Juno News - December 10, 2021Identity politics and grievance culture are killing civilization
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Summary
Mark Mielke joins me to talk about his new book, The Victim Cult, and why he thinks identity politics are destroying civilization. He also talks about why everyone seems to be a victim these days, and what s driving that.
Transcript
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This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
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Coming up, Mark Mielke and I talk about how grievance culture, victimization, and identity politics are destroying civilization.
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Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.
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As you know by now, we try to do things a little bit different on the weekend show.
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We take a big issue and delve into it with a panel of guests, but every now and then someone comes on who I think can carry the weight of an entire panel all by themselves.
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And there's no one more suiting of that description than Dr. Mark Mielke, who has done so much, everything from writing political platforms to columns to writing a book, which we're going to delve into today.
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The Victim Cult, how the grievance culture hurts everyone and wrecks civilizations.
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It actually came out a couple of years ago, but has just been re-released with the U.S. audience in mind.
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And it's actually more prescient than ever, even though it does have a couple of years on it now.
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Most political books now, I should say, do not have a shelf life longer than about seven minutes.
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I mean, it seems like a lot of books are kind of written the way that I would view an article or a column, where they have a moment, they sell, and then no one never picks it up again.
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Your book, obviously designed with staying power in mind.
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Well, in part, I mean, The Victim Cult is actually not a political book, I guess.
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It's really kind of a cultural analysis of the human condition.
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And very simply, you know, why do people think of themselves as victims?
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I mean, other than the obvious, that there are plenty of tragedies in human history now.
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But, I mean, why is it that people delve into the grievance culture these days?
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Why does everyone seem to be a victim these days?
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So I think that that's part of the reason for the staying power.
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As for the U.S. edition, what I wanted to do is I wanted to look at some specific U.S. issues for an American audience, right?
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So the Canadian edition of The Victim Cult looks at First Nations, for example.
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And the author, the person who wrote the foreword, Ellis Ross, agreed with me that, look, successful First Nations in Canada are those who maybe acknowledge the past but don't get stuck there.
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And he knows that from personal experience at the highest of First Nation.
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The American edition, I looked into Black Lives Matter and the recent uprisings, you know, from, you know, from, you know, some affiliated with BLM and others, you know, ever since, you know, verdicts, a number of verdicts in the last couple of years have torqued up this issue again.
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And this notion that there's an institutional racism that exists in English-speaking countries, whether it's Canada or the United States.
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So I wanted to give the American audience a chance also to look at this notion of real victimhood and fake victimhood.
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And in essence, why it almost doesn't matter whether someone is accurate about past victimization or now, why one had better be careful, because if you get stuck there, one can guarantee you and the rest of your society won't flourish.
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Even in my lifetime, and I am not a particularly old person, the meaning of the word victim, or I guess the moral weight of it has changed considerably.
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Growing up, a victim was not something you wanted to be.
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We had a lot of rhetoric around why you should prioritize being a survivor over being a victim, just as one example of the linguistic approach to this.
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Now, it seems in a lot of climate, certainly on university and college campuses, but I'd argue in a much broader sphere as well, being a victim is one of the best things you can be.
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And I'm wondering if there, in your view, was a marked point at which that shift happened, or if it's been quite a long trajectory leading there.
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Well, maybe it's the influence of the me culture over the last 50 years.
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I don't know if there's an exact point in history.
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In fact, I think this is kind of a human fault to dwell on something.
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But I think it's also, you know, with a lack of understanding or lack of historical awareness, maybe it's perfect for our social media culture, where really people thinking, you know, 120, you know, item, you know, tweets or something.
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I mean, I think part of it is just that, you know, let me go back to the beginning.
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I tell the story of, you know, the narrative, the creation myth of Adam and Eve, right?
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And most of your, you know, viewers might well know that.
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So God says to Adam and Eve, you know, don't eat from the fruit in the garden of good and evil, from the fruit of the tree.
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Well, you know, somebody picks an apple or whatever it is.
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And God comes and says, well, you know, who picked this?
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Eve blames the serpent who, you know, said, yeah, go ahead and pick this.
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There's this blame game in human history, right?
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Whether it's stories like that or whether you go back into the history of, you know, how wars start
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I mean, one of the longest chapters in the book is actually about the Rwandan genocide
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and how the majority Hutus felt pressed upon by a minority of the Tutsis.
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The Tutsis were at best 10% of the population of Rwanda post-independence in 1960s.
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You know, they argue there was some privilege over the decades, partly true, partly not.
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But nonetheless, the majority Hutus, 85% of the population, feel like they're picked on
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And so for three decades, they propagandized against them in the education system, in state
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media and elsewhere, ban them from politics and warn them they'll be killed if they try
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and influence the political landscape for Rwanda.
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I mean, so you can find examples in history, you know, extreme ones like that, or you can
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you can find mild ones on campuses in the United States and Canada, where people with basically
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no historical grounding, you know, get a little teary-eyed at what they call microaggressions.
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I mean, that's the really shallow end of the analysis in that sense, or the, you know, the
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mild end really compared to, you know, genocides in human history.
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But it is part of the same continuum in the sense that people fasten onto one thing as the
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reason for the, for the reason that way, sorry, for the reason they are today, for the state
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If we're looking at this either on a psychological level with individuals or on a historic level
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with states and regimes and governments, I guess the question is, what's the benefit you
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get when you declare yourself a victim or view yourself a victim?
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Is it just in some of these cases, a tactical measure?
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If you say you're a victim, then it gives you license to fight back in self-defense?
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Well, it gives certainly an emotional charge to it, doesn't it, right?
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If someone says, look, you know, my ancestors were beat up by your ancestors, and it's true,
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then all of a sudden there's a wariness of debating, you know, perhaps modern day cause
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And so, for example, I've done a lot of First Nations policy over the last 25 years.
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And I also grew up in Kelowna, near the West Bank First Nation.
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And I noticed pretty early on that the West Bank First Nation near Kelowna, BC has been
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one of the most successful First Nations in the country.
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And then later on, Ellis Ross, who I mentioned, wrote the foreword to the Canadian edition
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of the victim cult, you know, has been successful because he turned his First Nation around him
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and the others on council doing deals with LNG companies and the rest of it, and just basically
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They don't downplay the past, but they don't get stuck there.
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Now, compare that to, again, unsuccessful First Nations, where the narrative might be
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what happened 50 years ago, whatever event you want to choose, or 100 years ago, is the
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And there are plenty of First Nations leaders, unfortunately, who, you know, parlay that narrative
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Because the problem with First Nations today is really not what happened 50 or 100 years
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With respect, you can acknowledge wrongs in history, but the cause and effect link really
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I would submit that the problem on many First Nations reserves today is the fact that they're
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They're in northern Canada, far from economic opportunities.
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They have a collectivist style of property ownership, and so no one can build up their
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Instead, you're always, in one sense, in debt to the political leaders of the band, which
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So that's a real cause of poverty on reserve, which only makes sense.
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And that's why you see the average First Nation income less than, say, other Canadians,
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because a greater majority of First Nations people live in rural areas, often on reserves.
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And so that's what explains, actually, the poverty of some First Nations.
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Now, if you do an apple-to-apple comparison, the positive thing is, if you get an education,
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if you move closer to the city, a First Nations young adult will have the same income as any
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It's in the victim cult where I profile this stats can reality, where a university-educated
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young person, between 25 and 34, will earn exactly, in fact, just a little bit more than
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the average non-Indigenous First Nations person in the country, if they've got a university
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So you do an apples-to-apple comparison, and you find that this notion that First Nations
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are laggards income-wise simply isn't true when you do an actual apple-to-apple comparison.
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That's actually positive, because it shows the effect of income, sorry, education choices,
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It means no one has to be stuck in a subpar environment.
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But unfortunately, there are some First Nations leaders who actually think the solution to
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everything is to try and bring the mountains to Muhammad, then take Muhammad to closer to
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One interesting point that I would take from that is that it does work both ways as well.
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You also have a paternalism factor there in, I think, a lot of victim dynamics, and I'd
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say the First Nations are no exception, where you've got some people that want to be seen
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as the saviors and the protectors, and they kind of keep the status quo when it isn't working.
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And again, this is a popular but dangerous narrative today, this notion of cultural purity.
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And you hear this a lot, that if only we can get back to kind of a pure Indigenous culture.
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With respect, what it is, it's a psychological response.
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It's a reflex to having been abused in the past, that, you know, you want to find your
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Especially when others in the past have made, you know, living out that identity somewhat
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But again, I would say, look, First Nations Canadians received the vote in 1960.
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It was horribly wrong that it was ever taken away from, but it has been 60 years.
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And so I think you need to look elsewhere for some of the problems on First Nations today.
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But the danger is when people say, if we sort of retreat to a pure culture, Indigenous Canadians
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You see some Black Americans, not the majority, also think this, but some leaders who I would
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And in fact, what we know in human history is that it's the adoption, you know, whether
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you beg, borrow, or steal from other cultures, that makes your own culture successful.
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They stole Arab numbers from, you know, the Arab world, you know, over 800 years ago now.
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Had we been all stuck with Roman numerals, I can guarantee you that modern mathematics and
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insurance calculations and actuarial calculations could never have arrived.
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We had to use Arab numerals, not Roman numerals.
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And so cultural appropriation, as you call it, or I would call it cultural sharing, is
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But we have many people these days that think, no, the solution is to kind of retreat into
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I mean, in addition to being practically incorrect, it's actually really a rebuttal or a, you know,
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a rejection of the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. that we should all be judged on the
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I mean, I would say it's the same with policy and ideas.
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It doesn't matter whether it came from the English or the Europeans or an Indigenous Canadian.
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Cultural appropriation is a fascinating one because it's one of so many ways, and I'd
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say it's probably one of the more significant ones, in which the liberal progressive lens
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of 2021 is applied very anachronistically to an entirely different era.
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And for starters, the problem with cultural appropriation, or one of the problems with
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it, is that, you know, the pre-Westphalian nation state was a lot different than the nation
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states of the last, you know, 400 and some odd years.
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So the fact is, borders were a lot more malleable.
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And everything from food, to music, to people, to languages, we're all crossing these regions.
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I mean, you head to Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and you see all of these examples.
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I'd say food is probably one of the more notable, where all of these different cultures have,
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I don't know why that has ever become a bad thing.
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I know it sounds so trite to say such a cliche, but imitation truly is the sincerest form of
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And when you start taking something that you've seen elsewhere and saying, yeah, we should do
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that, that shouldn't be something that we shy away from as a culture.
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And again, in history, the most successful cultures have been those that have, as I mentioned
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a moment ago, beg, borrowed, or steal, stolen ideas, and what works from elsewhere.
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Let me give you an example of the danger, though, this notion of cultural purity.
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Another lengthy chapter in the victim cult is about the experience of Germany.
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Most people are familiar with the Nazis and Adolf Hitler and the notion of racial purity,
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especially after 1933, when Adolf Hitler gained power and the Nazis gained power and where that
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What most people may not realize is that Germany, though, and Germans in particular, most of them,
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or a good chunk of them, were stuck in this notion of cultural purity long before Adolf Hitler came
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along, and long before the notion of racial purity came along.
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And this was a psychological response to being occupied by the French.
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In the late 1700s and early 1800s, German lands were occupied by France.
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And as often happens in occupation and wars, there were some pretty awful things that the French
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Now, you finally throw off the French in the early 1800s as a German, and what do you do?
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You look around and you think, we never want to be conquered again.
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And so, again, it's a psychological reflex where you think, how can we become pure, pure
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And they look back in history and they romanticize, and literally, to use a kind of a modern, you
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know, cliche, they wanted to make Germany great again by looking back to the time of, you
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know, past emperors that were more successful than in recent decades.
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So they do this, and they focus on this notion of pure culture.
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And you see philosophers like Hegel and others who, you know, who get into this, you know,
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write about this in the late 18th century, early 19th century.
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And they begin to romanticize, you know, this mythic German Nordic culture going back 600
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Now, the danger in this is that it excludes almost everyone who's not German, who's not
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You know, they exclude, you know, Catholics if they live in northern, you know, Germany.
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They don't like the English, and they don't like liberalism, by the way.
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And so this goes on, you know, for probably 60 years before the notion of race purity comes
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So the Germans are enthralled by this notion of cultural purity and then race purity.
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And, of course, so they're paranoid and actually antagonistic towards ideas from outside the
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And we see where that went starting in 1933 in the most destructive way.
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One note, and I know it's getting a little bit outside the book here, but I'd say that
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clinging to purity doesn't do anyone any favors.
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You look at Japan as a notable example of this, still to this day trying to cling to
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And as a result, they have a population in decline.
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And perhaps another Japanese example is what happened between the early 1600s and about
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18, the mid-19th century, when Commodore Perry forcibly opened up Japan to trade, right?
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Japan was pretty culturally pure, pretty independent for two and a half centuries, but
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relatively weak vis-a-vis the rest of the world and vis-a-vis a rising power like the
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Americans, because they weren't learning the latest in technology or, you know, expanding
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their economy in a way that would allow them to be stronger economically vis-a-vis the United
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So it's another example of where this notion of cultural purity or isolationism, really
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kind of cultural isolationism, can come back to haunt you.
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So to bring it back into the contemporary context, when you have people that believe
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that a restaurant serving an ethnic dish from another country is something that borders on
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a hate crime, or people that believe you can't wear the cultural dress of another country
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I mean, I know these are very silly examples, but they are part of a more serious trend, which
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is a refusal to understand these very trends in history that you've just pointed out.
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And in the victim cult, they kind of categorize various victim cults, right?
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These notions, I'm a victim and here's why, into mild, moderate, and murderous.
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And we've talked about the most horrific examples, some of the murderous examples, some of the
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But it does appear on, again, the mild spectrum, if I can put it that way, the mild side of the
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spectrum, and so you do have Yale University students in 2015, who after, you know, a
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professor talks or sends an email around, you know, basically saying, look, you're adults
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at Halloween, don't worry about the costumes you wear.
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This after Yale administration sends out an email warning the opposite.
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This Yale professor ends up in hot water with students on campus who become offended by
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the notion that others might wear a costume from another culture.
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This morphs into like one fifth of the student body at Yale marching at the president's home
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I mean, talk about pitchforks, you know, virtual pitchforks.
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And what it does is it actually shows how out of touch maybe too many Americans and Canadians
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I mean, nothing in the victim cult, nor in the victim cult do I downplay actual victimization
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But if you think you're victimized because someone else has worn maybe your, you know,
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historical ethnic costume, you know, and, you know, in a not completely, you know, accurate
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way or just because they shouldn't do it because they're not your ethnicity.
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I mean, if that's victimization, I mean, I think we've reached the height of unseriousness.
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I mean, another example I give in the book, because it's easy to pick on sort of the woke
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left and, you know, university students these days.
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I mean, Donald Trump made it to the heights of fortune or at least self-proclaimed fortune
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and then fame and then the White House by always putting his visage out there, putting
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And yet when he ran for politics, he claimed to be a victim of everyone from, you know,
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even sympathetic talk show hosts at Fox News to judges that happened to do what they should
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do, which is, you know, rule on a court case in front of them that happened to involve,
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But he kept complaining to be a victim in 2015 and 2016 and again in 2020.
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And the problem with this is just as Americans and everyone else needed a role model to say,
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look, you know, I'm tougher than this, Donald Trump played the victim card.
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I mean, it was actually a perfect encapsulation of how ridiculous this has become that a self-proclaimed
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billionaire from Manhattan who made it to the White House thinks himself a victim.
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I mean, look, no president gets fair treatment from the media.
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Conservative presidents, if that's what you call him, and I think he was more of a populist
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than a conservative, but most presidents don't get fair treatment from the media, including
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But very few presidents that I'm aware of ever complained, even Richard Nixon, who famously
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said, you know, you won't have me to kick around anymore after he lost a governor's race
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in California in 1962, then said to the assembled reporters, but I'm not going to cancel my newspaper
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So the only other president I'm aware of in American history that claimed to be a victim
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never even took it nearly as far as Donald Trump did when he was president.
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But Trump was, again, perhaps the high point of this notion of I'm a victim, a billionaire
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That's a very interesting take on that, because, again, you could argue that there were genuinely
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issues that I think he had grievances about, but it is about how you decide to respond to
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And I wonder if, either in the Trump case or in other cases, a big part of this phenomenon
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is people wanting to find a way to abdicate responsibility in a way, to either set up in
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advance or even declare after the fact that, you know, whatever you didn't do or did incorrectly
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or failed at doing was actually someone else's fault.
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And I think we see this a lot in, you know, in certain countries.
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It's, oh, well, I can't do this because we have to deal with this.
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And individuals, you see it on a one-to-one, person-to-person basis.
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Oh, you know, I would go and, you know, do X, but I can't because Y.
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And I know that that seems like such a simple observation.
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And I don't know if it's self-preservation or something else, but there does seem to be
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this sense of declaring victimhood as a way to really just rationalize failure in some
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To rationalize failure and also to rationalize, you're right, a flight from responsibility.
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And one of the first chapters in the victim cult, I actually look at the mindset of terrorists,
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And they often think of themselves as victims or that they're fighting for victims, you
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know, even though they're creating new ones in their terrorist acts.
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So, and it doesn't matter if you're like a Norwegian terrorist, you know, you know, who
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happens to have white skin color, who's complaining about Muslims, you know, Brevik about a decade
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ago, or if you're on a U.S. Army base in Fort Worth, Texas, and you shoot, I think it was
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10 people, and you're a Muslim American claiming to be a victim there.
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In both cases, they both claim to be standing up for their particular tribe, right?
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And, and it's, and of course, it's utterly destructive and murderous.
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But even terrorists think of themselves as victims and fighting for victims.
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And that's, in fact, how they justify their terror.
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And of course, all it does, though, is it continues.
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The cycle of violence is a cliche, but it continues a new rampage of blood.
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And again, you know, we're, we're back to the, the murderous type of victim cults, but
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it's, it's a dangerous grievance to hold on to, as opposed to looking around you and
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going, okay, again, you know, what, what does success look like?
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I mean, one of the things I try and point out in the victim cult is I'm not saying if
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you've actually been abused or your, you know, your tribe has been, that you simply
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It's not just to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and stop complaining messages you're
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No, because what I do in the last two chapters of the victim cult, I looked at East Asian
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So between 1850 and 1950, if you were Japanese or Chinese origin and you can't be Canada or
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you were born here, but you know, your grandparents or great grandparents came here, Asian, Asian
00:24:42.660
Americans and Asian Canadians were indeed victims of a pretty discriminatory prejudicial
00:24:50.020
And it starts pretty quickly after, after the first arrivals in 1850.
00:24:53.760
Chinese Americans, you know, Japanese Canadians and so forth a little later on.
00:24:57.360
But what I found was when I did the research for the victim cult was that in both cases,
00:25:02.260
and those are, those are two ethnicities to focus on because there's some great historical
00:25:05.800
data and, and, and, and narratives that you can draw from is that, for example, Chinese
00:25:11.480
merchants in San Francisco and New York and in Chicago fight back in the legal system when
00:25:16.300
local discriminatory city councils try and basically run them out of business with discriminatory
00:25:23.280
Now you've got a labor leader in the United States, labor unions were very racist against
00:25:29.080
Japanese and Chinese Americans for a hundred years, late 19th century, you've got a Japanese
0.98
00:25:34.120
American that says, look, I'd like Japanese to be able to join your union.
00:25:37.620
He found his own union to fight for, you know, labor rights at the time.
00:25:41.520
And, but as rejected by the main, you know, American Federation of labor who see themselves
00:25:49.480
And sometimes Japanese and Chinese Americans and Canadians succeeded.
00:25:53.820
But they fought back in the courts and politics where they could.
00:25:56.660
But the interesting thing was they never stopped striving and actually trying to integrate, which
00:26:01.080
is different from what you hear from today's self-proclaimed victims.
00:26:06.360
Japanese and Chinese Americans, to use that example, there's some great data from 1920, 1930,
00:26:13.300
At that point in American history, the students, the children of Japanese and Chinese Americans
00:26:20.440
in 1910 are graduating from high school and college at rates slightly below, below white
00:26:25.880
By 1920 and 1930, those same, well, the children in those years are graduating at rates from
00:26:31.780
American colleges much higher than white Americans.
00:26:35.560
This is the most discriminatory period in American history.
00:26:38.580
But still, the parents said to their kids, and it's a cultural thing as well, you will get
00:26:47.880
And this actually sets the groundwork for what is almost a cliche now, right?
00:26:51.480
We know that Asian Americans and Asian Canadians and average earn a lot more than other, you
00:26:59.040
But this started 100 years ago in the depths of the most discriminatory period in both Canada
00:27:04.540
and the United States against those of Asian origin.
00:27:09.060
So this touches on something that I'm curious to get your thoughts on, because it seems like
00:27:13.020
we've uncoupled individual experiences from what are supposed to be societal experiences
00:27:21.840
And a lot of the talk about systemic racism, for example, would inherently dictate that a
00:27:27.520
multimillionaire black person with a PhD and a master's and a law degree is somehow facing
00:27:34.500
more of an uphill battle than a lower class, poor white person from, you know, a rural part
0.82
00:27:42.740
But in a lot of ways, that seems to be what the focus on systemic racism seems to do.
00:27:48.080
It says, well, even if someone doesn't face individual racism, the system is stacked against
00:27:53.660
And in a lot of ways, this seems to be setting up that argument we were talking about a few
00:27:56.920
moments ago of, you know, people have no opportunity to succeed because of these structures
00:28:03.660
And I'm curious how you break through that, because it does seem like a lot of individuals
00:28:08.980
are being taken out of the equation here and tried to really be wedged into a bigger narrative
00:28:20.900
So what I did in the new US edition of the victim cult is I looked at this, this notion
00:28:30.140
The old definition of racism, to be clear, was about you as an individual being discriminated
00:28:35.400
against based on your skin color or maybe your gender or your ethnicity, right?
00:28:40.400
But people these days are really sloppy about their definitions.
00:28:43.540
I mean, look, individual, you know, individual prejudice exists, right?
00:28:47.000
You can't really get rid of that from the human heart.
00:28:49.260
I mean, you can walk, you know, you can go online or, you know, you may encounter a bigot
00:28:56.220
That's hard to change by law, though I think even attitudes have improved.
00:28:59.480
It's clear that attitudes have improved in the last 70 years if you look at polling and
00:29:04.340
But individual prejudice is very different from systemic racism.
00:29:07.700
And one has to be clear what systemic racism is.
00:29:10.340
It's when governments or employers or others or, you know, landlords discriminate against
00:29:18.040
you based on your skin color, ethnicity and so forth.
00:29:20.880
This was outlawed in Canada in the early 1950s in Ontario.
00:29:24.020
In the United States, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the problem today is racism has been redefined
00:29:31.100
to say if there's a disparity between, say, the average income of black Americans and other
00:29:38.740
But as I point out in the victim cult, there's Thomas Sowell, a famous black American economist
00:29:42.780
who grew up in the South and then in Harlem, points out.
00:29:49.000
There are other things that make up your averages, right?
00:29:54.860
I mean, if you look at, for example, Mexican Americans, 13% have a university degree.
00:30:01.400
About a third of white Americans have a university degree.
00:30:04.280
Fully four fifths of Americans who have a Taiwanese ancestry have university degree.
00:30:10.340
Is it any wonder why Taiwanese Americans and East Asian Americans in general, and the same
1.00
00:30:15.780
in Canada, have much higher average income levels?
00:30:18.700
Because on average, they also have much higher education levels.
00:30:25.160
But people like Ibram Kendi have created a cult following on the notion that any disparity,
00:30:32.320
when you start to measure these cohorts statistically, must be due to racism.
00:30:41.360
Thomas Sowell has always pointed out, look, a famous example is Washington, D.C., 1899.
00:30:51.620
The black schools are actually outpacing the white schools in terms of score.
00:30:56.760
And this only stops in the 1950s with education reform, reform in quotes.
00:31:00.860
And so Thomas Sowell points out, don't blame the decline of education among black Americans
00:31:07.120
on racism, because it was a pretty racist place, including in the 1950s.
00:31:12.280
But certainly before the 1950s, what happened was a decline in educational standards in the
00:31:17.880
education system, which persists today in black communities, right?
00:31:22.260
And it has a lot to do with really unfortunate educational theories.
00:31:26.100
So, yeah, I mean, systemic racism, you know, I think what happens is people get away with
00:31:34.040
Yeah, well, it's almost deliberate because there is no cohesive definition.
00:31:39.280
You know, someone could say they are aggrieved by hate speech, but you drill down and look
00:31:44.660
And it may be speech that you as an individual deplore and don't like, but that doesn't mean
00:31:49.780
it's something that we have an obligation as a society to purge or criminalize.
00:31:55.580
So when we look at this in that bigger picture context here, what you're talking about seems
00:32:01.520
to be very in alignment with the trend that we're also seeing of moving more towards assessing
00:32:06.740
equality based on outcome rather than on input.
00:32:10.700
And if there is an outcome disparity, like you mentioned with wages, we assume that, you
00:32:15.660
know, the simplest answer, if we can just blame it on racism, is going to be the correct
0.94
00:32:21.120
But if that isn't it, if we can't do that, as you're saying, and find that monocausal
00:32:26.360
solution and we trace it back to input, what is the breakdown there?
00:32:32.000
Well, again, so whether we're talking about Indigenous Canadians or, say, Black Americans,
00:32:37.200
you have to look for other causes other than just racism.
00:32:39.980
So a greater proportion of Black Americans historically have lived in the American South.
00:32:46.680
Well, because the American South, whether Black or white, incomes have been on average lower.
00:32:50.260
And so if a greater proportion of Black Americans are in the South, that drags down the average
00:32:58.500
And so you have to understand that importance of geography or in the case of Canada, as I
00:33:04.260
So if a greater proportion of First Nations people live in rural areas, again, a good
1.00
00:33:09.320
chunk of the population on reserves, which are themselves in the middle of nowhere, far
00:33:13.440
from educational and career opportunities, thus driving down incomes, that matters too
00:33:19.080
to the average salary you're going to see when you look at stats can data.
00:33:23.820
That's why you have to do apple to apple comparisons.
00:33:26.000
I mean, again, Thomas Sowell, the famous Black American economist, has looked at this in the
00:33:30.120
American context, pointed out that university-educated Black couples made as much as university-educated
0.84
00:33:36.020
white couples by, I think it was by the end of the 1980s, if not before.
00:33:45.320
There are all sorts of reasons why when you measure groups, they differ.
00:33:48.780
I mean, if you look at, I mean, he looked at Italians, for example.
00:33:54.140
Why do Italians, you know, dominate fishing around the world, fishing fleets around the world
1.00
00:34:01.620
You wouldn't expect to see, for example, those of Swiss ancestry dominating fishing fleets
00:34:06.300
around the world because Switzerland is landlocked and they never had the opportunity to learn
00:34:12.740
So geography, education, and families matter, right?
00:34:20.340
There is no difference between, say, Black Americans, you know, two-parent families who read
0.83
00:34:25.040
to their kids and the incomes that that child will later show in life.
00:34:29.300
Uh, than white Americans who read to the kids and happen to be a two-parent family.
00:34:35.840
But, but the monocausal, um, advocates like Ibram Kendi, who say everything is due to racism.
00:34:41.220
I mean, it's really a simplistic analysis and it's actually anti-reality.
00:34:45.220
And in fact, most, you know, most, um, Black Americans don't believe this.
00:34:49.240
When Barack Obama was president, one poll showed that 60% of Black Americans thought something
00:34:54.560
else other than, uh, racism explained the differences between the averages and Black
00:35:01.280
I want to go to your subtitle here, how the grievance culture hurts everyone and wrecks
00:35:07.160
And I almost don't want to ask this, but I feel I have to.
00:35:14.240
But we have to make sure we learn the right historical lessons.
00:35:16.640
So again, let's not pretend that a pure culture will save anyone.
00:35:27.840
Um, and the, the, the subtitle about, uh, in the victim cult about wrecking civilizations
00:35:33.280
actually comes from the example of both Rwanda and Germany.
00:35:36.160
But Germany is, is perhaps maybe the most instructive example because the cover of the victim cult
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00:35:40.960
has a picture of St. Paul's Cathedral during World War II and the after effects of bombing.
00:35:45.920
You see smoke rising from the cathedral and around it.
00:35:49.200
And that was my nod to Germans who had already basically destroyed their own civilization.
1.00
00:35:54.240
The land of Bach and Beethoven is now known for Dachau.
00:35:58.240
And German Nazis were busily trying to destroy English civilization.
0.82
00:36:01.600
I mean, look, my last name, Milky, happens to be German.
00:36:04.720
My ancestors came over in the 1870s and then in the 1920s on the other side.
00:36:11.600
Um, but I have no sympathy for German governance or philosophy from 1800 onward.
00:36:17.520
Um, you know, I favor English civilization, the rule of law, looking at the individual as an
00:36:23.440
And the problem is if you're sunk in a victim narrative where you're blaming stuff on 50 years
00:36:27.840
ago or a hundred years ago, or Bill Clinton blame part of the reason for 9 11 on the crusades.
00:36:33.040
Um, if you're actually trying to make those, you know, faulty cause and effect links,
00:36:36.880
um, the further you go back in history, the weaker the link becomes, then I think you're
00:36:41.280
missing modern day causes, education, family makeup, geography, um, you know, do you have
00:36:47.760
property rights on reserve, which allows you to create wealth?
00:36:50.800
Uh, what's the culture of, uh, of some, you know, black American communities?
00:36:55.040
Is it kind of pro, uh, you know, free enterprise or, or is it something else?
00:36:59.600
I mean, if you don't account for those sorts of things in history and simply say, uh, and
00:37:04.560
look around and think someone else is to blame for your situation, or there's something structural
00:37:09.280
in a liberal democracy, anywhere, we're not talking about Stalin, Siberia.
00:37:12.560
If you live in a liberal democracy and actually think the structure is holding you down, um,
00:37:17.040
that's actually pretty debilitating, debilitating.
00:37:20.160
Um, it, it makes you think you can't actually change your situation.
00:37:24.160
Well, the positive part of the victim call is actually, you can, you do have some choices
00:37:29.520
You can move to another city, you can get educated, um, you can try and stay together
00:37:34.000
with your spouse, as long as they're not crazy or abusive.
00:37:36.400
Maybe you can make a success story out of life that way and you and your kids.
00:37:41.920
It's kind of been a running joke on this show in the last few weeks when we've done these
00:37:45.840
big picture discussions that by the end of it, everyone just feels everything's hopeless
00:37:49.360
and there's no point and we're all just so depressed.
00:37:51.520
So you deserve, you get the grand prize for actually coming with some, some, uh, some
00:37:54.880
prescriptions and some optimism, which I think is very much in, uh, something we're in need of.
00:38:00.000
Uh, the book is the victim called how the grievance culture hurts everyone and wrecks
00:38:04.560
civilizations. A new U S edition was just released, but you can certainly check out the
00:38:08.800
Canadian edition as well, or why not, uh, why not support a Canadian author and pick up both?
00:38:13.200
That's all at victimcult.com. Dr. Mark Milkey joins me. Mark, it's good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
00:38:18.800
And, and congrats on, on all of the success with this book. It's a, I think a very important read.
00:38:24.240
That was Mark Milkey. Always enjoy talking to authors. If you have any that you think I should touch base with,
00:38:30.880
let me know, Andrew at andrewlawton.ca, or just let me know what you thought
00:38:34.240
about all the things Mark and I spoke about. Like I said, a big topic, but very much an important
00:38:40.000
one. And with that, we have got to wrap things up. We will talk to you next week with more of
00:38:44.640
Canada's most irreverent talk show. This is the Andrew Lawton show. Thank you. God bless and good day.
00:38:50.480
Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show.
00:38:52.640
Support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news.