A Nation of People Not Ideology ｜ 9⧸21⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
137.09702
Summary
The media have been covering for Joe Biden s disastrous presidency by running comically propagandistic headlines about the success of his policies. Yes, the average person may be struggling, but nothing can stop the American Politburo from publishing stories about new record harvests with the kind of fervor that would make a Soviet commissar blush. While the media s shameless partisanship for the Biden administration makes their distortions more obvious, this denial about the true quality of life in the United States is hardly new. Both parties have prioritized the victory of their ideological preferences over the well-being of the American people.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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The media have been covering for Joe Biden's disastrous presidency
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by running comically propagandistic headlines about the success of Bidenomics.
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but nothing can stop the American Politburo from publishing stories about new record harvests
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with the kind of fervor that would make a Soviet commissar blush.
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While the media's shameless partisanship for the Biden administration makes their distortions
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more obvious, this denial about the true quality of life in the United States is hardly new.
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Both parties have prioritized the victory of their ideological preferences over the well-being of the American people.
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Narrative victory has become far more important to our ruling class
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than understanding the real condition of the average citizen.
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In his essay, Chartism, Thomas Carlyle raised what he called the Condition of England question.
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Carlyle was watching as the Industrial Revolution radically transformed the lives of the working class in Britain.
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He was particularly concerned with the ruling elite's new obsession with data collection and economic theories.
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Carlyle referred to economics as the dismal science
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because it attempted to quantify everything about the human experience
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and solve all of society's ills through statistical analysis.
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The human experience is incredibly complex, nested in a thick web of tradition and folkways
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that are not easily displayed on a spreadsheet.
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Carlyle warned that this focus on impersonal and cold measurements
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would allow economists to lie about the true condition of the people by manipulating data.
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The reign of quantity, data, and experts would not free people from governance
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but would instead make them subordinate to inhuman forces which would act in their own interests.
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The current leftist push to portray America's tenuous economic position in a cheerful light
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only demonstrates the truth of Carlyle's concerns.
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Spending has run rampant, inflation is out of control,
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and the only answer that Democrats have to offer is even more government programs and outrageous deficits.
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As evidence, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently posted about how the Inflation Reduction Act
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allowed for the planting of nearly $75 million worth of trees in New York.
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Democrats have no interest in how inflation impacts the average American.
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Politicians only care about how the situation can be used to further their ideological goal.
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And they are more than happy to manipulate data to ensure that outcome.
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Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman went so far as to claim that if you remove housing,
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cars, food, and energy, it appears that inflation has been largely defeated.
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As long as you remove everything humans need to live, the average American is doing great.
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While it's easy to focus on the absurdity of the current leftist regime, Republicans are just as guilty.
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Vladimir Putin called the U.S. dollar's drop in dominance objective and irreversible during the recent BRICS summit in South Africa,
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as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formally agreed to use local currencies instead of the U.S. dollar.
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For decades, conservative commentators told middle Americans whose jobs were being shipped overseas
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that economic conditions were improving because new and better jobs would arise
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from the creative destruction of the free market.
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Young families who couldn't afford to purchase a home due to skyrocketing residential prices
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were told to get an extra job and stop eating avocado toast.
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Young married couples who couldn't afford to have children due to prohibitive health care costs
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were told that everything was fine because flat-screen televisions from China were very cheap.
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Free trade, mass immigration, and cheap money were supposed to allow the nation to innovate its way out of any problem.
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The Party of Family Values didn't seem to care if family formation was increasingly out of reach
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The Republican Party has been a cheerleader for corporations that worked hard
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to destroy American culture, push a woke agenda, and make the dream of raising a family on one income impossible.
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The conservative establishment might talk about the importance of church or community,
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but it eagerly endorses the economic forces that regularly tear apart those same communities.
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In its ideological push for small government at any price,
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the GOP forgot what made small government possible in the first place,
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a robust network of families and community organizations that provided mutual aid for those in need.
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The drive for a beltway, libertarian version of radical individualism was painted over with a thin coat of family values
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to disguise its destructive nature, but it was dismantling the very structures on which those values stood.
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This obsession with economic ideology didn't just damage the country socially, but also materially.
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During the pandemic, many Americans were shocked to discover that the obsession with higher profit and cheaper products
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had moved production of critical medical supplies like ventilators and antibiotics entirely offshore.
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In a time of dire crisis, the United States was totally dependent on the very same hostile nation
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that had fostered that crisis for essential medical supplies.
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Any nation that was thinking about the well-being of its people would understand
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that having some degree of domestic production for those items is critical, no matter what the cost.
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But our leaders have learned nothing from this crisis, and little effort has been made to create
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any emergency production capacity for these essentials.
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The condition of the American people is not a cold statistic that can be derived from data.
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The nation is vast, and it contains many different regions, cultures, and traditions
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America's gross domestic product or the price of consumer electronics does not tell the story
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Man cannot live on affordable flat-screen televisions alone.
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Yes, the Biden administration has been shamelessly rearranging economic indicators
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in the hope of papering over deep societal problems, but it's far from the first to do so.
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It's much easier to abstract people into easily manipulatable data points than to actually
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walk their communities and understand their problems.
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The elderly move across the country to die alone in nursing homes.
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Career strivers suddenly reach middle age and find that they have
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nothing beyond a soulless corporate job to bring purpose to their lives.
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Young people search for real communities of belonging,
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but find only digital simulations of what was once a central part of human life.
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but none of these problems will ever be solved by robust economic development.
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Our modern minds have been trained to trust the quantifiable.
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We have been trained to believe that the opinions of experts and the authority of data
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hold priority over all other forms of knowledge.
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But if we are to solve the social and spiritual problems our nation now faces,
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we must learn to view our countrymen as humans, not boxes on a spreadsheet.
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To understand the condition of America, leaders must view the United States as a people with organic
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needs and ways of being, not an economic zone which can be optimized through social engineering.
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Until our rulers see the nation as a people and not a temporary staging area for their pet economic ideologies,
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they'll never be able to truly address what ails the country.
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And of course you can watch all of these episodes and read all of my columns over at The Blaze.
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Thanks for watching guys, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.