Making Sense - Sam Harris - #418 — A Future for Democrats

00:00:00.000 i am here with richie torres richie thanks for joining me it's an honor to be here it's really

00:00:24.780 great to meet you finally i've seen i've seen footage and um you're that footage convinced

00:00:29.880 me that there was still some sanity in the democratic party which uh there were moments

00:00:34.540 there where it really seemed like there was none so uh thank you for existing first i fear the

00:00:38.920 mythology is more impressive than the reality no i don't i don't think so we're gonna we're gonna

00:00:43.200 get to the reality so just maybe you can summarize your background in politics how did you get here

00:00:48.640 and what is your situation now in politics i mean the starting point for me is the bronx

00:00:53.700 i was born and raised in the bronx uh spent all of my childhood in poverty i was raised by a single

00:01:00.120 mother who had to raise three of us on minimum wage which in the 1990s was four dollars and 25 cents an

00:01:05.500 hour and probably the most formative experience of my life was growing up in public housing which is

00:01:11.420 owned and operated by the government and in new york city public housing is so savagely starved the

00:01:17.000 funding that it has a capital need of 80 billion dollars and counting so like hundreds of thousands

00:01:22.600 of tenants i grew up in conditions of mold and mildew leaks and lead without consistent heat and

00:01:28.020 hot water in the winter and i got my start in politics as a tenant organizer because of my lived

00:01:34.520 experience in public housing and then at age 24 i took the leap of faith and ran for public office

00:01:39.720 i had no deep pockets no ties to the party machine but i just spent a whole year doing nothing but

00:01:45.240 knocking on doors i went into people's homes i heard their stories and i won my first campaign

00:01:51.020 on the strength of door-to-door face-to-face campaigning i became an elected official at

00:01:55.800 age 25 and what was that office uh new york city council yeah and so i served in the new york city

00:02:01.500 council for seven years before running for congress but about a decade before entering congress like i was

00:02:08.840 at the lowest point of my life i had dropped out of college i found myself struggling with depression

00:02:13.500 i even attempted to take my own life because i felt as if the world around me had collapsed

00:02:17.900 and underwent hospitalization and i never thought in my wildest dreams that i would have a fighting

00:02:23.860 chance to rebuild my life and a few years later become the youngest elected official in america's

00:02:28.920 largest city and then ultimately become a member of the united states congress so i have a story that's

00:02:35.000 highly unusual but i feel deeply american yeah yeah and what's your background what are your parents

00:02:40.800 so i was raised by a single mother but both of them were puerto rican my father was born in puerto rico

00:02:45.740 and my mother my family's my my mother's side has been here for three generations so what has there

00:02:51.660 been an evolution in your politics i mean we're going to talk about your your how you view the

00:02:57.360 democratic party and it's both its recent past and future but uh where did you start with your your

00:03:03.340 kind of your set of political intuitions i entered politics as a progressive never far left but

00:03:10.620 fundamentally progressive and then i've become more moderate over time although i will tell you the

00:03:16.540 meaning of progressivism back then it's quite different from what it has become what year again

00:03:22.740 remind me so i ran for office in 2013 and assumed office in 2014 right well 2014 is sort of the moment

00:03:30.320 where we approach the cliff of yeah whatever we want to call it wokeness identitarian moral hysteria i

00:03:36.680 mean there's there's a the the intersectionality piece that was i mean it was certainly on college

00:03:42.640 campuses that was a vibe shift yeah then so you were just you were like the last sane person to step

00:03:50.060 into politics and on left of center the world felt radically different back then it seemed to me that

00:03:56.540 social media was a far less powerful force then than it has become today now it's become the center of

00:04:01.680 our political universe but back in 2013 the progressive position on immigration was immigration

00:04:07.540 reform and then it became open borders back then the progressive position on public safety was criminal

00:04:13.700 justice reform and then it became abolish the police or defund the police or the progressive position on

00:04:19.580 israel back then was the two-state solution and now it's bds or globalize the intifada so over the

00:04:26.880 course of a decade i've i've had a front row seat to the radicalization of progressive politics

00:04:32.120 so how responsible do you hold the democrats to be for trump and trumpism i mean did that radicalization

00:04:43.180 deliver us into the hands of this increasingly grotesque counter argument certainly in 2024

00:04:50.380 i mean i feel like we in the democratic party swung the pendulum too far to the left you know

00:04:56.640 after the 2024 election i wrote on twitter you know donald trump has no greater friend than the

00:05:03.720 far left which has alienated growing numbers of americans with absurdities like latinx or free

00:05:09.680 palestine from the river to the sea yeah or defund the police are you here to tell us that that you

00:05:14.560 don't call yourself latinx no no no no i'm from the i'm i'm not aware of anyone in the bronx who uses

00:05:20.240 the term latinx no it's a term that's been imposed on us by the college educated elites but uh you know

00:05:26.600 occam's razor holds that the simplest explanation is almost always the best and the simple explanation

00:05:30.700 is that we lost because of inflation and immigration you know we saw the highest inflation in more than

00:05:36.700 four decades and we saw a catastrophic mismanagement of the migrant crisis who's impact how do you

00:05:42.660 interpret that i mean that that seemed to have been so obvious i mean that was just something that

00:05:48.660 was politically optically and the fact that anyone could just hold up a cell phone at the southern

00:05:53.440 border and it looked like a zombie movie how did the biden administration not make that a priority

00:06:00.800 immediately because the biden administration had become ideologically captured by the far left

00:06:06.700 you know trump said something that i thought was right during the presidential campaign he said that

00:06:12.480 every state had become a border state because the impact of the migrant crisis was felt not only

00:06:18.180 at the border but in cities like new york whose shelter system and municipal finances were completely

00:06:23.840 overwhelmed by an unprecedented wave of migration and i remember seeing a poll in december 2023

00:06:30.300 indicating that 85 percent of new yorkers had concerns about the impact of the migrant crisis yeah and so

00:06:36.900 the biden administration waited two and a half years before finally issuing an executive order

00:06:41.840 restricting migration at the border securing the border and by then it was too late the damage was done

00:06:47.500 the republicans had won the issue had effectively weaponized the issue against the democrats and i remember

00:06:53.840 seeing a poll indicating that the majority that the executive order had overwhelming support from the

00:06:59.780 american people from every racial category black and white latino and asian and so i asked myself if the

00:07:05.420 executive order was effective at restricting migration and if it was broadly popular then why did it take

00:07:11.700 the biden administration so long to issue the executive order and for me the reason is simple

00:07:16.540 he was pandering to the far left which has outsized power over the policy making and messaging of the

00:07:24.180 democratic party and that outsized power is causing us to fall out of touch with the majority of americans

00:07:30.060 particularly the working class yeah he took two and a half years to issue that executive order but

00:07:35.060 if memory serves something like two and a half hours to issue one on trans bathroom rights or whatever they

00:07:41.460 particular object was i mean i take your point about the um i think kamala harris's loss was

00:07:48.040 overdetermined but and and inflation and immigration were certainly the major bright lines there but

00:07:54.600 famously she was also a candidate who in the 11th hour of her campaign couldn't say something sensible

00:08:01.840 about taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgery for incarcerated undocumented immigrants it seems so

00:08:09.740 unnecessary to be that captured by the activist class in the party i don't know if there's more

00:08:15.140 to say about how we got there but having gotten there and having seen that it was fatal for the chances of

00:08:21.960 achieving the presidency do you think the pendulum is swinging back is there is there any chance in

00:08:27.080 your mind that we're going to spend the next four years wondering whether we or the next three years

00:08:32.460 wondering whether we need to attack further left as a democratic party it remains to be seen i feel

00:08:39.020 like there is a recognition that we went too far left on immigration but you know i i feel there needs

00:08:44.140 to be a fundamental restructuring within the democratic party a return to a rational center but you know i

00:08:50.440 worry that i mean donald trump is so aggressive that he is provoking a response yeah that is you know

00:08:58.080 there's a divide between what i would say two teams in the democratic party there's team restraint and

00:09:02.440 team resistance right there are those in team resistance who feel like we should react hysterically

00:09:06.980 to everything that donald trump says or does and then there are those who feel like we should pick and

00:09:12.320 choose our battles and be strategic but i worry that the momentum is on the side of hysterical

00:09:17.620 hyperbolic resistance and the enormous expenditure of time and energy and resistance might crowd out the

00:09:23.880 restructuring and moderation that needs to happen within the democratic party but even if

00:09:27.980 the resistance were turned up to 11 why would it have to find a center of gravity around

00:09:34.880 identitarian intersectional highly non-mainstream convictions and i could see becoming hysterical i

00:09:43.260 don't think hysteria is the best strategy but if you were to want to become hysterical you could

00:09:48.080 become hysterical over his corruption his incompetence the way in which he has done our country

00:09:54.520 just colossal brands damage on the world stage alienating allies and standing shoulder to

00:10:00.680 shoulder with autocrats i mean that's you could be as shrill as you want about that what concerns me is

00:10:07.120 the sense that there's still people in the party who think we didn't go far left enough right and that

00:10:13.380 we should figure out how to alienate you know every last person right of center in america do you think

00:10:19.680 that conviction is um still has many subscribers or is the pendulum swinging back on that point

00:10:25.300 i feel like there's a symbiotic relationship between the far left and the far right the far

00:10:30.760 left has no greater friend than the far right and the far right has no greater friend than the far

00:10:34.080 left it's newton's laws of physics right every action produces an equal and opposite reaction

00:10:37.900 and i feel like donald trump produces a reaction in the form of an emboldened far left

00:10:43.120 the far left had far less relevance under biden than it has in the present moment well so you are

00:10:50.360 among your many powers apart from just being eloquent and having your head screwed on straight

00:10:55.520 you because of your background i mean correct me if i'm wrong i would imagine you're almost like

00:11:01.240 kryptonite to the far left i mean you have as many intersectional points as one could want i mean i guess

00:11:08.100 you finally would have to change your gender to get to just to run the table um you're also gay

00:11:14.200 right okay so that's you've got that going for you i have almost as many intersecting identities as

00:11:19.520 george santos right yes right yes my running joke is after the expulsion of george santos i became the

00:11:24.860 most prominent jewish gay latino congressman from new york so i'm a category of one right yeah so

00:11:31.180 what does the far left do with you when you don't sing from their hymn book uh i think if i

00:11:39.440 if i were a white male i would be seen as the enemy but because i am black and latino and lgbtq and

00:11:48.340 from the bronx i'm seen not only as an enemy but as a traitor and there's a special hatred for

00:11:54.460 reserved for traitors so i feel like i'm a uniquely detested figure by the left

00:12:00.840 and so what does that translate into uh just in your efforts to govern i mean how do you

00:12:06.440 function with your other uh the other democrat prominent democrats who are you know some i mean

00:12:12.340 i guess aoc shares the bronx with you right yeah yeah how does that work i mean at the staff level we

00:12:17.640 have a cooperative relationship right so there are issues like capping the cross bronx expressway where

00:12:22.360 there's been collaboration um i have no personal relationship with aoc but but i i never take

00:12:27.440 politics personally like my view is even if we only agree on a subset of issues we should

00:12:33.120 collaborate wherever possible for the good of the country you know my concern is that politics has

00:12:37.880 become religiosity without religion and there are those on the far right and the far left who say

00:12:43.800 you know they alone have the absolute truth their policy prescriptions are the only path to salvation

00:12:49.080 and anyone who disagrees with them is not merely wrong but evil and should be crucified at the stake for

00:12:55.240 heresy and i feel like that kind of fundamentalism is incompatible with politics which is supposed to be

00:13:01.640 you know an alternative to conflict it's supposed to be a pragmatic enterprise yeah yeah so what can

00:13:09.540 congress do i mean as many of us spectate upon the um the unimaginable progress trump has made in

00:13:18.120 devaluing our country on some on on a level and in areas that i really many of us who were not

00:13:24.840 optimistic didn't anticipate i mean the idea that he would see some reason to cut 50 to 80 percent of

00:13:30.620 the you know the funding for basic scientific research in this country i mean it's like there's

00:13:35.440 just own goal after own goal what can a prostrate congress do and i mean we're simply just waiting for

00:13:43.120 to win the midterms is at the next point on the landscape that we have to reach before anything

00:13:47.900 useful can be done there's no sign of independence from congressional republicans i mean the republican

00:13:52.640 party has become a cult of personality around donald trump i've never seen a political figure who has

00:13:58.680 had as much an iron grip on a political party as he has on the republican party i mean he can wake up

00:14:04.100 one day and just by sheer force of will make the republican party the party of protectionism and price

00:14:10.120 controls yeah and i've seen democrats you know quoting ronald reagan and and milton friedman so

00:14:15.280 i feel like our political universe has been inverted but i worry that we're entering a period of decline

00:14:20.740 you know if a superpower were intent on planting the seeds of its own decline it would paralyze the

00:14:28.320 global economy with uncertainty it would erode confidence in the reserve status of the dollar

00:14:34.040 it would discard due process it would defund scientific and medical research it would

00:14:39.900 allow its manufacturing base to atrophy from neglect and it would grow the deficit until interest on the

00:14:46.080 debt becomes the largest share of the federal budget and that's the story of america under

00:14:50.640 donald trump and that to me is a story of decline i mean i worry about the future of america and i worry

00:14:56.440 about the impact of the reconciliation bill not only on the social safety net but on the fiscal health of

00:15:02.820 our nation it will add a staggering five trillion dollars to our national debt at a time when the debt

00:15:09.220 has not only been never been larger but also more expensive i mean most people do not realize that

00:15:15.160 interest on the debt has become the largest line item in the federal budget second only to social

00:15:21.620 security we spend more on debt on defense or medicare or medicaid and it is projected to ultimately

00:15:28.700 surpass social security so i think we're playing with fire so what can the democrats do

00:15:36.220 now i mean short of taking back congress is there anything what's happening among democrats in the

00:15:43.140 house and the senate now look we're exhausting every means of resisting donald trump in the courtroom

00:15:49.360 on the streets in the halls of congress but look there are limits to what you can do when republicans

00:15:55.560 control every branch of government yeah so ultimately there's no substitute for winning we have to win

00:16:00.440 elections but for me it's not enough to win because you know if we win in 2026 our victory could be as

00:16:08.440 much about the weakness of donald trump as it is about our own strength i feel like we have to

00:16:12.380 fundamentally transform the democratic party what does that look like in your view well actually more

00:16:18.640 important than restructuring the democratic party is restructuring democratic governance i feel like

00:16:23.720 there is a crisis of blue state and blue city governance yeah in cities like new york and chicago

00:16:28.780 you know no state saw a greater swing toward donald trump than new york and that to me was not a

00:16:35.440 coincidence that was a consequence of failing governance at the state and local level and so

00:16:40.500 i worry that misgovernance in blue states is actually creating an electoral challenge for the democratic

00:16:46.140 party you know in the next reapportionment there's going to be a massive shift of population and political

00:16:51.580 power from the north to the south from the midwest to the mountain west from the rust belt to the sun

00:16:57.520 belt uh the south is projected to gain as many as 11 electoral votes the northeast and the midwest could

00:17:04.360 lose as many as 11 electoral votes and so i feel like as a party you know we're going to have no choice

00:17:10.200 but to become a big 10 party that's going to be a necessity in order for us to compete in a much more

00:17:15.820 complicated electoral landscape so why are democratic cities and states so badly run i mean like if if we're on

00:17:24.100 the right side of most or any political arguments why is there so much dysfunction that serves as a

00:17:31.360 campaign commercial for the other side i have two diagnoses i think the problem with the democratic

00:17:37.380 party is that at times we're more responsive to interest groups than to people on the ground and

00:17:44.200 the problem with the progressive movement which has outsized power within the democratic party is that

00:17:49.700 it's more concerned with progressive purity than with actual progress than with the actual competence

00:17:54.520 and performance of government you know one of my frustrations as a member of congress is i feel like

00:17:59.920 federal governance has come to consist of blue state representatives like myself passing laws like

00:18:06.520 the inflation reduction act whose benefits overwhelmingly flow into red states like of the 20 congressional

00:18:13.100 districts receiving the most ira investment 19 of them are republican held because those are the

00:18:19.180 easiest places to do business those are the easiest places to build you know if you think about the ai

00:18:24.820 revolution leading to the proliferation of ai data centers where are those data centers going to be

00:18:29.180 cited it's not going to be cited in new york which closed indian point a nuclear plant facility

00:18:33.000 it's going to be cited in states like texas which have an abundance of energy i had a clean energy

00:18:37.940 developer tell me that it is easier for him to create clean energy infrastructure in texas than

00:18:43.160 in new york in states that deny climate change than in the states that consider it an emergency

00:18:47.980 yeah and so there is a crisis of blue state governance that we have to come to grips with

00:18:52.500 is this of a piece which with what is now being called the abundance agenda in democratic circles

00:18:59.160 so i'm a strong proponent of the abundance movement and for me abundance is the best framework

00:19:05.680 for reimagining what it means to govern progressively to govern as a democratic party

00:19:11.340 you know if the republican party is going to be the party of less government then we as democrats

00:19:16.880 should not be the party of more government we should be the party of better cheaper and faster

00:19:20.960 government right a government that builds a government that works and you know progress is

00:19:25.980 measured not only by more spending but by more supply like for me what matters is not only whether

00:19:32.400 there's more or less housing spending but whether there's more or less housing supply like are we

00:19:37.180 pursuing policies that expand the supply of housing are we contracting it are we making housing more

00:19:42.540 abundant and affordable are we making it more scarce and unaffordable and it's often the case that in

00:19:47.680 blue cities and blue states we're pursuing policies that actually contract the supply of fundamental

00:19:53.540 public goods that we need and want yeah it seems like the variable of competence should be

00:19:59.600 is undervalued versionally the target when one thing that's on display with trump and trumpism

00:20:06.140 leaving the the verbiage aside is colossal corruption and incompetence right and if you oppose both of

00:20:13.900 those things you it seems like you're on the winning side of two very important arguments and none of

00:20:19.760 that requires a an approach to you know civil rights that in martin luther king wouldn't recognize or

00:20:26.440 or any of the other sinkholes of confusion that democrats have fallen into i mean we're going to

00:20:32.040 get to october 7th and the anti-semitism that has exploded left of center but can i comment on that

00:20:38.340 because i feel like abundance is a fancy word for competence right and it just feels to me our

00:20:44.860 politics values ideological purity more than competence competence has become the most undervalued

00:20:50.340 virtue but you know the the american people have a clear pattern of punishing incompetence you know

00:20:58.300 when when when donald trump was incompetent in managing the response to covid he lost the presidential

00:21:04.360 election in 2020 when we as democrats were incompetent in managing the migrant crisis the

00:21:10.660 democratic nominee lost the election in 2024 you know when george bush sloppily with uh sloppily uh

00:21:16.940 mismanaged the response to katrina you know his poll numbers never recovered and you might recall when

00:21:23.140 biden sloppily withdrew from afghanistan his poll numbers never recovered so i feel like the clear

00:21:29.360 lesson here is that the american people value competence demand it and punishing competence and

00:21:35.480 there's this common refrain that you know we have a messaging problem we did not have a messaging problem

00:21:41.440 we had a reality problem inflation was a reality the migrant crisis was a reality and so i i just hope

00:21:49.260 that we're not only focused on improving our messaging but also improving how we govern okay so let's talk

00:21:55.020 about some very errant messaging post october 7th literally before israel had done anything in response

00:22:04.400 we had an explosion of uh it's not too far to say it explicit support for the death cult that had

00:22:13.660 murdered 1200 people in israel on october 7th and this support was in the quads of our finest universities

00:22:23.140 we we we know that it was um it was not an accident it was not purely organic but obviously the the

00:22:30.860 sympathy was there to be leveraged by people taking to social media and in many cases you know directly

00:22:38.100 funding protests we definitely have an anti-semitism problem there's an anti-semitism problem on the far

00:22:43.260 right obviously and that's been with us forever but there's one on the far left which is um increasingly

00:22:50.180 shrill and increasingly hard for otherwise sane and ethical people to parse it's understandable given the

00:22:58.140 level of misinformation and disinformation spread on this topic it's it's understandable that people

00:23:04.140 are confused about what's happening there and about what israel could be doing or should be doing but

00:23:09.500 the clear dissection of the depth of the confusion happened on october 8th before israel had done

00:23:16.220 anything in response we saw this explosion of support for you know hamas essentially as a legitimate

00:23:23.580 resistance organization right throwing off an occupation in gaza that hadn't been occupied for

00:23:29.580 you know a decade and a half what do you make of the animus toward israel and the and just the

00:23:35.820 animus toward jews left of center in our politics now for me october 7th did not change the state of

00:23:43.420 anti-semitism it simply revealed a process that had been unfolding for a long time a process of demonizing

00:23:51.100 both the jewish people and the jewish state and to your point almost as troubling as october 7th itself

00:23:58.540 was the response on october 8th i saw masses of americans go to the heart of times square the most jewish

00:24:06.380 city in the world and celebrate and cheer the mass murder of jews you know i never thought as as

00:24:14.780 as a millennial who remembers the trauma of 9-11 i never thought in my wildest nightmares that osama

00:24:21.820 bin laden's letter to america would be spreading virally on tiktok and you know there's no single

00:24:28.460 explanation for what is unfolding in our politics but it seems to me the most one of the most influential

00:24:35.260 ideas on the far left on college campuses is the idea of intersectionality which seems to divide the

00:24:41.980 world into two categories the oppressor versus the oppressed and israel is seen as the oppressor that

00:24:47.980 can do no right and hamas is seen as the oppressed that can do no wrong and that seems to be the

00:24:53.420 distorting simplistic lens through which the war in gaza is seen through which the israeli palestinian

00:24:59.980 conflict is seen and it has deprived the whole generation of americans of the ability to empathize

00:25:07.100 with israelis who were victims of the deadliest day for jews since the holocaust yeah i guess

00:25:13.340 there's some doubt as to whether or not the holocaust even happened in certain circles i mean now we have

00:25:17.500 some of the biggest podcasts on earth platform people who are just asking questions about what

00:25:23.100 happened in 1941 and 42 and maybe hitler wasn't such a bad guy after all and maybe they just accidentally

00:25:29.260 killed jews or killed them out of compassion because there were so many prisoners of war they

00:25:33.260 just couldn't figure out what to do with them and wouldn't it might not be more compassionate to

00:25:37.260 euthanize them rather than have them starve and this is the kind of thing that is

00:25:41.020 tucker carlson's favorite history yeah this is yeah this is tucker carlson's favorite historian and one of

00:25:45.580 joe rogan's favorite historians who said that the central villain of world war ii was not adolf

00:25:49.580 hitler was winston churchill yeah yeah which would have been unsayable only a few years ago

00:25:55.180 and it shows how corroded our culture has become by anti-semitism both on the far right and on the

00:26:01.020 far left but to your point the far left anti-semitism enjoys greater respectability

00:26:05.900 right in american culture in american media and american education and i find it ironic that the

00:26:11.580 academic intelligentsia often has the least amount of moral intelligence and that point was driven home

00:26:17.260 to me during one of the congressional hearings you might recall one of my colleagues asked the

00:26:22.220 presidents of elite universities you know is calling for a genocide of jews harassment now

00:26:27.180 i'm from the bronx i represent a district where the median level of educational attainment is less

00:26:31.820 than a college degree but if you ask the average bronxite you know is calling for a genocide of jews

00:26:37.260 harassment they would say of course it is it's worse than harassment but if you ask an academic

00:26:43.500 you get a coldly legalistic formulaic response and it seems to me the loss of moral common

00:26:49.980 sense is not a bug but a feature of what the higher education industrial complex has become

00:26:55.900 yeah i mean i have a um i must say when i watch those hearings i had some sympathy for the college

00:27:01.420 presence because i do think that the the appropriate norm on a college campus is to be able to talk about

00:27:08.700 anything right as long as you're just talking i think you should be able to say anything and then

00:27:13.020 reap the reputational consequences of having advocated that idea but what was happening on the campuses

00:27:19.180 was quite a bit more than talk can i challenge that actually because i i that's a that's a fair

00:27:24.140 rule but then enforce it yeah even handedly that's that was the thing that was the lack of neutrality

00:27:28.860 and enforcement yeah amounts to viewpoint discrimination yeah which to me is the opposite of academic freedom

00:27:35.020 we know what would have happened had anyone been calling for the lynching of black people or trans

00:27:40.380 people on if there were a kkk encampment it would have been shut if you misgendered someone you would

00:27:46.060 have been fired and canceled in a heartbeat transgendered kkk members would have been bulletproof

00:27:51.420 so the selective enforcement of the rules i think is what i find most unsettling yeah like you can have

00:27:57.260 whatever rule you wish but enforce it evenly right right and clearly for the purposes of a college campus

00:28:04.060 one rule is that you shouldn't be able to shut down the the functioning of a campus you shouldn't

00:28:09.500 be able to shout so that no no one can be heard from the stage or cancel classes or you know we we need

00:28:15.660 to be able to educate the kids who are paying to get educated there there's a misconception about the

00:28:20.860 first amendment yeah like the first amendment protects speech not conduct there's no first

00:28:25.660 member right to erect an encampment or blockade a building exactly or harass and intimidate jews on college campus

00:28:32.700 yeah like that's not speech protected by the constitution that's conduct right that violates

00:28:37.100 out of the law university policy yeah yeah so it's it's the double standard that was that everyone

00:28:43.100 noticed that was um so infuriating there why doesn't that just end the argument i mean every no one can

00:28:49.340 deny that had trans people been treated that way at columbia or harvard or black people or pick any other

00:28:58.220 intersectional identity you you want no one can deny that a very different moral immune system

00:29:05.340 would have come online at the level of the administration but because it's the jews everyone

00:29:10.300 had to kind of go go back to their their manual and and try to split hairs and figure out okay how do we

00:29:16.140 respond to this situation but that's the i think the point about intersectionality and once you

00:29:21.180 categorize jews as an oppressor or white privilege privilege class yeah then you're declaring them

00:29:27.580 fair game for discrimination discrimination that would never be tolerated against any other minority in

00:29:32.620 our society yeah how did the jews become a privileged class when still within living memory nearly half of

00:29:40.780 them were exterminated in ovens in europe i mean how did how how is this uh for as long as anyone's been

00:29:48.620 paying attention certainly you look at you look at fbi hate crime statistics since 9 11 every year

00:29:54.860 since 9 11 even in the immediate aftermath of 9 11 when islamist terrorists brought down the twin towers

00:30:01.180 you had more hate crimes against jews in america than any other group how does this um notion that they're

00:30:08.780 at the top of the oppressor class get so secured in left of center circles i think one there's a long

00:30:17.180 history of scapegoating and fear mongering against jews i mean jews have often been a convenient target

00:30:24.540 for scapegoating but you know i think much of it is simply indoctrination i worry that our social media

00:30:33.100 platforms and our college campuses are indoctrinating the next generation of americans not only with a

00:30:39.100 hatred for israel but also a hatred for their own country yeah or a hatred for the west and i'm not

00:30:45.020 aware of a civilization in human history that has ever succeeded on the strength of self-loathing

00:30:50.300 like a society that no longer believes in itself will not long endure and i have found that there's

00:30:55.580 often a disconnect between how an immigrant sees america and how a native-born gen z-er might see america

00:31:02.620 and i'm overgeneralizing but i feel like there's a kernel of truth here you know an immigrant sees

00:31:06.460 america and sees a land of opportunity whereas a member of gen z will see america and see nothing but a

00:31:12.540 system of oppression nothing but racism and sexism and xenophobia and look there's certainly a danger

00:31:22.220 in excessive nationalism but there's also a danger in in a deficit like every civilization needs some

00:31:29.580 degree of self-love and i feel like we have a culture of self-loathing in the west um you know one

00:31:35.580 thing i found inspiring about the israeli left is before october 7th during the passionate debates

00:31:41.740 about judicial reform you had a mass mobilization of israelis largely from the left protesting the

00:31:48.300 judicial reforms and i found it striking that there were israelis who were singing the israeli

00:31:53.500 anthem hak tikvah and waving the israeli flag and proudly proclaiming their israeli patriotism and i

00:32:00.220 feel like that's such a stark contrast to what we see from the american left where you have leftists

00:32:06.620 burning the american flag or denigrating the united states and i feel like the i wish the american left

00:32:13.740 would embrace the patriotism of the israeli left and my hope is that i can represent a patriotic

00:32:20.780 liberalism within the democratic party because i feel like one of our miscalculations is ceding the value

00:32:26.780 of patriotism and american exceptionalism to the political right yeah well yeah we have an opportunity

00:32:32.620 to get that straight with the uh 250th anniversary of the of the country coming up here next year that

00:32:40.700 will really be a um depressing sacrilege if the centennial there becomes just a mega you know triumphal

00:32:49.020 story with the left whinging in a way that just can't find a patriotic lane and we need we need

00:32:56.140 left of center patriotism otherwise uh yeah it's not yet another own goal um and donald trump has no

00:33:02.940 love for america no he loves no one but himself that's pretty clear the ideology of the republican

00:33:08.780 party is no longer conservatism it's trumpism yeah and he has contempt for the democratic institutions

00:33:15.740 that have sustained what i would consider to be the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever

00:33:21.100 seen yeah and i feel like the democratic party is uniquely positioned to affirm the exceptionalism of

00:33:27.580 america as a multi-racial multi-ethnic expansive democracy the likes of which the world has never

00:33:33.260 seen well i love that aspiration uh between us and that happy day i see a few roadblocks we have to

00:33:41.340 dream yeah what one is there's a lot of energy aimed at aoc and bernie at the moment in the democratic

00:33:49.020 party or at least as you know it seems to be so judging from reading the new york times it strikes

00:33:54.300 me as uh highly unlikely that that's the future of the party that's going to deliver the vision you just

00:34:01.500 articulated i wonder if you share that sense i mean i the strand of of truth that i think has to be

00:34:07.100 addressed in the kind of platform they articulate is the problem of wealth inequality i think that's

00:34:12.460 just that is a problem and any sane and compassionate governance would want to address it but a descent

00:34:19.740 into our own populism that fails to purge this anti-american you know even anti-western civilization

00:34:28.300 strand of leftism i think is going to be a disaster for us i mean perhaps give me your thoughts on on

00:34:34.620 wealth inequality and the shadow it's casting over our society now but how do we deal with that and

00:34:40.940 still find our way to this goal of a patriotic and um you know a celebration of what is possible once

00:34:49.260 we become no longer ideological but merely competent and sane look for me the single greatest challenge

00:34:56.140 confronting america is the affordability crisis you know in new york about one-fifth of the young black

00:35:03.580 population has disappeared you know in the early 20th century african americans fled the south of

00:35:09.500 the north in order to escape jim crow and now we see african americans escaping the north of the south

00:35:15.420 in order to escape the affordability crisis and even though consumer goods like computers have become

00:35:21.900 dramatically more affordable and more abundant over time the fundamentals of human flourishing like

00:35:27.660 higher education and health care and housing have become unaffordable and scarce over time and i feel

00:35:33.980 like the central project of the democratic party should be to address the affordability crisis

00:35:39.100 that is immiserating the american working class i mean that's where we're feeling most miserably

00:35:43.980 so i think about it i mean wealth inequality is a real challenge but i think about it as an affordability

00:35:49.100 crisis do you think if we address and that's what's radicalizing the next generation right because and

00:35:57.020 i've been for good reason you know if you spend a hundred thousand dollars to go to college maybe even

00:36:02.620 more and you find yourself unemployed or underemployed you're going to feel bitterly disillusioned with

00:36:08.140 the system if you're struggling to keep pace with the crushing cost of housing and health care and

00:36:13.100 higher education and the inflation in these areas is out of control you know the promise of america is

00:36:19.580 supposed to be if you work hard and play by the rules then you will have access to a decent life

00:36:24.300 well there are people in america who are working hard who are playing by the rules and who are not

00:36:29.180 only working poor but working homeless like the majority of household heads in the new york shelter system

00:36:35.820 are working people right how much of the problem of race or the apparent problem of race or

00:36:42.060 racial inequality is a problem of class do you think i feel like the two are inextricably bound

00:36:48.940 together and if i were setting the agenda for the democratic party i would focus more heavily on class

00:36:55.180 i feel like we in the democratic party should be defined not by identities but by ideas and we should

00:37:01.100 speak not in the language of three-letter acronyms like crt and dei and esg we should speak in the language

00:37:07.980 of opportunity opportunity for every american we should give every american a fighting chance

00:37:12.540 at the american dream at a decent life that to me is a unifying message that will broaden the democratic

00:37:18.620 coalition so if you were going to reset the approach to dei or affirmative action is there an approach

00:37:25.340 that focuses on class exclusively economic disadvantage exclusively that you think solves the problems we

00:37:32.940 want to solve or is there some more to the apparatus that we need so i'll take one example on workforce

00:37:39.420 development and education i feel like in america we have a cultural obsession with the baccalaureate

00:37:45.340 and we should rethink the notion that everyone must go to a four-year college and learn shakespeare

00:37:50.940 and then enter the workforce like there's a significant subset of our population that prefers

00:37:56.540 vocational schooling career and technical education and instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all model

00:38:01.820 on everyone why not allow people the freedom and flexibility to choose the path that's right for

00:38:06.860 them why not allow people to bring a pell grant not only to a four-year college but to a union

00:38:11.740 apprenticeship you know i there's a quote from john gardner who served in the lyndon johnson

00:38:16.300 administration and i might be misremembering the quote but he said a society that exalts mediocre

00:38:22.380 philosophy but devalues excellent plumbing will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy

00:38:27.660 neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water and that that encapsulates what i believe but for

00:38:33.820 me there's nothing more corrosive to a society than structural unemployment and i've seen people in my

00:38:39.180 district who will go to college drop out and end up not with a degree but with debt and become

00:38:45.820 structurally unemployed and when you're structurally unemployed you're much more susceptible to contact

00:38:50.460 with the criminal justice system deaths of despair substance abuse mental illness what's been

00:38:56.460 described as the disappearance of work i feel like that's the central pathology that we should be

00:39:01.340 confronting and we should restructure and reimagine higher education and workforce development in

00:39:06.060 america to the benefit of the working class yeah well ai is going to be making that even more

00:39:12.620 interesting to navigate in in the coming years although the irony of ai is that it actually might

00:39:17.260 bring more dislocation to white collar yeah oh yeah exactly yeah that's what i'm saying yeah all

00:39:21.740 these people who read their shakespeare yeah are going to uh but originally it was projected that

00:39:26.620 all these truck drivers right would lose their employment no and instead i think we're going to

00:39:31.900 live in a world where the diagnostic capabilities of a doctor yeah are more replaceable than the

00:39:36.940 social emotional skills of a nurse yeah yeah no i think that's coming faster than anyone thought even

00:39:43.340 a few years ago are you optimistic or pessimistic about yeah i'm pessimistic about on at least two fronts

00:39:48.620 i'm pessimistic about our ability to even in success not exacerbate the kinds of problems we've been

00:39:56.460 talking about right i mean i think we're totally capable of leaving aside the problem of building

00:40:01.420 ai that is aligned with our interests and and may yet just kill us or ai that's not aligned with our

00:40:06.780 interests and may yet kill us even if we built it perfectly so that we could use it however we wanted

00:40:10.940 to and without any loss of control i think we're still capable of not understanding the political

00:40:19.100 and economic changes that this is going to force on us and we'll be celebrating a handful of trillionaires

00:40:25.020 you know in the pages of our business magazines as unemployment skyrockets and we just can't figure

00:40:30.460 out how to spread the wealth around which is to say that if we anticipate building it safely which is by no

00:40:36.700 means guaranteed or by some accounts even likely at this point we have to see that even safe ai

00:40:43.500 that's just kind of pulling wealth out of the ether is something that we could disastrously misuse

00:40:49.900 because we have we haven't anticipated the political and economic consequences of it it simply has to be

00:40:55.500 a tide that raises all boats and you know that's that's gonna sound like communism to half the country

00:41:00.460 and um it shouldn't because if you know we just we can't have uh i mean what is the end game you

00:41:07.340 know trillionaires uh with their uh you know building compounds in new zealand and and uh it's just a um

00:41:14.300 i mean it could be the greatest force for inequality the world has ever seen if we don't play our cards

00:41:19.340 right and be it behind all that there's the genuine concern that we're just in an arms race with china and

00:41:25.660 other bad actors and that this is it's like nuclear proliferation if if nukes were easily copied you

00:41:33.020 know and didn't require any rare materials to be created so it's uh it's in some ways scarier than

00:41:39.580 that and i suspect ai is much more susceptible to proliferation than nuclear weapons yeah exactly yeah

00:41:45.020 and it's just um look i i i'm not sure what to make of what will become of the ai revolution i'm i'm

00:41:50.540 hopeful that it could be a net good for humanity i feel like technology has been

00:41:54.380 yeah the greatest catalyst for human progress and look pessimism about technology apocalyptic

00:41:59.900 fears of what technology will bring is almost as old as humanity itself like if i if i remember my

00:42:05.500 plato dialogues correctly even socrates feared that the advent of writing yeah would mean the

00:42:10.300 end of human intelligence yeah and i think it's fair to say right it's a net benefit for humanity so

00:42:15.340 yeah no i mean i do think this is a fundamentally different breakthrough technologically and i'm

00:42:21.580 convinced we will see its implications relatively soon but um and it's a level of exponential

00:42:27.740 progress we've never seen yeah yeah but it is just it's humbling to realize that even the good version

00:42:35.020 poses problems that we will find difficult to navigate speaking of the future maybe hopefully

00:42:41.260 nearer term than the rise of super intelligence yeah malicious or otherwise what are your thoughts about

00:42:47.340 2028 what's uh is it indecent to ask you who should be running who should who in the democratic party

00:42:55.100 stands a chance of being a viable candidate at this point well naturally i have a preference for

00:43:00.780 center-left candidates and i tend to have a bias toward executives so i feel like our greatest bench of

00:43:06.940 talent is in the governorships but i've you know i'm impressed with governors like westmore josh

00:43:13.260 shapiro um i do feel like we have a wealth of talent at the gubernatorial level and then mayor pete

00:43:19.180 is just one of the most gifted communicators in the democratic party yeah so um i feel like we have

00:43:24.460 a stronger bench than people realize well richie i know you have a plan to catch is there anything we

00:43:28.780 haven't touched that you think we should cover in the remaining time no that's that's uh i we've done

00:43:36.220 i i feel like but post-mortem i think we we in the democratic party and those of us on the rational

00:43:42.460 left need to be more comfortable pushing back against more relativism and speaking with moral

00:43:49.180 clarity and defending america and defending western civilization which is worth defending

00:43:54.540 because i do feel like we live in an age of moral confusion yeah you know if you're speaking of

00:43:59.180 israel if you're an arab woman in the middle east and if you're born in israel you know you could rise to

00:44:05.180 the highest echelons of israeli society you could become a member of the knesset you could become

00:44:09.180 a member of the israeli supreme court you could be the judge that puts the prime minister in prison

00:44:13.740 whereas if you're born in afghanistan you will have acid thrown in your face for daring to be literate

00:44:20.220 and anyone who fails to see the fundamental moral difference between those two realities is profoundly

00:44:26.780 morally confused and i feel like those of us on the rational left should be at the forefront

00:44:32.060 of combating that kind of moral idealism and confusion that was uh better than i could have

00:44:38.940 ever hoped anyone would say it i mean i i would say that anyone who can't sign on the dotted line

00:44:44.780 there and see the implications of what you just said just that it's just obvious that there are

00:44:49.820 right and wrong answers or better and worse answers to fundamental questions of human flourishing

00:44:54.460 i just think there's no future in our politics for an orientation that that can't thread that needle

00:45:02.300 that you just effortlessly threaded there and yet it's as we push left of center it becomes harder and

00:45:09.260 harder to have that conversation on half a dozen fronts well richie there's no uh alternative but to

00:45:15.660 to see you more and more part of the conversation so thank you for what you're doing thank you for

00:45:20.220 coming out here and it's good great to get you on the podcast it's an honor to be here

00:45:42.300 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - June 02, 2025

#418 — A Future for Democrats

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