Speaker 1: Life Audio. What's happening in America is because of what
Speaker 1: happened on the campuses. Everything moves from campus to culture.
Speaker 1: It comes from upstream and moves downstream, and so what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in this cultural revolution has already been embedded
Speaker 1: in the campuses for a long, long, long time.
Speaker 2: Why does it matter whether we call something woke left
Speaker 2: or woke right? Why do you think the terms that
Speaker 2: we use really matter?
Speaker 1: Because if we don't have an adequate diagnosis, we can't
Speaker 1: offer an adequate prescription.
Speaker 2: Is there really a woke right? And why is this
Speaker 2: question so important and timely today? According to our guest today,
Speaker 2: it is a big mistake to compare what's called the
Speaker 2: woke left with the woke right. Doctor Corey Miller is
Speaker 2: the author of The Progressive Miseducation of America, and he's
Speaker 2: here to make his case why the term woke right
Speaker 2: is a misnomer and why it deeply matters. Corey, Welcome
Speaker 2: back to the show. We had you on telling your
Speaker 2: story how you grew up in a LDS faith and
Speaker 2: then became an evangelical, which is amazing. You and I
Speaker 2: went to school together way back in the day with
Speaker 2: our master's program so it's always fun to have you on.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so good to be back, Sean, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. I'm super intrigued. You sent me an
Speaker 2: email and you said, hey, here's a thought for a story.
Speaker 2: What do you think? And in the back of my mind,
Speaker 2: I've wanted to talk about what's called the woke right
Speaker 2: because there's been a ton of attention that we have paid,
Speaker 2: maybe not enough attention, but certainly some attention to the
Speaker 2: woke left, and this term has bubbled up, and you
Speaker 2: brought a perspective to it that I haven't really thought
Speaker 2: about it. So I'm actually hoping you can help me
Speaker 2: and my audience think through what this woke right means,
Speaker 2: why it's growing in popularity, how concerned we should be,
Speaker 2: and how it's similar and or different from what's called
Speaker 2: the woke left. But to start with, what interests you
Speaker 2: in this topic? What's the background that has made you
Speaker 2: pay so much attention to this?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, many years ago, after you and I
Speaker 1: had class together, I moved away stayed in philosophy of religion,
Speaker 1: arguments for and against God's existence for you know, ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen years. When I went off to Purdue University
Speaker 1: for my doctorate, faced some hardships there. Didn't complete the
Speaker 1: doctorate because I was told I had too much of
Speaker 1: a faith perspective. Right at the beginning, I'm taking classes
Speaker 1: on Marxism from a distinguished professor of philosophy there, and
Speaker 1: I saw my classmates, and I saw where they went,
Speaker 1: and I had congressmen calling me up asking for character
Speaker 1: assessments on some of these guys. These were radicals, and
Speaker 1: I saw, wow, this is really coming. I studied liberation
Speaker 1: theology many years before in seminary, but I never thought
Speaker 1: we would actually encounter it much in America when I
Speaker 1: got to Purdue, and it wasn't just analytic philosophy. But
Speaker 1: I'm in continental philosophy now, a place where most evangelical
Speaker 1: Christians don't, you know, focus their attention. I saw something
Speaker 1: significant was coming down the pipeline, and my interest began
Speaker 1: to change, in part because of my new position with
Speaker 1: Raschio Christi and all of the litigation that we are
Speaker 1: involved with constantly to be on campus across America, to
Speaker 1: have freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and so forth.
Speaker 1: But you know, with that and my understanding more of
Speaker 1: cultural Marxism, it started to open up a vista of
Speaker 1: an almost untapped area in Christian apologetics. And then I
Speaker 1: ran into a guy who was my sort of doppelganger opposite,
Speaker 1: and that was an activist Peter Bagoshian, who wrote the
Speaker 1: book A Manual for Creating Atheists, forward by Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: and endorsed by Michael Shermer, or vice versa. He invites
Speaker 1: me to his atheism seminar at Portland State University to
Speaker 1: give a two hour lecture on God's existence and then
Speaker 1: allows his students to try to take me down. And
Speaker 1: then we went and had lunch together. It was great,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. He proposed an alliance, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: this is odd. I wasn't expecting this, but I did
Speaker 1: know that we both had a similar background and a
Speaker 1: similar vista in our trajectory. And he said, we need
Speaker 1: you and you need us. He said, if we go,
Speaker 1: you go, and if you go, we go. In fact,
Speaker 1: you're already gone from the universities. And I remember telling
Speaker 1: him at that time, I said, Okay, I see the
Speaker 1: sense of what you're talking about. The enemy of my
Speaker 1: enemy is my friend. We had to partner with Stalin
Speaker 1: in the early days of World War two, and then
Speaker 1: at the same time keeping our eye open on the
Speaker 1: other person. And he later admitted that, yes, we ruined things.
Speaker 1: We him, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and so forth. We
Speaker 1: always talked and wondered if we destroy the God of
Speaker 1: the West, some other god or gods are going to
Speaker 1: replace it. But they had no idea how bad it
Speaker 1: would become. And so when I walked him to his office,
Speaker 1: I said, Peter, why is your office the only office
Speaker 1: in the Portland State Police Department. He said, I think
Speaker 1: it's for my safety from Antifa, the anti fascists, the
Speaker 1: Marxists that are doxing him and endangering him and his family.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people know the story of him
Speaker 1: and James Limsay and other people on the Grievance Studies
Speaker 1: and how they put forth these fake published papers in
Speaker 1: leftist peer review journals and had half of them accepted
Speaker 1: by simply overlaying contemporary woke or Marxist or new Left
Speaker 1: thought on the surface layer. And it passed muster until
Speaker 1: someone blew the whistle from the Wall Street Journal and
Speaker 1: said it's all fake. And so from that time forth
Speaker 1: he was now running from the new Left, he being
Speaker 1: a new atheist trying to destroy Christianity being a total
Speaker 1: liberal himself. Now that liberal atheist and me, a conservative Christian,
Speaker 1: are now going on a speaking tour together. And we
Speaker 1: began at Utah State University.
Speaker 2: Hey, let me jump let me jump in here before
Speaker 2: he tyler. He began, because you've probably heard Justin Brierly,
Speaker 2: of course, UK apologist who wrote the book The Surprising
Speaker 2: Rebirth of God in twenty eighteen, or The Surprise and
Speaker 2: Rebirth of Belief in God. Yeah, so in twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: or twenty nineteen he hosted a conversation in Portland and
Speaker 2: I ended up being the Christian side of that. And
Speaker 2: he originally went to Peter Bagosian asking him to be
Speaker 2: the atheist kind of interlock youateur for this dialogue. And
Speaker 2: Peter at that point he said, I'm not so interesting
Speaker 2: in this atheist theist conversation as I was. I'm concerned
Speaker 2: with something new, and he started talking about cultural Marxism.
Speaker 2: So he's the same one who woke up so to speak,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, and shifted the narrative
Speaker 2: for Justin Bridle to go, wait a minute, maybe times
Speaker 2: are changing from what you referred to earlier, just to
Speaker 2: give context to people when you mentioned Sam Harris and
Speaker 2: Richard Dawkins and names like Christopher Hitchins. For the first
Speaker 2: ten years of the twentieth century roughly dominated conversations about
Speaker 2: God in this group called the New Atheists, and the
Speaker 2: idea was that religion is false and it's bad, it's
Speaker 2: ran out of justifications. If we just get rid of it,
Speaker 2: we'll have a blissful, wonderful state. But the way you
Speaker 2: frame that, Corey, is so interesting that Peter would say,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if Sam or Richard would agree with
Speaker 2: this or not, but that he said we actually opened
Speaker 2: up the door for a lot of this trying to
Speaker 2: knock down the Christian God, not realizing what worldview would
Speaker 2: come in and take its place. That is such a
Speaker 2: fascinating point you made. So you're going on this speaking
Speaker 2: tour with Peter pick up where we left off.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we started at the university where Charlie Kirk's
Speaker 1: alleged assassin began his college career, and we hit four
Speaker 1: universities in two days, and we got canceled by a
Speaker 1: Christian campus ministry, ironically, and he couldn't get the atheist
Speaker 1: groups to attend either because he said they wouldn't lift
Speaker 1: a hand to help me. And Richard Dawkins now they've
Speaker 1: all gone woke, and I followed up with them because
Speaker 1: I didn't know if he was telling the truth, and
Speaker 1: he was absolutely right. So we were like this odd
Speaker 1: couple coming together. Our own camps wouldn't show up at
Speaker 1: the events, and we were just going to be talking
Speaker 1: about viewpoint diversity and the death of intellectual diversity in
Speaker 1: the universities. Now he lost his first PhD attempt. I
Speaker 1: lost my first PhD attempt. I got told I had
Speaker 1: too much of a faith perspective, and the Marxist professor
Speaker 1: put a permanent note in my file that I was
Speaker 1: delusional in schizophrenic. And then when I went on for
Speaker 1: the second PhD attempt, I defended before a guy who
Speaker 1: claims to be the first trans UK philosopher in the
Speaker 1: entire British Isles. And I talked to Justin Bryerly at
Speaker 1: that time and said, could you get all three of us,
Speaker 1: one Bagosian and this guy who is now a gal Right,
Speaker 1: But anyway, we only made it a weekend. We were
Speaker 1: going to hit Texas next and hit other states after that.
Speaker 1: But then shortly after that COVID hit, George Floyd died,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, all hell bro clues across
Speaker 1: the nation and the university we ended our lecture at
Speaker 1: was Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Wow
Speaker 1: for giving viewpoint diversity and dialogue right. And so I
Speaker 1: just talked with Peter this morning. Actually, we were talking
Speaker 1: about a possible new book on freedom because of where
Speaker 1: we began and how much things have changed ever since then.
Speaker 1: So finding allies in the strangest places now is just
Speaker 1: it's a really weird thing. You know. We're in a
Speaker 1: cultural revolution, and that's why you get people like Richard
Speaker 1: Dawkins claiming to be a cultural Christian and Elon Musk
Speaker 1: a cultural Christian, and Jordan Peterson an existentialist Christian and
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential candidates now on the Republican you know platform
Speaker 1: with Trump and Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce Jenner running for the RNC,
Speaker 1: you know, the Republican governor in California. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just crazy. Our world is different now, we are
Speaker 1: in a cultural revolution, and so I wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out what in the world is going on, what kind
Speaker 1: of revolution is this And that's where I really set
Speaker 1: into this trajectory in social political philosophy and thinking from
Speaker 1: a distinct Christian position, how do we navigate this now?
Speaker 1: And we understood what the woke left was, and I
Speaker 1: was trying to spend a lot of time educating our
Speaker 1: own people and our own audiences on this. And suddenly
Speaker 1: this thing after Charlie Kirk died, It's almost like it
Speaker 1: burst on the scene. It was already there, but now,
Speaker 1: you know, with people asking questions about whether Charlie Kirk's
Speaker 1: tactics were sufficient. Gen Z Boys, for example, I was
Speaker 1: interviewed by Fox News and they talked about this resurgence
Speaker 1: of gen Z Boys coming back to church and back
Speaker 1: to conservatism, and I said, I don't know, are they
Speaker 1: coming back following Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan who are
Speaker 1: knocking at the door of the churches, Or is it
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate with his wife beater shirt, or Nick Fuentes
Speaker 1: and the Droipers, or is it the late Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: who's now deceased and who knows what's going to happen
Speaker 1: with that movement. But he was already struggling for what
Speaker 1: he called the Lost Boys of the West. Where are
Speaker 1: they going to land? And the jury is still out
Speaker 1: on that one, because the woke right is now a term,
Speaker 1: but whether or not we should use that term as
Speaker 1: another question entirely.
Speaker 2: Okay, That gives us to the heart of what we're
Speaker 2: in talk about. And one of the reasons I wanted
Speaker 2: to in particular to have you on is last week
Speaker 2: I talked about concerns from the left and Scott Ray
Speaker 2: and I from Talbot, one of my colleagues, we reviewed
Speaker 2: a book about why Christian should be leftists and what
Speaker 2: he meant was socialists. So we critique that and made
Speaker 2: a case for capitalism, not that it's perfect, but a
Speaker 2: positive case that it works as an economic system because
Speaker 2: so many people have been taken in by socialism for
Speaker 2: reasons we don't have to go into here. But what
Speaker 2: I wanted to do is also have a critique of
Speaker 2: ideas on the right, or what's called the woke right
Speaker 2: that also concerned me, and that's why your email was
Speaker 2: absolutely perfect. Now remind us, maybe briefly, before we come
Speaker 2: to the woke right. This will help set us up
Speaker 2: what do we even mean by woke left? Because this
Speaker 2: term has changed and also can mean different things to
Speaker 2: different people. And I know you talk about this in
Speaker 2: your book, but maybe just remind us some of the
Speaker 2: key ideas of what we mean by kind of wokeism
Speaker 2: and how that relates to the wolk left.
Speaker 1: Sure, and the book title is called The Progressive Miseducation
Speaker 1: of America. It wasn't the title that I originally chose.
Speaker 1: The publisher forced that one on me. Okay. I had
Speaker 1: the third revolution from the campus to the culture and
Speaker 1: a vision forward. I wanted to show people what's happening
Speaker 1: in America is because of what happened on the campuses.
Speaker 1: Everything moves from campus to culture. It comes from upstream
Speaker 1: and moves downstream, and so what we're seeing in this
Speaker 1: cultural revolution has already been embedded in the campuses for
Speaker 1: a long, long long time. I was talking, though, not
Speaker 1: about a violent revolution. I was talking about an ideological
Speaker 1: revolution and primarily focused on the universities, which is the
Speaker 1: waters that I swim in, and the publisher decided to
Speaker 1: change it. So it makes me look now a bit
Speaker 1: more like my book is about politics. It's not. It's
Speaker 1: more about ideology and what's happening from the ideas up
Speaker 1: in the campus are coming down in culture such that
Speaker 1: today we now live on campus. And so I'm trying
Speaker 1: to explain to people what is it that this revolution
Speaker 1: is about, Where did it come from, how did this happen,
Speaker 1: and what can we do about it? And so I
Speaker 1: basically show that there were two major ideological revolutions that
Speaker 1: took over our universities that we Christians started. The first
Speaker 1: with scientific naturalism. I won't go into that, a lot
Speaker 1: of people understand what that is, but that laid the
Speaker 1: groundwork the apex of the scientific the naturalist experiment after
Speaker 1: about a century was Richard Dawkins and Peter Bagogian and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I look at Dawkins as sort
Speaker 1: of like the Robest Pierre of the French Revolution, who
Speaker 1: created the guillotine for his enemies, and then he got
Speaker 1: guillotined by his own guillotine, and now he wants to
Speaker 1: be friends. And so what was coming behind them has
Speaker 1: done the same thing that they did to the founders
Speaker 1: of the universities to the Christians. And right at the
Speaker 1: time when the dust was settling in America in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and we had to go start our new
Speaker 1: universities like the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, like Calvin
Speaker 1: College and Wheaton and other places. Over in Germany, once
Speaker 1: again was this nefarious thing happening, And now we know
Speaker 1: it was critical theory, which was a Freudian Marxist sort
Speaker 1: of synthesis that eventually their leaders came over and they
Speaker 1: taught in our brightest universities, and then within about fifteen
Speaker 1: years the founders of postmodernism began, and that was in France.
Speaker 1: We hear names like Leotard or Deredaf or Deconstructionism or
Speaker 1: fu cot all of these guys. When we think postmodernism,
Speaker 1: maybe we think relativism, skepticism toward a meta narrative or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if they're relativists, then it means that their politics
Speaker 1: ought to be everything from far left to far right.
Speaker 1: But the surprising fact is that they weren't. They were
Speaker 1: all uber left. They were called the new left. They
Speaker 1: were card carrying members of the French Communist Party or
Speaker 1: sympathizers with it. And so they were taking off from
Speaker 1: the scientific naturalism, moving in now to the neo Marxist synthesis,
Speaker 1: the Freudian Marxists adding to it, this new postmodern witch
Speaker 1: is brew So we can go into that or not,
Speaker 1: but it is this new phenomena that eventually came over
Speaker 1: to our universities and they went into the humanities and
Speaker 1: social sciences, whereas the First Revolution went into the hard sciences.
Speaker 1: And these guys, eventually, decades into it, started making their
Speaker 1: move and started kicking out the first guard. And by
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, you know, the ratio of liberal
Speaker 1: the conservative professor was two point three to one. In
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years, it's now twenty three to
Speaker 1: one or twenty seven to one for the IVY leagues.
Speaker 1: In some places it's seventy to one, at Yale at
Speaker 1: seventy eight to one. And so these are not viewpoint
Speaker 1: diversity academies at all. So we need to be preparing
Speaker 1: and understanding what's coming from upstream is coming downstream, and
Speaker 1: this is what's pushed out the Richard Dawkinses and the
Speaker 1: Peter Bagosians and the Elon Musks and the RFK and
Speaker 1: Tulsi Gabbards and everybody else into this cultural revolution. We
Speaker 1: are in an ideological revolution. And so rather than just
Speaker 1: a simple definition of woke, what I like to do
Speaker 1: is I like to layer it for you and I
Speaker 1: as trained philosophers helping out everybody else to see that
Speaker 1: philosophy is. It's kind of simple. It's three branches. It's
Speaker 1: what is real? How do we know what is real?
Speaker 1: How should we then live based on what we know
Speaker 1: about reality? Woke is part of epistemology, it's part of knowledge,
Speaker 1: so it fits right in there. But this whole woke
Speaker 1: worldview part of the critical race theory or the postmodern
Speaker 1: cultural Marxism. It's got a metaphysic at epistemology and an
Speaker 1: ethic or what is real? How do I know what
Speaker 1: is real? How should I then live based on what
Speaker 1: I know about reality? And so I choose not to
Speaker 1: define this popular slogan of DEI in that way. I
Speaker 1: do it dee because the D fits in metaphysics, what
Speaker 1: is real in human relations, the I fits in epistemology inclusivity,
Speaker 1: and the E fits in ethics equity, and it goes
Speaker 1: in that order. And this will help us understand what
Speaker 1: woke really is and eventually why I think it's a
Speaker 1: misnomer to be applied to the right inasmuch as we've
Speaker 1: got problems there. We need to use terms accurately and
Speaker 1: be clear about what we're saying, because we can't provide
Speaker 1: an adequate prescription if we don't have an adequate diagnosis.
Speaker 2: So, okay, super fair. There's been a lot of books written.
Speaker 2: This actually just got in the mail today Post Woke
Speaker 2: by Neil shanv one of my favorite kind of popular
Speaker 2: level books on this. I know you guys Rascho Christy
Speaker 2: did a great pamphlet with him some of the rudimentary
Speaker 2: ideas of this that's really really well done. So we
Speaker 2: talked about what kind of wokeism is here and in
Speaker 2: the culture, but we haven't talked about it on the
Speaker 2: woke right. And I'm totally up for you persuading me
Speaker 2: and convincing me not to use the term woke right.
Speaker 2: I've somewhat adopted it because I've heard it used didn't
Speaker 2: really see the harm in it. So before we talk
Speaker 2: about what's meant by that, why does it matter? Why
Speaker 2: is it whether we call something woke left or woke right?
Speaker 2: Why do you think the terms that we use really matter?
Speaker 1: As I just said, because if we don't have an
Speaker 1: adequate diagnosis, we can't offer an adequate prescription, okay, and
Speaker 1: the words we use matter. We want it to be accurate.
Speaker 1: We want it to be truthful, we want it to
Speaker 1: be helpful. And already it's taken a lot of effort
Speaker 1: to try to get people to understand what woke itself is.
Speaker 1: And now if we start applying it in the wrong area,
Speaker 1: we end up running into a couple of problems. One
Speaker 1: is this both sideism narrative. Right after Charlie Kirk was assassinated,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of sympathy in the country for
Speaker 1: about twenty four hours, and then you started seeing some
Speaker 1: really you know, nasty language coming out from people who
Speaker 1: thought of him poorly and thought of conservatives poorly, and
Speaker 1: the the temperature started to raise with all of that.
Speaker 1: And it was after that that people started to choose
Speaker 1: sides and push away from where Charlie Kirk was going,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to adopt this name that had been
Speaker 1: given to them, called the woke right. But something required
Speaker 1: a pause. This both sides ism that was happening was that,
Speaker 1: you know, assassinations happen on both sides, We have extremists
Speaker 1: on both sides. Violence is both both sides. In fact,
Speaker 1: political violence happens more on the right than it happens
Speaker 1: on the left. So you started seeing data sets coming
Speaker 1: out in the social media showing that on the right
Speaker 1: political violence is far worse. Most people aren't going to
Speaker 1: look that up. They're just going to wonder about it
Speaker 1: until you start to open up the hood and see
Speaker 1: what's under there. They're considering neo Nazis on the right,
Speaker 1: and you might think Nazism as a kind of socialism,
Speaker 1: maybe it should be left. They've got the KKK on
Speaker 1: the right. Well, the Democratic Party invented the KKK. They
Speaker 1: have Islamists on the right. They don't account for a
Speaker 1: lot of the trans shooters in this category and so forth.
Speaker 1: So you started to see cherry picking happening with the data,
Speaker 1: and the effect of the both sidesism is that, wow,
Speaker 1: we've got problems on both sides. Everybody's got extremists. Let's
Speaker 1: just all beware of the extremists. So the reality is
Speaker 1: that people on the right, not everybody, but those that
Speaker 1: are conservatives, and more deeply, what are they trying to conserve,
Speaker 1: and that is they're deeply held religious beliefs beginning with
Speaker 1: Genesis one twenty six. We are made in God's image.
Speaker 1: That's why black lives matter, That's why all lives matter.
Speaker 1: That's why liberals, conservatives lives matter, everyone's matters, because God
Speaker 1: is the sanctifier of human life. And so you would
Speaker 1: think it predictable that you're not going to have as
Speaker 1: much violence on the right. Forget just the abortion question.
Speaker 1: Is violence even political violence? And you start to look
Speaker 1: at the left and you start to see most atheists
Speaker 1: vote left. They feel most comfortable in that camp Republican
Speaker 1: and Democrat. That's superficial. Below that is conservative and liberal
Speaker 1: or Marxist now, and below that is secularism or religion. Well,
Speaker 1: those things should have consequences in the behaviors. And so
Speaker 1: I think when we have this both sides ism, what
Speaker 1: happened then is it sort of neutralized the conversation and
Speaker 1: that there's just bad violence on the left and the right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true, but if we can't really diagnose the problem,
Speaker 1: we can't offer a prescription. And I contend that the
Speaker 1: violence is predominantly on the left. We have you know this,
Speaker 1: this notion of what's it called an assassination culture now
Speaker 1: came out of the Washington Post. And when Luigi Mangioni
Speaker 1: assassinated Brian Thomas Thompson of United Healthcare, what was amazing.
Speaker 1: Wasn't just that he came from University of Pennsylvania as
Speaker 1: a graduate student and so forth, but how many people
Speaker 1: in gen Z were lauding him as a heathen? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you started to see and then out of
Speaker 1: Rutgers came this study that showed that fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of those who claim to be on the left think
Speaker 1: it justifiable to assassinate President Trump. And so you're finding
Speaker 1: all of these other studies that counterbalance the other side.
Speaker 1: So that said that both sides is, I think is
Speaker 1: an effect we want to avoid if it is inaccurate
Speaker 1: just throwing terms around. The other thing is hang.
Speaker 2: On before you come the SEGMENTE. I just want to
Speaker 2: make sure I'm tracking with you, because there's multiple questions
Speaker 2: at play here. There's a question of like, is the
Speaker 2: left more violent than the right? Who do we characterize
Speaker 2: as the left? Who do we characterize as the right.
Speaker 2: And there's the question of should we even call what's
Speaker 2: on the right woke right? And the way we call
Speaker 2: something on the woke left. Your concern, just to make
Speaker 2: sure I understand, is you think if we just call
Speaker 2: woke left and woke right, it leads to kind of
Speaker 2: a relativistic or a neutral playing field. Resay, Well, there's
Speaker 2: just problems on the left and the right, and it's
Speaker 2: all equal, and we fail to show where the problem
Speaker 2: really lies. That's your concern. Did I capture that fairly?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And there is a distinction you've seen it made on
Speaker 1: social media between the left and the new left. The
Speaker 1: new left is the Marxist left. It's the illiberal left,
Speaker 1: contrary to the old left, those who are liberal. So
Speaker 1: someone like Peter Bagosian would call himself a liberal. He's
Speaker 1: the old left. But the left has been classically liberal,
Speaker 1: even if atheist, but they would believe. And this is
Speaker 1: where Peter Bogosian and I, as allies, we adopted Voltaire's
Speaker 1: statement together, who is a deist? I may disagree with
Speaker 1: what you say, but I would defend to the death.
Speaker 1: You're right to say it. But Stalin comes along and
Speaker 1: says something more like, ideas are more powerful than weapons.
Speaker 1: We don't allow our enemies to have weapons, so why
Speaker 1: should we let them have ideas. That's the heart of
Speaker 1: cancel culture. And it is primarily on the left, not
Speaker 1: just anecdotally in my experience, but according to data where
Speaker 1: the cancel culture is rooted in. And it's not in
Speaker 1: the old left either, it's in primarily the new Left.
Speaker 1: So there is something happening over on the left that
Speaker 1: has been infiltrated by this post modern cultural Marxist zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: It's a worldview that started outside of America and came
Speaker 1: into America, and it happened to infiltrate into the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party more so than into the Republican Party, probably because
Speaker 1: it was already leaning toward a secularist base. But now
Speaker 1: you've got this thing happening on the right which is
Speaker 1: a reaction to their experienced people's experiences, their lived experiences
Speaker 1: on the left. So let me explain that lived experience,
Speaker 1: because that's where rests. Okay, So when we think about
Speaker 1: this in terms of what is real? How do I
Speaker 1: know what is real? How should I then live based
Speaker 1: on what I know about reality? Metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
Speaker 1: the three branches of philosophy. Diversity in academia means you
Speaker 1: locate all of these and you identify all of these
Speaker 1: identity politics groups and you formulate them on the two
Speaker 1: sides of the haves and the have nots. The oppressed
Speaker 1: and the oppressors, the victims and the victimizers, And you're
Speaker 1: either in one camp or the other, and you might
Speaker 1: have multiple intersectional levels of this. You might be black
Speaker 1: and not white, woman and not man, transgender and not cisgender, whatever.
Speaker 1: But everybody belongs to at least one, and most people
Speaker 1: to multiple of these classes. And what you do with
Speaker 1: that at this point comes next. But first, this is important.
Speaker 1: It's not just that you've divided oppressor and oppress e camps.
Speaker 1: It's the nature the definition of the oppression is not
Speaker 1: just psychologized, but it's also embedded in an entire worldview.
Speaker 1: I've heard you say on one of your podcasts, quoting
Speaker 1: Thomas Soul, Jonathan Height says it a lot too, that
Speaker 1: disparate treatment does not entail disparate outcomes. In other words,
Speaker 1: inequality entails injustice. And they would say, no, it doesn't,
Speaker 1: but if you're part of the Marxist ideology, you believe
Speaker 1: absolutely it does. It's not just oppression, and you know
Speaker 1: someone being oppressed by someone else, And so that claim
Speaker 1: being true of people on the right, and that claim
Speaker 1: being true of people every year of every Earth year
Speaker 1: that we've existed, it's a particular philosophy that inequality entails
Speaker 1: in justice always. It's that kind of oppression. And the
Speaker 1: epistemology then is that those people who are the oppressed,
Speaker 1: they have special insight once they have emerged with what
Speaker 1: is called critical consciousness in Marx's thought. It's part of
Speaker 1: what is called standpoint epistemology. Your standpoint theory started in
Speaker 1: second wave feminism by people like Sandra Harding, who applied
Speaker 1: it first in feminism, but she says she got it
Speaker 1: from Marx. And so you have a special esoteric knowledge
Speaker 1: based on your positionality or based on your social location,
Speaker 1: and you have special insights. So you were once blind,
Speaker 1: but now you see the other people they could just listen,
Speaker 1: learn and lament because they're blind. The us they can
Speaker 1: be is be less white, or be less male, or
Speaker 1: be less whatever. But you have special insight. And so
Speaker 1: we should include practice inclusivity only for those who are
Speaker 1: part of the oppressed camps. We should exalt them, promote them,
Speaker 1: give them platforms and d platform or exclude those who
Speaker 1: are the oppressors. And then what you do next in
Speaker 1: ethics is, if the problem is social oppression, the solution
Speaker 1: is social liberation. Liberational consciousness, and it is equity, revenge, reparations,
Speaker 1: payback for however long. Now, what's going on here is
Speaker 1: these guys, ultimately, at least this is what they say.
Speaker 1: They imagine for the Beatles song, imagine this utopia, this
Speaker 1: communist utopia where we're all sharing things in common and
Speaker 1: there's no more competition, there's no haves and have nots.
Speaker 1: It requires a little bloodshed, the dictatorship of the proletariat,
Speaker 1: but after a while they give it back to the people.
Speaker 1: The state just withers away, and we've got this harmony
Speaker 1: across the land. Their ultimate goal is utopia and equality.
Speaker 1: It's egalitarian. None of those things in d I E.
Speaker 1: Are what we're seeing on those who are charged with
Speaker 1: being woke. Right, These people who are say white Christian nationalists,
Speaker 1: if they are out there, and they are, they're not
Speaker 1: people who think that inequality entels injustice. They think inequality
Speaker 1: is the right way to go. But they're supremacists. They
Speaker 1: need to be on top. Their ultimate goal is not
Speaker 1: equality egalitarianism. Their ultimate goal is to have themselves on
Speaker 1: top and have perpetual inequality. We don't call the Confederate
Speaker 1: soldiers woke. We don't call the Nazis woke, they're just
Speaker 1: white supremacists. And so what's going on here with these
Speaker 1: people on the woke right being charged with, Well, they're
Speaker 1: involved in identity politics, you know, white supremacy or Christian
Speaker 1: supremacy or male patriarchy and imposing their viewpoints on other people. Okay,
Speaker 1: their tactics are similar, their methods might be similar, but
Speaker 1: they're metaphysic, they're epistemology, and their ethic they're not the same.
Speaker 1: And so while there are similarities, there aren't relevant similarities
Speaker 1: to provide necessary and sufficient conditions to defining what woke
Speaker 1: really is and what we've tried so hard to do
Speaker 1: to get people to understand what this revolution is and
Speaker 1: where it came from. People on the so called woke
Speaker 1: right don't believe those things.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's take this one by one and break
Speaker 2: this down. I think I'm seeing the distinction that you're
Speaker 2: making that you're saying woke left and woke right have
Speaker 2: maybe some similarities on the surface, but when you go
Speaker 2: beneath the surface, then those similarities fade. Hence we shouldn't
Speaker 2: use the same terms. So let's start with what you
Speaker 2: call epistemology. Now these are big, fancy philosophical terms, but
Speaker 2: it basically just means knowledge. It's the study of how
Speaker 2: we know things through testimony, through intuition, through science, and
Speaker 2: when it comes to what's on the what you call
Speaker 2: cultural Marxism wokeism, the way to know something is through
Speaker 2: standpoint epistemology. That's the term that's used that if you
Speaker 2: have certain intersections, so a certain economic status, a certain
Speaker 2: sexual orientation, a certain approach and understanding of your gender,
Speaker 2: if you're able bodied, if you're certain religion. By the way,
Speaker 2: earlier you said all of us have at least one Corey,
Speaker 2: I have none of them. I don't think I have
Speaker 2: a single one. I'm not sure you do either. When
Speaker 2: I show the chart of intersectionality of my students, I say,
Speaker 2: I'm actually the face of oppression. Now I'm not rich,
Speaker 2: but I live in southern Orange County. I'm doing fine,
Speaker 2: so compared to the rest of the world, I guess
Speaker 2: on some level I would maybe check that box just
Speaker 2: living where I live. But the point being, based on
Speaker 2: a certain standpoint you have of a category or characteristic
Speaker 2: you belong to, you have special knowledge and insight because
Speaker 2: of that because of my sexual orientation, because I'm male
Speaker 2: or female. Because whatever it is you're saying, that doesn't
Speaker 2: carry over to the woke right. They don't have the
Speaker 2: same kind of epistemology. Then what kind of epistemology does
Speaker 2: this group that we call the woe right have and
Speaker 2: how is it different from standpoint epistemology?
Speaker 1: The similarities and I, like I said, at surface level,
Speaker 1: they are on the level of the same behaviors imposing
Speaker 1: our ideologies, maybe deplatforming in some cases. They are fixated
Speaker 1: on certain identities. But I want to be careful with
Speaker 1: identity politics because identity politics as such was rooted in
Speaker 1: this Marxist New Left understanding of group identity being either
Speaker 1: in the oppressor or oppressed groups. They don't adopt that
Speaker 1: social binary metaphysic. They don't adopt the standpoint epistemology when
Speaker 1: it comes to knowledge, and they don't adopt the egalitarian
Speaker 1: ultimate goal because they might be supremacist in these ways.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me, let me, let me rudely jump in.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to grasp you're arguing here, So let's come
Speaker 2: back to they don't adopt the egalitarian you said. They
Speaker 2: don't adopt identity politics, oppressor and oppressed. What I hear
Speaker 2: coming from is people flipping it and saying, oh, it
Speaker 2: is the white Christian male who are those who are
Speaker 2: being oppressed? And they'll give examples of how they think
Speaker 2: this is the case. So it seems to me, unless
Speaker 2: I'm missing something, they're kind of adopting the same kind
Speaker 2: of framework that's given to them from the woke left,
Speaker 2: but saying instead saying, no, it's not black people, it's
Speaker 2: not straight people. I'm sorry, it's not gay people, it's
Speaker 2: not transgender, it's not poor people. It's white male Christians
Speaker 2: understood a certain way, who are the ones who are
Speaker 2: being oppressed? So why am I wrong in terms of
Speaker 2: them adopting the same framework but just switching who who
Speaker 2: is actually the oppressed versus the oppressor? When it comes
Speaker 2: to this, Wolk right.
Speaker 1: It's the necessity operator in logic, in equality entails injustice,
Speaker 1: or inequality might intel injustice. What caused the inequality? You
Speaker 1: know some study show, for example, and I've seen you
Speaker 1: use this. Neil has used this illustration in job employment.
Speaker 1: If you just give names and they sound like say
Speaker 1: African American or Hispanic names, they might get passed over
Speaker 1: for some more white sounding name. Likewise, you could find
Speaker 1: things on the opposite side where the Supreme Court needs
Speaker 1: to weigh in, because clearly there was racist admissions hiring
Speaker 1: at Harvard and University of North Carolina and so forth.
Speaker 1: So we're not saying that these white males haven't been oppressed,
Speaker 1: or that there isn't oppression among blacks or Hispanics or
Speaker 1: something like that. There may well be, but that's an
Speaker 1: empirical matter. We have to go investigate that. We have
Speaker 1: to look at the facts. But the facts are our hindsight,
Speaker 1: those are our second most. If it doesn't fall into
Speaker 1: the theory, you push it out. The metaphysics simply is
Speaker 1: inequality entails injustice. If there's an unequal outcome, it's because
Speaker 1: it's caused by injustice, full stop. And so someone like
Speaker 1: ib Ibrames Kendy, he's not going to be interested in
Speaker 1: your stats. He's always just going to say there's an outcome,
Speaker 1: whether it's SAT scores or whatever. If blacks are always
Speaker 1: down here and whites are always up here, there must
Speaker 1: be It's a must, it's a necessity. Operator there must
Speaker 1: be some causal link of injustice. Something nefarious go going on.
Speaker 1: Thomas Sulla comes along in his book on Disparities Right.
Speaker 1: He shows that no, there's there's awful. There's an awful
Speaker 1: lot of possible explanations for inequality. Sometimes it's unjust, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just because of the river systems or the
Speaker 1: social policies or whatever.
Speaker 2: We don't know, all right, let me so, let me
Speaker 2: jump in. I wouldn't normally do this a guest, but
Speaker 2: you and I have friends, We go way back, and
Speaker 2: I'm really trying to understand the case that you're making here.
Speaker 2: You're saying, so the book left, it's built into their
Speaker 2: ideology and the worldview from the ground up that these
Speaker 2: categories mean by definition, that there is inequality built in
Speaker 2: and any sign of any inequity different outcome is proof
Speaker 2: of the inequalities. So they so they that's not a
Speaker 2: negotiable part. That's not something you have to prove by
Speaker 2: empirical evidence. That is a starting point its opera. It's
Speaker 2: an a priori how they know and understand the world.
Speaker 2: This woke right is flipping it on its head and
Speaker 2: saying no, actually, we're the ones who are pressed here,
Speaker 2: but not because they start with the same world views,
Speaker 2: saying by definition, white Christian males, etc. Are oppressed. They're
Speaker 2: saying in practice, this is what's happened. So it's reactionary
Speaker 2: against it. It's almost parasitic upon it, rather than the
Speaker 2: same kind of built in ideology from the bottom up.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 1: Right? That's right? And there are some people like James Lindsay,
Speaker 1: for example, who was part of the New Atheists years ago.
Speaker 1: He's now a conservative. He's done a lot to educate
Speaker 1: even Christians in Christian movements.
Speaker 2: He's an atheist still right now.
Speaker 1: He's agnostic now and he's playing with the idea of God.
Speaker 1: Peter Bagozian now wants to call himself a skeptic and
Speaker 1: not so much an atheist. It's interesting to see what happens,
Speaker 1: you know, in this is in this cultural revolutionary moment.
Speaker 1: Where was I going with that?
Speaker 2: Oh man, I cut you off. Sorry, Corey, Shoot, you're
Speaker 2: making a point about James Lindsay.
Speaker 1: Oh Lindsay, who is one of the biggest educators on
Speaker 1: this a year ago when I was looking at his stuff,
Speaker 1: he was the one who sort of popularized this notion
Speaker 1: woke right, and now every blogger is starting to use it.
Speaker 1: But even he said back then I'm not comfortable with
Speaker 1: the term. And then two months ago I saw him
Speaker 1: again using the term and he said, I use it
Speaker 1: loosely of the right. And then today when i'm rea
Speaker 1: a material, once again he's applying it on the surface
Speaker 1: level of behavior, of tactics, of methodology. He's not going
Speaker 1: to the deeper philosophical issues. One of my other friends
Speaker 1: that we've mentioned, Neil Shenvy, is also very careful as
Speaker 1: a scholar, and he gets in many of the essential ingredients,
Speaker 1: but he misses certain aspects that I've just pointed out
Speaker 1: that need to be packed in because they're baked into
Speaker 1: the philosophy of the identity politic on the left that
Speaker 1: can't be on the right. Once anyone does accept that
Speaker 1: they're automatically on the left, it's a Marxist left, it's
Speaker 1: a new left. And so even Nil Shenvy says, if
Speaker 1: you don't like the term, I understand, maybe use a
Speaker 1: different term, like dissident right or the new right. And
Speaker 1: so I say, okay, so that we don't confuse things,
Speaker 1: let's do it now. There is another major thinker who's
Speaker 1: got a book out there called The Case for Christian Nationalism,
Speaker 1: and that is Stephen Wolfe. He's part of the reformed movement.
Speaker 1: Not everybody in that movement likes what he's doing. Some
Speaker 1: people like theologian Kevin Dejung first challenged him on it
Speaker 1: and asked, you know, whether his idea of imposing this
Speaker 1: Christian nationalism, this white Christian nationalism, what does it do
Speaker 1: with the First Amendment? For example? Was the First Amendment
Speaker 1: a mistake? You know, what are we going to do
Speaker 1: with the Muslims, What are we going to do with
Speaker 1: the Mormons, what do we do with the Baptists? And
Speaker 1: what do we do with the Catholics. Nick Fuentes, who's
Speaker 1: often said to be one of those on the woke right,
Speaker 1: well he's a Catholic and America's founding was largely Protestant,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of messiness there. But even Stephen
Speaker 1: wolf he's one who actually says explicitly, I'm going to
Speaker 1: advocate that we take the principles of critical theory and
Speaker 1: we make them work for us with a different starting
Speaker 1: point to give us the wanted, desirable conclusion. The problem
Speaker 1: is when you start to read his comments on it,
Speaker 1: he doesn't understand the essential ingredients going into again the metaphysics, epistemology,
Speaker 1: and ethics either. So we need clarity philosophically from the
Speaker 1: three branches of philosophy. What do we mean by these
Speaker 1: social binaries? What is packed in in the woke left
Speaker 1: is not what the right is appealing to. Stephen Wolf
Speaker 1: is not going to embrace that view on the reality
Speaker 1: of social binaries. He's not going to embrace the next
Speaker 1: category or the final category either. So we can call
Speaker 1: it that, as Lindsay says, loosely, we can say we're
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with it. We can come up with a different
Speaker 1: term for it. And I lawd that, and I say,
Speaker 1: I think we do need a different term because it
Speaker 1: only confuses and already confusing issue.
Speaker 2: Okay, So who falls in this category of what we
Speaker 2: would call the woke right and is it similar on
Speaker 2: the surface when we say the woke left. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of different people that kind of fall into that category.
Speaker 2: Some would identify as Christians, some would identify more as materialists,
Speaker 2: even though I know you would argue that the world
Speaker 2: view behind it is more materialist with its Marxist roots.
Speaker 2: But who would be some of the key figures whatever
Speaker 2: we call it? Aside for now, the new right, the
Speaker 2: dissident right. Some still refer to the woke right. We've
Speaker 2: talked about issues to that. Who'd be some of the
Speaker 2: key people that you would place in that category.
Speaker 1: I think you would consider someone like Steven Wolf who
Speaker 1: is Reformed Protestant, and you would consider someone like Nick Fuentes, okay,
Speaker 1: who is Catholic and he has the followers that are
Speaker 1: now called the Gropers, and he's the hottest thing now
Speaker 1: in social media. Almost no one knew of him. He
Speaker 1: started out with Daily Wire trying to get in there,
Speaker 1: and Ben Shapiro just went scorched Earth on him a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. Because when you're speaking to conservatives
Speaker 1: and you use the term woke and you stick that
Speaker 1: on someone like a dirty sock, immediately amongst a conservative audience,
Speaker 1: there is a visceral effect. And that's the intent is
Speaker 1: to stick someone like Fuentes right or wrong. You stick
Speaker 1: them with this notion woke that already has a a
Speaker 1: negative term, a negative connotation to it, and you get
Speaker 1: rid of your enemies. And there is a lot going
Speaker 1: on there with we could get into this the whole
Speaker 1: issue of anti Semitism Israel. Israel is actually somewhat central
Speaker 1: to many of these people that are charged with being
Speaker 1: on the woke right.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let me chum up here. I want to
Speaker 2: come back to some of Fuince's beliefs and the appeal,
Speaker 2: because I think he by far represents what's called again
Speaker 2: the woke right, and it does concern me, and I
Speaker 2: want to come back to your level of concern with that.
Speaker 2: But let's maybe just let's maybe take a step back
Speaker 2: and compare and contrast. You said, we want to make
Speaker 2: this simple. There's ethics how we live, there's epistemology, how
Speaker 2: we know, and there's metaphysics what is real? So presumably
Speaker 2: on the woke side, you would say the woke left,
Speaker 2: what is real is more materialism with its Marxist ruth.
Speaker 2: There might be exceptions, but it's more of an atheist
Speaker 2: materialist worldview. Would you agree with that? Is that what
Speaker 2: you would argue for wokeism?
Speaker 1: That's most consistent for it. But yes, it has, As
Speaker 1: Antonio gramscy envisioned, you must infiltrate the long march through
Speaker 1: the institutions, which were academia, media, and ecclesia, until we
Speaker 1: get into the churches, the seminaries, the Christian academic societies,
Speaker 1: campus ministries. We haven't done our job yet. So while
Speaker 1: it's grounded historically on naturalism, it can be divorced from that. Okay,
Speaker 1: and that's I think what has happened with progressive Christians.
Speaker 2: Okay, got it, which is a whole other conversation. That's fair.
Speaker 2: I don't want to put everybody who embraces a kind
Speaker 2: of woke belief in the atheist camp. That be far
Speaker 2: too simplistic. But it's roots that makes sense. Epistemology, how
Speaker 2: we know stuff, lived experience, and ethics, how we should live.
Speaker 2: You talked about we should if you're not in one
Speaker 2: of those categories, wake up to your contribution to the
Speaker 2: oppression and become an ally to those who are fighting
Speaker 2: against oppression. That's how we should live. Let's shift that
Speaker 2: to this new dissonent. Right, is it possible to put
Speaker 2: it in similar categories or is it just so broad
Speaker 2: and different that we can't simplify it in that same way.
Speaker 1: You can put them in identity categories, but the identity
Speaker 1: politic or identity power is not going to be the same. Remember,
Speaker 1: the end goal for someone like a let's say Nick Fuentes,
Speaker 1: Let's just say he was actually a white supremacist. There
Speaker 1: might be more reason to think that Stephen wolf Is
Speaker 1: than Nick fuents Is when you get down to their
Speaker 1: real views and not just their performative actions. In any case,
Speaker 1: let's say he is really a white supremacist. Well, we
Speaker 1: don't call the Confederate soldiers woke just because they're white supremacist.
Speaker 1: They weren't Marxists. They were Theists, at least on paper,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have this idea of egalitarian utopia in
Speaker 1: the future. Their idea was that and they would cite
Speaker 1: as much Darwinian science and Confederate theology as it took
Speaker 1: to convince people that they were superior to blacks. Right,
Speaker 1: So you can have an identity power in this new
Speaker 1: movement on the right, but it doesn't connote the same
Speaker 1: thing as the wokeness on the left, which has the
Speaker 1: necessity operator inequality entails injustice. Disparate outcomes always must entail
Speaker 1: disparate treatment. They're saying, we we agree that there should
Speaker 1: be unequal outcomes. That's fully just we're superior. They're they're
Speaker 1: not in the same category. And to complicate things even more,
Speaker 1: you have Fuentes, for example, befriending others that are in
Speaker 1: the black community that are blacks of premacists, and so
Speaker 1: talk about the identity politic like say a Lewis Farakahn,
Speaker 1: or you know, think about anyone who's a member of
Speaker 1: the black supremacist movement. It might be smaller than the
Speaker 1: white supremacist movement, but neither of those supremacist are egalitarian,
Speaker 1: so they can't technically be classified as woke, falling under
Speaker 1: the categories of D, I and E once we define
Speaker 1: the terms in philosophy.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you don't like the term woke, and I
Speaker 2: think you've made your case that there's similar practices, they're
Speaker 2: similar maybe strategies, but the belief system underlying it is
Speaker 2: fundamentally different. And that makes sense to me. I think
Speaker 2: I'm with you on that. What would you say to
Speaker 2: somebody who just said okay, or actually, let me refrain that.
Speaker 2: So maybe we shouldn't use the term woke, But you
Speaker 2: still are okay with the term right. So we've got
Speaker 2: kind of the woke left, we've got the dissident right,
Speaker 2: the new right.
Speaker 1: The problematic right, whatever we.
Speaker 2: Want to call them. And you know, I haven't done
Speaker 2: a deep dive on violence on the left versus violence
Speaker 2: on the right. How concern I am with the left
Speaker 2: concerned I am with the right. I just I have
Speaker 2: not personally done a deep dive on that, but I
Speaker 2: can tell you some of that stuff I'm hearing fwent
Speaker 2: to say, and talking with young people on campuses. You know,
Speaker 2: I teach it talbot, I teach a bio. But I'm
Speaker 2: out speaking on campuses all the time. This is bubbling
Speaker 2: up and it concerns me. It concerns me a lot.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you're seeing on college campuses in terms
Speaker 2: of this dissident right, and what do you think the
Speaker 2: attraction is for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, first of all, the final chapter in my
Speaker 1: book is called Maga and the morning after I asked
Speaker 1: the question, can America be made great again if America
Speaker 1: is not made good again? And I say no, America's
Speaker 1: greatness comes from her goodness. And if we don't reestablish
Speaker 1: that revolutionary foundation, we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: politicize this without violence. And this is the concern of
Speaker 1: some of those on the right because they are saying
Speaker 1: and the younger generation, and I'm talking to gen z
Speaker 1: ers saying this, They say, we thought Charlie Kirk may
Speaker 1: have been the way, but they killed him. It's not
Speaker 1: the way. It's ineffective. Not even Trump is the way.
Speaker 1: The whole thing needs to burn down. Some of them
Speaker 1: are just anti GOP, so they're right, but it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily Republican as far as they're concerned. Let the whole
Speaker 1: thing burn down and start all over. But their vision
Speaker 1: tends to be more political. In my estimation, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: it needs to be more transformational. We need to be
Speaker 1: thinking about soul saving, but we also need to think
Speaker 1: about institutional recapture because the institutions are critical. James Davison Hunter,
Speaker 1: who wrote the book To Change the World, says that
Speaker 1: even when you look back at many of the Christian
Speaker 1: revivals that were substantial or cultural revolutions or movements, they
Speaker 1: may start out in among the masses, but they never
Speaker 1: really get traction until they're baptized by the elite. And
Speaker 1: so my claim is in the original title of the
Speaker 1: book is the third revolution from the campus to the
Speaker 1: culture and a vision forward. As goes the campus, so
Speaker 1: goes the culture. As goes the US campus, so goes
Speaker 1: the world. It's that influential. You can't escape it because
Speaker 1: everything is coming from camp down into the corporate world,
Speaker 1: into the churches, into the seminaries, into your closets, even
Speaker 1: you've got your cell phones there. And everybody, even if
Speaker 1: they're not called to go back on campus, needs to
Speaker 1: prepare for this false, poisonous ideology coming from the campuses
Speaker 1: because you can no longer escape it. So when we
Speaker 1: look at where the statistics are going right now with
Speaker 1: the young men and the young women on the campuses,
Speaker 1: the young the young women are going more progressive, and
Speaker 1: there is a demographic feminization of academia across the board.
Speaker 1: More young girls are enrolled in college, more girls in
Speaker 1: graduate school in PhD programs, more assistant professorships, and within
Speaker 1: the next decade, more university presidents and full professors. The
Speaker 1: whole thing will be demographically feminized. That's not even talking
Speaker 1: about ideological feminization and all that it entels and implications
Speaker 1: that it'll have for the church. For example, if you're
Speaker 1: going to college to get graduate degrees, you're going to
Speaker 1: want to go get a job for a while, and
Speaker 1: that's going to put off, you know, baby making. And
Speaker 1: if the women are getting the higher degrees, and the
Speaker 1: higher degrees you have translates into higher paychecks. The woman
Speaker 1: is going to be the breadwinner going forward, including in
Speaker 1: Christian traditional homes. What is that going to look like
Speaker 1: for everybody going forward? The men do happen to have
Speaker 1: a greater zest for spirituality right now, but who are
Speaker 1: they going to again? Are they following Jordan Peterson or
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, who perhaps haven't crossed over quite yet, they're
Speaker 1: not yet Christians, but very close. Are they following Andrew Tait,
Speaker 1: who's advocating red pelling everybody you know, pushing back against
Speaker 1: feminism in a very unhealthy, non Christian sort of way.
Speaker 1: Or are they following someone like a Nick Flintests. And
Speaker 1: even if you exonerate Nick flintests on his real views
Speaker 1: and not just the performative views or the you know,
Speaker 1: clips that people take of him. Nonetheless, he's got enough
Speaker 1: groupers who really are women haters, haters of Jews, haters
Speaker 1: of blacks. I've met many of them too, the men.
Speaker 1: Ironically on college campuses, in our college campuses anyway, are
Speaker 1: our groups are dominated by men over women. Men flock
Speaker 1: to engineering programs, women flock to nursing programs. Men flock
Speaker 1: to apologetics more than the women do. So we have
Speaker 1: an opportunity for these men who are now reacting to
Speaker 1: a culture that they are so sick of being battered
Speaker 1: by as toxic, masculine and mails. The best hope you
Speaker 1: could ever be is Homer Simpson. And so they are
Speaker 1: coming back to some conservative roots. But where they're landing
Speaker 1: it's competitive right now. We need to go after them.
Speaker 1: They're open. There's a crisis of belief that Justin Brierly
Speaker 1: might talk about. Yeah, and it's an opportune moment for
Speaker 1: us to capture the men. And when the men convert,
Speaker 1: and when the men have families and they take their
Speaker 1: families to church, the statistics show the kids come to
Speaker 1: church more often if the dad comes than if the
Speaker 1: mom comes. So this is a good thing that these men,
Speaker 1: these young men are open right now. But Nick Frentes
Speaker 1: is after Charlie Kirk's young men, and he says, explative, explative, explative,
Speaker 1: we ft TPUSA. Your young men are following us, They're
Speaker 1: going in his direction. How many I don't know yet,
Speaker 1: none of us do. The young women we need to
Speaker 1: in the field of Christian apost pogetics and evangelism, we
Speaker 1: need to find a better way to reach them, especially
Speaker 1: on the campuses, and it might be through a new
Speaker 1: developing field we could talk about as rhetorical apologetics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely could.
Speaker 1: But they're the ones that are the majoritarians now, and
Speaker 1: in critical race theory, they're not talking about just numeric majority.
Speaker 1: They're talking about minoritization or majoritarian the positions of power.
Speaker 1: So now women are ascending to and within the decade
Speaker 1: they will be at the top positions of power in
Speaker 1: all of these universities, and that will have implications.
Speaker 2: It definitely will. Let me ask you, I have so
Speaker 2: many questions for you about this. You help me kind
Speaker 2: of work this out real time. But part of me,
Speaker 2: and I know a skeptic would say something like Corey,
Speaker 2: why are we putting so much emphasis in the long
Speaker 2: term institution of the universe city Even even Charlie Kirk
Speaker 2: wrote a book on like the Scam of College and
Speaker 2: you can self educate today. It would make sense in
Speaker 2: the early part of the twentieth century that the university
Speaker 2: would be so significant, But now things aren't moving out
Speaker 2: from the university. They're moving from influencers, and they're moving
Speaker 2: from podcasters and YouTubers and TikTokers, etc. So what's the
Speaker 2: big deal about the university. What would you say to that.
Speaker 1: It's true, but prestige still matters. The name of where
Speaker 1: you hail from, where you graduated from, where you work matters.
Speaker 1: The New York Times has less subscribers than say, at
Speaker 1: the USA today, but the New York Times is still
Speaker 1: the paper of record.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: Harvard. As conservatives, we might disdain Harvard right now, but
Speaker 1: we still think Harvard is the top university in terms
Speaker 1: of prestige. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, it still has that
Speaker 1: kind of cultural cash value. And moreover, it's a chance
Speaker 1: to change the world. Right now, one in every three
Speaker 1: world leaders, whether they be prime ministers, presidents, dictators, or whatever,
Speaker 1: one in three earned an academic degree from a US university.
Speaker 1: And right now, even with the lower numbers, perhaps going
Speaker 1: to the university and maybe maybe the boys are looking
Speaker 1: at trades more and so forth. Nonetheless, the average of
Speaker 1: church going attendance today is about thirty percent weekly. If
Speaker 1: you say almost weekly, it's thirty I think thirty nine percent,
Speaker 1: thirty seven or thirty nine percent, but exactly thirty seven
Speaker 1: to thirty nine percent of people that are age eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four are enrolled in college. If you go
Speaker 1: to church every week, you get fifty two sermons a year.
Speaker 1: You get sixty sermons in your first month as a freshman.
Speaker 1: So who has the ear of the future. And so
Speaker 1: last month I was with doctor James Torr, one of
Speaker 1: the top ten chemists in the world, top fifty most
Speaker 1: influential scientists. And on the podcast that I did with him,
Speaker 1: and then in the Sunday school teaching class we did,
Speaker 1: he said it both times. This guy was crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he came from Purdue, he did his PhD under a
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winning Japanese chemist here and he went to
Speaker 1: the same church that I go to now. And so
Speaker 1: we had a great conversation about this. He knocked on
Speaker 1: every single apartment door and did door knocking evangelism when
Speaker 1: he was here. That's the kind of guy he is.
Speaker 1: When he had kids, he used to wake up every
Speaker 1: morning at five point thirty am and wake his kids
Speaker 1: up and do family devotionals. That's the kind of father
Speaker 1: he is. And he's a super scientist. But he said
Speaker 1: this in the podcast. He says, I used to tell
Speaker 1: people train your child in the way they should go
Speaker 1: and when they get older, they won't depart from it.
Speaker 1: I will not tell people that proverb anymore. When all
Speaker 1: four of my kids went off to college, two of
Speaker 1: the four had their worldviews rocked, and one has not
Speaker 1: returned yet. The philosophical subtlety that's going on in the university.
Speaker 1: When the ratio is twenty three to one, twenty seventy,
Speaker 1: twenty seven to one, seventy to one, or seventy eight
Speaker 1: to one, no one can compete with that unless we
Speaker 1: adequately train them. And this is why I say in
Speaker 1: the end of the book, it's all hands on deck.
Speaker 1: It's the university stupid. It's still the paper of record,
Speaker 1: it's still the place of prestige and whatever comes in
Speaker 1: the future with AI, with technology, wherever the education source
Speaker 1: is located, that's where we want to be. So you're
Speaker 1: right in terms of podcasting or whatever, because we want
Speaker 1: to be upstream where the ideas come downstream and have consequences.
Speaker 1: Good ideas. Bad ideas have consequences that make victims. Good
Speaker 1: ideas have the kind of consequences that transform lives for
Speaker 1: good and civilizations as well. So wherever that sources, we
Speaker 1: want to be there. But right now it's still at
Speaker 1: the university, and so Peter Bagosian, for example, he joined
Speaker 1: and he said, let all the universities burned down. And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't think so, and he said he
Speaker 1: you know, he started with Steven Pinker and a number
Speaker 1: of other people, groups of people, the University of Austin
Speaker 1: that was modeled after Grove City and Patrick Henry College
Speaker 1: in Hillsdale where they don't accept any government funding. And
Speaker 1: now certain ones of them have left. It's still pursuing accreditation.
Speaker 1: But think about it. You start over all over again,
Speaker 1: and what are you going to have a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars endowment with an Atari computer? You're behind two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years from Harvard. So I'm saying, yes, let's
Speaker 1: throw multiple socks against the walls. Let's do what you're
Speaker 1: doing social media presence, Let's do what I'm doing the campus.
Speaker 1: But I'm also doing something else that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: build a coalition around, and that is the MALEIK Academic Fellowship.
Speaker 1: We are trying to learn from the Marxists about the
Speaker 1: long March through the institutions, and we're pumping PhD students
Speaker 1: getting into top one hundred institutes. Their whole job is
Speaker 1: to land a credible, sustainable, durable PhD student only chapter
Speaker 1: that after forty or fifty years, we will be reclaiming
Speaker 1: through institutional recapture ground at the universities. Al Muller I
Speaker 1: interviewed him. He took over a liberal university, it's now
Speaker 1: conservative al planning. He went into philosophy and behind him
Speaker 1: was a beachhead and awake that transformed the entire discipline
Speaker 1: and philosophy of religion. The fact that this ideological revolution
Speaker 1: number one and number two have happened two times shows
Speaker 1: that it can happen again. So is it uphill it is?
Speaker 1: Do we have our work cut out for us? We do.
Speaker 1: But regardless, everybody must either go back into the universities
Speaker 1: for institutional recapture or prepare for the poisonous ideology coming
Speaker 1: out of it because you can no longer escape it.
Speaker 2: Well, that feels like a mic trop moment to end
Speaker 2: on Corey, You've been thinking about this a lot. Your book,
Speaker 2: The Progressive Miseducation of America. I indorsed it, John stone
Speaker 2: Street endorsed it. You had a few other people indorse it.
Speaker 2: Very thoughtful, very compelling, especially somebody working at a university
Speaker 2: and a theological school that cares deeply about my university
Speaker 2: resonate with so much of what you have written there.
Speaker 2: I got a ton more questions for you about the
Speaker 2: woke right. I'd love to know what, Folks listening, what
Speaker 2: do you think? Do you agree with the assessment here
Speaker 2: about the woke right? Would you different say? No, the
Speaker 2: worldview doesn't matter. If the tactics and the strategy are
Speaker 2: the same, we should call it the woke right. I'd
Speaker 2: love to know what people think about this, so comment
Speaker 2: put your two cents below would be interesting to know
Speaker 2: you help me think this through, Corey. It's not often
Speaker 2: that I bring somebody on and I'm kind of live
Speaker 2: processing these ideas. But I think I'm compelled to not
Speaker 2: use the term woke right, at least in the same
Speaker 2: way or without serious qualification as to some of the
Speaker 2: differences I said. Folks watching, make sure you have subscribed.
Speaker 2: We've got some other conversations coming up you will not
Speaker 2: want to miss. And if you thought about studying apologetics,
Speaker 2: we are doing cultural apologetics, which is a lot of
Speaker 2: what you heard here, and also classical apologetics in our
Speaker 2: program about the Bible, Science and Faith, philosophical evidences, etc.
Speaker 2: Information is that is down below. Corey as always enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on, Sam Sean, take care of Go Team,
Speaker 1: Go God.
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