Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 30, 2020


Ep 332 | One Nation, Under Corporations? | Guest: Rachel Bovard


Episode Stats

Length

35 minutes

Words per Minute

183.46153

Word Count

6,448

Sentence Count

1

Hate Speech Sentences

11


Summary

In this episode of Relatable Happy Monday, I talk to Rachael Bovard, Senior Director of Policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, about big tech and corporate power, censorship, and the question of whether or not we are really free if we live in a society where the major channels of information and the corporations that control so much of our consumerism are cracking down on the things we consume and the things that we can think and say and do, and she gives us some solutions to what seems like an infringement upon our liberty by big tech companies and big business.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 hey guys welcome to relatable happy monday hope everyone had a great thanksgiving today i am
00:00:15.020 talking to rachel bovard we are going to talk about big tech big corporations and we are going
00:00:19.520 to explore this question of are we really free if we live in a society where are uh the the major
00:00:26.440 channels of information and the corporations that control so much of our consumerism are cracking
00:00:34.060 down on the things that we consume on the things that we uh can think and say and do and she's going
00:00:41.740 to give us some solutions to what seems like um an infringement upon our liberty by big tech and
00:00:50.300 big business but before we get into that conversation i want to take a quick ad break
00:00:56.440 rachel thank you so much for joining me uh could you tell everyone who might not be familiar
00:01:09.060 who you are and what you do so thanks for having me my name is rachel bovard i'm the senior director
00:01:15.900 of policy at the conservative partnership institute which is a non-profit i started here in dc about
00:01:21.100 three years ago with senator jim de mint former senator from south carolina um and i teach a lot
00:01:26.760 of senate procedure house procedure but i also do a lot of writing and commentary on sort of where the
00:01:32.100 right is going um on issues like you know foreign wars corporate power and a lot has that has really
00:01:39.220 kind of come to the fore during the trump era and so i've been i've been writing and thinking a lot
00:01:43.080 about those things yeah and and you started at least in your political career
00:01:46.960 and the kind of libertarian movement correct i did yes i was the legislative director for senator
00:01:54.860 rand paul for a number of years in the senate um which has informed a lot of how i feel about
00:01:59.740 foreign incursion specifically right but interestingly has informed how i feel about big the big tech
00:02:04.760 corporations as well okay and how do you feel like your um your ideas have changed over time as you've
00:02:12.500 seen the the right shift or have you always kind of had the same views on big tech and big corporations
00:02:18.020 so with big tech and big corporations specifically you know one of the reasons i found myself drawn to
00:02:25.020 the libertarian movement was that it was skeptical of concentrations of power wherever they were in
00:02:30.880 the government you know massive corporate power but i think the dc libertarian movement has lost that
00:02:36.420 skepticism of corporate power that i actually think is pretty classically libertarian
00:02:40.400 and so i feel i've stayed true to the libertarian movement in that regard and the movement in dc at
00:02:46.560 least has left me a little bit because you see a lot of libertarians who are defending big tech and
00:02:51.060 saying well the government shouldn't get involved ignoring the fact that the government is very
00:02:55.360 involved already in these companies and they're benefiting from a lot of government subsidies provisions
00:03:00.300 and law that have helped them grow why is that why do you think there has been a shift not on your
00:03:05.120 end but on libertarians in uh in conservatism in dc well i think you know the establishment republican
00:03:14.100 party which includes a lot of libertarians has always had a really friendly relationship with
00:03:18.980 business we've we've looked at it you know as a way to support our views the diversity in the free
00:03:24.120 market you know free market innovation and all those things are things we as conservatives prize and want
00:03:29.200 to protect but i think to a great extent we've become uncritical about it we've just assumed that
00:03:35.700 well if it's private business it must be good and that has sort of become this it's ossified into this
00:03:41.300 sort of ideology that you're not allowed to question business because that means you're questioning the
00:03:45.220 free market and i reject that because again conservatism is a full you know an abundant philosophy you know
00:03:51.460 that allows you know you to question and to assume you know that things should be questioned when
00:03:58.580 circumstances change and that's i think the position that we find ourselves in with big tech you you have
00:04:03.780 these unprecedented uh companies with that have amassed so much power we've never seen this before
00:04:09.840 they're the most powerful companies the world has ever seen and i think they deserve a second look
00:04:13.960 from lawmakers because of the fact that they're not just private industry they're private industry
00:04:18.260 that's changing the way in which we live together and that is fundamentally a question for our self
00:04:23.700 government you know my stance whenever we start talking about okay there's obviously a problem with
00:04:28.800 big tech and their lopsided censorship censorship in general but also lopsided censorship as well as
00:04:35.340 as well as some other constitutional issues um but my stance has been traditionally until i would say
00:04:43.160 recently okay well i really don't want the government to get involved because i'm afraid of when
00:04:47.960 that when the power shifts when there is more democrat uh democratic control in dc that uh the power
00:04:56.040 that we give to the government to regulate or to interfere in big tech is going to be weaponized even
00:05:01.260 further against conservatives and so at the same time i haven't known what the solution is but now
00:05:07.320 i read your article not about big tech and american greatness about corporations uh corporate power
00:05:13.320 and the gramophone mind and how you talk about these different situations where people are getting
00:05:19.080 discriminated against just for their conservative views and it does kind of create some ire in me and i
00:05:25.700 think other conservatives to say okay this doesn't really seem like a problem that we can just let alone
00:05:30.960 whether it is target taking a book from its distribution list or whether it is big tech uh de-platforming
00:05:38.280 people based on their conservative views and so where have you kind of landed on that obviously not
00:05:44.360 wanting too much government encroachment but at the same time realizing this is a problem that we can't
00:05:49.700 just let alone in the name of loving free markets yeah and you know in the course of writing that essay
00:05:56.440 it really became clear to me how this is not just a big tech problem this is a corporate problem you
00:06:02.020 raise the example of target you know removing abigail schreier's book because one person complained on twitter
00:06:06.960 right but you also have banks now who are refusing to service certain customers who work with
00:06:13.020 immigration customs enforcement they won't you know process transactions for anyone that works in the
00:06:17.900 private prison industry i mean this is beyond you know just big tech it is now woke corporations
00:06:24.200 which are a lot of them and i take your point about not wanting to create a government bureaucracy
00:06:31.480 that has to meddle in these areas and i'm very much aligned with that because i think that it is a
00:06:36.520 real fear that as soon as the political winds change that same you know bureaucracy will be
00:06:41.160 weaponized against conservatives when we built it you know to sort of enforce our own views we cannot
00:06:45.900 go down that road but what i think we can do is recognize as conservatives that our policy choices
00:06:52.260 have benefited these corporations for years and we prioritize them in our policy making think about
00:06:58.600 the last four years of the republican controlled senate the biggest accomplishment they did
00:07:03.480 was a massive tax bill now that was great for the middle class that was good for working families
00:07:08.960 but it also contained tremendous amount of corporate tax cuts and that's something that we
00:07:12.800 prioritize you know we're always happy to hand out those tax cuts to big business we're always
00:07:17.220 happy to bail out massive corporate banks who'd crater the economy and not you know give them any
00:07:22.660 consequences we are happy to give big tech companies um and you know other big companies
00:07:27.800 every incentive to to you know operate in america i think that the conservative movement and the
00:07:35.180 republican party should be more skeptical right we are empowering these companies who hate us and so
00:07:41.220 i'm not saying to build a new bureaucracy to control them but i am saying maybe we should be skeptical
00:07:45.360 before we you know willy-nilly hand out all these carve-outs in in you know the law and in the tax code
00:07:50.820 to these companies who clearly are weaponizing them against conservatives so tangibly that's what you think
00:07:56.760 maybe going in the right direction looks like it's not necessarily a specific policy or a punitive
00:08:02.320 policy against these companies it's not always looking out for their interests sometimes at the
00:08:07.820 expense of the working class am i articulating that correctly you are and i think it's a matter of
00:08:14.600 emphasis right it's the fact that as a party we've always said well you know business first in many
00:08:19.740 right or our party leadership has said that essentially and we've neglected a lot of these social
00:08:24.960 issues we've neglected you know kitchen table economics for working families so maybe instead
00:08:29.960 of prioritizing big business constantly we look to these other issues and say look you know we tried
00:08:35.100 it with the corporations and they took the you know gifts we gave them and essentially turned their
00:08:40.200 back on us so you know what i'm sorry that this tax credit's expiring we have pro-life policies we're
00:08:45.540 focusing on right now you know we have you know family issues that we're working on so it's a matter of
00:08:50.440 policy emphasis i think going forward and the reason why a lot of conservatives and even some
00:08:57.260 libertarians have decided that they are going to legislate in a way that especially and disproportionately
00:09:03.360 helps these corporations is it is it because their pockets are getting lined or is it just because they
00:09:08.840 don't even realize that the industry has changed and corporations have changed and so this idea of
00:09:14.440 business is important has without them even realizing it empowered uh these tyrannical left-wing
00:09:22.960 corporations that use their views to then bludgeon the working class that the republicans say that they
00:09:28.860 are fighting for yeah i think part of it is just a lack of skepticism and curiosity from the republican
00:09:35.600 lawmakers we've just always assumed that the market is functioning and you know there's nothing bad that it
00:09:41.960 can do as long as it's a free market but we forget that a free market has to be protected and i think
00:09:48.220 part of that lack of skepticism from republicans is our our lack of antitrust enforcement we've allowed
00:09:54.200 these corporations to grow so large that in many cases the big tech companies are crushing small
00:10:00.200 business they're crushing innovation and what would other be a robust marketplace and so i do think
00:10:05.740 it's incumbent upon conservatives and republicans to say look you know a free market you know we prize
00:10:12.480 it and therefore we must protect it and so i think being a little bit more curious and skeptical about
00:10:17.640 these claims from corporations is important because we have to police the marketplace to make sure it's
00:10:22.860 competitive to make sure it's fair and to make sure our policies aren't overly advantaging the big
00:10:27.940 companies over the smaller ones yeah you know it's interesting how you phrase that in protecting the free
00:10:33.920 market by uh being skeptical of of these companies and i think the same thing is true of something like
00:10:42.920 the first amendment there are people who say okay we don't want to interfere at all in big tech and in
00:10:48.580 corporate america because they are private companies that are free to do and say the things that they
00:10:53.020 want to do if they want to censor if they want to discriminate you know against certain political views
00:10:57.740 that's fine but at a certain point the first amendment kind of becomes moot if our our only cultural
00:11:05.400 megaphones are saying you know this is the only right way to think this is the only right thing that
00:11:10.700 we are going to allow you to say these are the only books that we're going to distribute and you know
00:11:15.820 this is the only viewpoint that we will sell and that we will allow you to to consume and so
00:11:22.940 there almost is a need for governments to interfere on behalf of the first amendment because like i said
00:11:31.200 the first amendment doesn't really matter if you have a constitutional right to free speech
00:11:35.100 uh if your free speech isn't protected by the corporations and the people that are controlling
00:11:41.760 our means of information is that is that a correct concern yeah it's funny when we think about
00:11:48.640 you know this first amendment discussion as it relates to big tech it's always binary people
00:11:53.240 say well it's their first amendment right and so that's the end of the story but it's not that at
00:11:58.460 all because as you point out our first amendment rights are also sort of have are interplaying in
00:12:04.300 this space and you think about i call these the network effects of the big platforms right the content
00:12:09.780 moderation practices they engage in which is which is essentially i'm going to amplify this content
00:12:13.860 suppress other content doesn't exist in a vacuum and because these companies are so dominant it has
00:12:20.380 you know trickle down effects that impact independent thought you know free minds market access there's
00:12:26.000 a ton of other stuff that's going on downstream from these companies exercising you know what is their
00:12:32.400 first amendment right but i also think it ignores the fact that the companies are exercising their first
00:12:38.460 amendment right in a privileged manner right section 230 which is the provision of law that grants all
00:12:44.400 these big type of companies you know all kinds of immunities for content posted on their site but also the
00:12:49.540 ability to take down content without recourse that is a privilege afforded to them by the law that other
00:12:55.920 outlets don't have newspapers don't have that movie studios don't have that right other for other
00:13:01.080 first amendment actors are not protected in that way so it's not merely a question of i'm these companies
00:13:06.980 are just exercising their first amendment it's there's a whole lot of context that that statement
00:13:11.940 has to be couched in to fully understand you know both the practicality and the sort of magnitude of
00:13:18.140 the issue that we're dealing with do you think there are some republican lawmakers that are waking up to
00:13:22.560 this i mean it seems like people like ted cruz and josh hawley have at least attempted to go after
00:13:28.260 these companies and maybe it's because they're younger than some of the other lawmakers they they seem to
00:13:34.500 understand what's going on a little bit more do you think those those efforts will ultimately make any
00:13:41.200 difference i think that what josh hawley and ted cruz have done is really is helpful um and i think
00:13:48.940 everybody's sorting out right now the best way to go about addressing what the type of problem that we've
00:13:54.820 never seen before we've never seen corporations have this much control over our thought yeah our speech
00:14:00.540 you know over you know what we can buy and what we can say and who can say it and so i think they're
00:14:05.680 all sort of a little bit struggling with how to address that without to the point that you raised
00:14:09.600 earlier growing the government but this is the legislative process this is it's iterative right
00:14:14.280 people just don't wake up with the perfect solution yeah you sort of work toward it and i think that's the
00:14:19.060 effort that they're engaged in but there's a very clear line between what republicans want to do and
00:14:24.040 what democrats want to do because when you listen to democrats talk about addressing these tech companies
00:14:28.020 you know they they want to censor all kinds of speech any speech they disagree with they want
00:14:32.340 removed and republicans by and large take the opposite approach that says no the answer to bad
00:14:37.160 speech is not less it's more speech and so i think that they are trying to you know find the best way to
00:14:44.060 address that question and again it a lot of them focus on section 230 reform i think that they should
00:14:50.320 also be focused on antitrust enforcement because i think a lot of these speech concerns are downstream
00:14:56.000 from the fact that there's only three major platforms in america that control kind of how
00:15:01.120 our speech and what we can see and that's facebook google and twitter yeah that's a problem and i think
00:15:06.360 we should be more curious as to why there's only three major platforms right right and it does seem
00:15:11.480 like you said that there are some lawmakers now who are at least curious about that i think that
00:15:16.940 you know some lawmakers just don't understand not to be condescending but they don't really
00:15:21.700 understand social media it's hard for them maybe to think about how this really does have an effect
00:15:28.000 on working class families like how does this really affect the populace but as you've explained so well
00:15:33.820 it does um i want to go through some of the examples in this article that you wrote for american
00:15:39.100 greatness that some of them i didn't know about i had seen some murmurings about mailchimp but i didn't
00:15:45.200 realize what it was about they banned the northern virginia tea party from its platform for trying to
00:15:50.800 organize a recount rally in support of president trump uh substack has been attacked by the
00:15:56.580 columbia journalism review you said uh for perpet quote perpetuating racism for platforming people like
00:16:03.920 andrew sullivan and glenn greenwald a video game website paper rock shotgun fired one of its uh
00:16:11.540 contributing writers banned them for saying that hey maybe we should have a debate about whether or not
00:16:17.960 biological males should be competing against women in sports not even saying whether or not it should
00:16:24.520 you know whether or not it's good or bad but just saying there should be a debate he was banned
00:16:28.920 abby al schreier as we talked about earlier her book was taken from distribution because of a random
00:16:34.280 person with 1200 followers complaining about it uh to target and then the american civil liberties union
00:16:40.980 you noted said yes taking taking away books is actually a good a good thing for a democratic
00:16:47.220 society amazon recently banned books contradicting the popular narrative about covid and a documentary
00:16:53.140 from shelby steel um and then citibank will not process some gun sales by their own customers
00:17:00.100 wells fargo jp morgan chase us bank will no longer provide services to the private prison industry and
00:17:06.580 the list goes on and on laura loomer who you know neither of us politically align with but her story i mean
00:17:13.900 what's happened to her is crazy uh how she's been deplatformed from twitter periscope facebook instagram
00:17:19.660 medium gofundme venmo mgm resorts paypal lyft uber i mean that is that is crazy and you make this point
00:17:26.540 which i think is a great point that yes we can say that well she really is bad like we really don't agree
00:17:32.940 with her so it's fine but the window moves over and over more and more to where saying hey you know
00:17:40.460 what i think biology matters and you know i'm a christian so i have a biblical view of marriage well
00:17:45.980 that is going to be one day seen as extreme and worthy of basically exiling uh from polite society so
00:17:55.100 i just wanted to list those examples that you gave for anyone who's listening thinking okay you know that's
00:18:00.780 not really happening that's just in the imagination of conservatives that they're being discriminated
00:18:05.980 against do you fear that we are going to see this more and more and that that line will keep moving
00:18:14.140 towards the center well i think that's the lesson of the last five or six years is that that line
00:18:20.220 is moving and it's moving incredibly fast and you know going back to sort of my libertarian roots this
00:18:27.660 should scare anyone who cares about liberty because this isn't the government enforcing its views
00:18:33.660 on you this is the collusion of woke corporate power that has the ability to cut you off from from
00:18:39.900 all mechanisms of society you know again i don't raise the laura loomer example because i endorse her
00:18:44.700 views i raise it because it's instructive she used to be an outlier she's not anymore she's almost
00:18:50.140 a warning for how easily all of these corporations can cut you off from doing business you know with
00:18:55.740 society and i think it's it's not just a matter of well just build your own right that's what we've
00:19:01.100 heard for the last decade right if you don't like google build your own google if you don't like your
00:19:04.540 bank switch to another but increasingly all of these corporations are on the same page about you know
00:19:11.340 their sort of progressive agenda and will shut you down from having a not even an opposing view but
00:19:18.060 even suggesting that there are opposing views right this i think is one of the biggest threats to
00:19:22.780 conservatives conservatives conservatives in the culture that we're not talking about and we need
00:19:26.940 to be yeah i think you're absolutely right and i think the and this you know would have been my
00:19:33.020 traditional response to that hey the market corrects itself and at the end of the day these
00:19:40.460 companies care about green and so they're not going to ostracize you know half of their customer base but
00:19:46.620 what we see continually is that they very much will who they're kowtowing to and these social justice
00:19:52.700 statements and supporting even blm and organizations like that is a very small percentage of the country
00:19:59.500 i believe that in general we're still a center right country even with joe biden winning i think that
00:20:05.980 actually shows that we are still center right of center most of the populace why don't companies care
00:20:12.620 about ostracizing what is presumably the largest portion of their customer base target amazon probably
00:20:21.580 most of the people that use those services aren't in line with a lot of the radical left views and
00:20:28.540 organizations that they are endorsing i mean if these are really capitalist uh you know companies who
00:20:35.100 just care about money why are they okay with you know sacrificing or offending so many of their
00:20:40.940 customers who don't align with them well i think there are two reasons for this the first is that
00:20:46.460 when it comes to the really big corporations like amazon even target um google they know that their
00:20:52.620 customers don't have anywhere else to go i mean amazon it's is it's one of its kind right we can start
00:20:58.220 ordering online just from the retailers themselves but it's such a convenient fact of life for so many
00:21:03.820 people that they're not i mean republicans are notoriously bad at boycotts yeah we talk about it
00:21:09.020 right we just keep shopping yeah so they know they're not going to lose us because we're a
00:21:12.380 captured audience but i think the second fact is that again republicans will not republicans in
00:21:19.260 washington will not use political power against these companies and again i'm not speaking about
00:21:23.980 constructing new bureaucracies to punish specific corporations i'm talking about the fact that these
00:21:28.220 companies know republicans will always line up to cut their corporate tax rate they will line up to
00:21:33.100 give them every advantage possible because you know that we believe they in the free market
00:21:37.500 um and so they will never face a penalty politically or at you know in their wallets and so they keep
00:21:43.740 doing what they want now democrats on the other hand will punish them politically and that's why i
00:21:47.900 think you see a lot of these corporations cozying up to democrats you're seeing big tech now you know
00:21:53.180 get hired by joe biden with all these advisors that formerly worked for facebook they're not they're
00:21:59.020 more scared of democrats than they are of republicans because democrats are the party that will use political
00:22:03.820 power and republicans will just keep cutting corporate tax rates no questions asked so for
00:22:10.140 individuals just your average person who is frustrated by this but feels exactly what you
00:22:16.540 just explained that okay i want to take my business elsewhere my husband and i for example have said okay
00:22:22.220 we gotta stop shopping at amazon especially during this you know during this lockdown period where so much
00:22:28.860 capital has been shifted to these big businesses away from small businesses we want to do we want
00:22:33.660 to do our part to support small businesses and it's sad to say i mean it's shameful to say that
00:22:39.820 convenience so often wins us over that our account is already set up our credit card information is
00:22:47.100 already in there our address is already in there and we know that we're going to be able to find
00:22:52.140 whatever we need but what does the individual do who doesn't want to support these big businesses or
00:23:01.020 the corporations that truly resent us and resent our way of life and resent our views what what power do we
00:23:08.620 have well i don't underestimate you know walking the walk um i was a dedicated amazon purchaser until i
00:23:17.340 actually started looking into amazon and it is not easy but i think you know we as consumers have to
00:23:23.260 take that next step but i think the difference is i don't see that as completely solving the problem
00:23:28.780 i think in addition to doing those steps we also have to you know push our lawmakers to stop
00:23:33.980 politically advantaging these companies at every possible opportunity you know they have done it they
00:23:39.420 have advantaged these companies so much that it actually limits our consumer choice for instance i also
00:23:44.700 think google is an infamously bad company i don't support the practices it engages in i don't want
00:23:50.140 to use google but because of the policy choices our lawmakers have made i cannot opt out of google google's
00:23:56.700 on every app i use on my phone you know it tracks me across the web through its digital advertising i'm
00:24:02.140 using google whether i want to or not and so i think we have to push on our lawmakers to say no
00:24:06.860 you've advantaged these corporations above my consumer choice in many ways above small businesses
00:24:11.740 focus um and you've done so thoughtlessly you know without sort of critical thinking that i think
00:24:17.180 would be necessary so whether it's you know transfer politicians transferring their focus away from big
00:24:23.500 the big corporations and on the small business or on to god forbid pro-life issues or you know family
00:24:29.020 economic issues or things like that or it's you know not reflexively supporting business every time
00:24:34.780 it comes with its handout i think that could go a long way one thing that i was happy to see is that
00:24:40.860 overwhelmingly at least in the house the um gosh i forgot the title of the bill but it was basically
00:24:47.740 saying look we're not gonna we're not going to be taking products that are created by uh
00:24:53.580 by uh the uighur muslims that are in these chinese concentration camps which i thought was a great thing
00:24:59.500 and the people who voted against it were libertarians and i understand the argument that okay we're not
00:25:06.060 going to tell businesses what they can and can't do but do you think that that kind of form of
00:25:12.620 libertarianism do you think that that is dying i personally when i look at something like that i
00:25:18.780 think it i think it needs to some things have to be restricted that some things have to be done
00:25:23.500 in order to protect liberties would you agree with that yeah i do and i think it's it's a sort of free
00:25:29.580 market fundamentalism that exists within some libertarians who you know prize the market above
00:25:35.500 it's it's a reductive way of looking at the market right which is to say the transaction of goods is
00:25:39.820 all that matters when in reality we know it doesn't and conservatives have been saying this for
00:25:43.420 generations which is the market is a part of our social order and it is incumbent on our our self
00:25:48.860 government so our we the people acting through our representatives to say this is acceptable and this
00:25:54.380 is not and that is oftentimes not a question of economics it's a question of what we as a
00:25:59.020 people cherish you know what what principles we prize in our society and that vote on uyghur muslim
00:26:05.660 slave labor was exactly that it was us as a country saying there's some things that are bigger than the
00:26:11.820 market there's some things that are bigger than corporate profits and the stock market and that is
00:26:16.140 you know human dignity uh and that is something that we as a country want to stand for and i wonder if
00:26:21.900 that vote which was so largely bipartisan and if you look at the people who sponsored the bill you've got
00:26:26.220 ilhan omar and aoc and you've also got republicans who are sponsoring the bill and i was really happy to see that i wonder
00:26:32.860 in a time where it truly feels like we are living in two different realities sometimes on the right and the left
00:26:39.020 um i wonder if this feeling that hey the elites and these people who are giving into corporations
00:26:46.940 they're not for the working class they're not for the common good of america let's fight against that i
00:26:53.580 wonder if that is an issue that can bring together the right and the left we're not going to come together
00:26:58.380 obviously on a lot but you do wonder if there is this bipartisan populism that seems to be bubbling up
00:27:06.140 and would be able to bring the two sides together at least when it comes to this because the left also says
00:27:12.140 they hate these big corporations doesn't even matter what their social views are and that they
00:27:16.860 vouch for black lives matter they also say that they they don't like them and then the right there
00:27:21.980 are now people on the right saying hey hey these corporations hate my way of life they hate my views
00:27:27.260 it feels like they hate me and i don't feel free living under this corporatist oligarchy is there a way
00:27:33.420 for us to come together and to fight against that do you foresee that happening so that was a really
00:27:39.580 interesting development in the trump era is that you did start to see that sort of populist left and a
00:27:45.180 populist right coalesce on certain issues i am actually hopeful that it that it can on on it
00:27:52.540 certain issues we're never going to agree on the sort of the broad sort of cultural issues i think but
00:27:58.460 on case-by-case basis when it comes to addressing corporate power i think there are actually broad areas
00:28:04.380 of agreement that are starting to generate um it's a question of whether our leaders i think
00:28:09.180 politically will allow us to agree uh because i think a lot of this partisanship is driven from
00:28:14.860 our top-down leadership who doesn't want to give an inch you know doesn't want to be seen as agreeing
00:28:19.180 with the other side on anything right and it's going to be difficult because even if both the right and
00:28:24.060 the left agree that some regulation and some whipping into shape is in order when it comes to big tech
00:28:30.940 which i think there is some agreement there there is such a disparate view of what that should look like
00:28:37.820 i mean i think the left would very much like to say yeah look you can't have conservative views on
00:28:42.780 on these platforms because that's harmful and that you know causes violence or or whatever it is well
00:28:49.180 that's not how the right views reining in the power of big tech and so both sides want to reign in these
00:28:56.780 big companies but in very different ways so i think you're right i think it would be it's going to be
00:29:02.700 interesting to see um if the right and the left can come together on this issue how they hash out
00:29:09.100 those differences of of what it actually what it actually looks like um can you give me just to end
00:29:17.580 on a kind of optimistic picture of people who are feeling like you know i'm powerless here and i really
00:29:24.060 feel like my freedoms are being taken from me every direction that i look i thought i could trust in the
00:29:28.940 free market and now it's obvious that i can't do you have optimism for the future and can things change
00:29:37.580 for the better in the way of liberty you know one thing i found really positive about the 2020 election
00:29:46.380 was that there was a big rejection i felt of this sort of woke identity politics narrative the fact that
00:29:53.900 you know trump made gains with minority voters across the board after democrats in a mainstream
00:29:59.740 media for four years told them trump was hitler and hated them i think speaks to a broad rejection in
00:30:06.140 the country of these woke narratives that these corporations are embracing now i'm i i think we need
00:30:12.940 to act quickly but i'm hopeful that there is something of a groundswell of support you know for members
00:30:18.460 of congress to say no you know what i'm not prioritizing corporations that you know so this
00:30:23.660 kind of divisiveness um and insanity you know in america so i actually think that americans do prize their
00:30:31.100 liberty from corporations and from the government much more broadly than sometimes i think people in
00:30:35.580 washington give them credit for and that does give me hope um that this will be reflected in our
00:30:42.140 policies in the next couple of years i agree i i hope so anyway um can you tell everyone where they
00:30:48.540 can find you so you can find uh conservative partnership online at conservative partnership
00:30:54.700 dot org and i post all of my essays on twitter at rachel bovard thank you so much rachel i really
00:31:00.780 appreciate you taking the time to talk to us my pleasure
00:31:04.060 okay guys hope you enjoyed that conversation there was one thing that i wanted to say that i
00:31:12.940 didn't get to say one part of corporate america that just bothers me so much in addition to the
00:31:18.540 censorship in addition to uh the lopsided discrimination against people that hold views
00:31:25.020 and purport views that they don't like is that while they are doing that in the name of virtue they're
00:31:29.500 saying look we're discriminating against these people because we're so virtuous and we're on the right
00:31:33.500 side of history here in america most of them are making billions of dollars not just from the chinese
00:31:38.460 communist party which is arguably the most corrupt regime in the world right up there with the terrorist
00:31:45.260 regimes in the middle east but they are also depending on slave labor like for example apple a left-leaning
00:31:53.740 company that i think in general sometimes does a pretty good job of not discriminating but you know
00:31:59.900 they're this woke corporation that uh says that they are virtuous by espousing these left-wing views
00:32:08.220 they actually lobbied against the bill that was passed in the house to say hey we are not going we're not
00:32:15.260 going to take these products that are created by slave labor in these uyghur concentration camps in china
00:32:23.180 uh the if you don't know the there are about a million uyghur muslims in concentration camps that
00:32:29.340 are being used as slave labor the organs are being harvested they're being tortured they're being maimed
00:32:34.220 they're being killed uh because of their religion because of their faith and there are companies here in the
00:32:41.660 united states using the slave labor in those concentration camps to get cheap products so they can have a
00:32:47.180 big profit margin and apparently even though apple denies this uh they are apple is actually benefiting
00:32:55.340 from that and yet they want to come here and pretend like they are virtuous there are so many companies
00:33:00.460 like that same thing with the nba here saying we're fighting for racial justice we're fighting for equality
00:33:06.540 we're fighting for all of these good things meanwhile they are making billions of dollars from the
00:33:11.500 regime that spies on its own citizens that doesn't allow allow free speech that doesn't allow religious
00:33:17.580 liberty uh that has uh engaged in intellectual property theft has enslaved their own people has
00:33:27.900 tortured their own people has arbitrarily imprisoned their own people has taken away uh taken away the
00:33:32.940 liberties of their own people and yet companies here kowtow to them while pretending to be social justice
00:33:38.700 advocates here and it's because they know that they can get away with making money from terroristic
00:33:44.380 evil regimes uh if they play it right in the united states because they know that the people who have
00:33:50.540 cultural power in the united states are the left so if they repeat the right talking points say the right
00:33:55.260 things partner with black lives matter they can do all their evil sketchy business with countries uh like
00:34:02.460 china and the and the ccp and they're still going to be fine here that you know we on
00:34:08.540 the right that we can say whatever we want we can complain however we want to that it's not really
00:34:14.060 going to matter because they've got the virtue points here in the united states uh with the leftist
00:34:19.820 cultural powers that be and so it doesn't it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what other behavior they
00:34:25.740 have throughout the world and so um if those are the people that hate you and hate your views and
00:34:32.460 are discriminating against you while it's terrible and while it's dangerous and while it's
00:34:37.260 absolutely awful and it's scary in a lot of ways um i would say that that's okay that's a good that's
00:34:43.020 a good at least in god's eyes that's a good enemy to have judgment is not going to be light for the
00:34:49.420 people who allow these policies and uh this hypocrisy to go on okay that's all i wanted to say i will be back
00:34:57.820 here on wednesday