Speaker 1: Up next, The Truth with Lisa both part of the
Speaker 1: game critical race theory. We've been hearing a lot about
Speaker 1: the term these days, but what exactly is it? What
Speaker 1: does it mean? And why should you be worried that
Speaker 1: this poison is infecting American institutions from our education system
Speaker 1: to the workplace. Today, I get you all the answers.
Speaker 1: This is The Truth with Lisa Booth. Yea welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Truth with Lisa Booth. I've got a really
Speaker 1: really interesting show for you guys this week. My guest
Speaker 1: is vivek Rama Swamy. He's an incredibly successful entrepreneur. He's
Speaker 1: founded multibillion dollar enterprises, led a biotech company CEO, became
Speaker 1: a hedge fund partner in his twenties, trained as a
Speaker 1: scientist at Harvard and a lawyer at Yale. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: he's not a dumb guy. The Vega is also the
Speaker 1: author of the forthcoming book Woke, Inc. Which takes us
Speaker 1: inside corporate America's social justice scam. It comes out this August,
Speaker 1: and after talking to him, I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be really interesting. The Vega has
Speaker 1: lived the American dream. His parents came here from India
Speaker 1: as immigrants, and he has built something for himself. He
Speaker 1: knows how unique and amazing America is, and that's why
Speaker 1: he is so concerned about critical race theory infecting America's institutions. Also,
Speaker 1: as an entrepreneur, he knows a thing or two about
Speaker 1: what's happening in corporate America today. The Vegue and I
Speaker 1: discussed critical race theory, this cancer, cancer that is infecting
Speaker 1: our country. Right now, we're going to discuss the dangers
Speaker 1: of wokeness, his career in business, and so much more.
Speaker 1: And with that, I want to welcome the Vague Ramaswami
Speaker 1: to the show The Vegue. Thanks for coming on The
Speaker 1: Truth with Lisa Booth. Thanks for having me. So your
Speaker 1: parents immigrated from India. How did that shape your childhood
Speaker 1: growing up? Look? Actually, I was in second grade in
Speaker 1: ninety nine three when I actually watched Martin Luther King's
Speaker 1: I Have a Dream speech for the first time. And
Speaker 1: in a certain sense, when I watched that speech, it
Speaker 1: actually made me think about my parents. That that was
Speaker 1: the one where he said he wanted his kids to
Speaker 1: grow up in a country where they'd be judged not
Speaker 1: on the color of their skin, but on the content
Speaker 1: of their character, and as I thought about it in
Speaker 1: the years since then, that was that was really the
Speaker 1: dream that allowed my own parents to succeed in the
Speaker 1: way that they had. Right my dad came halfway across
Speaker 1: the world in the late nineties seventies with a thickening accent,
Speaker 1: no dollars in his pocket, and built a career as
Speaker 1: an engineer at GE in Cincinnati over the course of
Speaker 1: forty years. My mom was a geriatric psychiatrist who created
Speaker 1: patients with Alzheimer's disease for her entire career, despite being
Speaker 1: a forg medical graduate. And to me, it was something
Speaker 1: that I took inspiration from and that I definitely couldn't
Speaker 1: do that today. What they did, pack my bags and
Speaker 1: go halfway around the world, go to a different country
Speaker 1: with a different culture, a different surrounding. And by the way,
Speaker 1: in an era where we didn't have an internet, they
Speaker 1: had to have a loose phone connection. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do that. So in a certain sense, I
Speaker 1: took a lot of inspiration from the courage that my
Speaker 1: parents had in voting with their feet to come to
Speaker 1: a place where they wanted to build a new life.
Speaker 1: But it was also a reminder of what the place
Speaker 1: they came to America was all about, was a place
Speaker 1: where they could live that dream that I learned about
Speaker 1: even when I was a young kid, that no matter
Speaker 1: who you are or what the color of your skin is,
Speaker 1: we now live in a country where you'd be judged
Speaker 1: on the content of your character and the content of
Speaker 1: your accomplishments rather than the color of your skin or
Speaker 1: where you were born. And and to me, that's part
Speaker 1: of why I was always been partial to the American
Speaker 1: dream is that it wasn't just something I studied in school.
Speaker 1: It was something that my family and I had the
Speaker 1: privilege of living. But at what point do you think
Speaker 1: this focus at what point do you think that came
Speaker 1: into focus? I mean, at what point was there a
Speaker 1: shift or or or when do you think this happened
Speaker 1: in the country in terms of just this intense identity
Speaker 1: politics focus. Yeah. Look, I think that the one of
Speaker 1: the beautiful things about the American dream is something that
Speaker 1: it's something that we aspire to, right, It's not a
Speaker 1: destination that we reach. It is a vision that we
Speaker 1: aspire to, which means we're always gonna fall forward. And
Speaker 1: so I think for as long as we've overcome the
Speaker 1: civil rights the civil rights the civil rights movement overcame
Speaker 1: a lot of historical injustices. You know, we were never
Speaker 1: fully all the way there. And so in the nineties
Speaker 1: began the birth of critical race theory, the idea that
Speaker 1: there were these invisible power structures that governed the social universe,
Speaker 1: kind of like Karl Mark said it in the he
Speaker 1: thought there were these economic power relationships. There was the
Speaker 1: emergence of this new academic movement in the nineties, critical
Speaker 1: race theory and related woke ism that said that actually, no,
Speaker 1: it's not just economic disempowerment's racial disempowerment and bigotry and
Speaker 1: misogyny and racism that govern our social forces. And this
Speaker 1: is a fringe theory in the academy, and it added
Speaker 1: something to the marketplace of ideas. It wasn't something that
Speaker 1: I personally subscribed to, but there's always something about a
Speaker 1: person who wants to challenge the system that I respect,
Speaker 1: whether or not I agree with them. When this really changed,
Speaker 1: actually was an untold story that begins with the two
Speaker 1: eight financial crisis, when this went from being about challenging
Speaker 1: the system, when wokism actually became the new system itself,
Speaker 1: and it was a tricky It was a tricky trade
Speaker 1: underlying how that happened. But the way it worked was
Speaker 1: after two corporations were the bad guys. Wall Street was
Speaker 1: the enemy. Corporate power was the target for the old Left,
Speaker 1: and what they wanted to do was take money from
Speaker 1: wealthy corporations and redistributed to poor people. Agree or disagree,
Speaker 1: that's what the old left wanted to do. And something
Speaker 1: new happened in the post two thousand eight period where
Speaker 1: there was this new left, this new woke left that
Speaker 1: actually said that now it wasn't really about economic injustice
Speaker 1: or poverty, No, it was about racial injustice and misogyny
Speaker 1: and bigotry. And that actually presented the opportunity of a
Speaker 1: generation for the most powerful companies in the United States,
Speaker 1: presented an opportunity of generation for Wall Street. Because ocupy
Speaker 1: wall Street's a tough pill to swallow, but this woke
Speaker 1: stuff was actually pretty easy. And so basically Wall Street
Speaker 1: jumped on the woke bandwagon, agreed to lend it not
Speaker 1: only it's money, but it's legitimacy to this new racial
Speaker 1: identity based movement, and together you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: big banks that got together with a bunch of woke
Speaker 1: millennials together their birth woke capitalism, and then they put
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street up for adoption, and that actually proved
Speaker 1: to be a really convenient trade that took this nascent
Speaker 1: idea of wokenness from the halls of the academy and
Speaker 1: supercharged it with the potency of capitalism. And then once
Speaker 1: wokeness got got in bed with capitalism, that's actually when
Speaker 1: it became unstoppable. And so Silicon Valle did the same thing,
Speaker 1: a backroom bargain where they say they're gonna censor content
Speaker 1: online that the woke movement doesn't want to hear, and
Speaker 1: in return, the woke movement agrees to work with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party to leave their monopoly power intact. The rest
Speaker 1: of corporate America started following the same pattern. That's really
Speaker 1: when wokeness became unstoppable, as when it merged with capitalism.
Speaker 1: And capitalism is a powerful tool, usually to organize the
Speaker 1: society's products, services, and economic affairs, but now it's being
Speaker 1: used to organize society's social affairs to under this guise
Speaker 1: of wokeness. So long story there, but but if you
Speaker 1: wanted the redux version. That's kind of how it goes. No, I,
Speaker 1: I think that's incredibly interesting. And so you've sort of
Speaker 1: existed though in a lot of these structures where you know,
Speaker 1: wokeisum is so prevalent. Right, So you graduated underground at Harvard,
Speaker 1: you went to Yale law school, you're an entrepreneur, you've
Speaker 1: existed in the biotech industry. I mean, how much indoctrination
Speaker 1: did you find going on when you went to school
Speaker 1: at Harvard and Yale. Well, I actually think it's changed
Speaker 1: a lot over the last decade. So to be clear,
Speaker 1: Harvard and Yale were definitely left leaning places at the
Speaker 1: point at the point in time where I was there.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you this, Lisas, I actually benefited from it, right.
Speaker 1: I think I got a better education than most of
Speaker 1: my peers because I didn't necessarily subscribe to liberal dogma.
Speaker 1: And that means you get your views challenge, and I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes you change your view, and sometimes it means
Speaker 1: that you've come out with your same view, but with
Speaker 1: a better understanding of why it is you believe what
Speaker 1: you do, rather than just knowing what it is that
Speaker 1: you believe. So I was actually grateful for it and
Speaker 1: when I went to Harvard I graduate two seven, I
Speaker 1: still found it to be a place that was about
Speaker 1: the intellectual meritocracy, in the marketplace of ideas, where the
Speaker 1: best ideas and the best arguments when on their own terms,
Speaker 1: irrespective of the background or the color of the skin
Speaker 1: of the person who's making that argument. It was it
Speaker 1: was definitely tilted in one direction. But I actually do
Speaker 1: that is tilted in my favor in that by being
Speaker 1: in the intellectual minority, actually got a better education out
Speaker 1: of it. I think things changed dramatically over the decade.
Speaker 1: Over the last decade, I do not think that's the
Speaker 1: intellectual environment at Harvard today. It is definitely not the
Speaker 1: intellectual environment at Yale today. And now what you say
Speaker 1: is merged with your identity that somebody can't evaluate your
Speaker 1: ideas without also evaluating the other inherited attributes that you
Speaker 1: were born with, your race, your gender, your sexual orientation.
Speaker 1: And there was this bizarre move intellectual move over the
Speaker 1: worse of the last few years, where race actually meant
Speaker 1: something that went even beyond the color of your skin.
Speaker 1: Ianna Pressley, remember the Squad, summed it up actually pretty
Speaker 1: well last year when she said we don't want any
Speaker 1: more black faces that don't want to be black voices.
Speaker 1: We don't want any more brown faces that don't want
Speaker 1: to be brown voices. The side note, I definitely don't
Speaker 1: fit her description of what counts as a brown voice,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that I have brown skin. But to
Speaker 1: be being brown or being black was always about a
Speaker 1: skin color, not about a voice. And so now that
Speaker 1: created the opportunity to say that actually, there's such a
Speaker 1: thing as a black voice and a brown voice. And
Speaker 1: now it's just one step further to say that if
Speaker 1: you then disagree with any of those claims, that actually
Speaker 1: means you're racist, not in the conventional sense that we
Speaker 1: think of racism is discriminating on a basis skin color,
Speaker 1: but now racism as disagreeing with a dogma, even in
Speaker 1: good faith, in the spirit of open debate. And that's
Speaker 1: really what chilled open debate in this country and set
Speaker 1: set in this new era, righted in this new era
Speaker 1: of fear that has supplanted our original culture of free
Speaker 1: speech and open debate. And the irony and all of
Speaker 1: this is that in the name of diversity, we've then
Speaker 1: sacrificed true diversity of thought, including at our leading universities.
Speaker 1: I've seen it firsthand. In the name of democracy, democracy
Speaker 1: is not just about casting some valid every November. In
Speaker 1: the name of democracy, we've actually sacrificed our most important
Speaker 1: democratic ideals of free speech and open debate. And in
Speaker 1: the name of inclusion, including in our educational institutions, we've
Speaker 1: created this new exclusionary culture or certain points of view
Speaker 1: just aren't welcome. And so you know, for me, I'm
Speaker 1: writing this book I told you about, I'm not doing
Speaker 1: it as a journalist that's reporting on my findings. I
Speaker 1: consider myself actually to be something more of a whistleblower.
Speaker 1: Having been in elite I releague institutions, having been in
Speaker 1: elite hedge funds, and then started a Company's a number
Speaker 1: of companies that have en venture backed and successful in
Speaker 1: the worlds of New York finance to Silicon Valley to biotech.
Speaker 1: I've had firsthand experiences that made me compel to say
Speaker 1: that somebody needs to speak up, not from the outside
Speaker 1: looking in, but from the inside looking out to really
Speaker 1: reveal the heart of what's going on, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: need a better way forward. But in order to for
Speaker 1: you better way forward, we're gonna first need to understand
Speaker 1: the essence of the problem that has really taken a
Speaker 1: chokehold of all of our major institutions in the private sector,
Speaker 1: not just corporate America, but nonprofits, museums, philanthropies, universities, educational institutions,
Speaker 1: and then of course the government itself well. And as
Speaker 1: you just laid out, and as I laid out in
Speaker 1: the intro of the show, and as our listeners, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you've accomplished. I was telling you earlier
Speaker 1: and we were talking. I was telling you about some
Speaker 1: of the things I was working on. I feel lazy
Speaker 1: in comparison. You've accomplished so much at your age. But
Speaker 1: you know, as you've mentioned, you're a hedge fund partner
Speaker 1: in your twenties, founded multibillion dollar enterprises. Let you lead
Speaker 1: a biotech company. You're on Forbes America's Riches Entrepreneurs Under
Speaker 1: forty list. I've not made the list. I'm thirty six,
Speaker 1: so maybe I have a couple of years. But you've
Speaker 1: accomplished a lot, and lately, you know, you've been vocal
Speaker 1: about this topic. You're writing a book, Woking, which is
Speaker 1: out auguste Why what what compelled you? Why did you
Speaker 1: feel because obviously there's a level of risk. There's always
Speaker 1: a level of risk in speaking out for you know,
Speaker 1: particularly uh for you and you know, with companies and
Speaker 1: with your work. Why why did you speak out? Yeah, Look,
Speaker 1: I felt some sense of obligation to do it. I
Speaker 1: actually consider this my form of public service, at least
Speaker 1: in the near term, because I told you about it
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. It's near and near to my heart,
Speaker 1: the American dream, because I've lived it right. I've gone
Speaker 1: in a single generation from being the kid of immigrant
Speaker 1: who came to this country with literally no money forty
Speaker 1: years ago to becoming the founder of multibillion dollar companies,
Speaker 1: including one that's going public this year for over seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars in a single generation. That was the dream
Speaker 1: that I was able to live. And you know, as
Speaker 1: I let a company a CEO for seven years, I
Speaker 1: developed medicines for a number of diseases, probably the one
Speaker 1: I'm most proud of as a drug for the treatment
Speaker 1: of prostate cancer. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: there was a new cancer that even the best of
Speaker 1: science wasn't going to address. It was a cultural cancer,
Speaker 1: not a biological cancer, and it was a cancer that
Speaker 1: threatened to kill that dream that I really cared about,
Speaker 1: and that was, of course the cancer that I that
Speaker 1: we all call woke culture. And I basically think the
Speaker 1: essence of woke culture is that it's about waking us
Speaker 1: up from the American dream. And that's what happened over
Speaker 1: the course of the last decade. We woke up. And
Speaker 1: the problem when you wake up from a dream is
Speaker 1: it pretty soon you forget what it was doing about.
Speaker 1: You might remember how it felt to be in it,
Speaker 1: and let enough time pass, you forget how how it
Speaker 1: felt to be in the dream too, And that's the
Speaker 1: phase that I think we're in. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: irreversible quite yet. I think that if the tens were
Speaker 1: about celebrating our diversity and our differences, at nauseum, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, ought to be about reviving our shared sense
Speaker 1: about who we are as a people. But like I said,
Speaker 1: you only get a little bit of time once you've
Speaker 1: woken up from a dream to go back to remembering
Speaker 1: what it was all about. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: period that we're in. So I felt some sense of
Speaker 1: urgency to be able to speak out actually to make
Speaker 1: a pretty tough decision earlier this year, when I stepped
Speaker 1: down as CEO of my company to do it. I
Speaker 1: do think that when a lot of left leaning ceo
Speaker 1: is like Mark Benioff or whoever write books about their
Speaker 1: own politics, it tends to help their businesses. But the
Speaker 1: reality of the world we live in is that that
Speaker 1: standard isn't applied evenly. And it was really important for
Speaker 1: me to practice what I preached by the way I
Speaker 1: think business and politics should be kept apart. I definitely
Speaker 1: uh endeavored to never use the business to foist my
Speaker 1: political views on anyone. I was always only speaking up
Speaker 1: as a citizen, But as I really entered the public
Speaker 1: sphere with the book and a lot of other initiatives
Speaker 1: I'm working on, I wanted to practice what I preached,
Speaker 1: and you know, in order to really protect the company's
Speaker 1: voice as separate from my own, I stepped down as
Speaker 1: from my role as CEO, so I could really speak
Speaker 1: not as a CEO but as a citizen. But the
Speaker 1: flip side of that is I'm going to speak with
Speaker 1: candor in an unvarnished way, and I really lay out
Speaker 1: a lot in the book that's probably gonna take a
Speaker 1: lot of people by surprise that is going to leave
Speaker 1: me with fewer friends at elite ski conferences and fancy
Speaker 1: ski towns that I might have otherwise had. But I
Speaker 1: do think that that's the kind of sacrifice that people
Speaker 1: in my position are gonna have to be willing to
Speaker 1: make if we're going to turn this cultural tide. So
Speaker 1: it was the least that I could do. Can you
Speaker 1: give us a highlight from that? I mean, now you
Speaker 1: piqued my interest? Yeah, well, um, well, look it's it's
Speaker 1: in the final stages of being touched up in a
Speaker 1: books available for pre order now. It comes out mid August.
Speaker 1: But you know, look I talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of my experiences in in you know, seeing this firsthand,
Speaker 1: and I guess, having been the CEO of a company,
Speaker 1: actually am and really actually pretty sympathetic to the younger
Speaker 1: generation of workers who want to join a company who
Speaker 1: does more than just print a buck by making products
Speaker 1: that matter. In fact, that was part of our pitch
Speaker 1: as a biotech company, is that you don't want to
Speaker 1: be part of a generation that's just looking at turning
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of cash into a bigger wad
Speaker 1: of cash by going to All Street. And I, by
Speaker 1: the way, I've done that or tonangement for a while,
Speaker 1: Or you don't really want to be programming an app
Speaker 1: that allows you to click one millisecond faster on some
Speaker 1: guy with a mustache, on an app that disappears via
Speaker 1: text message. Whatever it is. You want to be applying
Speaker 1: your talents to something that matters. Come do it at
Speaker 1: a place that allows you to make medicines or patients
Speaker 1: who need them by fixing a broken industry. So that
Speaker 1: was actually one of the pitches for recruiting employees early
Speaker 1: in the early days of when I even started my
Speaker 1: company back. So I think that it's a good thing
Speaker 1: when capitalism works by making products that matter for people
Speaker 1: who really need them. Where I think it goes awry
Speaker 1: is one of these businesses espouse social values that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with their businesses as a way of
Speaker 1: signaling their virtue, but in ways that actually serve as
Speaker 1: a distraction from the essence of what those businesses ought
Speaker 1: to be about, not just for themselves, but a distraction
Speaker 1: for our democracy. And I guess one of the things
Speaker 1: that I talked about in the book is some of
Speaker 1: my experiences in dealing with the next generation of talent.
Speaker 1: Right if from a millennial, you know, the gen Z
Speaker 1: talent pool, looking to enter the workforce. One of the
Speaker 1: things I've learned is they're actually really hungry for a cause,
Speaker 1: hungry for a sense of purpose, if I may say it,
Speaker 1: hungry for identity. And I think we live in a
Speaker 1: moment where we have to recognize that, you know, religion
Speaker 1: has nearly disappeared, Patriotism is on the decline, and human beings,
Speaker 1: especially young human beings, are hungry for a cause. And
Speaker 1: that black hole, that vacuum for purpose and identity and meaning,
Speaker 1: that's actually the void that wokeness is filling. It's become
Speaker 1: the equivalent of the modern opioid for the masses. And
Speaker 1: I think that that has our work cut out for
Speaker 1: us in fighting this, not to not to just go superficially,
Speaker 1: as many on the right seemed prone to do and
Speaker 1: countering wokenness, but rather to do the harder work of
Speaker 1: rebuilding a shared vision of not only what it means
Speaker 1: to be a conservative, but what it means to be
Speaker 1: an American, which we lack a good answer to that
Speaker 1: question today. I think rebuilding that answer and revising a
Speaker 1: new brand of Americanism as that same sense of shared
Speaker 1: purpose could actually be the cultural cure that we need.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I talked about in the
Speaker 1: book and some of my first stand experience is the
Speaker 1: first becoming really frustrated and sort of wringing my hands
Speaker 1: in the air with what exactly happened over the last
Speaker 1: ten years that allowed our private sector to become as
Speaker 1: defeat as it has with respect to the pursuit of
Speaker 1: these flimsy social causes and values, to really reflecting more
Speaker 1: deeply on the fact that actually a lot of these people,
Speaker 1: and I probably grew more sympathetic to it because many
Speaker 1: of them have worked for me over time, are really
Speaker 1: well motivated, talented if they're given the right mission, even
Speaker 1: hard working people, but who need to have their hunger
Speaker 1: for purpose and hunger for change, and hunger for identity
Speaker 1: and hunger for a cause satisfied with the cause. That's
Speaker 1: far more meaningful than the skin deep attributes that corporations
Speaker 1: and elite institutions are selling them today. I think the
Speaker 1: equivalent of Virginia Slims advertising the insecure teenagers back in
Speaker 1: the that's effectively what war corporations are doing today to
Speaker 1: the next generation of Americans. But what impact does it
Speaker 1: have on companies in the sense, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things I hear from a lot of people
Speaker 1: in corporate America is there's just this intense, intense desire.
Speaker 1: It's all about diversity. Diversity, you know, skin color, meeting quotas, etcetera.
Speaker 1: What impact does it have on a company when that's
Speaker 1: the focus versus just a meritocracy who's best for the
Speaker 1: job regardless of their skin color? And and also that's
Speaker 1: sort of belittling to think that someone can't the job
Speaker 1: based off of you know, meritocracy and just based off
Speaker 1: of you know, skill sets, and it has to be
Speaker 1: focused purely on race. I agree with you. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you just look at United Airlines in the last month,
Speaker 1: for example, said that the pilots in the cockpit had
Speaker 1: to be women or persons of color by the way,
Speaker 1: an expression that I detest, taking a hundred fifty cultures
Speaker 1: and lumping them into one new culture, which we call
Speaker 1: of color. But anyway, so they said women are people
Speaker 1: of color in the cockpit, had even if that meant
Speaker 1: throwing out the tests that they used to use to
Speaker 1: test for the competence of their pilots, and that reveals
Speaker 1: the essence of what's going on is today, in the
Speaker 1: name of diversity, we have actually sacrificed excellence itself, the
Speaker 1: pursuit of excellence. And you know, make no mistake, I
Speaker 1: think diversity is a good thing. Diversity of thought is
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be about. And I think diversity
Speaker 1: of thought is a means to the end of achieving excellence.
Speaker 1: But now, in the name of diversity, we have sacrificed
Speaker 1: both diversity of thought as well as our pursuit of excellence.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's how it impacts our companies.
Speaker 1: I think that's how it impacts are our educational institutions.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a separate impact to which is in
Speaker 1: the other direction, which I think is maybe even more important.
Speaker 1: Is not just the way in which these new political
Speaker 1: values infect private enterprises to operate less efficiently than they
Speaker 1: otherwise would, which is a real problem, but Milton Friedman
Speaker 1: could have told you about that fifty years ago when
Speaker 1: he wrote his first critique of stakehold capitalism. In No,
Speaker 1: the problem today is actually perhaps even greater in the
Speaker 1: other direction, the way in which woke businesses are actually
Speaker 1: infecting American democracy. And that's actually what makes me even
Speaker 1: more worried, not as a CEO or a leader of
Speaker 1: former CEO, or a leader of a business, but as
Speaker 1: an American citizen worried about corporate overreach where we're actually
Speaker 1: creating a modern version of old world Europe, where a
Speaker 1: small group of institutional elites get in the back room
Speaker 1: deal determining what the common ideals for society ought to be,
Speaker 1: when in fact, America was supposed to be a rejection
Speaker 1: of corporatism, a rejection of corporate ocracy, to create a
Speaker 1: world in which, on our most important moral questions we
Speaker 1: decided on the basis of a one vote, one person,
Speaker 1: one vote system rather than a one dollar, one vote system.
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually the more most dangerous trend
Speaker 1: of all, where corporations become the new moral arbiters. We
Speaker 1: then effectively live in a one dollar, one vote system
Speaker 1: where corporations use their market power to actually influence the
Speaker 1: marketplace of ideas. And that's something that really concerns me
Speaker 1: this year when you see you know, Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: leaving Atlanta in protests over a new voting law in Georgia.
Speaker 1: These used to be the a political institutions that brought
Speaker 1: us together, irrespective of whether we were democratic republican, and
Speaker 1: irrespective of whether we were black or white, we could
Speaker 1: still get together in an a political space like a
Speaker 1: baseball stadium and come together. And the foundation for democracy
Speaker 1: depends on actually certain common spaces where we could all
Speaker 1: come together that are a political And I'm worried that
Speaker 1: we're actually, in the name of protecting democracy in the
Speaker 1: case of Georgia voting law, we're actually eroting the true
Speaker 1: foundation for democracy itself in terms of the real free
Speaker 1: speech and open debate, where every citizen's always actually counts equally,
Speaker 1: rather than some corporation having a special say. How do
Speaker 1: you reign that in? Though? Yeah, So I talked about
Speaker 1: some legal solutions in the book that I think, in
Speaker 1: the short term are pretty important. Um, how technical do you?
Speaker 1: How technical are you open to getting? Least because I
Speaker 1: could I could lay a couple No, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a nerd. So I like it. Okay, so so,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna go on, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: stop me. But but let me, let me, let me
Speaker 1: give you a Let me give you a couple simple
Speaker 1: legal solutions, all right. The simplest one is that I
Speaker 1: think we need to add political belief as a protected
Speaker 1: class right up next to race, sex, sexual orientation post
Speaker 1: Bostock last year, the Supreme Court ruling in that case
Speaker 1: in religion in the Title seven of the Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 1: there's no good reason why a corporation should be able
Speaker 1: to fire someone for their political belief when they can't
Speaker 1: fire them for their religious belief, for their race, or
Speaker 1: their sex. And my own view is that the last
Speaker 1: thing we would want to do in general is to
Speaker 1: apply another constraint to what private businesses can can't do.
Speaker 1: That's the libertarian side of my brain says, that's what
Speaker 1: I would have told you ten years ago. But my
Speaker 1: general view today is in the legal code, you can't
Speaker 1: have it both ways. Where we say we don't trust
Speaker 1: the market to police certain forms of discrimination, but we
Speaker 1: unquestioningly trust the market to police other forms of discrimination.
Speaker 1: And the punchline is, if you can't fire somebody from
Speaker 1: their job just because they're black or Muslim or gay,
Speaker 1: or you can't d platform somebody because they're brown or Muslim,
Speaker 1: are gay or whatever, then you shouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: fire them or de platform them just because they're an
Speaker 1: outspoken conservative either, and that's not a theoretical issue anymore.
Speaker 1: If it can happen to the forty president of the
Speaker 1: United States, it can happen to anybody. So so those
Speaker 1: are the kinds of some of the kinds of solutions
Speaker 1: I talked about in the book, generally of the of
Speaker 1: the mold that you can't have it both ways. Political
Speaker 1: belief as a as a protected class alongside the other
Speaker 1: protected classes Section to thirty Reform by the way, which
Speaker 1: says that actually normal private companies ought to be a
Speaker 1: to determine what shows up on their websites and what doesn't.
Speaker 1: I agree with that, But the private companies today that
Speaker 1: are doing it in Silicon Valley are effectively acting as
Speaker 1: instruments of the state. Because if you notice, this has
Speaker 1: actually gone up a lot over the course of the
Speaker 1: last year after Democrats took control of not only the House,
Speaker 1: but then the Senate and then the White House, and
Speaker 1: they call these companies up to testify every few months,
Speaker 1: and they say, hey, if you don't take down hate speech,
Speaker 1: and you don't take down misinformation, and you don't take
Speaker 1: down content that we, by the way, disagree with, as
Speaker 1: Democrats in Washington, d C. Then we're gonna come after you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna regulate you, we're gonna break you up, we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it swift, we're gonna make it punitive. And
Speaker 1: so these guys get back on their private jets, fly
Speaker 1: back to the other coast and do exactly what their
Speaker 1: government overlords told them to do. But the problem with
Speaker 1: that is it's just a reverse form of chrony capitalism,
Speaker 1: where government agents today are doing indirectly through the back door,
Speaker 1: using private companies to accomplish what they directly can't do
Speaker 1: under the Constitution, namely under the First Amendment. And so
Speaker 1: my view is, if you find yourself in a situation
Speaker 1: today when private companies are being used as pawns, especially
Speaker 1: by this new administration, to do indirectly what government could
Speaker 1: not directly do through the front door, then those private companies,
Speaker 1: when they're engaging in those narrow sets of activities, should
Speaker 1: be bound by the same constraints as the federal government itself.
Speaker 1: And guess what, in the case of big Tech and
Speaker 1: and all internet companies, by the way, there's Section to
Speaker 1: thirty immunity to give them live freedom from state liability
Speaker 1: when they go out and do exactly that. So my
Speaker 1: own view is that again, you can't have it both ways.
Speaker 1: Either you're a private company that behaves as a private
Speaker 1: company does, or if you're operating a behest of liberals
Speaker 1: in control as the party in power, and by the way,
Speaker 1: you're immunized by section to immunity to do it. Then
Speaker 1: you can opt into getting that federal immunity, but if
Speaker 1: you do, you're bound by the same constraints as the
Speaker 1: federal government itself, namely the U. S Constitution and the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. So those are some of the bigger picture ideas.
Speaker 1: I can also get into some granular ideas relating to
Speaker 1: the business Judgment rule relating to rollbacks unlimited less shareholder
Speaker 1: liability for a lot of these woke capitalists or woke
Speaker 1: investors that are using corporations as pawns to advance their
Speaker 1: social agendas, that in my opinion, is actually an abuse
Speaker 1: of the corporate form and abuse of limited liability that
Speaker 1: we ought to police. On the flip side, I think
Speaker 1: when their CEOs who are gone rogue and are are
Speaker 1: ultimately using shareholder resources to advance social goals, there's right
Speaker 1: now are legal doctrine that protects them called the Business
Speaker 1: Judgment rule which says that executives can't be sued for
Speaker 1: making good business judgments. That should only apply in so
Speaker 1: far as they're actually making business judgments, not social judgments.
Speaker 1: And shareholders should be able to ultimately bring suit against
Speaker 1: executives who have gone rogue in using their seats of
Speaker 1: power and a corporation to be able to push their
Speaker 1: own personal values. So those are the kind of solutions
Speaker 1: I talk about in the book that get uh severally
Speaker 1: more and more technical, but I go from you know,
Speaker 1: all the ways in the big picture ideas down to
Speaker 1: some regular ideas that can I think, stop woke capitalism
Speaker 1: as we know it in its tracks. But at least
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I will be the
Speaker 1: first person to say that still these legal solutions are
Speaker 1: really just a form of symptomatic therapy. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: what we really need is a cultural cure, a new
Speaker 1: vision of what it actually the means to be an
Speaker 1: American irrespective of the color of your skin, or your race,
Speaker 1: or your gender, your sexual orientation, in a way that
Speaker 1: you know, in a way that really dilutes woke ism
Speaker 1: to irrelevance. And that's actually gonna be even harder work
Speaker 1: than implementing some of these legal solutions. But in the
Speaker 1: short term, I do think we're in a bit of
Speaker 1: an emergency here. We do need some legal solutions to
Speaker 1: at least serve as that symptomatic therapy the vehic. Let's
Speaker 1: hold it right there. We got to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: Let's say I get fired for being conservative? What can
Speaker 1: I do now about it? From a legal perspective? So so, actually,
Speaker 1: you bring up a really good point. My ideal fix
Speaker 1: in most of these cases would be a statutory fix
Speaker 1: amending Title seven a Civil Rights Act, amending section two thirds.
Speaker 1: That would also take Yeah, I guess what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get at is what is available now under the
Speaker 1: law for recourse. Actually, you bring up a really good point.
Speaker 1: I think people can bring legal action now in federal court.
Speaker 1: Let's take the big text censorship example first, and then
Speaker 1: I'll go to the woke employee firings, uh, the world
Speaker 1: corporations firing right wing employees in a second. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the big text censorship. Actually, there is good
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case law today which actually says the obvious
Speaker 1: what you would expect it to say, that the government
Speaker 1: cannot deputize private actors to do indirectly what the government
Speaker 1: is prohibited from doing under the Constitution. There's a great case,
Speaker 1: it's called Bantam Books from from the nineties sixties, I believe,
Speaker 1: where there was a bookstore owner that wanted to sell
Speaker 1: a lot of books and there was a local prosecutor
Speaker 1: that didn't want him. They didn't like one of the
Speaker 1: books that he was selling, and so he came to
Speaker 1: the bookstore owner and he said, you know what, if
Speaker 1: you don't stop selling these books, I'm gonna come after
Speaker 1: you and I'm gonna prosecute you so for some other
Speaker 1: unrelated crime. So the books are owner, of course, came
Speaker 1: to the pressure and stopped selling the book. Well, somebody
Speaker 1: else wanted to buy the book, and they brought the
Speaker 1: case and they said, hey, I know, you're a bookstore
Speaker 1: owner and normally you can choose what book you sell
Speaker 1: and what book you don't. But this wasn't a bookstore
Speaker 1: owner making that decision as a proprietor. It was actually
Speaker 1: state act in the guard of private enterprise. And you
Speaker 1: know what, they won that case which said that actually,
Speaker 1: if the bookstorer was just responding to a threat from
Speaker 1: a prosecutor, who's really a public figure. Then actually the
Speaker 1: thing that we have is state action that ought to
Speaker 1: be governed by the First Amendment, and so that's actually
Speaker 1: just one example among many, But there's good Supreme Court
Speaker 1: doctrine on this. I actually made an argument to this
Speaker 1: effect in the Wall Street Journal in January of this year,
Speaker 1: and I'm proud to say that that argument was referenced
Speaker 1: by Clarence Thomas in a recent opinion that he wrote.
Speaker 1: I think he's actually thrown the gauntlet inviting the right
Speaker 1: plaintiff to bring that case personally. I think one of
Speaker 1: those planets could be President Donald Trump himself bringing potentially
Speaker 1: the iconic case of our time, saying that actually what
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter did in the platforming him was actually
Speaker 1: a version of political censorship that might be allowed if
Speaker 1: these were operating as normal private companies. But if they're
Speaker 1: doing it as instruments of the state of the party
Speaker 1: in power, responsive to their threats, and by the way,
Speaker 1: immunized by the federal government in the former Section to
Speaker 1: thirty to do it, then that's actually just a federal
Speaker 1: carrot and stick that makes this state like action in
Speaker 1: the mantle of private enterprise, which still means that the
Speaker 1: First Amendment applies, and so I personally think at President
Speaker 1: Trump could bring that case and take it all the
Speaker 1: way to the real Supreme Court, not the fake sham
Speaker 1: Facebook corporate Supreme Court thing that we heard about last week,
Speaker 1: but the real US Supreme Court and have a pretty
Speaker 1: good legal grounds to be able to win. And I
Speaker 1: think Clarence Thomas has already you know, played his cards
Speaker 1: a little bit about where he's coming out on that
Speaker 1: set of issues. I'd be interesting seeing where the rest
Speaker 1: of the justices come out as well. But I think
Speaker 1: it could be the iconic defining case of our time
Speaker 1: that's on big tech answorship. Think he hasn't well look,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't. I don't know him, uh, and
Speaker 1: I can't really speak to that, but I think that
Speaker 1: if I were in his shoes, I would be bringing
Speaker 1: that case absolutely, and I wouldn't be doing it for myself.
Speaker 1: He could presumably start a media network of his own,
Speaker 1: he has access to be able to get his opinions
Speaker 1: out to the American people if he wants to. I
Speaker 1: would do it on behalf of the people that don't
Speaker 1: enjoy that position of authority that he might enjoy that
Speaker 1: position of accessing the American people through other means. This
Speaker 1: is happening every day where people who are being d
Speaker 1: platformed aren't the people who actually have alternative networks that
Speaker 1: they could go on. There are people whose voice has
Speaker 1: literally been suppressed because they are forced to choose between
Speaker 1: the First Amendment and the American Dream, between speaking up
Speaker 1: and saying what they actually believe and keeping their job
Speaker 1: and putting food on the dinner table. And to me,
Speaker 1: America is not a place that makes you to choose
Speaker 1: between the First Amendment and American Dream. You get to
Speaker 1: have both. And so if I were President Trump, I
Speaker 1: think that one of the most impactful things that he
Speaker 1: could do is to bring that case in. If I
Speaker 1: were him, I would say, you know what, once I
Speaker 1: get my account restored, which should be the damages here,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make any money off this. I'm
Speaker 1: actually gonna leave the network voluntarily. But I'm doing this
Speaker 1: on behalf of people who don't have the privilege and
Speaker 1: position that I do to be able to reach people
Speaker 1: in a different way because this is actually a defining
Speaker 1: issue of free speech in our time. So whether it's
Speaker 1: him or whether it's somebody else, has beend platform for
Speaker 1: the wrong reason. I think that this theory of combining
Speaker 1: state action with the actions of private companies is a
Speaker 1: winning legal theory in my opinion that could go all
Speaker 1: the way to the Supreme Court. So that's on big
Speaker 1: text sworship. I can give you a separate one, Lisa,
Speaker 1: where I think employees who are fired for their political
Speaker 1: beliefs also have a legal theory that they could bring
Speaker 1: under current existing legal doctorates too, which is again using
Speaker 1: Supreme Court jurisprudence about religion. So, according to Title seven
Speaker 1: and the Civil Rights Act, you can't discriminate on the
Speaker 1: basis of religious beliefs. And usually people think about that
Speaker 1: as meaning, correctly, you can't discriminate against an employee for
Speaker 1: their religion, you can't fire an employee for belonging to
Speaker 1: a certain religion. But often forgotten is that it equally
Speaker 1: means that an employer can't enforce their religion and force
Speaker 1: it down the throats of their employees. They can't force
Speaker 1: them to bow down to a cross, they can't force
Speaker 1: them to pray to the pray on behalf of the
Speaker 1: Koran or whatever. And guess what. That then raises the
Speaker 1: question of whether wokeness today meets the legal standard for
Speaker 1: a religion, and I think if you look at the
Speaker 1: core tenets of wokeness today in the United States, it
Speaker 1: meets the Supreme Courts test in space. Supreme Courts actually
Speaker 1: even said that's secular humanism counts as a religion. It
Speaker 1: said that well in in a funny case a number
Speaker 1: of years ago, a religion called Creativity, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: a rather goofy religion which says that white supremacy is
Speaker 1: its guiding principle, where what is good for white people
Speaker 1: is ultimately what achieves you salvation, and what is bad
Speaker 1: for white people is ultimately a form of sin. It's
Speaker 1: not a religion I subscribe to, but it's definitely a
Speaker 1: religion in the case of the Supreme Court, in a
Speaker 1: case called Peterson that the Supreme Court heard, which said
Speaker 1: that this religion, professing white supremacy is its coretenant, counted
Speaker 1: as a religion for the purpose of Title seven. If
Speaker 1: white supremacy counts as a religion, then anti white supremacy,
Speaker 1: which is welcomes today, counts as a religion too. And
Speaker 1: employers can't, like Disney for example, just see what we
Speaker 1: saw last week, can't force that religion down the throats
Speaker 1: of their employees any more than they could force any
Speaker 1: other religion down the throats of their employees as well.
Speaker 1: And so I too think that is a well grounded,
Speaker 1: legally well founded case that any employee who's fired for
Speaker 1: their political beliefs can really take all the way to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. And I think the Supreme Court would
Speaker 1: likely saw with this on the side of the correct plane,
Speaker 1: if that the facts were correct, and that could be
Speaker 1: done even without Republicans doing what I think Republicans ought
Speaker 1: to do, which is step up and amend the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act nineteen four by adding political belief as a
Speaker 1: protected class. If they fall short of doing that, as
Speaker 1: as I think Republicans are prone to do, you know,
Speaker 1: there's still legal action available in the courts. But I
Speaker 1: guess my concern is if conservatives are awake enough because
Speaker 1: I look at, you know, as you're talking about with
Speaker 1: some of this critical race theory and what's happening in
Speaker 1: corporations and the rest of America that you know, time
Speaker 1: is of the essence. You look at the past few
Speaker 1: months with COVID lockdowns and the authoritarian nature of the
Speaker 1: left just shutting down businesses, denying people the opportunity to
Speaker 1: go to church to worship, deciding who gets to exercise
Speaker 1: their First Amendment rights and who doesn't. It's fine to
Speaker 1: go out in protest among thousands, but you can't go
Speaker 1: to church, or there's limitations on how many people can go. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, on on top of it, you
Speaker 1: look at some of these things that the left wants
Speaker 1: to do with, you know, HR one, etcetera. Uh, And
Speaker 1: then you look at what happened to President Trump, as
Speaker 1: you pointed out, getting kicked off of social media, certain
Speaker 1: banks not doing business with him, etcetera. But I guess
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel to me that people are awake enough
Speaker 1: looking at collectively all these different things I've mentioned, or
Speaker 1: even looking the muted reaction to President Trump getting kicked
Speaker 1: off Twitter, like, it doesn't seem like conservatives are as
Speaker 1: weak as they need to for the fight that's ahead
Speaker 1: of us. Well, I think the Republican Party is not
Speaker 1: awake to it that much. I can say for sure
Speaker 1: in that we are we I say we. I don't
Speaker 1: I have self identified now as conservative. I don't even
Speaker 1: really identify as a Republican. I don't know what I
Speaker 1: always have. But you know, more But but I think
Speaker 1: Republicans appeared to be not really well cut to that
Speaker 1: task today because they're shackled by the dogmas of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty where Ronald Reagan, by the way, one of my heroes,
Speaker 1: identified the real threat to liberty and prosperity in his era,
Speaker 1: which was big government, and he came in and slashed regulations,
Speaker 1: cut taxes, did what he needed to do to protect
Speaker 1: American liberty and prosperity from the biggest threat of his
Speaker 1: day in nineteen eighty. But as Dorothy might have said
Speaker 1: to Tote in the Wizard of Us, we're not in
Speaker 1: night anymore. And actually another great to quote another great
Speaker 1: Republican from a hundred six years ago, if I may
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, the dogmas of a quiet past, he's that
Speaker 1: at the time are inadequate to the stormy present. I
Speaker 1: think the dogmas of eight are inadequate to meet the
Speaker 1: challenges of one. And the free market that we idealize
Speaker 1: as conservatives, we have to recognized that that does not
Speaker 1: exist today. The new market that exists is actually a
Speaker 1: figment of other actors who are manipulating that market to
Speaker 1: meet their own goals, including big government itself. In ways
Speaker 1: that I described earlier, and so the solutions that we
Speaker 1: need in the twenty one century in the year are
Speaker 1: different than just reciting some slogan that we memorized in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. We need actual solutions that meet the moment
Speaker 1: of where we are today now. I don't think that
Speaker 1: everyday conservatives are blind to that. I do think that
Speaker 1: they're disempowered right now to be able to fight back
Speaker 1: against this movement. Because the legal system is stacked certain
Speaker 1: protect certain classes are protected. You can't discriminate the basis
Speaker 1: of a whole range of criteria, but you can discriminate
Speaker 1: on the basis of your political belief and today that
Speaker 1: means if you're a conservative, you have to send your
Speaker 1: kids to the public schools and accept a certain dogma
Speaker 1: because that's where they got to be educated. But public
Speaker 1: schools have been completely overrun by this new infectious religion.
Speaker 1: It's a secular religion, but religion nonetheless that's been established
Speaker 1: as the religion that's ultimately being indoctrinated. Think that our
Speaker 1: kids are being indoctrinated by so I think that they're
Speaker 1: disempowered to be able to address it. I think it
Speaker 1: is the job of a leading political party in our
Speaker 1: country to at least be at the forefront of that debate.
Speaker 1: But I think the problem with the current Republican Party
Speaker 1: is it doesn't really understand the issues, or if it
Speaker 1: understands the issues, is dormant in dealing with them. And
Speaker 1: what we really need is a new north star for
Speaker 1: the conservative movement that recognizes that the real enemy to
Speaker 1: liberty and prosperity today is not just big government that
Speaker 1: is half the equation, but it is this new hybrid
Speaker 1: of big government in big business. It's what I call
Speaker 1: the Wolke industrial complex. That is the new leviathan that
Speaker 1: is far more powerful than what Thomas Hobbs and vision
Speaker 1: four centuries and it is far more powerful than what
Speaker 1: either big government or big business could do alone. They've
Speaker 1: entered into a marriage. It's an unholy alliance. It is
Speaker 1: not a marriage of love, by the way, it's a
Speaker 1: marriage of convenience. It is more like mutual prostitution. But
Speaker 1: they have together birth this new, uniquely twenty one century
Speaker 1: monster that's far more powerful than anything we've seen in
Speaker 1: the course of American history. And it is up to
Speaker 1: the conservative movement to step up and recognize that. And
Speaker 1: I don't think the Republican Party has proven itself up
Speaker 1: to that task. But I do think that that our
Speaker 1: work is cut out for us in the next couple
Speaker 1: of years, because I do think we're in an era,
Speaker 1: as I said in the very beginning, where if we
Speaker 1: don't take action pretty soon, the damage is going to
Speaker 1: become irreversible. Well, and the arty is the stupidity of
Speaker 1: the direction or country is heading in. And we're a
Speaker 1: lot of these quote unquote anti racists are the racists themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea is blatantly just disgusting, the concept
Speaker 1: that somehow minority kids can't do math, so somehow you
Speaker 1: have to dumb it down for them. That's inherently racist.
Speaker 1: Or you've got companies like or you've got companies like Disney,
Speaker 1: uh telling employees to recognize their white privilege. That's inherently racist.
Speaker 1: And so the irony of where we've arrived is all
Speaker 1: these people who are you know, quote unquote putting them
Speaker 1: in the anti racist bucket, are actually just a bunch
Speaker 1: of racists. Well, I think anti racism, LISA is the
Speaker 1: single greatest form of institutionalized systemic racism now in the
Speaker 1: United States has taken hold of every major institution as
Speaker 1: we know it, and it starts as this form of
Speaker 1: anti white racism. You put your finger on it where
Speaker 1: you're if you're white, you're inherently stained with the guilt,
Speaker 1: white guilt and white privilege at the point of your birth,
Speaker 1: irrespective of who you are, what your attitudes are. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop there, because once you engage in that
Speaker 1: form of anti white racism, that actually triggers a new
Speaker 1: wave of anti black racism in response, and then that
Speaker 1: actually breaks us into tribes and ultimately sets us on
Speaker 1: a spiral all the way to the bottom. And so
Speaker 1: in the name of anti racism, we're actually becoming a
Speaker 1: more racist country in a way that makes me makes
Speaker 1: me sad. Actually, as I watched this every day pollute
Speaker 1: the minds of our next generation. We say math is
Speaker 1: racist because there's somehow racially unequal outcomes. Math isn't racist.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what might be is failing to
Speaker 1: open the schools for poor kids in the inner city
Speaker 1: who may not be able to learn math in schools.
Speaker 1: We can talk about whether that's racist, and that actually
Speaker 1: reveals the heart of what's going on, which is using
Speaker 1: this mantle of wokeness as a way to deflect accountability
Speaker 1: for failed policies that were supposedly helping the very they
Speaker 1: were supposed to help, the very people that they're failing today. Now,
Speaker 1: I gotta you brought up Disney, and I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't comment on this too, because I
Speaker 1: think it's something that that a lot of us have missed,
Speaker 1: which is that there's another actor on the scene in
Speaker 1: recent years that took this unholy alliance right between big
Speaker 1: business and big government, and if I may say, it
Speaker 1: turned into a threesome. And that new actor is the
Speaker 1: Communist Party of China. Right. They understand this game far
Speaker 1: more deeply than any of us do. There's a there's
Speaker 1: an even a Chinese word now for woke white people
Speaker 1: in the United States. It's called bite school literally refers
Speaker 1: to woke white people in the United States, and they
Speaker 1: use it to laugh at us. And more than laughing
Speaker 1: at us, they're now using wokeism as a geopolitical tool
Speaker 1: to erode our moral standing on the global stage. And
Speaker 1: if you have any doubt about that, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to just look at what they are saying at every
Speaker 1: diplomatic meeting over the last year. Last year, the EU
Speaker 1: presses Jin Ping on the weaker human rights crisis, where
Speaker 1: by the way, we're talking about a million weakers in
Speaker 1: concentration camps, who, by the way, Apple uses a slave
Speaker 1: labor to make their iPhones, and they don't tell you
Speaker 1: that that's a separate point. The first thing that Jan
Speaker 1: Think says in response is that black lives matter, so
Speaker 1: that the United States is no better. And then you
Speaker 1: look at his deputy, Yang jh their top diplomat, comes
Speaker 1: to the Alaska summit last month and lectures us in
Speaker 1: this opening statements of fifteen minutes on how the United
Speaker 1: States is his word, slaughtering black Americans and that China
Speaker 1: hey help with the China hopes that the United States
Speaker 1: does better on human rights and that would be laughable.
Speaker 1: But you ask yourself how they're able to get away
Speaker 1: with this, and it comes back to companies like Disney. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how. Where Disney criticizes white privilege in
Speaker 1: its training for him ways this month two years ago,
Speaker 1: it says it can't film in the state of Georgia
Speaker 1: if Georgia passes the equivalent of a heartbeat bill in
Speaker 1: new anti abortion law. And yet last year, it films
Speaker 1: Mulan in the Shanjang Province of China without saying a peep.
Speaker 1: That is ground zero, the epicenter of the weaker human
Speaker 1: rights crisis until the very end they decided to speak
Speaker 1: up after they filmed it, when they said, we thank
Speaker 1: you the CCP and the local authorities in shan Jang
Speaker 1: for allowing us the privilege of filming here. And you know,
Speaker 1: the NBA is even worse so when these corporations become
Speaker 1: the new multinational moral arbiters, but apply their moral arbitration unevenly.
Speaker 1: The guys who are known for criticizing injustice here in
Speaker 1: the United States stay silent in China. That actually creates
Speaker 1: a false moral equivalence between Chinese nihilism and American idealism,
Speaker 1: between China and the United States. And in my view,
Speaker 1: that's actually the real Chinese virus that we need to fight.
Speaker 1: It is not a biological virus. It is a cultural
Speaker 1: virus whose consequences could be far reaching, far beyond this year.
Speaker 1: And I think few people on both sides of the
Speaker 1: political aisle have actually put their finger on this pulse
Speaker 1: in the way in which woke ism is now not
Speaker 1: just infecting capitalism, it's infecting geopolitics in a way that
Speaker 1: actually might erode our standing visa EA China and even
Speaker 1: in more limited ways visa be Russia. You saw Navalny
Speaker 1: being accused by Russia of being a racist, and that's
Speaker 1: why he actually had to be silenced. They're catching onto
Speaker 1: these new tools and playing it back against US China.
Speaker 1: You know, they're playing us like a Chinese mandolin, if
Speaker 1: I'm to say it, by using those woke values as
Speaker 1: a way of advancing their own agenda at our expense.
Speaker 1: So that thought quick break back on the other side.
Speaker 1: My favorite line from if you remember the monologue that
Speaker 1: Ricky Gervais did. I think it was a Golden Globes
Speaker 1: and he was like, if Isis started a streaming service,
Speaker 1: you would call your agents, which is really underscores what
Speaker 1: hypocrites all these people are. As you just laid out
Speaker 1: with corporate America, we saw with the NBA. You know,
Speaker 1: the list goes on, movies, etcetera. You know, they're all
Speaker 1: a bunch of hypocrites. But but I think you know,
Speaker 1: and having this conversation with you, and I have every
Speaker 1: only had conversations with Maximo Alvera is a Cuban exile,
Speaker 1: and it seems to all come down to communism. And
Speaker 1: you look at critical race theory, it's a Marxist idea
Speaker 1: and it really all comes down to communism. And one
Speaker 1: thing that you know, he was talking about is how
Speaker 1: the you know, communist government. What they wanted to do
Speaker 1: was to put you know, farmers against you know, people
Speaker 1: that live in the city pitt the city city dwellers
Speaker 1: against the farmers, rich first, poor poor verse, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: rich right first, but you know, I mean, the list
Speaker 1: goes on, and it's all about creating these divisions in America.
Speaker 1: It seems that's where we are right now. I think
Speaker 1: there's a there's truth in what you say. If it's
Speaker 1: even worse, I think this is worse than communism. And
Speaker 1: the reason is communism was based in the intellectual heritage
Speaker 1: of Marxism, where agree with it or not and I
Speaker 1: don't but agree with it or not. At least it
Speaker 1: was based on the foundation of economic injustice that you
Speaker 1: if you were economically disempowered, that was the real injustice.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much about the color of your skin.
Speaker 1: You could bring people together across different nationalities, across different
Speaker 1: skin colors. If you remember the proletariat, you were oppressed
Speaker 1: by the bourgeoisie, and it was a divide and conquered strategy.
Speaker 1: To be sure, it was one that was based on
Speaker 1: a lie of invisible social power structures that didn't really exist.
Speaker 1: But we're used by communist dictators to be able to
Speaker 1: use those so called invisible power structures to their own advantage.
Speaker 1: There's a lot wrong with it, but we don't need
Speaker 1: to relitigate that that was done in ninety eighty. I
Speaker 1: think that and and ultimately culminating in the fallow, the fallow,
Speaker 1: the wall in the early nineties. But this is worse
Speaker 1: because now it's not really about even economic injustice, but
Speaker 1: it's about this new conception of alleged racial injustice, which
Speaker 1: says that irrespective of the amount of money you have,
Speaker 1: irrespective of your upbringing, if you're black, you're inherently disadmanaged,
Speaker 1: and irrespective of your upbringing, whether you were poor or not,
Speaker 1: if you're white, you're inherently privileged. And to me, there's
Speaker 1: something even more toxic about that philosophy, which says that
Speaker 1: it is what you were born with. It it's a
Speaker 1: combination of it's a mutant hybrid between communism and the
Speaker 1: task syst which says that actually your economics, your long
Speaker 1: run plight as an agent in the world, is determined
Speaker 1: not even by your economics standings, but by your genetics,
Speaker 1: by who you were on the date that you were born.
Speaker 1: You are a per prisoner of the color of your skin.
Speaker 1: That's really at the heart of modern critical race theory
Speaker 1: and woke ism, which I think bears a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities to Marxism, but I think it's even worse because
Speaker 1: it combines it with this notion of inborn caste, where
Speaker 1: at least in the Marxist world view, somebody who was
Speaker 1: poor could go on to become a member of the
Speaker 1: rich bourgeoisie class, and there was some notion of mobility,
Speaker 1: even if it was divisive. Here, this says that no
Speaker 1: matter how rich you are, you could be a black billionaire,
Speaker 1: you're still ultimately you're ultimately stained with disadvantage versus poor
Speaker 1: white working class in the opioid rust belt in Ohio.
Speaker 1: That doesn't matter irrespective of economics. It's race that ultimately
Speaker 1: governs whether you enjoy advantage or privilege. Well, I think
Speaker 1: I probably misrepresented at Maximus point was that this is
Speaker 1: in the same vein of what the communist did in
Speaker 1: Cuba in terms of dividing people, but now it's along
Speaker 1: racial lines in Americas, as you just laid out so eloquently.
Speaker 1: And what's frustrating to me is a lot of these
Speaker 1: people who are driving this divide, you know, on the left, primarily,
Speaker 1: they're not providing solutions for people that would make individuals
Speaker 1: lives better. You know, for instance, zip code determines a
Speaker 1: child's future far too often in the sense of, obviously,
Speaker 1: have better educational opportunities if you live in a wealthier neighborhood,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a better school system, even a
Speaker 1: better public school system. Or you see a lot of
Speaker 1: people on the left being against school choice, or even
Speaker 1: someone like Senator Corey Booker actually used to be for
Speaker 1: school choice until he started speaking up you know, a
Speaker 1: higher a national profile, and then he turned on it.
Speaker 1: And he actually used to work with Betsy Divas and
Speaker 1: then gave a scathing speech against her confirmation. But all
Speaker 1: these people who purport to care about this issue actively
Speaker 1: work against things that could help minorities or could help
Speaker 1: children achieve better success in the future. And that's what
Speaker 1: infuriates me. Yeah. Absolutely, This is really just a way
Speaker 1: of of achieving greater power for the people who use
Speaker 1: the terms right. This isn't about I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: that's the one of the things that left is actually mastered,
Speaker 1: the use of terminology to pack in behind that terminology
Speaker 1: and agenda that has nothing to do with the term itself.
Speaker 1: Just take Black Lives Matter. It is a Marxist organization
Speaker 1: that calls for the decimation of the nuclear family structure,
Speaker 1: and yet I don't know what that has to do
Speaker 1: with actual protection of black lives and professors to care
Speaker 1: about black lives. In fact, it's about some completely orthogonal agenda.
Speaker 1: This is what we sort of see the Left having mastered,
Speaker 1: is you come up with the right label, but you
Speaker 1: pack a lot of a power driven agenda behind it
Speaker 1: that's actually about empowering and often even enriching the very
Speaker 1: people who are pushing that philosophy and allows them to
Speaker 1: evade accountability by creating this new woke smoke screen that
Speaker 1: ultimately distracts everyone by the things they say rather than
Speaker 1: the things that they actually do. And I think that
Speaker 1: that ought to be part of the calling card for
Speaker 1: the new conservative movement, too, is to actually counterintuitively recognize
Speaker 1: the very injustices that the left has monopolized as their
Speaker 1: causes of concern, economic disparities and access to capital, formation,
Speaker 1: access to education. We actually care about these solutions, makes
Speaker 1: you care about these problems in a way that actually
Speaker 1: makes us want to deliver actual solutions that address the problem,
Speaker 1: rather than one that just thrives on a new narrative
Speaker 1: of victimhood. And I think that victim the left US
Speaker 1: turned victimhood into this new cultural currency in the United States,
Speaker 1: and I personally think that that actually hurts the very
Speaker 1: people that it was supposed to help. Like all bubbles,
Speaker 1: and I think victimhood as a currency is now in
Speaker 1: a bubble of its own. When it bursts, it actually
Speaker 1: hurts the very people that was supposed to help. Well,
Speaker 1: I see the same thing with respect of the victimhood
Speaker 1: of culture that ultimately evades accountability for solving the actual
Speaker 1: problems that people might face in their in their everyday hardship.
Speaker 1: What's your vision for America? Well, look, I think that
Speaker 1: I think my vision for America is the vision for
Speaker 1: America that we began with two hundred fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: which is that America isn't even a place, It's just
Speaker 1: a vision of what a place can be. It is
Speaker 1: a set of ideas that brought an otherwise divided, polyglot
Speaker 1: group of people together. And more so than any nation
Speaker 1: in human history, America wasn't based on a single monarch,
Speaker 1: or a single religion, or a single ethnicity or a
Speaker 1: single language. No, it was based on a set of ideas.
Speaker 1: And I think that today I don't even have a
Speaker 1: good answer. We don't have a good answer to the
Speaker 1: question of what does it mean to be an American
Speaker 1: in the year one? And I think that absence of
Speaker 1: an answer to that question is actually the black hole
Speaker 1: at the center of our nation's soul. And so I
Speaker 1: think that we need to revive the basic ideals that
Speaker 1: brought us together in the first place. Idea like the
Speaker 1: American Dream eat pluribus from many one. And I think
Speaker 1: that these are the ideals that one the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: They're the ideals that reunited us after the Civil War.
Speaker 1: There the ideals that one World War one and World
Speaker 1: War two and the Cold War, And I personally think
Speaker 1: there's still the ideals that give hope to the free
Speaker 1: world as we know it. And if we can revive
Speaker 1: our sense of America as an idea deal, then I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody, not a nation, not a corporation, not
Speaker 1: a virus, is going to defeat us. But that is
Speaker 1: the hard work that we're going to have to do,
Speaker 1: is to look to our history to identify not perfection,
Speaker 1: because America has never been a perfect country, never will
Speaker 1: be a perfect country. Perfection doesn't exist. But more so
Speaker 1: than any nation in human history, America is the pursuit
Speaker 1: of perfection. We've said it since the day one, the
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of liberty, equality and justice
Speaker 1: for all. It's called the American dream for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's not a destination we reach. It's a vision that
Speaker 1: we aspire to. But reviving those basic ideas, the ideas
Speaker 1: that no matter who you are, who your parents who are,
Speaker 1: where you came from, you could achieve anything you want
Speaker 1: in this country with hard work, ingenuity in your own dedication.
Speaker 1: Reviving those ideas. That's part of my vision for America
Speaker 1: is taking the American idea to mean something more than
Speaker 1: just being a bunch of higher mammals occupying a common
Speaker 1: space doing what our iPhones tell us to do on
Speaker 1: a given day that is not America. America is the
Speaker 1: set of ideas that brought us together in the first ways,
Speaker 1: and I think that it begins with civic education. I
Speaker 1: think that we're overdue for a not for a conversation
Speaker 1: about civic service that we implement in the next generation
Speaker 1: of kids, to satisfy their hunger for a cause, their
Speaker 1: hunger for what it means to be an American, starting
Speaker 1: at a young age, starting to reconstruct our history rather
Speaker 1: than just criticize it and deconstructed, as we're doing in
Speaker 1: our schools today. So I think civic education plays a
Speaker 1: big role in that. I think there's a revival. A
Speaker 1: civic revival across all of our institutions is really important.
Speaker 1: I do think that there are some legal solutions that
Speaker 1: we need in the near term to hold the tide
Speaker 1: and ultimately hold back the woke epidemic that's infecting all
Speaker 1: of our institutions, But that's really just the first step.
Speaker 1: The longer run vision is is a civic revival in
Speaker 1: this country that reminds us of who we are as
Speaker 1: Americans in a way that brings us together across all
Speaker 1: of these divisive identity politic lines. What are you running
Speaker 1: for political office? You know, I was. I was in
Speaker 1: somebody encouraged me to a couple of people I respect,
Speaker 1: encouraged me to do that. Uh, you know at the
Speaker 1: start of this year. Actually, well, I thankue. So that
Speaker 1: means a lot to me. I love listening to you,
Speaker 1: so that that means a lot to me. I So
Speaker 1: I I needed to do something first, and that was
Speaker 1: actually writing this book that I was working on. The
Speaker 1: reason that was important is that, I think in the
Speaker 1: moment we live in today, As I said earlier, big
Speaker 1: government is a problem, but it's only part of the problem.
Speaker 1: I think the real cultural problem in America today spreads
Speaker 1: beyond big government to every institution in the private sector,
Speaker 1: from our museums to our schools, to our universities, to
Speaker 1: the companies where we work, to the community centers where
Speaker 1: we gather. That is really where the everyday threat to
Speaker 1: liberty and prosperities playing itself. That that is where the
Speaker 1: battle line is ultimately being forged, and one side is
Speaker 1: expanding that battle line further and further as it continues
Speaker 1: to win in this culture of fear. And so I've
Speaker 1: been a successful entrepreneur, right, I had been educated in
Speaker 1: the same elite institutions. I understand how to speak that language.
Speaker 1: I influent in that language. I have lived in that
Speaker 1: world and seen it firsthand for myself, and actually felt
Speaker 1: a sense of obligation to see through the project that
Speaker 1: I started over the last year and a half, which
Speaker 1: was exposing that for what it was, because I think
Speaker 1: it's important that every American see that game for what
Speaker 1: it is, so that we can use that as a
Speaker 1: first step to forging a better path forward. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, look, I mean, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: people were encouraging you to run for the Senate seat
Speaker 1: that opened up in Ohio. With Rob Portman announcing that
Speaker 1: he was going to step down. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have stepped in to do that. You know. I thought
Speaker 1: about it for for a hot second, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I thought it was really more
Speaker 1: important to focus on this new national movement outside of government,
Speaker 1: in our culture, in our private sector first, and to
Speaker 1: really re energize our interest in answering the question of
Speaker 1: what it means to be American, even outside of government,
Speaker 1: in our place of work and in our communities. And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm focused on with the rollout of the
Speaker 1: book is building that new that new American movement, and
Speaker 1: we'll see where that goes. I do think that public
Speaker 1: service is important. It involves a lot of sacrifice, and
Speaker 1: it's something that I'm open to in my future. But
Speaker 1: I'm not going to really turn to the until after
Speaker 1: this book is out, after I've really seen to starting
Speaker 1: this new movement in the private sector, which I think
Speaker 1: maybe even more important than a movement in government today
Speaker 1: and everyone go out and get woke. Inc it's out auguste,
Speaker 1: which is this August obviously and uh wise words incredibly accomplished,
Speaker 1: man the Vigue. I really appreciate what you said today.
Speaker 1: This is a fascinating conversation. You're obviously welcome on anytime.
Speaker 1: I hope the book is a massive success, and I am.
Speaker 1: I know I'm looking forward to reading it thankfully. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, and really and with with respect of
Speaker 1: the book, this isn't a commercial venture for me really
Speaker 1: any if there's any net profit that comes out of
Speaker 1: it for me personally, I'm just putting it right back
Speaker 1: into the underlying agenda and what I really care about
Speaker 1: is starting that new American movement this fall. So thanks
Speaker 1: for having me and we'll keep the conversation going awesome.
Speaker 1: Take care, Thanks so much. I want to thank the
Speaker 1: vig Ramaswamy again for such a smart and interesting interview,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank all of you at home
Speaker 1: as well for listening. If you're joined today's podcast, please
Speaker 1: leave us a review and leave us a five star
Speaker 1: rating on Apple Podcast. You can also find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram and at LESA Rebooth special thanks to
Speaker 1: our team producer John Cassio, writer Aaron Kleigman, researcher Margaret Smith,
Speaker 1: and executive producers Debbie Myers and speaker new Gingridge, who
Speaker 1: are all part of the network and team