Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 509 ｜ How a Former Soros Activist Is Taking On Toxic Progressivism ｜ Guest： Michael Shellenberger

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so

00:00:14.360 far. Today we are talking to Michael Schellenberger. He is the author of a new book, San Francisco,

00:00:21.420 where he is analyzing all of the big political problems that are happening in San Francisco

00:00:26.880 right now that are causing a very beautiful, once wonderful city to deteriorate. And we're

00:00:34.180 going to look at the homelessness crisis in San Francisco, the public drug use and public

00:00:39.000 defecation crisis that's happening there, why progressive policies are actually enabling

00:00:44.860 and exacerbating these issues rather than doing what they say that they intend to do,

00:00:50.800 which is fix them. Michael Schellenberger is not just an author. He has been in progressive politics,

00:00:56.840 he was a progressive activist for a very long time. So he comes with a very unique perspective.

00:01:03.380 And just to set us up, I want to talk about some of the things that are going on in San Francisco.

00:01:08.060 I mentioned public homelessness, which has increased and it's not just homelessness. It's

00:01:13.600 these homeless encampments that have spread throughout parts of San Francisco. We've always

00:01:18.460 had homelessness. We've always had poverty. We've always had drug addiction and mental illness.

00:01:25.060 But now all of these things have increased and they have converged into a really toxic environment.

00:01:31.600 And not just for people who are suffering from these things themselves, but also people who are

00:01:38.180 being affected by these encampments in their neighborhoods. Unfortunately, as with every social

00:01:47.220 justice policy, the people who are most affected are always going to be the most vulnerable.

00:01:52.940 The Thomas Sowell quote, two Thomas Sowell quotes that are coming to mind as we're talking about

00:02:00.420 this subject. One is whenever you are presented with a progressive policy or progressive idea,

00:02:05.960 for example, that we don't need to criminalize public defecation because somehow that is harming

00:02:12.540 homeless people or we don't need to have any consequences for public drug use. This is in the name of equity.

00:02:19.640 It's in the name of compassion. It's in the name of social justice. You always have to ask two

00:02:24.560 questions about policies like that or any social justice progressive policy. The first question is

00:02:30.000 at what cost? The second question is what hard data do you have? What hard data do you have that this is

00:02:35.260 going to make life better? What's the goal of this? Is this going to make life better for one or two

00:02:40.360 people at the expense of everyone else? Well, that's not a very good trade-off. And when you are a

00:02:46.660 policymaker, then you have to think about those trade-offs. Unfortunately, we've seen over the

00:02:51.580 past year and a half with COVID policy that our politicians are not very good at making those

00:02:57.360 trade-offs. They make policies that have the intention of benefiting a small number of people

00:03:03.740 at the expense of everyone else, always disproportionately the most vulnerable that comes

00:03:08.880 with things like defunding the police as well. So we're going to talk about all of that today.

00:03:15.680 We're going to focus specifically on San Francisco, even though this is happening in every city that's

00:03:20.580 run by progressive politicians in the country. That's why whenever there are people who say,

00:03:25.660 oh, well, I'm a moderate or, well, I'm, you know, I'm still a Democrat. I think democratic policies are

00:03:30.840 going to do well. I'm a progressive. I think that implementing all of these progressive policies

00:03:34.920 will finally make America more tolerant and more compassionate. And we'll just be able to push for a

00:03:40.680 better tomorrow. Well, the better tomorrow has arrived. It's arrived in Houston, in Austin, in

00:03:47.220 Denver, in DC, in New York City, in Seattle, in Portland, in San Francisco, in LA. It's arrived.

00:03:55.500 And what does it look like? It looks like a demolished quality of life. It looks like a place

00:04:02.620 where people don't want to live anymore unless you've got millions and millions of dollars to

00:04:06.540 insulate you from the realities of the consequences, the terrible consequences of progressive policy.

00:04:14.380 So there are a couple of news stories that are coming out of San Francisco today. And one of them,

00:04:20.320 of course, is just the constant reporting, surprisingly, in some ways, of course, with some

00:04:25.720 of a liberal bent a little bit with the rise in homelessness and crime. But there's also this

00:04:30.980 headline that I thought was pertinent to my audience. And that is San Francisco temporarily

00:04:35.900 closes In-N-Out Burger due to vaccine defiance. So In-N-Out said that they refuse to become the

00:04:44.220 vaccination police for any government. In-N-Out legal and business officer Arnie Winsinger said,

00:04:51.280 we fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against

00:04:55.820 customers who choose to patronize their business. You know what's funny about this is that

00:05:00.960 leftists were calling Ron DeSantis an authoritarian and Greg Abbott an authoritarian who said that no

00:05:10.000 entity can force people to show proof of vaccination. And they were calling them authoritarians for saying

00:05:17.520 the school districts can't force kids to wear masks. But they're OK with this form of authoritarianism,

00:05:24.200 which is they are inflicting their views about masks and vaccinations on private business

00:05:30.840 leftists. Leftists are fine with that. They're fine with that. And that's what I've realized about

00:05:35.580 leftists is that when they say authoritarianism, really what they're talking about is policies that

00:05:40.460 they don't like. They're totally fine with authoritarianism as long as it accomplishes what

00:05:44.960 they view as progressive policies. And so go In-N-Out. Good for In-N-Out. We should be supporting In-N-Out. 0.97

00:05:51.720 I might support In-N-Out on my way home. I don't need In-N-Out, but I want In-N-Out.

00:05:58.720 And now I can kind of feel good about it. I can feel like I'm giving back just by eating a hamburger

00:06:03.840 and fries. And this actually does go with the things that we're talking about today, because San

00:06:10.920 Francisco, the state of California in general, but specifically San Francisco, has been very strict

00:06:15.100 about COVID rules, not just for private businesses, but just for private citizens with their mask

00:06:20.840 mandates, with their vaccine passports. And of course, as we'll talk about with Michael, the mayor,

00:06:25.540 London Breed, she was seen dancing in a club without her mask on, even though there's a mask 1.00

00:06:31.220 mandate, even for vaccinated people. And her excuse was really incredible. You know, she was asked by

00:06:36.520 a reporter how she got away with this or why she feels good about breaking her own rules. And she

00:06:43.160 said, you know, I don't know if you've ever been to the kind of concert that I was at, but I was

00:06:47.660 feeling it. I was feeling it and I was feeling the groove and I'm not, you know, I'm just not

00:06:51.380 going to wear a mask. Rules for thee and not for me. How people haven't realized over the past year

00:06:58.300 and a half that the COVID restrictions that are being put in place and that are not followed by

00:07:02.260 the people who are putting them in place is not for public health. It's just beyond me. And then

00:07:07.220 how you could look at the things we're going to talk about today, which is a public health crisis.

00:07:11.300 The homelessness crisis is a public health crisis being exacerbated by the same people who are making 1.00

00:07:15.780 your two-year-old wear a mask at daycare. Like, how do you see this is not about public health?

00:07:20.240 How do you see that? Maybe this episode will be a red pill for some people. I certainly hope so.

00:07:26.780 Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:07:33.200 Sure. I'm Michael Schellenberger. I'm the author of two books, one that just came out,

00:07:39.440 San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruined Cities, and a book that came out last year called Apocalypse

00:07:44.860 Never, Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

00:07:48.220 You are not some right-winger that is trying to criticize progressivism in general. You come from

00:07:56.620 a progressive background, correct?

00:08:00.280 Yeah. I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on radical left causes, progressive causes. I've worked

00:08:07.760 for charities that have been supported by George Soros. I've advocated for decriminalization of drugs,

00:08:16.180 of alternative sentencing, focused more on rehabilitation rather than on punishment,

00:08:22.220 and have been focused on environmental issues for the last 20 years. But when I stopped working on

00:08:27.380 drug issues and criminal justice issues in the late 90s, my understanding was that we were trying to

00:08:33.280 move people into drug treatment, drug rehabilitation, and that's not what we ended up doing. We ended up

00:08:40.220 basically just stopped, we just stopped enforcing a lot of laws, and that's why we ended up with so

00:08:44.080 much chaos in California.

00:08:46.280 And would you say that the problems that we're seeing today, the rise in crime, the homeless

00:08:50.800 encampments, you're saying that that kind of started way back in the late 90s?

00:08:54.880 Yeah. I mean, basically, over the last 20, 25 years, we have in California in general, but also

00:09:02.300 in San Francisco in particular, it's just stopped enforcing a lot of laws against people who we've

00:09:07.540 categorized as victims. And that includes the untreated mentally ill people suffering from severe 0.56

00:09:12.920 drug addiction. And so what's led to what we call homelessness, which is really a propaganda word

00:09:18.720 designed to confuse you about what's really going on. That's what's resulted in the chaos or what,

00:09:24.660 you know, academics call the open drug scenes, the open drug markets, which are causing so much of

00:09:30.540 the crime and homelessness.

00:09:31.800 So let's talk about that, which you just mentioned a little bit more, homelessness being kind of a

00:09:37.860 euphemism for propaganda. I've never heard that before. Can you explain what you mean?

00:09:42.540 Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, the word homeless has been around for a long time, but it's really a

00:09:46.920 misleading word. It was deliberately chosen by progressives in the 1980s to mislead people about

00:09:54.200 what was going on. I mean, we were dealing with basically, you know, decades of untreated mental

00:09:59.540 illness. We, after we shut down most of our psychiatric hospitals, many of the people were

00:10:05.500 put on the street where they became homeless, addicted to hard drugs. We also suffered a crack

00:10:10.120 epidemic in the 1980s. And we really did a misservice to people that were sick, that were

00:10:15.980 mentally ill by referring to them as homeless, because it suggested that the main problem was lack

00:10:20.820 of housing when really it's a medical problem. So we're just dealing with people that need to be

00:10:27.840 either in rehab or in psychiatric hospitals or giving some kind of psychiatric care. And the word

00:10:33.860 homeless was really used to basically, you know, justify heavy government subsidies for public housing,

00:10:42.560 for subsidized housing. It was always part of a kind of socialist agenda to expand public housing,

00:10:48.800 which in some cases, you know, may be appropriate, like there may be a role for some of that. But

00:10:53.140 what ended up happening is that we removed basically any requirements that people achieve

00:11:00.280 abstinence or sobriety in return for, you know, public services, public benefits, including housing.

00:11:08.120 When conservatives talk about this, I'm a conservative, we get accused of, I don't even think

00:11:15.340 actually homeless is the term that I hear. I think it's like, houseless, or there are even more

00:11:21.140 politically correct terms that I hear now by progressives. I'm not even sure I can't keep up

00:11:27.240 with all of that. But they claim that we are shaming the homeless community that we're victim

00:11:33.760 blaming, or that we're cruel, because we say, you know, these homeless encampments don't seem to be

00:11:38.720 good for communities, they don't seem to be good for children who have to walk to school. And actually,

00:11:42.780 it seems to be disproportionately affecting people who are impoverished, who are kind of forced to

00:11:49.400 live amongst these encampments, which cause public health problems, obviously safety problems.

00:11:56.500 I'm accused or we're accused of lacking compassion. Can you talk about kind of the ideology? What is

00:12:04.100 behind that kind of thinking when it comes to progressives? How are they believing that by allowing

00:12:11.580 these encampments and allowing unfettered homelessness, that they are actually the ones

00:12:16.480 kind of, I don't know, legislating in an empathetic way? It's really hard for me to understand that.

00:12:23.580 Yeah, well, it's a great question. And I wrote San Francisco in part to be a really complete

00:12:28.160 explanation, both of what is going on with people that are living on the street, also what explains

00:12:34.320 rising homicide rates. The book also deals with crime, not just drugs and homelessness.

00:12:38.780 And I really trace it back to the 1960s. You won't be surprised after we passed the Civil Rights Act

00:12:45.240 at a national level in 1964. There was a growing concern around the, you know, around father absence,

00:12:52.340 around the breakdown of families, particularly African American families. And the response from

00:12:57.860 the radical left from people was that that is blaming the victim. There's a famous book in 1970

00:13:04.680 that was called Blaming the Victim that came up with this idea that any requirement of reciprocity

00:13:11.600 or accountability or personal responsibility in exchange, even for support from taxpayers,

00:13:18.460 was itself a kind of oppression, was itself a kind of victimization.

00:13:23.400 So it's a, you really have to unpack a lot of it. The basic idea is that there are whole groups of

00:13:29.520 people in society that can be categorized as victims, which I think is a really terrible, toxic idea.

00:13:35.340 It's a racist idea to call every African American a victim. It's insulting. It's false. Similarly,

00:13:42.020 people that are mentally ill or suffering from drug addiction, you know, traditionally, the way we think

00:13:46.680 about victimization is that it's part of the road to heroism. Like you don't become a hero without

00:13:52.300 overcoming oppression and victimization. And so there has been a shift. It's been gradual to some extent.

00:13:58.900 It's also, I think, accelerated. You know, when I was a young lefty in the 80s and 90s,

00:14:05.240 our heroes were people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. It was a story of overcoming

00:14:08.860 oppression, very similar to the story of Exodus or, you know, the stories in the Bible. But now it

00:14:15.640 becomes like, now we're kind of celebrating victim status. We're actually making victims sacred.

00:14:21.620 And it's just a kind of, it's just as dumb as it sounds, Ali, honestly, I wish I could say that 0.99

00:14:26.940 there was more philosophical sophistication to it, but it's pretty dumb at bottom. It's very childlike. 0.99

00:14:32.320 Right.

00:14:32.700 The idea that people should be treated like victims or like children. And that's where it all comes

00:14:37.540 from. And so if you say, yeah, we should enforce laws against sleeping in public, people will say,

00:14:43.640 how dare you blame the victim? You know, I also documented many times, people said this to me directly,

00:14:48.980 but I saw it with other people, the radical left who really call themselves advocates for the

00:14:54.920 homeless, but it's just a pose. It's kind of a, an identity that they put on to suggest that their

00:15:00.520 concerns are fundamentally with the people on the street and not with some other ideology.

00:15:06.320 They would often say things like, oh, those kinds of questions you're asking,

00:15:10.700 the things that you're saying cause violence against people, which is a horrible thing to suggest.

00:15:16.520 It's completely false, by the way, it's not true, but it's a way to shut down any conversation that

00:15:21.980 might lead to actually helping people rather than letting them live in continued squalor and

00:15:26.520 suffering. Yeah. The phrase that we hear from people like AOC, and I'm sure a lot of progressives

00:15:32.080 in San Francisco is that if you do pass any laws that inhibit someone's so-called right to sleep on the

00:15:37.360 street or to shoot up on the street, that is criminalizing poverty. Is this really about

00:15:42.700 criminalizing poverty? Is poverty what's driving all of this? Yeah, it's another manipulation of

00:15:48.500 the language. Uh, they say things like criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing poverty. You know,

00:15:53.780 when I I've started to just point out that that's propaganda, you know, it's, you have to interrupt

00:15:58.720 because what it, what those words do is they hijack your brain and they manipulate your emotions.

00:16:04.440 So obviously that's not what's going on to suggest that the parks should be free to use from every,

00:16:11.140 by everybody that it should be safe for a mother and her kids, a mother pushing a stroller to walk

00:16:18.300 safely through a park that that she has a right to do that. That's not criminalizing poverty. That's 1.00

00:16:22.640 protecting public spaces. You know, similarly intervening in the lives of addicts when they're

00:16:29.640 breaking the law is humane. That's standard treatment of addiction. We've known that for a hundred years.

00:16:35.400 We have a whole television show called intervention. It, you know, I like a lot of other people. I

00:16:41.080 love freedom. You know, I live in California because I love the freedom of it. There's a

00:16:44.880 libertarian culture. I don't know anybody, certainly not me that is advocating that you go and like

00:16:50.300 chase down addicts who are using, killing themselves with fentanyl or meth and the privacy

00:16:55.280 of their own homes. Fine. If you want to do that, I don't, that's terrible, but I don't think

00:16:59.460 the police should make that a priority, but you are not allowed to shoot heroin in public in any

00:17:05.600 developed societies, not in Amsterdam, not in Frankfurt or Zurich or Lisbon, the cities where

00:17:11.420 that did occur and they shut it down. I mean, I'm here in Washington DC right now, and I just went and

00:17:16.140 got a coffee at Starbucks and there's three big tents right, right outside of Starbucks. Obviously

00:17:19.700 these are addicts living on the street or they have some untreated mental illness. That's not okay

00:17:24.600 to block sidewalks like that. They need to be told that they should, they need to go and stay

00:17:29.660 in the shelter or they'll be arrested. It's just that simple. And yeah, I think conservatives have

00:17:35.520 been more honest about it, but I think there's also a lot of people that might consider themselves

00:17:39.920 liberals or left of center, like myself, who just think it's absurd. You know, there's even a

00:17:45.060 difference, I think, between the way people in New York, the way liberals in New York and Boston view

00:17:49.340 this issue as opposed to people in San Francisco. I've noticed that in Boston, there's now an open

00:17:54.160 drug scene on Massachusetts and Cass, it's a mass and Cass, it's an open drug scene. The Boston

00:18:00.800 Globe refers to it as a drug problem. Whereas in San Francisco and Los Angeles, we create euphemisms

00:18:08.400 and call it a homeless encampment, which makes it sound like it's some sort of camp out or some

00:18:12.860 sort of peaceful gathering. Women are raped in homeless encampments. You know, people are taken 0.97

00:18:17.700 advantage of. Drug dealers run them and they enforce the law with machetes. So this romantic

00:18:23.700 projection onto open drug scenes, it's pretty despicable, honestly. And I think it comes from

00:18:30.140 a really dark ideological place. Yeah. You mentioned that you've always liked living in

00:18:35.380 California because you like freedom, which is not really something that you hear a lot of people say

00:18:40.580 that you live in California because you love freedom. And I'm guessing what you mean by that is

00:18:44.780 not necessarily freedom from big government policy, which I don't think has been experienced by

00:18:48.920 Californians in a while, but more of kind of like the libertinism of, you know, live and let live,

00:18:56.440 like, you know, chill, no judgment, that kind of thing. That's what I think of when I think of

00:19:00.980 California. And that is something that people who have lived in California really like, kind of have

00:19:06.580 prided themselves on being open minded. But that libertinism has really shifted. Like, I don't think

00:19:13.900 that you could consider liberals libertarian there anymore. They're extremely tolerant of all kinds

00:19:22.020 of immorality, the kinds of what you're talking about, open drug use and things like that. But

00:19:26.960 they're very harsh when it comes to regulations, when it comes to other kinds of public health

00:19:33.760 restrictions, like mask mandates, even if everyone is vaccinated, having to show, you know, vaccine

00:19:40.000 passports or whatever, I think in San Francisco, even as London Breed is dancing and feeling the

00:19:45.480 music in her own, you know, nightclub and not wearing a mask. And so it's strange, like leftism

00:19:50.720 is so strange to me. It's so strict when it comes to some things and so tolerant when it comes to other

00:19:56.100 things, when really, to me, it should be the exact opposite. I don't know. I guess I've already asked

00:20:02.960 you this, but I want to know even more. I guess I'm asking you to psychoanalyze the far left

00:20:08.220 progressives like London Breed, like the DA there. I think his name is, uh, is it Chase? Is it

00:20:15.060 Boudin? Boudin. Um, and why for them, and I guess the people that vote for them, like this is not

00:20:23.440 a problem. How, how did we get to the place of being so strict on things like mask mandates

00:20:30.280 because of public health and not caring at all about a public health crisis that has to do

00:20:34.960 with homelessness? I really have a hard time comprehending it.

00:20:39.540 It's such a great question. Yeah. I mean, when I say what I like about California,

00:20:42.900 you know, I lived in Washington DC for a year and you know, you'd meet people and they'd kind of,

00:20:47.320 there's a snobbery that I I'm not crazy about where people would ask you like, where you went

00:20:50.940 to school, you know, where'd you go to school? And they were always asking whether you went to a

00:20:54.220 good school or not. And I didn't like that. Whereas in the Bay area, people want you traditionally

00:20:57.760 would want to know what are you doing? And there's a lot more respect for

00:21:00.880 entrepreneurialism, but no, you're absolutely right. I mean, look, I think the big thing,

00:21:05.600 and this is something that I've touched on both in apocalypse never end in San Francisco

00:21:08.820 is that, you know, as people move away from traditional religions, whether Judaism or

00:21:14.100 Christianity or Hinduism, they fill that spiritual void by creating new religions out of their politics. 0.69

00:21:21.920 And so the new religion for the radical left has been the victim ideology or victimology. 0.99

00:21:26.620 And it's just as dumb as it sounds. I mean, it basically, the idea is that there's some people 0.92

00:21:31.420 that are victims, they're sacred, to which everything should be given and nothing asked.

00:21:36.200 So one question then is like, well, why is it that progressives care so much about African

00:21:41.320 Americans killed by police, but they don't do much of anything. In fact, they defund the police, 0.91

00:21:46.860 even though the police aren't necessarily to prevent 30 times more African Americans from being killed

00:21:51.340 by civilians than by police, even more last year with the rising homicide rate. So why do

00:21:55.960 progressives care about some victims and not others? And the short answer is that

00:22:00.480 progressives care more or exclusively about victims of what they see as victims of the system.

00:22:08.820 So the police are viewed as part of the system. They're against the system. They think the system

00:22:13.640 is bad. This comes from a very old romantic idea from Rousseau, which is that society corrupts

00:22:19.900 individuals. Individuals are innocent. Conservatives have tended to have the opposite view.

00:22:24.620 Which is that society is needed to restrain bad instincts or bad behavior. And so it comes really

00:22:33.600 out of a kind of extremism of that ideology. It's certainly not something that most liberals do in

00:22:39.420 their private life. They put stricter rules on their own kids, for example. They teach their kids not to

00:22:44.580 be whiners or to have a positive mentality, although even that coddling culture has become worse and worse

00:22:49.680 over the years. So, yeah, I mean, there's there's a real authoritarianism that's been increasing on the

00:22:55.740 left. And, you know, there's just not even an open discussion of these questions. Like I said, there's

00:23:01.600 the rather than discussing that these things, progressives will just denounce the person as evil

00:23:07.720 and they'll suggest that even talking about it results in violence, even as they allow the violence of the

00:23:13.660 open drug scenes to continue. And it's just the difference between viewing the system as responsible

00:23:20.280 for all bad things, whereas victims themselves, by definition, could not be victimizing other

00:23:27.600 people. It's obviously wrong and dumb, but that is what's at bottom of it. It's just taken as a matter 0.96

00:23:33.780 of faith and it's enforced sort of socially and ideologically by ostracizing people who disagree.

00:23:39.480 Yeah. Gosh, there's just so much. There's so much double think there. And you're talking about how

00:23:45.240 if you say something about homelessness or policies that you want to put in place to change some of the

00:23:51.260 things that are happening, you are accused of causing harm, of causing violence. At the same time,

00:23:55.560 we're told by the same ideologues that silence is violence. But if people say, well, here's actual

00:24:00.900 violence happening in these homeless encampments or here's actual violence happening in some of the

00:24:06.160 riots that we've seen over the past year and a half or here's actual violence happening by the

00:24:10.920 activists, you know, who don't want a conservative's book to be sold in a bookstore in Portland or

00:24:17.660 something like that. That's not violence. That is actually some kind of what they would probably

00:24:22.840 refer to as repressive tolerance. That kind of action is actually necessary to create a more

00:24:29.040 inclusive, intolerant society. And it is it's very confusing. I think some of it is supposed to be

00:24:36.040 confusing. And do you think that's what that kind of mentality is truly what's motivating the mayor of

00:24:44.300 San Francisco, like London Breed or the prosecutor, Chase Boudin? Or do you think that there's is there

00:24:50.060 something else there? Like, why aren't they doing anything about the things that we're talking about?

00:24:54.380 Why don't they care? Yeah, I mean, those are two different figures. I mean, the mayor of San

00:24:59.740 Francisco had traditionally been a moderate. You know, she would like to break up the open drug

00:25:05.580 scenes. I'm pretty confident. The district attorney, on the other hand, comes from the radical left.

00:25:10.740 You know, his parents were famous terrorists. They actually killed or were involved in killing 0.61

00:25:15.500 police officers and security guards in a robbery gone bad or Chase Boudin's parents. Yeah,

00:25:21.880 were whether part of the weather underground. Wow. I didn't know that. And he never renounced.

00:25:26.560 He's never renounced either their ideology or their tactics. So those are two different people.

00:25:30.600 But the mayor has basically been, you know, cowed by the radical left. It's the same in most of these

00:25:36.600 cities, Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, ostensibly moderate officials, but they were under

00:25:44.280 severe pressure from the radical left. Look, we were in a moral panic last year after the George Floyd

00:25:49.280 protests. The only way to describe that is as a moral panic. I was struck by how quickly

00:25:53.660 the city councils in various cities felt the need to defund the police and not have any discussion

00:25:59.480 about it because the people that were advocating the defunding were saying that any discussion was,

00:26:04.120 you know, immoral and suggested some, you know, lack of concern for the lives of African-Americans.

00:26:11.220 So I do think, yeah, we're in, you know, I think we're in a crisis period of the United States.

00:26:16.000 There's a huge amount of chaos in the system. I think we're seeing this obviously accelerated

00:26:21.380 by social media. I had an argument, sort of an argument, but really, I do think a long-term

00:26:26.400 trend towards really where wokeism or victimology is an alternative religion. It's been fueled by

00:26:33.940 social media, which ends up creating a lot of incentives for extremism. And then I also think

00:26:39.220 that, you know, the United States is in a really bad way in many ways because we've really,

00:26:44.360 our solidarity with each other has declined along with national identity. You know, we used to have

00:26:50.660 a much stronger national identity when we were during the Cold War. I think that China is a

00:26:56.040 totalitarian system we should be deeply afraid of. We should be competing with to spread, you know,

00:27:02.320 really Western civilization and the values that we believe in and promote those with our allies

00:27:10.120 abroad. Instead, we're letting China basically take over the world. So I think it's a very deeply 0.87

00:27:14.040 scary time. And we need to, we've lost touch with the fact that we're, we're, you know, we're all

00:27:20.240 Americans and that we have a duty to help each other and support each other. There's a lot of people on

00:27:25.280 the radical left, a lot of progressives that really just hate their fellow Americans. And it's,

00:27:31.420 it's really sad. I don't see any alternative to it beyond trying to find a new patriotism.

00:27:37.200 Um, what I would say to conservatives is that I think we need to, I think that we, you know,

00:27:41.620 we all need to rethink some of our prior assumptions. You know, one of the things I

00:27:45.020 advocate in the book that I think is maybe the most liberal thing is that you do need to have

00:27:49.500 universal psychiatric care. And I found, I did find some support for this idea on the center, right.

00:27:56.220 Which is that, you know, people are suffering from addiction and mental illness. Um, we can't have

00:28:01.200 this thing where people don't have, uh, insurance, like they just need to get the care they need,

00:28:05.240 particularly for people that are, I mean, they're out of the people that are literally out of their

00:28:07.940 minds and psychotic states. So my hope is that with something like Cal psych, which is, um,

00:28:13.300 basically a new way to centralize and make more efficient the provision of psychiatric and addiction

00:28:19.480 care, that there would be some common ground to bring us together around sort of a common vision,

00:28:25.080 but it does need to be accompanied by enforcing the law and requiring some amount of personal

00:28:30.580 responsibility. Well, there certainly seems to be a political realignment going on right now.

00:28:36.780 There in so many ways we could cover all of the ways the left and the right, I think have shifted

00:28:40.900 over the past few years from the left and now loving the intelligence bureaucracy, um, in this

00:28:47.560 country to the right, really starting to champion some, what I would call some populist ideas, even some

00:28:53.420 center left economic ideas who really are kind of trying to stand up at this point for, uh, the working

00:28:59.800 class. And part of it is talking about these issues, these homeless encampments, a lot of the

00:29:04.820 progressive policies that intentionally or not disproportionately hurt, um, pretty poor working

00:29:12.080 class Americans who just don't seem to have a whole lot of representation. As you're talking about these 0.59

00:29:18.840 policies, I'm thinking about, about a million Thomas Sowell quotes that, that I know one of them, when he

00:29:24.900 talks about how progressive policies are always measured by their intentions and never by their

00:29:31.180 results. And so we hear something like decriminalize poverty or allow homeless people to live in dignity

00:29:38.220 or all of the different, you know, propagandizing euphemisms that we hear about this kind of thing,

00:29:44.980 or not wanting to criminalize, you know, addiction or something, which is certainly not something that

00:29:50.140 you're calling for criminalizing addiction, but we hear all of these things. And I think people just

00:29:54.480 nod along. No one wants to be called a bigot. No one certainly wants to be called some, you know,

00:29:59.340 privileged, white, rich person who doesn't care about the poor. And that's basically what those dogmas

00:30:04.720 are doing. That's what those maxims are doing. Um, they're silencing people preemptively. They don't

00:30:10.560 want to hear your arguments because the intention sounds good. And if you go against the intention of trying

00:30:15.880 to help homeless people by allowing these encampments, then you're just seen as a bad

00:30:20.420 person. Most people just, they don't want, they don't want to pay the price of being called a

00:30:28.440 bigot, especially somewhere like San Francisco. I imagine where certainly you don't want to be seen

00:30:33.780 as a conservative. Probably you don't want to be seen as right wing. You don't want to be seen as

00:30:38.020 anti-empathy and compassion. But would you say there are Democrats in San Francisco and elsewhere

00:30:44.240 who are starting to wake up and speak out about this kind of thing to say, okay, this is not a

00:30:48.880 left or right issue. These progressive policies are not working. Yeah, I think so for sure. I mean,

00:30:55.520 there's no, I mean, there's no doubt about it. I mean, it's, um, it's definitely, you know,

00:31:00.040 among Democrats and liberals on the East coast, it's an easier sell for sure than in San Francisco,

00:31:05.640 for example, but certainly in California. Absolutely. I think you're already starting to see it. I mean,

00:31:11.180 we just saw the mayor of San Francisco announced a crackdown on crime, even though there had been

00:31:16.640 claims that crime had not been increasing. We just had Walgreens just announced it was closing

00:31:21.400 another half a dozen stores because of the shoplifting. And at first they chronicled our

00:31:26.640 local newspaper and various Twitter. So on the shoplifting, just to, just to pause right there

00:31:31.500 for a second on the shoplifting, is it true that basically shoplifting under a certain amount

00:31:37.020 of money is not enough to get arrested? Is, is that the case in San Francisco right now?

00:31:44.780 Yeah, that's right. We passed a statewide ballot initiative in 2014 called Prop 47, which decriminalized

00:31:51.480 theft, including shoplifting of items below the $950. 62% of the public voted for it.

00:31:58.920 They tried to do that in Dallas, Texas too, actually.

00:32:01.660 I'm sure. Yeah, it's, it's been part of the agenda. I mean, I mentioned, I may have mentioned

00:32:07.580 that I, you know, worked for George Soros funded think tanks in the late nineties. This has been

00:32:13.140 part of the progressive agenda. You know, again, I thought that the idea was that, you know,

00:32:18.520 you arrest somebody trying to shoplift to feed their addiction and you say that you give them the

00:32:24.660 choice, the judge gives them a choice. You go, you can go to prison or you can go to rehab. That was my

00:32:30.000 understanding of where we left it, but we just went in this really radical direction of just not

00:32:35.280 making people even do the rehab. So, but we are seeing a response already from political officials.

00:32:42.100 We are seeing the mayor now making stronger pronouncements. I think the other thing is

00:32:46.940 just that people are grossly ignorant. They've been misinformed. I mean, the voters have been 0.99

00:32:51.360 victims of propaganda really for 30 years, including around the manipulation of their,

00:32:56.480 of their feelings, of their empathy around homelessness. I mean, honestly, it was a bit

00:33:00.960 of a fluke that I just happened to be in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which is a very liberal country.

00:33:07.120 I mean, you may know that marijuana is decriminalized. Prostitution is decriminalized.

00:33:12.020 Nobody would accuse Amsterdam of being a right-wing town. And yet there were no homeless people on the

00:33:17.120 street. You could walk safely back to your hotel from the bar at 2 a.m. I was with my young female 0.86

00:33:24.300 colleagues and they, the next morning, they were like angry that they couldn't have the same nice

00:33:29.740 things that they could have in San Francisco that they have in Amsterdam. And the Dutch are really 1.00

00:33:35.280 humanistic about it. They do a really good job treating people with mental illness and drug

00:33:40.480 addiction. So I just think there's some, to some extent, I have some faith that while there is a

00:33:45.460 hardcore, let's say 20 to 30% of the population that is pretty radical, particularly in San Francisco,

00:33:51.000 there is still a majority, 60, 70, 80% that want to see the open drug scenes shut down and want to

00:33:58.480 see people that are mentally ill and addicted to hard drugs get the treatment that they need so 0.52

00:34:02.640 that they stop being so destructive of themselves and of others.

00:34:10.300 You know, you mentioned George Soros and working for some Soros-funded think tanks, and he has been

00:34:16.580 credited both by the New York Times and then, you know, conservative organizations like the Heritage

00:34:21.480 Foundation of really funding an overhaul of prosecutors or of, you know, local prosecutors.

00:34:32.680 And so Chesa Boudin is one of those people that was funded. His campaign was funded by George Soros.

00:34:38.420 And so I can't credit him with all of the disasters and the chaos that's going on right now,

00:34:43.900 certainly. But his money is behind a lot of these changes that are leading to a lack of prosecution,

00:34:54.560 an enabling of lawlessness, of homelessness, public drug use, and all of that. Do you ever look back

00:35:02.880 at your time spent in those think tanks and think, did I kind of help create some of the problems that

00:35:10.800 we're seeing right now? Yeah, I mean, one of my motivations for writing San Francisco was to figure out

00:35:16.520 what, if anything, I got wrong and how so and what I believe now. I mean, I advocated for the

00:35:22.480 decriminalization of drugs. I advocated for the distribution of clean needles. You know, where I came out on it

00:35:28.260 was that, you know, I don't think, I think it should be against the law to use drugs publicly. It should be

00:35:34.740 against the law. I should continue to be against the law to camp publicly, defecate publicly. You should

00:35:39.860 be arrested for those crimes as you are in European cities. And then when you're brought before the

00:35:45.140 judge, I think the judge should have the ability to offer an alternative sentence. But it's an

00:35:51.540 alternative sentence. It's not no sentence. And that was how I understood it in the late 90s, is that if you

00:35:57.940 were arrested for those crimes and brought before a judge, and you clearly were suffering from drug

00:36:01.960 addiction or untreated mental illness or both, you would be getting this alternative sentencing. And

00:36:06.740 that is not what happened. Similarly, with needle exchange, if you're getting clean needles, you

00:36:13.020 should be offered drug treatment and rehab. That's not happening. If you're given, you know, we should be

00:36:19.920 requiring shelter. In other words, you have to sleep in a shelter, you can't sleep on the street or

00:36:24.360 get arrested. But those are your choices. Shelter should be universal, we should have shelter for

00:36:29.840 anybody that needs it. It should be basic. It should not be luxurious, but it should be safe and

00:36:33.980 clean. But then housing, meaning, you know, the thing that most a lot of people want is they want

00:36:38.840 their own room, understandably. But housing should be earned. And this is how they do it in Europe. This

00:36:44.200 is how they do it in Asia, is that you don't just get your own apartment in downtown San Francisco,

00:36:47.660 because you claim to be homeless. You have to earn it. It's a reward for abstinence or making progress on

00:36:54.180 your personal plans, such as having a job. So, yeah, it's restoring carrots and sticks. It's restoring

00:36:59.440 some incentives for personal behavioral change. To some extent, I think my views changed more on the

00:37:05.600 environment than they did on these issues of drugs and homelessness. Though I will say, I think one

00:37:11.180 thing that I have changed my views on is I do believe in greater restriction, really, of all drugs, including

00:37:17.840 alcohol, which is actually a pretty dangerous drug. And so I used to kind of scoff at the restrictions that

00:37:23.640 we put on alcohol consumption, including, you know, being able to buy it in grocery stores or buy it on a

00:37:28.140 Sunday. And there's some counties that are dry. I've really come to appreciate those restrictions. I worry

00:37:33.220 about the ways in which the society, including people that are maybe more center right of things like

00:37:40.860 psychedelic drugs, things like marijuana. It's true that nobody dies of an overdose of marijuana. It's much safer in

00:37:47.220 that sense than alcohol. But this but all drugs can be abused. And we should, I think, be really careful

00:37:53.440 with how we're, these drugs are getting out there. And that's the other reason I think you need to have

00:37:58.280 some universal psychiatric care. I think a lot of people that are using drugs heavily, including

00:38:03.400 alcohol, are just self-medicating, and they may have better lives if they had access to an

00:38:08.400 antidepressant, or just or to therapy, or just really exercising more regularly. For me, anyway,

00:38:14.000 exercise is important to mental health. So yeah, I just think we're doing a really poor job in the

00:38:18.840 United States right now of taking care of people's mental health. Yeah. And that's been a big reason

00:38:23.300 for, you know, we had 93,000 people die of illicit drugs last year. That's a five times increase from

00:38:29.060 the 17,000 that died in the year 2000. So clearly, something's deeply broken. And there's a lot of

00:38:34.760 things we need to do. But I definitely think restoring carrots and sticks, having universal psychiatric

00:38:40.020 care, and much greater care over how we deal with these really intoxicating and addictive substances

00:38:45.220 is required. Yeah. You know, I often say that politics, or I don't often say this, a lot of

00:38:50.260 people often say this, but I repeat it, that politics is downstream from culture. Culture is

00:38:54.760 downstream from cult, from religion. Whatever we worship affects our culture. Culture then affects

00:39:00.400 politics. But policies do have the ability to change culture. Like if you look at something,

00:39:08.540 for example, like gay marriage, before Obergefell, the majority of Americans were not for gay marriage.

00:39:14.440 After Obergefell happened, it very precipitously changed. Support for gay marriage changed very

00:39:20.960 quickly. And yes, part of that was culture, obviously, media representation, things like that.

00:39:25.620 But I think the Supreme Court decision actually had an effect, at least over time, on people's

00:39:33.480 mindset about it. And I think that that can be true, as well, when it comes to policy surrounding

00:39:42.020 homeless people, or whatever you want to call it, the accurate terminology for that. I don't think

00:39:48.660 that we have to wait for the very destructive culture that I think has been created, especially in

00:39:54.280 progressive cities, that any type of law enforcement is some form of oppression, any type of incentivizing

00:40:02.540 that you're talking about, the carrot and stick, the carrot and stick strategy, that that is somehow a form

00:40:11.420 of harm. Even just everything on the left, that it seeks to destigmatize and that it seeks to

00:40:18.820 normalize in the name of compassion and empathy, I think has just created a very destructive and lawless

00:40:27.400 culture in which the in which people who are most vulnerable really suffer, like it's poor people

00:40:33.680 that suffer from that. The rich people in San Francisco, I love San Francisco, by the way, it's

00:40:37.880 my husband and my favorite city, we love visiting San Francisco, it's beautiful. But the rich people are

00:40:44.380 not the ones who are most affected by this. It's the working class people. It's the poor people who no 1.00

00:40:49.740 longer can be safe. Same thing when it goes when it comes to defunding the police, same thing when it

00:40:54.720 comes to any progressive policy that sounds really good, but costs most of society a whole lot. And I

00:41:01.980 guess I have hope, I guess that people are, are waking up to that. And it sounds like you do too.

00:41:08.440 My question is, do you consider yourself a conservative now? And do you think that it takes

00:41:15.340 people becoming a conservative to wake up to some of the detrimental effects of the progressive policies

00:41:21.260 that we're talking about? Yeah, sure. And I agree with everything you say. And, you know,

00:41:27.600 there's a great quote from the late Senator Patrick Moynihan, where he said, you know, culture,

00:41:31.140 the central conservative insight is that culture determines the fate of a nation, but the central

00:41:36.500 liberal insight is that politics can intervene in that culture. And I really believe that I do think

00:41:42.240 we need a new political formation. It may be a third party, it may be a different realignment of the

00:41:48.620 political parties. I struggle with labels. I mean, part of the reason I wrote, you know,

00:41:53.520 two 400 page books is that I wanted to sort of say, here's what I think. And you can call it a lot

00:42:01.100 of different things. I mean, there's definitely some things that I believe that I think progressives

00:42:05.520 would call conservatives. I think families are important. I think enforcing the laws are important.

00:42:10.240 I think we should not tear down institutions, but really try to reform them. I think there's other

00:42:17.220 things I believe that are probably considered more liberal. I support, as I mentioned, universal

00:42:21.140 psychiatric care. I think gay marriage is a wonderful bit of progress. I, you know, I, I,

00:42:30.080 I basically more liberal in my habits and in my, you know, I sort of decriminalization of marijuana

00:42:35.440 fine with needle exchange. But again, I do think there has to be carrots and sticks. So I do,

00:42:40.200 I hope that I think people will read both apocalypse never in San Francisco and kind of walk away being

00:42:45.720 like, this is not easy to categorize. I don't want to sound too fuzzy or something, but I do think

00:42:52.700 that there needs to be some balancing here of liberal and conservative tactics. I mean, one of

00:42:58.820 the problems, you know, one of the reason that people become street addicts is that inside the

00:43:05.100 families themselves, there's a really confusing relationship to drugs, where often what you'll see

00:43:12.380 is parents having a liberal attitude towards drugs at first being like, well, he's just experimenting

00:43:17.540 or he on his own has to decide what, whether he's going to quit or not. And then when the addiction

00:43:22.160 spirals out of control, just kicking their kids out of their house, understandably, I mean, I've had 1.00

00:43:26.620 friends that are addicts and became street addicts for that reason. But I think we need to get better

00:43:32.280 at imposing discipline earlier in the process, both in the family, but also in the society so that we

00:43:39.460 don't have to resort to more draconian means later, whether that be, you know, eviction or prison.

00:43:45.820 Yeah. You know, I think that conservatives, at least in my estimation, I am very squarely

00:43:52.300 conservative. Now I'm with you when it comes to a lot of the political labels. But I think that

00:43:56.620 conservatives have more of an appetite for solutions that may be politically considered

00:44:03.240 considered center left than it seems like, at least from my vantage point, people on the left have

00:44:09.240 for social positions that may be considered on the right, because I don't think the right is going to

00:44:16.060 compromise on some social things. Like, I don't think that you're going to see a large swath of

00:44:20.280 conservatives say, yeah, man can become a woman and vice versa. You're probably not going to see a lot 1.00

00:44:24.660 of conservatives say, you know, that abortion through nine months is awesome. But I do think that

00:44:32.080 conservatives are more welcoming, one of heterodox people with whom we disagree on a lot of things,

00:44:37.160 but can link arms on other things. They're all of a sudden considered right wing, like Joe Rogan,

00:44:42.260 who is not right wing. He's now considered right wing by the left. I see actually conservatives as being

00:44:47.860 a lot more open to some of the solutions that you're talking about. And just in general,

00:44:53.900 with linking arms with people that we disagree with on other things, then people on the left are.

00:44:59.900 Do you see that, too? And do you hope that it changes for some of our friends on the left,

00:45:05.120 that they will kind of, I don't know, meet us in the middle, at least on some things?

00:45:10.820 Oh, yeah, for sure. Of course, I'm finding that. I mean, look at who whose podcasts I'm doing. I've

00:45:15.140 been invited on Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson talking to you talking to Glenn Beck, Tim Poole. And it's

00:45:22.780 been a total pleasure and exciting. And the disagreements themselves have been interesting. And

00:45:27.720 and it hasn't threatened the relationship. Whereas, yeah, like, I mean, I'm not being

00:45:33.740 invited to go on progressive TV shows or radio shows. It's disappointing, but I'm also kind of

00:45:40.320 over it. Yeah. You know, I'm old enough now that I have, you know, you kind of understand that

00:45:47.260 there's just things that are outside your control. What I'm excited about in California is trying to

00:45:52.080 build a movement of and this is what we're doing, you know, parents that are of kids that are that

00:45:56.620 were killed by fentanyl parents who have kids that are addicted and would like to see their kids

00:46:00.440 arrested and required to go into drug treatment. Community leaders who are sick of the disaster on the

00:46:07.320 streets. You know, these are groups of people that are very liberal and very conservative, but we share

00:46:13.000 a common agenda. And so there is I feel optimistic in the sense that I don't think America is done as a

00:46:21.220 civilization. It just doesn't feel like we're done yet. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

00:46:27.500 No, I mean, me too. I mean, my book ends with a meditation on whether this is it, guys, like is

00:46:32.040 America just over? And I don't think so. And and I think that's because, you know, it's still just

00:46:37.320 the greatest country on Earth. I mean, where else are you going to go live in China where you have to 1.00

00:46:41.100 have social credit scores or, you know, Europe? It's just you know, you go to Europe. It's like

00:46:45.220 visiting a museum. It's beautiful, but it's old and it's not innovative and it's not where the

00:46:49.620 excitement's at. So, you know, United States and I think California still have a huge amount of

00:46:54.260 potential as places of innovation and entrepreneurialism and social change in

00:46:58.840 positive directions. I do think it's going to require new politics. And, you know, I mean,

00:47:03.660 one thing that's happening in California is just that it's now that it's a one party system. It means

00:47:09.000 that I do think Republicans in California are more open to being having a somewhat different agenda

00:47:16.500 than has been the Republican agenda in the past. Yeah. You know, people get super overwhelmed when

00:47:23.660 we talk about these big issues that seem to run so deep, especially in places like California. I

00:47:29.680 think people had a little glimmer of hope when there was a recall. But but then I think what

00:47:34.360 really confuses people and burdens people is when it seems like everyone's waking up, then you read a

00:47:39.680 story about Walgreens. Like you said, they've had to close down five more stores because they're just

00:47:44.040 losing business, shoplifting, all of that. Well, they donated fifty thousand dollars to Gavin Newsom,

00:47:48.640 who is part of this whole problem. He may have not started the problem, but he certainly

00:47:53.040 hasn't helped it. And it just I think the alternative to what you're saying is, well,

00:47:58.800 it doesn't seem like the companies care. It doesn't seem like the people in charge really care if a

00:48:03.060 so-called moderate ends up kowtowing to the far left. So what can the average person do to help wake

00:48:09.940 people up and hopefully help make some positive change?

00:48:15.420 Yeah, I mean, we definitely need new leadership. I mean, you know, the the candidates that we had

00:48:21.740 running in the recall were not folks that were striking the right chord with moderate voters.

00:48:28.160 You know, we you know, most voters, I think, voted on coronavirus. And that's definitely an issue

00:48:34.700 where conservatives and liberals tend to disagree. I tend to be more alarmist about coronavirus than

00:48:42.280 most of my conservative friends. So that's probably an area of difference, although I do think the

00:48:46.700 mask mandates for kids, for example, has gone way too far. But I do think there's a place for more

00:48:51.800 moderation there. It was also a recall. And for the most part, voters just we we don't really like

00:48:58.020 recalls because, you know, you just elected the guy a few years earlier. So I think we have a big chance

00:49:02.180 to make some change next year. But again, I do think it's going to require different leadership.

00:49:08.060 Yeah, I think that the thing that can wake a lot of people up is seeing just the hypocrisy and the

00:49:14.440 apathy that comes from a lot of the leaders. Like you talked about those COVID restrictions. You know,

00:49:19.640 a lot of people are where you are. They're on board. They want to follow the rules. It's not the rules so

00:49:24.960 much that bother a lot of people. It's the lack of adherence to the rules by the people who set the rules

00:49:31.580 for everyone else, like London Breed, like Gavin Newsom. When you see Gavin Newsom dining at the

00:49:36.280 French Laundry, when you hear London Breed say, well, I wasn't following the mask mandate because

00:49:40.060 I was, you know, feeling the groove at a club. That is the let them eat cake stuff that makes

00:49:47.480 people really mad. When you hear Jen Psaki, you know, the the press secretary say, oh, supply chain

00:49:54.180 problems, the tragedy of the delayed treadmill. That's what she reduces it to. That's my hope that

00:50:01.440 that kind of thing that I want people to realize that the state doesn't care about you and that

00:50:05.660 most of the people we've put in charge really don't care about the issues that they say they do. And

00:50:10.800 they're actually exacerbating the problem. I hope so, too. It was infuriating. I mean,

00:50:15.940 my daughter is 15. She has to wear a mask at school and to see our mate, the mayor of San Francisco

00:50:21.260 out there partying it up and then making excuses for it. But even though she's the one that imposed

00:50:26.560 the mask mandate on indoor, it's pretty upsetting. So I hope that is one of the things that triggers

00:50:31.760 people. Although I do. I think that the main issue is just that we have to offer a positive

00:50:36.460 program for dealing with the biggest problem in the state. And it's not going to be enough to point

00:50:41.360 out the hypocrisy. I think we need to offer a really positive agenda. Yep. Yep. And, you know,

00:50:46.160 this is not just San Francisco. You mentioned this a little bit earlier. This is happening in

00:50:50.300 Houston, in, you know, the heart of Dallas. It's happening in Austin. It's happening in Denver.

00:50:55.440 It's in D.C. It's in Boston. It's in New York. It's in Chicago. It's in Portland. It's in Seattle.

00:51:00.640 Every city that is run not just by Democrats, but we're talking about left wing progressive

00:51:05.460 ideologues where their policies have actually been able to take root. Life has become worse. It's

00:51:11.560 become worse. That's just an objective fact. And hopefully people are waking up to that. And I think

00:51:16.760 you are playing a big role in that. Thankfully, tell everyone where they can follow you and get

00:51:21.140 your book. Thank you. Yeah. Please. I hope folks do consider buying San Francisco. Why progressives

00:51:29.800 ruin cities. You can get it on Amazon. Hopefully it's your local bookseller. While you're there,

00:51:33.860 buy Apocalypse Never. Why environmental tourism hurts us all. The two books really do go together.

00:51:38.880 They're a defense of the pillars of Western civilization, which I view as being under attack

00:51:43.780 and threatened and also a case for kind of rebooting our civilization with some new institutions,

00:51:50.620 some new ideas. And yeah, they can follow me on Twitter, Schellenberger and then MD. I'm not,

00:51:57.140 I'm not a doctor, but those are my initials. Schellenberger MD at Schellenberger MD on Twitter,

00:52:02.000 or I'm also on Facebook, Michael Schellenberger. Well, thank you so much. I also hope people go out

00:52:06.320 and buy your book. We'll include the links to those. We'll include the links to those in the

00:52:10.860 description of this podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I really appreciate

00:52:16.060 it. Thanks for having me. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I learned a lot

00:52:26.800 from him. He's really interesting. Definitely go out and buy his book and just keep in mind,

00:52:33.640 keep in mind that progressive policies, progressive ideas, progressive dogma,

00:52:38.320 that sounds good, that sounds compassionate, whether it's about abortion, whether it's about

00:52:43.280 transgenderism, whether it's about homelessness, poverty, education, always ask at what cost and

00:52:52.320 what hard data do you have? Always ask the person who is putting forth a line or an idea or a policy

00:52:59.180 proposal that sounds really good, that sounds really compassionate, that sounds like, oh, if you're

00:53:03.960 against that, then you're a bigot or you're a bad person or you hate poor people or whatever,

00:53:07.660 rather than giving in to that and saying, oh, you know, I'm compassionate, so I support you.

00:53:12.800 Ask yourself, what facts do you have to back up the idea that this is actually going to help? And what

00:53:18.200 cost is this going to put on the rest of society? This sounds like maybe it's meant to be compassionate

00:53:24.620 for one group of people, but what about everyone else? The same is true when it comes to illegal

00:53:28.860 immigration. Oh, we have to be so compassionate by letting everyone in who wants to come in.

00:53:33.620 At what cost to the country? At what cost to the people at the border? At what cost to people who

00:53:37.500 are being trafficked? And really, at what cost to the migrants in the countries that they're coming from?

00:53:42.940 As Thomas Sowell says, what is typically called social justice should actually be called anti-social

00:53:48.380 justice since the thing that is precisely ignored is the cost to society. That is so true. That's why

00:53:57.540 I don't believe social justice is just. It never is. Read Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell.

00:54:04.860 If this episode didn't red pill you, then Thomas Sowell definitely will. All right. One more thing I

00:54:12.300 wanted to say. So we've been talking about, we've had a lot of, you know, fun, fun moments on Instagram

00:54:17.660 this week where we've talked about this millennial problem, issue, syndrome, whatever you want to call

00:54:24.120 it that we have. And maybe it's not just millennials, but I do think it's mostly generational and then,

00:54:30.580 you know, part personality and things like that where we have this paralysis when it comes to doing

00:54:36.660 small things. And there was actually a BuzzFeed article on this a couple of years ago. They called

00:54:41.280 it errant paralysis. So we can do other things. You know, the big things we can, you know, go to medical

00:54:49.380 school. We can get married. We can have kids. We can do the big obligations and responsibilities that

00:54:55.480 we have. But when it comes to like sending packages back that we, uh, uh, that we need to return or going

00:55:03.380 to the post office or listening to a voicemail and calling people back, reading like a long personal

00:55:09.060 email, it's very, very scary to us. So I want to hear from you, like, tell me your personal stories

00:55:16.580 about your paralysis surrounding, you know, small things, whether it's like, oh, you've had, uh,

00:55:22.540 boxes in the back of your trunk that you have meant to donate to Goodwill for the past six months.

00:55:28.200 I want to hear like the craziest ones. Like how long have you been putting off that one task that

00:55:33.460 you have meant to do? And I want to hear like the most menial tasks and the longest someone has waited

00:55:40.700 and procrastinated to do that thing. And tell me your thinking behind it. Why have you put off

00:55:45.260 doing that thing? And I'll give you our phone number so you can leave a quick voicemail telling

00:55:51.140 me this, and I'll play a few of them maybe next week. Uh, 682-503-1369, 682-503-1369 call. Leave us a

00:56:01.220 voicemail. Also tomorrow, I am going to be announcing finally the winner of the giveaway that we announced

00:56:07.880 at our 500th episode. You'll get lots of good stuff. So I'll announce that tomorrow. So make sure

00:56:13.460 that you tune in. We will see you guys then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 20, 2021

Ep 509 ｜ How a Former Soros Activist Is Taking On Toxic Progressivism ｜ Guest： Michael Shellenberger

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