THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 92 — Bring Redskins Back？ What Makes An American？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.34036
Summary
It's finally summer, which means it's time for another episode of Thought Crime Thursday! This week, the gang talks about the tragic loss of Ozzy Osbourne and the tragic death of Hogan Hogan. Plus, we talk about a cruise ship accident that has people stranded in the middle of the ocean.
Transcript
00:00:05.620
DNSSEC specifically targets the communications of everyone.
00:00:24.840
I'm in an undisclosed location and we have the whole gang here.
00:00:36.700
And Jack, I'll just kind of say, how are you doing?
00:00:45.180
You know, in terms of obviously the week, you know,
00:00:52.540
So that's definitely been something that's put a damper on things.
00:00:55.620
But other than that, you know, summertime has been great.
00:00:58.820
You know, with the family, going out, swimming a lot, getting a lot of sun.
00:01:02.420
We have been enjoying it from that perspective.
00:01:10.680
Blake, you don't seem like much of a summer guy to me.
00:01:20.260
The Phoenix summer has been unusually gentle, though.
00:01:23.100
Yeah, well, I always tell people when they ask how Phoenix is since I moved here two years ago,
00:01:29.760
And I always tell them that I feel lied to because I was told I was moving into a desert.
00:01:35.320
And the actual weird thing about Phoenix is it rains all the time here.
00:01:38.640
It's apparently the wettest desert in the entire world.
00:01:41.740
And like it's rained like three times in the last week.
00:02:08.600
But the family, the weather, the off hours, which maybe are sparse at times, have been amazing.
00:02:16.960
So with that, some people decide to spend their summers on cruise ships, of which I don't know why people would do this voluntarily.
00:02:33.420
Are these people being sentenced to the cruise ship?
00:02:35.660
Is this like in lieu of community service after they committed arson?
00:02:41.620
People do like they'll decide to spend a bunch of money to leave their comfortable homes and instead sit on like a cramped boat in quarters that are typically smaller than their homes.
00:02:57.420
And then they're on this boat and it's filled with like noisy people and like a lot of like sometimes gross people.
00:03:08.600
And then they like float on this boat between various like usually, you know, straddling the line between first and third world a bit countries.
00:03:20.860
And if they get sick or die, like the cruise is going to aggressively try to get them off the boat because they don't like it when people die on their boats.
00:03:35.800
You're reminding me of COVID when like everybody's getting trapped on the cruise ships when the COVID outbreaks would happen.
00:03:44.460
It's like I vowed then because then it was like a wake up call to everybody about just how disgusting most cruise ships actually are.
00:03:53.100
I was like never going to go on a cruise at that point.
00:03:56.300
I guess we're never going to get a cruise sponsor on this show, but so be it.
00:04:04.900
Listen, and then Blake can walk through this latest news with it.
00:04:07.780
But let me just tell you my whole experience with cruises.
00:04:14.540
I was stuck on a cruise ship with Brent Bozell, Joe Piscopo, Jason Chaffetz, Alan West.
00:04:35.180
So were you on like a national review cruise or something?
00:04:42.600
And we started in Rome, of which I wanted to stay longer.
00:04:53.780
And we were supposed to then go to like Santorini and then Istanbul.
00:05:20.380
So Jack, make the argument as to why you want to suffer.
00:05:26.160
I don't know why anybody would want to go on a cruise.
00:05:30.080
I don't think it's a good time, a good way to entertain anything.
00:05:33.440
Tanya's been trying to get me on a cruise since,
00:05:44.300
I have no idea why anyone would want to put them through such.
00:06:02.700
Would you like to spend time with everyone you work with all the time?
00:06:17.880
And also, you're not allowed to leave the building ever because you are at sea.
00:06:25.820
And that's what I think about every time I set foot on a cruise ship.
00:06:28.840
So why, God, why would anyone think that this is an enjoyable way to spend your time?
00:06:43.200
When I said I've taken so many cruises, I meant because when I was in the Navy,
00:06:58.840
Let's all take a step back and let's just kind of look at the horizon here, okay?
00:07:02.480
Now, there's all these different types of cruise companies, okay?
00:07:05.720
So they're, and by the way, they are relentlessly running ads.
00:07:10.120
I don't know what SEO I have on my YouTube, but I get lots of cruise advertisements.
00:07:26.580
There's the Royal Caribbean, the Norwegian Cruise Line, the MSC, and then the Disney Cruise Line.
00:07:33.200
There's the Viking Ocean Cruise, Ponyet, Asmara, Seabourn, and Windstar Cruises.
00:07:43.040
Blake says you get these because you're a right winger who raises money.
00:07:47.340
Do you understand how many cruises I've been invited on?
00:07:51.280
I get invited to cruises to Alaska and to Vancouver and to Scotland.
00:07:57.220
As somebody who gets the incoming, the inquiry is like, hey, would Charlie be willing to do this cruise and we'll make it worth your while?
00:08:13.920
It's such a, but the mentality of who goes on these cruises, and the reason this is topical, and Blake will tell us why in a second.
00:08:21.920
It is, it's like a floating old country buffet meets a bingo hall with everybody getting sick all the time.
00:08:32.540
That's a very waspy interpretation of what it is.
00:08:38.160
Cruise, there's another type of cruise that we, shall we say, call it, I don't know, the Spirit Airlines cruise.
00:08:46.900
Would you rather fly a cross-country flight at 5 a.m. from Spirit Airlines, LAX to JFK, or would you rather have to do two nights on the Carnival cruise?
00:09:10.800
And apparently there's like two forms of people that go on cruises.
00:09:15.700
There's older kind of retirees who, from the Midwest, they love cruises.
00:09:21.080
And then there's the rambunctious types that seem to be causing a lot of problems right now.
00:09:30.420
I can attest to many, many Midwesterners loving their cruises.
00:09:34.900
I feel, this will probably offend a lot of people, I feel like cruises appeal to the same demographic that likes going to Disney World a lot, but like older.
00:09:45.060
So, like people, you have like Disney adults who go to Disney World and spend a bunch of money on that.
00:09:50.060
If you're an older kind of group of the same thing, you like going on, you know, you go on like a cruise every year or two cruises a year.
00:09:57.700
Anyway, as you know, there are several tiers of cruises.
00:10:00.920
You have the higher, what are the nicer ones than Carnival?
00:10:07.920
There's Ritz-Carlton, there's Disneyland, there's like the Disney ones.
00:10:15.320
Yeah, the Vikings are the ones that do like river cruises, I think.
00:10:24.900
All these people probably paid for this, but take it with a grain of salt.
00:10:27.880
Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is the best luxury cruise.
00:10:35.420
I'm just saying, there's a whole, there's a bounty, there's a buffet.
00:10:44.220
Yeah, so the mid-tier ones, like Royal Caribbean, of course, they're kind of the standard ones.
00:10:48.560
And then I'm looking at one ranking, and what's great is they refer to them as entry-level cruises.
00:10:56.160
But anyway, one of the entry-level cruise brands is Carnival.
00:11:01.020
My understanding is Carnival, especially, they became even more entry-level than usual during COVID,
00:11:08.240
because COVID obviously completely bungled up travel.
00:11:13.960
Cruise lines were absolutely deep in the red, really looking for money.
00:11:18.520
And one thing about cruises is you often book them quite long in advance.
00:11:22.500
They try to fill them up way, way in advance to make sure, you know, they don't have a ton of people buying tickets last minute.
00:11:27.760
And so they were offering these incredibly steep discounts that opened up cruise lines to all sorts of clientele
00:11:34.440
that previously did not go on cruises very often.
00:11:37.080
And this gave Carnival, as Jack was alluding to, the Spirit Airlines reputation.
00:11:42.080
It is a reputation for not always being the most pleasant thing to go on.
00:11:47.400
And so this led to what we're discussing, which this went viral a few weeks ago,
00:11:52.580
and it kind of went re-viral in the last week or two.
00:11:58.120
Anyway, Carnival Cruise Line has some updated rules that people are noticing.
00:12:02.940
And I'm just going to read the rules as a summary I found describes it.
00:12:10.660
Cannabis, even if legal in your home state, is banned on board because it violates U.S. federal law.
00:12:16.900
And if you do it, you will be removed and banned.
00:12:21.900
Guests 17 and under must leave public spaces by 1 a.m. in the morning
00:12:26.940
unless accompanied by an adult or part of a supervised teen program.
00:12:32.920
I'll leave number three for last because I think it's the funniest.
00:12:39.080
Guests may no longer play their own music in public areas.
00:12:43.260
Carnival says this is for general comfort, but some see bias in this.
00:12:48.840
Number five, we have stricter enforcement of drink packages.
00:12:52.680
So Carnival sells a Cheers package that gives you a 15 alcoholic drinks per day limit
00:13:03.760
And apparently in the past, the enforcement of this was a little flexible.
00:13:08.240
They wouldn't flip out too much if you asked for a 16th or a 17th or a 20th.
00:13:18.000
This is not an official rule, but this is being reported that their music genres
00:13:22.980
that their DJs play at the various dance clubs that are on cruise ships,
00:13:28.340
They are cutting away on hip hop and rap music that their DJs play.
00:13:33.540
And reportedly they even decline guest requests far more often than they used to.
00:13:40.480
This is the final rule that I think is the funniest.
00:13:42.760
They are banning handheld, non-battery powered fans.
00:13:47.360
Like, you know, like the one like a Southern lady would fan herself with in a movie or something.
00:13:51.180
Those are banned and they say it is due to safety concerns, specifically related.
00:13:57.900
There is a viral song that goes, has a title that is apparently where them fans at.
00:14:05.460
And as part of the music video in this, they click the fans repeatedly.
00:14:13.060
People would bring handheld fans on cruises and they would click them
00:14:17.040
and they were hitting people and probably annoying people a lot.
00:14:22.860
And you can already tell me, I bet, why people are mad about all of these rules.
00:14:27.720
Well, and so then there was an article from The Root.
00:14:30.800
Carnival's new rules got black folks all in their feelings,
00:14:38.740
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, they say, right,
00:14:40.620
the Carnival rules are racist, is what they are saying.
00:14:52.840
They, oh man, Carnival has some very funny tweets in it.
00:14:56.140
One of them they have from someone going by Geechee Barbie.
00:14:59.440
I hope that is not like a gross slang term because I don't know slang.
00:15:03.240
And she tweeted, so Carnival Cruise banning fans now
00:15:07.760
because y'all won't stop putting boots on the ground and clacking them.
00:15:15.920
That song has black America in a chokehold LMAO.
00:15:23.300
Do we, can we get like a clip of the, of the fan clicking?
00:15:26.760
And I, I've got to wait to pass judgment on how annoying the song might be.
00:15:37.020
And I'll tell you, I couldn't be punished for being on a cruise.
00:15:42.700
I would, I would throw something else out there.
00:15:45.160
There's, there's a, there's, and by the way, if you want to take like a regular cruise,
00:15:50.180
But there's this whole culture I've noticed of people like older couples getting reverse
00:15:56.560
mortgages and then spending the money immediately on those like massive lavish cruises.
00:16:06.360
You're, you're putting yourself and your estate in debt so that you can go on some cruise.
00:16:11.860
Like it's the most ridiculous and flagrant you just, just waste.
00:16:21.840
It's just like you get to a certain point and you're like, I'm not going to pass along
00:16:28.300
I'm going to spend it all as quickly as I can because I earned it and screw them.
00:16:33.260
And like, there's a whole bunch of people that think that way and reverse mortgages.
00:16:38.320
If you're up against the wall and you don't have money coming in, you need the expenses
00:16:41.520
for whatever reason, but you know, to spend it on a cruise line, like if this is what
00:16:47.900
You could have had generational wealth and legacy, or you could have this.
00:16:53.880
Back against the, we need to put people who like cruises against the wall.
00:17:06.120
When you put people against the wall, they go, they go before a firing squad.
00:17:13.160
The thought crime tonight isn't that carnival cruises are bad.
00:17:15.600
The thought crime tonight is that all cruises are bad and you should feel bad if you go
00:17:21.080
They are the low, they are the lowest form of vacation.
00:17:24.340
There is, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to stake that one out.
00:17:28.820
Like anything, any type of vacation you could go on is better if it's not on a freaking
00:17:41.000
I could see myself doing like a kid friendly one.
00:17:49.880
But I'm just saying like if somebody was like, hey, they've got water slides and they
00:17:54.320
take you to the next cool kid location and then we're, you know, go to, I don't know.
00:17:59.200
What's a single cool kid location that a cruise ship goes to?
00:18:02.580
Kids just want to go to Disney World and Disney World is in land.
00:18:11.480
We, I, I feel like we need to like actually like lay down the law here on the, on the cruise
00:18:18.680
Andrew, there's a great one that is called, um, let's get this one for Andrew.
00:18:37.800
It's because they make a ton of money on the liquor and the extras while you're actually
00:18:43.000
So it's, uh, this one sounds perfect for Andrew.
00:18:45.220
The seven day Western Caribbean from Miami, Florida, the Carnival Celebration.
00:18:50.980
Um, you go to Celebration Key, Mahogany Bay, uh, Cozumel, and you end back in Miami.
00:19:03.040
Are you trying to send me on a cultural, uh, experience, Charlie?
00:19:09.400
Hey, you said, you said you wanted to bring your kids.
00:19:12.020
I didn't say, I said like, you know, I mean, here's my theory.
00:19:15.400
It's like, just like I would spend more to not fly Spirit Airlines.
00:19:19.120
I would probably spend more to not go on Carnival.
00:19:28.180
Let's go to the next topic since we're all so spirited about it.
00:19:30.560
Blake, what were we supposed to talk about today?
00:19:32.460
Our opening topic we were supposed to do, uh, Jack really wanted to hit this, so he
00:19:37.900
But the question is, what is an American, Charlie?
00:19:44.520
So this, this has been, you know, just probably the most viral thing on, uh, certainly on
00:19:49.920
X all this week, you know, that's sort of in the culture war space, if you will.
00:19:54.680
Um, it really stems from the back of this, I believe it was the endorsement win by Omar
00:20:01.360
Fatah over in Minneapolis, and then sort of this impending, uh, race in New York city
00:20:11.240
And you're, you're seeing people now who are running for, um, mayor of major cities.
00:20:20.140
Uh, there was another, I think it was a city council or representative of Somalian out of
00:20:24.540
Maine, Maine, uh, you know, was, was going viral as well this week.
00:20:30.000
And people started really kind of asking the question, you know, guys, can we, you know,
00:20:35.960
can we, can we step back for a second and see here and say, what is an American?
00:20:41.400
Because this has gotten way too far where we're having people who weren't born in this
00:20:47.460
country, in some cases only became citizen a couple of years ago.
00:20:51.620
So, and now they're stepping up to, uh, now, yeah, South Portland, Maine.
00:20:58.600
And now stepping up to be leaders of some of America's most iconic cities, certainly in the
00:21:06.700
And I think it represents a broader question for the movement and for America writ large
00:21:11.140
when we asked this question, because it gets into all of these issues that we've been
00:21:16.140
talking about, mass immigration, mass migration, the balkanization of America, the Brazilification
00:21:20.840
of America, the fact that many nations are now being created inside the United States
00:21:27.020
in various locales, where we've had these mass migrants be emplaced, uh, really predominantly
00:21:32.760
throughout the Obama administration and where our country simply isn't looking like America
00:21:39.800
And, and I think it does beg us to actually start asking the question, what is an American?
00:21:44.560
Andrew, you had some, um, thoughts on this late last night as I was falling asleep.
00:22:01.140
Well, I'll read, I'll read it because I don't know how good it is, but I was feeling inspired
00:22:04.960
last night and American is first and foremost, someone born in America who speaks English,
00:22:10.960
who is raised here, who is steeped in the Anglo traditions of common law, blind justice,
00:22:15.680
equal rights, and believes in, or at least has reverence for the Christian traditions that
00:22:23.520
An American is also someone who we allow to move here, who works without crime nor harbors
00:22:28.540
animosity for the country and who, after a time of painstaking pursuit, gains the incredible
00:22:34.480
rights, freedoms, and privileges of our citizenship.
00:22:39.260
The latter should be given away sparingly, far, far less than we are currently allowing.
00:22:45.020
Um, and then I talk about, they should know who George Washington is, Thomas Jefferson,
00:22:51.940
I mean, I really, I, it's like, I hate to use the analogy, but it's like, it kind of reminds
00:22:58.840
Like, you know it when you see it, like, you know, an American when you see one and
00:23:05.000
You know, when you hear their turns of phrases, their cultural references, how they interact
00:23:09.520
with you personally, interpersonally, it's not somebody that goes and runs for mayor and
00:23:21.440
So I would say also an American is someone who is loyal to a creed.
00:23:27.080
Which would be ordered liberty under God, revering the constitution, owns his land or her land
00:23:35.940
It's really the birthright of the declaration of the constitution, but I would go a step further
00:23:42.560
And it's also, you're an American once you have skin in the game.
00:23:48.940
You become an American when you demonstrate that you're part of this project and that you
00:24:01.680
Daka Dalakawak says that her goal is to help our country of Somalia.
00:24:10.280
Policies, how can the politics in Somalia can be, you know, resonate what we have here
00:24:16.560
in the United States, the democracy that we have.
00:24:19.100
How can you help us, you know, be a better country and build back what we used to have
00:24:27.040
So hopefully we will be able to help our country, our former country, Somalia.
00:24:33.100
So I don't want to take her out of context there, but it seems, it seems like she's talking
00:24:41.260
And just for a little bit of a history lesson, that is South Portland, Maine.
00:24:48.540
Maine is a very remote state that has been completely transformed by mass immigration.
00:24:57.440
You know, I think kind of the follow-up question of what is an American, and I think what can
00:25:02.640
really like supercharge this is the question, can two people, let's say two people who are
00:25:07.680
both American, both American citizens, both born here, can one be more American than another?
00:25:14.080
And that is, that is where you can really charge it up.
00:25:16.980
And I think it's certainly possible to say the answer is yes.
00:25:20.520
Uh, I think Andrew's on the right track where, you know, there's an element of, uh, loyalty
00:25:28.060
There's an element of like creedal nationalism to it.
00:25:31.520
But frankly, I think one thing that is underplayed is there are identity elements to Americanness.
00:25:38.980
Uh, and so like, for example, I would say you are more American if you identify with America's
00:25:47.620
So if you, I mean, if you read like Americans from the 1800s, they very much see their country
00:25:54.420
as a successor to the English nation that we broke away from.
00:25:59.960
And so they would see as elements of American history, not just the American revolution, not
00:26:06.340
just the settlement of Massachusetts, the settlement of Janestown colony.
00:26:10.360
They would also be looking to, uh, the glorious revolution, the reformation in England, the
00:26:17.160
Magna Carta, the Magna Carta, of course, uh, battle of Hastings.
00:26:20.160
If you want to go all the way back to that, that they would see America as an English nation,
00:26:27.560
And even if you are not Anglo-Saxon ethnically, the way Charlie is like, I think you actually
00:26:36.380
Like if you assimilate that aspect of American identity into yourself, you become more American
00:26:42.380
and you have to take kind of America's side implicitly in all American things throughout
00:26:49.300
Uh, I think I've heard before, I can't remember where, but like the best, a great marker for
00:26:53.780
whether Hispanic immigrants to the United States have assimilated to America is if like,
00:26:58.960
you can ask them, uh, you know, who, who lost the battle of the Alamo.
00:27:03.760
And if their answer is we did, and because by we, they mean the American Texans who were
00:27:09.640
And if they're instead identifying with the army of Santa Ana, because they're Mexican,
00:27:16.260
And I think there's, that's an important aspect of American identity is you really have to
00:27:21.120
try hard to identify with the earliest Americans and where they culturally came from.
00:27:28.080
You are not, uh, you know, saying I am, uh, a German or a Russian or a Middle Eastern or
00:27:34.600
an Indian or a Chinese person who happens to have just plunked into America within the
00:27:47.320
So what we should do, and I'm not being sarcastic, Jack, maybe we could riff on this in real time.
00:27:52.780
We should develop five or six similar questions of the one you just developed, right?
00:27:58.080
Blake, as a very simple litmus test, which is, and I don't even know if it's on my head,
00:28:02.620
but that one of the, well, the Alamo's amazing.
00:28:07.660
And I think that's so smart, which is like, oh yeah, actually, I think, what, Pancho Villa
00:28:12.220
or whatever, the Mexican, uh, general one, like, okay, great.
00:28:16.300
So now we know that you haven't fully assimilated to this country.
00:28:19.860
Probably like the internment of, uh, Japanese Americans or something like that.
00:28:24.600
There's maybe some Asian ones that you could do.
00:28:27.880
Um, I don't know, but that, that exam, that example is great.
00:28:32.300
You should probably think of five or six others.
00:28:35.400
One that went kind of viral yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a famous
00:28:40.880
painting of Manifest Destiny, and that went super viral because people were saying, how
00:28:52.740
So, you know, what is your opinion of Westward Expansion, which wasn't necessarily a war in
00:28:58.460
a sense, but it, you know, I suppose you could say it, it, it is in certain contexts.
00:29:06.300
And just, again, it's a great litmus test because you're going to see, or you could say
00:29:10.060
Westward Expansion, if people don't know what that means, what, what are your thoughts
00:29:22.420
The whole debate is like, are we on stolen land?
00:29:29.780
And by the way, you know, if you go back through history, this, this one always upsets me
00:29:33.180
because if you go back through history, every piece of land has been stolen from somebody
00:29:39.100
And it's like that, um, was it, um, who's the MSNBC, uh, excuse me, excuse me, conquered,
00:29:50.960
And he went on, uh, the Jubilee, which Charlie made famous.
00:30:03.120
I felt like, I felt like they didn't have it quite dialed in yet.
00:30:06.620
When you went on like that, you went on like one of the first episodes and it just wasn't
00:30:10.280
not, not only that, let me just as a side note, the Jubilee thing, they were just like
00:30:15.240
so petrified at how violently rhetoric, like the rhetorical violence that occurred during
00:30:27.360
I can get some people to just say and act in ways that they'll never act in any other
00:30:33.320
And literally, so yeah, I mean, they didn't have the word triggered until Charlie was
00:30:40.240
No, I mean, it's just you are a trigger, man, harm upon my daughter.
00:30:47.200
Jack is that the format was so out of, I was the first one in that whole thing and now it's
00:30:52.220
kind of been a rite of passage in American politics.
00:30:55.400
You know, I'll throw, I'll throw a sop to you, Charlie, on the American question.
00:31:01.040
I think actually like a real facet of being American and you are like more American if
00:31:07.680
you hit this than if you don't is like being frankly being a Protestant actually and having
00:31:12.740
like Protestant Christian like ethos, if you will, and that like America was founded again
00:31:22.560
by this specific, by like a pretty narrow specific group of people.
00:31:26.320
It was substantially like dissenting Protestants from like Northwestern Europe and then later
00:31:32.640
like other Protestants came on and then later you had some Catholics from that region and
00:31:36.360
like, you know, you get more and more since then, but it's definitely a country that's found
00:31:40.340
on, for lack of a better way of putting it, Protestant values.
00:31:44.220
There's a great book that I recommend to a lot of people.
00:31:50.240
It's a history of Texas, but it's really a history of America and it just happens to use
00:31:57.140
And one of the things he points out is he's pointing out when there's these conflicts between
00:32:01.580
Texas and between Mexico, which happens in, you know, with the Alamo, but it happens
00:32:09.660
And he points out that like the key difference between them is civilizational and that the
00:32:15.100
Texans are all Protestants, even the Catholic ones, and the Mexicans are all Catholics, even
00:32:24.880
And I think there is sort of this ideological component to Americanness.
00:32:37.980
Like you Protestants love to break away and form your own churches as soon as you disagree
00:32:46.080
The American thing is it was founded by people who said, screw you.
00:32:49.620
I'm leaving to go start my own club way off on another continent.
00:32:53.700
And that's why America was actually so awesome.
00:32:57.120
Why did America, why did the American West get settled?
00:32:59.480
The American West get settled because it was a bunch of people saying, screw it.
00:33:05.700
The Spanish, Charlie, the Spanish got to America more than a hundred, about a hundred years in
00:33:16.440
That's 90 years before Jamestown is getting off the ground.
00:33:20.280
Yet it's the Anglos, the, the, the English speakers who are the ones settling into Appalachia,
00:33:27.960
Because that was, it was basically in their blood to do that.
00:33:32.060
And it's really astonishing when you read about like new Spain in comparison, the Spanish,
00:33:40.540
They want to settle Texas and they can't get people to do it.
00:33:44.040
It only happens when they like take soldiers and practically abduct people and make them
00:33:49.840
Meanwhile, the English, like the British crown, one of the reasons the revolution happened
00:33:54.500
was the British crown was trying to stop people from settling Appalachia and they were just
00:34:02.220
Over and over American settlers would like run off and start their own state, start their
00:34:10.220
And then years later they would kind of come back and be like, Hey America, can you come
00:34:17.040
I just feel like all of that is, that is a huge part of the American ethos, the American
00:34:24.880
And I think we do have to be careful though, to not separate the identity as well and try
00:34:31.300
to say that it's, that you can like import any one, you know, like piece of paper type
00:34:36.120
of creed and say, well, if you just agree with this, you're going to like, like there's,
00:34:39.520
there's plenty of, for example, I tweeted this earlier this week, you know, there's
00:34:45.500
You couldn't just import them here and have America be formed.
00:34:49.680
So it's true, but you are also talking about, again, the original Anglo-Saxon settlers and
00:34:55.300
that's who originally, you know, founded America.
00:35:00.040
And it's, it's funny, you know, people will be like, oh, so, but you're like some Polish Ellis
00:35:03.700
Islander and it's like, yeah, I never once said that like Hamilton has to be a bunch of
00:35:09.120
Like, like, sure there were Polish people here, but it was, you know, a couple of generals
00:35:12.780
here and there, you know, the vast majority were Anglo-Saxons.
00:35:16.820
And when you see a lot of these ethics, so again, America was founded by the British
00:35:21.180
And so you, you just can't separate the people.
00:35:24.020
And I, and I see people trying to do this over and over and over.
00:35:27.300
And I got into it with Curtis Yarvin a little bit because I was saying like, like, that'd
00:35:31.180
be like, that'd be like saying that Rome was just founded by, on the worship of Jupiter.
00:35:34.640
And he said, ah, but the Romans did worship Jupiter.
00:35:38.440
What I'm saying is it was founded by the Romans and you couldn't just, you know, put some
00:35:44.320
other group of people there and get the same system out of it.
00:35:48.260
So I, I, I think it's much more multifaceted than a lot of people want to put into it.
00:35:54.400
Obviously it's changed over time and it's certainly grown and people have assimilated
00:36:03.000
But if you, if you mess around with that core, if you get too far away from that core
00:36:07.520
too much, too fast, that's what leads to this massive instability that we have.
00:36:13.800
Talk about what we're dealing with now, because we don't have assimilation now.
00:36:16.480
What we have are these mini ethnic enclaves that have turned into mini nations and you
00:36:26.940
They clearly view themselves as part of this, like greater Somalia or the Somalian diaspora
00:36:37.920
If you go look at their culture, thanks to technology, you can be on a video, you know,
00:36:42.280
voice chat or, um, you know, FaceTime with home all day long.
00:36:49.100
So a certain percentage of however much money you make is getting sent back home.
00:36:52.820
You're consuming media from back home all the time.
00:36:56.360
You're speaking many cases in the same language and you can find, go find me, by the way, one
00:37:01.120
of these deport, I've yet to find a deportation video where the people can even speak English.
00:37:08.380
Never wants to attack Tom Homan about this, but you can't even find one where people have
00:37:14.800
They say, oh, I've been here for 20 years, 30 years.
00:37:18.880
Because they don't have to, because they're living in these mini ethnic enclaves that exist
00:37:26.600
We're sitting there acting like, oh, these are all Americans.
00:37:28.960
And, you know, the Supreme Court's got birthright citizenship.
00:37:31.580
I got to say that separate question, but I'm not, I'm not confident that they are going
00:37:39.840
I think that's got to be changed probably with a new amendment.
00:37:44.000
We're going to lose that, which is crazy because it's such an open issue.
00:37:53.620
That's well demonstrated, but Catholics did not start America.
00:37:55.840
There, there was once, there was one significant character at the founding and it was Charles
00:38:01.640
And Maryland, literally land of Mary, Maryland Catholic integration came later with the
00:38:09.340
So again, uh, Catholics integration came later on mid, mid, mid 1800s with the Italians, the
00:38:18.500
The only difference between the Roman analogy and the, which I don't love from Curtis Yarvin
00:38:22.480
with Jupiter or Saturn or whatever, is that Catholics and Protestants at least have a baseline
00:38:27.460
belief in Christ our Lord and the incarnation and the inerrancy of scripture.
00:38:32.080
I mean, you have, they have a, they have a shared ethic of ethical monotheism.
00:38:39.040
And I know it triggers people like Jack sometimes on social media, Protestant, Protestant, Protestant,
00:38:43.640
Protestantism shaped the American ethos, self-government, individual liberty, moral responsibility,
00:38:48.700
and suspicion of tyranny are all Protestant contributions.
00:38:54.660
But my pushback on that is I think that's more Anglo-Saxon.
00:38:56.220
I mean, well, yes, I mean, but Anglo-Saxon, you can't separate that from Anglo-Saxonism.
00:39:04.120
That, that was, that's, that, that was the point I was going to make, right?
00:39:07.040
Is that the Anglo-Protestantism blend is why the Protestantism in Africa does not necessarily
00:39:13.240
hold on because the Anglo tradition of, which by the way, is a, is a outgrowth, just so we're
00:39:20.880
clear, of Protestantism, or at least very least Christianity, separation of powers.
00:39:28.080
You see this in Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex, who was a Protestant thinker.
00:39:32.840
You see this in Blackstone, who was a Protestant thinker.
00:39:35.480
And again, I'm not here to bash on Catholics, even though there was a huge anti-Catholic sentiment
00:39:40.240
that was widespread among Jefferson, Adams, and Madison.
00:39:43.240
They all view the Pope and papal supremacy as a threat to the American Republic.
00:39:49.300
I mean, and you, as you, as you all know, the 1774 Quebec Act, which extended Catholic
00:39:55.540
rule in Canada, was cited as one of the intolerable acts, intolerable acts leading to the war.
00:39:59.780
And even Catholics were legally barred from, you know, going from office or voting in several
00:40:10.260
I've said the country was founded by Anglo-Saxons, and Protestantism was circumstantial to that.
00:40:21.100
I mean, again, so in order for that to be correct, again, 55 out of 56 of them were Protestants,
00:40:33.800
No, that's the whole point of Protestantism, right, is that there's Presbyterianism, there
00:40:39.420
is Reform, there's Calvinists, there's Congregationalists, there's Quakers.
00:40:42.520
There's—but no, but I mean, again, I just—it's just—I would like Jack to point beyond Charles
00:40:48.160
Carroll that—okay, so I know that Jack is not making the argument that America was founded
00:40:54.520
by Catholics, but you're saying that it was strictly Anglo.
00:40:57.420
Of course I'm agreeing that it was Anglo, but you have to acknowledge, Jack, if you're
00:41:01.900
being intellectually fair, the robust Protestantism mixed with Anglo.
00:41:10.580
If it was only Anglo, then other Anglo colonies that were not Protestant explicitly would have
00:41:18.920
There's something special about that combination that started America.
00:41:24.140
No, I'm not necessarily saying that it's not, and I want to be very clear about that,
00:41:31.220
What I'm saying is, is that I think a lot of those ethics and those ideals are found in the
00:41:39.380
Anglo-Saxon culture in general, and, you know, there's a much deeper, you know, there's a much
00:41:45.620
deeper discussion as to say, you know, how much of this arises naturally within the Anglo-Saxons,
00:41:52.440
and that's why Protestantism took off there so much because of this nature of the Anglo-Saxon.
00:42:00.120
And by the way, I say this as, you know, as a Pollock, as a Pollock, right?
00:42:05.660
And, you know, I suppose you can say it's one or the other, and I don't think you can.
00:42:13.420
And I do think you have to say it's both, and it's certainly both, but it's definitely
00:42:18.260
something that you see in the Anglo-Saxon tradition if you look at the history of England,
00:42:23.520
if you look at the history of the United Kingdom.
00:42:25.540
If you look all throughout, even before, certainly well before 1500.
00:42:29.420
Do you think in 1700s Catholicism, resistance to tyranny was a Catholic value?
00:42:37.000
Again, like, you're making an argument that I'm not.
00:42:41.620
It's that the idea of rejection of tyranny, there was literally something called the Calvinist
00:42:51.540
Of course, Charles Carroll, a Catholic, signed on to it, but Catholics were far less likely
00:42:56.380
in the 1700s to have a comprehensive theology to reject power, and part of that just came
00:43:02.140
from the overarching supremacy of the Catholic Church.
00:43:06.600
Of course they were, but there was something I'm saying, though, that fundamental Catholic
00:43:11.480
ideas and values in the 1700s, and they might have grown and church teaching has evolved,
00:43:17.320
was Catholic values were not necessarily as articulated resistance to tyranny.
00:43:24.980
What Catholic church were they breaking away from at that time frame?
00:43:28.860
The British were already, had already broken away writ large.
00:43:32.360
So it was the Church of England they were coming away from.
00:43:40.960
It's like you keep bringing up the Catholics, but like nobody else is bringing that up.
00:43:47.260
So again, I just, the question I have to repeat, which is that again, yeah, there's a lot going
00:43:52.780
on in the chat, do you think that resistance to government tyranny is a Catholic value in
00:44:15.580
I don't think it was Catholics setting up the French Revolution, Jack.
00:44:18.240
Standing up to the revolution, fighting against the French Revolution.
00:44:24.980
Yeah, I'll let Blake, I don't know enough about that.
00:44:29.660
Look, and I'm not even anti-Catholic in this way.
00:44:33.380
I don't know, Jack, why you're hesitant to just like give a hat tip to Protestantism and
00:44:37.880
be like, thank you for this incredible advance.
00:44:40.460
I'm saying, what I'm saying is from the analysis perspective, I think you can't separate
00:44:54.560
But I mean, the pea and the wasp is important, right?
00:44:58.920
It's like, were they Protestant because they're Anglo-Saxon or did they act in that Anglo-Saxon
00:45:07.520
I think it's for our policies today, the way we talk about it.
00:45:10.960
Well, interestingly enough, Jack, when I was writing that, that thing that I started
00:45:15.940
this whole conversation with, I remember thinking like Protestant, and then I took that out and
00:45:24.440
And so I, but I became, you know, kind of evangelical in college.
00:45:29.880
And so like, I feel very ecumenical spiritually, right?
00:45:35.200
And so do I, and I'm not trying to make an anti-Protestant argument at all.
00:45:40.600
But so like, and I think it's funny because I actually, I find this, what you guys are talking
00:45:45.180
about really like infinitely interesting, but I was going to add something.
00:45:49.700
We were talking about a brand, Charlie and I were talking about a brand that will remain
00:45:56.220
And I feel, I feel like in some ways, what is an American?
00:45:59.540
You just, it's like, you're almost spiritually American, you know?
00:46:04.180
And I don't necessarily mean Protestant or Catholic.
00:46:07.940
It's a, it's a way you carry yourself, a way you believe who you obey, who you salute,
00:46:15.500
And I, I think that, listen, Christians of all stripes are very welcome.
00:46:21.500
And I think once you get outside of that, I think part of the, the, the, the challenge
00:46:26.160
when you're trying to decide what is an American is you have to make it broad enough to something
00:46:31.740
that even everybody on this chat, if we can't all agree what an American is, then, then we're
00:46:36.440
going to have issues trying to define that as a country.
00:46:42.400
And Jack, I just want to make one final thing that what you are praising as Anglo-Saxon values
00:46:46.980
after the break with Rome from Henry VIII, it was not just the political break.
00:46:54.500
So it was Protestantism that created the Anglo-Saxon values that you're praising.
00:47:01.180
It was this idea of the King James Bible, which of course Tyndale was killed by the Catholic
00:47:06.320
church for that, the book of common prayer and Puritan theology.
00:47:10.280
So again, we can go back and forth, chicken and the egg, but what started Anglo-Saxon values
00:47:15.820
Anglo-Saxon values go back to the break from the Catholic church.
00:47:23.180
Well, excuse me, predate the Protestant Reformation by quite some time.
00:47:27.360
Of course, no, but the Anglo-Saxon values that you appreciate, which both you and I, free
00:47:31.120
speech, common law, separation of powers, all of that was catalyzed and really was put in
00:47:44.520
Individual liberty became to be a huge idea once people could then have widespread literacy
00:47:49.640
They started reading, they started to say, well, I'm made in the image of God and I can
00:47:54.680
And so, look, I know it seems like it's chicken and the egg, but to go back to the original
00:47:59.720
source, the source was the separation of the Catholic church and England.
00:48:08.620
Why would you say public literacy has not been a success then, Jack?
00:48:14.480
You know, there's an interesting school of thought on that.
00:48:25.580
Yeah, I mean, I don't, I've never heard the argument that public literacy is bad.
00:48:32.860
The founders were highly influenced by Montesquieu, who was raised in the Huguenot Catholic tradition.
00:48:48.240
Huguenot family, but received a Catholic education.
00:48:52.480
Montesquieu was born into a Huguenot family, but received a Catholic education, outwardly
00:49:01.360
I, you know, so when I brought that up at the start, just the Protestant thing is like,
00:49:04.620
what's interesting is if you go 120 years ago, you have European Catholics who get really
00:49:09.080
annoyed with American Catholics because they literally had a heresy they called Americanism.
00:49:13.900
And it was basically being too American in your outlook, which was basically like kind
00:49:23.320
They associated a lot with the theological, we would say liberalism of the time, but it
00:49:29.640
And it caused like the Europeans a lot of angst.
00:49:32.520
And it's kind of funny because now you loop it around the other way and Europeans get
00:49:37.240
irritated with the American Catholics because the American Catholics are often too trad and
00:49:44.220
American Catholics go and they do things like they set up Latin mass parishes where they
00:49:49.740
Like they don't actually do that in Europe much at all.
00:49:55.940
And you'll have these really far away from the original topic.
00:50:06.720
An American is an inheritor of Protestant values.
00:50:24.840
You can launder them through Anglo-Saxon, but if you peel back the layers to its core, to the
00:50:29.640
seed, to the birth, to the beginning, it's Protestantism.
00:50:32.980
And everyone has benefited from that, including Catholics.
00:50:37.160
This is also why the Reformation tended to be intended to have to success geographically.
00:50:40.760
Like, it was the Anglo-Saxon culture that led the Protestant Reformation, for example.
00:50:49.020
That's why Eastern and Southern Europe is still predominantly Catholic.
00:50:55.500
Because I would argue, by the way, in the same token, that the Polish culture, like I'm from,
00:51:01.600
is inherently more communal, which tends towards more Catholicism.
00:51:08.740
No, I mean, there are downsides to over-indulging in the idea of individual initiative and liberty.
00:51:18.000
No one here is, like, anti some of the beauty of Catholicism, but there's something special
00:51:23.200
And we're asking, what is an American, not what is a Hungarian, right?
00:51:30.160
Again, we're not going to come to some conclusion, is that the Founding Fathers drew from a tradition
00:51:34.660
all the way back from the Magna Carta to the Mayflower Compact, to the Declaration, to the
00:51:41.100
And the catalytic event was when all of a sudden there was a separation from Rome, King James
00:51:47.680
Bible, mass literacy, people read for themselves.
00:51:51.380
And they said, well, if we can read for ourselves, we can grow for ourselves, we can work for ourselves,
00:51:59.980
And that sequencing of thinking started upon the separation of blind obedience to Rome.
00:52:14.780
There's plenty of non-blind obedience to Rome prior to the founding of America.
00:52:25.920
So, is Mamdani, Zoran Mamdani, is he an American?
00:52:41.840
And he's so far beyond any of the, like what Charlie and I are getting into, which is a
00:52:48.080
great conversation, by the way, but it's very parochial, right?
00:52:50.220
We're still talking about, vastly speaking, the European Christian tradition, and certainly
00:52:55.080
the Anglo-Protestant tradition and Anglo-Protestant people, the British Empire, right?
00:53:00.860
Because that's who was, who ran the British Empire, founded America.
00:53:08.880
And yet you've got this Zoran Mamdani, who is from a completely separate, completely
00:53:18.160
And so, yes, Charlie is 100% correct in saying that is the nation that comprised America
00:53:28.220
So, there's this idea of magic dirt that anyone can just magically come to America and transform
00:53:36.740
You know, this is the difference between being American, like for real, versus being an American
00:53:43.400
So, is he on paper an American in terms, does he have legal citizenship?
00:53:46.680
Of course, the same way that in Rome, you could have legal citizenship as a Roman.
00:53:52.480
But it didn't necessarily make you a real Roman if you were not actually a Roman.
00:54:00.160
And by the same token, I would say Omar Fattah is not an American.
00:54:03.940
He is a member of a different nation with all of these multi-layers combined, is the argument
00:54:16.980
It has to do with all of these things writ large.
00:54:26.080
It's not something that can be done with just a piece of paper.
00:54:34.080
Andrew, I'll throw it to you if you want to play a couple pieces of tape here.
00:54:38.280
So this is why I was asking that, Jack, is because this Mehdi Hassan clip has gone viral.
00:54:52.880
And I think Mehdi Hassan is shocked by a white guy saying that, 466.
00:55:01.140
Your parents are from India, so you have your own states.
00:55:05.640
I don't know how you got that, but fair enough.
00:55:11.800
And my family lineage is settlers from the 1500s, so I have some stake in the crime here, okay?
00:55:31.520
I mean, well, first of all, I love the applause in some ways.
00:55:35.280
It's just like, because I wasn't anticipating that.
00:55:38.780
So, look, if you look at it, the technical part of America, yeah, I mean, he is Native to America.
00:55:49.360
Now, if you're talking about Natives prior to the founding of America, they also could be called indigenous people or whatever.
00:55:56.380
And so, look, I mean, the more important question is not the question of who technically is an American.
00:56:08.780
The question is, what is this thing that we're trying to uphold?
00:56:13.960
And it is wrought with a lot of people getting angry over it and getting fired up.
00:56:20.920
And I would love the chance to sit down with Mr. Hassan at some point.
00:56:37.380
Well, by the way, Mendy Hassan also claims to be a native British.
00:56:43.420
Yeah, because brown people can be native to anywhere.
00:56:47.180
White people aren't allowed to be native, right.
00:56:49.620
This is interesting because I want to contrast this in our final minute here with what –
00:56:56.380
I know we don't have to play the clip, but Matt Walsh went after Maria Elvira Salazar,
00:57:08.240
Still has a very thick Hispanic accent, Latin accent.
00:57:14.780
And Matt Walsh is coming under some fire for saying,
00:57:21.860
But when I see that clip, it feels completely different.
00:57:25.200
Now, we have blasted Maria Elvira Salazar for her soft amnesty push,
00:57:38.220
the ones that have come to America and largely are in Florida,
00:58:00.520
I mean, they have so much about them that I love
00:58:07.960
And so, again, it's sort of like, what is an American?
00:58:10.320
It's not necessarily – I even wrote in my little thing.
00:58:14.420
I didn't read that part, but it's most likely you're white.
00:58:17.680
I mean, just by stats, by history, yeah, white probably helps be an American.
00:58:22.840
But if you're not white, don't be antagonistic to those who are,
00:58:32.620
And I guess, you know, if you go down certain rabbit holes online,
00:58:37.960
For me, it does, especially when I look at the Cuban community in Miami.
00:58:41.840
But I would say, like, in general, we have to –
00:58:44.920
I would love to see us do an immigration moratorium.
00:58:47.840
We've got to deal with how many we've had come in this country
00:58:50.500
who are not American, and yet they're living here,
00:58:52.780
they're walking around us, and they don't represent kinship or community
00:59:04.120
Just as a reminder, though, I do want to reiterate,
00:59:06.460
we're not saying that being an American is inherently anything racial.
00:59:11.660
We are saying, though, that it's more than just paperwork,
00:59:16.980
I think that it's very good to ask the question this semester,
00:59:24.060
you know, hey, not only what is a woman, but what is an American?
00:59:32.480
Email us freedom at charliekirk.com, and subscribe to our podcast.
00:59:40.960
And don't you dare step foot on a carnival cruise.