Richard Hanania on the Legal Origins of Woke Culture
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Summary
Richard Hanania joins us to talk about his new book, The Origins of Woke: How Government Became Woke, and the Case for Woke in the Civil Rights Movement. Richard Hanania is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of the book, "Woke: The Case for Why We're All Woke." In this episode, we talk about how government policy can be seen as the root cause of wokeness, and how that can be traced back to Jim Crow laws.
Transcript
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Hi, today we are joined by a very special guest, the author on Substack and Twitter, Richard
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Hanania. Really awesome work. We love following him and we love talking with him even more. So
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we're so excited he's coming on the podcast. Well, so an interesting thing is, with our
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audience, you're hitting an audience that's going to be great for your book, The Origins of Woke,
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but great in an interesting way because we are so interested in the same type of stuff.
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We actually are going to have persistent disagreements about the types of questions that normal people
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have literally no vested interest in. So I am so interested, and I know our audience are
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interested to hear your theory on The Origins of Woke presented in the short version that
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will get them excited for the book. Would you like to know more? Yeah. So the basic argument,
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if you're going to sum it up in a sentence, is that wokeness is caused by government policy via
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civil rights law. And it's a strong claim, and it's a claim that could be misinterpreted. And
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of course, it doesn't explain literally every single thing that ever happened. It doesn't
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explain Zs or pronouns or whatever. But the basic outline of all policy is racist if it has a
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disparate impact, how we classify race in this country. You know, the fact that our institutions
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have HR departments and DEI offices that are obsessed with race, that is ultimately traceable
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to law. There's a fascinating history there, and it can potentially be undone by law too.
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Yeah. So, I mean, you've gotten fairly in the weeds in your book into like how this first was
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introduced into law and why it wasn't stopped as it was happening. Can you talk a little to that?
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Yeah. So this is a history book. I mean, when I say origins of woke, I mean, my background is in
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political science. I'm trying to like meet the standards of like a good social science argument
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of like how we got here. And so that requires a lot of history. And yeah, I mean, the civil rights
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movement, I mean, that's the basically every school children know about it. It's, you know,
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the idea that, you know, there was, there was a sort of this moral sort of wave and reaction to
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Jim Crow laws in America in the 1960s that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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And what happened after that is that the people, you know, who were involved in that movement
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didn't just pack up and go home and embrace the issue wasn't solved overnight. There was, you know,
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pretty much immediately within, you know, within, you know, within literally years, there was a
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move towards equality of outcome rather than equality of results. And what happened, what happened from
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there was you had to start pushing, you know, quotas or quasi quotas onto private institutions. You had to
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start going after standardized tests. And later, the same Civil Rights Act and other, you know,
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associated laws, smaller, less important laws were used to go after free speech through hostile work
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environment and harassment and all these things really led to the rise of HR, really led to like
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institutional homogenization. And so that's sort of the genesis of how we got here.
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So can you talk about when really the moment happened when it moved from equality of opportunity
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to equality of outcome, like in the legal system?
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I mean, there are, you know, there's so many sort of, you know, there's so many sort of,
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you know, steps on the way, but I think the Griggs decision in 1971 was, you know, pretty much the
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ratification of it by the Supreme Court. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thought it would
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lose that case. It actually encouraged the plaintiffs not to appeal because they thought the legislative
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history was so clear that you could use tests and you couldn't just say they were racist on the
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grounds that whites do better on them than blacks. They said, clearly, that's not what the law meant.
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That's not what the law says. They thought they would lose. It goes to the Supreme Court and
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there's a unanimous decision. I mean, the Supreme Court would surprise people on race in a lot of
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ways and during the Warren and Berger years in the 1960s and 1970s, but that really, that really
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codified it. And then it was sort of off to the races. So can you educate our audience on the
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Griggs decision? What happened in it? What was at stake? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the Griggs decision was
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basically a lawsuit against a corporation in North Carolina, a company in North Carolina. I think it was a
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textile factory and they had given basically a test. You know, they used to discriminate based
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on race, you know, before the Civil Rights Act, then they integrated, but they used to, they would
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have basically like an IQ test and they would have some educational requirements like high school
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degree. And basically went to the Supreme Court. Somebody argued that this was discriminatory just
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because blacks did not do as well on the test as whites did, right? This idea of disparate impact had
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been around for a while, but when they passed and signed the Civil Rights Act, you know, the belief was
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that the discrimination had to be intentional. You had to actually have an intent to want to keep
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somebody out of a job. But then this was the theory of disparate impact. You went to the Supreme
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Court on that basis and the Supreme Court basically said anything that has a disparate impact is basically
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presumptive, can be presumptively seen as discriminatory, as violating the Civil Rights Act.
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And then it becomes on the business as a, has the burden of proving that it's actually necessary.
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And there's, you know, all the, all kinds of steps to determine what that means. We can get
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it to vote weeds, but that's basically the idea. So when you hear something is racist because whites
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do better on it than blacks, it's all from a Supreme Court decision in 1971.
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Fascinating. So question, when you look at the current, the most recent Supreme Court ruling
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that's, you know, on everyone's mind these days was, was, you know, tied to early colleges and
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admissions and everything like that. I don't know what it's called off the top of my head, but
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is it sort of like the opposite of this? Do you think it could lead to an untangling of some
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of this or do you think it's, it's just farting in the wind? It's, it is a, it's a related area
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of law. It's not the, so that, that one was about employment. This one is about universities
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directly discriminating based on race. But it's a, you know, you can't do that. And it is, I mean,
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it is important. I think you've seen stories, even though it doesn't directly apply to employment,
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you've seen stories of like corporations, like sort of becoming a little more skittish about
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diversity. It's a signal of sort of how the Supreme Court is thinking about these issues and how
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future cases will be ruled on. And, you know, whether it matters or, you know, how much it
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matters in the end is really going to be determined. It's a very, it's sort of a boring answer, but it's
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going to be determined by, you know, who the judges are in the future. I mean, it's going to be determined
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by election results and who's appointing the judges and who's, who's the Senate, you know, confirming
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them because like every, you know, every decision is sort of never in our legal system, nothing is ever a
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final decision. Everything is just sort of shifting, you know, the goal points one direction
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or not. If a three conservative Supreme Court just says die and I replace tomorrow, right? That
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decision will go back and we'll go, we'll go even further in the other direction. So it, I mean,
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it matters. You see sort of, it's sort of like, you know, like you fire, you know, artillery barrage at
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an enemy and they scramble for a while. If you don't follow up with any other fire, they're going to
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regroup and they're going to be right back in their original position. If you start hitting them again,
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while they're scrambling, you can really change things. So, you know, how much it matters will depend
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on future decisions and future elections as boring as that sounds as an answer.
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Well, no, it is, it is actually an interesting answer. So what I find interesting is how different
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our perceptions on the origins of woke are and what woke is. And I'd love it if you could comment.
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So I'll give a brief explanation of where I think our differences of perception are. And I'd love you to
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present an argument for, for your perception versus our perception. Ours. So, so if I'm going to
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characterize yours and you can tell me if I'm mischaracterizing it is wokeism is downstream
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of legal decisions that were originally tied to the civil rights movement, but basically ran out of
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control. Um, whereas our perception is that wokeism is a memetic virus, much closer to a religion and
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that it literally evolved out of a form of Quakerism. And that it, instead of coming from these decisions,
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that it actually sort of infects cultural movements, even iterations of religions, basically kills
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everything they ever stood for, then marionates their corpses and claims to be them. And that it is
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not the civil rights movement, that the civil rights movement had entirely different goals in modern
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wokeism. And that the civil rights movement now is just the corpse of something that used to matter
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being marionetted by the thing that killed it. So how do you, I mean, I hear these arguments and I
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talk about them a little bit in the book. How does one go proving that, I mean, what is this sort of the,
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the, the, the historical analysis that gives you the causal mechanism that shows you that,
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that Quakerism is sort of the root of this? Well, so we sort of try to trace it through time and
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through the educational system that was originally controlled by the Quaker movement. And then we look
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for weird thing that woke culture does that we don't see in any other culture. I can almost think
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of it as like vestigial organs. So like an example of this would be two things that are like really
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weird that I wouldn't, or three things. So three things that we only see in wokeism and this form of
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Quaker culture. One thing that was really common in Quaker culture was that young children would
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chastise adults for moral failings. No other culture in society does this yet was in the woke
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movement. We have things like Greta Thornburg. Another thing that they would do is they would
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have a form of religious meeting where you wouldn't have a leader, but people would just stand up and
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talk when moved by God, which is very similar to the way meetings were structured. If you look at
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something like occupy wall street, the final one is, is that Quaker culture was famously really,
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really prudish about sexuality yet like claimed to be like sexually open ish, which is a weird thing
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you see in woke culture, which is like the idea of what culture is sexual openness. And yet they are
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extremely prudish, especially about male sexuality, which seems to go against their raison d'etre.
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The reason I don't think it's the civil rights movement, which I think is pretty interesting as a
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direct is the civil rights movement was about creating equality where I think woke culture's
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goal is to remove in the moment emotional pain, which is a very different goal than creating
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So, yeah, as far as that vestigial organ, you know, analysis, you know, I think that,
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you know, I'm just trying to think, is there any historical examples where I could say, well,
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you know, there's this year, I mean, it sounds to me a bit like Maoism. I don't think civil rights
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wokeness comes from Maoism, but if I wanted to, I could say, you know, young generation denouncing the
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old prudish about sexuality. What was the, what was the second one? We crazy meetings that are,
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you know, I mean, it seems they did have that under, under Mao, right?
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Well, I mean, could you argue that woke culture, I mean, we do know if you look at something like
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Antifa, so I'm just going to make a different argument now, woke culture is Maoism. We do know
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with stuff like Antifa that we had actual like communist training cells, like training these
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organizations, which then could have disseminated to other parts of woke culture.
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Yeah. So, so I think that like the, you know, the, the stronger argument for it being,
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you know, descending from the civil rights, I have the strongest argument is that
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it was a lot of cases, the same people. I mean, it was the same people who were preaching
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equality of opportunity. A lot of it was a strategic, I mean, there was a lot of communist
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involvement in the civil rights movement. They, you know, they of course sold it as, you know,
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colorblindness and most of the members of Congress and the senators who voted for it were not
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communists or anything close to that. But then on a drop of a hat, sort of when they were,
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when the public attention was off of them, you know, they went and they pushed for equality
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of results. So whatever was motivating the civil rights movement, I think it's a combination of
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like, you know, going back to Lincoln, the sort of noble idea of just like race, not mattering and,
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you know, free markets and free labor and people living as individuals. There was, there was that,
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there was a coalition of that and just communists who just wanted, you know, equality of results,
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no matter what. And sort of the, that, that latter part of the movement just sort of took over. And
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you can just say, I mean, it's a, it's a safe organization. It's the NAACP, right? Colorblindness
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in 1960, all about quotas in 1970, 1975. Well, it sounds like that the, the Richard explanation is
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like the statutory legal governing origins of it. And the Malcolm story is the like memetic
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religious, like sort of intuitive origins of it. And they both totally play into each other.
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They just come from really different like perspectives of like how, how actually they
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both sort of reflect on you, like both of your, your ways of modeling the world and your education.
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Like, you know, you're coming from a very different sort of academic background. Like Malcolm is looking
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at this from the perspective of someone who studied psychology and neuroscience. And you're looking
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at it from the perspective of like politics and history and like, you know, what, what concrete
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things are happening. I think it's really interesting to see like how that plays out.
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By the way, I found your arguments very compelling and they made me challenge some of my own beliefs,
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like going through your book and going through you talking on other podcasts and hearing just
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how specifically you were able to chart things.
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Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, I think people, yeah, I think people can, I think I'm glad you said that
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because that is really sort of a strength of the book when I'm talking on social media or when I'm
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talking on podcasts, it's, it's hard to just, cause it is, it's not a, it's not a long book.
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It's like 210 pages, but it's dense. Like, you know, I don't do the academic thing, book author
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thing of repeating the same things over. I'd be a hypocrite if I did, because I wrote an article
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about why you shouldn't read books because books are often just a bunch of fluff of people saying
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the same thing over and over. I only gave you 210 pages, but they're all, each one is necessary.
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Right. And, you know, I do trace, you know, I do trace that history very, very closely.
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And it depends on what you're talking about. There are some things that I think I can show like
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absolutely conclusively that it was governed, like how we classify race. I mean, that chapter,
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the word AAPI, the phrase didn't exist in the English language before the 1970s. It was a
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government classification. And then it became part of the English language. What are the odds that it,
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you know, was anything, it was anything else. Right. I'm not familiar with this. Can you go into
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this part of the book? Oh, so it's called Asian American Pacific Islander. So we have this category
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in America called Asian American Pacific Islander. I have a chapter on how the government created new
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races. Right. And when I have Google, I have a couple of graphs of Google n-grams for one for
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Hispanics and one for Asians. And I showed that it does not, AAPI, Asian American Pacific Islander,
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does not appear in any English language book until the late 1970s. It doesn't exist.
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And it's a government category. And why it became a government category is just sort of funny.
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It was just because Hawaii was a state and like, it was like a third, like native Hawaiian and like
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a third Asian or something. They're like, okay, miscellaneous. Everything, everyone from Hawaii
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is just an Asian American Pacific Islander. And it became an identity. And now in 2020, you see
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hashtag stop AAPI hate. You see on Hulu, they say AAPI heritage month. I mean, it's amazing.
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This mimetic thing, which was literally just invented by the government. And now it's like,
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it's like race. Like the thing that you think would be like sort of primordial, right? Something
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that would just be very natural was just clearly so clearly created by the government.
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Oh, that's also fascinating because there are groups that have so little in common.
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Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of a test case of like how ridiculous, like you could just construct
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Well, I mean, it's the same with Latino though. Like, I don't know, like we grew up, I think,
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insensitively, like just sort of running with it, at least like I did in California and super
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progressive Silicon Valley society. And then Malcolm and I acquired a business with headquarters
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in Peru and then like a U S team that had people from all over Latin America. And we discovered that
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like people that would be considered Latino or Latinx, though no one wants that, like totally don't
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see themselves as part of a group. Of course not, because they're not, they're super culturally
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different. They would hold on. I can see how plausibly you could say these groups were colonized
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by many of the same people and stuff like that. And so they had the same pressures on them,
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but like comparing a Pacific Islander to like a Chinese person is insane.
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Okay. Okay. What are some of the other quirks you ran into?
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Yeah. Yeah. So there, I mean, the Hispanic one is not as absurd as the AAPI one, but you do see
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the word Hispanic Latino sort of takes off. So it's not like it didn't exist in the English language.
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It existed. And actually Mexican American and Puerto Rican go down around the same time period.
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So we start thinking, we start sort of lumping these, you know, these groups together, you know,
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like the, you know, some things are so direct, like the title nine stuff, this is more recent history.
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So people even might be familiar with this, but like the government and the Obama administration was
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basically going to universities and telling them hire a title nine coordinator. This is how you
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judge sexual assault cases. You know, you have preponderance of the evidence. You don't have,
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you know, beyond a reasonable doubt standard. And they're just like, and they're giving them
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like the feminist literature of like, you know, how to understand gender relations and telling them
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like who they have to hire. Right. They're saying you're going to have to have, you know,
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a title nine coordinator. And so there's very direct here. Another thing I mean, I think people will
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really appreciate is universities, right? So you think of universities, they're the origins of,
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they're the origins of wokeness, right? They're places where, you know, the craziest people go
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and they have the craziest ideas and they're obsessed with identity. In 1971, it was the
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federal government that goes to Columbia University and they go, give us your data on your, you know,
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race and sex of your hires. We want to see if you're discriminating. And the president of Columbia
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University is scandalized by this. He writes an open letter saying, what do you talk, we're an institution
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of higher learning. We don't even collect that data. We are, we are so decentralized. I don't want to
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start asking departments like which race are they hiring or if they're hiring enough women.
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And at the, you know, at the end of the note, he, at the end of the letter, he goes, you know,
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we have to do it to maintain our funding. And so we'll have to become a new kind of institution.
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I mean, you have the history of Columbia, literally holding the line for merit and, and, you know,
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colorblindness and, you know, academic standards, and then just being bullied into becoming something
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else through the federal government. And I wish there was more, you know, I wish there was more
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research on like the history of this because you, you look at, and there's not like tons of like,
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you know, there's not like historians haven't like really paid much attention. Yeah. You can go
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back and you can see the New York times articles from 1971 talking about this. You can find the
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open letter. It's sort of an obscure document from the Columbia president. But, you know, there's
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like, you know, there's, there must be a rich history there of what was going on in these years
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that I don't think anyone has taken up to my knowledge, but it's just, it's just sort of,
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you know, it's sort of crazy how, how like direct you could see the influence of government
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on these institutions. So if it started with government, are you of the opinion that would
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have to end with government that like, if people wanted to shift culture in a different direction,
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they would be best advised to try to do so through policy and government?
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I think it's the most direct way to do so. Yes. And it's not, you know, they should,
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they should fight the mimetic war, of course, and they should make culture and art and media and
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go on Twitter and art and make their arguments. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all that is, all that is great.
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The law though, I mean, it shapes incentives and it shapes institutions and what it does is not
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always visible, right? If you like, if you have a law that says you have to make sure you don't have
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a disparate fact, you hire some HR person, you know, five years later, they do some program,
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nobody traces it to the original civil rights law. Right. And so it's like going in the reverse
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direction is going to be like the same thing. You're going to be basically making these HR people,
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you're going to be making them less necessary. You're going to be making corporations less
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skittish about racial discrimination or maybe more skittish in the case of anti-white or anti-male
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discrimination. And there's going to be downstream effects, you know, months, years, even decades
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down the line. And so, yeah, I have a, you know, my second to last chapter, it falls out the political
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program. There are specific things, you know, government can do. Well, so what, what are you going
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to run for office? Yeah. You think I would do well running for NBC by Twitter? I mean, name
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awareness is like the number one factor that you need. Maybe. Yeah. When I get to Trump's level of
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name awareness, maybe, maybe all the stuff I say won't matter, but yeah, no, I don't think I have
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enough to overcome all that. Simone went to a council thing to like teach you how to run for office.
00:20:08.580
Cause she's thinking about running in the next election cycle. And they're like, well, the first
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thing you have to do is delete all your social media. So no one knows anything crazy you've said.
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And we were like, wow, if we had a political assault, they would literally have a heart
00:20:19.960
attack. Yeah. What are you running for Simone? We're looking at potentially running for just
00:20:26.580
state house in Pennsylvania for our district. No, don't say just state house. I would be
00:20:30.480
impressed if you became a state rep. I would be impressed too. It's a, it's a what the hell it's,
00:20:35.620
it's a, our district is very much on the edge and running as a Republican, like the, the female
00:20:39.660
Republican challenger to our democratic incumbent has lost two times in a row. So like not, not a good
00:20:44.640
sign, but I mean, we agree with you that government is, is crucial in changing things. We also
00:20:51.220
somewhat disagree with the, the philosophy that those who are elected to office are elected
00:20:56.960
because they are like good guys with clean records. I mean, Trump, we say broke the ultimate
00:21:02.440
glass ceiling and prove that people like office. Exactly. Yeah. I think there is, I mean, I don't
00:21:09.240
know like other candidates don't, there's not a lot of Trump like candidates, right?
00:21:13.820
There are, but there's not a lot of people who have the balls to do it. Here's the thing
00:21:16.820
is you, you decide you want to run for office and you're serious about it. Right. So like
00:21:20.100
you do all the right stuff, which is you hire the political consultant, you hire the campaign
00:21:23.760
manager, you hire the pollster. They all tell you to do exactly the same thing. They are not
00:21:27.620
incentivized to look at efficacy. They're not incentivized to look at ROI. They're incentivized
00:21:31.220
to get hired again. So they're not going to do anything risky. They're not going to do
00:21:34.040
anything weird. Of course, they're going to do all the stuff that is like extremely conventionally
00:21:38.320
safe because if they, if they do something weird and for any reason you don't get elected.
00:21:43.160
And there are many reasons why you could be a really promising candidate and not get elected
00:21:47.440
and your district is just, you know, zoned in a weird way, like they're out. So they're
00:21:52.060
not going to do anything. So I think the problem is that most responsible people who care about
00:21:56.040
it don't have the balls to run for office using any unconventional tactic. We also think,
00:22:01.380
and I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on this because you recently got a lot of press
00:22:05.920
for something that most people would be terrified to get press about, right? You got sort of like
00:22:10.320
a lot of controversy, but we found personally that the most controversial coverage we get and the
00:22:15.620
most hate we get also leads to the most actual reach for people who are genuinely like engaged with
00:22:20.420
our message. So whenever we get positive press, we're like really disappointed because it literally
00:22:25.120
does nothing. Like nothing moves the needle, no new subscribers, no new engagement, no new followers.
00:22:30.380
And then like we get hate and we just like tons more, tons more engagement and meaningful
00:22:34.700
engagement, positive engagement. So I'm curious, like, and so like part of, part of our thing with
00:22:38.920
like running for office is we're like, you know what, you know, leave the bad social media up.
00:22:43.320
Let your, let your opponent smear you because as long as your vices are not deal breakers for the
00:22:49.720
thing you're running for and like for Trump, right? Like in the fact that he was like, that he lied
00:22:55.180
about his finances and that, you know, yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. So the adage, you know, no publicity
00:23:01.780
is bad publicity. I think there's, there is some truth to that. The worst thing in the universe for
00:23:06.220
a politician or an intellectual, you know, depending on the, on the field, but a lot of field is to be
00:23:10.940
ignored. So bad press at least puts you in the arena, right? If anyone is, you know, most people
00:23:16.080
are not thinking about most other people most of the time, and most people will not leave a mark in
00:23:20.360
most things that they try. So if they can write 10 hit pieces on you, a house candidate in
00:23:25.560
Pennsylvania, that's, that's, you're at the 99.9th percentile of attention for someone running for,
00:23:30.780
for that position. You know, and I, the one thing you're getting at Simona that I think is, you know,
00:23:36.560
there might be something to it is that like the whole sort of industry, you know, there's fake
00:23:40.660
expertise. I've heard about fake expertise that the whole sort of political conventional wisdom is
00:23:45.160
sort of fake that there was, you know, something to be said for that. It was, you know,
00:23:49.280
the whole Trump phenomenon. I mean, if you watch the Trump, you know, the Trump phenomenon, they
00:23:52.840
were always like, he can't get when the primaries, okay, he can't win the election. Okay, now he's
00:23:56.740
finished. He's not going to be the nominee in 2024. They're always, they're always wrong, right? On
00:24:01.060
Trump. And the market, even the markets are following sort of the conventional wisdom. The
00:24:04.360
markets have always underestimated Trump. And I think, you know, another case, I think, I don't
00:24:08.220
know how much, how close you're following the court Republican primary, but my, my friend,
00:24:12.240
Vivek Ramoswamy is sort of doing the unconventional thing. He's not as unconventional as you guys are,
00:24:17.540
but he is like, he's trying to be the new Trump, like the reasonable Trump.
00:24:21.360
Yeah. And I, he's got a very good sort of ear for where the base is. So it is, I don't know if
00:24:27.180
he's actually doing something that unusual or different, or he's just like, he's just like
00:24:31.220
better than the consultants are sort of knowing where the base is and where to go. Yeah. But the
00:24:35.660
idea that conservatives are, but I will say he's way too like good. He doesn't have enough. I don't
00:24:41.000
know what's wrong with him. If I cannot clearly name someone's vices, they're not doing it right
00:24:45.220
per our philosophy. Yeah. I mean, there are people do say he's too slicker there, this and that. I
00:24:50.200
mean, you know, he, but he's done amazingly for someone who came from nowhere, right? The fact
00:24:54.060
that he's, you know, almost in second place and some polls, you know, ones that I've seen,
00:24:58.000
but in fact, he's even like in the top five, uh, given he was nobody, you know, six months ago,
00:25:02.080
it's just amazing. And so, yeah, I mean, I think you guys, yeah, I mean, I, I, yeah, it's, it's,
00:25:09.140
it's, it's, it's a theory worth testing. I mean, you guys are not going to be like,
00:25:12.940
what are your options? You're not going to become a conventional, you know, political
00:25:16.140
couple, right? We can't know. So like, you know, we'll learn something from it if nothing
00:25:20.520
else. So yeah. Are you, are you, is it a sure thing you are running? We're not totally sure
00:25:25.740
yet. Yeah. Whenever I hear something like, I'm like, okay, how do we fix this? And you're
00:25:29.880
like, here's how you could fix this. And I'm like, okay, then how do we do that? You know,
00:25:33.440
get more sane people into office, I think is a really good goal. And I like what, I mean,
00:25:39.620
you seem to be working on it with Ramaswamy. So that's cool. I'd love to see you run someday
00:25:45.360
though. The world would have to be a lot, a lot crazier. I've sort of, you know, I've just,
00:25:51.540
I value my freedom a lot. I've sort of, you know, I wasn't thinking about academia for a while. And
00:25:55.980
then I was sort of doing a few think tank things. And then finally it was just like, I am, you know,
00:26:01.060
I just, I just don't want to be, I don't want to be chained to anything.
00:26:04.000
But politics is like academia. You just don't have to be competent.
00:26:08.560
Well, yeah, but you have to be in a certain place at a certain time, right? You have to sort of,
00:26:13.820
you know, go where they tell you, right? I'm fine with being competent. I just, I just don't want to,
00:26:18.220
I just don't want to have to be anywhere. I just, I just love my own schedule and my own,
00:26:22.540
my own freedom. So, but no, you guys doing it. That's awesome. I mean, I, I, I didn't know about
00:26:28.780
So what are you going to do with all our guests, try to convince them to run for office?
00:26:33.600
You know, okay, well, we'll, we can do the test run, right? We'll throw ourselves under the bus.
00:26:37.540
Then we'll get like, actually meaningful tactics.
00:26:40.400
It would expand my sort of, my understanding of what's possible. Yeah.
00:26:43.180
Yeah. Yeah. Like if we were like, oh, if you do this and here's our secret way of making it work,
00:26:48.980
We'll get all of our spicy internet friends to run.
00:26:51.920
No, but you know, here's the thing is, and many people, like I think Tyler Cowan,
00:26:55.160
like put out a blog post about this recently, that he, he genuinely believes that, that one of
00:26:59.580
the most meaningful EA causes is to reform the Republican party, because right now it's kind of,
00:27:05.440
it's kind of lost. It doesn't have like, like a sort of intellectual leadership or new tone.
00:27:09.220
It could really use it. And we'd love to do for the Republican party, what justice Democrats kind
00:27:14.560
of did with the, the, the democratic party where they moved the Overton window and they installed some,
00:27:25.920
Justice Democrats. Are you familiar with what happened there?
00:27:28.000
Oh no, I'm familiar with justice Democrats. Yeah.
00:27:29.840
Yeah. I mean, they were incredibly successful. So for the audience who's not familiar,
00:27:34.320
there was this group that was like, can we change the Overton window of the democratic party by
00:27:38.180
basically holding like America's got talent style, like auditions for who would be good candidates
00:27:43.100
and then funding them to run by basically telling them what to do. And you know, this sounds like an
00:27:48.880
insane idea, but this is where like AOC came from. This is where Omar came from. This is where
00:27:53.020
like the squad came from. They really did move the Overton window of the entire democratic party
00:28:02.020
Yeah, no, yeah, you're right. You know, the, the, the, the specifics of the Republican party
00:28:07.260
though is it's interesting because it's, you know, like the, the justice Democrats were sort of,
00:28:12.500
they were coming from a place where they sort of, you know, the base, you know, like the base of both
00:28:18.180
parties is sort of more economically leftist than the parties themselves are. So they were just saying
00:28:23.180
be even more economically leftist. And then also like, well, I mean, they were also more economically
00:28:28.000
liberal. And so like, they were sort of, you know, in that place where, and it was considered like,
00:28:32.060
you know, being socially liberal was sort of consistent with all the, you know, I think that
00:28:36.260
the, with the Republican party, it's sort of different in that, like, first it's like, it's,
00:28:40.020
has less of an intellect, intellectual elite culture. It has more of sort of a podcast and
00:28:44.340
sort of not podcasts like radio and TV mostly. And you guys are good on radio and TV, but you know,
00:28:50.220
your, your audiences, you're competing with like, you know, Sean Hannity or something, right. Just
00:28:53.980
like the mouthpiece, right. As far as like, as far as reach. And then you have like this very sort of,
00:28:59.080
you know, these sort of like religious sort of rural concerns, you know, you're going to have to
00:29:03.660
sort of navigate that, you know, your socio, your socioeconomic class is sort of different from
00:29:07.620
where the Republican voter is. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea.
00:29:11.700
Have you thought about like running as a Democrat? I mean, was it always going to be Republicans for
00:29:15.340
you guys? I, I do not, one, I don't think it matters to run as a Democrat anymore. The
00:29:20.160
Democratic party's agenda is set. There's nothing you can do to change it. The Republicans post Trump,
00:29:24.620
they can be anything they want. It's really exciting. But in addition to that, I do not think
00:29:30.380
we keep having people trying to start pro natalist foundations that are tied to Democrats
00:29:34.460
that are like, that are politically neutral and they keep getting crucified.
00:29:37.860
Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. The Republicans can't be whatever. I think you have to, you have
00:29:41.300
to, you have to check a few boxes. I think abortion, guns, taxes. I think you have to check those. And
00:29:46.780
you have to be like, I love Trump. You have to just love Trump personally. Right. But you're right.
00:29:51.560
Other than that. Yeah. Democrats is sort of, there's more of sort of a comprehensive agenda of
00:29:55.460
all Republicans. You have, you have a lot of space.
00:29:58.120
Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, we'll see. All right. I have loved chatting with you.
00:30:03.160
So this was fantastic. We'll definitely do another episode with you. And thank you so
00:30:07.040
much for your time. I would really encourage our audience to check out his sub stack. Like
00:30:11.300
somehow you don't know who Richard Henenia is yet. You know who we are. He is very ideologically
00:30:17.460
similar to us, but much more famous and has a broader reach. So I am surprised. Like if you
00:30:24.580
know who we are, but don't know who he is, you should.
00:30:28.240
And definitely also check out his book, The Origins of Woke. Really interesting book. And
00:30:33.320
yeah, the sub stack Twitter, I'm, I'm, you know, every thought I have is, is basically
00:30:37.620
put on one of those places. So yeah. Thought you could follow that.