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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,

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Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of

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Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.

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Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.

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Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.

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Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means

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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.

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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.

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Speaker 4: We're really excited to be joined today by Christopher Rufo.

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Speaker 4: He is the author of the new book America's Cultural Revolution,

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Speaker 4: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Chris, thank you so

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Speaker 4: much for joining Breaking Points and Counterpoints here on Wednesday.

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Speaker 3: It's good to be with you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Chris, you missed it earlier on the show,

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Speaker 1: But I was saying that the book, from my perspective,

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Speaker 1: is extraordinarily well done. There's clearly a lot of talent

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Speaker 1: went into it. I think the writing, the storytelling, and

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Speaker 1: the research are all impressive. I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: that masks some fundamental problems underneath it. But we're going

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Speaker 1: to get into the contradictions and the contradictory things that

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Speaker 1: I think we found it later but I did want

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Speaker 1: to say that as a just as a matter of craft,

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Speaker 1: I think it's impressively done, and I think for that

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Speaker 1: reason it's going to get a lot of mileage, and

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Speaker 1: I think the left ought to pay attention to it.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely well.

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Speaker 5: I appreciate that, And you know, the craft is something

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Speaker 5: that's really important and often is invisible for a general audience.

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Speaker 3: They feel like, Okay, this is a good book. I

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Speaker 3: like it. It's fun, it's good pacing, and let's tease

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Speaker 3: out some of those disagreements.

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Speaker 5: That's what it's all about, and I enjoy having some

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Speaker 5: back and forth.

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Speaker 4: A good place to start is probably with the title

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Speaker 4: America's Cultural Revolution. We wanted to begin by asking how

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Speaker 4: you think critical race theory what you describe, I think

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Speaker 4: really aptally in the book as an uber discipline for

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Speaker 4: the contemporary left. Where does that critical race theory in particular,

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Speaker 4: you're so known as a student and opponent of CRT.

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Speaker 4: Where does that factor into what you probably describe as

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Speaker 4: the cultural revolution?

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Speaker 3: So the main storyline in the book is tracing.

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Speaker 5: The arc of ideological development on the far left from

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Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies to the present, more or less, and

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Speaker 5: what I found and I think the critical race theorist,

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Speaker 5: if you ask them, they've certainly written as much.

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Speaker 3: They kind of pick and chose.

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Speaker 5: They've had this process of picking and choosing from the

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Speaker 5: various ideological strands, whether it's critical theory, whether it's the

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Speaker 5: kind of race based ideology of Angela Davis, whether it's postmodernism,

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Speaker 5: and so it's this interesting kind of converging point where

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Speaker 5: you have all of these trends from the late sixties

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Speaker 5: through the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and they all

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Speaker 5: come together in this intellectual stew that is critical race theory,

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Speaker 5: and I think it also represents the culmination but also

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Speaker 5: the dead end of this ideology. Of course, I'm a

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Speaker 5: critic of critical race theory.

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Speaker 3: That's well known.

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Speaker 5: But what I wanted to do is go a bit

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Speaker 5: deeper than some of the three minute news hits that

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Speaker 5: I've done and show people exactly where it comes from,

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Speaker 5: exactly how it developed, exactly how it achieved power, and

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Speaker 5: then from my perspective, exactly how it can be defeated.

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Speaker 4: And there's a really interesting tension that you pick up on,

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Speaker 4: and it's obvious, I think, to people who read their

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Speaker 4: work really closely, but this is G two A. I

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Speaker 4: think we made a pull out quote of this part

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Speaker 4: in your book. You write for all of their faults,

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Speaker 4: Davis Kleever referring ANGELA. Davis and Black revolutionaries at least

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Speaker 4: grappled with and appealed to the black loop and proletariat.

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Speaker 4: The critical race theorists, on the other hand, treat them

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Speaker 4: like lepers, the lump, and class is nowhere to be

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Speaker 4: found in their work except a symbolic justification for their abstractions.

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Speaker 4: This is where the critical race theists reach their final impasse.

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Speaker 4: Their program has become a form of empty professional class aestheticism,

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Speaker 4: designed for manipulating social status within elite institutions, not for

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Speaker 4: alleviating real miseries or governing a nation. And this is

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Speaker 4: where you write about Patrise Collars, for instance, the person

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Speaker 4: behind the Black Lives Matter global movement, who describe yourself

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Speaker 4: as a Marxist, a trained Marxist. And it raises this

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Speaker 4: fascinating question of you know, does the Nicole Henna Jones

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Speaker 4: or does the Patrice colorI who spent all this money

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Speaker 4: on a mansion that was donated to BLM, do they

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Speaker 4: actually want to seize the means of production and if not,

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Speaker 4: how did you get from Marx to today's Marxists describing

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Speaker 4: themselves as trained Marxists but promoting something that looks more

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Speaker 4: like Marcus than it does Marx.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean they certainly can be traced back

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Speaker 5: to MARCUSA and so you know, they're the person who

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Speaker 5: really established all of the language, all of the ideas,

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Speaker 5: all of the styles and esthetics.

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Speaker 3: That were used by BLM.

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Speaker 5: As Angela Davis, I mean, she developed all of this,

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Speaker 5: you know, many decades before, and then also became a

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Speaker 5: personal mentor to the leaders of BLM. And so one

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Speaker 5: of the interesting things though that I that I felt

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Speaker 5: in the process of researching and writing this book was

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Speaker 5: even though I paint these biographical portraits of what I

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Speaker 5: think of as the for profits of the New Left

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Speaker 5: and the modern Left, Marcusa, Angela Davis, Paulo Frera Bell,

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Speaker 5: the godfather of CRT, even though I.

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Speaker 3: Really disagree with the work that they do.

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Speaker 5: I think they've yielded devastating consequences in the United States

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Speaker 5: and also abroad. But I gained a grudging kind of

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Speaker 5: respect for these people. They were idealists who I'm afraid,

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Speaker 5: through their mistakes, became cynics in some way, but you

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Speaker 5: actually have to respect their own personal transformation from that

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Speaker 5: idealistic starting point to their cynicism. When you compare it

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Speaker 5: to something like b a Land, which I think is

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Speaker 5: wholly cynical from the beginning.

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Speaker 3: It doesn't have any of.

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Speaker 5: That spirit of inquiry, discovery, breaking new ground idealism, utopianism

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Speaker 5: even And so there's an attractive quality to these thinkers.

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Speaker 5: And what I wanted to do in the book, and

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Speaker 5: I hope you both agree, is I wanted to write

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Speaker 5: a book that certainly has my point of view, obviously,

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Speaker 5: but takes these subjects seriously, doesn't dismissed them, doesn't doesn't

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Speaker 5: have a condescension towards them, but it actually seeks to

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Speaker 5: first understand them as they may have understood themselves before

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Speaker 5: launching into the critique.

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Speaker 1: And so to that point, let's let's put up a

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Speaker 1: G two Seks. I think you're on some of your

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Speaker 1: most solid ground when you're kind of making fun of

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Speaker 1: the kind of corporate DEI structures that have developed over the.

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Speaker 3: Last couple of years.

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Speaker 1: But I want to talk about what that actually means structurally.

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Speaker 1: So you write at one point, the major corporations have

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Speaker 1: made a simple calculation. They've achieved all of their desires

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Speaker 1: from the political right on economics, tax cuts, free trade, deregulation,

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Speaker 1: and so they are looking to appease their potential enemies

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Speaker 1: from the political left on culture. It is a classic

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Speaker 1: inside outside game. Corporate lobbyists quietly secure favorable legislation through

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Speaker 1: congressional Republicans, while corporate executives publicly announce their contributions to

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Speaker 1: racial equality and pledge allegiance to social justice. So when

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Speaker 1: I read that, I'm underlining that and saying sounds right

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Speaker 1: to me, like, Okay, this sounds right, And I think

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Speaker 1: this gets at what I think is a conflation of

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Speaker 1: Marxism in a variety of different ways, because Marxism gets

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Speaker 1: tossed around just so utterly, loosely, and you have, on

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Speaker 1: the one hand, a Marxism from a standard class perspective,

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Speaker 1: But then the way that you're often using it in

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Speaker 1: the book is through these more Marqusian lenses of using

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Speaker 1: the word marx But you're actually talking about what is

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Speaker 1: effectively identity politics. And identity politics, as you're writing about

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Speaker 1: here in your book, is the shield that the kind

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Speaker 1: of power structure uses to maintain that power structure. And

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Speaker 1: to me, the reason that DEI and these types of

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Speaker 1: things have been able to penetrate these institutions is not

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Speaker 1: because Marque's successful, you know, pulled off a long march,

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Speaker 1: but because they're useful to corporations and to institutions like universities.

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Speaker 1: For instance, If universities are getting protested by groups for

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Speaker 1: a variety of different things, if they can say, well,

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Speaker 1: we did a training, you know, if they can let

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Speaker 1: off the steam of that through there, through these trainings

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Speaker 1: and through adopting the kind of lexicon of the protesters,

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Speaker 1: but not the actual kind of structural demands that they're making,

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Speaker 1: that's to me why corporate America and our political institutions

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Speaker 1: have been so willing to embrace this. So to me,

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Speaker 1: it seems like you're making the kind of counter argument

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Speaker 1: that this isn't actually Marxists, this isn't actually revolutionary, it's

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Speaker 1: just more you know, co optation by the power structure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of truth to that, certainly.

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Speaker 5: And the structural question is an interesting one. I think

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Speaker 5: what we have today are Marxists without Marx, or Marxism

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Speaker 5: without Marx, and so the the kind of dominant strand

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Speaker 5: of the last that you see in critical race theory,

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Speaker 5: that you see in the DEI infrastructure, the diversity training

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Speaker 5: and such. You know, critical race theories explicitly say we

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Speaker 5: are you know, Marxists, we are revolutionary, you know.

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Speaker 3: But in some ways it's true. In other ways it's

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Speaker 3: not true.

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Speaker 5: And I think what's most striking about this is that

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Speaker 5: it almost seems like we've come to a point where

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Speaker 5: the left has given up the old Marxist politics of

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Speaker 5: reshaping the economic base using the Marxist terminology.

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Speaker 3: The critical race theorists.

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Speaker 5: Don't want to take over a Ford factory and start

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Speaker 5: building f one fifties. I mean, that's like they don't

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Speaker 5: want to do that, they have no interest in doing that,

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Speaker 5: no capacity to do that. They're very happy occupying the superstructure.

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Speaker 5: And they have substituted that that old demand to change

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Speaker 5: the economic conditions with a new demand simply to play

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Speaker 5: symbolically with language, words, titles.

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Speaker 3: Prestige, and position within the superstructure.

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Speaker 5: And so it serves as almost a substitute or a

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Speaker 5: simulacrum of Marxism that ends always in cynicism, right, because

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Speaker 5: you can't claim to be a revolutionary, you know, sitting

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Speaker 5: in your your your comfortable reading chair and in at

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Speaker 5: the public university at UC Berkeley or UCLA or Harvard

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Speaker 5: or University of Wisconsin, wherever you might be, and pretend

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Speaker 5: that you know, when you're doing zoom calls with the

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Speaker 5: Treasury Department teaching you know, employees about their white privilege,

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Speaker 5: that that you're doing something revolutionary. I think it's wrong.

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Speaker 5: I think it's harmful. I think it's wasteful. I think

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Speaker 5: it could be disastrous for long term. But you're right,

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Speaker 5: it's been a kind of this uneasy truth or this

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Speaker 5: uneasy management of power between the corporation and between these

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Speaker 5: activists that that probably really doesn't satisfy anyone. I don't

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Speaker 5: think that old school Marxists are satisfied with DEI, and

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Speaker 5: certainly conservatives aren't either.

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Speaker 4: And is it this Marcusian idea that you need a

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Speaker 4: better elite, like the idea the end goal can't be

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Speaker 4: the Marxist end goal Marxism. He's looking around that stuff

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Speaker 4: like the hard hat riots in the Nixon administration and saying,

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Speaker 4: you know, the Marxist idea of what progress would look

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Speaker 4: like is falling apart around me. And what we actually

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Speaker 4: need is this benevolent elite, And that's where you have

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Speaker 4: this sort of limousine liberal stereotype sort of come into play.

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Speaker 4: Is that what explains how you get a Patrice Colores

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Speaker 4: spending millions and millions of dollars on a mansion, money

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Speaker 4: that was donated to the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation,

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Speaker 4: whatever the formal group title is, because otherwise it seems

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Speaker 4: utterly ine inexplicable and unreconcilable that people are trained, self

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Speaker 4: described trained Marxists are pouring money into a mansion. Is

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Speaker 4: it rooted in what happened as this all started to

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Speaker 4: all apart in the sixties and seventies and the new

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Speaker 4: Left kind of looked around and said, we're going to

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Speaker 4: the universities because we need to train up a better elead.

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Speaker 3: Well, I think this is always the case.

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Speaker 5: I mean, if you look at even back to the

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Speaker 5: Russian Revolution, you have Lenin's theory of vanguardism, you know,

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Speaker 5: the leading the proletariat, shaping the consciousness of the proletariat.

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Speaker 5: And so there's one argument that you could perhaps make

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Speaker 5: that this is always the case on the left, that

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Speaker 5: it requires essentially it leads to shape the consciousness or

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Speaker 5: less charitably to manipulate the masses along the lines of envy, revenge, hatred,

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Speaker 5: et cetera, in order to get them to take political action.

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Speaker 3: But I think that we're.

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Speaker 5: Being, you know, really honest about it. This is probably

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Speaker 5: always true. I think politics is always been, and likely

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Speaker 5: always will be an elite game first and foremost, and

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Speaker 5: so public opinion in a mass democracy and a mass

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Speaker 5: media republic like we have today, public opinion alone is

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Speaker 5: not enough to make any changes.

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Speaker 3: Something that I've learned.

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Speaker 5: Public opinion has to be harnessed, shaped, directed, channeled, elevated,

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Speaker 5: improved by organizations, institutions, leaders in order to actually bring

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Speaker 5: public opinion as a force in the political process. So

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Speaker 5: I think that the Marxist idea was always somewhat naive

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Speaker 5: and how politics works, you know, a spontaneous revolution.

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Speaker 3: Marcusa saw this. Marcusa said in the nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 5: He said, the working class in the West and the

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Speaker 5: United States in particular, is anti revolutionary.

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Speaker 3: They want the the you know, three.

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Speaker 5: Bedroom house, you know, the ford car, the you know,

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Speaker 5: the cabin in the woods for the summer.

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Speaker 3: They're they're happy with this life that they have, and

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Speaker 3: so it's.

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Speaker 5: The frustrated, alienated intellectuals, not the frustrated, alienated working class

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Speaker 5: that becomes the new sub of the revolution.

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Speaker 1: Let's do a little bit on Marcus, because I think

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Speaker 1: that one of the one of the problems I had

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Speaker 1: with the book. I think the chapters on Markus are

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Speaker 1: they're they're a fun read. It's kind of a romp

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Speaker 1: through the late sixties and early seventies. But I think

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Speaker 1: that if if you talk to people who were active

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Speaker 1: in that period, they will tell you that to the

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Speaker 1: extent that mark CU's was influential at all, it was

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Speaker 1: more as a kind of after the fact justification for

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Speaker 1: things that they were already going to do. Like they

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Speaker 1: already wanted to shout down you know, right wing speakers

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Speaker 1: on campuses, the weather underground, already kind of wanted to

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Speaker 1: go out and start, you know, putting pipe bombs at

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Speaker 1: the police stations in the United States Capitol. And so

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Speaker 1: to the extent that there was this guy who was,

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Speaker 1: you know, coming kind of along behind them and writing

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Speaker 1: things that that was that that was fine for them,

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Speaker 1: and it reminded me a little bit of the Powell Memo.

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Speaker 1: You're familiar with the Powell Memo, right, So for people

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Speaker 1: who aren't the This is a memo written in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one by a future Supreme Court justice that if

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Speaker 1: you're on the left, it's it's like an article of

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Speaker 1: faith that the next like fifty years of the conservative

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Speaker 1: ascendancy came from literally this letter that a guy wrote

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Speaker 1: to his neighbor that. But all the letter says is

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Speaker 1: what was conventional wisdom on the right at the time.

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Speaker 1: And people have kind of gone back in time and said, oh,

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Speaker 1: it was that pal memo, It was that thing that

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Speaker 1: produced the next fifty years. We find that's our that

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Speaker 1: that we cracked the code. And so then if if

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Speaker 1: you feel you feel like then if you can crack

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Speaker 1: the code, then you can kind of unwind it. So

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Speaker 1: I feel like you've you've done a little bit of

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Speaker 1: that with Marcus. And now I have my own book

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Speaker 1: coming out December that has a chapter on Marqus.

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Speaker 3: So I don't think he's.

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Speaker 1: Completely inconsequential, but I don't think he's anywhere near as

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Speaker 1: consequential as you say today.

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Speaker 3: So are you? Are you? So?

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Speaker 1: I guess the question would be where do you left wing?

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Speaker 1: Where does the left come from? Like do you believe

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Speaker 1: that the system has contradictions that are going to materially

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Speaker 1: produce opposition to the system. Where do you think it

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Speaker 1: comes from kind of the imaginations and the theories of

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Speaker 1: people like Marcus who can then kind of lead their

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Speaker 1: graduate students around to then lead movements, Because I obviously

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Speaker 1: think it's the former.

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Speaker 5: Oh, I mean, I think undoubtedly it's a combination of both.

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Speaker 5: And what I tried to do in the book, I think,

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Speaker 5: contrary to the critique that you're laying out is that

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Speaker 5: I'm not saying that MARCUSA was a prophet who was

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Speaker 5: a causal force that the sixties and early seventies would

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Speaker 5: not have happened without his ideas. I think you're right,

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Speaker 5: and I think I kind of laid this out in

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Speaker 5: the book in a similar manner that he was, of

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Speaker 5: course reacting to spontaneous movements and people and ideas that

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Speaker 5: were bubbling up around him. But what he did was

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Speaker 5: serve as a method of rationalization and legitimation for this movement,

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Speaker 5: meaning he took this incoherent set of ideas, whether it

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Speaker 5: was from the student protesters or the riots in the

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Speaker 5: black inner cities and the new political parties like the

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Speaker 5: you know, the Black Panther Party, or even some of

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Speaker 5: the radical movements in the kind of white intelligensi aside

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Speaker 5: like the Weather Underground, and he synthesized all of these movements.

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Speaker 5: He put it into a coherent narrative, He made them rational,

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Speaker 5: using his really stunning intellectual capacities, and put them in

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Speaker 5: the frame of the movement of Western philosophy from you know,

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Speaker 5: Hegel to the present and then legitimized it because he

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Speaker 5: was seen, I think rightly so as a as an

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Speaker 5: intellectual force, as someone with intellectual authority, and so he

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Speaker 5: served as a father or even a grandfather figure to

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Speaker 5: this movement. But I still think and the reason I

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Speaker 5: chose to highlight him in the book is that he

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Speaker 5: offered the best intellectual case for the new Left. He

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Speaker 5: offered the best analysis of the new Laft. And while

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Speaker 5: of course I think it be you know, just flattery

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Speaker 5: to him to say that he was the cause of it, I.

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Speaker 3: Don't think that's true.

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Speaker 5: I think that he's really the pivotal figure who understood

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Speaker 5: it better than anyone.

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Speaker 3: And then of course personally.

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Speaker 5: He was connected to all of the most important radicals

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Speaker 5: of the time. So through him you can tell the

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Speaker 5: story of the whole movement, both in his personal connections

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Speaker 5: and his intellectual ideological work.

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Speaker 4: Unfortunately, as we have this conversation about critical race theory

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Speaker 4: queer theory, a lot of those theories are still alive.

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Speaker 4: A lot of us came out of the eighties and

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Speaker 4: the nineties, and so Kimberly Crenshaw, the creator of intersectionality,

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Speaker 4: has responded basically to the new conservative opposition to critical

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Speaker 4: race theory and said, basically, you know, this is all

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Speaker 4: it is, fundamentally misunderstood. People are using intersectionality wrong. You

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Speaker 4: get all the time, Chris, people saying you're just turning

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Speaker 4: critical race theory into this blunt force object and it's

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Speaker 4: too broad to mean what it's supposed to mean.

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Speaker 3: What are from your.

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Speaker 4: Perspective, A, are people either being dishonest when they talk

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Speaker 4: about their own positions on theories like intersectionality and CRT

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Speaker 4: or are they actually misunderstanding something about their own position

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Speaker 4: or about their own worldview.

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Speaker 5: No, I don't think they're misunderstanding it. I think that

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Speaker 5: they're they're they're concealing it, they're obfuscating, and I think

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Speaker 5: in some ways they're probably embarrassed of their own writings

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Speaker 5: from the eighties and nineties, which simply don't hold up.

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Speaker 5: Intersectionality is a complex word. It's a you know, latinate,

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Speaker 5: multi syllavic word for a very simple idea that most

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Speaker 5: people understand.

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Speaker 3: When you hear the even the mocking terms.

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Speaker 5: Like oppression olympics, that's basically what intersectionality is. It's it's

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Speaker 5: it's not any more complex than that at part. And

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Speaker 5: I think that conservatives are criticizing it, or some conservatives

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Speaker 5: criticizing in an unfair way. Yeah, probably, but that's how

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Speaker 5: politics works. And I think that uh, doctor Crenshaw's position

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Speaker 5: of saying, oh, you don't understand, oh you're doing this

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Speaker 5: or you're doing that, there's no such thing as CRT.

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Speaker 3: I mean it to me amounts to a lot.

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Speaker 5: Of whining and complaining, obfuscation, and I think that it

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Speaker 5: betrays a lack of confidence on the part of the

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Speaker 5: critical race theorists. These are people that are tenured professors

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Speaker 5: at some of the most prestigious universities in our country.

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Speaker 5: They could not mount a significant defense of their ideas.

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Speaker 5: They failed to persuade the public. They got smoked in

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Speaker 5: the matter of the public debate, and so they're trying

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Speaker 5: to make excuses, and so you know, to me, it's

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Speaker 5: a good sign.

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Speaker 3: I offered to debate Crenshaw and the rest of them.

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Speaker 5: Of course they didn't take me up on it, but

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Speaker 5: if they want to clarify their position, I'm I'm still.

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Speaker 3: Open we could do it. Even right here on breaking points.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to pick up on a point that you

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Speaker 1: were making earlier, where you allowed that the subtut of

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Speaker 1: the book is how the radical left conquered everything, But

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Speaker 1: you do allow that the DEI world has not actually

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Speaker 1: conquered corporate America, like in other words, if it had.

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Speaker 1: If it had, Twitter would not have sold itself to

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk, Like if a Marxist left had actually seized

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Speaker 1: the means of communications through Twitter, they wouldn't have just

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Speaker 1: handed it over to Musk when he made a bit

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Speaker 1: of fifty four twenty. But more broadly, you're sting your

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Speaker 1: point that it's a uneasy alliance between these corporate leaders

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Speaker 1: and this movement, I think is a fair way of

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Speaker 1: putting it. The corporate corporate America gets its own benefits

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Speaker 1: from that. So if that, if that's the case, what

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Speaker 1: what can we really if it hasn't conquered everything, what

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Speaker 1: can we really take from it?

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Speaker 5: Sure, well, you know, the subtitle is is provocative, it's polemical,

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Speaker 5: it is hyperbolic. And I think that the meaning if

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Speaker 5: you take it in the ironic form, if you if

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Speaker 5: you understand that it's kind of a wink in a

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Speaker 5: nod in some ways, is that, uh, the radical leftist conquered,

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Speaker 5: as we discussed, the entire superstructure. And so at the

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Speaker 5: end of the day, when the board of uh, when

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Speaker 5: when the board at Twitter is considering a sale and

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Speaker 5: they're all gonna you know that they're all going to

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Speaker 5: get rich. Of course they're gonna there. Of course they're

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Speaker 5: going to sell Twitter to Elon Musk. I think at

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Speaker 5: the end of the deal Elon Musk.

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Speaker 3: Was trying to get out of the deal. Yeah, but yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: of course.

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Speaker 5: And so I and I think that that actually, in

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Speaker 5: a sense is exactly the case that I make in

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Speaker 5: the book.

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Speaker 3: It's that they've conquered all of the superstructure.

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Speaker 5: They've given up that old dream of conquering the kind

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Speaker 5: of economic structure, and it's created this really uneasy contradiction

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Speaker 5: and and and in a sense I would agree with

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Speaker 5: some of my my friends in the old Marxist camp

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Speaker 5: who feel the same frustration. I of course am glad

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Speaker 5: that they haven't conquered the economic structure of you know, uh,

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Speaker 5: that would be a total disaster. But I think that

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Speaker 5: it's disastrous enough that they've conquered all of the lead

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Speaker 5: institutions that shape culture, knowledge, science, censorship. I mean these

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Speaker 5: are significant things. Education, the transmission of values from one

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Speaker 5: generation to the next, that is extremely significant.

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Speaker 3: And I think that.

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Speaker 5: Actually I'm a critic of many conservatives in this regard,

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Speaker 5: who say, well, we've you know, we have you know,

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Speaker 5: low taxes, low regulation. You know, corporations are people, they

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Speaker 5: should be left alone to do whatever they want. Whereas

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Speaker 5: I think that culture is very important, and I embrace

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Speaker 5: the term culture war because ultimately, what is worth.

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Speaker 3: Fighting for more than our culture? I mean that to me,

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Speaker 3: in some.

436
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:46,120
Speaker 5: Ways, is more important than fighting about the marginal tax rate.

437
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:48,639
Speaker 5: You know, we can negotiate about that. Can go up

438
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:50,159
Speaker 5: a little bit, go up, go down a little bit.

439
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 5: I'd prefer to go down, of course, but I foreground culture.

440
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 5: And so when I say they've conquered everything in the

441
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 5: terms of the cultural revolution, they have in the terms

442
00:24:01,400 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 5: of the orthodox Marxist revolution, of course they have not.

443
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:07,159
Speaker 1: Well, let me push you a little bit on the

444
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: cynical politics of it.

445
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:10,440
Speaker 3: Lee Atwater.

446
00:24:10,520 --> 00:24:13,159
Speaker 1: You're probably familiar with this infamous interview that he did

447
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:15,719
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty one. I think we have this

448
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:19,880
Speaker 1: as two e He says, you start out in nineteen

449
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: fifty four saying word enward nward. By nineteen sixty eight,

450
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:26,200
Speaker 1: you can't say nword that hurts you backfires, So say

451
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:28,960
Speaker 1: so you say stuff like forced bussing, states rights and

452
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:31,920
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now you're

453
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 1: talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking

454
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 1: about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them

455
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:41,199
Speaker 1: is blacks get hurt worse than whites. We want to

456
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: cut This is much more abstract than even the bussing thing,

457
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: and a hell of a lot more abstract than nword nward.

458
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: And so if we were going to stretch that out,

459
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:55,520
Speaker 1: it's kind of twenty years or forty years later. And

460
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:57,920
Speaker 1: the way I would if I were thinking about it

461
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:00,680
Speaker 1: in the voice of a contemporary, say Rufonian, you would

462
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:04,680
Speaker 1: say something like, there's now a populist working class right

463
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to hear those coded words about cutting

464
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: social spending because that hits of some of the working

465
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,399
Speaker 1: class base of the Republican Party. So now you have

466
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 1: to abstract it even further and talk about critical race theory.

467
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: So is this not just kind of an extension of

468
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: a Republican Southern strategy more just with a more sophisticated gloss.

469
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:27,880
Speaker 3: No, I mean I don't think it is, certainly.

470
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 5: I mean, as one of the people involved in leading this,

471
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 5: I don't think it is now at all. I think

472
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 5: that that's not right, and I actually don't think it

473
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 5: was that way in nineteen sixty eight. I think that

474
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 5: Atwater's reading of that history is just flat out wrong.

475
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 5: And you know, you know Richard Nixon, of course was

476
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 5: a supporter of civil rights.

477
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon, well, he was an Atwater was an architect

478
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,640
Speaker 1: of it as a close Nixon strategist.

479
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 5: That's right, And I'm saying that I think he's misreading

480
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 5: even Nixon's legacy.

481
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 3: And if you look.

482
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:59,919
Speaker 5: At Nixon's you know, taped conversations, you look at his diary,

483
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,360
Speaker 5: you look at all of the material from Nixon himself,

484
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:05,160
Speaker 5: I don't think he thinks in those terms at all,

485
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,399
Speaker 5: even in his most candid moments. And in fact, and

486
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 5: his critique of welfare policies, even though we're talking just

487
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 5: a few years after these programs were established in the

488
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 5: Great Society, Nixon already understood the nature and and and

489
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 5: the through his work, especially with with moynihan, what would

490
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:27,919
Speaker 5: happen eventually to these welfare state policies on the black community.

491
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 3: And I think that even you.

492
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 5: Know, a Clinton style Democrat could see that those policies

493
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,120
Speaker 5: were which were in the name of something good, something helpful,

494
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:43,879
Speaker 5: something to redress past discrimination and past maltreatment, we're actually

495
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 5: counterproductive for most people. I mean, you know, I spent

496
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 5: three years working on a film in a public housing

497
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 5: project in Memphis, and you can see the legacy of

498
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 5: those programs that just devastated these communities.

499
00:26:58,240 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 3: And so I wouldn't.

500
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 5: Concede for in a single minute that that's what critical

501
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 5: race theory is about in twenty twenty two, which is basically,

502
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 5: don't teach racial scapegoating to kindergarteners, don't segregate people by

503
00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 5: race and training programs, don't portray the United States as

504
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 5: a force for evil, and portray the solution, as you know,

505
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 5: suspending private property rights, limiting the first Amendment abolishing the

506
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 5: equal protection of the law. I just think that it's

507
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:32,840
Speaker 5: such a bad misread and doesn't hold water really at

508
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 5: any time after nineteen sixty four.

509
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:37,080
Speaker 4: And I think Ryan has another question, but just a

510
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 4: quick comment there. It's so interesting that you have a

511
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,120
Speaker 4: New York Times that is happy to publish Nicole Hanna

512
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 4: Jones sixteen nineteen project but would never endorse Bernie Sanders.

513
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 4: Is always going to go if they're Hillary versus Bernie,

514
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 4: They're always going to endorse Hillary, and they're going to

515
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 4: do it Egerly.

516
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: What was your no, Yeah, to pick up on that,

517
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: basically to your point earlier that you'd much rather fight

518
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: the culture war than talk about marginal tax rates or

519
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: kind of fight over the structure nature of the of

520
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: the economy. That gets back to the I think the

521
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 1: fundamental disagreement we have here around the role of class

522
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: in these uh in the way that our in our

523
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: politics are shaped.

524
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,160
Speaker 3: And you start the book with.

525
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: Mark Cuse delivering a speech titled Liberation from the Affluent Society.

526
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: And for people who aren't kind of tuned into the

527
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 1: politics of the sixties, affluent society nerds, Yeah, the nerds

528
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:32,200
Speaker 1: and losers who aren't. That's that's John, that's John Kenneth

529
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 1: gall Bright's seminal book that kind of defined, you know

530
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: what the kind of Keynesian left understood to be the

531
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: most just way to set up an economy and a

532
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: political economy. And it was the thing that kind of

533
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 1: mark Us pointed to said he was sad that now,

534
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: you know, the proletariat is no longer angry enough to

535
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: lead a revolution, and instead of like being happy about that, that,

536
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: like and Edward Bernstein might have been, he's he goes

537
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: and tries to find some other revolution and group just

538
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: have revolution for the sake of revolution. But it gets

539
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: back to then, Okay, if if that's the thing you

540
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: object to, and you think CRT flows out of this,

541
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: then why not go back to the new deal affluent society,

542
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 1: great society world where you're actually making sure that people

543
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 1: are taking care of And it goes this question of

544
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: I think economic nihilism on the right, that that says

545
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 1: we're so angry that the patriarchy is collapsing, that the

546
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 1: male bread male, you know, the male breadwinner can't bring

547
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 1: home the bacon anymore, while at the same time crafting

548
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: economic policies that make it impossible for him to do

549
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: that and produce the kind of social collapse that that

550
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 1: then creates the cultural rot that then is becomes the

551
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: grist for the culture War.

552
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 3: So why not just go back to the New Deal.

553
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 5: Basically, if we could, you know, repeal the Great Society

554
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 5: and go back to the New Deal, I would make

555
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 5: that deal in a sense. And I think the greatst

556
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 5: Society is an utter disaster. And there's two elements to

557
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 5: your question that I think are are smart and perceptive,

558
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 5: and I can respond in kind to each one.

559
00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 3: But the.

560
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 5: Great Society is still the system that we have today.

561
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 5: First and foremost, we have to understand that, as Robert

562
00:30:19,160 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 5: Rector at Heritage Foundation has pointed out for years now,

563
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 5: the United States spends more than one trillion dollars per

564
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 5: year on means tested anti poverty programs. More than one

565
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 5: trillion dollars per year on means tested anti poverty programs.

566
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 5: We spend an enormous sum For Medica is huge one

567
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 5: of those, right of course, Medicated a huge part of that. Again,

568
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,720
Speaker 5: it's a means tested an anti poverty program, you know,

569
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 5: health education and welfare style program. And so the idea

570
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 5: that somehow we have reduced. The Great Society programs is

571
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 5: just factually incorrect in multiple orders of magnitude, the scope

572
00:30:58,200 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 5: and scale of it.

573
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 3: And then the.

574
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 5: Assumption though is that if we had more, things would

575
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:04,560
Speaker 5: be better.

576
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 3: And I think that that, again is just an assumption

577
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:09,040
Speaker 3: that doesn't hold true.

578
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 5: Although where I would disagree or where I would rather

579
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 5: agree with you with a twist, is that you know,

580
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 5: a single income in the United States at a middle

581
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 5: class wage can support a family at the same level

582
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 5: of material comfort as I was in the you know,

583
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties. You would have to have, you know,

584
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 5: like they did in that time, a very small house,

585
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 5: you know, maybe one kind of old car. You'd have

586
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 5: to have, you know, make some other sacrifices now to

587
00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 5: go to college, never go to college, et cetera. So

588
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that that is good and that we

589
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 5: should return to that level of affluence. But what happens

590
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 5: is that we have desires that have outpaced, outpaced the

591
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 5: ability of one income to provide for and so we

592
00:31:58,200 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 5: have more desires. And maybe marcusa is even write a

593
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 5: little bit in this regard. It says, ah, the affluent

594
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,800
Speaker 5: society ends up just replicating desires to the point where

595
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 5: you're in a frenzy of consumption. I mean, I think

596
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 5: it's a little bit, you know, a little bit a

597
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 5: little bit too far. But there certainly is something that

598
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 5: in my view, I wouldn't analyze it from his point

599
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:19,880
Speaker 5: of view. But while I would agree with certain elements

600
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 5: what he's saying, I would say that it's really the

601
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 5: loss of those old Benjamin Franklin virtues of prudence, temperance, frugality,

602
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 5: all of these things, self restraint.

603
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 3: And so I would like to see not a society.

604
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 5: Where the government spends more money on welfare programs that

605
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 5: actually achieve the opposite of their intentions, but actually restoring

606
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:40,719
Speaker 5: people in a kind of maybe even like a hokey

607
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 5: Dave Ramsey kind of way, those old American virtues that

608
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 5: you know, Ben Franklin did his famous checklist every day?

609
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 5: Am I being temperant and frugal? And I think that

610
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 5: those things are so those things are so foreign to

611
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 5: how we think today that I think that again, it

612
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 5: kind of is a cultural problem more than a material problem.

613
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 5: If we have materials to technical challenges to raising standards

614
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 5: of living, I mean, we have an affluent society absolutely,

615
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 5: and that's good. But we need to have the virtues

616
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 5: that can restrain some of the problems and some of

617
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 5: the temptations of that society if we want to have

618
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 5: happy families, if we want to have strong communities, and

619
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 5: so forth.

620
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 1: One quick interjection before Emily response, because I thin, actually

621
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: Emmy and I I started to agree on this more

622
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: than disagree. But I would only say that I wouldn't

623
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: characterize New Deal, Great Society and affluent society as government

624
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: kind of support for the poor, but as government intervention

625
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: in designing an economy that allows for union jobs, allows

626
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: for wages to at least keep pace with inflation, allows

627
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: for lots of private sector growth that is supporting families,

628
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: not to just reduce it to transfer payments.

629
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 4: Although I think that's where Chris is drawing the line

630
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 4: between rightfully between the New Deal and the Great Society,

631
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 4: in that you know, there's the conflation of.

632
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: Both medicaid, but Medicaid and medicare, like they're major economic interventions.

633
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:11,799
Speaker 5: Like Medicare is not a not a means test at

634
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,320
Speaker 5: anti poverty program. But even if you take out Medicaid

635
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 5: under the argument and and and there's some persuasive element

636
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 5: to it that Medicaid subsidizes corporations who no longer have

637
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:22,800
Speaker 5: to provide health insurance benefits.

638
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:24,959
Speaker 3: There's a there's a there's a point to be made there.

639
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:27,799
Speaker 5: But even if you take that out, we have the

640
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 5: most high spending social safety net for means test at

641
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 5: anti poverty programs, even minus health benefits, of any country

642
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 5: in the world. And if you look at poor communities,

643
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 5: if you spend time in these communities, it's very hard

644
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 5: to make the case that they're helping. I spent three

645
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 5: years again in Memphis and Public Housing Project Memphis spends

646
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 5: something like thirty thousand dollars a year per person.

647
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 3: Under the poverty line.

648
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 5: And then you look around the city of Memphis and

649
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:57,879
Speaker 5: you talk to people, you meet them, you go into

650
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 5: their homes, you see their communities, and you say, we

651
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 5: would probably be better off not spending this money at all.

652
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 5: But we would most certainly be better off. You know,

653
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 5: people are not living as if they had a thirty

654
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 5: thousand dollars a year standard of living. I mean, where

655
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 5: is the money going and.

656
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 3: How is this not working?

657
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 5: How is it actually ending up in trenching people in

658
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:21,920
Speaker 5: some of these dire circumstances.

659
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 3: I just.

660
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 5: I think, and I would love for everyone on the

661
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,280
Speaker 5: left that is the cheerleading for these programs to actually

662
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,719
Speaker 5: go look at the places where they've become the guiding

663
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:39,000
Speaker 5: force in society. Go look at those housing projects, those

664
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:43,760
Speaker 5: low income apartment projects in places like Memphis or Youngstown, Ohio,

665
00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 5: or Stockton, California. And I think it would change people's mind.

666
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 5: If you're really compassionate person, you really care about people's

667
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 5: ability to.

668
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:53,400
Speaker 3: Flourish and reach their potential.

669
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 5: I think you come away from that experience saying, my God,

670
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:00,879
Speaker 5: we have to change something. This is not working, and

671
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 5: and and and it's creating these it's it's manipulating social

672
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 5: conditions in a way that ends up destroying people. That's

673
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 5: the conclusion that I have reached through my own experience.

674
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 4: You've spent a lot of time with Ronda Santis. I'm

675
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:19,359
Speaker 4: sure on this uh. As you launched this book, you're

676
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 4: going to be getting a lot of questions. But just

677
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 4: from a sort of human perspective, I'm curious what it's

678
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 4: like to have conversations about these extremely uh esoteric academic theories,

679
00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:35,399
Speaker 4: things like critical race theory, intersectionality, and to be sort

680
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:38,839
Speaker 4: of behind closed doors with somebody like Ronda Santis, who

681
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 4: even whose critics should admit, is a very smart man.

682
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 4: And other Republican lawmakers who I know that you've sit

683
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 4: down You've sat down with over the last couple of

684
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 4: years and gotten into sort of the weeds on what

685
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 4: CRT is and what these ideas are. What is it

686
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 4: like to sort of be face to face with a

687
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 4: politician who's more concerned with the sort of day to

688
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 4: day campaigning or fundraising, et cetera, et cetera, and sort

689
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 4: of then bring in what the stakes are from the

690
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:07,560
Speaker 4: sort of intellectual perspective.

691
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I'm extremely impressed with the governor. I

692
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,000
Speaker 5: appreciate everything he's done. I think he's by far the

693
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 5: best governor in the United States. And you know, of

694
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 5: course supporting him for the presidency. And I would say

695
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 5: two things that I've noticed spending you know, one on

696
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 5: one time in small group time with him. He really

697
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 5: has an astonishing attention to detail in every regard on

698
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 5: public policy. I mean, he's like a behind closed doors,

699
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 5: he is a walks walk.

700
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,000
Speaker 3: I mean he really understands how.

701
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 5: Law culture, funding, legislative priorities, you know, potential legal liability.

702
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 5: I mean he has a whole sense of the constellation

703
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 5: of power, where all the levers are what needs to move,

704
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 5: who needs to be there, who should be you know,

705
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 5: delegated authority to achieve it, who he needs to call

706
00:37:57,360 --> 00:37:59,240
Speaker 5: in order to get the legislation moving.

707
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 3: He's got this incredible vision that that comes out when

708
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 3: you talk to him about policy.

709
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,120
Speaker 5: And I think in my experience at least, and I

710
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 5: think I've read some reporting that seems to substantiate it otherwise.

711
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,319
Speaker 5: And he's not one for small talk, you know, I

712
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 5: kind of chit chat with people. A lot of politicians

713
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:18,879
Speaker 5: want to kind of be s with you and chit chat.

714
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 5: And I realized, huh, he's not really responding to this

715
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 5: chit chat. And then I started talking policy and he

716
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,319
Speaker 5: lights up, and it's like a machine starts worrying in

717
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 5: his mind.

718
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 3: It's it's really impressive.

719
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:33,560
Speaker 5: And then what I've also noticed, and I also really

720
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 5: appreciate about him, he can talk about you know, CRT

721
00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 5: and the structure of academia and tenure and hiring and

722
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 5: all of these complex issues, and then he goes out

723
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 5: there on the stump. And I've done a number of

724
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 5: speeches with him and and love listening to him, and

725
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 5: he says, you know, critical race theory is about we're

726
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 5: not going to teach our kids to hate each other

727
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 5: and to hate their country.

728
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 3: And so it's like, oh, this is great.

729
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 5: You take the wonkish issue and then you bring it

730
00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:04,319
Speaker 5: down to like sixth grade syntax so that everyone can

731
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 5: understand it. It becomes really clear and has an emotional

732
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 5: quality to it. And so, you know, there's seems like

733
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,399
Speaker 5: there's some bumps in the road on the campaign side

734
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 5: right now. But I hope that people can really get

735
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:17,879
Speaker 5: a chance to understand who he is and to see

736
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 5: who he is, and I hope that he feels that

737
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 5: he can let out the personality that he has, which

738
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:29,759
Speaker 5: is not a conventional warm Bill Clinton style, you know,

739
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:35,359
Speaker 5: you know personality, but I think is the exact kind

740
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 5: of person we need.

741
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 3: He's right for the moment.

742
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:38,320
Speaker 1: I know you've got to run in a second, but

743
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: I wanted to press you on the R part of

744
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 1: the CRT again one more time. You quote in the

745
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:47,839
Speaker 1: book Derek Bell writing that race is quote an indeterminate

746
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: social construct that is continually reinvented and manipulated to maintain

747
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:56,760
Speaker 1: domination and enhance white privilege. That's a lot of big words,

748
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: but he's basically just saying that racism is a real

749
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 1: force our society. And do we have Tim Scott. I

750
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: wanted to if we could roll that Tim Scott clip.

751
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: This is Tim Scott talking about it in a personal way,

752
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 1: apps at the kind of academic lingo.

753
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 6: There's a deep divide between the black community and law enforcement,

754
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 6: a trust gap, a tension that has been growing for decades.

755
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 6: And as a family, one American family, we cannot ignore

756
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 6: these issues because while so many officers do good and

757
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 6: we should be thankful, as I said on money, we

758
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 6: should be very thankful in supportive of all those officers

759
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:47,360
Speaker 6: that do good, some simply do not. I've experienced it myself,

760
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:52,360
Speaker 6: and so today I want to speak about some of

761
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:56,720
Speaker 6: those issues. Not with anger, though I have been angry.

762
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 6: I tell my story not out of frustration, though at

763
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 6: times I have been frustrated. I stand here before you

764
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 6: today because I'm seeking for all of us, the entire

765
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:15,719
Speaker 6: American family, to work together so we all experience the

766
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 6: lyrics of a song that we can hear but not see, peace,

767
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 6: love and understanding. Because I shuddered when I heard Eric

768
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 6: Garner saying I can't breathe.

769
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: He goes on, as I'm sure you've seen that famous speech.

770
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: He goes on to talk about a lot of his

771
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: personal experiences with police and otherwise living in a world

772
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:47,360
Speaker 1: that treats him differently because of his race. And so

773
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: what do we do as a society about that? What

774
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: is our role if we acknowledge that this is not

775
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: just the kind of aggregation of a bunch of individuals

776
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: who can be kind of untrained. Let's let's say we're

777
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: going to reject that that kind of get a two

778
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:07,799
Speaker 1: hour DEI training is going to solve that? So what

779
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:10,399
Speaker 1: do we do? And you know, do do you acknowledge that,

780
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:15,160
Speaker 1: you know, racism is a strong and powerful force in

781
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 1: our society?

782
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 5: No, I don't think that racism is a strong and

783
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 5: powerful force in our society.

784
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 3: I think it certainly has been in the past.

785
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 5: But as I, you know, lived my life and and

786
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:28,800
Speaker 5: deal with people from all different backgrounds, I do not

787
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 5: think that this society is racist. I do not think

788
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 5: that racism is a determining force in the lives of

789
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 5: most people and and and of all backgrounds. And I

790
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,720
Speaker 5: think I dispute also the factual basis of of Senator

791
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:48,839
Speaker 5: Scott's speech here, America has the most well disciplined, restrained,

792
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:55,439
Speaker 5: and professional uh uh policing system in the world. Unfortunately,

793
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 5: we have also a country with very high rates of violence, crime,

794
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 5: drug abuse, gang formation, and so the job for a

795
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 5: police officer is very, very difficult. But the studies, the

796
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 5: best studies from people like Rolling Friar at Harvard and others,

797
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 5: show that that in general, police do not show any

798
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 5: kind of disparate treatment for African Americans or other minorities.

799
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:22,000
Speaker 5: And so I think that Senator Scott is doing a

800
00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 5: disservice with this narrative. He's playing to the crowd, he's

801
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:29,440
Speaker 5: playing to the to his political opponents, trying to wrap

802
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 5: them in an empathetic message. But I think that it

803
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 5: actually needs some more clear headed thinking and analysis. And

804
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 5: you know, I've spent a lot of time with police officers,

805
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 5: observing them, writing about them, working with them, and you know,

806
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:48,360
Speaker 5: do they do bad things, yes, and they are punished

807
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:51,440
Speaker 5: in those cases as they should be.

808
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:55,399
Speaker 3: But I just, I just I just totally reject that notion.

809
00:43:55,480 --> 00:44:01,919
Speaker 5: And even Tim Scott himself has he experienced some interpersonal racism.

810
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 3: I think that he says that later in the clip.

811
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 5: I'm not quite sure. I actually I have not seen that before.

812
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 5: That's true. I'm not sure what he.

813
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:10,719
Speaker 3: Said, but I would I would take believe it at

814
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 3: face value.

815
00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 5: But if you look at the so called systemic forces

816
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 5: in society, those are an advantage for Tim Scott. And

817
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 5: in fact, you know, all of the systems and policies

818
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 5: that we have in the United States actually reward African

819
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 5: Americans and Latinos relative to a pure merit based system

820
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 5: and punish white European Americans and Asian Americans relative to

821
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:38,240
Speaker 5: how they would be treated on a system of pure merit.

822
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 5: And so with widespread now fifty plus years of affirmative action,

823
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 5: racial quotas, and other such policies, I just think that

824
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 5: it's astonishing to say that our government, our policies are

825
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:54,720
Speaker 5: somehow driven by racism, when the only hard evidence suggests

826
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 5: that in some ways not denying that racism is bad

827
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 5: and we should we should seek to reduced and eliminate it. Actually,

828
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 5: the opposite of the idea that the America is a

829
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 5: systematically racist society appears to be true.

830
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the studies to show that

831
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 1: wick when you control for everything except race, you wind

832
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: up having lower property values and neighborhoods, you wind up

833
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: having higher interest rates for black homeowners controlling for everything.

834
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: But we're getting told you've got to run to your

835
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:24,839
Speaker 1: next day, Emily. Emily also has to run to her thing.

836
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 1: We could but happy to pick this conversation up more

837
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 1: in the future. We're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately.

838
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, we could do anytime. I appreciate it.

839
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 5: It's it's great to talk to you both, and I

840
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 5: love the pushback. It's really fun and I think it's

841
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 5: a valuable service that you're doing.

842
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:40,879
Speaker 3: You all are doing well.

843
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 4: Likewise, from my perspective, you've been so generous with your time.

844
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 4: The book again is called America's Cultural Revolution, How the

845
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,439
Speaker 4: Radical Left Conquered Everything. You can get it. It's out now.

846
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 4: Christopher Ruffo, thank you for joining us on Counterpoints.