Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 28, 2021


Ep 411 ｜ Understanding Biden's Foreign Policy ｜ Guest： Rebeccah Heinrichs


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

184.02368

Word Count

8,000

Sentence Count

375

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.
00:00:11.260 Today I am talking to Rebecca Heinrichs about foreign policy and in particular foreign policy
00:00:17.680 as it relates to China, what we need to be thinking about, what we need to know, what
00:00:22.140 we need to be concerned about.
00:00:23.700 And we're going to kind of look at the strategy of the Trump administration versus the projected
00:00:31.620 strategy of the Biden administration, kind of compare and contrast those two things, why
00:00:37.380 we have reason for optimism, why we also have some reasons for concern.
00:00:41.440 And then she also gives some practical advice of what we can be doing as people and as families
00:00:45.760 to protect ourselves and to ensure that American values, which we believe are good, are perpetuated
00:00:53.680 and are propelled into the next generation.
00:00:56.340 So really excited for you to listen to this very informative conversation with Rebecca.
00:01:01.840 Here she is.
00:01:07.260 Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me.
00:01:09.980 Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do?
00:01:13.660 Sure.
00:01:14.160 My name is Rebecca Heinrichs.
00:01:15.600 I'm a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, which is a think tank in Washington, D.C.
00:01:20.320 And I specialize in international relations, national security.
00:01:25.800 And so I do all kinds of research and writing on those subjects.
00:01:29.120 And I'm a mom and a wife and I have five children.
00:01:32.620 Yes.
00:01:32.880 And I love following you on Instagram.
00:01:34.640 You're literally one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram because your family is
00:01:39.300 so precious.
00:01:41.060 Each of your each of your children is just beautiful.
00:01:44.380 And I just love following along in your life and all of the adventures that you guys are
00:01:49.960 on.
00:01:50.260 Can you tell us how you got into what you do now and how you how you balance that your
00:01:57.660 work plus being a mom of five awesome kids?
00:02:01.520 Sure.
00:02:01.780 Well, you know, I I studied history and political science at the Ashbrook Center.
00:02:07.400 It's a political science program at Ashland University in Ohio from a small town in Ohio.
00:02:11.660 And I I'd always been interested in politics generally and started to gravitate towards
00:02:17.460 national security issues.
00:02:18.920 But then I was a freshman in college when 9-11 happened.
00:02:22.320 And like a lot of people my age at that time, it was formative.
00:02:28.120 And, you know, I I I was studying.
00:02:30.920 I grew up in a patriotic home.
00:02:33.640 Parents very interested in current events.
00:02:35.680 And and but I think it was, you know, at Ashbrook, whenever I was really learning about
00:02:40.120 the meaning of America and what the American founding meant, what it what it what our country
00:02:44.320 really is and why it is so worthy of our love and affection.
00:02:47.980 And then at the same time, September 11th happened.
00:02:51.400 It was those two things that were especially formative for me.
00:02:54.600 And I decided to pursue a career in rather I don't even like the word career, but decided
00:02:59.640 to pursue just continue to work in the field of national security.
00:03:03.120 And, you know, one thing led to another.
00:03:04.280 I didn't really plan on being exactly here then.
00:03:06.780 I just took one opportunity as as they came before me.
00:03:10.120 Met my husband working on Capitol Hill.
00:03:12.480 He works in national security policy, too, and then had our first child in 2009.
00:03:19.020 And then it was at that time that I decided, you know, I was working for a congressman on
00:03:23.640 Capitol Hill and decided it was taking too much of my time and away from my new baby who
00:03:29.600 crazy about.
00:03:30.640 And so I decided to file an LLC and then see if I can continue writing and researching
00:03:37.020 from my home and from different think tanks and continue my scholarly work while having
00:03:42.660 more control over my schedule and my calendar.
00:03:44.600 And so I had my first little baby, little girl, and then five babies later, we've got three
00:03:49.920 daughters and two sons.
00:03:51.620 Yeah.
00:03:52.020 Yeah.
00:03:52.440 That's amazing.
00:03:53.380 Well, I really appreciate the work that you do.
00:03:55.340 Even just following you on Twitter, you always add clarity to the conversation of what can be
00:03:59.760 a very confusing and overwhelming conversation for a lot of people.
00:04:03.460 I think we all wish that we knew more about foreign policy and national security for obvious
00:04:08.240 reasons, very big subjects and important subjects.
00:04:11.820 But a lot of us just don't.
00:04:13.540 And so I'm wondering if you can break down for us, if you can compare and contrast in just,
00:04:18.700 you know, simple terms, the foreign policy goals and actual accomplishments from the Trump
00:04:24.140 administration versus what you think that we can probably expect from the foreign policy
00:04:29.620 and national security goals of the Biden administration.
00:04:32.220 Great question.
00:04:34.420 So first of all, I think that one of the reasons people have a hard time staying, you know,
00:04:39.700 up to speed on everything going on in foreign policy, international relations is because
00:04:42.840 we're consumed with all the things that directly impact us on a day to day.
00:04:46.780 And so, you know, that's why moms and dads are busy.
00:04:49.400 You know, they turn on the evening news.
00:04:50.660 It's kind of, you know, they try to keep track of what the biggest threats are, and then
00:04:53.920 they have to go along with, you know, the things that are impacting their kids and what's
00:04:56.900 going on with work and all that kind of stuff.
00:04:59.200 So it's understandable, but we should know that, you know, the Trump administration, I
00:05:05.140 would say one of their best accomplishments, biggest accomplishments, was shepherding the
00:05:09.860 United States through this major change, seismic change in our relationship with China, which is
00:05:16.820 governed by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:05:19.400 Xi Jinping is their leader.
00:05:20.440 And establishing that they are an adversary of the United States.
00:05:25.860 They're not just this economic partner, even, where we just conduct trade with, that they
00:05:31.180 actually pose the greatest threat to Americans and the American way of life over all the different
00:05:37.960 adversaries.
00:05:38.760 And the reason for that is really twofold.
00:05:41.540 And this is why, this is how you rack and stack.
00:05:43.940 What are the biggest and most important threats facing the United States is their ability to do
00:05:50.340 harm and their willingness to do harm.
00:05:52.920 Right.
00:05:52.980 So you can have a country that's really doggedly willing to do harm, but they might not have the
00:05:56.600 Like North Korea, maybe.
00:05:57.720 Exactly.
00:05:58.340 Or even just the terrorist threat.
00:06:00.340 Really bad stuff, but can they do the, can they propose a existential, you know, threat to the
00:06:06.820 United States and their way of life?
00:06:07.980 And the country that stands out above all the other countries, even Russia, which Russia is
00:06:12.180 another very serious threat to the United States and can do great harm, but even above the Russian
00:06:17.380 Federation is the Chinese Communist Party.
00:06:19.280 It's because of their enormous economy and then how they've used that economy to pour into their
00:06:23.460 military and then all the other bad, nefarious stuff that they're doing across multiple fronts
00:06:28.200 to undermine Americans and our security.
00:06:31.440 Yeah.
00:06:32.040 And can you talk about why is that?
00:06:34.520 What some of those threats are?
00:06:35.820 I mean, we know that they're, um, a very large economic power and we know that America
00:06:42.360 has really kind of aided and abetted their economic growth for at least a, I mean, a few
00:06:48.480 decades now.
00:06:50.020 Um, but can you talk about, you know, tangibly what some of those threats are just for people
00:06:54.880 who don't know?
00:06:57.080 So, um, yes.
00:06:59.100 And this has been really the, the, the, the, the fault of, or who deserves the blame for
00:07:04.260 how we got to this mess, um, from the American side.
00:07:07.200 It's really a, a bipartisan problem of government and private sector that have sleepily kind of
00:07:14.180 allowed China's rise over the last multiple decades, ever since Bill Clinton kind of ushered
00:07:20.480 in China's ability to join the WTO to normalize economic relations.
00:07:25.500 And, and this idea was the idea at the time was, and both Republicans and Democrats thought
00:07:30.620 this and obviously big business thought this too, that that as China became richer, that
00:07:36.740 China would liberalize politically their human rights, their business practices, and they
00:07:42.300 wouldn't be, you know, uh, communists.
00:07:45.660 They wouldn't be communists.
00:07:46.580 Yeah.
00:07:46.780 And, and they, and for a while they kind of hid, hid, hid what they were doing, kind
00:07:50.560 of, they, they hid their hand, they bid their time is what they say.
00:07:53.200 And, and as they became stronger, I think they, I think it was like every, every eight years
00:07:57.500 or so, like doubled their economy since 1979 or something just enormous.
00:08:02.280 And so now what they're doing across multiple fronts, they just have all kinds of spies, um,
00:08:08.240 in our academic institutions.
00:08:10.340 I think, uh, FBI director Ray said that, I think it was trying to get the fact exactly right.
00:08:15.160 Um, every 10 hours, the, uh, there's a new China related counterintelligence case that's
00:08:22.440 being opened by the FBI.
00:08:24.080 So right now, I mean, it's just constantly by, um, that that's our biggest, um, espionage
00:08:30.340 economic, what are they doing?
00:08:31.760 Like, what is the spine entail?
00:08:34.160 So they're, so they, they do it in a variety of ways.
00:08:36.700 One of the things that they do is they get buried into these academic institutions or labs.
00:08:40.700 Um, and they just, they, they pretend as though, and because of our generosity and
00:08:45.020 openness, you know, we don't, we don't look sideways at people who are of Chinese ethnicity
00:08:49.600 and think that there's some sort of dual loyalty at all.
00:08:52.500 And so they come here and they work.
00:08:54.360 Um, but the, but the, but the hard truth of the matter is many of these Chinese nationalists
00:08:58.640 have ties to the Chinese communist party.
00:09:00.060 So they're taking scientific research, medical research, and, and, and then they just, um,
00:09:06.660 uh, business, they just take it right back over to the Chinese communist party.
00:09:10.540 Um, and it's not even just that kind of stuff too.
00:09:13.520 It's businesses, our poor businesses.
00:09:14.980 They come in and they do these work with, um, uh, you know, those who still have ties
00:09:20.040 to the Chinese communist party.
00:09:21.280 And then those, those spies go back to, to China and then they patent the, the manufacturing
00:09:27.340 ability over there.
00:09:28.540 And then they just steal all of this intellectual property that are, that belongs to the hard
00:09:33.980 work, blood, sweat, and tears, you know, poured into by, by American companies.
00:09:37.620 And they've done this for years and it's really just the Trump administration that's just kind
00:09:43.420 of ripped the top off of this to expose all the different ways they're spying and stealing
00:09:48.520 through our technology and, and, um, and direct espionage like that.
00:09:53.740 Yeah.
00:09:54.360 And how did the Trump administration do that?
00:09:57.940 Does that have anything to do with the so-called trade war or the tariffs?
00:10:03.460 Um, I mean, that was a huge point of discussion, even just between conservatives, whether or
00:10:08.800 not it was the right thing to do to engage in that kind of, um, adversarial behavior, some
00:10:15.000 would say with China.
00:10:17.140 So I think that the best way to answer this too, cause I got pressed on this all the time
00:10:21.100 whenever I would say, look, look what Donald Trump is doing at these, these great things.
00:10:25.240 I mean, rapid, rapid change towards China.
00:10:28.160 And it's stuff that Democrats, Republicans didn't want to do because of all the money
00:10:31.220 lost and all of the access to, um, the Chinese economy that, that American businesses still
00:10:36.460 wanted.
00:10:37.460 But what it was about Donald Trump that made all of his national security people across,
00:10:44.060 I mean, Secretary Pompeo, his different secretaries of defense, national security advisors, FBI
00:10:48.940 directors, they were all able to make serious changes on all these fronts because of President
00:10:55.640 Trump's kind of populist nationalist team USA Jersey that he wore.
00:11:01.680 And so there, it just, it didn't, it was the trade war.
00:11:04.440 That's, that's kind of the tip of the spear.
00:11:06.500 That's what started saying, you know, you know, started pushing this and saying, I don't
00:11:11.540 believe that the United States should continue to take it on the chin for some sort of greater
00:11:15.700 ideal for, for globalism or, or, you know, we're all just, yeah, it's going to harm
00:11:20.340 American businesses, but in the end, it's going to help the Chinese people.
00:11:23.280 And it's going to help all these other companies and tech companies that benefit from cheap
00:11:27.740 labor in China and all the other disadvantages that the United States has versus China.
00:11:31.800 So it was that brash personality of Donald Trump pushing back and really saying, this
00:11:37.520 isn't good for America on trade.
00:11:40.240 And that kind of broke all these other barriers on all these other issues.
00:11:44.900 And then once the coronavirus pandemic happened, I mean, and, and, and Trump realized how much
00:11:51.580 China was to blame for this, they tabled the trade stuff and then it was game on.
00:11:56.880 I mean, it was sanctions and constant rebukes on all these different fronts and arresting
00:12:01.920 spies much more publicly.
00:12:03.740 And so the rapid fire changes really happened in the last year, building up to the last year.
00:12:10.300 And then it was just a crash of all of this good stuff.
00:12:12.400 I think that makes it very difficult for the Biden administration to completely undo.
00:12:16.560 Well, that's a good thing.
00:12:17.980 Secretary Pompeo was always very clear about the threat of China and the Chinese Communist
00:12:23.920 Party.
00:12:24.380 I think just the other day, we're recording this in January, but just the other day called
00:12:28.320 him like a fear mongering clown or something exaggerating about, or he, they said that he was
00:12:35.460 exaggerating about the Uyghur Muslim treatment that's happening in China.
00:12:40.480 That's something that Secretary Pompeo has talked a lot about that.
00:12:44.100 Unfortunately, it seems like some people in Washington and just large swaths of Americans
00:12:49.240 kind of look away from, of course, I think every decent person would say, yeah, we're
00:12:53.200 against internment camps.
00:12:54.300 We're against slavery.
00:12:55.260 We're against torture.
00:12:56.400 But even so, some people are very slow to criticize the CCP and their practices, either
00:13:03.220 because of money reasons, like you said, we want access to the Chinese economy, or even
00:13:08.060 just, I think, some political correctness is at play there with people thinking that if
00:13:12.660 you criticize the Chinese Communist Party and any practices of the regime, then you're
00:13:17.720 being racist or something like that.
00:13:20.600 And all of that, both of those mentalities inhibit us from taking proper action to kind
00:13:27.360 of to remove our dependence on such a hostile regime and their economy, correct?
00:13:33.220 I think that's exactly right.
00:13:34.680 I think that the more the more Republicans and there's some Democrats that are willing
00:13:39.620 to do it to talk about the underlying ideology that motivates the Chinese Communist Party,
00:13:45.680 this communism, Marxist Leninism.
00:13:47.600 This is something that Secretary Pompeo, as you said, was very eloquent about trying to
00:13:51.600 explain because all countries, there is no there is no amoral void that exists.
00:13:58.100 You know, we all have ideas about what is right and good and in our interests, and it is what
00:14:02.840 animates us.
00:14:03.680 It's what motivates us.
00:14:04.600 Countries are the same way, and regimes, and so the ideology that motivates, animates
00:14:09.180 the regime matters.
00:14:11.140 And that's why these internment camps are, it's so important for us to understand and
00:14:15.420 know what's going on, not just because these poor people, we want to make sure that we're
00:14:19.640 using our, any ability that we have to, to not exasperate the problem and to help, but
00:14:26.280 also because it tells us about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:14:30.640 And it should not surprise us then when a country that has such disregard for human dignity and
00:14:36.720 the way they treat their own people, of course, they're going to have terribly unfair trade
00:14:40.520 practices.
00:14:41.600 Of course, they're going to steal intellectual property.
00:14:43.880 Of course, they're going to do all of these things.
00:14:45.620 They're going to have social credit scores.
00:14:47.020 They don't have some kind of limiting principle.
00:14:49.660 There's no limiting principle, and it's exactly right.
00:14:53.380 And then the world that they want to shape, they want to take the leadership reins from
00:14:56.720 the United States, and then they want to shape the world according to what they believe is
00:15:00.260 right and good.
00:15:00.880 And all of that is to empower Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
00:15:05.220 It's not for all of the reasons that the United States and the other allies and partners
00:15:09.260 that we have in the free world believe that are right and good.
00:15:12.600 And so that's the difference.
00:15:13.460 And so the Democrats, many of them do not like to talk about the ideology.
00:15:17.980 And then as soon as you start talking about those Uyghur camps, those internment camps,
00:15:21.140 then the next question is, well, then why are these American companies investing in the
00:15:25.860 Chinese economy?
00:15:27.180 And if there's no separation between the private sector, if there is no private sector, and
00:15:31.760 there's no separation between civilian work and military work, their civ-mil fusion doctrine,
00:15:37.940 you know, what we really need to have a gut check about how much we are actually responsible
00:15:43.640 and culpable, these American companies, for these massive internment camps.
00:15:48.560 And it's really stunning how quickly some of these corporations and sports organizations
00:15:54.080 are willing to sell out their own fellow Americans in order to work with China.
00:15:59.840 Even through some of the political messaging of these organizations, they are more than willing
00:16:04.280 to take a knee, literally and figuratively, to social justice causes here and say that
00:16:09.060 people who voted for Donald Trump are terrible and, you know, they believe they're on the
00:16:14.040 right side of history for being on the side of Black Lives Matter and things like that here.
00:16:18.820 At the same time, actively profiting off of a regime whose economy is built on slave labor
00:16:27.400 in large part.
00:16:29.020 And they can say, you know, I don't have a right to criticize that country.
00:16:33.320 I don't live there.
00:16:34.960 I'm, you know, have to criticize my own country because I live in America.
00:16:39.320 But if you're purposely and actively partnering with that regime, well, that becomes part of
00:16:45.780 your moral jurisdiction now.
00:16:47.920 And you are responsible for it.
00:16:49.600 And I think most Americans, they don't know.
00:16:52.360 They don't care.
00:16:53.340 We see it as something that is far off, not really a threat to us.
00:16:58.400 And I think that's I think that's a mistake, don't you?
00:17:02.580 It's definitely a mistake.
00:17:03.780 And I think it's it's even more than a mistake in terms of the moral problems that you just
00:17:08.700 raised, which are legion.
00:17:10.260 I mean, you do not have the moral authority to talk about, you know, certain issues of social
00:17:16.720 injustice when you are blatantly, flagrantly willing to choose not to, for instance, condemn
00:17:24.540 the Uyghur internment camps.
00:17:26.820 You know, there has been any time there is like somebody who works for one of these big
00:17:31.720 professional sports teams, makes a comment about that, and they're immediately asked to
00:17:36.300 apologize or to no longer discuss that you think of LeBron James or whoever the high profile
00:17:41.180 person is, and they're willing to look away.
00:17:43.220 I mean, they're doing that because the Chinese Communist Party has directed that, and then
00:17:47.800 the company then puts pressure on those Americans.
00:17:51.260 And so or even like a censorship in higher education, where they take all of this money
00:17:55.920 from the Chinese Communist Party with only, you know, they're on the condition that they're
00:18:02.240 not allowed talking about Tiananmen Square.
00:18:04.020 They're not allowed talking about the Tibetans.
00:18:05.960 They're not allowed to talk about all these other horrible crimes.
00:18:08.720 Yeah.
00:18:08.840 They're not allowed to talk about Hong Kong and how the Chinese Communist Party is just
00:18:12.840 overrunning these freedom-loving people in Hong Kong.
00:18:16.580 And so it really kind of strikes to the heart of what China is up to.
00:18:22.300 And then they're not satisfied with merely oppressing their own people.
00:18:27.100 They really are trying to shape the world in ways that are conducive to helping them gain
00:18:33.540 prestige and influence.
00:18:35.660 And so if Americans are willing to be censored, I mean, that's why I get worried even just
00:18:42.060 on small things.
00:18:42.940 You know, somebody on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media thing, you know,
00:18:48.380 says something.
00:18:49.120 We should all be very pro-free speech and freedom of expression because I call it our
00:18:54.320 soft middle.
00:18:55.440 The more tolerant we are of censorship at home, the more susceptible we are to the kinds of
00:19:01.680 censorship that the Chinese Communist Party wants to enforce on the United States to harm
00:19:07.200 us and to help them.
00:19:08.640 Yep.
00:19:08.960 And especially when it's done in the name of public safety.
00:19:13.260 I mean, we believe that Twitter and Facebook should have enforceable rules, but we want them
00:19:18.960 to be fair.
00:19:19.820 We don't want them to be politically biased.
00:19:21.600 We want them to be non-arbitrarily applied.
00:19:24.880 And we also want there to be a narrow definition of what incitement of violence looks like and
00:19:31.260 the things that they are actually able to enforce.
00:19:36.480 Because when we see so much bias in the censorship process on social media, that's when things get
00:19:42.080 really scary for a lot of people.
00:19:44.320 But you see people, in particular on the left, defending it by saying, well, this is for public
00:19:48.860 safety.
00:19:49.720 This is, you know, that was fascist propaganda that that conservative was spreading.
00:19:53.720 So it was good that it was taken down.
00:19:55.400 It just reminds me, and the cancel culture that's also involved in all of that, it reminds
00:20:00.380 me very much of the cultural revolution in China several decades ago of these shaming,
00:20:08.500 or what was it called?
00:20:09.700 Shaming or struggle sessions is what it was called, where publicly they would bring someone
00:20:14.080 into the public arena, into the street, publicly shame them, torture them, murder them, or
00:20:18.880 just yell at them.
00:20:19.680 There's pictures of, you know, their fellow countrymen pointing in their face and yelling
00:20:24.560 at them.
00:20:24.940 And this was all under the guise of public safety.
00:20:27.020 This was all under the guise of making sure that they got rid of this person committing
00:20:31.740 wrong think in Orwellian terms.
00:20:34.440 And you see the same kind of thing happening here.
00:20:39.440 And for those people who say, well, you know, the First Amendment is still intact.
00:20:42.400 You know, politically, you're still free.
00:20:44.740 But all of these communist regimes rose to power, not on political revolutions first, but
00:20:49.600 on cultural revolutions.
00:20:51.260 So to your point, if people are able to just in our private lives call for the cancellation
00:20:56.900 and the life ruining of people and the censorship of people that we just disagree with, you are
00:21:02.280 creating an environment here that is ripe for the same kind of totalitarian takeover that
00:21:09.380 we've seen, not just in China, but around the world.
00:21:11.860 Do you agree with that?
00:21:12.840 Or am I being dramatic?
00:21:14.520 No, I think that that's right.
00:21:15.880 And again, you know, it's a takeover.
00:21:18.240 It allows for greater control.
00:21:21.160 And it doesn't have to be government control.
00:21:22.920 This is something that conservatives have been talking about now for the last several
00:21:25.700 years during the Trump administration.
00:21:27.120 It can be big tech.
00:21:28.060 Who has the ability to control information, the flow of information, and then with that
00:21:35.000 information, control what people are seeing, what they're not seeing, and then shaming
00:21:39.320 people or stigmatizing people who have, as you said, wrong think.
00:21:44.440 Right now we're seeing it with conservatives.
00:21:46.400 How quickly we went from, you know, some of these, the rioters on January 6th who went from
00:21:52.400 protesters to rioters to insurrectionists to terrorists, and now it's people who voted
00:21:58.160 for Donald Trump might also have terrorist sympathies or extremist sympathies.
00:22:01.820 And so you can see that this is a very, very slippery slope.
00:22:05.000 Well, if this is how you stigmatize people and then the people who are able to harm those
00:22:10.040 people doesn't have to be the government.
00:22:11.300 Again, like I said, it can be big tech.
00:22:12.720 And if big tech is actually working with and sympathetic towards or wants that access
00:22:17.820 to the Chinese market, you know, how much is the Chinese Communist Party the one that
00:22:23.840 is influencing the flow of information in the United States?
00:22:27.540 Totally.
00:22:27.820 And the second point I think is really critical, especially for your young listeners too, is,
00:22:34.440 you know, China also, you think about all these apps that we use, you know, TikTok became
00:22:39.040 something that was really talked about a lot during the Trump administration because they
00:22:42.780 were really looking at ending TikTok in the United States.
00:22:45.800 And it's because China will also, if we don't care about our own, you know, information
00:22:52.380 being stolen, our day-to-day life, you know, Americans used to care about that stuff.
00:22:56.020 It would just kind of, just even the don't tread on me and me, or, you know, would just
00:22:59.240 say, I don't want my data stolen.
00:23:00.860 I don't want my information about where I go and all my facial recognition taken by our
00:23:06.220 government, but certainly not by an enemy government, by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:23:10.640 But that's what they do.
00:23:11.780 The Chinese Communist Party will take all of that data.
00:23:13.880 It goes directly into, you know, their algorithms, and they use it for artificial intelligence,
00:23:20.420 and they can compile dossiers.
00:23:22.860 You might be 19 years old and think that what you're doing isn't going to affect you or
00:23:26.600 embarrass you in 10, 15, 20 years when you're looking for a job.
00:23:30.460 But just think about that the Chinese Communist Party can have all that and is keeping a dossier
00:23:34.960 on you, just like what they do for their own people, and how that can impact other things
00:23:39.440 in the future.
00:23:39.980 So it is very troubling, and we need to have not just Republicans, but Democrats, too,
00:23:46.980 over many, many years talking about this because it's going to require changes on the part of
00:23:51.680 the American people, not just the government, to do what we need to do to protect the United
00:23:56.580 States and our way of life against China in particular.
00:23:59.180 I think one thing that's going to make that difficult is that when you kind of hear some
00:24:05.380 of the things coming from academia and then repeated by, in particular, I would say, some
00:24:11.780 leftists in America, it sounds so similar to the propaganda that we've heard really from
00:24:18.640 the past 100 years in Soviet Russia about America and American imperialists and the selfishness
00:24:25.060 of capitalism and the evils of the United States.
00:24:27.720 I read a book about North Korea about a year ago now, where you read the propaganda that these
00:24:35.540 young children were learning in school about America and about Japan, too.
00:24:41.020 The evil imperialists, the selfishness of capitalism, really saying that all oppression and all poverty,
00:24:47.720 not just in North Korea, but in the world, is because of the selfishness of Americans.
00:24:52.060 And these eventual dissidents realized after they left North Korea that America
00:24:56.800 had been sending foreign aid to North Korea for a very long time and it never got to the
00:25:02.240 people.
00:25:02.620 So these are lies.
00:25:04.280 This is propaganda that I don't know if it's directly through the Chinese Communist Party,
00:25:09.060 but has absolutely infiltrated our public school system, has infiltrated academia, has
00:25:14.300 infiltrated diversity and inclusion trainings, corporate trainings, has infiltrated just our
00:25:20.300 public dialogue.
00:25:21.300 And if China and these foreign regimes can make us hate ourselves, as so many unfortunately
00:25:27.900 seem to in America, then that means we're ripe for the taking, right?
00:25:32.820 It does.
00:25:33.500 Well, it doesn't even have to come from China in terms of influencing this.
00:25:38.680 It can just be these liberal intellectuals who have gotten to the point where they're teaching,
00:25:44.520 you know, you've talked a lot about on your show, the 1619 Project, that really the American
00:25:49.280 founding wasn't 76, the, you know, where the meaning and the ideology, the underpinnings
00:25:54.440 of the American regime is the belief that we're all created equal before God and that we all
00:26:01.080 have inherent dignity.
00:26:02.500 And it's in that, you know, we give government, our rights come from God and we give government
00:26:08.660 the ability to protect us and they're supposed to defend those rights.
00:26:11.780 And that's how Americans think, and that's how we used to teach it in schools.
00:26:15.800 And now it's this new thinking pushed by this, you know, the intellectuals from the
00:26:23.000 left, from higher education, that actually our founding was inherently flawed, it was
00:26:26.880 inherently racist, and it was terrible.
00:26:30.020 And so really, the United States doesn't really have any moral standing.
00:26:32.960 We need to completely remake ourselves because the founding was flawed and it was terrible
00:26:37.180 and bad.
00:26:37.580 And if you have enough Americans who believe that and who don't understand all of these
00:26:43.960 things that make America unique and exceptional, then whenever I go to them or people go to
00:26:48.560 them and they say, listen, you know, the Chinese Communist Party wants to replace all these great
00:26:52.960 things about America with this, these things that, that, that, that communism values.
00:26:57.480 But then you have all of these college students who are like, but I like those things that
00:27:00.320 the communists value.
00:27:01.440 Communism is great.
00:27:02.300 What's wrong with that?
00:27:03.480 How do you, we don't have any antibodies.
00:27:04.960 We don't have any national antibodies to push this stuff back.
00:27:08.420 And so, um, that's why, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about the external threat
00:27:12.500 coming from China, but then the internal threat where we, we need to make sure that we have
00:27:16.780 a revival of truly good American patriotism that is, um, is, is a bulwark against racism.
00:27:26.100 And it's a bulwark against the kinds of things that the left accuses, um, many conservatives
00:27:31.540 of, and you, you need to have that in order to, to withstand kind of the onslaught that
00:27:36.560 that's going to happen.
00:27:38.100 And that doesn't mean looking, you know, looking back over history and pretending like everything's
00:27:42.280 been perfect or that at our founding America was perfect.
00:27:45.440 But I think that, you know, the mistake, the 1619 project makes, um, and a lot of the
00:27:51.140 critical race theory makes is this idea that America has always been endemically, um, racist.
00:27:57.100 And it just, it is just as much today as it was in 1619.
00:28:01.540 We've just gotten better at hiding it.
00:28:04.180 And therefore something like, um, the founding and this idea of liberty and justice for all
00:28:09.300 and everyone being equal in the eyes of God, because, uh, we still had racism then, and
00:28:14.120 there were some founders that owned slaves while it's all just moot, but really it's not
00:28:18.920 either the constitution was moot or our country was perfect at our founding.
00:28:22.400 It's okay.
00:28:23.440 That seed of liberty and justice for all, it was a seed and it's grown.
00:28:27.960 I mean, Frederick Douglass thought that the constitution was a glorious liberty document
00:28:32.200 because that idea of liberty and justice for all of everyone being equal in the eyes of
00:28:36.600 God has grown over time.
00:28:38.640 It wasn't perfect.
00:28:39.640 It wasn't at, it wasn't flourishing in 1776, but it's gotten better and better.
00:28:45.760 We've righted our wrongs and we've extended that promise that the founders, I think, were
00:28:51.500 inspired to write then.
00:28:53.740 And so I think we can have a very accurate view of the injustices in America and still
00:28:59.340 be patriotic and say, wow, the ideas and ideals upon which we were founded are really good.
00:29:04.380 And when we let those flourish, America is really good.
00:29:08.220 But unfortunately, like you said, we've got a lot of people who just want to throw out
00:29:12.240 those ideals.
00:29:13.660 And I think that just allows fertile soil for someone like the CCP to come in and say, yeah,
00:29:18.240 we've got new values now.
00:29:19.720 Well, they do.
00:29:20.980 And actually, a lot of those on the left will look back, though, and they'll actually look
00:29:25.340 at the history of the United States and they'll disagree with your conclusion.
00:29:29.000 And my conclusion is that on the whole, though, the United States on net has done so much good,
00:29:34.560 has so much has done so much good because of those founding principles in our own country,
00:29:38.420 but has done so much good since the end of World War Two.
00:29:41.960 And then after George H.W. Bush, George H.W. Bush was the last president to kind of sit
00:29:47.540 at the top of the American apex of military power and economic power where the American
00:29:52.580 led world really that's what we're thinking about when there really wasn't any other power
00:29:57.020 that could come near touching us at the close of the Cold War.
00:29:59.640 And he handed that baton over to Bill Clinton.
00:30:02.240 And then that's whenever you saw you saw China, China's rise.
00:30:05.840 And then American preeminence getting chipped away, chipped away, chipped away to the point
00:30:09.460 where now we're much closer to peers than we were preeminent power or where the United
00:30:13.580 States was a preeminent power.
00:30:15.100 But that because of the United States having so much military strength, economic strength
00:30:20.060 and a greater sense of cultural confidence in what America was and the good that we were
00:30:24.940 doing, yes, always bad because we're made up of human beings and human beings because
00:30:28.900 of the fall.
00:30:29.420 And our we are we are we do do bad things, but we also do great good.
00:30:34.920 But these these American principles allowed us to do great good.
00:30:38.260 And as the United States was and has been the leader of the free world, more good has
00:30:44.760 been done.
00:30:45.200 But many liberals look back and they say, actually, no, if you look at everything that we do,
00:30:49.420 everything the United States touches, it goes bad.
00:30:52.860 And the United States actually does more bad than good.
00:30:54.980 And they really believe that.
00:30:56.020 I would just point out the New York Times wrote this ridiculous article recently about
00:31:02.040 how, you know, just how confused so many liberals are trying to urge readers to to look at how
00:31:08.400 China during the coronavirus pandemic actually was showing us their new version of freedom,
00:31:13.940 that even though they don't have civil liberties in China, I mean, even though they don't even
00:31:21.300 though they had to literally weld their citizens or, you know, into their homes.
00:31:26.660 Until they died of starvation.
00:31:27.900 Yeah.
00:31:28.480 Died of starvation.
00:31:29.660 Or I mean, there is all kinds of horrible things that I have not corroborated, so I won't
00:31:33.560 repeat them here.
00:31:34.080 But terrible, terrible, inhumane things that to me highlight how the Chinese Communist Party
00:31:38.380 does not does not value the intrinsic dignity of their people.
00:31:42.140 But they say yes.
00:31:43.280 But now because of the way they crack down, people can walk around and go to go to school and
00:31:48.060 go to work.
00:31:49.080 And so they have their new version of freedom, which is trading all of these liberties that
00:31:53.020 Americans value for the sake of, you know, whatever there exists, you know, their ability
00:31:56.980 to move around today, even though they're in this massive surveillance state.
00:32:00.080 And so it's a confusion about what freedom is and about the purpose of government and what
00:32:06.200 is actually good for human beings and what actually gives us the most ability to have maximum
00:32:12.020 human flourishing.
00:32:18.060 OK, last question that I have for you.
00:32:25.060 What do you anticipate from the Biden administration?
00:32:27.140 You talked about how the Trump administration was really strong against China and how it will
00:32:31.880 be hard for the Biden administration to undo some of those things.
00:32:35.080 But I mean, we saw at the Biden inauguration, state-affiliated media in China was celebrating
00:32:41.980 the exit of Trump, the entrance of Biden.
00:32:46.440 That really worries me.
00:32:47.780 That really worries me.
00:32:49.380 And I just it seems like Democrats aren't quite as strong in taking a stance against China.
00:32:54.620 Do you think those concerns are valid or do you have some hope for this administration
00:32:59.180 and continuing to take a strong stance against the CCP?
00:33:01.940 So I always try to have a realistic picture, not a rosy picture of what I think is going
00:33:07.820 to happen with just a little bit of constant Midwestern American hope thrown in there.
00:33:13.160 Yeah, please.
00:33:13.840 So so I think that there are there are some individuals who've been nominated by the Biden
00:33:21.300 administration who do see the China threat more clearly.
00:33:24.040 You saw Anthony Blinken.
00:33:25.160 I've debated him on PBS before on China's handling of the coronavirus, and he I definitely was
00:33:31.360 taking a much stronger stance at blaming and putting the onus for the pandemic on the Chinese
00:33:35.800 government where they're hiding it.
00:33:37.160 They're lying about it, which they constantly do today about the origins of the virus and
00:33:41.180 what they knew and when.
00:33:42.820 And he really didn't though he thought that the Chinese government messed up.
00:33:46.240 He still put a much more of the blame, I think, on the handling of the United States
00:33:50.960 government.
00:33:51.320 And so you see some kind of soft peddling rhetoric over the course of the of the many
00:33:58.340 months whenever they were attacking Donald Trump, the Trump administration.
00:34:02.240 But during the nomination hearing, some of the rhetoric changed and it was a little bit
00:34:05.540 tougher.
00:34:06.180 I mean, he did condemn.
00:34:07.240 He did agree with the designation of the the the what was the official designation of the
00:34:15.600 human rights violations of China against the Uyghurs, et cetera.
00:34:18.420 And he agreed with that.
00:34:19.680 All of that is good.
00:34:20.480 So we're seeing some good signaling from some of the senior officials coming out.
00:34:25.040 But let's be realistic.
00:34:27.260 Joe Biden has been in government for decades, decades.
00:34:31.200 And so he has a trail of evidence of what he will do.
00:34:34.700 And he has never stuck his neck out in any serious way to lead or to push back on China.
00:34:40.180 And in fact, whenever he was asked about China all through leading up to the to the election,
00:34:44.520 he did not.
00:34:45.580 He downplayed the threat and he said it wasn't a threat.
00:34:47.960 So they're not folks, folks, they're not bad folks and all kinds of business dealings with
00:34:54.200 individuals in the administration who continue to work with who worked with China.
00:34:58.780 And so I don't know if we you know, I'm not confident that they fully understand the ideological
00:35:04.500 motivation of the Chinese Communist Party and why it's a threat.
00:35:08.680 And so, you know, my hope is they get in there and get all these intel briefings and see how
00:35:13.020 how bad it is and see what the Trump administration did.
00:35:16.300 But a lot of these policies that the Trump administration put in place, we can thank Pompeo for that.
00:35:20.700 We can thank the National Security Council for that.
00:35:23.340 Really great stuff.
00:35:25.400 It's going to be almost impossible to overturn some of it.
00:35:29.020 And some of that, I think, does the Biden administration a lot of good.
00:35:33.400 You know, Joe Biden can go in there and be the congenial Joe Biden and not this, you know,
00:35:37.000 really tough guy like Donald Trump was.
00:35:39.180 And he can still build on the progress that the Trump administration already established.
00:35:45.160 But I do think that they they will undo quite a bit of it.
00:35:48.260 They're always looking for a conciliatory relationship with with countries like that.
00:35:52.380 They do that with other adversaries.
00:35:54.220 So I am concerned.
00:35:55.900 But I think our biggest threat is going to be going to do good stuff on the military.
00:35:58.960 I think that they're still going to try to work with our partners and allies in in the
00:36:02.900 Pacific to deter China.
00:36:04.280 That's all going to be good with Australia and Japan.
00:36:07.800 There's good statements about defending Taiwan.
00:36:10.320 All of that's critical.
00:36:11.500 Where the weakest part is going to be the Biden administration is all the stuff you and I just
00:36:15.420 talked about domestically.
00:36:16.520 If they continue pushing this critical race theory stuff, they continue this identity politics
00:36:20.880 that pits Americans against one another.
00:36:22.740 That goes back to that soft middle.
00:36:24.960 And we need to have a much harder middle as a people and as diverse as we are as a people,
00:36:31.600 which is wonderful.
00:36:32.340 This great, you know, just, you know, different different ethnicities and different religions
00:36:39.640 and all these things that make Americans great.
00:36:41.340 We have to have some kind of unifying cord that keeps us all together that acts again
00:36:46.600 as that, you know, that bulwark against what the Chinese Communist Party is going to continue
00:36:52.120 to try to do over the next many decades on multiple fronts.
00:36:55.720 Yeah.
00:36:55.980 And critical race theory, identity politics, which we talked a lot about on this podcast,
00:37:00.040 it works directly against that because it purposely categorizes people.
00:37:05.120 It splits people apart by their race, by their sexuality, by their religion, and not just
00:37:11.980 splits people apart, but pits people against each other based on an allocation of oppression
00:37:16.820 points.
00:37:17.260 So when Biden and his inauguration talked about unity, there were a lot of beautiful words
00:37:22.040 that I agreed with.
00:37:23.060 But you can't peddle identity politics and talk about unity because the purpose of all of
00:37:28.600 that is disintegration.
00:37:30.380 The purpose of all of that is splitting Americans apart.
00:37:35.260 And at one point, I think, you know, we at least had, okay, yes, we're different in a variety
00:37:41.300 of ways, but we all believe in liberty and justice for all.
00:37:44.860 But even greater than that, we all believe in some kind of great moral lawgiver that gives us
00:37:49.740 our rights.
00:37:50.900 The less we believe that, that we're all human beings made in the image of God and therefore
00:37:55.700 have inherent value, which is what is supposed to set America apart from someone like China.
00:38:01.220 Then it gets tougher and tougher, I think, to make the case for personal liberty, personal
00:38:07.600 privacy, personal autonomy, because human beings are just viewed as these material objects.
00:38:13.760 Why can't they be controlled by a tyrannical state?
00:38:17.480 So it really does start at the heart.
00:38:18.920 And I think it starts at the home.
00:38:20.220 And I think it starts in schools.
00:38:21.500 These values, that's really the enemy, I think, of the CCP is an ideological enemy,
00:38:27.620 a philosophical, a religious enemy, not as much of, you know, a military power, although
00:38:33.200 that's important too.
00:38:34.620 Do you think that's correct?
00:38:36.300 I think it's both.
00:38:37.500 I think that Americans can wrap their mind around, okay, what is the Chinese Communist Party
00:38:42.000 going to do militarily?
00:38:43.640 You know, can they close us off from the Indo-Pacific region?
00:38:47.640 Yes, I think that they would try to do that.
00:38:49.200 They're going to try to do to Taiwan or they would like to do to Taiwan what they did to
00:38:52.160 Hong Kong.
00:38:53.000 And then if they did that, then they could close out the United States from being able
00:38:57.460 to, you know, maintain free and open seas, you know, to make good on our security commitments,
00:39:04.020 those great democratic countries that we not only we help, but they help us in Japan and
00:39:09.160 Australia and South Korea and these other countries.
00:39:12.960 That is definitely a threat because if China is able to close us out of that region, then
00:39:17.700 that is effectively the end of the American-led order.
00:39:20.800 That means that it's now a Sino-led, it's Chinese-led.
00:39:24.180 That's a problem.
00:39:25.360 But on the point that you just made, I think it's just absolutely fundamental and critical.
00:39:30.960 So whenever people, you know, just everyday Americans say, well, what can I do?
00:39:34.500 One of the best things you can do is bone up on what it means to be an American and make
00:39:39.600 sure that you're instilling those things in your children.
00:39:42.440 Make sure that they understand why it shouldn't be acceptable to censor speech and why that's
00:39:47.020 so critical, why religious liberty is so important at home and why we're not going to accept some
00:39:51.440 of these overbearing restrictions that are irrational because of the coronavirus from
00:39:55.700 some of these politicians.
00:39:58.260 These things are dear to Americans.
00:40:00.040 They're very dear to Americans.
00:40:01.180 And we have to have this sense of, again, what it means to be an American, regardless
00:40:07.100 of, you know, ethnicity or race, something that the Democrats are always trying to blame
00:40:12.320 on Republicans for not caring about.
00:40:15.120 But, you know, conservatives do care about those things.
00:40:17.720 And you have to have enough Americans that have great, deep patriotism and appreciation for
00:40:24.140 our rights and also, you know, strong desires to freely worship and care for our families
00:40:31.700 and not having the government, the state come in and tell you how to raise your children,
00:40:36.020 what to do and how you can and cannot worship.
00:40:37.920 All of that is going to be critical if we are going to remain, you know, the greatest,
00:40:42.700 most exceptional nation on earth and be the leader of the free world, which I think is
00:40:46.920 certainly a noble purpose worth pursuing.
00:40:49.480 And it's important that we are.
00:40:51.960 And don't let anyone tell you that patriotism is wrong or bigoted or that America seeking
00:40:58.020 to be the world power is somehow wrong, because there's always going to, I think people forget,
00:41:02.480 there's always going to be a world power.
00:41:04.400 There will be.
00:41:05.340 China is not OK with just being equal, like on equal playing field and everyone just getting
00:41:10.020 along.
00:41:10.980 They want power.
00:41:12.440 And if the country who believes in liberty and justice for all and has upheld that in so
00:41:18.080 many ways for so long is not the preeminent power, the country who believes in putting
00:41:23.420 people in internment camps for believing something different will be the preeminent power.
00:41:27.480 And that has an effect on the entire world.
00:41:30.280 So like you said, is it an it is a noble and worthy endeavor to make sure that the United
00:41:35.700 States stays in the place that we should be as the leader of the free world.
00:41:40.640 Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
00:41:43.960 Can you tell everyone where they can find you, where they can follow your work?
00:41:48.640 Sure.
00:41:49.080 You can follow me on Twitter.
00:41:50.200 My handle is RL Heinrichs, H-E-I-N-R-I-C-H-S.
00:41:55.140 Or you can go to Hudson Institute and all of my work is posted there, my articles and essays.
00:42:00.280 And one of the things that I've been tracking, too, which, Ali, you just mentioned a few minutes
00:42:05.180 ago, too, about how we can be sort of deceived and whether or not things are true, whether
00:42:09.940 or not it's Chinese communist propaganda, one of the things that I've been tracking and
00:42:13.800 I've been written several articles about, too, is how American media, if it doesn't,
00:42:18.920 if these journalists don't have sort of a pro-America bent, but they don't and they
00:42:22.840 don't know how to tell the difference between Chinese communist propaganda and what isn't,
00:42:26.560 they've been just repeating what comes out of the CCP.
00:42:30.320 And we've seen I have been tracking a lot of that, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
00:42:34.480 And so we need to make sure that we understand, you know, what is just Chinese communist propaganda
00:42:39.460 being perpetuated by even American media company, you know, reporters, et cetera, and what is
00:42:45.120 actually true.
00:42:45.840 We need to be very discerning, very, very careful.
00:42:48.620 And also just, you know, the other thing I would just encourage your viewers, too, this
00:42:51.480 is not anything to be panicked about or being, you know, something that we should have great
00:42:55.220 anxiety over.
00:42:56.280 Um, we can have, uh, confidence in knowing, um, that, um, as, as you mentioned, too, that
00:43:03.580 we have this great creator who is just and good and, um, and we can move forward though
00:43:10.180 and just pray for our leaders and for the, for greater discernment and not just have great
00:43:14.880 anxiety over it, but we need to do our part in all the small little ways that we can in
00:43:18.980 our various vocations to uphold these principles that we know are right and good.
00:43:23.120 Yes.
00:43:23.600 Amen.
00:43:24.040 Thank you so much, Rebecca.
00:43:25.260 I really appreciate you coming on.
00:43:27.740 Thanks, Allie.