's
44:03you're not going to be basic. You're
44:04going to be advanced. the number of
44:06blacks nationwide in a nationwide sample
44:10in the NAP that are advanced in math,
44:12which is at the bare minimum what you're
44:14going to need in order to be in really
44:16demanding professions, it doesn't even
44:19show up on a statistical sample. It's
44:22too small. And the number who are even
44:24just proficient is about 6%. So, are you
44:28just saying black people are stupid? We
44:29need to like deal with that. Is that
44:31what you're saying? I'm saying we need a
44:32massive change of culture, of family
44:35culture. If we all acted like Asians,
44:37we'd be a lot better off. You know, I
44:40you I I'm told all the time, you can see
44:43it. The Asian parents are sending the
44:46message to their children from the time
44:49they're sentient. I expect you to
44:53succeed. I expect you to study. I'm
44:56going to monitor your homework. I'm
44:57going to monitor your school attendance.
44:59Blacks have a truency rate in California
45:01four times that of whites. You can't
45:03study, you know, learn if you're not in
45:04school. Now, I agree. I mean, the
45:05schools because of progressive education
45:08and the lowering of standards there um
45:11are are absolutely substandard, but but
45:15even
45:16so, I'm sorry, if you put an Asian
45:19student and a black student on average,
45:22there's I'm talking about averages here.
45:25I'm not talking about individuals. There
45:27are thousands of blacks who are whooping
45:30Asians asses. Okay, but we're talking
45:33about group
45:35averages. An Asian student is going to
45:38do a lot better in any academic
45:41environment because of the family
45:42culture. One example, you brought up
45:45MIT. So, we've so we've had now the
45:48striking down of racial preferences in
45:51college admissions by the Supreme Court,
45:53right? And it's it's in the news
45:55recently and it was positioned
45:58hyperbolically on MSNBC of course as
46:00like oh see hell's going we're going to
46:03hell in a hand basket and their example
46:04was MIT admissions yearover-year since
46:07the change and what happened
46:10was all the groups went down as
46:13percentages including whites and Asians
46:17went up. Yeah, that's what happened. It
46:19was like, oh, and and I know the the
46:22case, I think, if I remember this
46:23correctly, was actually the um an
46:25argument that Asian-Americans were being
46:28actively discriminated against at
46:29Harvard. Am I remembering that
46:30correctly? So, you have
46:33this
46:35weird intersectional warfare of we're
46:39going to talk about black and white, but
46:40we're going to kind of ignore these
46:42other groups like Asians and like those
46:46super successful Nigerians that were
46:48really uncomfortable for us to talk
46:49about that beat out white Americans on
46:51average and everything.
46:54Um why are those like again instantly
46:58argument busting groups of people not
47:03they continue to be treated like not
47:06part of the conversation? I mean, you
47:09know, among the people who are so active
47:12about this, why can you, how, how do you
47:14think it is that the anti-racism crowd
47:18can live in that cognitive dissonance
47:20where it's like we live in a white
47:21supremacist country except for the
47:24Asians and the
47:25Indians, some of whom, you know, have
47:28radically different cultures. And so,
47:30like, if we're bigoted, aren't we also
47:31bigoted against Asians and Indians? I
47:34don't get it. like how are they
47:36justifying that? There's any amount of
47:39rationalizing the real they will come up
47:41with any explanation to justify it. So
47:44you had for a while, you know, a decade
47:47ago that yeah, they're white adjacent
47:50and uh somehow they're they're benefit.
47:53It's it's that like the number of
47:54contradictions within leftwing ideology
47:56is unbelievable because occasionally,
47:58you know, the Asian students on campus,
48:01the status today on campus is to be a
48:04person of color. And Asians by and large
48:07are still trending pretty left-wing
48:09because that's how you get elite status
48:11in our culture. Did the elites are are
48:13still overwhelmingly democratic. So
48:16that's where the power lies. Uh and so
48:19there'd be a lot of Asian student groups
48:20say, "Please, sir, can we be a person of
48:22color, too? could we be a student of
48:23color? And the the administrators like,
48:25"No, no, no. You may not be a student of
48:27color because here's the secret. Uh
48:29student of color is a euphemism for
48:30underperforming students." And so Asians
48:33are like by definition not students of
48:34color. Jews fit into the same category.
48:36Right. Absolutely. And
48:40um here's the here's what the Asians do.
48:44the the the needle gets more and more
48:47the eye of the needle gets narrow and
48:48narrower for them because admissions is
48:52always zero sum. This is something that
48:53the proponents always denied with a
48:55straight face all the way up to the
48:57Supreme Court that well just because
48:58we've got set aides for black students
49:01doesn't mean that anybody else is
49:02thereby handicapped. No, excuse me.
49:05Every time you set aside a place for a
49:07female who's less qualified, that's one
49:10less seat for a qualified male. Same
49:13with race. If you set aside seats for
49:15blacks, that takes out the finite core
49:18for non-blacks. So, it is always your
49:21sum. But the Asians, rather than
49:24complain, except the few that were
49:26willing to come forward and serve as
49:27plaintiffs in these recent lawsuits,
49:29yeah, they basically say, "You set the
49:31bar even higher. We'll meet it." That's
49:33the proper
49:35response. We'll meet your damn standards
49:38and we'll beat you at it. And that is
49:40the message that is not being sent to
49:43blacks. The message being sent to blacks
49:45is you demand that standards be lowered
49:47on your behalf. And that's a tragedy.
49:49These black civil rights leaders are not
49:53exhorting blacks to study more. And I'm
49:56sorry, the reality is I've been in a lot
49:58of inner city classrooms. I've observed
50:01that classroom behavior.
50:03It's not
50:05exactly
50:06obedient or respectful or dedicated to
50:11learning. It is chaotic and men and then
50:15we make excuses that if black students
50:17are disciplined more for
50:19insubordination, that's because the
50:20teachers are racist. Are you kidding me?
50:23This is the most left-wing profession in
50:25the country. Ed school is one
50:26two-yearong marination in white
50:29privilege theory and intersectionality.
50:31These are not racist school
50:33administrators. The black kids are
50:34acting up more because of the chaos of
50:36their home environments. So the idea
50:40that somehow, you know, the the the
50:44the problem is again the racism the
50:48Asians belly. Um and and so the solution
50:51is I well and immigrant black Americans.
50:53So, one thing I I had a our first
50:56episode of this show a couple years ago
50:59was with a an educational entrepreneur
51:02disruptor named Mike Yates. And I'm I
51:05don't even remember if this part of the
51:06conversation was on camera or not, but
51:09in he has come a long way. He's become
51:12much more of a classical liberal from
51:14being more of like a rad like a kind of
51:17anti-racist type of thinker. And he said
51:20one of the things he encountered in
51:21school was this question of what does it
51:24mean to be black? Uhhuh.
51:27And it was between first generation
51:29immigrants from Africa and black
51:32American students who whose whose family
51:35lineage was has been here for a long
51:37time maybe even going back to slavery.
51:39And there was a lot of tension because
51:41again like the Nigerians and the you
51:44know the Ghanins and the people who'd
51:45come from Africa had
51:49more like the kind of typical immigrant
51:52to America zeal and
51:57um they they didn't have the baggage of
51:59the culture that we that that has
52:01emerged here, right? And they
52:03outperformed and they didn't want to be
52:05grouped in with the with the
52:07race discourse in the same way. And so
52:10it was like this really interesting
52:12window into an internal dialogue
52:14internal dialogue
52:17um that he said was really started to
52:20change the way he thought about race in
52:22the country because it's like well it's
52:23like gosh my buddy from Nigeria is
52:25darker than me and so if if race is all
52:28about looks and skin
52:30color why is he doing great? Yeah. Why
52:33is his family still together? Um well
52:36you ask you know why is this still going
52:37on? It's because it's a race hustle now.
52:40And that's how you have power. You get
52:43automatic power if you're a black
52:46so-called advocate by claiming racism
52:49because whites are still guilty enough
52:51and they're well-meaning enough at this
52:53point that they're going to confer a
52:56whole lot of benefits on you. And it's a
52:59great gig. You specialize in being
53:01black. Nobody can compete with you on
53:04that. It's just like specializing in
53:06being female. Well, here's the news.
53:08Being female is not an accomplishment. I
53:11don't deserve any special privileges
53:14because I'm
53:15female. There's no it's of utter no
53:18interest to me. And being gay is not an
53:21accomplishment either. But under
53:23identity politics, those are
53:26qualifications in their own right. And
53:28I'm just sick of it. I I I don't think
53:31that uh any institution that is based on
53:36knowledge and the accomplishment of
53:37knowledge should admit me simply because
53:40of my gonads in if I don't have
53:43competitive qualifications I shouldn't
53:45be there and I am under no delusion that
53:48I have been the so-called beneficiary of
53:52gender preferences forever. I have never
53:55been excluded from anything because of
53:57my sex. That to believe that as a female
54:01today is to be completely deluded again
54:05because you look at Fox News for
54:08example, it has about a 50/50 male to
54:11female ratio of onair talent that is
54:15completely artificially engineered. I
54:18think the ratio of attractive blondes is
54:20a little out of step with the population
54:22as a whole though on Fox. Yes. To find
54:25an attractive bimbo like we know just
54:28saying there's a difference there's a
54:30different selection criteria going on
54:31for TV. Absolutely. Absolutely. about at
54:33Fox uh thanks to Roger Als. But I go
54:35around collecting natural experiments to
54:38test this theory of of gender bias. And
54:43there and the the theory of gender bias
54:45is the racist or the sexist gatekeepers
54:48that you know if you have an institution
54:50that is not 50/50, it's because they're
54:53sexist gatekeepers, you know, at at at
54:56Viacom or or Hollywood or whatever. So,
55:00let's find institutions with no
55:03gatekeepers and see how the gender
55:07ratios pan out. And there's several of
55:11them, but one of the most interesting is
55:14Wikipedia. Wikipedia, it's blind.
55:17Anybody can edit. There's there's no
55:20gatekeeping. You you just enter at will
55:22and nobody knows who you are. It's
55:24anonymous. Also, there's no history of
55:27Wikipedia. You know, people the excuse
55:29for lack of 50-50 parody among chess
55:32grand masters, even though again it's
55:34meritocratic now, is well, there was a
55:36history of discrimination and females
55:38are so oppressed by that history, so
55:40they can't go forward. Wikipedia is very
55:43new. It's not as if there's a history of
55:45long-term discrimination against female
55:47editors at Wikipedia. Well, to the
55:50absolute chagrin of the lefties who run
55:53Wikipedia, it's like 90%
55:57male without any gatekeepers. Nobody is
56:00keeping the females out. It turns out,
56:02where'd you get that data from? How do
56:03you know that? From Wikipedia. This was
56:05like a huge scandal several years ago.
56:07Okay. So, they actually reported this.
56:09Yeah. And um the Wikipedia Foundation.
56:13Turns out that females do not have that
56:16same
56:17drive for facts for for thoroughess.
56:22Even the female entries like Manalo
56:25Blanik stiletto heels are very thin
56:28compared to what you would expect.
56:30There's other natural
56:32experiments. Anybody can write a letter
56:34to the editor of a newspaper. There's no
56:37gatekeepers. Nobody's saying who's, you
56:40know, you any you can just send it in.
56:42That's about two to one females. Who
56:44subscribes to the New Republic, to the
56:47Atlantic, to public journals? No
56:51gatekeepers. You can subscribe. It also
56:53skews heavily male because males on
56:56average, and I'm not saying there's not
56:58lots of exceptions, then your daughter
57:00and your granddaughter are going to be
57:02the most accomplished physicists and
57:05public figures in the world, but on
57:07average, males are more externally
57:09oriented. So when you look at Fox and
57:11you see the 50/50 that is engineered
57:14because that does not reflect the actual
57:17pool of who is most interested in public
57:21affairs. And I'm always amazed at like
57:23there's still like conservative
57:26magazines that are thank god holding out
57:29against this like National Review you
57:31can look at the table of contents or
57:34national fairs you've all it's all male
57:36contributors and you can't they would
57:39love to have more females. So anyway,
57:41this type there are these sort of
57:43generic thing like uh rules of thumb,
57:46terms of phrase in this world of
57:48psychology uh as it pertains to gender,
57:50right? That women on average are more
57:52interested in people, men more
57:54interested in things. Yeah. Men on
57:56average are more interested in
57:59abstractions and spatial relations which
58:01is where the STEM and and political and
58:04ideological stuff comes in which is
58:06probably also where the philosophy and
58:08the history of some of that kind of on
58:11average. Yeah. But those averages, I
58:13think is it James De Moore who had done
58:15a paper on this and sort of showed that
58:16like the averages when you get to the
58:18extremes end up mattering a lot, right?
58:21The sort of bell curve at the tail where
58:23you get the truly radically brilliant
58:26crazies. If the average is off, you're
58:30going to have a really disproportionate
58:32number of truly exceptional
58:35people. And it it isn't proportional.
58:38It's it's there's some dynamic there
58:41about are you familiar with sort of some
58:43of that? Yeah. Yeah. Distribution. This
58:44is what got Larry Summers pushed out of
58:47Harvard. It it turns out that at the
58:50tails ends of the distribution
58:53curve. Males predominate among math
58:56dummies. There's a lot more males than
58:59females who are completely clueless.
59:01They never have been able to add two and
59:03two. And at the far end of the math
59:06genius level, males outnumber females
59:10according to a very inadequate um uh
59:14measure when the SATs used to measure in
59:1850 point increments and they got rid of
59:20that because of the usual racial we
59:23don't like the what it tells us about
59:24the racial distribution. But at the at
59:28the top 50, which is again hardly the
59:30tail end, males outnumbered females like
59:332.5 to one. So So again, the only
59:37allowable explanation is the exact
59:39parallel for race. The only allowable
59:41explanation for the fact that the Google
59:45engineering department is overwhelmingly
59:47male is discrimination against all of
59:50these qualified females that are equally
59:53good at doing the most abstract physics
59:57and and engineering as males, but
1:00:00they're just being kept out because
1:00:01Google would rather have a subpar
1:00:04collection of engineers than allow
1:00:06females to come in. The quality of the
1:00:08Google search results suggests that that
1:00:10is indeed a problem. Something's a
1:00:12problem. Well, I don't know if females
1:00:13females would make it much worse. We
1:00:15should get uh we'll return to James
1:00:16Deore in an instant. And his his big
1:00:18problem was talking about neuroticism.
1:00:20Um but so this is like a scandal. So
1:00:25Larry Summers was at a conference. This
1:00:27is former president of Harvard who was
1:00:30Clinton's Treasury Secretary. Yeah. Big
1:00:33economist. He said this is a this is a
1:00:36conference supposed to be asking
1:00:37difficult questions. So I think what is
1:00:40Larry on the Asberger spectrum? If he
1:00:42isn't, he's Asberger's adjacent because
1:00:44I've I've met him and it's like could be
1:00:47could he speaks his mind. He's not going
1:00:48to he's not going to he's not going to
1:00:50Yeah. Um I interviewed him a few times
1:00:52for the uh Hamas hysteria on on campus.
1:00:55But anyway, so he said, "Well, maybe,
1:00:58you know, there may be other reasons
1:01:00such as personal preference. males and
1:01:02females have different capac interests
1:01:05in, you know, being in a computer lab at
1:01:072 am eating cold crusts of pizza because
1:01:10they're so involved in coding. And, you
1:01:12know, there may maybe there's something
1:01:15in the distribution of high-end skills.
1:01:17So Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at MIT,
1:01:20she famously afterwards read she had to
1:01:23run out because she was about to throw
1:01:24up because hearing hearing that there
1:01:27may be uh differences or hearing
1:01:30somebody say that there may be
1:01:31differences in the innate averages of
1:01:34math skills was so traumat traumatic to
1:01:37her that she could not be in the same
1:01:38room. She's a biology professor. She's a
1:01:40biology professor at MIT. So anyway, the
1:01:43the Harvard faculty rose up in absolute
1:01:47revolt against Larry Summers for daring
1:01:51to
1:01:52um even suggest that anything other than
1:01:55sexism explains the lack of 50/50
1:01:58proportionality. Summers, to his immense
1:02:00discredit, apologized. He he brought in
1:02:03a whole raft of new gender-based
1:02:06programs, but it was too little too
1:02:07late. Even though we don't so he he
1:02:09ended up James Deore, the hapless, naive
1:02:13little lamb. I was at a conference with
1:02:14him once and you couldn't meet a more
1:02:17sort of ingenuous person who was an
1:02:20engineer at Google and Google was
1:02:22involved in the identical discussion of
1:02:25right woe is me we're so sexist somehow
1:02:28you know you have these institutions
1:02:30that are willing to blame themselves for
1:02:32racism and sexism rather than admit the
1:02:35obvious which is there's a pipeline
1:02:37problem so Google is saying somehow
1:02:40we've got all these sexist engineers and
1:02:42please raise your hand if you're one of
1:02:44them. They never ask that. That are
1:02:46keeping out all these qualified females.
1:02:48So Deore wrote this five 10page memo
1:02:51saying, "Well, maybe there's other
1:02:53explanations and and Google's supposed
1:02:55to be this wonderful we're open to all
1:02:57ideas. We've got our little employee
1:02:59chats and stuff. So long as they so long
1:03:01as they're communism
1:03:02adjacent, we can make money which is not
1:03:05communist, but the rest of the ideology
1:03:06can be turbo communism." Yeah. Somebody
1:03:09there once reached out to me, an
1:03:10engineer said, "We've got this books
1:03:12program. I'd like to invite you. Would
1:03:14you be willing to come up to Menlo Park
1:03:16or wherever they are? And I said,
1:03:17"Sure." And I didn't hear from him. And
1:03:18I didn't hear from him. And then he
1:03:19finally decided for professional
1:03:21reasons, I'm not going to advance your
1:03:23name. You know, that would have been
1:03:24like the end of his career. But anyway,
1:03:26so Deore proposed. Was he wearing a
1:03:28Mauist dunce cap when sending you the
1:03:31email? I've I've I've struggle sessioned
1:03:33myself so that others won't have to.
1:03:35Yes. Right. I'm sure he he he
1:03:37disappeared himself after that. So he is
1:03:40buried so deep at this point. But
1:03:42anyway, Demor said he he actually didn't
1:03:45stress the skills so much. He said
1:03:48um there's different inclinations. And
1:03:51he said females are on average score
1:03:54higher on neuroticism. Well, that's one
1:03:57of the what's called the big five. Yeah.
1:03:59Which are these psychological traits
1:04:01that have been known or or identified
1:04:04maybe their constructs by psychology for
1:04:06decades. And neuroticism means a higher
1:04:10uh propensity for worry. Yeah. For
1:04:12self-dab, threat awareness. It makes
1:04:14sense as if you're a maternal creature
1:04:17that needs to protect babies that you
1:04:19would be super vigilant. Right. Right.
1:04:22So, females are there. They they're
1:04:24neurotic. So, this got this got Deore uh
1:04:27booted out because the females that
1:04:30they're supposed to be so brave and such
1:04:32strong women, but if they read a memo
1:04:35that talks about a psychological trait,
1:04:39they've just fallen to pieces because
1:04:40actually they're really like Victorian
1:04:42neurosthenics that you know and need
1:04:44their fainting couch all the time. So,
1:04:47again, another weird double standard
1:04:49that females are so strong and yet they
1:04:51can't stand to hear other facts. And so
1:04:54you talk about, you know, the female
1:04:55traits, the it's the females that are
1:04:58driving the academy left. Poll after
1:05:01poll shows when it comes to, you know,
1:05:05do you support academic freedom and the
1:05:08ability to pursue truth no matter where
1:05:11it ends up versus do you believe in
1:05:14speech codes and and protecting safety.
1:05:18It's a huge split. The males are
1:05:21for the pursuit of truth, open
1:05:24discourse, and it's the females who
1:05:27believe in suppressing speech in the
1:05:29name of safety, which is one of the most
1:05:32nauseating concepts. We got to, you
1:05:34know, adn nauseium during COVID, be
1:05:37safe. I hated that. That was like the
1:05:40worst mantra in human history. Yes.
1:05:42Safetyism. safety as a as a kind of like
1:05:47accidental backed into modus operandi
1:05:50for our society has been incredibly
1:05:52destructive. I want to plant a flag for
1:05:54something I want to come back to, which
1:05:56is that you are a you're data driven,
1:05:59you're fact-based, you're punchy as
1:06:01hell, you don't pull punches. So I want
1:06:04I want to come back to the question of
1:06:07like fighting a war in the culture or
1:06:10fighting a war of discourse in the
1:06:12culture and and the trials and
1:06:14tribulations of that in a world where
1:06:16the counter reaction to this wokeism has
1:06:19some pretty dirty underbellies. Some of
1:06:21which we've seen in some of the comments
1:06:22sections of some of our videos where
1:06:24it's like oh
1:06:25no that's a little fascism adjacent to
1:06:29um so I wanna I want to come back to
1:06:30that because I think it's challenging
1:06:32for us. Uh-huh. But first, I promised we
1:06:35would talk about is America uniquely
1:06:38racist in its history. I've been
1:06:39wondering about that. Thanks. And is our
1:06:42um history of the slave trade uniquely
1:06:45um worthy of um of uh lashing ourselves
1:06:49and recontextualizing our history as
1:06:52being born in 1619 instead of 1776. And
1:06:56so,
1:06:59um, make the case that that's not true.
1:07:02That the that people on average are told
1:07:06American slavery uniquely horrible,
1:07:10uniquely. We are a
1:07:13slaveocracy. What's the counterargument
1:07:15to that? There's not a single society or
1:07:18civilization in human history, in all of
1:07:20human history, that hasn't practiced
1:07:22slavery. This is it seems like it's a
1:07:25it's an innate instinct that human
1:07:26beings have. If they have the capacity
1:07:29to enslave others, they will.
1:07:32Uh Africans were enslaving each other.
1:07:35Chinese were enslaving each other. It's
1:07:38everywhere. It was in Greece. It was in
1:07:40Rome. Uh it has been the norm throughout
1:07:45history across the globe.
1:07:48The only civilization that tried to end
1:07:51slavery was the west. We are the only
1:07:55civilization that has provided the
1:07:58language, the concepts to end it. It the
1:08:03abolitionist movement began in Britain
1:08:06with echoes in in North
1:08:09America. It was Britain that that ended
1:08:13the transatlantic slave trade. They
1:08:15dedicated in the in the 18 19th century
1:08:19in the 1800s 13% of their naval
1:08:23resources were dedicated to simply
1:08:26blockading the coast of West Africa to
1:08:29try and end the slave trade because the
1:08:32Africans were so gung-ho on keeping up
1:08:35the the transatlantic slave trade. You
1:08:38had Deomi members from the pre-
1:08:43Nigeria actively going out and and and
1:08:46getting their fellow Africans to bring
1:08:49them to the slave markets. This was
1:08:51completely a mutual transactional
1:08:55transaction. Britain occupied Lagos in
1:08:591861 to try and decouple it from the
1:09:02slave trade. the Arabs. There's still
1:09:05slavery going on now, you know, in a lot
1:09:07of Arab countries. So, one fact I heard
1:09:11pointed out is that the the Arab nations
1:09:14had enslaved more people than North
1:09:16America and and maybe even all of the
1:09:18Americas. And that the question was,
1:09:21well, why aren't there as so why aren't
1:09:23there that many black people today in in
1:09:25in Arab countries? And the argument I
1:09:27heard made, I'm curious if you've heard
1:09:29this, is they enslaved people like crazy
1:09:32and then mutilated them like like turned
1:09:35them into Unix and and made sure they
1:09:37wouldn't breed basically. It's like the
1:09:39most barbaric story. It's I was like, is
1:09:42that true? Like that is I guess it does
1:09:45like where are all the black people? But
1:09:47I haven't heard that. I mean there's an
1:09:49argument that's made in because there's
1:09:51it's a huge slavery literature um that
1:09:55actually American slaves they they live
1:09:58very well compared to those in the
1:10:00Caribbean. It is true that if you look
1:10:02at like one I just was reading a
1:10:05historian was looking at one slave port
1:10:10of exit in Africa only 1% of the slaves
1:10:14that came out of that port went to North
1:10:17America. They went to Latin America to
1:10:20the Caribbean to other places. We were
1:10:23not the main consumers of slaves. But in
1:10:26any case, uh, aren't American states
1:10:29like Vermont some of the first units of
1:10:32government to abolish slavery as well?
1:10:35Well, isn't that my understanding? But
1:10:37like, but I mean in the early like as
1:10:38far as like who were the first five? Oh,
1:10:41yes. But a lot of people there was a
1:10:43backsliding. Some of them abolished it
1:10:45initially and then opened it up more and
1:10:48there was, you know, there was some
1:10:50slavery going on in the in the northern
1:10:52colonies. But um I understand that the
1:10:56Quakers who were strong abolitionists
1:10:58actually had some some slave stuff even
1:11:02while they were claiming to be strong
1:11:03abolitionists. So there's Yeah, it's I
1:11:05guess it's a messy history on se several
1:11:07fronts there. Yeah. But you know, I'm
1:11:09going to I'll I'll be willing to pay
1:11:11reparations when I see Africa saying
1:11:13we're going to pay reparations, too.
1:11:14Again, this is not unique. Uh, this
1:11:18sounds I don't even know whether to
1:11:19bring it up because it it it can easily
1:11:22be dismissed, but American slaves
1:11:26actually measured just at pure and I'm I
1:11:29am
1:11:29not ignoring the
1:11:32psychological abuse and cruelty, heinous
1:11:35cruelty of this, but
1:11:38separation of families, all of it. Some
1:11:40sometimes that that may be exaggerated,
1:11:43but they did do better than a lot of
1:11:44white indentured servants. I've been
1:11:46listening on audible to an fantastic
1:11:48book by Gordon Wood called the
1:11:51um re the radicalism of the American
1:11:54Revolution. Yeah. I interviewed Gordon
1:11:55about this and he's he told me some of
1:11:57it of the white indentured servants. He
1:11:59said there's very little difference that
1:12:01he sort of captivity slavery lack of
1:12:05power was absolutely endemic. there was
1:12:07this slight you know difference
1:12:09obviously you it's better not to be a
1:12:11slave but still uh hierarchy and and
1:12:16unequal power was absolutely endemic in
1:12:19in pre-revolutionary America so two
1:12:22wrongs don't make a right why is that an
1:12:23argument against the 1619 crowd just why
1:12:27does that matter that we okay we are
1:12:30horrible but so is all of humanity why
1:12:32is that an argument well first of all is
1:12:35the 1619 project right in its history as
1:12:38an empirical matter. And I think the
1:12:40weight of historians is that their claim
1:12:43that the whole purpose of founding the
1:12:46American republic was to preserve the
1:12:48slave trade that that just it doesn't
1:12:51bear up. So I would say truth matters.
1:12:54Um but but then the larger question is
1:12:58is this the is this
1:13:00the best strategy if you want
1:13:04to close those racial gaps which
1:13:07everybody
1:13:08does. And again the gaps are behavioral
1:13:12and academic. Those are the ones that
1:13:14matter. is the best strategy to go
1:13:18around still playing the victim card and
1:13:20demanding that standards be lowered on
1:13:23your behalf as blacks rather than saying
1:13:26we'll meet your damn standards and we'll
1:13:28better we'll best you at them and I
1:13:31would say that the best strategy is the
1:13:33latter and to give up playing the victim
1:13:36card and you mentioned Asians you know
1:13:41uh there's push back you know they're
1:13:43the ones that have been trying to defend
1:13:46the various exam schools across the
1:13:49country. Here's another disperate
1:13:50impact. You know, in New York City,
1:13:52there's the famous school called
1:13:55Stasend, which has been one of the
1:13:58biggest uh generators of of talent and
1:14:03success. Anybody can go there. It's a
1:14:05public school, but it's got an exam to
1:14:07get into it. And it has been under
1:14:11attack for decades because of disperate
1:14:13impact because the exam which has
1:14:16nothing to do with race, it is not
1:14:18culturally biased. It measures math
1:14:21skills and reading skills and it blacks
1:14:25do very very poorly on it. So that based
1:14:27on this computer graded again purely
1:14:30objective no racist computers uh the
1:14:33percentage of blacks admitted is very
1:14:36small and Asians styosin that has no
1:14:39affirmative action is like 70% Asian
1:14:44and so we're getting rid of that now the
1:14:46Asian there's the Chinese Americans are
1:14:49the most conservative they're the ones
1:14:52that have been fighting the preferences
1:14:54to an extent um And and if it ever comes
1:14:58down to how much longer are they going
1:15:00to go put along go along with being
1:15:04excluded from what their natural number
1:15:07should be in institutions because of
1:15:09white guilt at some point. If they say
1:15:13we're not putting up with this any
1:15:15longer, you're really going to see
1:15:16changes. Um I interviewed uh a the
1:15:21strictest head mistress in London. Her
1:15:23name is Katherine Berbalsing. She runs a
1:15:25school that's akin to a charter in
1:15:27London called Michaela. It is
1:15:31overwhelmingly black and brown kids from
1:15:35from Arab countries and from Africa who
1:15:38are immigrants often first generation.
1:15:40It is truly there's a beautiful
1:15:42documentary about it called um strictest
1:15:45head
1:15:45mistress and it is a perfect case study
1:15:48of why behavior and high standards
1:15:51matter. She holds these kids to
1:15:52impeccably high standards. She the the
1:15:56whole thing holds that it is strict. And
1:16:00this film lays out a couple things.
1:16:03Number one, the
1:16:05kids, they are the underprivileged of
1:16:07their
1:16:08society. They except for the fact that
1:16:10they have parents who cared to put them
1:16:12in this school that they knew would set
1:16:14them up for success. So that is great
1:16:16privilege, right?
1:16:17Um, it is the highest performing school
1:16:20in I think in London if not in the
1:16:23entire United Kingdom by by by grades.
1:16:27Um, some of these kids English is not
1:16:29their first language. And they just say,
1:16:31"No, you got to get here. You got to be
1:16:33the top. Anything shy of the top is a
1:16:36failure. And when you fail, we're not
1:16:37going to sugarcoat it, but we are going
1:16:40to say we believe you can get here."
1:16:41Right? It works. It works. It's like if
1:16:44you want natural experiments, it's like
1:16:45the perfect natural experiment for when
1:16:48you tell someone, "I believe you can
1:16:52reach the
1:16:54stars," it isn't disempowering. It's the
1:16:56opposite. It doesn't mean they can
1:16:58always reach the stars, but um it works.
1:17:02What parent would say to his child, "I
1:17:05want you to go through life claiming to
1:17:08be a victim and demanding that standards
1:17:10be lower on your behalf because I don't
1:17:12think you can meet them." So get, you
1:17:14know, make sure that your victim hustle
1:17:17is well polished because that's the
1:17:20success and and you know, don't bother
1:17:22working hard because everything's uh,
1:17:25you know, arranged against you. That's
1:17:28not a recipe for success. You know, we
1:17:30had comparable schools here in the
1:17:32United States, charter schools that went
1:17:34under a category, conservatives used to
1:17:36write about this in maybe the 2000s
1:17:39called no excuses schools. And one of
1:17:42the premier chains of this was something
1:17:44called KIPP, which is an acronym, KIP P,
1:17:46and I knowledge da power. I'm not sure
1:17:49what it stood for. started by two Jewish
1:17:52guys I think from Texas um that it's
1:17:56featured in the documentary um Waiting
1:17:58for Superman Kip very very very
1:18:00prominently and and they viewed
1:18:02themselves as civil rights part of the
1:18:05civil rights tradition you know going
1:18:07back to the 60s and and the no excuses
1:18:11schools set up absolutely
1:18:14um incredibly detailed rules for
1:18:18behavior, you know, how you walk in a
1:18:21corridor. The parents sign contracts. I
1:18:24will monitor homework. I will monitor
1:18:26attendance. I will work with my child.
1:18:29And and the kids are every mon you the
1:18:33libertarian you may not like this, but
1:18:34every minute of their day is scripted
1:18:36because of the assumption that they're
1:18:39it's not a government school, so I got
1:18:40no problem. Okay, that's all right.
1:18:41Good. Good. Good. You like you like
1:18:42order as long as it's not top down.
1:18:44Good. I'm with you on that. Um so the
1:18:48assumptions that they need to be brought
1:18:51into the bourgeoa values of
1:18:53self-control, deferred
1:18:55gratification and and you know looking
1:18:58at at at future
1:19:00orientation, things were going well.
1:19:03George Floyd hit I've heard about this
1:19:06first firsthand accounts of internal
1:19:08changes that there that are
1:19:09heartbreaking. And the motto used to be
1:19:11something like work hard be good or
1:19:14something. And the the founder of Kip
1:19:19decided that was a racist motto that to
1:19:22say work hard is racist. So this is the
1:19:26mentality we have on the left. It is so
1:19:29condescending and it is so
1:19:31counterproductive. Is he these are
1:19:34educated people? Are they just a bunch
1:19:36of pants cowards? I I mean I mean that
1:19:40honestly. I know it's question and and
1:19:42because it's like
1:19:44surely he knows that saying working hard
1:19:49is a racist claim I know is racist,
1:19:54right? Am I crazy? You the world is
1:19:58crazy. I mean, remember the Smithsonian
1:20:00belatedly in the summer of George Floyd
1:20:03hysteria, they published a chart that's
1:20:05been going around for like decades among
1:20:08corporate diversity trainers and stuff
1:20:10about all the as attributes of
1:20:13whiteness. This is like it shows up. Oh,
1:20:16I've seen this graph. It is the most
1:20:18objectivity thing you've ever seen in
1:20:20your life. It is like, did David Duke
1:20:23write this? Exactly. So if you care
1:20:25about accuracy, if you care about
1:20:27promptness, if you're objective, if
1:20:29you're rational, if you care about
1:20:31family, that's to be white. So if you're
1:20:33if you're going to be like u a radical
1:20:36black with black identity, you're going
1:20:38to be against all of those things. So it
1:20:40is a mystery. Don't I have punctuality
1:20:42is white supremacy, right? But that's
1:20:44been around for a long time. You know,
1:20:46in the the the diversity hustle has been
1:20:48along around a lot longer than people
1:20:50knew. In the 90s, you would have these
1:20:53corporate diversity trends. This was a
1:20:54new a new scam where people decided, I'm
1:20:59gonna train for diversity and and they
1:21:02would that's one of the uh tenets is
1:21:04that expecting punctuality is just
1:21:07anti-diversity.
1:21:09I I want to interrogate a couple moments
1:21:12in history as you understand them
1:21:13because
1:21:14um when you look
1:21:17at where we are and you look at the
1:21:21statements you've made which are are
1:21:22summaries of the facts about averages or
1:21:25for for a black um performance um
1:21:29academically
1:21:30um in behavior as it pertains to crime,
1:21:33percentage of violent crimes committed
1:21:35as a share of population, all of those
1:21:40If you go into the time machine, as I
1:21:42understand it, back to 1955, let's
1:21:47say, I believe that black families,
1:21:52which are currently at illegitimacy
1:21:54rates, father absentee rates north of
1:21:5775%
1:21:59today, we're actually below
1:22:01Italian-American immigrants in the
1:22:041950s. that the black family, the black
1:22:07culture, the things that I think you and
1:22:10I believe are the bedrock of being set
1:22:13up to succeed in school and become the
1:22:15next Thomas Soul um were there. Am I is
1:22:20that a fair picture that that that that
1:22:23there was because I think you could hear
1:22:25everything you're saying and derive that
1:22:29what you're actually saying below the
1:22:31surface is that there is something
1:22:34inherent in black people that make them
1:22:37incapable of the kind of success that
1:22:41whites and Asians have.
1:22:43Well, first of all, I don't go there. I
1:22:46don't think it's necessary. My my main
1:22:49goal right now is to get the culture to
1:22:52stop destroying standards in the name of
1:22:54avoiding disperate impact because I
1:22:56think that is civilizational suicide. Um
1:22:59and so one doesn't in theory need to
1:23:03answer the question why in order to
1:23:06say
1:23:08colorblind standards are not racist.
1:23:13But the cultural differences right now
1:23:16with inner city culture are so
1:23:20vast. It's so obvious that there is so
1:23:23much to be done there as far as no
1:23:26longer valorizing or glamorizing
1:23:28violence.
1:23:30uh you know celebrating fatherhood
1:23:35uh and and cutting back on welfare
1:23:37payments that pay people for
1:23:40self-destructive behavior that that
1:23:42matters. I the culture has changed much
1:23:46for the worse and we used to be able to
1:23:48talk about that. You know Tipper Gore in
1:23:51the
1:23:5290s brought the country's attention to
1:23:55rap music which is just gangster rap. I
1:23:58mean these sets of values that you hear
1:24:01in this we turn away. You know we talk
1:24:04about like
1:24:07nice college professors as being
1:24:09misogynist. You want misogyny or
1:24:11homophobia? Listen to gangster rap. But
1:24:14we couldn't take it. We we turned our
1:24:15eyes away because it was it was too
1:24:18uncomfortable. Um and yes, there was
1:24:20much just to jump in on that for a
1:24:22minute. Um, and I'm I'm not the hugest
1:24:24rap fan, even though I've made weirdly
1:24:26nerdy rap videos about economics and the
1:24:28like. You could say similar things about
1:24:31rock music and about other pop culturees
1:24:33always had a transgressive
1:24:35energy to it. the s, you know, um, I
1:24:39think some of there is a legitimacy to
1:24:42the culture that you're talking about
1:24:44there, but I think sometimes the like
1:24:48piling on on rap music sounds like pearl
1:24:51clutching from, you know,
1:24:54uh, soccer moms or something that aren't
1:24:57really connected to things. It's it's
1:24:59uh, so I want to just put that out there
1:25:02that there's there's a lot of diversity
1:25:03inside of hip-hop. Not all of it's a
1:25:05bunch of nons I'm talking about
1:25:08celebrating cop killers and you're
1:25:10absolutely right you know the the Jimmy
1:25:12Deans the sort of there is this she was
1:25:15just 17 if you know what I mean that's
1:25:16in the Beatles so there's all kinds of
1:25:18stuff in music that can be like that's
1:25:21not great well you know that does come
1:25:24out of to a large extent the um
1:25:27celebration of adolescence that that
1:25:29grew out of the 50s with our fabulous
1:25:32wealth for the first time that allowed
1:25:34adolescence to be an actual market. And
1:25:36so you had adolescence setting the the
1:25:39tone for culture which came in. Yeah.
1:25:42Which is a disaster. Adolescence have no
1:25:44taste. They have no knowledge. And when
1:25:47you give when they have their parents'
1:25:48credit card to spend because we're so
1:25:51damn wealthy because capitalism works so
1:25:53well that we've just got this excess
1:25:55resources slloshing around. It's not
1:25:57really going to lead to the most uh
1:26:00intelligent and and uplifting culture.
1:26:03So that that is I agree there's there's
1:26:05a get off my lawn with your rap music
1:26:08and your rock and roll, you kids. Well,
1:26:11we need more of that as far as I'm
1:26:13concerned. Okay. I I wish adults would
1:26:15grow up and like move beyond their their
1:26:18damn 60s rock groups, which I grew up
1:26:21with them, but I don't listen to the
1:26:22Rolling Stones anymore. It's it's a
1:26:24little bit gruesome to see these
1:26:26rockers, you know, 80s with no hair. But
1:26:28anyway, um I derailed us a little bit.
1:26:31So, yeah. So, but I've I, you know, I'm
1:26:33not going to completely normalize rap, a
1:26:35gangster rap. I think there's it's it's
1:26:37an it's a window into a world and I'm
1:26:39not suggesting uh censorship or
1:26:42anything, but uh I don't think that's
1:26:45part of why I kind of jump in there
1:26:47because Tipper that was, you know, we
1:26:49now seen as two too white person like
1:26:52being pro I don't know. I don't think of
1:26:55soccer moms these days as pearl
1:26:56clutching. They're sort of part of the
1:26:57problem. But anyway, I think one it's
1:27:00interesting we we as we sit here um free
1:27:03speech is now a right-wing issue. If you
1:27:05go back to the late 90s, the the right
1:27:07the right wing wasn't great on on speech
1:27:09and expression as it comes to things
1:27:11like video games and music. So I I just
1:27:13I think it's important. Okay. I it's
1:27:15important to kind of I think understand
1:27:17some of that context. No, I I forgot
1:27:18that regula if regulation they were
1:27:21regulatory forces. I think I think to
1:27:23some extent but I see even so there is
1:27:26this cultural transformation that takes
1:27:28place.
1:27:29You were saying you were a little um you
1:27:32don't go there as much. Is that right?
1:27:34Well the causes I just I think it's all
1:27:37it's very contested. I think culture is
1:27:40just plays a huge role and that's what
1:27:41we should focus on. I will say to be
1:27:44perfectly honest though, you know, WB
1:27:46Deo in in the turn of the 20th century
1:27:50was himself complaining about
1:27:52Philadelphia and what he saw was very
1:27:55high rates of out of wedlock child
1:27:58rearing and juvenile delinquency
1:28:01uh compared to the culture at large. So
1:28:04there's there's been problems for a long
1:28:06time and you know what the causes are. I
1:28:09just don't think we need to go there. I
1:28:11think I think the focus has to be on uh
1:28:15how do we get out of this? Now I
1:28:17understand that the human beings always
1:28:20want to ask the why. And um well how how
1:28:24can you but you don't have to solve it.
1:28:27You can solve the problem I think
1:28:29without knowing the why by by
1:28:32maintaining high standards and and and
1:28:35not being susceptible to the race hustle
1:28:38any longer.
1:28:40So
1:28:43the the moment we're in right now, the
1:28:46the election of Trump, his per
1:28:51overperformance with black men,
1:28:54especially Latino men, but also at
1:28:56large. Um I was surprised to see, I
1:28:59think, as we currently sit here, that
1:29:00even the gap between men and women in
1:29:03terms of the Trump vote wasn't as wide
1:29:05as people were thinking. We we heard a
1:29:07lot about the the diverging of the sexes
1:29:10on politics.
1:29:12Um this seems like a moment where the
1:29:16kind of conversation you and I are
1:29:18having can actually be heard by more
1:29:20people without pearl clutching and woke,
1:29:24you know, silence is violence and speech
1:29:26is violence and you're a fascist, which
1:29:27is something that's been thrown your way
1:29:29many, many, many, many times on college
1:29:31campuses.
1:29:34Um, are you worried
1:29:37about reaction overreaction
1:29:41reactionary cultural forces that um are
1:29:45ugly on the right as it pertains to
1:29:48this? We have we've been especially like
1:29:52the
1:29:53co George Floyd combo was like about as
1:29:57toxic a cultural stew as one could
1:29:59imagine. So you're you you're locking
1:30:01people down. You're absolutely
1:30:03demolishing their lives and their
1:30:04psychology and their families. And then
1:30:06you're subjecting the culture to this
1:30:09crazy hypocrisy on the basis of
1:30:11something that was tragic but rare, not
1:30:14emblematic
1:30:15of systemic this or that to anywhere
1:30:19near the extent that we were all told it
1:30:23is. And a lot of people are just
1:30:26like, I'm done. And when you get into
1:30:29that space, it isn't r it's not a
1:30:32rational space or it can be an
1:30:35irrational space, a a space that starts
1:30:38to calcify. How do you think about that
1:30:41as someone who uses strong language and
1:30:43someone who comes at these issues with a
1:30:45lot of force and isn't afraid to make
1:30:48the arguments about what's happening on
1:30:50average? Um, how do you think
1:30:54about discourse on the right and where
1:30:58it's go might start to go too far in
1:31:00pockets or do you not care about that?
1:31:02Well, I think that the actual
1:31:04anti-semites and the actual racist are
1:31:07very small in number compared to the
1:31:10anti-white racists that dominate our
1:31:14institutions everywhere.
1:31:16Um, and so I think that the Obama and
1:31:21Biden administrations, their justice
1:31:23departments and FBI's were always
1:31:26warning against, you know, we're going
1:31:28to have these outbreaks of white
1:31:29supremacist violence. It it never
1:31:31happened. I mean, January 6th was really
1:31:34a abysmal event, uh, embarrassment, but
1:31:39it was
1:31:41uh it was not it was it was not some
1:31:45uprising of of, you know, Neanderthal
1:31:49white supremacists. It was people that
1:31:51were over, but but that's been sort of
1:31:54it. There was the Charlottesville march,
1:31:56but I mean, that was like a small group
1:31:58of yahoos in Charlottesville. Yeah. So
1:32:00this is just just it's it's a complete
1:32:02fiction that that's
1:32:04the threat in the in the country today.
1:32:08You know, we always hear before the
1:32:11election, the idea was
1:32:13that there'll be white riots if Trump
1:32:17lost. And I thought that's very, very
1:32:20unlikely. If there's going to be
1:32:22rioting, just look at the history, it's
1:32:24going to be the left. You know, they've
1:32:25done it before, they'll do it again. So,
1:32:28I don't worry about the the sort of
1:32:33Hitler sympathizers out there because I
1:32:35just think they're trivial. They have no
1:32:36they have no impact on the culture.
1:32:39They're in the corners of the internet
1:32:41and it's just they're not a threat. The
1:32:43Nick Fuentes types, the young the sort
1:32:46of young incel men who are women haters,
1:32:49all that. The the there's there's these
1:32:50pockets that are like, oh, oh no. Oh.
1:32:55But I do think I I asked myself, I'm
1:32:59sorry, as a logical
1:33:02matter, how do you say that every other
1:33:04group gets its own identity politics and
1:33:07whites don't? you know, why should we be
1:33:10the uh ones who have everybody circling
1:33:15their wagons and deciding, you know,
1:33:18we're the enemy and they get to to use
1:33:21their identities as weapons and as as as
1:33:24uh means of advancement and whites are
1:33:27the only group that says, "Well, we
1:33:28don't have an identity." As a purely
1:33:30logical matter, I don't think that's
1:33:32sustainable. It's it's it's held up to
1:33:35now. whites are willing to um give every
1:33:40other group advantages and to say your
1:33:43identity deserves official government
1:33:46recognition and and benefits and god
1:33:49forbid we culturally appropriate
1:33:51although we don't mind you know we
1:33:53should if if we're serious about being
1:33:55anticultural appropriation we should
1:33:57tell the whole rest of the world sorry
1:33:59give us back our vaccines give us back
1:34:01our hot showers and clean milk and clean
1:34:04water and airplanes
1:34:07elevators and and electricity. I mean,
1:34:10I'm I'm just amazed that I can flip the
1:34:12switch and get get lights on at night.
1:34:14This is an absolute miracle that we are
1:34:16never sufficiently grateful for, but you
1:34:19guys are all culturally appropriating
1:34:20us. Sorry. Um, so so but I know this is
1:34:25a debate within the right. most of the
1:34:29conventional establishment conservative
1:34:32opinion takes the high ground and says
1:34:35there shall be no white identity
1:34:37politics. Um I'm frankly have been
1:34:42driven enough into a corner that I am
1:34:45willing to contemplate at least western
1:34:48civilization identity politics. I am
1:34:50willing to say that there was a
1:34:54civilization there is a civilization
1:34:56that's under threat right now
1:35:00that I'm going to say it is uniquely
1:35:03powerful in its set of concepts and it
1:35:06in its accomplishments the scientific
1:35:09revolution that came out of London uh
1:35:13with the Royal Society the passion to
1:35:17tinker to understand reality to work out
1:35:20mathematical explanations for how the
1:35:23world works. And yes, the the urge to
1:35:27explore. I'm reading a book now that is
1:35:30a a chronicle, a set of letters that a
1:35:34uh a geologist, a young geologist wrote
1:35:37from California. He was brought out by
1:35:39Whitney to do a geological survey
1:35:42because they wanted to map the mineral
1:35:44resources in California to be able to
1:35:47better know where the silver mines are.
1:35:48and they're got quicks mines. I didn't
1:35:50I'm a Californian. I had no idea that
1:35:52there used to be mercury mines in
1:35:54California. But it is an amazing thing
1:35:57what these guys put up with in their
1:36:01passion to
1:36:04understand and map the geology of
1:36:06California. They would just walk for 50
1:36:10miles a day through chaperel up the
1:36:13mountains into 130°ree temperatures, not
1:36:16complaining. uh running out of water.
1:36:20Their mules are the only things that get
1:36:21them over these crevices. That passion
1:36:24to explore, to circumn the globe, no
1:36:28other civilization showed that. And I
1:36:31can tell you that any other civilization
1:36:35that had our technology would have done
1:36:38the exact same amount of colonizing as
1:36:42we did because that is a universal human
1:36:46impulse.
1:36:47We did do it. But every other
1:36:50civilization, not just slavery, but but
1:36:54you know, I mean, Genghaskhan for crying
1:36:56out loud. If the if they had the
1:36:57resources of genocide, they would have
1:36:59done it. So, but the West gave the world
1:37:03maps of of of navigation that nobody
1:37:07else came up with. So, I am willing to
1:37:09be a Western civilization chauvinist,
1:37:11and I'm not apologetic for that.
1:37:15It's it's funny that you would frame it
1:37:17that way. Um
1:37:20because in the aftermath of um the
1:37:24immediate aftermath of 107 and I'm not
1:37:27I'm 100% Italian Catholic. I don't
1:37:29really have technically like a dog in
1:37:32the fight in the Israeli Palestinian
1:37:34thing other than I have a bunch of
1:37:36Jewish friends that I love. Yeah. and um
1:37:40and philosophically and argumentatively
1:37:44I have
1:37:44opinions but the
1:37:49full-blown revolt against the all the
1:37:52premises of Western civilization that
1:37:55sort of came to a peak with the protests
1:37:58on our across the whole western world in
1:38:03the immediate aftermath of the dis
1:38:07demonic
1:38:08attack on 107 by Hamas by the official
1:38:12formal government of another region. If
1:38:15that's anything other than an act of
1:38:16war, then I don't know what you're
1:38:18supposed to how you're supposed to
1:38:19concoct the notion of what war
1:38:22is. It shook me to my core. It was like
1:38:25we really are under a as a concept. And
1:38:29when I say we, I mean the West, Western
1:38:31civilization decolon, this is what
1:38:34decolonization looks like was their
1:38:36slogan. And it meant we're going to kill
1:38:38you all. Yeah. Land back. All of these
1:38:43slogans struck me maybe for the first
1:38:45time in my adult life as
1:38:49being something that we can't just sit
1:38:52on the sidelines and be like, well, free
1:38:54speech and isn't that lovely? But as a
1:38:57kind of fifth column in our society
1:39:00trying to destroy it from within. And we
1:39:03have I have guests on all the time. I
1:39:04tend to be a rational optimist broadly,
1:39:07but this feels like a fifth column that
1:39:09wants to destroy the society and and
1:39:12leave barbarism and return to tribal war
1:39:16of all against all in its wake. Let's go
1:39:18back to being like the Cherokees who
1:39:20were just beheading people. Let's let's
1:39:22in Australia, you know what we're going
1:39:25to do in our as a as our political
1:39:27answer to trying to further and further
1:39:31expand universal rule of law and
1:39:34equality under the law. We're going to
1:39:36do dances like the Mallerie who beheaded
1:39:39people and traded in the heads of their
1:39:41c of the people they conquered. And I'm
1:39:44gonna I'll I'll go on for a little bit
1:39:46longer. But the the worst part about
1:39:49that is, okay, if you want to play the
1:39:53old g the old ways game, here's how the
1:39:56old ways game looks. We go to war.
1:40:00Whoever wins takes it all. Yep. So guess
1:40:04what? We won. Sorry. No land back. You
1:40:08lost. You lost. Those are the old ways
1:40:11rules. It's not Marshall Plan. That's
1:40:13not the old ways rule. It's not, oh, you
1:40:16invade us in 1967, we take the Sinai and
1:40:19West Bank and all of this and we give it
1:40:21back for some reason. That's not the old
1:40:23ways
1:40:25rule. I'll I'll bracket my rant, but I'm
1:40:29with you. We're better. The West is
1:40:33better. The West invented a philosophy,
1:40:36a culture, warts and all that's better.
1:40:39It's why it won. It's why we invented
1:40:42just about
1:40:45everything. So, I agree.
1:40:48There's so much there. The left fights
1:40:51in the name of concepts that are
1:40:52uniquely western. Tolerance,
1:40:55equality, limited government. These are
1:40:58all western concepts and yet the left
1:41:00wants to turn the west, tear the west
1:41:02down. It's just completely perverse.
1:41:04It's what I think about all the time.
1:41:06Why is the west uniquely
1:41:08self-cancelling? that includes its
1:41:10immigration policies. I don't understand
1:41:12it. I've also become I I listen to um
1:41:17German uh public TV on my podcast and so
1:41:20I get maximal
1:41:23uh coverage of climate conferences and
1:41:28uh EU and and UN stuff and I have had
1:41:33the exact same response to you of what
1:41:36ever happened to the old nation state
1:41:38and its lack of apology now like when
1:41:41did nation become such wimps where like
1:41:46the west all it is is just giving money
1:41:48out all the time
1:41:50uh to no end it doesn't do anything but
1:41:54it's a complete abdication of what the
1:41:56sort of self-respecting nations used to
1:41:59do which is say we have power you're
1:42:02right we
1:42:03want the reason you guys got conquered
1:42:06is because like you didn't have the
1:42:08wheel Africa never developed writing
1:42:11subsaharan Africa in millennia. It never
1:42:14developed writing. It had no
1:42:17architecture. If you wanted to survive,
1:42:19how about you develop some technology?
1:42:21What is with these n? When did it become
1:42:24the norm for at least a certain group of
1:42:28nations to be so completely unselfertive
1:42:33and just view themselves as ATMs for the
1:42:37rest of the world? It is very perverse.
1:42:40Um is it guilt? What what do you think
1:42:42it is? Because it is yes it is guilt.
1:42:45But why are we uniquely guilty? Why
1:42:47isn't China guilty? Why isn't Africa
1:42:49guilty? Why isn't India? Because they
1:42:51all have equal sins. So I asked myself,
1:42:53does it come from the western critical
1:42:56impulse that we see in classical Greece
1:42:59with Socrates questioning concepts that
1:43:02were self-critical that we use our
1:43:05reason to question authority and we went
1:43:08along for millennia and sort of did well
1:43:12although you know history is one long
1:43:14attack on authority. So I think
1:43:15conservatives are kind of all a bunch of
1:43:17phonies because we pretend to be
1:43:19conservatives and burkians. Not you I'm
1:43:21putting but you know we believe in we
1:43:24well but we believe in
1:43:26tradition and authority except we don't
1:43:28because we've gone along with every
1:43:30radical change that has brought us to
1:43:32this world. Um but but the is it the
1:43:35west is uniquely self-critical and maybe
1:43:37at some point that just becomes an
1:43:40instinct that is so great that it tears
1:43:43itself down. Like did this begin with
1:43:46getting rid of absolute monarchies and
1:43:49established churches? Was that the
1:43:50beginning of the end? Was it the French
1:43:52Revolution? I don't know. But it is
1:43:54really perverse.
1:43:56Now, the contra perspective on this
1:43:59would be something like this. And
1:44:01there's plenty of truth in
1:44:03it. You two sound like a bunch of
1:44:06Cassandra. The world has never been
1:44:08better than it is right now. We are a
1:44:10more moral people than we've ever been
1:44:12as a soc as a planet. Um, there are
1:44:16fewer people as a share of the planet's
1:44:18population dying of violence. Uh, there
1:44:20are more women who are literate. There
1:44:22are more babies surviving into
1:44:24adulthood. We live materially wonderful
1:44:26lives. Most of what we're dealing with
1:44:29to the extent there are problems are
1:44:31just the excesses of wealth that we just
1:44:34have this abundance disease. We
1:44:36basically have societal diabetes. Yeah.
1:44:40Well, I think that's true. I think
1:44:41that's absolutely true. I mean, obesity
1:44:44is literally I I I'm astounded when I go
1:44:47to my disgusting third world
1:44:49supermarket, Key Foods, right next to
1:44:52me. Oh, you really don't pull any It's
1:44:54hell. When I come back from California,
1:44:56I feel like I have entered hell in going
1:44:58to Key Foods. It is completely chaotic.
1:45:01They they we've had supermarkets for a
1:45:03hundred years. They can't figure out
1:45:05cart management. They all build up you.
1:45:07There's nobody to help you bag anything.
1:45:10It's the the filthy open boxes
1:45:13everywhere. It's unbelievable. But it is
1:45:16wallto-wall packaged food. It is the
1:45:18most bizarre thing. This is absolutely
1:45:20unique in human history where food
1:45:22scarcity, food starvation, famine was
1:45:25the norm. We are so successful that
1:45:28human beings are surrounded by food all
1:45:30the time. Granted, it's awful food. I
1:45:33believe in primary ingredients and
1:45:35cooking for God's sakes, a primal uh
1:45:38archaic tradition, but but you can eat
1:45:42all the time. And it turns out most
1:45:44human beings don't have the wellworth to
1:45:47to not eat if you put food in front of
1:45:49them. It is astounding. So it is in many
1:45:52respects the best of all possible
1:45:55worlds. But that should be all the more
1:45:57reason not to then turn on the concepts
1:46:00that gave us this prosperity. Whether
1:46:02it's political concepts of equal
1:46:06representation, due process, you know,
1:46:09just because a male is accused of
1:46:11assault doesn't mean you believe
1:46:13survivors. You have the presumption of
1:46:15innocence and you have to prove the case
1:46:18with cross-examination. Some of the
1:46:20greatest truthf finding uh mechanisms
1:46:23developed in human history is the
1:46:25Anglo-American juristprudence. You don't
1:46:27tear that down. You don't say that
1:46:29science is racist and do Navajo learning
1:46:32circles. You know, you don't you don't
1:46:35repatriate
1:46:36uh uh
1:46:38archaeology because somehow this is
1:46:41preventing Native American the
1:46:43archaeological remains which are being
1:46:45used to understand human history to
1:46:48because somehow Native Americans are
1:46:50being held back because there's a skull
1:46:52in the natural history museum. Uh, and
1:46:54you don't pretend that we have things.
1:46:56I'm sorry. There is nothing to learn as
1:46:59far as solving biological problems from
1:47:02Native American so-called science. It
1:47:05was superstition. We were superstitious.
1:47:07I mean, again, reading Gordon Wood and
1:47:10and and Elbian Seed, it took a very long
1:47:13time for the West to overcome
1:47:17uh facious means of thinking of just
1:47:21association is causation. Uh but so
1:47:25let's keep our let's keep our affluence
1:47:28rather than trying to mimic uh third
1:47:32world backwaters.
1:47:36The um I'm only laughing because it's
1:47:38like
1:47:41it's you're one of a
1:47:44kind. Um
1:47:47okay, thank God. What one of the things
1:47:51one of the things that I think can
1:47:53justifiably push back on on your
1:47:55glorious tirade is and mine is that we
1:48:00we continue to live in a world of
1:48:03enormous complexity and the solutions to
1:48:05problems come from unlikely places. And
1:48:08so I think we do have a unique and
1:48:11slightly
1:48:12weird problem that I don't hear talked
1:48:15about I think quite enough and that is
1:48:17in a world where we're all globally
1:48:20connected. Yes, great ideas can travel
1:48:22fast but culture can travel maybe even
1:48:27faster and bad culture and and and and a
1:48:30kind of monoculture can can take root.
1:48:34We the university being the perfect
1:48:36example of basically braindestroying
1:48:39monoculture. It's like oh you hate you
1:48:41hate miles and miles of soybeans grown
1:48:44by Monsanto. Well you have the
1:48:46intellectual equivalent of that at
1:48:47Harvard.
1:48:49Um the preservation of distinct
1:48:53cultures, complete with their
1:48:55superstitions, complete with their
1:48:58oddities and their
1:49:01anacronisms strikes me as something that
1:49:03may have a value that we don't fully
1:49:07understand. H how do you think about
1:49:09that? How do you think about diversity
1:49:11for its own sake in the name of a kind
1:49:14of cultural biodiversity? Yeah. Um, I I
1:49:18read a absolutely
1:49:21uh lightning bolt type book this summer,
1:49:25translations of essays by a French
1:49:28philosopher, Reo Camu, no relationship
1:49:30to Alber,
1:49:32uh, that's been translated as the enemy
1:49:34of the disaster. Kamu was the one who
1:49:38first came up with the concept or term
1:49:40the great replacement. Now, he never
1:49:43meant that as a conspiracy theory. It
1:49:45wasn't that there was some cabal of
1:49:46Davos types that are uh you know trying
1:49:50to erase the west but he just noticed
1:49:54the radical demographic change in France
1:49:57um with Muslims coming in to a a culture
1:50:01that is very very different and um he
1:50:04has an extraordinary set of
1:50:06explanations. He says it's the second
1:50:08career of Adolf Hitler that Hitler has
1:50:11made the West completely leerary of any
1:50:15concept associated with his crimes such
1:50:18as nations, peoples, races, uh, and
1:50:23national identity. And we've gone
1:50:25totally in the opposite direction. He
1:50:27has other explanations of the
1:50:28replacement of the uh oat bourgeoisi by
1:50:32the petty bourgeoisi and the passion for
1:50:35egalitarianism as opposed to elite
1:50:38culture. But he's
1:50:40also in many respects a a classic
1:50:44European intellectual and that he's very
1:50:45suspicious of American capitalism.
1:50:49And he also makes an argument for
1:50:51cultural diversity that one of the
1:50:53reasons he doesn't like the great
1:50:56replacement is it's well the world is
1:50:59homogenizing. Yes. And he's as much in
1:51:02favor of Muslim culture but in Muslim
1:51:05communities. uh and and he thinks that
1:51:08the loss of and and that he says
1:51:12replaceism is the mechanism of of
1:51:16modernity that everything can be
1:51:18replaced. Again, this is the the
1:51:21European intellectual talking about the
1:51:23the American commodification of
1:51:25everything and there's no more sort of
1:51:27unique identities. That's very French,
1:51:30very French, hates tailorism, blah blah
1:51:33blah. But but nevertheless, he makes
1:51:35that argument. I would say I'm going to
1:51:37do your libertarian side now, which is
1:51:40that nobody is forcing these cultures to
1:51:44have faced themselves in the name of
1:51:46Western blue jeans and Big Macs. It's
1:51:49the market and it's true you know
1:51:52although it's always amazing to see like
1:51:55clothing India still has its own clothes
1:51:58you look at uh Pakistan as well even
1:52:01places in in South America it's it's
1:52:05quite lovely they still have fantastic
1:52:07textiles so that's good to see um but
1:52:10yes there is clearly a global capitalist
1:52:15culture of American consumer products
1:52:18One can rue that, but you know, you
1:52:20you're going to be the first to say
1:52:22what's the solution? People are voting
1:52:24with their feet. This the the question
1:52:27with all of these things as it pertains
1:52:29to culture is always,
1:52:31well, who's going to be the minister of
1:52:32culture that doesn't suck. I'm pretty
1:52:34sure they're going to suck. Yeah,
1:52:36exactly. And France, you know, they've
1:52:38had their rules against American cinema
1:52:40and language. I'm becoming a little more
1:52:43sympathetic. I remember conservatives
1:52:44used to mock Quebec in the um and and
1:52:49the the whole province of Montreal and
1:52:51Quebec in the '9s for having rules about
1:52:54you must use France and French and you
1:52:56can't have English signage and stuff and
1:52:57we all thought that's ridiculous. I'm
1:52:59more sympathetic to that now uh because
1:53:01of sort of replacement theories that why
1:53:04shouldn't you try to hold on to a
1:53:06cultural identity? Um but and but you
1:53:10know I'm I'm amazed when I see Starbucks
1:53:11in Vienna when they've got this
1:53:14tradition of cafe culture. You're really
1:53:16going to buy Starbucks but it sells. So
1:53:21um I am uh I've spent Oh can I just
1:53:24interject ahead? I just want to ascent
1:53:26to
1:53:27your the importance the catastrophic
1:53:31importance that you place on the
1:53:33reaction in the west to October 7th. it.
1:53:36You're absolutely right. This should
1:53:38have been the defining moment where we
1:53:41see with utter clarity what we have
1:53:44become. And to me, the big question of
1:53:46the election was whether the Jews, are
1:53:50they going to continue voting for
1:53:52Democrats when they've should have
1:53:54learned by now that your intersectional
1:53:56allies hate you? You know, every every
1:53:59every protest on a college campus was
1:54:03the intersectional coalition of gays,
1:54:07blacks, Muslims, lesbians, you name it,
1:54:11females, all hating on Jews. Are the
1:54:14Jews going to finally say we're walking
1:54:15away from the Democratic party? And an
1:54:18article I just read said no. They
1:54:20continue to vote overwhelmingly for
1:54:22Democrats. So with that kind of there's
1:54:25another well not the religious not the
1:54:27religious Jews not the orthodox but the
1:54:29but the cultural ones who should care
1:54:30it's just bizarre but that that there
1:54:33was a moment where you had the alumni
1:54:36revolts at Harvard and Penn and they
1:54:39started out with these ridiculous
1:54:41demands for more diversity training for
1:54:44to be anti-semitism training that so
1:54:46misunderstood what was going on because
1:54:48as you say this was not primarily an
1:54:50outbreak of anti-semitism it was an
1:54:53outbreak of anti-westernism and that is
1:54:56in the curriculum. It's in every aspect
1:54:59of academia and you cannot extrapate
1:55:01that without wholesale change and doing
1:55:03a little anti-semitism trainings about
1:55:06maybe you shouldn't use from the river
1:55:08to the sea. It's not going to it's not
1:55:10going to cut it. This shows what we have
1:55:12become and and we've forgotten it. I
1:55:15mean we've like just as we've walked
1:55:16away from the co hysteria and we're not
1:55:19holding people accountable. you know,
1:55:21there should have been a total political
1:55:23accounting for that and we've forgotten
1:55:25the safety except it's it's, you know,
1:55:27obviously everywhere. We've kind of
1:55:29walked away from the October 7th. We
1:55:32still have campus protests now in the
1:55:33new school year, but they're not getting
1:55:35the same attention. And we're so nice as
1:55:38Americans, we just kind of move on. the
1:55:44um we are in a
1:55:47time that I think trying to grapple with
1:55:51this because it's very easy to
1:55:53make emotionally gratifying arguments
1:55:57and what I mean for for being boisterous
1:56:00and punchy and cut right to it. And one
1:56:03of them uh I I heard made by JD Vance
1:56:06when he was interviewed on the New York
1:56:08Times podcast. He did this long form
1:56:10interview with this New York Times
1:56:11reporter. She asked him um you know you
1:56:15said Donald Trump was like America's
1:56:18Hitler and now you're his running mate.
1:56:20Like how do you how do you square that
1:56:22circle? And his his story that he told
1:56:26and I think it is a I'll just call it a
1:56:28story. Maybe he believes it. I think
1:56:30it's compelling even if he doesn't. and
1:56:33that is in 2016 I thought his rhetoric
1:56:36was um unbecoming of our institutions
1:56:40um and that it was too bombastic, it was
1:56:43too inflammatory and I want more
1:56:45statesmen. I'm I'm paraphrasing here,
1:56:47but I want a statesman. I want good
1:56:49leadership that is smart, is coherent,
1:56:53has an ideology of Americanism that I
1:56:56that I can understand.
1:56:58um not just some like New York guy
1:57:01that's throwing bombs and wants to
1:57:05punch. And then I realized that that's
1:57:09not the country we have anymore. That
1:57:11our institutions are way more broken and
1:57:14corrupt. Way more shot through with
1:57:16psychosis and craziness than than I
1:57:19thought. And so maybe we do need the New
1:57:22York guy with the brash voice and the
1:57:25crazy talk s sound to get in there with
1:57:29a sledgehammer and do a down to the
1:57:32studs
1:57:33remodel because this at the margin sort
1:57:37of George W. Bush compassionate
1:57:40conservative, you know, I'm sort of only
1:57:42I'm at the 49 yard line. We're debating
1:57:45the 49 yard lines. That used to be this
1:57:46phrase you'd hear in politics in the
1:57:48before times that that's not that we
1:57:52don't live in that world. That's a
1:57:54delusion.
1:57:56Um I don't know if that's true or not.
1:58:00And I don't know if I like it because
1:58:02I'm just like a Philly Jersey guy that
1:58:05kind of likes this or if it is true. And
1:58:08there's something about the
1:58:09calcification of our institutions, the
1:58:12the like over the threshold of self
1:58:16defeat that radical Marxism in all of
1:58:18the universities and bleeding into K
1:58:20through 12, the deep state, the stuff we
1:58:24got exposed to like the COVID tw the
1:58:27COVID then
1:58:31um George Floyd protests then um Biden,
1:58:37Hunter Biden hidden
1:58:38laptop,
1:58:40then Twitter files, then if you're
1:58:45protesting drag queen story hour, you're
1:58:48a domestic terrorist according to
1:58:50Merrick Gar. How many of these things do
1:58:52I have to get thrown at me before I'm
1:58:54just like, I'm voting for that guy. I'm
1:58:58all in, baby. That's what it feels like.
1:59:01And I'm just laying it all out there
1:59:04partly because I'm scared of that, too.
1:59:07Like I don't know that that's a
1:59:09productive posture. It's a smash things
1:59:12posture. And the smash things
1:59:14revolutions tend to involve a lot of
1:59:16guillotines in history and we end up
1:59:19with jackabin crazies. So maybe that
1:59:22doesn't make any sense what I just said.
1:59:23But how do you
1:59:25understand the vibe of our discourse and
1:59:30where it where we head? How do we do we
1:59:32head towards productive improvement when
1:59:36the vibe is
1:59:38like bright red, bright blue?
1:59:43Yeah. I mean, this gets into the very
1:59:44difficult question of Trump and um I
1:59:48would say one can have a smash culture
1:59:51without Trump as the figure head. Uh, I
1:59:54think I I was very surprised that Dantis
1:59:59did so poorly because he's somebody that
2:00:01also gets far probably better than Trump
2:00:04does. Uh, just how dangerous the
2:00:08left-wing assault on merit and
2:00:11colorblindness
2:00:12is. Uh, and he was pretty aggressive.
2:00:16Yeah. But it didn't take off. I I would
2:00:20be completely in favor of continuing to
2:00:24be unrestrained in one's criticism and
2:00:27refuse to compromise, refuse to do the
2:00:31little usual disclaimers of like I I'm
2:00:35I'm I do not say anymore, well, of
2:00:36course racism is still a problem because
2:00:38it's not. It's like it's like the Nick
2:00:40Fuentes you talked about. Those people
2:00:42are out there, they have no power. the
2:00:45the
2:00:46institutional norm is
2:00:49now black privilege, not white
2:00:51privilege. So, I'm not going to do those
2:00:52disclaimers just to be hands across the
2:00:55water. This is sort of like the election
2:00:57denialism question. It's like, well, let
2:00:58me get, you know, a bunch of people in
2:01:00MAGA hats being upset about the election
2:01:03isn't the same thing as all of the
2:01:05institutions doing Russia gate for for
2:01:07years, including the intelligence
2:01:09community and uh and the Justice
2:01:11Department. Like, it's not those aren't
2:01:12the same thing. Yeah. How dare they say
2:01:14that we're the threat to free speech
2:01:16when you have Biden pressuring companies
2:01:18to this whole mis I mean how do they get
2:01:20away with misinformation and
2:01:21disinformation concepts? It's
2:01:23incredible. They have no self-awareness.
2:01:26You guys are mimicking George Ardwell.
2:01:28Like you don't care. This is so obvious.
2:01:31Disinformation is so clearly a term that
2:01:34is totally self-involved. It's what you
2:01:37call things you disagree with. Who has
2:01:39the power to declare misinformation? You
2:01:42don't get that power. It's the
2:01:44marketplace of ideas. Go read your damn
2:01:46JS Mill. That is the absolute essential
2:01:48thing. It's the marketplace of ideas. If
2:01:50you're so confident in your truth, let
2:01:52it be challenged. You don't suppress it.
2:01:54Anyway, I find this amazing. And they
2:01:57they claim that it's the right that
2:01:59threatens free speech. But generally, I
2:02:01would say that I'm still
2:02:04not I'm not a happy Trump voter
2:02:08because this is the one time I feel
2:02:11female identified because I'm not
2:02:13usually at all. But when I hear males
2:02:16say, "Oh, his his nicknames are so
2:02:19funny. Little Marco, I find them
2:02:22uniformly repellent and juvenile." And I
2:02:25think, again, I'm going to generalize
2:02:27here. I think it's more of a male thing
2:02:28to think. Well, his behavior as it
2:02:30pertains to women in general is not
2:02:33good. Oh, that doesn't bother me one
2:02:35bit. Doesn't bother me. All right. So,
2:02:38sleeping around having sex with stars is
2:02:40no problem. Little Marco is the problem.
2:02:42Yes, absolutely. That's public behavior.
2:02:46Okay. Little Marco is how your your
2:02:49leaders what their language is in the
2:02:52political realm. I distinguish the
2:02:56political realm from the private realm
2:02:58of Aeros. All bets are off. Okay. All
2:03:00bets are off. But that is not even
2:03:02company with JFK and LBJ and a whole
2:03:04bunch of them. So I guess I guess that's
2:03:06fair enough. And who cares? Like what if
2:03:09it turns out that James Madison had been
2:03:12a skirtchaser? Would we say now, oh, me
2:03:15too should have taken him out? that that
2:03:17was more important that he was, you
2:03:19know, maybe going after his maid and
2:03:22that they're they're it's a complete
2:03:24female narcissism to think that
2:03:25somebody's behavior in the private realm
2:03:28of arrows should trump their capacity as
2:03:30a public leader and political thinker.
2:03:32So anyway, what no what objects what I
2:03:35object to to Trump is his lack
2:03:38of of political male virtues of
2:03:42magnuminity, graciousness, and and
2:03:45frankly his rhetoric, I mean, you may
2:03:48think that there's no difference. I do
2:03:50believe I'm fact-based. His rhetoric
2:03:52gets pretty manakian and hyperbolic. I
2:03:55think he was becoming increasingly
2:03:57hyperbolic. I'm I'm for total closed
2:04:00borders at this point, but he was
2:04:02frankly exaggerating the extent of
2:04:05criminality in the immigrant population.
2:04:07My objection is cultural. Um, so I think
2:04:12that we can have other strong leaders
2:04:16who are not cowed by the claim of being
2:04:18a racist that are not necessarily Trump.
2:04:22Um, and I hope they come forward and I
2:04:24hope JD Vance, you know, I'm really
2:04:26hoping that Vance can maybe restrain
2:04:29Trump's worst impulses. I'm not looking
2:04:31forward to the tweets
2:04:32again so that Vance gets eight years at
2:04:35it. the um the immigration
2:04:41issue is very interesting and
2:04:43complicated and also seems different
2:04:45here in the US than in Europe where the
2:04:47diff where like you referenced the
2:04:48French there does seem to be a an almost
2:04:53this is going to be hyperbolic and maybe
2:04:55it's not fair there's an almost
2:04:58protocrusades thing going on in Europe
2:05:00it seems like like we're just going to
2:05:01let you take over right just come on in
2:05:03and take over we're just we've abandoned
2:05:05the church, you can have it all. Like
2:05:08I'm just I'm I'm like holding on to the
2:05:11table for dear life as a as an Italian
2:05:13Catholic that the Vatican doesn't
2:05:15somehow something doesn't bad happened
2:05:16to the Vatican just even physically and
2:05:19um yeah anti- crusades. I mean it's the
2:05:22crusades in reverse. They're they're
2:05:23reconquesting. It's unbelievable.
2:05:26Um the ironies are incredible. But I
2:05:30think, wouldn't you agree that it might
2:05:32be a net positive if we shipped every
2:05:34gender studies graduate in exchange for
2:05:36two Mexican-Americans? Wouldn't that be
2:05:38a good trade? I mean, can't we? There's
2:05:40all kinds of immigration innovation we
2:05:41could come up with together, surely,
2:05:43right? Get a bunch of hardworking
2:05:45Catholics in, send a bunch of blue hairs
2:05:47out. There's no there's no formulation
2:05:50of an immigration policy that you would
2:05:52be on board with. Can't we can't we have
2:05:54like a middle ground between that? I
2:05:56don't know. So, I I guess it depends on
2:05:59the
2:06:00um I just think we're importing third
2:06:03world culture. I don't think I I don't
2:06:05think is it inevitable that the the the
2:06:08corruption the tight it's all going to
2:06:10tie trade out and they're not going to
2:06:13bring that here. I mean, you're seeing
2:06:14in some of the small Southern California
2:06:16cities a lot of corruption that are
2:06:18heavily Hispanic. So, I I would choose
2:06:22as an immigration policy high skills um
2:06:26and and people that are going to
2:06:27assimilate. You know, there's still not
2:06:30much Well, the English language learning
2:06:33is is not great in a lot of the Southern
2:06:36California Hispanic communities. What
2:06:38about Texas? We do great. We got all
2:06:40kind We got all kinds of Mexicans. My
2:06:42son went to a school that's 88% Mexican.
2:06:45It's great. We're probably farthest
2:06:47apart from each other on immigration.
2:06:49Probably. So, right. Um, although I will
2:06:51say,
2:06:53um, you
2:06:54can't escape no matter where you stand.
2:06:58If you're like Alex and R as the Brian
2:06:59Kaplan type or if you're completely on
2:07:01the other side like you,
2:07:03the political reality is is that when
2:07:05immigration gets too voluminous, there's
2:07:09a political reaction that you can't
2:07:11escape, right? that seems to be almost
2:07:14natural law like the Chinese Exclusion
2:07:16Act, the 1924 constraints. It seems like
2:07:19there's a certain limit that gets
2:07:21touched
2:07:22that's where it just happens. People are
2:07:25just like, I can't accept this for some
2:07:28reason. Yeah. I mean, as you say,
2:07:30America is a special case, and it's it's
2:07:32harder to argue for the thousand-year
2:07:34tradition as as Camu does of the French
2:07:37people. and only a nation of immigrants
2:07:40is I mean I I mean the uh yeah although
2:07:43that's as you know you know I'm sure
2:07:45that there's a push back in in some
2:07:47circles about that that there was in
2:07:49fact a core uh ethnic and cultural
2:07:53identity that was Anglo-American and
2:07:55that
2:07:56that mass immigration was quite late and
2:08:00that there is there was a cultural
2:08:03heritage coming from Europe. So whether
2:08:06the the Mystizo Indians that are coming
2:08:09in to be electric bike delivery workers
2:08:13are going to feel
2:08:16a continuity and a an affinity
2:08:21with the tradition of European
2:08:23civilization. I'm just not sure. But by
2:08:26now, you know, we have our mainstream
2:08:29institutions betraying that anyway. But
2:08:33ideally people who come in would be
2:08:35those that say okay I want to embrace
2:08:38uh you know the culture of George Elliot
2:08:41and Dickens and Trrollop and Wdsworth
2:08:43and and Shakespeare and Andrew Marvel
2:08:47and Beethoven and Mozart and Shopan
2:08:50uh and and you know so I understand
2:08:54things move evolve evolve. I love Latin
2:08:57American music. I love the folk music.
2:08:59So I don't know. I I still think um I
2:09:04would prefer to take in people with
2:09:08higher levels of education and with an a
2:09:11stated interest in in the western
2:09:14legacy. I um as we start to wrap up, I
2:09:18want to stay on this subject for a
2:09:20little bit. It's it's connected to our
2:09:22broader conversation. Um and this is
2:09:25where we're going to I think maybe have
2:09:26more difference, but I'm an open-minded
2:09:28person on this. I'm not doctrinire.
2:09:31one aspect of the immigration story that
2:09:34for and this is like maybe this is my
2:09:36own personal identity politics. I I
2:09:37bring it up my my my heritage just did
2:09:41you see the movie Cababrini by any
2:09:42chance? No. So it's the story we
2:09:44actually interviewed I interviewed um
2:09:46Eustus Wolfington the executive producer
2:09:49and um I loved it. It's a story of this
2:09:51Catholic nun, sister Francesca
2:09:54Cababrini, who comes to the states in at
2:09:57the turn of the last century and is, you
2:10:00know, comes to New York City and and
2:10:02starts to build orphanages and hospitals
2:10:05and the ultimate embodiment of
2:10:07entrepreneurial civil society for
2:10:09Italian-American immigrants who at that
2:10:11time were the largest immigrant group
2:10:14coming to the city. I think like there's
2:10:155 million southern almost entirely
2:10:17southern Italians that come to
2:10:19America. And I heard this from my own
2:10:21great-grandparents that when we came a
2:10:25there's a lot of merit tests that
2:10:26Sicilians weren't going to pass. Like if
2:10:28you try to put in place some kind of IQ
2:10:31or anything, it's like no, we're a bunch
2:10:34of band. It's like they called us
2:10:35bandidos. like there's a lot of um
2:10:37sympotico as an
2:10:40Italian-American
2:10:42with the the current like me Mexican but
2:10:46broader Latin American. They called us
2:10:48Latins. I looked at my
2:10:50great-grandfather's naturalization
2:10:52paperwork and it's like dark like we
2:10:54were like not white people until
2:10:57relatively recently as a people. So like
2:10:59even the notion of
2:11:02whiteness, I my back stiffens with that
2:11:05term because it's like
2:11:08a as someone with Roman genetics, I will
2:11:11stand by the Western civilizational
2:11:14structures and go to the wall for them.
2:11:17But the whiteness
2:11:19thing, well, I don't know. Romans aren't
2:11:22that's not that's a different thing.
2:11:23That's like some Nordic Anglo stuff. I'm
2:11:27not I don't feel like I'm gonna
2:11:31go, you know, all in on that. I don't
2:11:34like that. I I I don't think that that's
2:11:36representative of what Western
2:11:37civilization is. I think that's adopting
2:11:40a construct of the wacky race
2:11:43collectivist left. And I I I think
2:11:45people on the right need to just not go
2:11:47there. What about Caucasian? Because
2:11:49there are contrary to what the left says
2:11:52that race is a social construct. At the
2:11:54same time, they say, "If you don't see
2:11:55my race, you're not seeing me." So, I
2:11:57don't know how we scare that one. But
2:12:00there are actually
2:12:03genetically marked racial groups and
2:12:06Caucasians are one of that. So, you're
2:12:09you're a Caucasian. You know, it's it's
2:12:11a group that has come down from Northern
2:12:14Europe. So yeah, but anyway, I I the
2:12:17reason why I'm bringing all this up is
2:12:18to say that um
2:12:24the we have brought in lots of people
2:12:29who didn't fit with the prior people and
2:12:32we became awesome Americans. I don't see
2:12:35any reason why that can't continue to be
2:12:37true. I think there's a completely
2:12:39reasonable conversation about rate and
2:12:42about the way. Certainly, I have no love
2:12:45for the Democrats on any of this.
2:12:47They're just liars. They claim they care
2:12:50and they've done nothing to change the
2:12:52rules of the system. DACA was just
2:12:54illegal. It's just like extra legal
2:12:57presidential nonsense. That's not
2:12:59statute.
2:13:01Um, but I hope we can have something
2:13:05more sophisticated about when it comes
2:13:07to immigration than
2:13:09just build that wall and send them all
2:13:12home. I don't know that that is in
2:13:14keeping with like what this country has
2:13:17done in its history. What's your
2:13:19response to that concern? I guess I
2:13:21would say that I would agree with you
2:13:23that it's about numbers and I I think
2:13:27mass migration of lowskilled
2:13:31immigrants that are not necessarily
2:13:34literate even in their home uh languages
2:13:37is not a way to increase the average
2:13:41capacities of the United States. And I I
2:13:44you know I I know Texans love Texas.
2:13:47There are parts of Los Angeles where I
2:13:50grew up um that just look terrible now.
2:13:55Uh there's litter everywhere. It's it
2:13:58looks like a third world country. And it
2:14:02isn't that just like the
2:14:05California police non We didn't get a
2:14:07chance to talk so much about the
2:14:09destruction of the police. We'll save
2:14:10that for our next conversation. But how
2:14:12much of that is that really that it's
2:14:13Latin Americans coming to California or
2:14:15is it just California lefty whack job
2:14:18governance that doesn't want to do
2:14:20anything about basic public crimes?
2:14:24Well, I'm not speaking about crimes so
2:14:26much as just the tech litter and all of
2:14:28that is part of it. Well, but the people
2:14:31are littering. So, do you know uh that
2:14:35that's a cultural value. Like there's
2:14:37the mountains of California now.
2:14:41Uh
2:14:43there's recreational areas, little
2:14:46springs and whatnot that are just
2:14:48completely litter fililled. And Tucker
2:14:51Carlson got in a big trouble at one
2:14:53point by saying it's Hispanic
2:14:55immigrants, but it's true. Those are the
2:14:58ones that are leaving the trash there.
2:15:00So there are cultural norms that can be
2:15:04overcome, you know, in with a better
2:15:07assimilation. But as Mark Cororan would
2:15:10argue, the problem maybe is not the
2:15:12immigrants, it's us that we no longer
2:15:14believe in assimilation and and saying
2:15:16these are values that you will conform
2:15:19to. So,
2:15:22I I'm just not in favor of more poor,
2:15:29lowkilled Hispanic immigrants that are
2:15:32not necessarily passing
2:15:34on the social capital that I think I'
2:15:37I'd rather see in our country. So, but I
2:15:40I understand the immigrant history here.
2:15:45Italians, you know, they they they're
2:15:48very much part of the West. Obviously,
2:15:50the Sicilians, you may say, you know, a
2:15:52little less, but even so, I mean, my
2:15:54god, look at the look at the opera
2:15:56houses down there in Polmo. Um, and the
2:15:59the Mexicans that we're getting are the
2:16:01the Mystizos, you know, it's not really
2:16:03this it's not the Spanish Hispanic roots
2:16:07there that it's a it's a different
2:16:08people. Um so I I would just say let's
2:16:13select on the basis of of skills,
2:16:16language capacity and likelihood of of
2:16:19assimilating. The the the invasion that
2:16:22you see at the border I think is not um
2:16:26is not going to necessarily improve our
2:16:28country. So one way to connect the dots
2:16:29from our earlier part of the
2:16:30conversation is we should have
2:16:32merit-based entrance into the US just as
2:16:35the universities have should have
2:16:36merit-based entrance. Right. Absolutely.
2:16:39Which they don't. And you know that we
2:16:41always talk about Canada. There are
2:16:42other countries that that do screen, but
2:16:44even Canada now is saying we've it's too
2:16:46many. You know, we've got it. This is
2:16:49not working out. So, I just I do think
2:16:51that cultures have a right to say they
2:16:54don't want to change. And that's that's
2:16:55sort of an issue. Can a culture say, "I
2:16:58like it the way I am. I we like being
2:17:01the way we are. We don't want to
2:17:02change." or should immigration policy
2:17:05ultimately be determined by people
2:17:06living outside the country because
2:17:08that's sort of the way it is now when
2:17:10you have de facto open borders. We can
2:17:13set our immigration policy and it
2:17:15doesn't really matter. It's whoever
2:17:16wants to come in and and I I acknowledge
2:17:20that's a it's a it's an open question.
2:17:22To me it seems you may argue it's
2:17:25self-defeating and you're trying to cut
2:17:28yourself off and you won't thrive as a
2:17:30culture. Nevertheless, it seems to me
2:17:32the right of a culture. If if Hungary
2:17:34wants to say we like our Hungarian
2:17:37culture and we don't want to take in
2:17:40immigrants, that's their right. There's
2:17:43something about America when you talk
2:17:45about culture that is fundamentally
2:17:48different than Europe because from the
2:17:50get-go we were
2:17:53multicultural and we are very big. I
2:17:56mean, we're the size of all of
2:17:57continental Europe, right? Like or
2:17:59roughly. So within continental Europe,
2:18:02you've got
2:18:04this discomfort between the groups. You
2:18:08know, you've got very distinct blood and
2:18:11soil nations that have truly a fairly
2:18:14homogeneous culture. You go to, it's
2:18:16funny, the left loves to lionize
2:18:19Scandinavian countries. You want to see
2:18:20overt racism, spend some time in the
2:18:22Scandinavian countries. Um, but they're
2:18:25monocultures by and large. you know,
2:18:27immigration is starting to impact that
2:18:28in ways that they're pushing back
2:18:31on. America isn't like Europe, though. I
2:18:34mean, it might be like Europe at large,
2:18:37but we What is it? What is American
2:18:39culture? Like, how would you even define
2:18:41what American culture is? Well, I think
2:18:45there was a core and I would also say we
2:18:48were
2:18:48multicultural. Yeah. Yeah. We had
2:18:50Germans in the beginning and French, but
2:18:53it was individuals that coming in. Uh,
2:18:58You know, Albian Seed, the fame book
2:19:00that got so much attention, he talks
2:19:02about the four different folkways, but
2:19:04they're all from different parts of
2:19:05England and and Scotland. It the core
2:19:09really was an Anglo tradition with some
2:19:14around the edges of of the Germans, as I
2:19:17say, and we had places that spoke, you
2:19:19know, German was the official language.
2:19:21So, you know, that's on on your side of
2:19:24the question.
2:19:26Um, I I would say that throughout the
2:19:3019th
2:19:31century there was a pretty defined
2:19:35American culture. Now, you can also come
2:19:37at that from other ways. Yeah. What
2:19:38about blacks? And I that's a question
2:19:40that I found myself asking myself all
2:19:42the time. Well, even to that end, what
2:19:46is culture and the I mean, if there's
2:19:49one area, there are more than one.
2:19:52There's obviously black American
2:19:54contributors to to lots of parts of
2:19:56American life, but some of the things
2:19:58that we typically think of as culture,
2:20:00especially music, African-Americans have
2:20:03had like they are the they are American
2:20:06pop culture. Like they literally they
2:20:08they they you know jazz, rock and roll,
2:20:12um hiphop, these are these are American
2:20:16culture. I mean, we can not like
2:20:19gangster rap, but hiphop is it is an
2:20:23American cultural export. Yes, I would
2:20:26say it is a culture. I wouldn't say it's
2:20:28the culture. I I I I would put in the
2:20:32American song book and Jews contribution
2:20:34as as equal jazz and you know, I think
2:20:37the American song book is our main
2:20:39contribution to world culture. Um, so
2:20:44but yes, you're right.
2:20:49Uh still, you know, I I do think that
2:20:54there was a core identity there that
2:20:57that expected assimilation. On your
2:21:00behalf, I would recommend uh HL
2:21:04Mein's autobiography of growing up in in
2:21:08Baltimore called Happy Days. It's he's
2:21:10an extraordinary writer. Oh, yeah. I
2:21:12love H. He describes, you know, his
2:21:14school principal that would go
2:21:17around flattering one ethnic group after
2:21:20another, you know, so one day he'd be
2:21:22the Polish American, the next day he'd
2:21:23be the Scandinavian American. And so
2:21:26very much to your point about the
2:21:28multicultural, multinational nature of
2:21:31America. This was in the late 19th
2:21:32century. Mein was a little bit ironic
2:21:35towards this. Um, but I I think it's a a
2:21:39question of numbers and source. And I I
2:21:41do think European
2:21:44uh stream in is different from the
2:21:48global south. the um I think the area
2:21:53where you our shared values come
2:21:55together can come together on this
2:21:57question is this
2:21:59um there is an Americanism that I think
2:22:03is baked into the vision of the
2:22:06founders that we should and it is the
2:22:09sort of distillation as I as I think of
2:22:12it I think I think of the maybe I'm just
2:22:14super romantic but our founding
2:22:17principles our founding documents the
2:22:18things that make us special as a unit of
2:22:21governance are worthy of defense, of
2:22:25celebration, of inculcation, of
2:22:29assimilation. And if you're going to be
2:22:30an American, you better love being an
2:22:32American. And being an American is a set
2:22:34of ideas that ain't communism. It ain't
2:22:38it isn't divide and conquer identity
2:22:40politics. It is all men are created
2:22:42equal, endowed by our creator with
2:22:44certain unalienable rights. And I think
2:22:46if we could I think one of the things
2:22:48that creates this immigration
2:22:50tension maybe maybe for you and I'll let
2:22:53you respond to this before I ask my
2:22:54typical last question of the show
2:22:58is do you find yourself reacting against
2:23:01some of this in part because we are no
2:23:03longer a country doing that we're not
2:23:06saying come on in bring you know give
2:23:09you know we're not doing the Statue of
2:23:11Liberty poem but saying you're going to
2:23:13be an American and you're going to
2:23:14you're going to salute the flag and
2:23:15you're going to know this the civics of
2:23:17our country and you're going to make it
2:23:19your your secular creed. Is that part of
2:23:22what makes it more uncomfortable more
2:23:25uncomfortable for you as we look at this
2:23:27immigration situation? Yeah, as I said
2:23:29just to repeat you know Mark Coran says
2:23:31the problem is us not the immigrants is
2:23:35that we are
2:23:36not asking for assimilation. We are not
2:23:40testing commitment to the American
2:23:42creed. So that is definitely a problem.
2:23:46Uh
2:23:49and I you know if we had a sense that
2:23:52people were coming because of those
2:23:55ideas and not
2:23:57just you know you're going to obviously
2:24:00wanting to better yourself and and have
2:24:02a better job. That's also very American.
2:24:05Uh but getting a handout or an Obama
2:24:08phone or an apartment here in Manhattan
2:24:10is not the American way. Right. Right.
2:24:13Um, so yeah, I mean that that's
2:24:17certainly a middle
2:24:18ground. I just I do think that migration
2:24:22from the global south is the issue of
2:24:24the 21st
2:24:26century. And I think if it is allowed to
2:24:30go unchecked with a total transfer, I
2:24:35think that's going to be a problem. And
2:24:38I think
2:24:39again, how about you fix the problems in
2:24:42your own country?
2:24:44I think it's a reasonable position.
2:24:47Heather McDonald, I ask this of every
2:24:48guest, um, we call the show Dad Saves
2:24:51America because I think that is a role
2:24:53that we as men play that is powerful and
2:24:55important and heroic. And so when you
2:24:58think about your work and what you do in
2:25:00your life, how do you see your role in
2:25:03the American story? H I never thought
2:25:06about that and I I don't think I have
2:25:07one. I just I
2:25:09um I I my role I guess is somebody who's
2:25:14no longer can be cowed by being called a
2:25:16racist and I believe in even though I
2:25:19really am a postmodernist from my
2:25:21training. So part of me doesn't believe
2:25:24in truth yet of course I'm also going to
2:25:26say you know I know these facts and they
2:25:28sure look like the truth to me although
2:25:31as a as a abstract philosophical matter
2:25:33I can say well you know it's all
2:25:35standpoint theory and whatnot but I do
2:25:38think that there are facts that rebut
2:25:41the narratives that are tearing
2:25:42everything down
2:25:45and I guess I think of myself as
2:25:47somebody
2:25:48who
2:25:51loves greatness ness and beauty and
2:25:53sublimity. I love the classical music
2:25:56tradition. I love literature and I want
2:26:00to fight for those things and I hope I
2:26:03can convince other people that if they
2:26:06die before hearing Shopan or Brah's solo
2:26:09piano music or some of the great Mozart
2:26:12operas or reading Middle March that they
2:26:16have lived a poor life and that there
2:26:19are things there that are worth
2:26:20defending.
2:26:22Heather McDonald, thank you for being on
2:26:24Dad Saves America. I will be having you
2:26:26back as soon as I can. I think I look
2:26:28forward to it. Thank you so much. Great
2:26:30conversation, John.

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