The Charlie Kirk Show - September 28, 2022


3 Professors LIVE from Hillsdale College—Khalil Habib, Kenneth Calvert, and Kevin Slack


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

165.82484

Word count

5,428

Sentence count

388

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Does the Roman Republic and America have any parallels? What can we learn from Montesquieu and Locke? And what are the big takeaways of post-60s liberalism? Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show Podcast by opening up your podcast app and typing in and subscribing in the upper right hand corner.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.
00:00:00.000 Today, the Charlie Kirk Show, a full Hillsdale hour as I do the show live from Hillsdale College.
00:00:06.000 Does the Roman Republic and America have any parallels?
00:00:09.000 What can we learn from Montesquieu and Locke?
00:00:11.000 And what are the big takeaways of post-60s liberalism?
00:00:15.000 Email me your thoughts as always.
00:00:16.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:18.000 That is freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:20.000 Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast by opening up your podcast app and typing in Charlie Kirk Show and subscribing in the upper right-hand corner.
00:00:28.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA and our nationwide education movement to pass down American values from one generation to the other.
00:00:35.000 And join our biggest event in December AmericaFest, amfest.com.
00:00:40.000 You're going to hear me talk about it a lot.
00:00:42.000 We got Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Josh Hawley, Kaylee McEniny, Jack Pasobic, Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, Allie Stuckey, Mike Lindell, Lauren Bober, George Farmer, Lauren Chen, and more.
00:00:53.000 Amfest.com, amfest.com, and Phoenix, Arizona.
00:00:56.000 You're going to hear a lot more promo about that.
00:00:59.000 That's just a little taste.
00:01:00.000 So check it out.
00:01:01.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:01:02.000 Here we go.
00:01:03.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:01:05.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:01:07.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:01:10.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:01:14.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:01:15.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:16.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:01:23.000 Turning point USA. 0.65
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00:01:48.000 So we're here at Hillsdale College.
00:01:50.000 I thought it'd be fun to kind of get a series of experts from Hillsdale College so you could get an idea of why am I always bragging on Hillsdale College?
00:01:59.000 Well, just a couple of awesome people.
00:02:00.000 We have Dr. Khalil Habib.
00:02:02.000 We did a whole series with him.
00:02:04.000 I want to get back to that.
00:02:05.000 I missed that.
00:02:06.000 And so we're working on getting that back.
00:02:08.000 He's really special.
00:02:09.000 We had him on to talk about Nietzsche and many other things.
00:02:12.000 And it's Dr. Habib who joins us right now.
00:02:14.000 Dr. Habib, welcome back to the program.
00:02:16.000 Charlie, it's good to see you.
00:02:18.000 Long time.
00:02:19.000 Yes, it has been long, and we have to do it more often.
00:02:22.000 So I understand you're teaching a course on Montesquieu, Locke, and many other things.
00:02:27.000 So my Montesquieu is, let's just say, not as sharp as it should be.
00:02:33.000 At least I did remember he wrote a book called Spirit of the Laws when Kyle mentioned it.
00:02:37.000 Why is it important for us to know Montesquieu or understand Montesquieu to properly understand the American founding and tell us who Montesquieu is?
00:02:47.000 So Montesquieu was an aristocrat from France and he had published The Spirit of the Laws in around 1750.
00:02:54.000 And many of our early founders had actually read it in French and it was quickly translated into English.
00:03:00.000 And he's one of the second or third most quoted authority among the early American founders when it came to debating what exactly is the purpose and role of government.
00:03:10.000 Now, to be sure, Locke is central to that debate where the founders take Locke's understanding of natural rights very seriously and Locke's idea that consent of the governed is the only legitimate form of government.
00:03:25.000 But where Montesquieu comes in is Locke has a very early version of the separation of powers.
00:03:32.000 So he separates the executive and the legislative branch.
00:03:37.000 And it's a bit of a mystery where he puts the judicial branch.
00:03:40.000 It's somewhat shared by the executive and the legislative.
00:03:44.000 For Locke, with respect to domestic issues, the legislative branch does have some control over the judiciary.
00:03:51.000 Whereas when it comes to international relations, the executive.
00:03:54.000 Now, when Montesquieu writes The Spirit of the Laws, he's very reluctant to go down that path.
00:04:01.000 What he wants is a far stricter, if that's a word, separation.
00:04:05.000 And so he identifies three powers that any government has, whether it's a tyranny or whether it's a republic, there's three powers.
00:04:14.000 The question is: how are they organized and assembled?
00:04:17.000 Who has control over them?
00:04:18.000 The executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
00:04:20.000 Well, in a tyranny, as you can imagine, the authority is centralized, and the despot would simply wield all three.
00:04:27.000 And for Locke, it's okay to have the separation just between the legislative branch and the executive, because the executive branch is checked by the legislative branch.
00:04:38.000 And of course, the legislative branch is checked by the consent of the governed.
00:04:42.000 And they're all working from within a very strict standard of natural right that Locke puts forward.
00:04:49.000 But with Montesquieu, Montesquieu does not believe you can have political liberty in any government unless all three powers are separated.
00:04:59.000 But even if they are separated, anytime a power begins to abuse its authority, you no longer have what he calls liberty.
00:05:08.000 So if you look at our Constitution, the framers basically separate all three and then go over each aspect of it.
00:05:18.000 And so you've got the executive branch, you've got writings on what the powers of the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary are.
00:05:25.000 That's Montesquieu's doing.
00:05:27.000 So he's enormously important for that reason alone.
00:05:31.000 Now, you could consider him a bit of an honorary founder in a way that we would consider Locke.
00:05:37.000 But the course is not exclusively devoted to Montesquieu.
00:05:42.000 It's our flagship U.S. Constitution course.
00:05:46.000 And we have some liberty to add some material that's not usually included in our text.
00:05:51.000 And so what we've been doing is taking very seriously Jefferson's letter to Henry Lee, where he's informing him what went into the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
00:06:02.000 And Jefferson says, well, I'm drawing from principles as old as Aristotle and Locke and Sydney.
00:06:09.000 And so that gives us a bit of a framework or an outline of how to proceed to understand how the framers understood themselves.
00:06:17.000 So we just finished a whole section on Aristotle's politics and the ethics.
00:06:22.000 And then we turned to Locke, where we covered virtually the entire second treatise.
00:06:28.000 And now we're just about to wrap up book 11 in Spirit of the Laws, where Montesquieu discusses liberty.
00:06:35.000 And then after that, we will turn to the Federalist Papers.
00:06:39.000 And in the Federalist Papers, there's only one philosopher actually mentioned by name.
00:06:44.000 It's not Locke, but it's Montesquieu.
00:06:47.000 And it's Montesquieu in relation to how one deals with expanding the orbit of the governmental powers so that you can control factions and bring about some kind of equilibrium within the branches of government so that it can foster tranquility and liberty without having to squash, say, factions militarily, because then you'd be a despotism.
00:07:10.000 So a bit of a combination of David Hume and Montesquieu go into the early Federalist papers.
00:07:15.000 And so I'm just trying to sort of make good on Jefferson's letter and show students how our founding is really a result of absolute genius and but a real deep understanding of history political thought.
00:07:29.000 Yeah, I think it's Federalist 47 where they mentioned Montesquieu a couple of times.
00:07:34.000 And so Dr. Habib, I think it's really important as we try to educate the audience, and I get educated when I just listen to you, about how we view power.
00:07:45.000 This is something I've been really fascinated with and kind of how different structures of government understand power and who actually has the power.
00:07:53.000 Where did the idea of the people being sovereign come from?
00:07:58.000 Was that Lockean in nature?
00:08:00.000 How did that idea?
00:08:02.000 Yeah, without question, that's law of God.
00:08:05.000 But Locke makes that very emphatic.
00:08:07.000 To some extent, you see it already indicated in works like Aristotle, but it's not as pronounced.
00:08:14.000 He's more interested in the moral quality of the rulers.
00:08:17.000 But you can see that whether it's classical or early modern political thought, there's always a sense that consent is required of governing.
00:08:25.000 Otherwise, it's coercion and you don't have anything even resembling liberty.
00:08:28.000 But it's Locke who begins to use terms such as the sovereignty of the people.
00:08:34.000 And because he builds it on the consent of the individual who does have a duty to respect and honor the rights of others, so it's not strictly individualistic in an extreme sense.
00:08:44.000 It's rather that a commonwealth that takes seriously liberty and property rights, among other things, has to acknowledge the central authority of the individual.
00:08:54.000 We need each other's consent because in the state of nature, we're all free and equal from any authority of any other person.
00:09:01.000 There is no coercion that is legitimate within the state of nature for Locke.
00:09:06.000 And so that really forms the foundation for the consent of the governed and the sovereignty of the people in Locke.
00:09:15.000 This is very important because, you know, we look at the American founding sometimes and we look at it in a silo or we fence it off.
00:09:22.000 But it's important to understand the people that they studied, the ideas that they pondered, right?
00:09:28.000 That Jefferson and Madison, well, Jefferson, obviously the author of the Declaration, Madison, Jay and Hamilton, much more of the driving force behind the Constitution.
00:09:38.000 And that's really what Hillsdale College does better than any other institution on the planet.
00:09:43.000 So, Dr. Habib, I want to ask about social contract theory and why Locke was different.
00:09:50.000 I'm going to try to tie this to current events very quickly.
00:09:52.000 People talk all the time: I have a right to this, I have a right to that.
00:09:54.000 I have a right to housing, I have a right to healthcare, I have a right to be happy, I have a right to an iPhone, I have a right to TikTok, I have a right to all this.
00:10:00.000 But Locke's view was different.
00:10:02.000 Locke's view was that rights were given by a creator or from God, this idea of natural rights.
00:10:07.000 Why is it important that we understand natural rights before we even begin to hear the complaints of somebody saying, I have a right to all these different material things?
00:10:16.000 Yeah, that's good.
00:10:17.000 I mean, for Locke, he distinguishes liberty from license early on when he first introduces the notion of rights.
00:10:25.000 The idea that a right is anything you want to do would be too permissive for Locke.
00:10:31.000 He even associates that with license.
00:10:33.000 For him, liberty is working within what he calls the law of nature.
00:10:38.000 And that law of nature is known through reason and it's given to us by God and by nature.
00:10:43.000 And so it's really a right to self-govern.
00:10:47.000 And that when one, on the one hand, means a form of government, you want a government in which the citizens get to self-govern or at least represent it fairly, but it also means to self-govern your appetites.
00:11:00.000 So if you define a right as just the indulging of one's license, Locke would not consider that a form of liberty.
00:11:08.000 For liberty for him means self-rule, and moral virtue is the command of reason over the appetites.
00:11:14.000 If you can't self-govern your with respect to your appetites, then it's highly unlikely that you can be self-governing in a form of government.
00:11:23.000 So before he moves us in the direction of forming a civil state that will protect the rights that we have, he has to first explain what a free human being is.
00:11:34.000 And a free human being is not one that just indulges in any license that they have.
00:11:38.000 He's very explicit about that.
00:11:41.000 That's so fascinating.
00:11:42.000 And so then, Dr. Habib, why is it important then when someone says, I have a right to all these different sorts of things?
00:11:49.000 Mean, meaning I have a right to receive somebody else's property.
00:11:54.000 What would Locke, how would Locke view that?
00:11:57.000 Yeah, Locke is very clear about that.
00:11:59.000 Property belongs to the person who earned it.
00:12:01.000 And in fact, in the passage on private property, he says the property, private property, belongs to the rational and the industrious.
00:12:08.000 And the Federalists actually argued early on in the Federalist Papers that the purpose of our government was to protect even the inequalities that will emerge from the disparate amount of wealth people can collect for themselves on the basis of certain priorities that they've made in life and choices and different talents.
00:12:27.000 So for Locke, property rights means protecting the fruit of your labor.
00:12:32.000 What we often hear today, cloaked in the language of rights, is a sense of entitlement.
00:12:37.000 And for Locke, that would be a violation of private property and natural right.
00:12:43.000 That's so right.
00:12:45.000 And it's easy to act as if you have a moral right to tempting to somebody else's property or somebody else's consciousness, but it violates public opinion.
00:12:59.000 Exactly.
00:13:00.000 Well, we're out of time, Dr. Habib.
00:13:02.000 Great as always.
00:13:03.000 Thank you.
00:13:03.000 Enjoy your class.
00:13:05.000 And see you around campus here at Hillsdale College.
00:13:08.000 Appreciate it.
00:13:08.000 Enjoy your visit.
00:13:09.000 Thank you.
00:13:10.000 Thank you.
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00:14:10.000 So there's, I haven't had a chance to take it yet.
00:14:12.000 I've taken a majority of the Hillsdale online courses.
00:14:14.000 I have not taken the one on Roman history yet.
00:14:17.000 There's just a really great one that is being taught by Professor Kenneth Calvert.
00:14:22.000 Did a great job, and people are really raving about it.
00:14:25.000 Professor of History here at Hillsdale College.
00:14:28.000 Professor, welcome.
00:14:30.000 How are you?
00:14:31.000 I'm very well.
00:14:32.000 Thank you.
00:14:32.000 Great to be with you.
00:14:34.000 Thank you.
00:14:35.000 So I'm meaning to take your course, and the reviews are just phenomenal about it.
00:14:40.000 I want to ask you specifically about Roman history.
00:14:47.000 There's a parallel that is made every so often about the decline of Rome, you know, porous borders, a destroyed currency, greedy politicians, some would say sexual perversion, and kind of comparing that to America.
00:15:00.000 Do you think those parallels are helpful or appropriate as we kind of try to look to see if a superpower has ever been on the course of what America is on right now?
00:15:09.000 Yeah, I think there are some definite parallels, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we are a free society, and particularly in the Roman Republic.
00:15:22.000 I mean, that was a free society as well.
00:15:24.000 And whenever you have a free society, you have the freedom of citizens to be what they will.
00:15:32.000 And as a Christian, of course, I understand that at least part of that is to act out on their fallenness. 0.90
00:15:38.000 But there's also positive that can be found in that.
00:15:43.000 Now, the Roman Empire, I think, suffered from a number of things.
00:15:47.000 First of all, its paganism was very much running against it.
00:15:54.000 The second was the fact that it was magnificently successful.
00:15:59.000 And so they had a huge amount of wealth and a huge amount of luxury.
00:16:03.000 And you put all those things together and you do have a recipe for disaster.
00:16:08.000 You find in so many of the ancient cultures that they begin to fall.
00:16:14.000 Their demise begins as soon as they reach their height.
00:16:18.000 Now, can we make some parallels with the United States on that?
00:16:23.000 You know, we had a great century where we defeated the Nazis, who were socialists, I think we need to remember, and defeated all those fascist forces and then came home and created the most remarkable economy the world has ever seen and spread freedom, spread great medicine, spread technology all over the world, which has created the world we have today.
00:16:51.000 So much of CRT and what's going on in the left, they want to pretend like all that has happened in the last 100, 200 years has been negative, but I don't think so, of course.
00:17:03.000 I think there's been a great deal of positive to it.
00:17:05.000 Has there been negative?
00:17:06.000 Of course, we're human beings.
00:17:08.000 But I think it's been mostly positive.
00:17:11.000 Finally, I'll say this.
00:17:14.000 I don't think the parallel works for one main reason.
00:17:19.000 We have this great document that states that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:17:30.000 The Romans would never have written that kind of document.
00:17:34.000 The idea of equality there would never have happened.
00:17:37.000 Also, the Romans fought three wars to keep their slaves in place.
00:17:43.000 We fought a war to free the slaves.
00:17:46.000 And so I'm a person who sees a lot of the parallels, yes, because we're human beings and because we live in a free society and because we're a huge society and very, very wealthy, there are a lot of parallels.
00:17:59.000 But I'm one who would say that we're nowhere near over.
00:18:03.000 And I think a lot of the blowback to the Biden administration, a lot of what's going on today, the blowback to the left that is on the part of sane Americans, I think that's showing us that there's still a lot of life left.
00:18:20.000 That is the best answer I've ever heard, where you say, look, there might be parallels superficially or kind of looking at the top, but the Romans never would have composed the document that would say, one of the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have tied them to another.
00:18:37.000 They never would have wrote that.
00:18:38.000 That's very smart.
00:18:39.000 And so let me ask you, you know, kind of just looking at the arc of Roman history, and this is obviously a very, you know, let's just say open question.
00:18:51.000 When you look at the good emperors, the bad emperors, you know, whether good being Aurelius and, you know, that whole category and negative Caligula, Nero, and many others, you know, what are the, let's talk to positives.
00:19:04.000 What are some of the virtues that we can learn of a statesman in a time of today?
00:19:09.000 Because you have multiple examples over a long period of time.
00:19:13.000 And in historical terms, from what I understand, rather well-documented history of how they acted and what they did.
00:19:22.000 What are some of the lessons you think we can learn from and apply them to today's time?
00:19:26.000 Well, when we look at the Roman Empire before it became Christian under Constantine, we can see a number of good emperors that really exemplify the positive nature of what Rome was.
00:19:46.000 Caesar Augustus was a very rational man and was a man who did an excellent job of organizing an empire that was far abroad across many cultures, across many languages.
00:20:01.000 And he did a great job of unifying a very diverse empire.
00:20:08.000 If we look at Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius, and I would encourage any listener to read Marcus Aurelius on the meditations, his meditations.
00:20:19.000 Here's a guy who understood discipline and duty.
00:20:26.000 And against his own personal interests, he wanted to be a philosopher.
00:20:33.000 He wanted to do anything other than be emperor.
00:20:36.000 And his example of faithfully, dutifully doing his best for the empire is really a tremendous example.
00:20:47.000 And I would say that his stoicism and his meditations had a definite influence on our founders, particularly a man like George Washington, who returned power back to the government, back to the civil authorities over and over again.
00:21:03.000 He was a man who understood that this was not about him.
00:21:06.000 It was about ideals.
00:21:08.000 It was about the highest good.
00:21:12.000 That is so well said.
00:21:14.000 Yeah, it is impossible to properly understand the American founding without having some understanding of Roman history.
00:21:23.000 I mean, George Washington, I think he was a member of the Order of Cincinnatus, right?
00:21:28.000 Which was a very similar type of story of what he actually ended up living.
00:21:34.000 And his story was that he served in the war and went back to his farm or something.
00:21:37.000 Right, right.
00:21:38.000 Cincinnati.
00:21:39.000 He won the war and then went back.
00:21:40.000 Right.
00:21:41.000 Cincinnatus was elected dictator.
00:21:43.000 And in ancient Rome, that was an elected office in a time of great danger.
00:21:48.000 He was given six months' total power.
00:21:51.000 Cincinnatus went out.
00:21:52.000 He did his duty, defeated the enemy, marched back to Rome all in two weeks, and gave his power up and went back to his farm.
00:22:02.000 And that's one reason why Washington is so famous: all he wanted to do was go back to Mount Vernon.
00:22:08.000 And he ended up, he was part of the Order of Cincinnatus, or Professor Calvert.
00:22:14.000 I was mine together.
00:22:16.000 Okay.
00:22:17.000 Yeah.
00:22:18.000 The Order of Cincinnatus was actually named after him.
00:22:22.000 He was the American Cincinnatus, and the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, really is named after George Washington and for his willingness to give up power.
00:22:34.000 Yeah, it's spectacular.
00:22:35.000 Professor Calvert, thank you so much.
00:22:37.000 Everyone, check out his course.
00:22:38.000 I know I will be at charlie4hillsdale.com.
00:22:41.000 Thank you so much, Professor.
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00:23:47.000 Hillsdale College has an all-star team of professors and thinkers.
00:23:53.000 It's really impressive.
00:23:55.000 And we have another one joining us right now.
00:23:57.000 He is the Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College.
00:24:04.000 And he has a very interesting take on post-60s liberalism and radicalism.
00:24:11.000 And I look forward to going into that.
00:24:12.000 Before I go into it, though, you guys can always email us freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:24:16.000 That's freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:24:18.000 And joining us now is Professor Slack from Hillsdale College.
00:24:22.000 How are you doing?
00:24:22.000 Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:24:24.000 Hey, Charlie, how are you?
00:24:26.000 I'm doing very well.
00:24:27.000 So the great Kyle Mernan, who is the driving force behind all things online courses here at Hillsdale College, said that you have a very interesting take on liberalism post-1960s.
00:24:38.000 And so I'll let you take it from there.
00:24:41.000 Well, I'm doing a course for Hillsdale College on post-60s liberalism.
00:24:46.000 And one of the things, the things that I think is important is that people, when they use the words liberal or radical or progressive, neoliberal, that they root that in some historical context.
00:24:57.000 And so one of the things that I do in the course is while I treat some of the later movements, identity politics, transgenderism, the anti-racist movement, and so on, is I go back in history and I show how the radicals that embrace all those ideas are really breaking from the mid-century liberals.
00:25:14.000 And that's in the 1960s.
00:25:16.000 In fact, many of the things that we talk about today, even words like woke or trigger, all those things are around in the late 60s and in the early 70s and are even being sponsored by the federal government.
00:25:27.000 So in this course, we look at what the regime is today.
00:25:31.000 But importantly, we understand that by seeing how we got where we are.
00:25:36.000 So I think that's really important for people to kind of draw the roots back to 1960s and how all these forces came together.
00:25:42.000 Can you talk about how some of the, you could call them liberal forces, you know, let's just say classical liberal forces that would say that want international trade, that want, let's just say, open and porous borders and maybe more socially liberal on certain social issues, about how they kind of created a consensus of neoliberalism for many decades.
00:26:10.000 And recently that's really been pushed back against.
00:26:12.000 But what we're talking about post-1960s is all these different types of variations of what could be considered, you know, liberalism or radicalism.
00:26:22.000 How do we reconcile, you know, what would be considered neoliberalism with some of the more radical elements that we now see driving the American discourse that would call themselves more kind of like leftists?
00:26:34.000 Well, I think if you look at the mid-century liberals, here we're talking about the New Deal era, 1933 to 1945, that liberalism for them meant big government.
00:26:43.000 It was the creation of the welfare state.
00:26:45.000 But ultimately, in the 1960s, you see an implosion, right, the end of the 60s, the American economy, and the stagflation that rolls in in the 1970s.
00:26:53.000 The break with those mid-century liberals who prioritized the labor coalition, right, where the government was supporting labor unions, something like 35% of the workforce was unionized around 1950.
00:27:06.000 After the 1960s, what you find is a class break.
00:27:09.000 And so the tensions that occur in the neoliberal period, I think you can understand in terms of class.
00:27:14.000 You have on the left, the radicals who create systems of identity politics, and they ensconce themselves in the universities as well as in the regulatory commissions and agencies.
00:27:25.000 We're familiar with them.
00:27:26.000 The same radicals that were there in the 70s were still there in the 1990s.
00:27:31.000 And they understood the American middle class as being the enemy, right?
00:27:34.000 It was culpable of racism, for example.
00:27:37.000 But then you also find another elite group, and I think that's the group that is part of what's called the knowledge economy in the 1970s and after, sometimes called libertarians.
00:27:49.000 But that group saw the middle class also as being an enemy.
00:27:53.000 And while those on the left were going to fight for the underprivileged or the disadvantaged, by which they meant government policies for minorities and single women, the whole affirmative action regime, that you find on the right, they're making neoliberal arguments to benefit the disadvantaged, by which they mean the consumer.
00:28:12.000 And so what you lose is any element of citizenship.
00:28:15.000 And so Americans become replaceable consumers.
00:28:19.000 Both of those groups on the right and the left in this neoliberal period see the middle class as the enemy.
00:28:25.000 I should also point out one more thing: that neoliberal is a word that's being used in the 1980s to describe the new Democrats, right?
00:28:34.000 Think about Tim Wirth, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsangas.
00:28:38.000 These are all Democrats who are saying what we need is more free market policies, deregulation.
00:28:43.000 And this would be a solution to the big fiscal policies of the liberals of the mid-century.
00:28:49.000 So, Dr. Slack, I find that fascinating.
00:28:51.000 And, you know, in the time we have remaining here, I do want to ask you about one of the courses you teach.
00:28:56.000 And I think I'm understanding this.
00:28:58.000 You've taught it before.
00:28:59.000 Politics 804 on Herbert Marcuse, which, of course, reminds me of one-dimensional man.
00:29:06.000 Who is Marcuse, and why is it important that we learn about him and what kind of damage has he done to our republic?
00:29:14.000 Well, Marcuse is one of the founders of critical theory.
00:29:17.000 And critical theory is a power philosophy that's responding to the positivist philosophies in the mid-century.
00:29:25.000 When you hear the language of other, for example, that comes from the Frankfurt School, where it's important to understand certain identities and how they're inseparable from their other and how that very relationship leads to political oppression.
00:29:41.000 And so Marcuse was arguing for a new politics of liberation.
00:29:45.000 So I get into this in great detail in the online course.
00:29:48.000 I'm not sure how much we can get into it now.
00:29:52.000 But essentially, Marcuse has the argument that the philosophers or you could say the poets, and here you could stand in place of that, the white young progressive radicals should ally with, in solidarity, should ally with the underprivileged of society against the American middle class.
00:30:11.000 And so you have this rejection of what was seen as the middle class, the working class, in the 60s by the radicals themselves.
00:30:18.000 How this unfolds in the neoliberal period is that those who are espousing critical theory, who see America as a land of oppression as the enemy, they form their own authoritative priesthood.
00:30:30.000 And when we round out the neoliberal era around 2008, what we find is, particularly on the conservative side, that all the conservative gods are dead.
00:30:39.000 The old neoconservative school, the libertarian school, the performance traditionalism, they no longer are able to justify the oligarchy that's been created.
00:30:48.000 For example, the change in antitrust law that's privileged large corporations and the formation of monopolies in every sector of the American economy.
00:30:55.000 And facing this crisis of legitimacy, both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the 2008 housing market crisis, I think the oligarchs needed legitimacy.
00:31:04.000 And so they sided with that woke priesthood, whose roots go back to critical theory.
00:31:09.000 That was the foundation for other schools we're familiar with.
00:31:12.000 Critical legal studies, critical race theory, transgenderism, and identity politics.
00:31:17.000 And so you have an oligarchy that rejects the populist movement on the right, and it turns to the group that had been most critical of it.
00:31:24.000 And that's going to be the radicals on the left to justify, to give that regime legitimacy.
00:31:29.000 And so there are two real religions that have emerged.
00:31:31.000 One we saw during the COVID crisis, and that's the religion of health.
00:31:34.000 So we have authorities on health who, by poisoning the population, will do them good through government mandates.
00:31:40.000 And then you also have anti-racism.
00:31:42.000 And anti-racism has really taken over many of those institutions we would thought were conservative, particularly Christian churches.
00:31:52.000 That is so fascinating.
00:31:53.000 I wish we had more time.
00:31:54.000 Dr. Slack, we have to have you back again.
00:31:57.000 And you guys could check out all things Hillsdale at CharlieForhillsdale.com.
00:32:00.000 Thank you so much, Dr. Charlie Slack.
00:32:02.000 Can I get a plug for a book real quick?
00:32:03.000 It's called War on the American Republic. 0.59
00:32:07.000 That's my book that's coming.
00:32:08.000 Do you want to have more time?
00:32:09.000 I have a book that's called War on the American Republic with Encounter Press, and that'll be coming out this winter.
00:32:16.000 And it covers all the things we've been talking about.
00:32:20.000 So when that comes out, come do a full hour on our program.
00:32:23.000 I mean that.
00:32:24.000 If you're ever in Phoenix, come by the office.
00:32:25.000 We'll have you.
00:32:26.000 Please check out it.
00:32:27.000 Check it out.
00:32:27.000 Thank you so much, Dr. Slack.
00:32:29.000 Great, Charlie.
00:32:30.000 Thank you.
00:32:31.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:32:33.000 Email me your thoughts as always.
00:32:34.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:32:35.000 Thank you so much for listening.
00:32:37.000 God bless.
00:32:40.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.