Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, my guests, and is a
Speaker 1: senior editor at National Review and l a Times columnist,
Speaker 1: American Enterprise Institute, scholar, and best selling author whose latest
Speaker 1: book is called Suicide of the West. How the rebirth
Speaker 1: of tribalism, populism, nationalism, and identity politics is destroying American democracy.
Speaker 1: She's welcome, Jonah Goldberg. I thought about pawing you up,
Speaker 1: sort of a Macrone versus Trump kind of thing and
Speaker 1: get it all pansy. But I decided we should have
Speaker 1: done that. We should have done a little handshake into
Speaker 1: a kiss, into like a little moment into a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could have like whispered, I like your musk, which
Speaker 1: is the way I think he was saying to him
Speaker 1: at one point. It felt like it. It felt like
Speaker 1: a Trump. Trump's really into him, which is something that
Speaker 1: is good for America. Yes, yeah, maybe, you know, if
Speaker 1: it's good for merit for us to get along with
Speaker 1: our two year old allies, that's good. But if he's
Speaker 1: only doing it because somebody's sucking up to him, less good, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it should be they're getting along because we
Speaker 1: have mutual interests, we have mutual values and they reflect
Speaker 1: that it shouldn't be because the leader of France says,
Speaker 1: not only are you a handsome man, you're a powerful man. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean it shouldn't just be sucking up, it should
Speaker 1: be something more. I feel like it should just be there,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show, great to be here, like, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming through. And you have written quite a
Speaker 1: book here, Suicide of the West. If there's a title
Speaker 1: that would catch you, is that why the title of
Speaker 1: the book, um, Well, in part because I didn't say
Speaker 1: the death of the West or the decline of the West,
Speaker 1: as grim as the title sounds, and it actually doesn't
Speaker 1: end as grim as it sounds. Uh. Suicide is a
Speaker 1: choice you choose to do, um, to make these decisions
Speaker 1: that you're making. And um, I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things that people don't appreciate is that if you
Speaker 1: you can, you can choose not to do them as
Speaker 1: l And then a lot of the things that are
Speaker 1: are are plaguing this country are within our own power
Speaker 1: to fix. Right. It's interesting because you talk about nationalism, tribalism, populism,
Speaker 1: all of these things that you you believe are leading
Speaker 1: to the decline of America, when when you talk about
Speaker 1: the decline of America, you specifically referring to capitalism and
Speaker 1: the way it's made America thrive over the past three years.
Speaker 1: In part, I mean, I call this thing of the miracle,
Speaker 1: right and but the miracle isn't just capitalism. It's also
Speaker 1: uh natural rights, um, civil rights, uh um, free speech,
Speaker 1: all of the things that we associate with the Bill
Speaker 1: of Rights um, the idea that the individual sovereign, that
Speaker 1: we are captains of ourselves, that we are citizens not subjects,
Speaker 1: that the government works for us, we don't work for
Speaker 1: a government. These are all unbelievably new ideas in the
Speaker 1: history of humanity. Humanity split off from the Neanderthals like
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago, and for most of humanities existence,
Speaker 1: we were poor, ignorant, bloody, violent creatures, right and um.
Speaker 1: And our human nature hasn't changed. We are still the
Speaker 1: same creatures we worked ten thousand years. What has changed
Speaker 1: are our values are norms, are institutions, And if you
Speaker 1: don't have gratitude for them, and if you don't try
Speaker 1: to protect them, they'll go away. And it's interesting, as
Speaker 1: you say that, though, you go if we if we
Speaker 1: don't have gratitude for them, if you don't try to
Speaker 1: protect them, because that seems like an argument many people
Speaker 1: in America will use for one group or another. What's
Speaker 1: interesting in this book is you refer to both sides
Speaker 1: of the political spectrum doing similar damage or an idea
Speaker 1: that that may cause damage to that idea in the
Speaker 1: same way. So, for instance, you right for a National
Speaker 1: Review as a conservative writer, but at the same time
Speaker 1: you are not a fan of Trump. I think that's fair. Right,
Speaker 1: So you are saying that populism both on Trump side
Speaker 1: and on the left. Uh, there's a danger of that
Speaker 1: hurting Americans. That there's nothing wrong with a little populism, right, Um,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with a little nationalism. It's like a
Speaker 1: pinch of salt brings out the flavor and the meal.
Speaker 1: Too much ruins the meal, and way too much is
Speaker 1: literally poisonous, right, And so all poisons are determined by
Speaker 1: the dosage. Um. You know, my favorite New Yorker cartoon,
Speaker 1: which my wife got blown up for me a few
Speaker 1: years ago and framed, has two dogs drinking martinis at
Speaker 1: a bar, and one dog says to the other, you
Speaker 1: know it's not good enough that dogs succeed, cats must
Speaker 1: also fail, right, And that's sort of where we are
Speaker 1: as a culture right now, where it's not, you know,
Speaker 1: and this drives me crazy about my own side these days,
Speaker 1: where I talked to young conservative activist college students and
Speaker 1: I say, look, by all means, fight political correctness if
Speaker 1: that's what you want to do. But just because being
Speaker 1: rude is politically incorrect doesn't mean being rude is good.
Speaker 1: And so much of what's happening I think on both
Speaker 1: sides of the political aisle is this this idea that
Speaker 1: you can do almost any horrible thing if it annoys
Speaker 1: the right people. And that a huge part of the
Speaker 1: defense of Donald Trump, which I just find intellectually bankrupt,
Speaker 1: which is, well, he's got the right enemies or um,
Speaker 1: he's making the right people upset. Well, you have to
Speaker 1: look at what is actually upsetting them right and some
Speaker 1: of the things that upset you know, liberals and left
Speaker 1: is I can agree with, and I you know, I'll support,
Speaker 1: But some of the other things are just sort of
Speaker 1: craftness rudeness for its own sake, And I don't see
Speaker 1: why I should defend that just because he's on my team.
Speaker 1: As it were. It's interesting that you bring up teams
Speaker 1: because it does feel like America is drifting into a
Speaker 1: space where politics is solely about teams. You pick your team.
Speaker 1: Whatever your team does, you defend. So the other team,
Speaker 1: whatever they do, you pick the opposite. You know, the
Speaker 1: ref is biased, this is against us. Those are not
Speaker 1: facts because they don't work in our favor. Does this,
Speaker 1: in your opinion, lead to a place where the experiments
Speaker 1: of America begins to decline? Is is that the only
Speaker 1: thing that's kept it moving? Or has it just been
Speaker 1: an illusion that's lost it for three years because there
Speaker 1: were people who were previously oppressed and that wasn't something
Speaker 1: that America ever was. No. Look, I mean, look, are
Speaker 1: there bad things in American history that we need to
Speaker 1: atone for that you need to fix. Are that we
Speaker 1: have problems today that we need to still work on. Absolutely?
Speaker 1: My point is is that um again, human nature has
Speaker 1: no history. Human nature is a constant. We have this.
Speaker 1: If you took a kid from uh New Rochelle and
Speaker 1: you sent them back to a Viking village to be
Speaker 1: raised by vikings a thousand years ago, he would end
Speaker 1: up going pillaging the English countryside. You take a Viking
Speaker 1: baby and you bring it to New Rochelle, he's gonna
Speaker 1: grow up to be an orthodontist, right and a very
Speaker 1: big and so uh. These challenges exist in every generation. Um,
Speaker 1: it is human nature to want to be part of
Speaker 1: your tribe. We are hard wired to be part of
Speaker 1: a group. That's how we evolved is to say I
Speaker 1: will do everything to help. In Darwin writes about this, well,
Speaker 1: I would do everything to help my team, my friends,
Speaker 1: my kid, my family, my allies, my coalition, and the
Speaker 1: stranger is the enemy. And what you know and some
Speaker 1: people you know, there's a common cliche that says people
Speaker 1: have to be taught to hate. Um, no, they actually
Speaker 1: have to be taught not to hate. That's what civilizations
Speaker 1: do is teach people to see. And it starts with
Speaker 1: Christianity or Judas me, you're way back in the religion apartment.
Speaker 1: But the fundamental insight is that you need to teach
Speaker 1: people that strangers have human dignity, that strangers are decent people,
Speaker 1: and just because you don't know them doesn't mean or
Speaker 1: or don't agree with them, It doesn't make them the enemy.
Speaker 1: And I think we're falling down on that in our
Speaker 1: politics and our education, and instead we're telling people just
Speaker 1: go with your feelings, your rage is more important than
Speaker 1: facts or argument, and that's where you get populism. That's
Speaker 1: where you get a lot of nationalism too. But if
Speaker 1: you if you have somebody who is trying to end you,
Speaker 1: how do you then work on responding to that? Because
Speaker 1: that's something that I that I'm always trying to figure
Speaker 1: out in my head is it's it's one thing for
Speaker 1: people to say, let's keep politics, uh civil, let's not
Speaker 1: have an argument, let's not points each about as enemies,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But there are times when, let's say Charlottesville
Speaker 1: is a good example, there are people who are literally
Speaker 1: saying we are Nazis. These people are wishing for the
Speaker 1: end of other human beings. It's a bit difficult at
Speaker 1: that point to say, yes, yes, but let us uh,
Speaker 1: let us sit with them and engage as they drive
Speaker 1: over us. It's a very difficult space to be. And
Speaker 1: I agree with you. And look, look, my last name
Speaker 1: is Goldberg. I'm not really a turn the other cheek guy.
Speaker 1: I'm more of a smiting and wrath guy. So I
Speaker 1: get what you're talking about. But but my point is,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you, and tyling about the Nazis
Speaker 1: one of the things that infuriates me about what Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon and some of the people around Trump did um
Speaker 1: was claimed that somehow, a bunch of freaking Nazis were
Speaker 1: part of our coalition. And I would keep trying to
Speaker 1: explain to these people, no, you don't. They literally say
Speaker 1: that they want to get rid of people like me,
Speaker 1: people like you. Why why should I form a common
Speaker 1: you know, group of them just to get this guy
Speaker 1: elected or just for political purpose or whatever. Some things
Speaker 1: are ex sinential questions. And I'm not saying that we
Speaker 1: should have gone into Charlottesville and shot a bunch of Nazis, right,
Speaker 1: But the idea that somehow, um, they have something important
Speaker 1: to say that I need to find common ground with them,
Speaker 1: I think is ridiculous. I also think it's ridiculous to
Speaker 1: call people who aren't Nazis Nazis as a way to
Speaker 1: demonize them. And I think there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: that's going on too. And so it's a prudential question
Speaker 1: and you have to sort of figure it out as
Speaker 1: you go. It doesn't mean you can't have big arguments.
Speaker 1: I've always believed the democracy is about disagreement, not about agreement.
Speaker 1: It's about having arguments. What I don't like about our
Speaker 1: politics right now is how people don't think arguments matter
Speaker 1: at all, that facts don't matter that um, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole point of the Enlightenment was this idea that
Speaker 1: you could persuade people. And part of the reason I
Speaker 1: wrote this book is it's much a cautionary tale to
Speaker 1: my allies on the right, is that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are just giving up on persuasion and instead it's
Speaker 1: just hammer and tongs. Cats must fail, It's all about power.
Speaker 1: The arguments in defense of Donald Trump and the we're
Speaker 1: all about winning and strength. Winning and strength are not
Speaker 1: They're absolutely amoral concepts. Winning for what, strength for what,
Speaker 1: Unity for what? It has to be the ideas that
Speaker 1: underlie it, and we're in a moment where a lot
Speaker 1: of people just don't care about ideas anymore. One of
Speaker 1: the big ideas that you share in the book is
Speaker 1: that America needs to focus on less identity politics on
Speaker 1: both sides and more on merits, because merits is how
Speaker 1: capitalism thrives. Merits is what moves the society forward. When
Speaker 1: you say that, though, do you think sometimes a statement
Speaker 1: like that ignores the fact that some people's merits is
Speaker 1: overlooked because of identity politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Look look,
Speaker 1: you know it's funny Like most of the liberals I
Speaker 1: talked to, they like the words. They agree with me
Speaker 1: on the populism and nationalism, and they don't like the
Speaker 1: and the tribalism. They don't like the identity politics. Right.
Speaker 1: I am not saying that you can't. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that there isn't discrimination out there. Obviously there is. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that one of the great and glorious things.
Speaker 1: And Barack Obama was very eloquent about this. Um about
Speaker 1: this country is not that America were the Founding fathers
Speaker 1: were hypocrites when they started this country. They were you know,
Speaker 1: the slavery was a big you know, it's a big
Speaker 1: you know, hey what about that? Right? Um description, what
Speaker 1: about that? But you know what I'm getting a right. So,
Speaker 1: So what happens is then Abraham Lincoln comes along with
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg Address, and he redefines what this country is
Speaker 1: about about, you know, equality, and then Martin Luther King says, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a second. A hundred years later it is his
Speaker 1: wait a second. The Founding Fathers were a promisory note
Speaker 1: to the American people that all men, including black men,
Speaker 1: are comin to equal. It's the unfolding of that story,
Speaker 1: so that that is what matters. And so one of
Speaker 1: the core values that all of civilization is is the
Speaker 1: story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why Martin Luther King was so persuasive is he
Speaker 1: was appealing to the best ideals of white America and saying,
Speaker 1: you should take people as you find them. One of
Speaker 1: the great things about the American founding, which doesn't get
Speaker 1: taught anymore, is that we got rid of titles of nobility.
Speaker 1: We got rid of the notion that simply by an
Speaker 1: accident of birth, one person is better than another person.
Speaker 1: And so a little identity politics, just like a little
Speaker 1: nationalism in terms of ethnic pride and solidarity, all of
Speaker 1: that is fine. When you start reducing whole categories of
Speaker 1: people to an abstraction and say all I need to
Speaker 1: know about you is the color of your skin, that's
Speaker 1: when you get into a problem. And this idea that
Speaker 1: all white people are racist is is first of all
Speaker 1: not true. You know, intermarriage rates between white and blacks
Speaker 1: are going through the roof. They can't all be racist. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: But I but I think the argument is less all
Speaker 1: white people are racist and the system has been created
Speaker 1: by white people to oppress people of color. So I
Speaker 1: think when when people say white people are racist, I
Speaker 1: think that's disingenuous. But most of the time the argument
Speaker 1: people are saying is, hey, we can admit that this system,
Speaker 1: from the founding fathers through to redlining through the segregation
Speaker 1: was written in such a way that it would benefit
Speaker 1: one race over another. Would it would hemp but the
Speaker 1: cats and allow the dogs to succeed? And I look,
Speaker 1: and I think there's obviously a lot of truth to that. Um.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the definition of who counts as
Speaker 1: white changed over time. You want the Benjamin Frankly changed
Speaker 1: for everyone except black people. That's that's true. That and
Speaker 1: that's true too, And that's my That's part of my
Speaker 1: point is that it is an outrage that this country
Speaker 1: took so long to include everybody in this idea of
Speaker 1: of universal equality. That is not an argument for getting
Speaker 1: rid of the value of universal equality, right, It is.
Speaker 1: It is to say that we need to be more
Speaker 1: consistent in applying these ideals, rather than saying these ideals
Speaker 1: themselves are bankrupt. Because it is these ideals that for
Speaker 1: for all of human history, the average human being everywhere
Speaker 1: on Earth lived on average with three dollars a day Africa, Asia, Europe, everywhere,
Speaker 1: and then once it only once in all of human history,
Speaker 1: it starts to go like this. And it's because these
Speaker 1: ideas start getting put into action. I think we should
Speaker 1: be you know, we live in this moment of the
Speaker 1: greatest alleviation of material poverty in all of human history.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of millions of people in Asian Africa are coming
Speaker 1: out of poverty. And it's not because of UN programs
Speaker 1: they help, it's because of these ideas starting to germinate
Speaker 1: lifting people up. Maybe I just a little gratitude for them,
Speaker 1: and maybe have a little room to say, maybe the
Speaker 1: entire story of this three hundred year miracle isn't a
Speaker 1: story purely of oppression and tyranny. Were we bad the
Speaker 1: bad things happen in the past. Yes, have things been
Speaker 1: getting better? Yes, you can say both things. You can
Speaker 1: say both things nuanced. The way I like to think
Speaker 1: of it as this, I go, uh, Capitalism in many
Speaker 1: ways should be like software on a phone. It constantly
Speaker 1: needs to be updated, and at some points it feels
Speaker 1: like the updating has stopped and people allow its to
Speaker 1: you know, stagnates in the way that it is. And
Speaker 1: to your point of gratitude. Before I let you go,
Speaker 1: I think the one thing and I wonder if you
Speaker 1: can maybe understand this is when people say you should
Speaker 1: be grateful for for what you have, do you not
Speaker 1: think that gratitude is always relative to the bottom versus
Speaker 1: the top in where you are, Because to say to somebody,
Speaker 1: and you hear this all the time, and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you're saying. Politicians will say, oh, black people, you
Speaker 1: complain about America, go live in Afghanistan. See what that's like.
Speaker 1: I said, But you're not living in Afghanistan. If I'm
Speaker 1: an a Michelin Star restaurant and the food is not great,
Speaker 1: you can't tell me to go to Arby's because I complain.
Speaker 1: I'm saying to you, the food is not what it
Speaker 1: was promised in this restaurant. So is it not difficult
Speaker 1: to say to people who have gratitude when they are
Speaker 1: not living in the promise of what the country is
Speaker 1: meant to be. Yeah, no, I think that that's fair.
Speaker 1: I think at the same time, well, I don't say
Speaker 1: that to people, right, you know, and really not, honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying so and so I one of the
Speaker 1: one of the good ones, one of the things. I
Speaker 1: for one of the things. And look, I mean I've
Speaker 1: I've taken slings and arrows from lots of different directions,
Speaker 1: including from a lot of friends and former friends taking um.
Speaker 1: One of the thing is I would say to people
Speaker 1: who make that argument is stop making that argument, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not how you should frame this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. What I would say is that you know,
Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness is is it's not a guarantee
Speaker 1: if you have the right to pursue it. And one
Speaker 1: of the great things about freedom, the miracle liberal democratic capitalism,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, is it gives more
Speaker 1: people the opportunity to pursue it. Could that get better? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But you can't look at any of the systems we
Speaker 1: had prior to three hundred years ago, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you can look at to most of the sort
Speaker 1: of nationalist or socialist systems and say they're better at it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when people say we fall short of ideals,
Speaker 1: I said, well, of course, that's why they call them ideals.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be able to like live. They're
Speaker 1: supposed to be a north star, you know, they're the
Speaker 1: thing that you're your true north that you march towards,
Speaker 1: and you can always get better at them. My point
Speaker 1: is that we shouldn't throw them away because this is
Speaker 1: the only game in town in terms of of what
Speaker 1: has actually taken humanity out of the muck of its
Speaker 1: natural environment. Capitalism is unnatural, democracy is unnatural. If they
Speaker 1: were natural, you would think they would show up a
Speaker 1: little earlier in the evolutionary record than about two thousand
Speaker 1: years into our existence here. And so maybe these are
Speaker 1: things that we should be a little more protective of.
Speaker 1: If the goose, the golden goose, came into your house
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and started, you know, golden eggs don't
Speaker 1: sound modern anymore, started squeezing out winning lottery tickets, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but you would your response to it should be gratitude,
Speaker 1: not like, give me more, you know, more lottery tickets
Speaker 1: than you can produce. But that's what the story is about,
Speaker 1: is it's it's not really so much about greed, it's
Speaker 1: about ingratitude. It says, I think, I think fundamentally understand
Speaker 1: what you're saying. And that's what I appreciate about the
Speaker 1: book is it makes me think. It engages in ideas
Speaker 1: and fundamentally, what the book is saying is don't throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the buff. That's right. That's right.
Speaker 1: And we can we can disagree about the size of
Speaker 1: government all these kinds of things, but there's some fundamental
Speaker 1: things that we should all be able to agree, have
Speaker 1: merit and are worth keeping. You stop the conversation. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being on the show. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Suicide Off the West. It is available now
Speaker 1: The Daily Show with governoah Ears Edition. Watch The Daily
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