Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 458 ｜ J.D. Vance on Faith, White Privilege & The Big Things Worth Fighting For

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Super excited about today's interview with author and Senate

00:00:16.980 candidate J.D. Vance. He is going to tell us why he's running, the things that he cares about. He's

00:00:24.620 going to give us some really insightful analysis about the state of our country, the state of

00:00:29.200 middle America, the state of conservatism, and also a hopeful vision of where he thinks that we can go

00:00:35.400 if we stand up and speak up about the things that we really care about. I'm super, super excited for

00:00:41.600 you to listen to this conversation. He is awesome, and I know that you're going to get a lot out of

00:00:46.480 this. Without further ado, here is J.D. Vance. J.D., thank you so much for joining us. For those

00:00:57.580 who are not familiar, can you tell us a little bit about where you come from?

00:01:02.440 Yeah, so I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, which was a classic steel town in southwestern Ohio,

00:01:07.960 and was raised by my working class grandparents, who my grandfather worked in the steel mill. My

00:01:12.740 grandmother was a homemaker, and was able to live the American dream. Went from Middletown to the

00:01:18.000 Marine Corps, to Ohio State, to Yale Law School. Now I have a business here in Cincinnati with my

00:01:23.040 wife and two beautiful boys. Think about my life and where I came from and the circumstances that I

00:01:29.180 came from. I almost can't believe that I've been able to live such an incredibly charmed and good

00:01:33.860 life, but it happened because this country has just been really good to me, and not just the country,

00:01:37.440 but the state of Ohio, the people in my community. It was a good place. It was a rough place to grow up

00:01:44.500 in some ways. We didn't have everything handed to us, but it was the sort of place, I think, that taught

00:01:48.520 really important traditional American values about hard work and perseverance and dedication.

00:01:53.700 I'm glad that I grew up in that town. I'm glad that it gave me the lessons it did.

00:01:57.680 Yeah. Both my husband and I have been fans of you for a long time, and I loved your book. We both

00:02:02.440 loved the movie, but when we finished the movie, we were really left with this very sad sense. We

00:02:08.840 felt very heavy, not because your story isn't inspiring, but because it is. Both of our families

00:02:14.940 come from rural working class, Arkansas, Louisiana, middle Georgia. Even though our personal lives were

00:02:22.280 different than your upbringing, we still felt like going generations back, we really related to your

00:02:27.840 story. I think what made us feel sad was just the antipathy, the animosity that we see from, I guess

00:02:35.480 you could just say mainstream culture, you could say media elites, towards the white working class that

00:02:41.180 also made us who we are, made you who you are. Can you talk about why you think that is? Why do you

00:02:47.060 think that animosity exists, especially in a time where we're talking about white privilege and all

00:02:51.380 of that? Can you give us just your analysis of where that seeming hatred comes from?

00:02:57.220 Yeah. I've thought a lot about this, and I've experienced it very personally because when my book

00:03:02.800 came out in 2016, there was this brief period where even liberals were picking it up and responding very

00:03:08.660 favorably to it. And then when the movie came out, which of course is a dramatization, but it's pretty

00:03:13.620 much the same story, there was this really intense liberal reaction, like how dare you tell a story

00:03:19.160 about these white working class Americans? And I think that what it is, is that a lot of white working

00:03:24.660 class folks, they don't fit the liberal narrative. You know, if you're a left-wing thinker today,

00:03:30.220 you want to assume that every black person is disadvantaged, every white person is privileged.

00:03:34.780 And of course, there are a lot of black folks who are disadvantaged, but there are also a lot of

00:03:37.820 white people who come from really tough circumstances. And instead of trying to understand

00:03:42.180 those people, I think a lot of liberals want to put them into a box. They want to accuse them of

00:03:46.360 having weird racial privilege, and they want to fundamentally ignore them and ignore the concerns

00:03:51.400 that they have. I mean, look, my family, we're good people, we're hardworking Americans, but we've got

00:03:56.560 problems. And I think if you're a liberal American, or at least a liberal elite, you don't like to even

00:04:01.620 think about the fact that there might be some problems that are unique to the white working class

00:04:06.260 community. You'd rather ignore them and have them shut up.

00:04:09.800 And over the past four years, there has been an even bigger shift, I would say, because like you

00:04:15.220 said, when the book came out, it was very well received among, you know, left-leaning journalists.

00:04:21.880 The first few pages of the book are, you know, praises from the Washington Post, from the New York

00:04:27.060 Times, obviously from Oprah. And then like you said, the movie comes out and all of a sudden it's,

00:04:32.440 oh, well, this is still white privilege. And there was just this backlash that I guess it didn't

00:04:39.840 surprise me. I think what surprised me more was looking back at the praise that it received

00:04:44.540 just a few years ago and how much that has changed. What do you think has changed in just the past five

00:04:49.800 years alone to get those kind of disparate reactions? Yeah, I think a lot of it is just

00:04:55.360 politics, right? So in 2016, the world was shocked. Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

00:05:00.760 And you had a lot of well-meaning liberals who were just for a couple of weeks and only a couple of

00:05:05.920 weeks trying to ask themselves, what did we miss? What did we not understand about the rest of the

00:05:10.220 country? And then what happened is it was, well, these people are racist. That's why they voted for

00:05:15.020 Trump. Or, well, they were idiots. That's why they voted for Trump. Or especially Russia, Russia,

00:05:19.160 Russia, right? They were all tricked because Vladimir Putin bought $300,000 worth of Facebook ads.

00:05:23.840 And that was, of course, really stupid. And there was no reason to think that people were

00:05:27.740 motivated primarily by racism or by Vladimir Putin's Russia ads. But that almost became the

00:05:33.360 narrative. And I think, you know, just for me personally, like you may know, I was sort of a

00:05:37.380 critic of Trump in 2016. And I became a more public supporter, not just of Trump, the person,

00:05:43.240 but of conservative politics more broadly over the last few years. And I think a lot of liberals

00:05:47.700 reacted negatively to me personally, because maybe they didn't fully appreciate that I was not on their

00:05:53.220 side politically. And so I think, unfortunately, a lot of the reaction to the book is all about

00:05:57.980 politics. Even the praise from the book in 2016, people trying to be understanding, to the criticism

00:06:03.700 of the book and the movie in 2020, it was like, we don't care about these people. We hate them.

00:06:08.640 They're bad people. Let's ignore them. And here's this guy saying, well, we shouldn't ignore these

00:06:13.440 people. These are American citizens. We should take them seriously.

00:06:15.960 And you mentioned how your views on Trump have changed. You wrote a big article in The Atlantic,

00:06:22.680 I think it was in 2016, talking about Trump and your negative views of him. Tell us what changed.

00:06:29.960 We're talking about a lot of shifts in the past few years. Obviously, your views of Trump shifted a

00:06:34.740 lot, too. So tell us how that happened. You know, I think for me, it was actually seeing the inside of

00:06:40.600 a lot of elite corridors and recognizing how corrupt the ruling class really was. You know,

00:06:44.920 when Trump said these people are all evil, they don't care about their country. You know,

00:06:48.980 my reaction was that doesn't make a ton of sense. Like, maybe we should tone down the rhetoric a

00:06:52.840 little bit. I don't agree with what these people are doing, but are they actually bad people?

00:06:57.320 And I think one of the things that just spending time in a lot of these elite circles made me

00:07:00.800 realize is that when Trump says a lot of our leadership doesn't actually care about the

00:07:05.380 country, they actually look down on the country, he was actually being right. And I saw it more from

00:07:09.960 the inside. The more that I saw it from the inside, the more I recognized, look,

00:07:13.680 I could be on the team of the people that I grew up around. I can defend their interests and defend

00:07:19.040 their concerns. Or I could be on the team of the liberal elites who are maybe going to bring a lot

00:07:25.020 of money and prestige and power along with them. But they're always going to make me feel like I've

00:07:28.800 sort of turned my back on my own people. And so for me, it was the fact that Trump was really

00:07:33.200 respecting, he cared for, and he tried to fight for it. I think he had a lot of successes on behalf of a

00:07:39.420 white working class Americans. Whereas the people who hated Trump, they were just really vicious,

00:07:45.620 not just to Trump personally, but it became almost about his voters too. And to me, it's like, look,

00:07:52.460 Trump did a good job, right? I mean, I think thinking people should change their mind when

00:07:57.460 the facts change. I think Trump had a lot of successes in policy. I think he did a lot of good

00:08:01.840 things for the people that I cared about. And I'm not too big of a person to say, yep,

00:08:05.420 I didn't fully see it. I didn't fully appreciate it. But I think he did a good job. And I changed my

00:08:10.220 mind. You get a lot of pushback, a lot of backlash on Twitter is what I see. Does it ever

00:08:18.740 get to you that some of the same people who praised your book just a few years ago, and maybe even

00:08:25.060 hoisted you up as some kind of, you know, working class hero, now think that you have just spiraled

00:08:31.400 into immorality, and you are just as delusional as they think other Trump voters are? Does that

00:08:36.680 ever bother you? Yeah, no, because I made the horrible, horrible mistake of supporting Donald

00:08:41.320 Trump and speaking openly about it. No, it doesn't bother me. I mean, I think, look, politics is a

00:08:46.200 game to these people. And it's a game they've been winning. And I want to push back. And I want to win

00:08:50.760 the game on behalf of people that actually deserve to win, not on behalf of the elites in this country,

00:08:56.100 who I think really have plundered the greatest country in the world, and feel no sense of sorrow

00:09:02.300 about it. They still feel no sense of remorse. And I think the reason they hate me is because I'm a

00:09:07.040 guy who's standing and saying, Look, you guys have misgoverned this country, you have not served the

00:09:12.180 people that you're supposed to serve very well. And I don't care that they hate me. And in fact,

00:09:16.880 I take it as a bit of a badge of honor. One of the things that was interesting about Trump is and

00:09:21.980 again, this is part of why my thinking on him changed, is he made a lot of the right enemies.

00:09:27.400 A lot of the people who were most responsible for screwing this country up hated Donald Trump.

00:09:32.920 And I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that those same people also seem to hate me too.

00:09:37.640 And I don't think they'd spend any, you know, any time or any words denouncing me and calling me a

00:09:43.700 terrible person if they didn't actually fear what I represented. And so I'm actually happy

00:09:48.380 that a lot of these folks are turning against me. I don't let it bother me at all.

00:09:51.980 Before we get into a conversation about some of the policies that you are advocating for as you

00:10:06.500 are running for Senate, as we're talking about kind of an evolution and shifts and change,

00:10:10.880 I want to hear a little bit about your faith journey. This is a Christian podcast.

00:10:15.360 You are a professing Catholic, I believe. I'm Reformed Protestant. So a lot of differences,

00:10:19.840 but I'm sure a lot of similarities too. And I think my audience would be interested to hear just

00:10:24.200 how you came from the background that you did to being a Catholic today. I know that your grandmother

00:10:30.640 had a big influence on you for faith in general. My grandmother did too, a very strong influence in

00:10:36.840 my life in a variety of ways. Tell us a little bit more about that journey and how you came to

00:10:42.260 profess the faith that you have today.

00:10:43.640 Yeah, absolutely. So before I answer, I want to get a plug into the website. If folks are

00:10:47.920 interested, go to jdvance.com to follow what we're doing. But for me, I think I came, like you said,

00:10:54.560 my grandma was a very devout Christian. She was a woman of contrast. She had a very foul mouth on

00:10:59.460 her. She cursed like a sailor, but she was a deeply committed Christian. And that was an important part

00:11:04.440 of the way that I grew up. I think like a lot of kids who go off to college, they sort of feel the

00:11:08.860 pressure to conform a little bit. And they recognize that people who take their faith seriously

00:11:13.440 are themselves looked down upon, I think, by a lot of our elites in our university system

00:11:18.320 and just in the liberal world more broadly. And I think I let that pressure, even though it wasn't

00:11:25.040 explicit to me, I let that pressure get to me a little bit. And I started to internalize this idea

00:11:29.920 that if I wanted to be a smart person, if I wanted to be the sort of person who could fit in with these

00:11:34.740 crowds, that I had to cast my faith aside along with a lot of other things. And I think that that

00:11:39.980 faith journey really was about recognizing that so many of the lessons that the Christian faith taught

00:11:45.480 me and taught my grandma were really valuable as I started to think about, you know, getting married

00:11:51.600 and having a family. And the big thing to me is that I recognize that, you know, elite America takes

00:11:57.620 a kid like me from a working class background, and it makes them obsessed with all of these things,

00:12:02.580 with achievement, with what kind of job you work in, with what kind of college degree you have.

00:12:07.060 You want your kids to get into the very most elite university that they can. And I started to think

00:12:12.340 to myself, you know, are all of these obsessions, are all of these concerns about where I go to

00:12:17.280 school and where I get a job at, are these actually making me a good person? Are they making me a good,

00:12:22.740 the type of man who's going to be a good husband and a good father? And I recognize that it wasn't

00:12:26.860 actually. It was making me obsessed with credentials and outward markers of success, but it wasn't

00:12:31.560 actually making me a better person. It wasn't giving me a whole lot of character. And the more

00:12:35.320 that I thought about it, I thought, well, you know, the philosophy that has taught me the most

00:12:40.480 about character and about the things that really matter is the Christian faith. And so maybe I

00:12:44.380 should start taking this a little bit more seriously. And, you know, I converted to Catholicism

00:12:50.300 a few years ago, and there really aren't a whole lot of Catholics in my family. And I think for me,

00:12:55.240 it was really a few things. I think, you know, one, I really liked the oldness of the Catholic

00:13:01.640 Church. I felt like the modern world is so constantly changing and in flux. And here was

00:13:07.680 this church that was really committed to some of the old traditions. I liked that. I liked the

00:13:12.560 oldness of the church, for lack of a better word. I also liked the fact that I felt like the Catholic

00:13:17.120 Church hadn't compromised on a couple of key moral issues. You know, the Catholic Church had stayed

00:13:22.020 really committed on this idea that marriage is an important foundational civilizational value.

00:13:27.920 You can't just discard your husband or your wife like they're a dirty pair of laundry. And I think

00:13:33.480 that recognition that the Catholic Church had stayed very true on a couple of those key moral issues

00:13:38.380 made me really attracted to it. But it's also just, you know, a lot of this stuff, we try to overthink

00:13:43.300 it and over-intellectualize it. I had a lot of good friends who were Catholics. I met a good couple of

00:13:47.540 good Catholic priests who really, I think, understood where I was coming from in my faith

00:13:51.780 journey. And so I don't want to pretend that I overthought it too much, because really it was

00:13:55.840 just, I felt at home in the Catholic Church. We found a good parish here in Cincinnati that's

00:14:00.360 been a good church home for us. And it's been the best decision I ever made is not just returning

00:14:06.360 to the faith, but taking it seriously and letting it influence how I think about, you know, morality

00:14:11.400 and character and virtue. And how do you treat people? And what really matters? And what are you

00:14:15.860 going to be remembered for when you die? It's not where you went to school. It's the people that you met

00:14:20.800 in your life and whether you can actually make an influence in their lives and have a real impact

00:14:25.780 on your community. That stuff matters a whole lot more than I think what the elites often tell

00:14:29.500 kids like me to worry about. Yeah. One of those moral issues that a lot of Catholics have been very

00:14:36.940 strong on, and I would say just the Catholic Church in general has been very strong on, and the

00:14:41.060 Evangelical Church has also been strong on, is abortion. That is one of the moral issues that we talk

00:14:46.080 about a lot on this podcast. Can you tell us your position on that personally, morally, and also

00:14:51.700 just policy-wise? Yeah. So, you know, I'm a pretty down-the-life, pro-life conservative. I really

00:14:58.060 always have been. Even when I drifted away from the church, I always just cared about the abortion

00:15:01.600 issue a great deal. I think those Christian morals were still influencing me. You know, so I'm not a fan

00:15:08.280 of, you know, the various exceptions that are placed in. I think, obviously, there are situations

00:15:13.200 where maybe the life of the mother is threatened, where, look, we've obviously got to recognize

00:15:18.100 that there are tough circumstances and tough decisions to be made. But I really think that

00:15:21.940 from the moment of conception, we should be protecting the life of the unborn, and we should

00:15:25.440 be doing that, not just because it's important for the unborn, obviously. I think it's obviously

00:15:29.840 a moral, a grave moral sin to take the life of an innocent person. That's one reason I care about

00:15:37.120 the abortion issue. But I also think that abortion has really taken something from us as a society.

00:15:41.780 And that thing is the recognition that babies are blessings to be cherished and nurtured,

00:15:47.380 and not inconveniences to be discarded. And when I think about the culture, the cultural

00:15:52.300 effect of abortion on our society, what I worry the most about is that we've become almost

00:15:57.700 an anti-family and anti-baby culture. You know, we sort of, we get annoyed at the loud baby who

00:16:05.560 cries at a restaurant or on an airplane. We don't actually honor the people who bring life

00:16:11.220 into the world. We tend to tell young women that it's more important, and young men that it's more

00:16:16.940 important that they go and achieve at the workforce, instead of raising and supporting

00:16:21.380 great, great American families. And I really think that's the consequence of abortion. The wages of

00:16:27.240 abortion is that it's taught our society not to value human life and not to see babies as something

00:16:33.480 that we need to cherish and nurture. And that to me is the most damaging effectiveness. I really care about

00:16:39.940 the life of the unborn, but I think it's actually, it's not just harm the unborn. It's actually harmed

00:16:44.500 our whole society and how we think about questions of life and questions of family.

00:16:49.200 Yeah. You alluded to the disintegration of the family, which I agree is a big problem,

00:16:54.180 seems to be an increasing problem. Do you think the government has a place in providing solutions

00:17:01.220 to that problem? Obviously, I believe it's a spiritual and cultural and moral problem primarily,

00:17:06.120 but does the government have any place in incentivizing the cohesiveness of families,

00:17:12.260 starting a family? Where do you think the government plays a role, if any?

00:17:18.000 Yeah, I think that there are some countries actually in Eastern Europe that take the right

00:17:23.860 approach to this to recognize that we need to support families in this country. It's the most

00:17:28.600 important to the bedrock of our entire civilization and society. And so, you know, look at America,

00:17:34.440 we actually penalize people. We make them pay a higher marriage penalty when they get married

00:17:39.720 than when they're single. And we make it harder for people to start and form families. I'm a big

00:17:44.960 believer that, look, if you have two or three kids in this country, maybe you should pay a lower income

00:17:49.780 tax rate than people who have no children. Maybe we should actually actively encourage the formation

00:17:54.980 of families. I think that's a good idea. And by the way, if you don't have babies, you don't have

00:17:59.420 families, you're not going to have a country after 30 or 40 years. Western Europe is learning this the

00:18:03.580 hard way. Japan is learning this the hard way. So I agree with you. It is a spiritual, a moral,

00:18:08.800 a cultural problem. But I think the government can send a signal to people to say, look,

00:18:13.380 we honor families, we honor children, we want people to have successful, healthy families.

00:18:18.720 And if there are ways that we can help out financially to make it easier to do that

00:18:22.480 and to send a signal that we're a pro-family society in the process, I'm all for it.

00:18:27.020 Mm-hmm. One of the big issues that I see you talking about a lot is big tech. Tell us why this

00:18:33.220 is something that you care about so much and why other people should care about it.

00:18:37.720 Sure. Yeah. So I've seen the inside of the technology industry. I've worked in the technology

00:18:41.860 industry for much of my professional life. And I just think these companies are too powerful.

00:18:46.920 They're too powerful economically. I think they suck a lot of talent and a lot of money away from more

00:18:52.400 productive, more important sectors of their society. And just to take an example, there are

00:18:57.340 neuroscientists at Facebook right now who make a ton of money literally figuring out how to make

00:19:03.180 our children more addicted to their applications. Well, those neuroscientists could be working on

00:19:08.500 solving Alzheimer's or curing brain disease. And I think what Silicon Valley has become is such an

00:19:13.700 economic behemoth that it's sucked away a lot of the talent away from more important sectors of our

00:19:19.340 economy. The bigger thing I worry the most about is that Silicon Valley has turned into the total

00:19:27.000 monopolist in the flow of information in our country. You cannot say anything. You cannot even

00:19:33.000 think the wrong thoughts without the approval of Silicon Valley. And if you think about what

00:19:38.780 happened after January 6th, Twitter, Facebook, all of these platforms kicked the sitting president

00:19:43.620 of the United States off their platforms. I mean, how is it acceptable that in the world's oldest

00:19:48.660 constitutional republic, we're not allowing the president of the United States access to his

00:19:54.820 people, his citizens? He can't communicate with them directly because of something four or five

00:20:00.420 monopolists in Silicon Valley have decided they want to do. That to me is just totally unacceptable.

00:20:06.280 And it's, of course, not just the president of the United States. It's, you know, the crazy

00:20:10.280 conspiracy theory that maybe the Chinese coronavirus came from a Wuhan lab. You weren't allowed to talk

00:20:15.320 about that a year ago. There are a lot of my friends who put in Facebook jail for circulating

00:20:20.400 basic conservative viewpoints, but they're not allowed to share those viewpoints with their friends

00:20:25.040 and family. We just have to decide, do the people in this country control the flow of information? Do we

00:20:30.700 have a first amendment or does the first amendment take a knee to Silicon Valley? I think the first

00:20:35.800 amendment shouldn't take a knee to anybody or to any platform or any company. And so to do that,

00:20:41.160 to do that, to really give effect to the first amendment, I think we have to break up these

00:20:44.840 companies. We have to reduce the power they have in our whole country.

00:20:57.180 I think this represents a real evolution in the thoughts of a lot of conservatives, myself included,

00:21:02.500 who was definitely the person a couple years ago who was saying, you know what, private companies do

00:21:07.300 what they want to do. I'm a conservative. I don't believe the government should step in. We, you know,

00:21:11.180 it's not a violation of the first amendment unless it's the government. But I've seen a lot of people

00:21:15.100 kind of change their minds on that, myself included. And I almost just wonder if that is representative

00:21:20.380 of a bigger shift in general for conservatism, that we're starting to think about how we actually

00:21:27.580 use the government rather than only thinking about limiting the government. We're thinking,

00:21:32.200 okay, well, the government might actually play a role here and in other ways that we didn't

00:21:37.480 previously think about. And I'm curious to know if you agree. I think you do, because I think I heard

00:21:43.300 you recently say that the right is terrified of using power. Do you think people are waking up to

00:21:49.220 that and are starting to shift their thinking about the role of the government from a conservative

00:21:52.760 perspective? Yeah, I do agree with that. And I think that, you know, look, the government exists,

00:21:58.700 and very often the government is not going to take a neutral position. We see this, for example,

00:22:02.480 with critical race theory, which is really coming from two government funded institutions,

00:22:07.520 our public schools and our university. That's what's driving this movement to teach American

00:22:12.680 children that they come from a racist and terrible country. I think conservatives too often,

00:22:17.480 we don't want to get involved in what the government should be doing. We don't want to talk about what

00:22:22.300 our children should actually be learning in schools. And so we kind of disconnect ourselves from it.

00:22:28.700 These are private decisions. These are not government decisions. But at the same time,

00:22:33.040 the government is making these decisions whether we like it or not.

00:22:36.760 Tech is another great example. We saw just last week, I believe,

00:22:40.360 Biden and the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, basically threatening the social media companies

00:22:47.800 with censorship unless those companies did what the government wanted them to do. So very often what's

00:22:53.880 going on is the government is an actor, the private sector is an actor, and there's an unholy alliance

00:23:00.660 between the two of them, where if we don't recognize that and we're not willing to use the government to

00:23:05.780 accomplish conservative ends, we find ourselves just abandoning the playing field and letting our

00:23:11.560 enemies control everything, not just the corporations and the private sector, but the government too.

00:23:16.020 Look, the Constitution gives the people the power in this country. I do not want an overbearing

00:23:21.120 government. I think limited government principles are very important. But if four tech monopolies

00:23:27.400 are controlling what the President of the United States is allowed to say, it's time for the government

00:23:31.760 to do something about that. That's what the Constitution gives the people the power through our

00:23:36.720 constitutional republic to do, is to break these companies up, to control them so that they don't

00:23:41.880 control us. Yeah. I am wondering what you think about the debate that I saw happening on Twitter

00:23:48.880 this week, kind of between people who would probably identify as libertarians and then social conservatives

00:23:54.320 about kind of what conservatism actually is or what the future of the Republican Party is, what the future

00:23:59.880 of conservatism is. There's kind of one side who thinks that, okay, it's just small government

00:24:04.240 constitutionalism, the government not really doing anything, and we just allow people to, you know,

00:24:09.780 there's not really a moral foundation for conservatism. It's just whatever you want to do,

00:24:15.120 do it. That's basically the basis of conservatism. Then you've got another side, which I would say I

00:24:19.380 represent, that there are moral parameters and there's a moral foundation that is necessitated

00:24:25.740 by the argument that conservatism makes that we are endowed by a creator with certain inalienable

00:24:30.780 rights, and therefore the government can't arbitrarily give them or take them away.

00:24:34.280 What do you see? What do you see the future of conservatism being? What do you think better

00:24:41.040 represents just the average person who identifies as a conservative, that kind of socially liberal

00:24:48.460 libertarianism or the kind of social conservatism that might actually be a little bit more populist

00:24:54.280 when it comes to economic issues?

00:24:55.700 Yeah, I think it's a very perceptive question. I mean, I personally believe that, look, I got into

00:25:02.560 politics because I care a lot about the social and cultural issues, right? I do not care if Amazon

00:25:09.080 pays a 9% tax rate over a 12% tax rate. In fact, I'd probably prefer, given its role in destroying our

00:25:15.320 country, I'd prefer it to pay a higher tax rate. What I really care about is whether we're protecting

00:25:19.640 life, whether we're protecting people's and encouraging people's families. And I care about

00:25:24.960 whether you can live a traditional American conservative set of values in your own life

00:25:33.220 without being fired from your job or without being attacked by mainstream culture. And if you actually

00:25:38.740 care about those things, you've got to be willing to take a stand on some of these questions. You can't

00:25:44.080 just say, well, we're going to let people do whatever they want to do. Because while we say people are going to

00:25:49.200 do whatever they want to do, we just want to have a hands-off approach. The left is actively promoting

00:25:53.960 their vision of society. They're funding the things that they care about. They're punishing people for

00:25:59.280 living a conservative way. I mean, you cannot look at what's going on with the cake baker in Colorado

00:26:04.520 who's had multiple big lawsuits come against him because he refuses to bend the knee to the social

00:26:11.480 justice mob. They are not going to leave us alone. This is a fantasy that we can be left alone. We can do

00:26:18.040 our own thing in the culture. The liberals can do their thing in the culture. And the best ideas

00:26:22.800 are going to win. The liberals are using the state actively against conservatives. We have to be

00:26:28.800 willing to push back against that. But we're not just going to lose a political battle. We're going

00:26:34.020 to lose the entire culture. And I think that's what so many of these fights are really about,

00:26:37.640 is whether conservatives are willing to use the power afforded us in the Constitution to push back

00:26:43.940 against liberal overreach. If we're not, we might as well just give up now.

00:26:47.840 Yep. I agree with you. Neutrality is a myth, certainly at this point. Maybe it has been for

00:26:52.620 a long time, but definitely right now there's just no neutral ground. I also want to know what you

00:26:59.680 think. And this might seem disconnected, but it's actually not. And I think you know this.

00:27:03.380 I'm curious what you think the role China is playing in all of this, not just in the disintegration of

00:27:09.700 our culture, but also in things like critical race theory and the self-loathing that we seem

00:27:14.060 to be pushing upon Americans, the exporting of jobs that has really hurt our middle class.

00:27:19.700 I see them playing a huge role in really all of these economic and social and cultural issues.

00:27:24.740 And it doesn't seem that we're talking about it quite enough. What's your take on that?

00:27:28.460 Yeah, we know that when the Chinese stole a lot of manufacturing jobs from the United States,

00:27:33.360 that they built their middle class in some ways on the backs of the American middle class.

00:27:37.540 And we saw what happened to communities like mine. Opioid addiction moved in,

00:27:41.400 family breakdown moved in. And I think it goes to show that you can't totally disconnect

00:27:45.780 the Chinese economic war against our country from some of these deep cultural problems that we have,

00:27:51.660 the breakdown of the family, the opioid epidemic, and so forth. I happen to think that China is really

00:27:58.280 excited about the cultural decay they see in the United States. I mean, you watch, let's say,

00:28:03.540 an advertisement for the Chinese military. And it's about the motherland. It's about defending

00:28:09.560 your country. It's about being a representative of China. You watch a military ad in the United

00:28:14.840 States these days, and it's about almost diversity, equity, and inclusion, the corporate buzzwords.

00:28:19.400 It's not about being proud of defending your country. And there are all of these ways in which

00:28:25.260 the Chinese have effectively infected American society using a lot of their economic power. So just one

00:28:32.140 example, you cannot make a movie in Hollywood right now that is explicitly critical of China,

00:28:37.260 because then the Chinese won't let that film have access to their markets. So the Hollywood studios

00:28:43.980 won't make as much money. Well, what that's basically meant is that the Chinese censorship regime

00:28:49.020 is now infecting Hollywood movie studios here in the United States. When we said we were going to have

00:28:55.720 free trade with the Chinese, what we really thought is that we were going to export American values to

00:29:01.920 the Chinese. What is actually happening is we're importing Chinese values into the United States.

00:29:06.500 It's a disaster for our people.

00:29:08.940 Yes. I mean, one of my favorite presidents, I have him quoted in my studio, Ronald Reagan,

00:29:12.780 I would say played a huge part in this. Like if you read his autobiography from the 90s,

00:29:17.100 he really thought still that we were going to export capitalism, we're going to export democracy

00:29:21.600 and freedom. And like you said, the exact opposite has happened, both under Republican

00:29:27.920 and Democratic leadership. Do you sense that there are maybe politicians on both sides who see this

00:29:35.540 problem and are willing to actually push back on this? Or are you kind of hopeless, especially under

00:29:40.280 the Biden administration, that we're going to stand up in any kind of substantive way to the CCP?

00:29:45.940 Look, I'm not happy about what I'm seeing from the Biden administration. I do think they showed a fair

00:29:50.020 amount of weakness in the last six months. And I'm sure the Chinese are looking to take advantage of

00:29:54.200 that. I mean, who who didn't notice the really embarrassing meeting between our secretary of

00:29:59.040 state and the Chinese leadership? It made us look just like a weak country. And I'm sure the Chinese

00:30:03.260 took it that way. But I'm actually optimistic over the long term. The reason I'm optimistic

00:30:07.700 is because there are a lot of good conservatives who recognize that you cannot defend the American

00:30:13.920 nation unless you're willing to push back against the Chinese, push back against the Chinese

00:30:18.120 cultural censorship, push back against the Chinese economic warfare that's making it impossible for good

00:30:23.580 Americans to work in the middle class. This is to me the fight of the next 30 or 40 years in this

00:30:29.200 country. And I'm actually really hopeful, Ali, because I think a lot of folks, you, me, a lot of

00:30:34.540 others are woken up to how crazy this is that we're going to let China control what kind of country we live

00:30:40.080 in. The final point I got to make on this China issue is the Chinese have completely controlled not

00:30:46.960 just the middle class manufacturing jobs, but the manufacturing of goods that we rely on. You can't buy a

00:30:53.360 car right now because the cars all rely on components, chips and so forth that are manufactured

00:30:58.980 in China. You can't buy dishwashers, refrigerators, a lot of critical appliances that we need in our

00:31:04.120 homes. And importantly, I've got a four-year-old and a one-year-old boy. You increasingly are not

00:31:10.260 going to be able to get pharmaceutical ingredients unless the Chinese are willing to give us the

00:31:14.700 components because we've allowed them to make all the drugs. Drugs that were invented in the United

00:31:20.100 States are being made over in China. And the Chinese during COVID last year even threatened

00:31:25.520 us with the loss of critical pharmaceutical ingredients unless we've bent the knee to them.

00:31:30.740 Now, imagine having a four-year-old boy who has an ear infection and you can't get antibiotics for

00:31:36.560 that kid, even though the antibiotics were made in your country because the Chinese won't give you

00:31:41.020 the critical ingredients. That's not freedom. That's not the free market. And that's certainly not a life

00:31:46.980 that I want to lead where I have to have our president bend the knee to China so that my kids

00:31:52.240 can get drugs that they need. Yeah. And I want to hear what you think some of the solutions are.

00:31:57.560 You mentioned a few of them, but what solutions do you think that there are not just in the political

00:32:01.840 realm, but for people listening to this, you just feel powerless. They feel like, okay, these powers are

00:32:06.960 beyond me. There's nothing that I can do to change these institutions. In the past year, we've

00:32:11.980 certainly seen just how power hungry so many of the politicians are and really, truly do not have

00:32:19.200 the best interest of their constituents at heart at all. And people who have woken up to this, like

00:32:24.900 you said, they still feel like, well, there's nothing I can do. Who am I? I'm just one person.

00:32:30.720 I care about my family and I want to help them. But, you know, I don't have the influence to be able

00:32:35.700 to do anything. What's your encouragement to them?

00:32:37.500 Well, I still, my encouragement is we still live in the greatest country in the world and we still

00:32:42.200 really can affect change as people. I'll put another plug for myself. I'm trying to run for

00:32:46.920 the U.S. Senate for the state of Ohio so that I can better represent Ohioans on all the issues that

00:32:51.600 we're talking about. Go to jdvance.com if you want to help us out. But look, you're seeing even at the

00:32:56.700 local level, people really getting involved and engaged. And I talked to people, even yesterday,

00:33:01.680 a woman who's thinking about running for a local school board in Chillicothe, Ohio, because she

00:33:07.780 doesn't want her children to be taught that she comes from a racist country. And she doesn't want

00:33:11.600 her children to be taught that there's no difference between boys and girls. So she's thinking about

00:33:15.480 running for school board to change that. I met a few other people yesterday who they're not going

00:33:20.880 to run for school board, but they're maybe going to help her out. They're going to go knock on some

00:33:24.240 doors. They're going to get some literature out there so that people know what she stands for.

00:33:27.680 They're going to host a fundraiser so that she can actually resource that campaign. Look, there's

00:33:31.720 a lot of work to do, but I don't want people to be discouraged by that. I want people to feel

00:33:36.360 invigorated by that because what an honor and what a blessing it is to live in the greatest country in

00:33:41.660 the world at a time when we actually need patriots to stand up and push the levers of power to make

00:33:48.320 this a country that's worth giving on to our children and grandchildren. There's a lot to do. And

00:33:54.160 sometimes I know that people get discouraged by it, but I look at everything that's going on.

00:33:58.460 I look at the way that the conservative movement is waking up to how powerful not just the government,

00:34:03.680 but some of these big corporations are. I see people taking over school boards so that their

00:34:07.980 children aren't indoctrinated from a very young age. And I see a real beginning of a movement that

00:34:14.560 I think can save this country. So my message to people is don't get discouraged, get involved. And

00:34:19.060 there are a lot of ways to get involved out there. Local organizations, national campaigns

00:34:23.020 do not get discouraged. Yeah. And don't take for granted either how much influence you can have by

00:34:30.480 supporting people who are running to represent you like you are. And I know that you would say

00:34:37.420 that every little bit of support of your campaign helps. So can you tell people just a little bit more

00:34:43.200 about your campaign? Like, give us your pitch, give us your top priorities, and then again,

00:34:49.200 tell us how we can best support you. Yeah. So look, the campaign is pretty simple and straightforward.

00:34:56.720 It's oriented around this very basic idea that you should be able to live a good life in this

00:35:01.460 country. And that's an economic thing. You should be able to have a good job if you work hard and play

00:35:06.000 by the rules. But you should also be able to raise your children in the values that you hold dear.

00:35:10.260 You should not have them go to school and learn that the country you were taught to love is actually

00:35:14.640 an evil place. You should not have them taught, have your children taught that they're not allowed

00:35:19.840 to speak their mind. They're not allowed to profess their faith without having consequences at their

00:35:24.780 college, at their schools, at their jobs, their workplaces, and so forth. And so our campaign is

00:35:29.940 oriented around the idea that we can actually take this country back. We can push back against the

00:35:35.060 ideologues who are making it impossible for people to live their dreams, but also to

00:35:40.000 speak their mind. And that's the simple idea behind this campaign. So look, we're going to break up the

00:35:46.540 big tech companies that are making it hard for people to speak their mind. We're going to fight

00:35:50.200 back against the crisis at the southern border. We're going to double the number of border enforcement

00:35:53.840 agents that we have there so that we don't have thousands of pounds of fentanyl and heroin coming

00:35:58.380 into our communities. We're going to fight the Chinese from poaching our manufacturing jobs.

00:36:03.620 And we're going to fight the universities that are indoctrinating our children, our university

00:36:08.980 students, who then go on and indoctrinate our public school children after they get out,

00:36:15.360 teaching them that their country is fundamentally a bad place and that it was founded by terrible

00:36:19.760 racist people. Like we're going to do all these things. And to your point earlier, we're actually

00:36:24.200 going to pass legislation. We're going to use the power of the constitutional republic to defund the

00:36:29.360 institutions that are making it harder for people to live their dreams, to fund new institutions that

00:36:34.760 are making it easier for people to live their dreams. And we're going to actually fight the

00:36:39.320 governments and the tech monopolies that are making it hard for normal people to live a good life in

00:36:44.660 this country they call their own. Yeah. You know, Republicans have been a big disappointment to a lot

00:36:51.000 of conservatives. Not every, not every Republican. Of course, I, you know, I vote Republican. I think most of

00:36:55.680 the people that listen to my podcast do, but we are continually disappointed by them just being

00:37:02.260 unwilling to actually advocate for the people that they say that they're representing. I really hope

00:37:07.320 and I truly do pray that you are a part of this new generation, new class of politicians who changes

00:37:13.000 that, who actually wants to get in and get stuff done. I know it's easier said than done for sure, but I

00:37:19.340 believe you. And I think that the agenda that you've set forth represents the cares and the concerns of a lot

00:37:25.540 of people, myself included. So, um, thank you for, you know, for taking this up, taking this

00:37:32.420 responsibility, uh, courage begets courage. And you have a lot of courage for doing this. You've got a

00:37:37.820 lot of pushback. People out there are scared to be called a racist, to be called a bigot, to be called

00:37:42.420 all different kinds of, um, names that they don't, that they know don't represent them. And, um, they have

00:37:49.660 to see people standing up in the midst of that pushback anyway, and to double down on the things that,

00:37:55.180 uh, you believe in, and you're doing that. So I appreciate that. Can you tell us one more time

00:37:59.800 how we can support you? Absolutely. So the easiest place to go to is jdvance.com because we need two

00:38:06.120 things. We need financial support and everything matters. $5, $10. These things really, really matter

00:38:12.620 and show that we're getting some momentum. Uh, but we also need volunteers inside the state of Ohio,

00:38:17.460 especially, but all across the country, people who are willing to talk to their friends about us,

00:38:21.880 to knock on doors for us, to do some phone banking for us. Again, there are real ways to get involved.

00:38:27.060 And if you want to get involved in this campaign, uh, go to jdvance.com and, uh, we can use all the

00:38:32.180 help we can get. Thank you so much, JD. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

00:38:37.080 Thanks, Sally. Appreciate it.

00:38:38.120 Thank you guys so much for listening to that episode. Uh, if you guys love this podcast,

00:38:54.360 it would mean so much to me if you could leave a five-star review on Apple podcast, make sure that

00:38:58.700 you also subscribe, um, on YouTube. And as always, if you guys have suggestions, suggested topics,

00:39:04.960 guests, please send those my way. I really appreciate you guys so much. You've got the best

00:39:09.800 audience in the world. We will be back here, um, on Monday to talk about some important

00:39:15.520 and controversial topics. Have a great weekend.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 22, 2021

Ep 458 ｜ J.D. Vance on Faith, White Privilege & The Big Things Worth Fighting For ｜ Guest： J.D. Vance

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