The Auron MacIntyre Show - How Gender Ideology Is Conquering Red States ｜ Guest： Nate Hochman ｜ 1⧸9⧸23

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00:01:30.980 Hey, everybody. How's it going?

00:01:32.540 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:01:34.260 I've got a great stream with a guest who has written an excellent piece that I wanted all of you guys to check out.

00:01:39.840 We're going to be talking about his new piece and more.

00:01:43.280 But joining me from the National Review, it's Nate Hockman.

00:01:46.900 Thanks for joining me, man.

00:01:48.160 Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

00:01:50.520 Absolutely.

00:01:50.960 Absolutely.

00:01:51.080 So we're going to get into your piece on North Dakota and why radical gender ideology has kind of infiltrated that state and why it seems to be able to work its way not just into these deep red states, but many different right-leaning institutions.

00:02:07.180 But before we get to all of that, for my listeners who might be unfamiliar with you, can you give a little bit of background?

00:02:12.580 How did you get started in what you're doing now?

00:02:15.480 Yeah.

00:02:15.700 So I'm a writer at National Review, which is where this piece on South Dakota ran.

00:02:19.720 I've been there for a little under two years.

00:02:22.840 I graduated college before that.

00:02:24.820 But I've written all over the place, Claremont Review of Books, American Mind, some mainstream publications like the New York Times.

00:02:30.720 But my main post is at National Review, and it's where I do most of the reporting, especially the long-form stuff that you'll find like this.

00:02:39.760 Excellent.

00:02:40.480 So your piece focuses specifically on North Dakota, though, like I said, we're going to talk about other states and why this isn't just a phenomenon there.

00:02:48.600 But, you know, you started the piece by talking about how there's this, you know, radical conference on transgenderism in a state that we wouldn't otherwise think of as one that would be predominantly left-leaning.

00:03:01.640 Why is there a massive conference on this in a place like South Dakota?

00:03:06.480 Right.

00:03:07.060 So South Dakota, it's the third most conservative state in the country in terms of the actual sort of public opinion conservatism of its population.

00:03:16.160 I cited that at the beginning of the piece.

00:03:17.520 It's been controlled by Republican supermajorities since like 1996.

00:03:22.060 So it's sort of, I mean, that was what caught my attention in the first place.

00:03:25.500 There's this big third annual sort of Midwest Gender Identity Summit for transgender medical specialists, which is sort of, you know, standard issue gender identity experts, you know, actual surgeons who do in-state surgeries, including on children for sort of gender transitions.

00:03:42.540 And I looked into it and it's being hosted at the Sanford Research Center, which is sort of the big outpost of Sanford Health, which is this major health care company based in Sioux Falls in South Dakota.

00:03:54.660 It's the largest employer in South Dakota by a degree of like 700 percent.

00:04:01.140 It's valued at $7.5 billion.

00:04:03.120 So it's really by far the largest and most, at least economically most powerful institution in the entire state.

00:04:10.280 And as a result, it has the ear, I would say to put it excessively charitably, of a large segment of the Republican establishment in South Dakota.

00:04:19.540 And when I started looking into it, this wasn't the first time I'd kind of dug into this stuff in South Dakota, but it was the most comprehensive sort of investigation.

00:04:27.180 What I found was that basically the South Dakota legislature, despite being a bicameral Republican supermajority, hasn't been able to pass almost any sort of anti-gender ideology kind of conservative transgender bills over the course of the last decade.

00:04:41.920 Even the kinds that you've seen in much less red conservative states like Florida, you know, you've also seen stuff in Texas and Arkansas.

00:04:49.320 And the result of that largely is because the influence of this massive health care company, which, you know, happens to profit off of puberty blockers and sex change surgeries.

00:04:59.380 But also, I think it's just ideologically committed, along with a lot of transgender activists pushing this stuff.

00:05:04.700 And unfortunately, the GOP establishment in South Dakota has gone along with them.

00:05:09.040 And I think South Dakotans are unfortunately reaping the negative consequences.

00:05:13.920 Yeah, I think there's a lot of interesting ways to approach this, but let's go ahead and look at maybe the GOP establishment there first, because I come from a state like Florida, where basically if you want to get elected for a very long time, unless you happen to be in like Miami, you needed to be a Republican.

00:05:32.680 And so that means a lot of people take what we call the Republican baptism in Florida politics, where they came down and, you know, they had been Democrats their whole life.

00:05:42.100 They had held like center left opinions.

00:05:44.300 They had been involved in unions and all kinds of other things that are considered traditionally left wing.

00:05:51.580 But all of a sudden they're down in Florida and they need to get elected.

00:05:54.900 And magically, they're Republicans.

00:05:57.080 Nothing has really changed in their ideology, but they do have the correct indicator on the ticket to make sure that they can, you know, the primary is the election in a lot of these places.

00:06:08.000 Is that the kind of thing happening in South Dakota?

00:06:10.780 Are the majority of people there in the legislature actually Republican or right wing?

00:06:15.360 Or do people just understand that they need to become Republican in order to get elected?

00:06:20.020 So it's definitely part of it.

00:06:21.340 I mean, one particularly damning example that I found is this guy who just got elected to the statehouse this cycle, you know, November 2022, who happens to be the husband of the majority whip in the state Senate, Helene Duhamel, ran as a Republican.

00:06:36.220 And surprise, surprise, got elected with a lot of financial backing from from Sanford groups, by the way.

00:06:40.860 But he had previously run and won for a bunch of local sort of state offices as a registered Democrat.

00:06:48.520 He had been a registered Democrat his entire life.

00:06:51.440 And he, you know, oh, by the way, he had donated thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2007 and 2008.

00:06:57.820 Right. So just exactly what you're describing.

00:07:00.400 Lifelong Democrat, as far as we can tell, going back more than a decade,

00:07:03.620 who understood that if he actually wanted to get elected to the state legislature, he had to flip the D and put an R next to his name.

00:07:10.960 And we have no indication that he has changed any of his beliefs.

00:07:14.940 It also raises questions about one of the most powerful people in the state legislature who happens to be his wife.

00:07:21.340 So that certainly exists.

00:07:22.760 And there's been some some sort of commentary by local media about the fact that if you you know, if you're a Democrat and you want to win in South Dakota, you just run as a Republican.

00:07:31.100 But I think the the deeper issue in South Dakota that I found, which is certainly not limited to South Dakota,

00:07:38.100 is that there's just this sort of old school business friendly sort of chamber of commerce wing of the GOP,

00:07:44.700 which exists at the national level as well, which was raised in an era where, you know, the business of of America was business,

00:07:50.980 where basically there was no real problem from the conservative perspective of going along with what business interests like the Chamber of Commerce or Sanford Health were pushing for.

00:08:00.660 And the sort of economic argument, you know, that that what what we want to do is basically just what is best for sort of GDP growth was a relatively viable argument.

00:08:09.560 It made sense. And a lot of a lot of those folks in places like South Dakota are still convinced by those arguments when they're made by the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce or Sanford Health or whatever,

00:08:20.620 even when it means advancing these extremely radical sort of cultural policies, which are certainly at odds with what South Dakotans are actually actually think they're voting for.

00:08:31.540 And I think they're just at odds with any reasonable interpretation of conservative principles.

00:08:35.540 Yeah, that's the thing. I hear what you're saying. And that does make sense that they kind of go along to get along with the business interests.

00:08:42.720 But there is a big difference. And I don't think there should be. I mean, people should understand that some of the business policies like, you know, mass immigration,

00:08:50.640 those kind of things that have destroyed the American worker and American culture were just as destructive as what business is trying to push now.

00:08:58.020 But I can understand why the average person isn't immediately shocked by, OK, we're going to let some more workers in.

00:09:06.060 I can see how that wouldn't immediately set off alarm bells. But the kind of things that are being pushed now are literally child mutilation.

00:09:12.280 It's literally allowing, you know, boys to come in and, you know, beat up a woman under the guise of female participation in sports.

00:09:20.940 I mean, these are things that are these bills that are supposed to be protecting children against this kind of stuff are being held back by people like the governor of the state.

00:09:30.820 I mean, what's going on that they don't see that this is very dangerous?

00:09:35.460 Yeah, really quickly, I totally agree with what you said at the outset.

00:09:38.580 You know, the Chamber of Commerce, I think, has always been at odds with well, certainly obviously been at odds with the sort of populist or, you know, furthest right wing of the GOP on issues like immigration.

00:09:48.720 That's the most obvious one. But, you know, I did a long piece about the National Chamber of Commerce last year and the Chamber of Commerce of the 1990s wouldn't have dared to touch kind of like diversity, equity, inclusion stuff, LGBT stuff, et cetera,

00:10:03.480 because it understood that that was sort of unacceptable to working with Republicans, who were basically the main party they were working with.

00:10:11.260 And also just because big business leaders weren't as left wing or at least as radical back then as they are now.

00:10:18.320 So there has been a shift, but certainly the Chamber of Commerce wing, I don't think, has ever been really on the right side when it comes to a lot of important issues.

00:10:25.860 But the sort of Kristi Noem situation, you know, Noem has positioned herself as this sort of conservative fighter on the national stage. 0.80

00:10:34.820 Her big claim to fame was that South Dakota was the only state that never locked down, which is true.

00:10:40.720 But another part of the investigation I found was that she actually tried to lock down the state and she was blocked by conservatives in the state legislature and then turned around and took credit for it.

00:10:49.200 But I think a variety of her missteps, most notoriously, her veto of this ban on men and women's sports in March 2021 have invited some deserved scrutiny of her record.

00:11:01.900 And what sort of began to unravel was that both Noem and a lot of other Republican leaders in South Dakota were much more loyal to big business interests,

00:11:10.640 particularly Sanford Health, than they were to, you know, the actual conservative voters who elect them.

00:11:16.280 Now, let's talk a little bit about the preoccupation with business interests, because you hit that pretty hard, and I think rightly so.

00:11:25.100 And I think this presents a really huge problem for conservatives, right?

00:11:28.760 Because understandably, most Republican governors want to grow the economies of their state, right?

00:11:33.960 They want to welcome large businesses into their state so that these people can provide the kind of employment opportunities and economic boosts that will really, you know, make them stand out.

00:11:45.480 The problem is that, like you said, at this point, all of these companies are very radically left wing.

00:11:51.860 And that means that necessarily, even if it's not their direct intention, conservatives are welcoming a kind of left wing fifth column directly into their state.

00:12:02.480 So no matter how conservative or red ideologically or culturally their state might become, they are dependent on the economic apparatus of these large companies who will inevitably, it seems, influence the state in the leftward direction.

00:12:16.320 Right. And that has become all the more apparent, you know, if you look at red states, not just South Dakota, but everything from the sort of 2015 battle over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana, the overturning of the bathroom bill in North Carolina.

00:12:29.940 Now, there have been a bunch of really high profile examples in recent years of this sort of big set of big business interests having sort of fused their economic power, which has a lot of clout in especially smaller rural states like South Dakota, with these really powerful national and local left wing activist groups on cultural issues.

00:12:51.380 And the problem is, I think, that the sort of old school business friendly wing of the GOP, which is often the majority of the GOP in these deep red states, which is why the sort of deep red hue can be deceiving from the outside looking in, are often unwilling to actually put up a fight because it's sort of not the way that they learn to do politics.

00:13:11.080 And it's also, by the way, the majority of their campaign donations a lot of the time.

00:13:17.240 So Sanford Health, I think, in South Dakota, is one of the most extreme examples we've seen thus far, just because of the extreme nature of exactly what is being pushed in a state which is one of the most conservative ones in the country.

00:13:29.540 But it's a phenomenon that you see all across the country, even or even especially in a lot of deep red states, which I think have become complacent because they think of themselves as conservative states.

00:13:40.500 And it does raise serious questions about, you know, when I hear someone like Greg Abbott talking about wanting to build sort of a Silicon Valley in Texas, I understand that argument for having sort of a really robust economy with a lot of GDP growth.

00:13:53.740 That's obviously important. You need people to have well-paying jobs. It's one of the bases of sort of a good way of life.

00:13:59.080 But the side effect now is that you are inviting these extremely powerful actors with a demonstrated commitment to an extreme left-wing cultural agenda into your state.

00:14:10.680 And what we've seen is that those actors are going to turn around and lobby for things that your voters are not actually interested in, and I would say runs contrary to their interests.

00:14:19.700 Now, you mentioned the activist groups. I think one of the main players here that you talk about is the Transformation Project.

00:14:30.000 And what's interesting about the Transformation Project is it's involved in things including state-funded priorities that are overseen by, you know, the departments headed by, you know, people like Christine Noem.

00:14:47.180 So what is the Transformation Project? What was its role and kind of its interactions with Sanford Health? And where is it funded from? It's not all inside the state here, right?

00:14:58.480 No, it's, I mean, I haven't seen the exact sort of breakdown of its financials, but a hefty amount, and I would be pretty comfortable saying the majority of its funding comes from out-of-state groups,

00:15:08.680 including a lot of sort of powerful national left-wing groups that we're comfortable with.

00:15:13.880 But the Transformation Project was the co-host with Sanford Health of this big Midwest Gender Identity Summit,

00:15:21.200 which is coming up next week, I think January 13th in Sioux Falls.

00:15:26.300 And I thought they were interesting, A, because they're sort of at the center of this mini-controversy over this Gender Identity Summit,

00:15:32.540 but B, because they're sort of a perfect representation of this extremely powerful coalition of forces,

00:15:41.140 which are funded by out-of-state interests, which really are responsible for pushing a deep red state like South Dakota left.

00:15:48.720 The Transformation Project's funding, you know, they're getting, they got 100,000, more than $100,000 donation from the pop singer Ariana Grande,

00:15:55.440 because she started this sort of Defend Trans Youth Fund.

00:15:59.320 This big LGBT foundation in Los Angeles donated their annual gala to raising $145,000 for them,

00:16:07.320 and that included donations from, you know, all the big Hollywood studios, Hollywood actors, the Kelly Clarkson show, right?

00:16:12.900 So it's this powerful national coalition of left-wing groups, and with a lot of money behind them,

00:16:20.280 are basically parachuting in to South Dakota via these local groups that are sort of astroturfed,

00:16:27.360 like the Transformation Project, and they're working alongside this really powerful Sioux Falls-based healthcare company,

00:16:34.180 Sanford Health, to organize these kind of astroturf protests with the funding of and the backing of a lot of Republican politicians

00:16:42.820 to kill this long line of social conservative bills, including things like a ban on, you know,

00:16:49.120 sex gene surgeries and drugs for children, which we've seen passed in states like Arkansas,

00:16:54.080 but in South Dakota was killed in the Senate Health and Human Service Committee

00:16:58.040 by a lot of legislators who were very close with left-wing activists and with Sanford Health.

00:17:04.300 Now, one of the things that you talk about with the Transformation Project is that they hold what almost sounds like a religious ceremony

00:17:10.640 where they burn the old names of the children who have undergone this process,

00:17:16.580 and I want to ask you, you know, a lot of people have different opinions on it,

00:17:21.560 but I always like to sample the opinions of the people who are on the show.

00:17:25.540 Do you think that these are separate phenomenon, or do you think they're kind of codependent?

00:17:31.460 Do you think that the financial incentives are driving the actions of these people?

00:17:36.560 Do you think it's purely ideological and the business leaders are being pulling behind?

00:17:41.140 What do you think the different admixture is of these two interests?

00:17:45.160 Yeah, it's a really good question.

00:17:46.080 It's one that I was sort of pondering throughout the process of writing this piece,

00:17:49.440 because we know that increasingly, especially as sort of prescriptions for puberty blockers skyrocket,

00:17:55.940 you know, over the course of the last couple of years, especially, that this is a profitable industry.

00:18:00.040 And it's an industry with, in a very gruesome way, a whole lot of growth potential for these big healthcare companies.

00:18:06.680 We know that Sanford Health profits off of sex change surgeries and puberty blockers,

00:18:10.680 including for sometimes very young children.

00:18:13.920 So profit can't, to me, you can't talk about the issue without talking about the profit motive for a company like Sanford Health.

00:18:22.700 I do think, though, that if you just look at not just Sanford Health, but the kind of larger American medical bureaucracy,

00:18:29.280 which it's a part of and which its leadership comes from, they are just really ideologically committed to this stuff.

00:18:34.600 They really believe that the chemical castration of young children is a public good, which should be actively lobbied for.

00:18:41.440 I think it's, you know, particularly convenient that that ideology sort of lines up perfectly with their profit motives.

00:18:47.060 And I think we should always be skeptical when these kind of ideological beliefs are just too perfectly nestled in with things that make these organizations a lot of money.

00:18:55.480 But I think that that a lot of the doctors, maybe most of the doctors who are sort of showing up as Sanford lobbyists to lobby for this stuff,

00:19:02.720 think of themselves as doing it for, you know, ideological social justice reasons.

00:19:08.420 They may get the backing of the sort of corporate leaders, at least partially because of profit.

00:19:12.020 But I think the story that Sanford tells itself is an ideological one.

00:19:17.060 Yeah, I think it was the Daily Mail who just ran a piece.

00:19:20.440 It was some paper.

00:19:21.340 It might have been them, but they just ran a piece on the kind of the Canadian euthanasia market.

00:19:26.740 And it's all of these doctors, you know, bragging about the number of people they have now euthanized.

00:19:32.600 And I think for a lot of people, it was shocking was like how enthusiastic and how much almost a badge of honor they wore it as.

00:19:39.940 And I think people really need to understand that it's, you know, material incentives matter and people will move with them.

00:19:50.620 But they will also always build an ideology that's going to kind of undergird that.

00:19:55.800 And so it's not very difficult, really, to get people, especially who feel like they're on a vanguard, the tip, they're the tip of the spear that's driving the revolution,

00:20:05.000 to back like really horrific things and be very proud of it, especially when it then lines up with them winning in every other material sense.

00:20:13.660 Right. It's, you know, I think this is part and parcel of this broader ideological apparatus, which a lot of, if not most of the people who are a part of it,

00:20:22.660 I think firmly think of themselves as genuinely and authentically believing, but is also like like any sort of ruling class ideology.

00:20:30.700 It's one of its primary functions is to entrench and justify and propagate the power of this sort of ruling class apparatus, 0.98

00:20:37.720 which includes the medical bureaucracy and its allies in these activist groups.

00:20:42.280 So it's a coalition that I think increasingly is sort of taking public shape and is throwing its weight around, particularly in red states,

00:20:48.580 which, you know, has goes all the way down to sort of these local transgender activists foot soldiers,

00:20:53.900 all the way up to the sort of major leaders of medical bureaucracies and billionaire philanthropists who are held together by this public story they tell themselves

00:21:03.340 and by an ideology which they sort of actively propagate.

00:21:07.260 But that ideology also serves to sort of further entrench, you know, the power of this sort of managerial apparatus

00:21:13.740 and to delegitimate its opponents, which I think, again, is part of the pull for them.

00:21:19.420 So you've always been picky about your produce, but now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian.

00:21:25.860 So be it.

00:21:26.920 At Sobeez, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first.

00:21:31.200 Restrictions apply. See in-store or online for details.

00:21:33.880 Now, speaking of delegitimating their opponents, you talk about how, you know, there's a noticeable divide in the state legislature.

00:21:45.120 You have the people who are actively employed by Sanford Health who are voting on its behalf,

00:21:54.420 even though they're supposed to be Republican.

00:21:56.140 But it's not just that these people are, you know, are supposed to be conservative but are promoting this stuff.

00:22:03.940 You also have an active effort by outside forces to purge those that oppose this activity from the legislature.

00:22:11.300 You have people lining up to fund the removal of incumbent representatives who aren't willing to go along with this

00:22:19.280 or who are trying to push the bills that would protect children from this stuff.

00:22:23.260 Right. With the backing, you know, all the way up to the top of Kristi Noem, by the way,

00:22:26.620 it's worth noting that her office is sort of consistently denied that there's any collusion with, you know,

00:22:32.160 SDAO, SDSMA, which is the Sanford lobbying groups and their allies in the in the state Senate.

00:22:38.940 But she has there is a hit list circulated of names of the actual conservatives in the state legislature who were opponents of the kind of Stanford transgender stuff.

00:22:49.460 It was circulated by Lee Schoenbeck, who's, you know, the president of the state Senate and up until recently was a very close ally of Kristi Noem's.

00:22:56.800 And Noem, you know, just conveniently happened to endorse the primary challengers to pretty much every single conservative legislator who was on the hit list.

00:23:05.220 And Schoenbeck was out in public saying that Noem was, you know, the greatest ally that they had in that endeavor.

00:23:09.580 So I'm a little skeptical of Noem's claim to not have been involved.

00:23:13.220 But regardless, it's that that whole campaign to primary all of these actual conservatives who were a sort of structural barrier to Sanford's goals in the state legislature

00:23:24.860 had the financial backing of these Sanford lobbying groups.

00:23:28.980 But it also enjoyed the sort of public support of a lot of Republican leadership in South Dakota who happened to be chummy with Sanford and its and its allies.

00:23:37.820 So, again, you're seeing the sort of coordinated apparatus which crosses these different sort of institutions working together as a cohesive class,

00:23:45.680 which, you know, you see that phenomenon in a lot of different red states and at the national level.

00:23:49.860 But it was just particularly stark in the context of South Dakota because we think of it from the outside as being such a conservative state.

00:23:57.220 Yeah, I was going to say we just saw the showdown with the leadership in the House. Right.

00:24:01.640 And again, you know, we see holdouts for not willing to back the speaker as, you know, terrorists in many cases.

00:24:11.720 So this is hardly some kind of isolated incident.

00:24:15.460 Anyone who is in somewhat in step with the voters seems to be, you know, lined up for a purge.

00:24:22.380 And the conservative leadership, you know, using those words loosely, seems to always be vastly to the left of the people they're supposed to be representing.

00:24:32.640 I want to get into that a little deeper in a second.

00:24:34.600 But before we move on, I want to bring up one more example that you kind of sent over me today,

00:24:40.940 an article that you had also written previously on Utah Governor Spencer Cox,

00:24:47.020 because we don't want it to seem like this is just a phenomenon in, you know, South Dakota or just happens to be centered around Kristi Noem.

00:24:55.100 There are many Republican governors, and Cox is probably even more egregious here,

00:25:00.680 willing to step out and completely embrace this ideology even while being, you know, the governor of one of the redest states in the country.

00:25:09.700 Right. And Cox, I think, really is, to my mind, the most egregious Republican governor, at least in a red state.

00:25:16.440 I mean, you can sort of point to sort of blue state Republican governors like, you know, Massachusetts and Maryland,

00:25:22.100 where their embrace of a certain kind of social liberalism is, to a certain extent, pragmatic because they are governors of liberal states.

00:25:29.460 But Utah is supposed to be and is, by all accounts, still a very conservative state.

00:25:34.980 And Cox is one of those guys, you know, I haven't looked into the actual sort of institutional economic incentives behind what he's doing,

00:25:42.520 although I'm sure they exist. But he's clearly someone who's really ideologically committed to the most radical edge of the kind of left wing cultural revolution.

00:25:52.360 And, you know, you can you can sort of go down the list.

00:25:54.740 He's sort of vetoed all of these different transgender bills.

00:25:57.800 His veto of this ban on men and women's sports was overridden by the state legislature in, I think, 30 minutes.

00:26:04.720 So luckily, there's still some actual conservatives in the Utah legislature.

00:26:08.200 But there is this video of him, you know, tearfully apologizing to LGBT activists when he when he failed to sort of pass this or to kill this anti LGBT bill.

00:26:18.860 He put his pronouns in his Instagram bio for a while.

00:26:23.440 You know, he introduced himself with pronouns in these various sort of forums.

00:26:26.700 He defended this this this scholarship program by the Utah Jazz, which excluded white kids, said it wasn't racist, obviously racist.

00:26:35.400 So, you know, that's an example, I think, again, of the power of the sort of ideological apparatus where somewhere someone like Spencer Cox is more loyal to

00:26:43.600 the kind of centers of left wing ideological power and to the sort of public narrative that they tell than he is to the views of the of the people who actually elected him

00:26:54.480 with the understanding, implicit or explicit, that he was going to govern in their interests.

00:27:00.140 And I think in the context of Utah, it's partially at least because I spent a lot of time in Utah and Utahns are extremely nice people.

00:27:08.000 Mormons are very nice people. They conceive of themselves as very kind, nice people.

00:27:12.060 And the problem is that the sort of national left has defined nice in terms of basically going along with the transgender agenda.

00:27:21.440 And it's sort of often conceived of as mean to sort of do something like ban the chemical castration of 12 year olds.

00:27:28.460 And I think Cox clearly has bought into that. And again, it's it's it's a demonstration of just how deep the kind of tentacles of this apparatus reach into the reddest parts of America.

00:27:38.280 So now that we've done a pretty good job of establishing, you know, what's going on here and why it's phenomena across many different areas, not not just in South Dakota, but but multiple places in the United States and at the national level, I want to ask you a deeper mechanical question, because I'll be I'll be interested to pick your brain on this.

00:28:00.000 I have my own thoughts. I have my own thoughts, but we'll you know, let's get yours first.

00:28:03.400 Is this new? Is this a phenomena of of the wokeism, the current cultural revolution?

00:28:10.120 Why is this happening? Why is it that the GOP candidates of today are, you know, far more progressively left wing than liberal Democrats from the 90s?

00:28:22.460 It's a good question. And I'm curious about your thoughts as well.

00:28:26.780 The apparatus is clearly not new. I mean, you can go back and read someone like James Burnham talking about the sort of managerial elite, you know, almost a century ago.

00:28:36.060 And that's clearly, I think, the apparatus he was describing with this sort of fusion of a variety of different institutions that had sort of traditionally been in competition with one another.

00:28:44.720 You know, the federal bureaucracy, big business, the universities, et cetera, under under the guise of one sort of cohesive class, which often, you know, moves between the different institutions and the institutions, I think, have adopted the kind of left wing ideology we're thinking about as their ideological apparatus.

00:29:02.300 So, again, like the sort of institutional power structure has been around for a while.

00:29:06.860 I do think that the ideology and their willingness to sort of aggressively lobby for it has become more extreme.

00:29:14.160 And I also just think that they've become more brazen in their efforts to do things that they previously thought they couldn't get away with.

00:29:20.540 You know, we weren't seeing Republicans or the kind of lobbying groups like Sanford Health that funded them lobbying against bans on sex change surgeries for kids a couple decades ago.

00:29:31.260 That's probably because it wasn't even an issue.

00:29:32.880 But the fact that it is an issue, I think, speaks to the sort of radicalization of the managerial ideology.

00:29:40.120 So, again, that sort of apparatus and the sort of power centers are not new.

00:29:44.680 And the kind of cohesive class that governs them is not new.

00:29:48.700 But the the the that classes sort of attempts to sort of hollow out all these red state institutions and ultimately their ways of life as a corollary has become much more aggressive and brazen than, you know, even even in the America that I was born in. 0.94

00:30:04.880 But if these if this isn't new, then then my question is, why do we see this leftward drift?

00:30:11.380 Like, why is there why is there always an incentive for Republican leadership or conservative leadership to drift leftward?

00:30:21.080 Right. Like we under you're absolutely right that it's accelerating.

00:30:23.500 And I do think that Burnham's understanding of the managerial class is and their incentives, especially when it comes to like de-territorializing things and re-territorializing them into the market for the for the utility of easier management is is an eye opening thing.

00:30:41.780 Like, I think that is essential. But why why do we see this cycle over and over again on the right?

00:30:49.240 I'm I'm I say this because I'm writing a piece on it.

00:30:52.260 So that's so spoiler spoiler. I have I like I said, I have my own thoughts on this.

00:30:56.920 But why why do we constantly see the incentives to always move leftward?

00:31:03.620 And again, I don't I think you can go back to Buckley or before that and see that this has always been the way that the American right has operated since 1950, at least.

00:31:14.400 Why why isn't there an incentive to serve the base?

00:31:17.960 Why isn't there incentive to be to the to be to the right to have the vanguard to the right of the voters?

00:31:24.580 Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, this was a critique from the right of Buckley.

00:31:28.380 I think in the case of Buckley, it's a little more complicated. I'm not contractually obligated to say that, but I mean, I think Buckley was was overall a salutary figure.

00:31:40.200 But one one thing he was criticized for was and this was a major debate.

00:31:44.580 There's a fault line in the right at the time was trying to sort of conceive of the conservative movement as seeking affirmation of and membership within this sort of managerial regime.

00:31:56.300 Now, he made strong arguments for that, but it was it was a critique.

00:32:01.440 And the critique was that if you're actually going to fundamentally achieve the things that you say that you want to achieve,

00:32:09.680 you're going to be sort of neutered by your membership in a class which is sort of functionally institutionally committed to opposing those things.

00:32:17.940 But the the I think the to answer your larger question, the sort of Republican elites, you know, sort of always seeming to capitulate to the left in ways that the left never capitulates to the right does have to do with their membership.

00:32:31.660 And or at least proximity to these centers of power, which are wholly dominated by controlled by the left and particularly the cultural left is where you see, you know, these kinds of capitulations.

00:32:44.800 And, you know, that manifests in a lot of different ways.

00:32:47.640 It manifests in the sort of public narrative control of the sort of dominant conversation.

00:32:53.340 You know, there's this thing called the New York Times effect that people talk about where, you know, conservative media like National Review can run 100 pieces about something,

00:33:02.160 but it'll it'll likely have less social effect than if the New York Times runs a really long piece about it.

00:33:07.480 The good example of this was sort of anti-porn, where you get all these conservative anti-porn activists spending decades sort of lobbying for sort of harsher crackdowns on child pornography,

00:33:18.060 sort of human trafficking, et cetera. And then Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times did one big piece and all of a sudden legislators in the U.S. Senate sort of moved on it.

00:33:27.120 So so that sort of power differential in terms of these narrative forming and policing institutions is huge.

00:33:34.100 But it's also just the fact that if you look at like the composition of the Republican elite, they are formed by and come from often, not always, but often these kind of managerial elite institutions.

00:33:45.100 They go to elite universities in D.C. They frequent a lot of institutions that kind of sit at the center of of that.

00:33:52.480 They're they're often chummy, as we talked about with big business, which is very much representative of this class. 0.97

00:33:57.740 As a result, either explicitly or implicitly, you know, consciously or subconsciously, they sort of think in terms of the framework that has been set by a regime that is that is hostile to the things that the people who actually elect them are looking for.

00:34:12.200 And that's why they see it as acceptable to capitulate on things that people sort of outside of or with less proximity to those power centers see as unacceptable.

00:34:22.100 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:34:24.100 Yeah, I think that's right. I think a huge part of this is the fact that the very skill set that allows you to operate a party to to write, you know, pieces for a major publication to produce a television show, those kind of things are the skill sets that are acquired inside the institutions that are promoting managerial values.

00:34:44.100 And that means that at the end of the day, even if you see yourself as the right most person in those institutions, you're still far to the left of the people who are you're supposed to be representing.

00:34:57.100 And so over and over again, we see people moving this direction, because really, you're not giving up that much by, you know, letting a little bit of the right wing stuff slide at the end of the day, you're still the most qualified person on the right to kind of lead it.

00:35:11.400 I think there's also a huge problem with the neocon effect, where you have these people come in, they fall out of the left because the left has gotten too radical for them.

00:35:22.560 And, you know, this is the famous Ronald Reagan, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.

00:35:27.340 And now those people enter to the right and because they are of the managerial class, because they are the well spoken, they are the properly trained, they are the properly credentialed, they feel the entitlement to lead.

00:35:41.920 And because the right wants to be able to win a victory, they immediately move to acquiesce to the demands of these new members of the right wing coalition.

00:35:50.500 And all of a sudden, you see, you know, guys like Buckley cancelling people to his right in order to take control, you know, of the movement.

00:36:00.780 And I think this is a very old cycle. This is not new. I think this is something that is repeated over and over again.

00:36:08.440 And, you know, that's why we continuously see, you know, our leadership in, you know, the current year to the left of, again, Democrats from, you know, 20 years ago, because they are the Democrats from 20 years ago that got shoved out of that movement and they got forced to the right.

00:36:29.780 And now that they're there, they have the quality to lead. And now that they're in leadership, they know that they need to get rid of their right wing if they're going to be able to maintain their power there.

00:36:39.640 Right. I'm glad you brought up neoconservatism because I actually think it gets to this sort of deeper problem with the kind of ideological power or influence of the left.

00:36:48.880 In fact, it was speaking of James Burnham as well. I wrote this column today where I was quoting this 1972 essay that Burnham wrote criticizing neoconservatism in National Review, by the way.

00:37:01.620 But Burnham argued that while neoconservatives had broken with liberal doctrine, they retained the emotional gestalt of liberalism, which is liberal sensitivity and temperament,

00:37:11.980 which is part of this sort of deeper critique of neoconservatism, which in many ways controls the kind of central apparatus of mainstream conservatism now,

00:37:20.020 which has actually accepted a lot of the basic premises of the left and often just counters that sort of pragmatically or practically speaking,

00:37:28.400 conservative ends or conservative means are a better way to reach left wing ends. 0.59

00:37:33.560 And you see that, you know, across the spectrum, like, you know, one of the things that, you know, constantly gets me is you hear about, you hear conservatives.

00:37:41.220 I mean, the sort of the sort of low IQ version of it is Democrats are the real racists, but the sort of higher IQ version of it is the argument that,

00:37:49.840 for example, abortion is systemic racism or the public school system is systemic racism or I don't know, the welfare system is systemic racism.

00:37:59.960 And what they're what they're doing is they're indicting these left wing policies using an extremely left wing premise,

00:38:06.760 which is that any policy that has a disparate racial impact is evidence in and of itself of the sort of systemic racism and that ultimately that America is rife with systemic racism.

00:38:17.500 It's just left wing policies instead of right wing policies.

00:38:20.140 And you regularly hear conservatives make those kinds of arguments as if sort of appealing to that is going to convince people on the left, which it never will.

00:38:27.300 You're never going to beat them at their own game. But it's evidence also of the kind of internalization on the right of these sort of core left wing premises about,

00:38:37.520 you know, the purpose of public policy being sort of egalitarian redistribution and social reconstruction.

00:38:43.540 And, you know, the idea that America is a systemically racist country, which it isn't.

00:38:48.400 You know, you see that, you know, there's there's a there's a House GOP statement in January 2020 about the Trump economy,

00:38:54.560 where they're boasting about the fact that under the Trump economy, women's wages are rising higher than raising rising quicker than men's wages.

00:39:02.520 And women of color's wages are, you know, are growing faster than both women or men's wages who are white.

00:39:09.940 It's the same thing. I mean, like we actually know that that that women's wages rising faster than men's wages is bad in terms of marriage formation, 0.80

00:39:18.820 because there's an enormous amount of social science showing that women don't want to marry men who make less than them. 0.92

00:39:24.280 But again, it's the sort of internalization by this official organ of the House GOP that the way to make the case for the Trump economy is that women are getting richer faster than men are. 1.00

00:39:33.720 You know, you can go down the list. You can find any number of examples. That one just stood out to me.

00:39:36.900 But that's kind of one of the that was one of the sort of founding credos of neoconservatism.

00:39:42.680 And it was a subject of criticism from the kind of old right and from the paleos during the kind of neo paleo wars,

00:39:49.120 which is that the neos had basically embraced conservative public policy, but kept the left wing ends.

00:39:56.400 But, you know, the neos won that war pretty decisively. And the paleos and the old right were were often pretty marginalized.

00:40:02.780 And the result is that a lot of what what passes from mainstream conservatism today also retains that kind of emotional gestalt of liberalism that Burnham was talking about in the 70s.

00:40:12.920 So now that we have a better understanding of kind of why this has been institutionalized on the right, here come the hard questions.

00:40:20.960 So and the ones that I don't have necessarily an immediate answer.

00:40:26.020 I have some ideas, but but I don't want to claim to have all these answers either because they are genuinely difficult questions.

00:40:31.540 So if we see that there is an innate problem with the class that shares these values across both parties and the institutional incentives built into these and the adoption of frames and those kind of things,

00:40:48.020 what is the move here? Because we've already acknowledged that, like, OK, we understand that, like, inviting these massive corporations into your right wing state will probably make it drift left wing.

00:40:58.660 But what's the answer? Just don't have corporations in your state like that seems like economic suicide, right?

00:41:04.800 We say, well, the managerial class is going to necessarily push the conservatives to the left.

00:41:12.120 Great. But what's the plan? Like, don't have educated people in don't have people who are able to operate, operate bureaucracies inside the right.

00:41:18.980 Like what what is the escape mechanism here? How do we see our way around this corner?

00:41:24.180 Yeah, it's it's sort of the question defining question of our age. I would be I would be sort of I mean, I don't I don't claim to have sort of like the perfect comprehensive answer.

00:41:35.400 If I did, hopefully people who are smarter and more powerful than I did would also have that answer.

00:41:40.140 But I think it's a bunch of different things. I mean, there's a sort of granular sort of policy level question.

00:41:44.100 And there's like the big sort of paradigm question. The granular sort of policy one is the sort of obvious stuff of stop listening to the Chamber of Commerce and business groups or taking your cues from them in terms of public policy.

00:41:56.460 When it comes to, you know, all the cultural stuff, you know, the transgender issue, immigration, you know, critical race theory in schools, all of that stuff in every red state, you can find the Chamber of Commerce, which used to be the GOP's kind of like, you know, constituency lobbying against anything that social conservatives try to do.

00:42:12.480 And for Republican voters to actually start holding their Republican leaders accountable, because in places like South Dakota, you know, if Republican voters had more time, I think, to sort of spend paying attention to what was actually happening in their state legislature, I think they'd be outraged by what was happening.

00:42:30.800 So the Republican base is really, I think, the right's friend in this fight. And that kind of gets to the larger kind of framework question, which is that you stop looking as a sort of source of your power, of your agenda, of your sort of priorities inside the kind of managerial apparatus, and you try to organize resistance to the managerial apparatus in the places that are the farthest away from its proximities in power.

00:43:00.800 It's maybe a little spicy, but there's actually, this was one insight that Mao Zedong had when he was, when he was, when he was fighting in China, which was that the people who need to lead the kind of counterinsurgency are the ones who are the furthest away from the centers of power.

00:43:16.760 So he sort of his innovation in Marxist theory was that you go to the peasants, who are the ones who are the most alienated from the regime and the most sort of resentful towards it, to kind of be the kind of organizing ethos of your movement.

00:43:31.660 I think the Trump base is a pretty good analogy for that in the context of what we're talking about, the kind of the sort of the middle Americans are the ones who are the most alienated by, alienated from sort of denigrated by and hurt by these kind of national managerial institutions.

00:43:47.760 And those are the ones I think where we should be, those are the people that we should be organizing into a kind of self-conscious coalition to actually make a bid for power in these national institutions.

00:43:59.820 But there is a real, I mean, there's a real sort of point to be made that because that managerial apparatus is where power lies in America, to a certain extent, what conservatives in the right are doing, are competing for power within it, rather than, you know, trying to overthrow it outright.

00:44:16.720 Because the, you know, at least, at least for now, you know, that, that's the sort of institutional framework that we're stuck with.

00:44:23.240 But I think thinking in those terms and understanding how sort of power functions in America today is a pretty good way to get a lot of Republicans to wake up and realize that kind of going along to get along with these big business interests, particularly on these cultural issues, is not the way to win.

00:44:40.100 Yeah, Francis, Sam Francis, had basically this outlook, he said that you're, you know, one of the reasons that kind of the Buckleyhead approach failed was that it was attempting to work from within the managerial framework, and that the, if you don't have a critique of the framework, then you simply have, you're only, you're only negotiating your place inside of it, you don't have any hope of actually fundamentally dismantling it or opposing it in, in any serious way.

00:45:07.440 I guess one issue that I think is a big problem in this, because, of course, Mao's approach is, it might be revolutionary for communism, but it's not particularly revolutionary when it comes to, like, understanding of power.

00:45:22.140 This is the juvenile and high and low versus middle.

00:45:25.040 This is the, you know, the power looking to, to kind of erode the opposing power structures seeking out, you know, the periphery.

00:45:35.160 But in order to do that, you need to have, I think, the high, right?

00:45:40.060 Like, so you can, you can take the, the Trumpian coalition, but it needs to have another power center with the ability to erode the manager, managers in the way that the managers eroded the bourgeoisie power, right?

00:45:51.820 And so you need an alternative power center with the ability to kind of take that coalition and wield it as a hammer against kind of the managerial apparatus.

00:46:00.780 I think a lot of people look at a guy like Elon Musk, and I understand why, and I think there's some merit to that.

00:46:05.960 Do you see any, any figures or any other competing power apparatuses that might be able to wield the Trumpian coalition in that manner?

00:46:14.860 Well, I think the, the sort of other strategy and the two can, I think, can and should coexist.

00:46:20.780 And, but this is where I think Elon Musk is, is indicative of, of this sort of second strategy is that you need class traders within the apparatus, right?

00:46:27.320 I mean, one of the sort of weirdest critiques that you hear from some conservatives of sort of sort of populist right wingers is, you know, well, you know, like at least the populist elites.

00:46:35.860 It's like, well, you know, he went to Harvard or he went to, this is something that people say about someone like Josh Hawley, like, oh, he went to Harvard or Yale Law.

00:46:41.380 So he's a hypocrite for sort of styling himself as like a populist representative of the people.

00:46:45.440 It's like, no, every serious populist movement in history has understood that you need elites and you need sort of class traders, you know, FDR, whatever you think of him was a class trader, right?

00:46:55.280 He was someone who came from this kind of upper, upper crust of American society, who styled himself as someone representing the interests of workers.

00:47:03.560 So, so, so finding people who are sort of allied with and believe in your cause and who are willing to sort of align themselves with the kind of like mass grassroots within the apparatus.

00:47:17.160 And those people do exist in DC is, is, is one way to make your way in, you know, Elon Musk is an example of this.

00:47:22.900 I mean, he's, he's sort of different than the managerial class and that he's in this weird way, this, this sort of remnant of this older kind of America where the ruling class was this kind of capitalist entrepreneurial class, which is not the same thing as the managerial elites.

00:47:37.780 Who don't really invent things or, or particularly are particularly innovative.

00:47:41.860 They draw their power from managing these kinds of preexisting corporate superstructures.

00:47:47.300 Musk is actually, you know, an entrepreneur.

00:47:49.040 He invents things.

00:47:50.440 But he was also, you know, obviously, you know, he's wealthiest man in the world, I think.

00:47:53.720 So he is, is from the upper class and he moved in those circles his entire life, even if he was not quite the same as the, as the kind of normal membership.

00:48:02.920 So the, but again, the, you know, those two strategies can kind of, can exist with, with one another.

00:48:10.560 So Musk's attempted takeover of Twitter, and we haven't seen exactly how it's going to play out yet.

00:48:16.120 But that's kind of an example of someone that you could call a class trader or someone who kind of represents like an outsider institution, but also is familiar with working within all of these different apparatuses.

00:48:29.000 Actually wielding the power that they have to, to take over.

00:48:34.560 And I think, you know, in, in those examples, a big part of the role of someone like Musk is to open up space for the building of those institutions that exist outside of and in diametric opposition with the kind of managerial apparatus.

00:48:48.640 Because the managerial apparatus is, is obviously invested in killing any attempts to build sort of things that could actually present a real threat to their power.

00:48:57.960 And someone like Musk neutralizing their attempts to do that, at least in the context of Twitter, is one of the most valuable things that he can do.

00:49:05.220 Yeah, I know why people have a lot of hesitation around guys like Musk, and it's fair, like, don't, don't go all in on that.

00:49:14.260 Don't think that he's, you know, super based and 100% aligned with you.

00:49:17.360 But do remember that almost all of the guys who have led these kind of things tend to be guys who came from the power structure, found themselves with no other place to go and then reach out to the disaffected people.

00:49:31.020 So, like, you know, Caesar didn't want to be a populary, but he ended up having to be because the other option was to have the Senate completely destroy him.

00:49:39.480 And, you know, I don't know that Trump wanted to represent the red states the way he did.

00:49:44.340 But, you know, the only option left was, was that because the left was, was more than willing to abandon him.

00:49:49.380 And the same thing with Musk.

00:49:50.500 If Musk wants to get the things done that he, or if Musk is going to get the things done that he wants to get done, the left won't let him.

00:49:57.020 And so he's kind of forced in that.

00:49:59.080 So just because someone, you know, works inside of the system to some level, that doesn't mean that they're not, there's not an opportunity.

00:50:05.800 People, people often have to rise to that stuff when kind of the forces of history come to them.

00:50:10.240 It's not that they've always been on your side and are just ideologically aligned with you.

00:50:14.840 Right. No, I think that's exactly right.

00:50:16.520 Yeah.

00:50:17.140 Yeah. So we've got a few super chats here from the audience lining up.

00:50:20.280 So we'll see if we can answer those real quick.

00:50:21.880 But before we do, can you let people know where to find your stuff?

00:50:25.600 And do you have any pieces that they should be looking for anything big coming out?

00:50:29.360 So you can find my stuff.

00:50:30.360 I post everything on Twitter.

00:50:31.400 So that's probably the easiest one to do.

00:50:32.880 So I'm Nate Hockman at Twitter.

00:50:34.100 I'm at N-J-H-O-C-H-M-A-N, N-J Hockman at Twitter.

00:50:38.720 And I've got, yeah, I've got some other big stuff in the pipeline coming up.

00:50:42.460 I kind of want to dig more into some of the stuff that we're talking about, because, because as we were talking about, you know, this is not something that's unique to South Dakota.

00:50:51.360 I've written about it in other red states before.

00:50:54.120 But I think particularly in these rural areas where the local media is either totally neutered or just doesn't have the resources, you know, there's a lot of reporting to be done.

00:51:03.220 So let's keep an eye out for some of that stuff.

00:51:06.560 All right.

00:51:07.400 So glow in the dark here for $10.

00:51:09.420 Thank you very much, sir.

00:51:10.240 One major contributor to the leftward drift of all major figures or leaders of the right come from deep blue states or cities.

00:51:17.560 So by exposure, they tend to be more left.

00:51:20.020 Yeah.

00:51:20.180 And I think this goes along with our talking about the class, the managerial class structure part of this, right?

00:51:26.800 That because these people might be the right most person in D.C. or New York or, you know, whatever part of California they grew up in, they are still left leaning and are willing to acquiesce compared to the base.

00:51:41.160 Right.

00:51:41.840 Right.

00:51:42.420 And there's sort of longer commentaries about what the actual sort of substance of living in a city sort of does to one's sort of worldview.

00:51:49.820 I grew up in a city, so I'm not I'm guilty of whatever whatever sort of indictment that presents.

00:51:54.220 But it's true that the sort of cultural milieu that you come from is just very different in terms of like some of your sort of core premises, even if you think of yourself as a conservative.

00:52:05.080 And certainly if you're formed by the kind of institutions that represent those those urban worldviews, like Ivy League universities, for example, you know, that's going to affect the way you think of some of things.

00:52:16.000 Even even as a conservative, you have this very vivid sense of where the kind of wall is on the rights and what things you can't pass.

00:52:24.220 Which just doesn't exist, at least to the same extent on the left.

00:52:29.160 All right.

00:52:30.000 Let's go ahead and move on.

00:52:31.740 Oh, glow in the dark here again.

00:52:32.720 Thank you, sir.

00:52:33.680 What problem with the right or the problem with the right is we look at things the way the left wants us to.

00:52:39.840 What is important?

00:52:40.740 They decide.

00:52:41.860 What is it important?

00:52:42.740 They decide by playing into the left dialectics.

00:52:46.120 You lose.

00:52:46.960 Now, I think this has been a pretty consistent critique.

00:52:49.600 I know it has of me, and it's certainly a lot of people are adopting this as well, understanding that the frame is the problem, right?

00:52:57.680 That we're the right is largely running around chasing the new stories and using the language that the left wants them to.

00:53:05.180 I see guys like Chris Ruffo who are doing good work to try to shift this, but where are the maybe some of the key points where the right can try to refocus and set the agenda?

00:53:17.860 What things do they need to do to make sure that they're not constantly chasing the left wing narrative?

00:53:21.500 Well, I mean, a lot of it plays into everything that we're talking about in terms of taking your cues from constituencies and institutions insofar as they exist that don't have the same proximity to these kind of power centers.

00:53:34.340 But I think the best example that I can come up with, and you can criticize aspects of it, but the pro-life movement, what they did was very, I think, indicative of what needs to be done across the board in terms of building outside institutions, new original institutions dedicated to a policy agenda, which was obviously opposed by the power centers that we're talking about.

00:53:58.360 And then organizing, you know, in terms of decades of activism, grassroots, you know, door knocking, et cetera, et cetera, an entirely different sort of institutional media apparatus that set its own narrative and was in many ways sort of a counter hegemonic narrative to the sort of central one.

00:54:15.260 And then sort of through that organization and through the sort of building of this sort of counter hegemonic narrative made it, you know, completely unacceptable if you wanted to be a national Republican to not embrace at least a version of their policy agenda.

00:54:29.580 If you look back to the to the 70s, you know, even even a decade after Roe v. Wade, you know, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were both kind of 50 50 on the abortion.

00:54:39.360 You know, Nelson Rockefeller in New York, who's a Republican governor, signed the most liberal abortion law in the world at that time.

00:54:47.660 And what the pro-life movement was extremely successful in doing is basically taking over the Republican Party apparatus on the one issue that they were lobbying for and remaking it in their image.

00:54:57.180 And what they what the way that they did that, again, was through the sort of twin approaches of building a grassroots kind of consciousness, a coalition in the Republican base that was aware of itself as being pro-life and a sort of institutional superstructure through big activist groups, pro-life media, you know, et cetera, et cetera, which sort of built the sort of narrative and the kind of calling, you know, agenda that they that they coalesced around.

00:55:23.460 And, you know, you see that with things like the Federalist Society as well.

00:55:27.840 All of these institutions are worthy of criticism, too.

00:55:30.820 But the pro-life movement, I think, was the most successful social conservative movement in recent memory, at least, because they actually took this kind of grassroots outside insurgent coming in approach.

00:55:42.780 And that was enormously successful.

00:55:45.320 And, you know, they enjoy a lot of power still to this day as a result.

00:55:48.060 Yeah, one hopes that the the right will be able to do that in ways that facilitate further victories as well.

00:55:56.740 That's, you know, that's a good point about the ability of them to kind of shift.

00:56:01.920 And a lot of that is because the parties were more regional than ideological at that point.

00:56:06.800 But and there's there's a lot more to that as well.

00:56:09.400 But it's an excellent point that they were able to acquire that level of power due to their approach.

00:56:14.800 The key thing, however, is that it didn't allow the conservatives to then win additional victories.

00:56:21.080 In fact, in many in many ways, it just facilitated the left's acceleration of things like the Respect for Marriage Act and these kind of things.

00:56:30.460 Right. And so and so one of the key things I think conservatives need to understand is winning on policy issues comes after winning power.

00:56:39.480 And and that has to be a key aspect as well.

00:56:43.220 Yeah. Yeah. Just really quickly, the pro-life movement was committed to one specific issue and they did remarkably well on that.

00:56:49.700 But absolutely the sort of roadmap is is much broader than that one issue.

00:56:53.720 And you've seen Republicans hold on to the pro-life issue as they sacrifice basically every other social conservative commitment.

00:57:00.280 Right. So you need a much more kind of all of the above approach.

00:57:04.640 Glow in the dark here again. Thank you very much.

00:57:06.320 Sure. Any right winger on the or religious person worth their salt will know that sin sells.

00:57:11.680 Will you take the 30 pieces of silver for your morals and objections?

00:57:15.800 I mean, yeah, this is obviously a huge part of, again, Republicans embracing this pro-business problem.

00:57:23.340 Right. Is that there was always the inevitable truth that businesses make far more money by dismantling your community and your traditions than they do by upholding them.

00:57:35.640 And so there there was always this unspoken but implicit agreement that you were going to be able to kind of slowly but surely sell this kind of stuff to Americans under the idea of free enterprise, free markets, these kind of things.

00:57:50.020 So escaping that ideology is increasingly important.

00:57:53.440 I mean, there are even sections of libertarians understanding this now.

00:57:56.700 So, again, I'm hopeful that the the the commerce, the chamber of commerce constituency of the right is is waning in power, at least slowly.

00:58:10.100 But that will be an essential part of victory moving forward.

00:58:13.420 Right. And I will say, you know, I don't usually sort of defend libertarians, but one thing that a lot of libertarians have often been correct about is that a lot of ways, a lot of times the ways that this functions isn't purely kind of entrepreneurial, free market, free enterprise capitalism.

00:58:30.120 You know, big business basically enjoys its monopoly over various industries by collaboration with, you know, quote unquote, big government, the managerial regime, whatever you want to call it.

00:58:42.180 But the kind of entrepreneurial sort of small and midsize businesses are often a threat to the big businesses that are actually throwing their weight around and big business allies with the federal bureaucracy and regulators a lot of time to box those sort of smaller competitors out.

00:58:57.480 Those smaller competitors also often happen to be much more culturally conservative because they're based in sort of regional identities, whereas these kind of multinational corporations have no allegiance to any regional identity or even to the often to the nation that they exist in.

00:59:13.980 So we've got Friendly here for ten dollars off topic, but judging by your musical taste, I think you enjoy Gamma Ray and Eduguy.

00:59:23.080 If you haven't listened to these bands, I highly recommend would be interested to know if you enjoy yet.

00:59:28.680 You have correctly identified me as a power metal guy.

00:59:30.920 And yes, I have heard both of those bands.

00:59:33.740 I like some other stuff.

00:59:35.740 I'm not the biggest fan of either, but but they are definitely in my wheelhouse.

00:59:41.240 So you did correctly grab my taste there.

00:59:45.660 Let's see.

00:59:46.480 Creeper Weirdo for two dollars.

00:59:48.220 This sounds a lot like Dave.

00:59:50.580 I'm assuming maybe you mean the distributist there.

00:59:53.560 If it if it does, then that's that's probably true.

00:59:56.600 We often overlap in opinions.

00:59:58.880 Dave's a very smart guy, so I often agree with him.

01:00:02.280 Let's see.

01:00:02.900 Our glow in the dark here back again.

01:00:04.500 Thank you very much, sir.

01:00:05.780 I'm hearing a narrative now that DeSantis isn't the new right, but more old right.

01:00:09.960 So MAGA isn't the future.

01:00:11.420 My counter isn't about laws or procedures, but intent.

01:00:15.060 Without intent, borders are open.

01:00:17.500 What is your response to this?

01:00:19.900 Let me read that a little more carefully so I can craft a good answer.

01:00:28.100 All right.

01:00:28.840 So let me say this because I think I understand some of your question glow in the dark, but I might not completely.

01:00:35.940 So let me take the best swing at it and you let me know.

01:00:38.100 You don't you don't need to super chat again.

01:00:39.400 You can just at me and I'll try to reply if I don't if I don't properly understand it.

01:00:44.160 I hear a lot of people saying that DeSantis is, you know, containment, that type of thing.

01:00:51.540 He's not truly a leader.

01:00:54.540 He's got too much establishment in him.

01:00:56.620 He's not willing to kind of break some of the rules in order to change things.

01:01:02.040 I have had a pretty consistent opinion, I think, on this, and it's always been the same.

01:01:08.180 I'm from Florida.

01:01:09.300 I'm a DeSantis fan.

01:01:10.780 I benefited gratefully from DeSantis' leadership, and I do not think that he is controlled opposition.

01:01:17.780 However, I do not think DeSantis should run for president because I think, A, I'm selfish and I want him to leave Florida.

01:01:26.560 He's very good at it, and I'd prefer he not leave to waste his talents at the national level.

01:01:32.180 I think the reason is that the ability for him to build power and show how to create regional power structures in Florida

01:01:41.960 and how governorship can be done in a way that dismantles the power of the federal bureaucracy is far more compelling

01:01:48.280 than him going to Washington, finding out that actually change is not going to happen.

01:01:52.760 He's just going to get log jammed and spending, you know, four to eight years arguing with the press

01:01:58.220 and getting smacked down by the federal bureaucracy.

01:02:02.200 Not that I don't think he's competent.

01:02:04.180 I think he's highly competent.

01:02:05.400 I just think that the enemy there is too strong, and I think his power would be better spent where he is.

01:02:15.320 I also think that people who think he's entirely containment, I will say one thing, and again, I'm a DeSantis fan,

01:02:21.840 so this is not me saying I agree with that.

01:02:24.760 I will say that DeSantis has not proven that he's willing to touch some of the third rails in some of the ways that Trump was,

01:02:33.200 and I think that that means he is still untested in certain areas,

01:02:37.340 and the question of is he willing to stand up to the narratives and the power in those situations

01:02:43.040 will be the defining question of whether or not DeSantis has what it takes to really bring it to the next level,

01:02:48.960 and I think that's a question that we probably only get to answer once we see that run actually happen,

01:02:53.740 but Nate, do you have any thoughts on that?

01:02:55.220 Well, I'm not from Florida, so I think I have less of a selfish investment in DeSantis remaining governor,

01:03:01.780 although I totally would find that viewpoint compelling if I was from Florida.

01:03:08.720 I do want to see DeSantis run for president, sort of cards on the table.

01:03:15.460 I have friends that are sort of more loyal to Trump and are skeptical of DeSantis.

01:03:20.420 I don't think that that's a stupid opinion.

01:03:23.400 I have yet to really see evidence of the arguments that he's sort of, you know,

01:03:29.040 establishment or, you know, controlled opposition or whatever sort of names are thrown around about him,

01:03:33.940 except that he's sort of taken meetings with Paul Ryan or something like that,

01:03:37.620 which to me is not, you know, an indictment in and of itself.

01:03:41.240 You know, you still have to work with the GOP.

01:03:43.020 But I do, I mean, I think if you look at the sort of influence that what you're talking about

01:03:48.980 in terms of like building the red state model and DeSantis being a leader,

01:03:52.300 if you look at how much DeSantis just from Florida has sort of set the bar

01:03:57.340 and in terms of how many governors, you know, Greg Abbott, you know,

01:04:00.960 even Kristi Noem sort of feels obligated to try to sort of posture like DeSantis sometimes,

01:04:06.660 that Republican governors now feel obligated to follow,

01:04:09.140 which they didn't feel obligated to follow a few years ago.

01:04:11.280 So I would love to see that at the national level.

01:04:14.060 And I think, you know, if DeSantis wins and has the kind of anywhere near the kind of loyalty

01:04:18.440 of the Republican voter base that Trump did, Trump, I think, at times squandered the sort of power

01:04:25.360 that had been given to him by the loyalty of Republican voters to sort of remake the Republican Party.

01:04:31.020 And I think DeSantis is obviously much more focused and competent.

01:04:34.320 And I think, you know, as much as aspects of the kind of federal bureaucracy

01:04:38.480 feel pretty permanent and entrenched right now, you do need like-minded legislators at the national level.

01:04:45.440 And I'd like to see sort of DeSantis have the same effect that he's had from Florida across the country

01:04:49.800 in Republican governorships at the national level.

01:04:52.600 I'd be, you know, encouraged by that.

01:04:54.980 Yeah, I mean, I would like to see that too.

01:04:56.580 I'm just skeptical about whether that's possible.

01:04:59.220 I think it's a different animal to do it nationally.

01:05:03.180 He also, again, has to address topics like immigration that are going to get very difficult.

01:05:10.040 You know, he needs to explain how the FBI gets addressed.

01:05:13.740 Like there are, like, I think anyone who's going to make a substantial change at a national level

01:05:19.600 for the right has to be willing to tackle some very, very difficult topics.

01:05:24.300 And again, he might be able to, he might, he might have all of that and be ready to go.

01:05:29.000 I'm just saying he's untested in those areas and, and we'd have, we'd have to see for sure.

01:05:34.020 Yeah.

01:05:35.360 Let's see.

01:05:37.840 KS for $4.99.

01:05:39.440 The right will never win until Christianity is discarded or includes evolution, 1.00

01:05:43.780 other cutting edge sciences until then it's culturally backwards for elites. 0.59

01:05:48.400 Um, okay.

01:05:50.480 I mean, this, this seems like a kind of adorable, uh, critique, uh, the right,

01:05:57.780 even if this was true, which I don't think it is, but even if it's true,

01:06:01.420 all you're saying is like the rights just got to become left wing to compete with the, okay.

01:06:06.420 Like, like, yes, I'm aware of the neocon argument.

01:06:09.460 Like, like I'm aware of the cycle, like the, the right must adopt the, the,

01:06:13.660 all the cultural positions of the left in order to appeal to elites.

01:06:16.980 All right, fine.

01:06:18.320 Like, yeah, I guess.

01:06:19.800 But then what, what are you?

01:06:20.980 Are you any kind of opposition?

01:06:22.940 Fine.

01:06:23.420 I mean, uh, the right, uh, uh, to embraces all kinds of cutting edge science,

01:06:29.760 probably too much in, in, in certain areas.

01:06:32.640 Um, so I don't understand that critique as well.

01:06:35.660 I think, again, if you're, if you're critique of the right is it's just got to

01:06:42.540 abandon its values so it can get to the left of the left in order to, uh,

01:06:46.880 appeal to elites than, okay.

01:06:48.700 But yeah, that's not the right or shouldn't be.

01:06:52.840 Yeah.

01:06:53.220 Really quickly.

01:06:53.680 I, I mean, I, I agree.

01:06:55.240 I don't, I don't really take this view, uh, particularly seriously with all,

01:06:58.340 with all due respect.

01:06:59.220 Um, but the, the other sort of like more radical critique is there is like this

01:07:02.920 radical, right.

01:07:03.640 Kind of anti-Christian critique, which is that Christianity is sort of inherently

01:07:07.340 liberal because it's too egalitarian, you know, it's too universalist, et cetera,

01:07:11.980 et cetera.

01:07:12.280 Um, and I wrote the, the, the sort of long New York times piece I wrote was, was kind

01:07:17.280 of about that.

01:07:17.980 And I was citing the kind of radical right thinkers, uh, including, uh, Sam Francis,

01:07:22.200 by the way, who were critical, at least of, of sort of political Christianity's effect

01:07:26.660 in terms of his kind of egalitarianism and universalism.

01:07:29.900 Um, I just think it's an extremely dangerous game to play one, because so much of sort

01:07:34.980 of our, our culture and heritage is contained in the, in the Christian tradition.

01:07:38.520 Um, but also just because once you abandon sort of a sense of the divine and the transcendent,

01:07:43.600 um, things go pretty dark places, uh, pretty quickly.

01:07:46.120 And I'm not necessarily enthusiastic about what a sort of non-Christian conservatism would 0.82

01:07:51.340 look like.

01:07:52.360 Absolutely.

01:07:53.640 Uh, let's see, uh, Alex Blasquez for $5.

01:07:58.640 Thank you very much.

01:07:59.320 Sure.

01:07:59.420 I just moved to Montana from California and the LGBT stuff is only seen near the big, the 1.00

01:08:06.640 bigger cities.

01:08:07.420 It's definitely a younger voting block, way more motivated.

01:08:11.220 I mean, yeah, that's absolutely true, right?

01:08:12.860 Like the, the, the, the old saying is there are no blue states, only blue cities.

01:08:18.480 And while that's true, that's also kind of important because cities for better or for worse

01:08:24.840 are where political power and financial power concentrate.

01:08:28.560 And so, you know, the fact that this stuff is in many red states only, uh, present in these

01:08:36.580 certain areas that might feel comforting for a moment.

01:08:39.860 The problem is that these are the places of influence.

01:08:42.220 And I think something that the right really needs to go away from is the idea that like, uh, views are

01:08:49.360 transmitted because they are held by the wider populace or that culture is adopted because

01:08:56.040 the people support it.

01:08:57.980 Um, these things come top down, not bottom up.

01:09:01.740 And the fact that your universities and your media could change the entire definition of

01:09:08.480 what a man or woman is inside of like five years should probably help you understand kind

01:09:14.220 of where power actually lies when it comes to culture and political influence.

01:09:17.660 Yeah, fully agreed.

01:09:20.780 All right, guys, I think we hit everything there.

01:09:24.340 Just want to double check and make sure.

01:09:26.240 So I'm not robbing anybody of a super chat.

01:09:29.960 Yep.

01:09:30.360 I think that's everything.

01:09:31.580 All right.

01:09:32.520 Let's go ahead and wrap things up.

01:09:34.680 Uh, Nate, I want to thank you so much again for coming on.

01:09:37.280 It's been a great time talking to you.

01:09:39.080 Uh, I think we, you already told everybody where to find your stuff, but just one more time.

01:09:43.080 If you want to remind them, you know, where can they follow you?

01:09:45.440 Where are they going to read your work?

01:09:46.760 Yeah.

01:09:47.020 Follow me at Twitter and J Hawkman and J H O C H M A N and anything, you know, even 1.00

01:09:52.480 semi-important that I do.

01:09:53.660 I'll, I'll probably post on there.

01:09:55.640 Excellent.

01:09:56.140 And as always guys, if you're new here, go ahead and, uh, make sure you follow, uh,

01:10:01.680 and, or subscribe.

01:10:03.500 And, uh, this is also now available.

01:10:05.760 Remember as a podcast.

01:10:07.060 So if you want to be able to listen while you're mowing the lawn or lifting weights or,

01:10:11.720 you know, cleaning the house or whatever, just make sure you go ahead and you can find

01:10:15.960 it on any of the major, you know, platforms.

01:10:17.860 And if you do go over to something like Apple or Spotify, make sure you got a rating or review,

01:10:22.500 whatever that really helps out with everything.

01:10:24.760 But that said, thank you everyone for joining us.

01:10:27.480 And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

01:10:38.380 Sweet.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 09, 2023

How Gender Ideology Is Conquering Red States ｜ Guest： Nate Hochman ｜ 1⧸9⧸23

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