WEBVTT - Is “The Woke Right” Even a Real Thing? 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:08.039 Life Audio. What's happening in America is because of what 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.760 happened on the campuses. Everything moves from campus to culture. 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:15.400 It comes from upstream and moves downstream, and so what 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.040 we're seeing in this cultural revolution has already been embedded 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.720 in the campuses for a long, long, long time. 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.400 Why does it matter whether we call something woke left 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:27.560 or woke right? Why do you think the terms that 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:29.520 we use really matter? 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.120 Because if we don't have an adequate diagnosis, we can't 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:34.680 offer an adequate prescription. 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:39.040 Is there really a woke right? And why is this 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:43.040 question so important and timely today? According to our guest today, 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.080 it is a big mistake to compare what's called the 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:50.400 woke left with the woke right. Doctor Corey Miller is 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.520 the author of The Progressive Miseducation of America, and he's 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:57.200 here to make his case why the term woke right 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:01.080 is a misnomer and why it deeply matters. Corey, Welcome 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:02.720 back to the show. We had you on telling your 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.840 story how you grew up in a LDS faith and 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.240 then became an evangelical, which is amazing. You and I 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.640 went to school together way back in the day with 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.120 our master's program so it's always fun to have you on. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:15.039 Thanks for joining me. 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:18.080 Yeah, so good to be back, Sean, Thank you. 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.120 Yeah, absolutely so. I'm super intrigued. You sent me an 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.760 email and you said, hey, here's a thought for a story. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:25.959 What do you think? And in the back of my mind, 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.720 I've wanted to talk about what's called the woke right 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.840 because there's been a ton of attention that we have paid, 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:35.039 maybe not enough attention, but certainly some attention to the 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.959 woke left, and this term has bubbled up, and you 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.679 brought a perspective to it that I haven't really thought 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.520 about it. So I'm actually hoping you can help me 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.560 and my audience think through what this woke right means, 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.080 why it's growing in popularity, how concerned we should be, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.160 and how it's similar and or different from what's called 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:59.080 the woke left. But to start with, what interests you 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:01.800 in this topic? What's the background that has made you 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:03.360 pay so much attention to this? 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.320 Well, you know, many years ago, after you and I 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:11.320 had class together, I moved away stayed in philosophy of religion, 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.280 arguments for and against God's existence for you know, ten 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:16.760 or fifteen years. When I went off to Purdue University 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:21.480 for my doctorate, faced some hardships there. Didn't complete the 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:23.280 doctorate because I was told I had too much of 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.600 a faith perspective. Right at the beginning, I'm taking classes 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:31.240 on Marxism from a distinguished professor of philosophy there, and 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.560 I saw my classmates, and I saw where they went, 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:37.880 and I had congressmen calling me up asking for character 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.400 assessments on some of these guys. These were radicals, and 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:46.200 I saw, wow, this is really coming. I studied liberation 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.040 theology many years before in seminary, but I never thought 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.400 we would actually encounter it much in America when I 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.360 got to Purdue, and it wasn't just analytic philosophy. But 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:59.120 I'm in continental philosophy now, a place where most evangelical 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:04.000 Christians don't, you know, focus their attention. I saw something 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:08.600 significant was coming down the pipeline, and my interest began 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.600 to change, in part because of my new position with 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:15.000 Raschio Christi and all of the litigation that we are 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:19.520 involved with constantly to be on campus across America, to 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.840 have freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and so forth. 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:29.520 But you know, with that and my understanding more of 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:33.480 cultural Marxism, it started to open up a vista of 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:38.520 an almost untapped area in Christian apologetics. And then I 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:43.960 ran into a guy who was my sort of doppelganger opposite, 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.880 and that was an activist Peter Bagoshian, who wrote the 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:53.480 book A Manual for Creating Atheists, forward by Richard Dawkins 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:57.320 and endorsed by Michael Shermer, or vice versa. He invites 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.840 me to his atheism seminar at Portland State University to 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.280 give a two hour lecture on God's existence and then 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:06.360 allows his students to try to take me down. And 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.400 then we went and had lunch together. It was great, 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.160 that's awesome. He proposed an alliance, and I thought, okay, 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.720 this is odd. I wasn't expecting this, but I did 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.479 know that we both had a similar background and a 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:22.440 similar vista in our trajectory. And he said, we need 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.560 you and you need us. He said, if we go, 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.400 you go, and if you go, we go. In fact, 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:34.359 you're already gone from the universities. And I remember telling 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.479 him at that time, I said, Okay, I see the 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:38.520 sense of what you're talking about. The enemy of my 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.640 enemy is my friend. We had to partner with Stalin 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.640 in the early days of World War two, and then 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.599 at the same time keeping our eye open on the 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:54.560 other person. And he later admitted that, yes, we ruined things. 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:59.640 We him, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and so forth. We 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.720 always talked and wondered if we destroy the God of 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.120 the West, some other god or gods are going to 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.479 replace it. But they had no idea how bad it 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:11.160 would become. And so when I walked him to his office, 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.800 I said, Peter, why is your office the only office 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.680 in the Portland State Police Department. He said, I think 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.080 it's for my safety from Antifa, the anti fascists, the 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:25.560 Marxists that are doxing him and endangering him and his family. 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.000 So a lot of people know the story of him 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:33.440 and James Limsay and other people on the Grievance Studies 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:37.520 and how they put forth these fake published papers in 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:42.520 leftist peer review journals and had half of them accepted 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:51.279 by simply overlaying contemporary woke or Marxist or new Left 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:56.799 thought on the surface layer. And it passed muster until 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:00.480 someone blew the whistle from the Wall Street Journal and 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.800 said it's all fake. And so from that time forth 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.480 he was now running from the new Left, he being 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.800 a new atheist trying to destroy Christianity being a total 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:17.279 liberal himself. Now that liberal atheist and me, a conservative Christian, 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.359 are now going on a speaking tour together. And we 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.880 began at Utah State University. 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:24.559 Hey, let me jump let me jump in here before 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:28.040 he tyler. He began, because you've probably heard Justin Brierly, 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.960 of course, UK apologist who wrote the book The Surprising 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:37.040 Rebirth of God in twenty eighteen, or The Surprise and 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.359 Rebirth of Belief in God. Yeah, so in twenty eighteen 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:43.919 or twenty nineteen he hosted a conversation in Portland and 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.960 I ended up being the Christian side of that. And 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:51.520 he originally went to Peter Bagosian asking him to be 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:56.400 the atheist kind of interlock youateur for this dialogue. And 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.960 Peter at that point he said, I'm not so interesting 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.200 in this atheist theist conversation as I was. I'm concerned 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:08.080 with something new, and he started talking about cultural Marxism. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.040 So he's the same one who woke up so to speak, 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:15.200 for lack of a better term, and shifted the narrative 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.080 for Justin Bridle to go, wait a minute, maybe times 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:20.840 are changing from what you referred to earlier, just to 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:24.200 give context to people when you mentioned Sam Harris and 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.160 Richard Dawkins and names like Christopher Hitchins. For the first 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:33.680 ten years of the twentieth century roughly dominated conversations about 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.840 God in this group called the New Atheists, and the 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.520 idea was that religion is false and it's bad, it's 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.400 ran out of justifications. If we just get rid of it, 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.840 we'll have a blissful, wonderful state. But the way you 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.040 frame that, Corey, is so interesting that Peter would say, 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.000 I'm not sure if Sam or Richard would agree with 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.560 this or not, but that he said we actually opened 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:58.720 up the door for a lot of this trying to 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.640 knock down the Christian God, not realizing what worldview would 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:06.160 come in and take its place. That is such a 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:08.800 fascinating point you made. So you're going on this speaking 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.800 tour with Peter pick up where we left off. 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:15.360 Yeah. So we started at the university where Charlie Kirk's 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:20.080 alleged assassin began his college career, and we hit four 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:24.680 universities in two days, and we got canceled by a 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:30.040 Christian campus ministry, ironically, and he couldn't get the atheist 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:33.480 groups to attend either because he said they wouldn't lift 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:35.640 a hand to help me. And Richard Dawkins now they've 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.040 all gone woke, and I followed up with them because 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:40.760 I didn't know if he was telling the truth, and 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:44.600 he was absolutely right. So we were like this odd 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.920 couple coming together. Our own camps wouldn't show up at 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:51.760 the events, and we were just going to be talking 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.200 about viewpoint diversity and the death of intellectual diversity in 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:59.120 the universities. Now he lost his first PhD attempt. I 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.760 lost my first PhD attempt. I got told I had 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.040 too much of a faith perspective, and the Marxist professor 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:06.920 put a permanent note in my file that I was 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.040 delusional in schizophrenic. And then when I went on for 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:14.400 the second PhD attempt, I defended before a guy who 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:19.440 claims to be the first trans UK philosopher in the 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:22.920 entire British Isles. And I talked to Justin Bryerly at 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:24.800 that time and said, could you get all three of us, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:31.079 one Bagosian and this guy who is now a gal Right, 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.800 But anyway, we only made it a weekend. We were 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:37.679 going to hit Texas next and hit other states after that. 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.600 But then shortly after that COVID hit, George Floyd died, 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.400 and all of a sudden, all hell bro clues across 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.880 the nation and the university we ended our lecture at 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.520 was Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Wow 0:09:54.080 --> 0:10:00.240 for giving viewpoint diversity and dialogue right. And so I 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.760 just talked with Peter this morning. Actually, we were talking 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.800 about a possible new book on freedom because of where 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.640 we began and how much things have changed ever since then. 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.679 So finding allies in the strangest places now is just 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:17.800 it's a really weird thing. You know. We're in a 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.200 cultural revolution, and that's why you get people like Richard 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.960 Dawkins claiming to be a cultural Christian and Elon Musk 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.960 a cultural Christian, and Jordan Peterson an existentialist Christian and 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:33.599 Democratic presidential candidates now on the Republican you know platform 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:38.800 with Trump and Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce Jenner running for the RNC, 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:43.040 you know, the Republican governor in California. I mean, this 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.160 is just crazy. Our world is different now, we are 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:49.040 in a cultural revolution, and so I wanted to figure 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.400 out what in the world is going on, what kind 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.800 of revolution is this And that's where I really set 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:59.560 into this trajectory in social political philosophy and thinking from 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:03.679 a distinct Christian position, how do we navigate this now? 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.160 And we understood what the woke left was, and I 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.440 was trying to spend a lot of time educating our 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:14.679 own people and our own audiences on this. And suddenly 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:18.439 this thing after Charlie Kirk died, It's almost like it 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:23.120 burst on the scene. It was already there, but now, 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:27.560 you know, with people asking questions about whether Charlie Kirk's 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:32.840 tactics were sufficient. Gen Z Boys, for example, I was 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:36.000 interviewed by Fox News and they talked about this resurgence 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:38.679 of gen Z Boys coming back to church and back 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.559 to conservatism, and I said, I don't know, are they 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.760 coming back following Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan who are 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.200 knocking at the door of the churches, Or is it 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:51.200 Andrew Tate with his wife beater shirt, or Nick Fuentes 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.760 and the Droipers, or is it the late Charlie Kirk 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.439 who's now deceased and who knows what's going to happen 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.440 with that movement. But he was already struggling for what 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:04.439 he called the Lost Boys of the West. Where are 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.240 they going to land? And the jury is still out 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.000 on that one, because the woke right is now a term, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.080 but whether or not we should use that term as 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:15.680 another question entirely. 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:17.959 Okay, That gives us to the heart of what we're 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:19.520 in talk about. And one of the reasons I wanted 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:21.640 to in particular to have you on is last week 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:25.280 I talked about concerns from the left and Scott Ray 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:27.800 and I from Talbot, one of my colleagues, we reviewed 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.080 a book about why Christian should be leftists and what 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.920 he meant was socialists. So we critique that and made 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:40.120 a case for capitalism, not that it's perfect, but a 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.079 positive case that it works as an economic system because 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.040 so many people have been taken in by socialism for 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.880 reasons we don't have to go into here. But what 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.800 I wanted to do is also have a critique of 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:57.840 ideas on the right, or what's called the woke right 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.400 that also concerned me, and that's why your email was 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:06.080 absolutely perfect. Now remind us, maybe briefly, before we come 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.360 to the woke right. This will help set us up 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:12.840 what do we even mean by woke left? Because this 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:17.160 term has changed and also can mean different things to 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.160 different people. And I know you talk about this in 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.120 your book, but maybe just remind us some of the 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.800 key ideas of what we mean by kind of wokeism 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:26.680 and how that relates to the wolk left. 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:31.760 Sure, and the book title is called The Progressive Miseducation 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.440 of America. It wasn't the title that I originally chose. 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.120 The publisher forced that one on me. Okay. I had 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.000 the third revolution from the campus to the culture and 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.400 a vision forward. I wanted to show people what's happening 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:49.440 in America is because of what happened on the campuses. 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.800 Everything moves from campus to culture. It comes from upstream 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.200 and moves downstream, and so what we're seeing in this 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.800 cultural revolution has already been embedded in the campuses for 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:04.560 a long, long long time. I was talking, though, not 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.640 about a violent revolution. I was talking about an ideological 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.599 revolution and primarily focused on the universities, which is the 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:17.080 waters that I swim in, and the publisher decided to 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.680 change it. So it makes me look now a bit 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.680 more like my book is about politics. It's not. It's 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.840 more about ideology and what's happening from the ideas up 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.800 in the campus are coming down in culture such that 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.640 today we now live on campus. And so I'm trying 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:39.040 to explain to people what is it that this revolution 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.160 is about, Where did it come from, how did this happen, 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:44.640 and what can we do about it? And so I 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.120 basically show that there were two major ideological revolutions that 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.840 took over our universities that we Christians started. The first 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.080 with scientific naturalism. I won't go into that, a lot 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.800 of people understand what that is, but that laid the 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:02.160 groundwork the apex of the scientific the naturalist experiment after 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:06.000 about a century was Richard Dawkins and Peter Bagogian and 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.440 things like that. And I look at Dawkins as sort 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.800 of like the Robest Pierre of the French Revolution, who 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.280 created the guillotine for his enemies, and then he got 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:17.640 guillotined by his own guillotine, and now he wants to 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:23.680 be friends. And so what was coming behind them has 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:26.680 done the same thing that they did to the founders 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.920 of the universities to the Christians. And right at the 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.040 time when the dust was settling in America in the 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.000 nineteen thirties and we had to go start our new 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.280 universities like the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, like Calvin 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.880 College and Wheaton and other places. Over in Germany, once 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.880 again was this nefarious thing happening, And now we know 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:52.440 it was critical theory, which was a Freudian Marxist sort 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:57.440 of synthesis that eventually their leaders came over and they 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.080 taught in our brightest universities, and then within about fifteen 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:06.000 years the founders of postmodernism began, and that was in France. 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:11.680 We hear names like Leotard or Deredaf or Deconstructionism or 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:16.480 fu cot all of these guys. When we think postmodernism, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.320 maybe we think relativism, skepticism toward a meta narrative or whatever. 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.640 But if they're relativists, then it means that their politics 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:27.200 ought to be everything from far left to far right. 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.720 But the surprising fact is that they weren't. They were 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.680 all uber left. They were called the new left. They 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:38.360 were card carrying members of the French Communist Party or 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.040 sympathizers with it. And so they were taking off from 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:49.320 the scientific naturalism, moving in now to the neo Marxist synthesis, 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.840 the Freudian Marxists adding to it, this new postmodern witch 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.480 is brew So we can go into that or not, 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.600 but it is this new phenomena that eventually came over 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:04.240 to our universities and they went into the humanities and 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:08.720 social sciences, whereas the First Revolution went into the hard sciences. 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.720 And these guys, eventually, decades into it, started making their 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.840 move and started kicking out the first guard. And by 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:23.159 the mid nineteen nineties, you know, the ratio of liberal 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.280 the conservative professor was two point three to one. In 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:29.959 the last twenty five years, it's now twenty three to 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:34.119 one or twenty seven to one for the IVY leagues. 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.400 In some places it's seventy to one, at Yale at 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:41.480 seventy eight to one. And so these are not viewpoint 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:46.920 diversity academies at all. So we need to be preparing 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.840 and understanding what's coming from upstream is coming downstream, and 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:55.960 this is what's pushed out the Richard Dawkinses and the 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.879 Peter Bagosians and the Elon Musks and the RFK and 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:05.760 Tulsi Gabbards and everybody else into this cultural revolution. We 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:10.439 are in an ideological revolution. And so rather than just 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:14.080 a simple definition of woke, what I like to do 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.480 is I like to layer it for you and I 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:21.000 as trained philosophers helping out everybody else to see that 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.920 philosophy is. It's kind of simple. It's three branches. It's 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:27.720 what is real? How do we know what is real? 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.159 How should we then live based on what we know 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:35.520 about reality? Woke is part of epistemology, it's part of knowledge, 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.399 so it fits right in there. But this whole woke 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.240 worldview part of the critical race theory or the postmodern 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:49.239 cultural Marxism. It's got a metaphysic at epistemology and an 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.960 ethic or what is real? How do I know what 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:53.760 is real? How should I then live based on what 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.520 I know about reality? And so I choose not to 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.879 define this popular slogan of DEI in that way. I 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:05.800 do it dee because the D fits in metaphysics, what 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.920 is real in human relations, the I fits in epistemology inclusivity, 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.000 and the E fits in ethics equity, and it goes 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.240 in that order. And this will help us understand what 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:23.119 woke really is and eventually why I think it's a 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.280 misnomer to be applied to the right inasmuch as we've 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:31.760 got problems there. We need to use terms accurately and 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.840 be clear about what we're saying, because we can't provide 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.359 an adequate prescription if we don't have an adequate diagnosis. 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:43.720 So, okay, super fair. There's been a lot of books written. 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.080 This actually just got in the mail today Post Woke 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.080 by Neil shanv one of my favorite kind of popular 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.520 level books on this. I know you guys Rascho Christy 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:55.640 did a great pamphlet with him some of the rudimentary 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.280 ideas of this that's really really well done. So we 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.960 talked about what kind of wokeism is here and in 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.399 the culture, but we haven't talked about it on the 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.720 woke right. And I'm totally up for you persuading me 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:10.800 and convincing me not to use the term woke right. 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.359 I've somewhat adopted it because I've heard it used didn't 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:19.280 really see the harm in it. So before we talk 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.680 about what's meant by that, why does it matter? Why 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.440 is it whether we call something woke left or woke right? 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:29.760 Why do you think the terms that we use really matter? 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.120 As I just said, because if we don't have an 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:38.600 adequate diagnosis, we can't offer an adequate prescription, okay, and 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:43.600 the words we use matter. We want it to be accurate. 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:45.639 We want it to be truthful, we want it to 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:50.719 be helpful. And already it's taken a lot of effort 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.560 to try to get people to understand what woke itself is. 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.640 And now if we start applying it in the wrong area, 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.240 we end up running into a couple of problems. One 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:06.440 is this both sideism narrative. Right after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.560 there was a lot of sympathy in the country for 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.920 about twenty four hours, and then you started seeing some 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:20.280 really you know, nasty language coming out from people who 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:24.720 thought of him poorly and thought of conservatives poorly, and 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:32.480 the the temperature started to raise with all of that. 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:37.119 And it was after that that people started to choose 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:41.159 sides and push away from where Charlie Kirk was going, 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:43.960 and they wanted to adopt this name that had been 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:49.520 given to them, called the woke right. But something required 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.920 a pause. This both sides ism that was happening was that, 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.600 you know, assassinations happen on both sides, We have extremists 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.400 on both sides. Violence is both both sides. In fact, 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:04.479 political violence happens more on the right than it happens 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.800 on the left. So you started seeing data sets coming 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:12.480 out in the social media showing that on the right 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:16.840 political violence is far worse. Most people aren't going to 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:18.720 look that up. They're just going to wonder about it 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:22.000 until you start to open up the hood and see 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.359 what's under there. They're considering neo Nazis on the right, 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:28.960 and you might think Nazism as a kind of socialism, 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:32.240 maybe it should be left. They've got the KKK on 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.600 the right. Well, the Democratic Party invented the KKK. They 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.520 have Islamists on the right. They don't account for a 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:44.920 lot of the trans shooters in this category and so forth. 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:48.680 So you started to see cherry picking happening with the data, 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.399 and the effect of the both sidesism is that, wow, 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:57.080 we've got problems on both sides. Everybody's got extremists. Let's 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:01.159 just all beware of the extremists. So the reality is 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:05.080 that people on the right, not everybody, but those that 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.440 are conservatives, and more deeply, what are they trying to conserve, 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:11.840 and that is they're deeply held religious beliefs beginning with 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:15.919 Genesis one twenty six. We are made in God's image. 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:18.520 That's why black lives matter, That's why all lives matter. 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:23.480 That's why liberals, conservatives lives matter, everyone's matters, because God 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:28.119 is the sanctifier of human life. And so you would 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:30.919 think it predictable that you're not going to have as 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:35.080 much violence on the right. Forget just the abortion question. 0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:38.680 Is violence even political violence? And you start to look 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:41.680 at the left and you start to see most atheists 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:46.440 vote left. They feel most comfortable in that camp Republican 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:50.520 and Democrat. That's superficial. Below that is conservative and liberal 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:56.920 or Marxist now, and below that is secularism or religion. Well, 0:23:57.040 --> 0:24:03.840 those things should have consequences in the behaviors. And so 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:07.919 I think when we have this both sides ism, what 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:10.879 happened then is it sort of neutralized the conversation and 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.360 that there's just bad violence on the left and the right. Well, 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:18.520 that's true, but if we can't really diagnose the problem, 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:22.560 we can't offer a prescription. And I contend that the 0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:27.240 violence is predominantly on the left. We have you know this, 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:33.680 this notion of what's it called an assassination culture now 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:37.440 came out of the Washington Post. And when Luigi Mangioni 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:44.080 assassinated Brian Thomas Thompson of United Healthcare, what was amazing. 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:47.720 Wasn't just that he came from University of Pennsylvania as 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:51.720 a graduate student and so forth, but how many people 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:58.840