Chris Ruffo is probably the most effective conservative political activist of my lifetime. He's out with a new book now called America s Culture and his new book America's Cultural Revolution is out now. In this episode, Chris talks with me about how he got started in activism, why he got into politics, and what it takes to be an effective activist.
00:01:38.960I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:01:43.660So I'm sure most of you are already familiar with Christopher Ruffo's work.
00:01:48.120He is probably the most effective conservative political activist of my lifetime.
00:01:53.960He's certainly one pushing the boundaries of what can get done in things like the fight against critical race theory and radical gender ideology.
00:02:01.920And he's out with a new book now called America's culture and he's out with a new book now called America's cultural revolution.
00:02:09.520So Chris is going to be jumping into everything about America's cultural revolution.
00:02:13.520We're going to look at some different questions about what is effective activism and how people can actually work against the system that we're now looking at.
00:02:20.980But before we do that, guys, let's jump into a message from today's sponsor.
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00:03:32.000ISI is here to educate the next generation of great Americans.
00:04:10.280And so, yeah, absolutely, ISI is an organization to support and to check out if you are a young person wanting to get into the mix.
00:04:16.900And certainly, you know, building on that, don't follow my lead.
00:04:21.660You know, don't make documentaries for PBS as a pipeline to working in conservative politics.
00:04:28.320It's a kind of unique path that I took as my politics shifted, my career shifted.
00:04:33.960You know, after I was 30, really, kind of took it in a political direction, burned all the bridges in the documentary world as I started to become more political.
00:04:42.340And then fully made the jump in the early part of my 30s into doing journalism, think tank work, policy work, writing, reporting, documentary work.
00:04:53.560And so one of the things that I would say that has been good about that is that in contrast to a lot of our peers in this side of the world that have, I would say, underdeveloped aesthetic and narrative sense working for so many years in the documentary world, which is, you know, uniformly and really extremely left wing.
00:05:18.200I at least learned some of the really good techniques of the left as far as narrative aesthetics, you know, professional media production.
00:05:26.800And so I brought a lot of those skills with me that I think has made me somewhat different and maybe stand out in some ways.
00:05:33.340Yeah, I think that's going to be really essential and something that I definitely want to get into with you is the use of language, why the right is so bad at it, why narrative control is something that the left is so good at.
00:05:44.300But we'll get deeper into that in just a second.
00:05:46.840So your book, America's Cultural Revolution, it starts, you know, of course, you have a very good narrative, like you said, very narratively gifted in this.
00:05:55.260And it starts with a guy named Herbert Marcuse.
00:05:58.440Can you explain a little bit about who he is and why he's so central to this cultural revolution?
00:06:04.140Yeah, the book is divided into four parts, looking at the four main categories or components of this, you know, 50 year long cultural revolution.
00:06:12.320And I think Marcuse is the foundation of the book, the beginning section of the book, because in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he laid out all of the conceptual categories that we still live in today.
00:06:25.900He really established that, which at that time was a countercultural left-wing narrative and philosophy.
00:06:31.880And a lot of the key concepts that he developed in that time haven't really changed.
00:06:38.100They've been kind of stuck in a static situation, although they have gained power.
00:06:42.240And, you know, Marcuse was an interesting person.
00:06:44.980He was a really erudite philosopher, a student of philosophy and the classics.
00:06:51.900He was a devoted Marxist who then broke with the Soviet Union when he realized that it was a bureaucratic tyranny.
00:06:58.600And his concept was to pioneer a new Marxism, a neo-Marxism that liberated human beings from repressive culture,
00:07:07.960that liberated human beings from repressive sexual manners and mores,
00:07:12.480and that really sought to bring revolution in the West using a high-low coalition of the predominantly white middle class student radicals,
00:07:22.740the intelligentsia, and then the predominantly black lower class members in the inner cities
00:07:28.640that provided almost a pincer movement or pincer movement that provided the ideology at a high level
00:07:36.200and then provided the threat of violence and disruption at the lower level.
00:07:40.620And so this is still kind of the left-wing coalition of today.
00:07:44.180And so I think all of those concepts are really worth revisiting, really worth understanding
00:07:48.340to really see how things have gotten to be the way that they are.
00:07:52.300Now, in your book, you obviously talk about how Marcuse was pretty essential in getting this ideology into institutions.
00:08:01.120But something I was thinking about as I was kind of reading this was that communist infiltrators in institutions were nothing new, right?
00:08:08.300Like, we're very aware, of course, of Joseph McCarthy and, you know, the Un-American Activities Committee.
00:08:15.960We're familiar, you know, James Burnham wrote a book, Web of Deception, about all of these different infiltrations,
00:08:21.200not just in the government or not just in the places you would think, but throughout intelligence agencies and these things.
00:08:27.300There was already a very active communist network throughout the United States in entertainment, in government and all of these things before he came on the scene.
00:08:37.080So how is this different from what was already an ongoing communist infiltration of institutions?
00:08:42.060It's different in one critical respect.
00:08:46.580And the reason that the kind of old school kind of foreign intelligence operation, communist asset maneuvers didn't work is that they were, you know, of course,
00:08:57.680they were aligned with a hostile foreign power.
00:15:30.140And though there's another interesting wrinkle, though, that I think about and found really interesting,
00:15:35.760is that then their relationship to the means of production changes.
00:15:41.240So, you know, traditional Marxists and then the Leninists and Russia and then European communists for a large part of the early 20th century,
00:15:50.400into the mid-20th century even, they really wanted to seize the means of production.
00:15:55.340They wanted to take over the factories.
00:15:57.280They wanted to, you know, build the cars themselves.
00:16:00.100They wanted to, you know, staff the public hospitals.
00:16:02.840And they wanted to run it from the bottom up.
00:16:06.900And, but the Marxist, neo-Marxist revolutionaries of the 60s and then certainly our postmodern Marxist revolutionaries in BLM and other entities today,
00:16:45.260One is to say, well, we deserve to have all the stuff.
00:16:48.160So you better give us, you know, universal basic income or reparations or tax and redistribution or free college or free this or free that.
00:17:00.360But then the other method, and you see this in Marcuse, says, oh, we're on the verge of technological progress that is going to transcend anything before.
00:17:08.920The robots, and now they would say the AI, is going to create everything that we could possibly desire.
00:17:14.620And therefore, no one is going to have to work.
00:17:16.540And we can create, we can harness the technology, have public ownership over the self-generating wealth that then we can just, you know, kind of retire into.
00:17:31.700It gives one actually some kind of sympathy and respect for orthodox Marxists to say, well, at least these people had a basic idea of how, you know, society works in its most elementary basis.
00:17:43.800You have to work, you have to do things, you have to be creative.
00:17:48.280You want to produce man's productive capacity.
00:17:53.120His creative capacity is part of his essence.
00:17:56.180Not just, like, sit back and, you know, smoke a blunt, play video games and collect your UBI.
00:18:02.040I mean, that is like, you know, I think even Marx, frankly, would be disgusted by something like that.
00:18:06.860If you really give him a charitable read.
00:18:09.260Yeah, I mean, they were certainly assuming that the progress and the material largesse was automatic.
00:18:14.860The only question was who would be the beneficiaries of it.
00:18:17.400They didn't see it as the production of some kind of particular culture or nation or system.
00:18:23.080They simply saw it as the common state.
00:18:26.120And then the only thing to do is rearrange who would be the beneficiaries of it.
00:18:30.040But this kind of brings me to the next question.
00:18:32.460It feels like this is a coalition that isn't, as you pointed out, orthodox Marxists at all.
00:18:38.900Instead, they seem to have a very different understanding of what they're doing.
00:18:43.220It seems like a number of groups who all benefit from the rearranging of kind of already instantiated hierarchies inside the Western and particularly American system.
00:18:55.880Less of a group of people with a true ideological alignment and more of those who feel like by dismantling what currently exists,
00:19:04.300they'll be the new recipients of some particular material benefit.
00:27:16.740It's got to get overturned by the Supreme Court.
00:27:19.940You know, and conservatives, Republicans, you know, you think Griggs is bad.
00:27:24.760Well, what they did in the 1991 Civil Rights Act reforms was actually take that principle of disparate impact and codify it into federal law.
00:27:33.860So taking it out of the realm of just the jurisprudence and interpretation into the actual law of the United States.
00:27:40.480And so – and then you look at Lyndon Johnson's executive order underlying the affirmative action programs.
00:27:49.580So I'm just confused as to when this became colorblind.
00:27:52.860Like, when was the civil rights reckoning, the revolution, colorblind?
00:27:59.480And how is – how is the current thing a – a perversion of what I think was, at its very beginning, an act that was not in any way colorblind?
00:28:09.100I think that it was sold to the public as a method of fulfilling the promise of a colorblind society, protecting people's individual rights, treating people equally as individuals regardless of their ancestry, which is a vision that I still support.
00:28:23.920And I would agree with your critique in the sense that we don't have that.
00:28:31.700We have, you know, all of the, you know, civil rights lawsuits that incentivize this DEI bureaucracy.
00:28:38.660We have these training programs that are explicitly divisive, hostile, treating people unequally as a matter of policy and a matter of culture.
00:28:46.800You have rampant discrimination in hiring at private firms based on this kind of intersectional categorization.
00:28:53.140And so you could make an argument to say, well, you know, have we ever had a totally colorblind society?
00:29:02.300And so there's an argument that you could say perhaps no because you have all of these legal decisions and then the executive orders and then the legislation.
00:29:12.320But does that mean that we then throw out the vision?
00:29:17.200I think that means that we need to fight for it.
00:29:19.540And the good luck for us, for those of us who want to fight for that, is that we have, you know, 70% plus public support.
00:29:27.420The public supports a colorblind system even in places like Washington State and California whenever it's put to voters in referenda.
00:29:34.960And so conservatives were really, in a sense, sold a bill of goods in the 1990s certainly and then even before that.
00:29:44.320And look, any conservative president could have wiped out Lyndon Johnson's executive order, which provided the basis for infertive action, could have been written out at any time in the last, you know, 60 years.
00:29:56.620And so for whatever reason, multiple reasons, they didn't do that.
00:30:00.900But I think it's time to do that and to say, hey, look, these executive orders were stopgap measures.
00:30:07.220Griggs versus Duke power is an illegitimate method of settling these disputes.
00:30:12.760Any kind of group identity-based public policy, for example, should be rejected in favor of an individual treatment of people under law.
00:30:35.160And I think with some legislative changes, with a couple of good Supreme Court rulings, we can get much closer to that.
00:30:41.780So one thing that you focus on quite a bit and something that I'm also really interested in is the use of language, setting frames, understanding what's going on here.
00:30:50.940And obviously, that's a big part of your book is explaining kind of how that language gets manufactured.
00:30:56.300But just to break it down for people a little bit here, why are the left so much better at manufacturing language, controlling narratives?
00:31:07.460I think it's a – honestly, I think I don't have any, you know, survey data to bag this up.
00:31:13.200But I think it's a temperament question.
00:31:14.640You know, having spent a lot of time in the kind of left-wing social scene and then in the more right-wing social scene, you have people on the left that are much more verbally adept, symbolically adept, narratively adept.
00:31:31.260They have high skills, the kind of people that would score really high on, like, the SAT verbal section.
00:31:36.800And I think on the right, you have more of the strong silent type is perhaps the traditional model and the archetypal personality.
00:31:46.280You have people that are good at running businesses, that are good at, you know, leading families, that are good at making institutions work, good managers, that kind of thing,
00:31:56.980that are less inclined for verbalism, which they probably think of instinctually as a form of sophistry.
00:32:09.100But we have a society where there are really rich rewards for people with high levels of verbal sophistication.
00:32:18.180And we have a media ecosystem that the manipulation of words and symbols actually changes how people think in a dramatic way and then can persuade people one way or the other if done successfully.
00:32:30.260And so I think people with high verbal skills that are able to use those verbal skills for political purposes gives our opponents,
00:32:42.480the people who we're kind of doing the battle with every day, a big advantage.
00:32:48.560And we have to try to eliminate or at least narrow that deficit if we want to be successful in the future.
00:32:54.680Is part of this problem also that conservatives are really bought into the idea that politics is all about kind of a debate?
00:33:03.120It's a big debate club and it's all about getting in there and meeting your opponent on the ground that they create and then convincing them that they're wrong,
00:33:11.500as opposed to kind of understanding that actually your opponents are not acting in good faith and the language they've already chosen is loaded
00:33:18.580and that meeting them there will mean your dismemberment in public?
00:47:24.280I mean, I do not want to have the mirror image of critical race theory be my ideology.
00:47:29.280I mean, these people are lunatics and fanatics and cynics and, and, um, and filled with fears
00:47:37.280and paranoias and, and revenge fantasies and hatreds.
00:47:40.280Um, I want to have a philosophy and, and, and, and a, and a political argument that, that,
00:47:46.280that, that, that goes so far above that, that I don't actually then find myself a victim
00:47:51.280to those kinds of feelings in a, in a mirror image.
00:47:54.280And, and unfortunately, um, and I, I, I do see that in certain elements of the political right.
00:47:59.280I mean, I see people that are prey to the same temptations that the critical race theorists are, are, are, are, are, have been prey to.
00:48:08.280And I think it's personally as, as a, as a person, I think it's a mistake.
00:48:13.280I think it's actually, you know, not, not, not good for those people.
00:48:16.280And I think also politically and socially, it's a mistake as well.
00:48:20.280I think it is a mistake for some people on the right to say that, uh, that they're, that they're going to have basically their identity politics exactly the same as the left.
00:48:28.280I don't think that in the end, that is a good goal.
00:48:31.280I just think that there is a certain acknowledgement that has to take place.
00:48:35.280If you want people to take us kind of seriously on these issues.
00:48:38.280And part of it is speaking truth about how different groups are treated.
00:48:42.280There's also an issue of course, that even when we move to a colorblind society, if that's a thing that, that can happen.
00:48:49.280If different groups continue to perform differently than like disparate impact has noticed, people will try to take corrective action, right?
00:48:58.280They that's built into our civil rights structure.
00:49:02.280And so I think there also has to be an explicit understanding.
00:49:05.280If you're going to attempt to kind of re understand that vision that you're talking about to say,
00:49:11.280even if there are noticeable statistical differences that emerge over time, once we have applied a merit based program, that is no longer something that is of concern to people.
00:49:23.280That is not something that can be or should be addressed by the law or culture.
00:49:28.280I think we should have a pure kind of colorblind society in the sense that we treat people as individuals.
00:49:36.280And then if there are group disparities at the end of that process, as long as they've been treated fairly and equally during the process,
00:49:44.280let the cards, you know, fall where the cards fall.
00:49:47.280And so, for example, if Asians are dominating in college admissions and SAT scores, the solution is not to say, hey, let's penalize the Asians.
00:49:57.280The solution is for other groups to figure out, well, you know, what are they doing?
00:50:01.280Is there any way that we can improve our own performance, have, you know, higher test scores, strive harder, figure out other ways to succeed?
00:50:10.280And I think that if you look at group disparities, there's group disparities everywhere.
00:50:16.280I mean, there's group disparities in every human endeavor.
00:50:18.280And it's not even exclusively on, we focus on race because it's like a monomania.
00:50:23.280But it's not even exclusively there because, of course, within, you know, European Americans, within American whites,
00:50:30.280you have massive group disparities between different ethnicities or different nations of origin.
00:50:36.280You know, your Scots-Irish Appalachians are performing very differently than your Swedish-American people in the suburbs in the Midwest.
00:50:44.280And so these kind of disparities, we have to make an argument, and what I would agree with you on, is if we get to a colorblind legal regime
00:50:56.280in which you have to prove active discrimination in order to have any kind of legal claim in your specific case,
00:51:16.280But we have to have a better argument as conservatives to say, okay, colorblind society produces unequal outcomes of groups in many different ways.
00:51:46.280But I think that most people, most normal people, don't spend all day obsessing over these questions,
00:51:57.280thinking about these questions, don't particularly care.
00:52:00.280They're not particularly conscious of it in their daily life where they're focused on their own families and needs and interests and professions and institutions.
00:52:11.280And I think that if we can devise a strong argument, if we can devise a strong system of law, if we can devise something that has buy-in from people of all different backgrounds,
00:52:23.280that is fair, that is just, I think that people will eventually come to the conclusion that, one, it's their responsibility.
00:52:37.280They'll take on more responsibility without the ability to just blame the system or demand unequal treatment from the system.
00:52:45.280And then I think, look, I think that, you know, the society that results will not be perfect, but I think it will be much better than what we have today,
00:52:55.280which is a system of legalized discrimination, which is a system of these kind of farcical DEI bureaucracies that degrade all of our institutions.
00:53:05.280And then the really elevation of some of these very hostile ideologies that I outline in the book that do damage, not just to people, you know, not just to this group or that group,
00:53:19.280but actually to the entire society fundamentally.
00:53:21.280Yeah, I think there's a larger discussion to be said on kind of the top down versus bottom up nature and those kind of things.
00:53:29.280But I want to ask you one more question.
00:53:31.280We're kind of running up of time and I don't want to miss the opportunity to ask it before we go.
00:53:53.280So just for people who aren't aware, basically without using, you know, colorful language as much as Yarvin did on the show,
00:54:01.280he said basically forcing people into like like flexing force and using this to kind of push people in this activist direction by taking over these public institutions
00:54:12.280and forcing them into a particular mold kind of sets you as the villain.
00:54:16.280It activates all the defense mechanisms of the regime and it causes them to kind of have a new and vital energy
00:54:22.280because they're back again fighting the evil of the mid-century Germans once more as opposed to wooing them,
00:54:30.280you know, making it more of a soft power peddling of ideas, slow transformational thing.
00:54:35.280Once their kind of ideology burns out is more his approach.
00:54:40.280What do you have to say to kind of Yarvin's thought that your aggressive nature towards the denizens of New College is something that's kind of a losing strategy?
00:54:51.280Well, you know, I love Curtis and I enjoy, you know, talking to Curtis and I've spent a little time with him at some conferences and such.
00:54:59.280And I find Curtis to be really interesting and refreshing and obviously very intelligent.
00:55:05.280But I just think that he's wrong on this.
00:55:07.280And I think that, again, it's almost a temperamental thing.
00:55:09.280He talks about, I remember in some interview or maybe I talked to him personally about it.
00:55:14.280He's like, oh, you know, I kind of adopt the posture of a prey animal so that no one really tries to bother me or cancel me.
00:55:19.280And I think that his philosophy is, in a sense, a kind of prey animal philosophy where, you know, if we could just kind of avoid danger for long enough, things will shift in our direction.
00:55:30.280And maybe if we can just get the predators to like us a little bit, we can, you know, change how they think.
00:55:35.280And then kind of, you know, flash, bang, bam, at some point then we'll have the conditions if everything really degrades and degenerates for some dramatic Napoleonic figure to come in.
00:55:49.280And it's like, I mean, A, which is it?
00:55:52.280You know, B, you know, kind of how is this going to work?
00:55:56.280And then C, well, look, I mean, this is the political regime we have today.
00:56:03.280I believe we still have a constitutional republic.
00:56:06.280And so we have to use the mechanisms of power that we have available to us.
00:56:10.280And I think that beyond the theoretical question where, again, I disagree with him.
00:56:16.280It's like, wait a minute, you're not going to, you know, it's this kind of this mistaken idea of, well, if I can only get, you know, the New York Times op-ed page to agree with me.
00:56:24.280No, the New York Times op-ed page will publish, like, the maybe DEI is not so great after all as a pressure release, you know, not because there's actually any material or significant administrative change in the institutions.
00:56:39.280I think that you have to use politics and try to create prototypes for recapture, for transformation.
00:57:12.280Gavin Newsom flew into town, onto the campus, and he was part of some drum circle or something.
00:57:18.280I don't even really know what he was doing, but he was dancing to a drum circle.
00:57:23.280But then, you know, as Governor DeSantis told us explicitly before we engaged in this campaign, he says, the media's going to come after you.
00:57:42.280We've recruited the largest incoming class in the college's history.
00:57:45.280We have the college's budget is in better shape than it's ever been since it was established in the 1960s.
00:57:52.280We had 30 of the most kind of anti-liberal, smaller liberal, the most left-wing, you know, gender studies professors, you know, ideological professors, self-select out.
00:58:27.280We also do this through mechanisms like universal school choice, giving parents cash to take to any school of their choice to rebuild their own local institutions.
00:58:36.280And I look at this in a way in my own experience, not just the kind of abstract experience in writing and politics, but what do I do with my kids?
01:00:35.280What are the ideas that I'd like to advance?
01:00:37.280And who is the most likely to actually bring them to fruition?
01:00:41.280And having worked with the governor on some of these issues in the last couple years, I've seen him work and I've seen his, I mean, really unique talent.
01:00:52.280And one of the things that he has a talent for is understanding complex institutions, understanding how the law works, understanding the levers of power in the bureaucracy.
01:01:02.280And what he's done is really an astonishing transformation in Florida.
01:01:06.280I think he could absolutely do the same thing in Washington, D.C.
01:01:10.280He has intelligence, self-discipline, follow through, really good management skills.
01:01:18.280He's delegated to a very high, very talented team within his administration in Tallahassee.
01:01:25.280And, you know, he has this remarkable vision where he says, all right, here are the boards, here are the laws, here are the reforms, here's the budget.
01:01:33.280Here are all the different components of how to run an institution as an executive.
01:02:39.280Even though he has the constitutional power and authority to make that order, he was just entirely ignored.
01:02:47.280What would be different with DeSantis?
01:02:50.280What would he do differently that would actually cause that order to be reinforced?
01:02:56.280Well, you know, I actually read it quite differently, and I was involved with it, and I actually don't think it was ignored.
01:03:02.280In fact, I think they were actually pretty good and actually very good at enforcing the order.
01:03:08.280And it was really run by Russ Vogt out of the Office of Management and Budget.
01:03:12.280He put together this really incredible team that was fielding tips from federal employees who said,
01:03:17.280hey, I think they're in violation of the order.
01:03:19.280And then he would just squash them one by one if anyone was in violation.
01:03:23.280And not only that, but it actually had kind of a chilling effect, and because it extended to corporate America,
01:03:31.280that actually corporations were starting to cancel some of these trainings.
01:03:34.280And so I actually think that, you know, under Russ's leadership at OMB,
01:03:40.280I actually think they did a really good job at enforcing the executive order and a really good job at monitoring and cracking down as necessary.
01:03:49.280All right. Thuggo here for $7. Thank you very much, sir.
01:03:53.280Issues like trans kids are just battles fought on our turf.
01:03:57.280Once they lose, all their power will be intact.
01:04:02.280So very interesting. Yeah, a lot of strength right now, I think, for the right,
01:04:06.280because they're standing on pretty firm ground fighting back against the trans issue.
01:04:11.280But what would be some of the core issues that we would know that, you know, we are now moving into their territory, making gains in that direction?
01:04:20.280Yeah, I mean, I think, in my view, the best way to look at that is administratively or institutionally.
01:04:27.280And so what I found to be true in the political work, policy work, and then also the higher education work is that you have to actually start doing significant work that disrupts the bureaucracy administratively,
01:04:42.280which means inevitably, you know, terminating the employment of people who are doing the wrong things that are employed in departments that should no longer exist,
01:04:53.280much as a private corporation would do downsizing or layoffs, that's really what it's going to take at a deep level.
01:05:01.280And so that is much harder, right, because when people lose their jobs, the media finds some sympathetic story and runs it and you get beat up on it.
01:05:09.280But I think that's when we know that we're stretching.
01:05:13.280You know, certainly at New College, we've done that.
01:05:17.280You know, we fired the president, the provost left.
01:06:48.280You know, and whatever their personal motivations are, keep your eye on the ball.
01:06:56.280And that said, of course, like if there's an opening or an opportunity like the Nader campaign in 2000, I mean, exploit it, use it as a tool in the political fight.
01:07:07.280But, you know, I will take many bets at good odds that, you know, RFK Jr. does not become president of the United States.
01:07:17.280Yeah, I hope no one was under that illusion.
01:07:36.280If certain people are less ethnocentric and rule following, judging as individuals and others are ethnocentric, which are which you can never really fully catch.
01:07:46.280And won't the people following your merit based rules unfairly lose resources and political power in a diverse society?
01:07:56.280Yeah, so the question, if I can maybe rephrase it and make sure I understand it correctly, is if there are certain people that want to reward others who share the same background instead of merit or in addition to merit, that's where I'm kind of confused.
01:08:12.280Yeah. So basically, I think what he's trying to say is, look, if most people are following the rules and they're trying to do the colorblind thing and they're going by merit.
01:08:22.280A group of people who say, I'm just not going to do that.
01:08:25.280I don't care that much about it and I'm in a position of power, so I'm going to ignore that.
01:08:29.280And that can be difficult to detect over, you know, if they're doing that, if they're putting the thumb on the scale slowly and surely over time.
01:08:36.280Won't the people who follow the rules eventually lose to the people who don't follow the rules?
01:08:42.280I don't think so. No, I don't think so, because I think that, you know, firms that would do that, I mean, it'd be very difficult to do something like that in a large corporation, right?
01:08:56.280I mean, that's kind of an obvious truism. It's much more difficult and that's why they have all these lawsuits in companies, but I don't know.
01:09:05.280I mean, if it's a flagrant violation, if it's, you know, outright kind of discrimination motivated by animus or whatever in this example, obviously there's some remedy to that.
01:09:16.280But I look, I just think of people that I work with every day, people that I engage with every day, they want to find the most capable person.
01:09:23.280They want to find the most competent person. And yeah, are there going to be people that try to reward friends and not others? Yeah, fine.
01:09:31.280There's going to be some of that around the edges, but I think at the end of the day, most people are pretty fair. Most people treat others equally.
01:09:39.280And so, you know, I just think that in the larger scheme of things, if that is true, it's a kind of relatively minor negative consequence for an overall improvement in the system as a whole.
01:09:52.280And guys, we're going to make this last one because I did. Chris does have to get going here, but I will read the rest of your super chats.
01:10:00.280Just I do want to respect his time here. So Ronald McNuggets again for $10. Chris, do you support the right of private property owners to allow or exclude anyone for any reason or no reason from their private property?
01:10:12.280Per Caldwell, this seems like how we got men in women's bathrooms.
01:10:16.280Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, obviously don't support men in women's bathrooms. And that is an example, I think, of the kind of Caldwell thesis on Title IX grounds of the civil rights, you know, Title IX grounds on sex.
01:10:34.280But look, I mean, you know, no. And I think conservatives have to be a lot harder on that issue. I mean, they have to say, look, you know, men cannot be in women's bathrooms.
01:10:45.280Because a lot of times what we find, surprise, surprise, is that these are just straight men with, you know, kind of illicit or, you know, harmful desires.
01:10:57.280And so we have to stop that. We have to protect people. And then I guess the question, though, is on this question, the interesting question is, well, what if it's a person who is trans that successfully passes as a woman?
01:11:09.280Or, you know, let's say, okay, well, okay, is that, then they're going to be, you know, it's like, well, I think you have to have a standard.
01:11:16.280And then if someone passes, they pass. I mean, literally, definitely, they pass. And they go and no one bothers them because they're not bothering anyone.
01:11:27.280They're not, they're with bad intentions. They pass. I guess, like, that's kind of the risk that people run.
01:11:33.280But it's a dynamic that can be too easily hijacked. And I think we've seen that over and over, whether it's in prisons with rapists or just the kind of garden variety creeper in the ladies' room.
01:11:45.280All right, guys. Well, I'm going to go ahead and let Chris go. He's been very generous with his time.
01:11:50.280Mr. Rufo, thank you for coming by, guys. Make sure to check out his book.
01:11:54.280I'll continue the stream here and make sure that all the Super Chats get read. But Chris, thank you for coming on.
01:12:03.280All right. So let's go ahead and jump into our remaining Super Chats.
01:12:08.280Oh, I'm sorry, CreeperWeird. Okay, yours was specifically for Chris.
01:12:12.280But he said, okay, Chris, but it's okay to be white. I mean, I'm pretty sure, you know, I would hope Chris would be fine with that.
01:12:21.280Of course, he has children. I'm sure he'd want them to be okay saying that, too.
01:12:26.280So let's see. The Elite Elite for $10. Thank you, sir. By downplaying anti-white crap and pretending it's somehow different from other group stuff, you leave the door open to racial identitarians who will speak the truth to be disaffected whites.
01:12:42.280Yeah, so that's a really good point. And I think kind of what I was getting at there is, if you're not willing to say something that's kind of obvious, then other people, especially people that, you know, probably Chris does not agree with, are going to say the truth.
01:12:57.280And then you leave an unopened door there. And so I think it when there is a lot of Chris makes a really good point that you don't want to step into your opponent's frame.
01:13:07.380I think that's an entirely valid and good point of strategy. However, there is, at some point, a scenario where you are simply ignoring true and obvious things in an attempt to just not touch an issue that you think you're going to lose on or something.
01:13:21.920And that reeks of weakness, right? That reeks of kind of weakness and deceit. And so this is something that I have, you know, that's what I was trying to kind of explain to Woka.
01:13:32.660But when we had the conversation, and obviously, you know, Chris is separate, they have, you know, they're not the same person, obviously. So he might have different approaches on this.
01:13:41.980But I just do think it's important to acknowledge that that doesn't mean he needs to become the central thing of everything you talk about doesn't mean you're, you're, you know, fully embracing some kind of identitarian ideology.
01:13:53.060But pretending like this is not real, it's not pervasive, it's not out there. Excuse me. I think does set people the wrong way people can observe this, they understand what's going on.
01:14:04.900And they just don't like this. It starts to feel dishonest at some point when it's too obvious, and people kind of won't say it, which is, you know, people like Tucker Carlson have pointed it out.
01:14:14.940I think it's relatively in a mainstream position at this point. I don't think you're saying anything particularly radical by just acknowledging that that's kind of the situation.
01:14:23.440Let's see here. Torin McCabe for $10. What is Chris's opinion on Eric Kaufman's white shift? Should people be allowed to have an attachment to historical, ethnic, racial makeup of their nation and make policy decisions based on this?
01:14:40.980Yeah, unfortunately, I'm sorry. I know that, you know, Chris isn't here to kind of respond to that. So I don't know what his response would be.
01:14:50.180I think that a lot of people are kind of looking at that situation. Does that attach to things like America, the way it attaches to places in Europe, which, you know, in which you can definitively say the population was, the native population was ethnically, you know, Caucasian?
01:15:10.180I think that's the wrong mix of turns, but you guys know what I mean. I think that those are kind of very difficult and sticky debates, unfortunately, to have in kind of our current moment, but ones that will eventually kind of become necessary as people kind of look at this issue, you know, kind of going forward.
01:15:29.740But sorry that Chris couldn't respond to that. Let's see another one here. Life of Brian for $5. We have a situation where everyone knows the emperor has no clothes, but the nudist colony holds all lovers of power.
01:15:43.120Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, it's difficult. I mean, don't get me wrong. A lot of these people are kind of true believers, to be sure.
01:15:50.020But it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that, you know, that these things are ridiculous, that they're out of control, that they are insane.
01:15:58.520However, that noticing that is not in itself, you know, that's kind of a joke amongst a lot of people. The left has gone insane. The left has gone crazy.
01:16:06.260That noticing that in and of itself is kind of not sufficient. So you're right that a lot of people, you know, are just kind of incapable of making any changes because those who have kind of decided to go down this path hold all the levers of power.
01:16:20.760And I think that's why, you know, Chris is right. Whether you agree or disagree on some of his rhetorical lines, he's absolutely right that the acquisition of power is kind of a key thing to make any kind of changes.
01:16:32.440Simply pointing and sputtering at hypocrisy or insanity is just not going to get the job done.
01:16:38.580And then Adam E. here for $5. How do you, how do you on, or Mr. DeSantis, ensure your work continues, is not undone once you to retire?
01:16:48.560Yeah, Adam, again, sorry that Chris isn't here to answer that question directly. But yeah, the line of succession is a big problem.
01:16:56.640We unfortunately have a system in which, you know, you don't obviously just hand that legacy off to someone else.
01:17:03.280So as long as you're moving, you know, kind of working inside a democratic paradigm, then you kind of have to have a very tight control over the ideological levers kind of your movement.
01:17:16.920If, let's say, that Rufo and DeSantis were able to make significant headway, they were able to perform these institutions, they were able to move things in the direction that they wanted them to,
01:17:28.500they would need to establish control over institutions that would continue to instill these principles, that would raise up leaders, that would continue to push these forward.
01:17:38.480That's why control over the institutions are so important, especially those that credential high-skill leadership type people, because if you don't have those kinds of ideas and values kind of put forward in those institutions, it's very easy for all of that work to get undone.
01:17:55.360All right, guys. Well, I want to thank everybody for coming by. I really appreciate it.
01:17:59.480We had lots of very good and thought-provoking questions, so I really appreciate everybody who joined the stream today.
01:18:06.800Of course, if this is your first time on the channel, make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the channel.
01:18:14.020And please, also, if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you subscribe to The Oren McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast network.
01:18:23.440Thanks for coming by, guys, and as always, I will talk to you next time.