00:01:00.000They have the U.S. Supreme Court course, Winston Churchill and Statesmanship, and so much more.
00:01:04.000My goal is to finish every single Hillsdale online course.
00:01:08.000It takes work, but all good things take work and sacrifice, don't they?
00:01:13.000That's what you can do at charlie4hillsdale.com.
00:01:16.000They have the David story, Shepherd Father King, Civil Rights in American History, classic children's literature, the great American story, a land of hope, Constitution 101, as I mentioned, and so much more.
00:01:27.000Go right now to charlieforhillsdale.com, free of charge.
00:01:36.000And if you are a parent, you need to take one hour a week to spend with your kids to go through big ideas.
00:01:42.000Charlie4Hillsdale.com can be your place for that.
00:01:46.000My conversation was with David Azerod today.
00:01:49.000We talk about identity politics, race, what was wrong with the Civil Rights Act, thought crimes incoming.
00:01:54.000This episode is one of my favorites recently and rather provocative.
00:01:57.000Email us your thoughts of this episode, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:02:01.000If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com slash support and make sure you come to AmericaFest, tpusa.com slash A-M-F-E-S T in Phoenix, Arizona, December 18, 19, 2021.
00:02:46.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:58.000Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk show.
00:03:02.000I've been looking forward to this one ever since our friends at Hillsdale said there was an opportunity to get the legendary professor Azerod on our podcast.
00:03:40.000So there's a lot I want to unpack, but let's start with this idea of identity politics, which you correctly and very wisely frame more as oppression politics or kind of the elevation of certain groups that are deemed to be oppressed.
00:04:00.000Because identity politics is misleading because it would imply that everyone is entitled to have an identity of which they're proud and that they want to defend.
00:04:09.000So you would think, oh, we used to have class-based politics.
00:04:13.000And now we're going to have identity politics.
00:04:15.000But it turns out that in the realm of identity politics, not all identities are created equal.
00:04:30.000So-called people of color with blacks always first and foremost, hence the shift to BIPOC, Black and Indigenous people of color to emphasize that Black is the most oppressed ahead of the so-called white adjacent Asians.
00:04:42.000You know, they're having problems with the Asians because they do too well in America.
00:04:47.000Then, of course, LGBTQ, women, sometimes immigrants, Muslims, but the Holy Trinity is really the first three.
00:05:42.000What the hell is critical race theory?
00:05:44.000It's basically anti-white racism with, you know, a couple of footnotes that if you're white, you can partially absolve yourself of your sins if you read the script and claim solidarity with the oppressed and claim to check your privilege.
00:06:03.000And however, if you're a so-called person of color and you deviate from the script, they get very angry at you.
00:06:09.000So Clarence Thomas may be black, but in their mind, he's closer to the Ku Klux Klan.
00:06:15.000So it's a very, you know, scripted way to approach politics that based on these characteristics, you need to espouse certain positions.
00:06:24.000And if you have the privilege of belonging to a recognized oppressed identity group, and I emphasize recognize, because, you know, if we're going to play oppression Olympics, I think the Mormons have a good claim to maybe being, I don't know, third in the history of America as being most oppressed, and yet they're not recognized as oppressed.
00:07:06.000So it really is a certain caste system that is finding its way in America that thankfully, I put it to you this way, it's firmly ensconced in the minds of the elites, the credentialed people who run America.
00:07:21.000It has made serious inroads in our laws, but thankfully it has not fully conquered the American mind.
00:07:28.000And I think that there's much more opposition amongst the God and country people, the deplorables, whatever you want to call them, who are maybe afraid to speak out against this, but know that this is nonsense and that it's un-American.
00:07:43.000You have this phenomenal line in this lecture.
00:07:45.000You guys, everyone can listen to the lecture by enrolling at charlieforhillsdale.com, charlieforhillsdale.com.
00:07:52.000You say, let's be honest, no one gets canceled for abandoning their children, betraying their country, or committing any number of indecent, immoral, or criminal acts.
00:08:03.000No, today in America, there really is only one unforgivable sin, and that is to deviate from the accepted script when speaking of protected identity groups.
00:08:15.000It is to say something, whether intentionally or not, that either offends protected identity groups or that the elites find offensive on their behalf.
00:08:23.000And before that paragraph, you wrote something that just like clicked, and it's so true because we did a whole segment with your colleague, Dr. Khalil Habib, on Nietzsche.
00:08:33.000And I'm trying to find where it is, but you could just share with the audience, Nietzsche said that every society has something you don't make fun of, a piety that you don't.
00:10:24.000Slavery, yeah, because that's why, you know, the deep south is just booming economically in terms of innovation and putting, I mean, that's ludicrous.
00:10:34.000Slavery held this country back because it taught people to devalue labor, that there was something shameful in working.
00:10:45.000Because, well, we need to redistribute honor in this country and puff up the accomplishments of the oppressed identity groups.
00:10:53.000And so in this case, we need to say that all of the great things in America came from slavery, from the contributions of black people or of women or of black women.
00:11:02.000One of my buddies told me that there was a movie that was made about the role of black women in the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
00:12:09.000Laugh at their pieties, laugh in their institutions.
00:12:15.000You know, with the caveat that, you know, you ought to be careful.
00:12:18.000I mean, you have some prominence and you've established yourself, but for the average American citizen, there are serious consequences to saying impious things.
00:12:30.000We don't criminalize hate speech in America, so you won't go to jail or be fined the way you would in Europe or in my native country of Canada.
00:12:38.000But, you know, you may get fired, you may get deplatformed, and you may have a piece written up about you on the internet that says that you're a racist or a sexist or a homophobe, and the internet does not forgive.
00:12:53.000And then, you know, you, you, I mean, it's a, it's a tricky prop, it's a dangerous proposition for the average citizen to say such things.
00:13:02.000But I think people who have more independence, I think the duty is incumbent upon us who have institutions that protect us to speak out against the lies and in defense of America, properly understood.
00:14:14.000Can I turn the tables on you one second and ask you a question?
00:14:17.000Because this is something I haven't figured out.
00:14:19.000We agree that their piety is untenable.
00:14:22.000But to me, the hard question is: what piety should replace it?
00:14:27.000I have some thoughts, but I know you're the interviewer, but I'd be curious to ask you: you know, if we ran America, if we took back the universities, the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, Hollywood, we still need a piety.
00:14:41.000You can't have a society without a piety.
00:14:46.000I think the greatest piety should be intentional and flagrant living out of a hypocritical, inconsistent life.
00:14:56.000And this at its core is being somebody different in public who you are in private, which we tolerate all the time.
00:15:02.000And I think that a functioning society is a society where people are the same with their wife as they are on television or with their friends, not the constantly having to put on a new costume.
00:15:16.000And it basically goes back to this idea of, you know, are you who you say you are?
00:15:21.000Are you going to tell the truth in all circumstances?
00:15:23.000We just kind of put up with this, right?
00:15:24.000We just kind of put up with people being completely different in front of the cameras.
00:15:29.000And the kind of mask charading of politicians kind of, you know, exposes this.
00:15:34.000But I think that's really where a lot of this comes from, isn't it?
00:15:37.000And so I think, and Jesus being, you know, having great disdain for hypocrites.
00:15:42.000I mean, he was, this was one of the things he believed was one of the worst things a human being could do.
00:15:51.000And in this regard, it is, I find, a bit worrisome how, look, I don't know about you, but, you know, when they expose the latest member of the house or senator on either party, who turns out to be a grifter, corrupt, you know, a Fortune 500 CEO, you kind of roll your eyes and like, ah, you know, par for the course at this point.
00:16:12.000I feel that I'm running out of outrage for how corrupt, incompetent, and unpatriotic the elites are.
00:16:21.000I wish I just, the thing is, I mean, there's only so many hours in a day.
00:16:26.000What are you going to spend in a perpetual mode of outrage?
00:16:29.000But you're right, that these things should be unforgivable.
00:16:32.000But I find we've become somewhat desensitized because my default assumption is, you know, they're all charlatans and then prove me wrong.
00:16:42.000And in the Bible where the law was self-enforced, where there was no kings, no police, no standing army 400 years, it was because everyone knew the law and they enforced the law themselves, right?
00:16:56.000That was the original citizen government.
00:16:58.000And then they said, God, give us a king and basically be careful what you wish for.
00:17:01.000And it all kind of went into a cycle of chaos from there.
00:17:04.000But at the core is this idea, I think, one of the central pieties amongst many, it should be this idea that you're just not allowed or you shouldn't be tolerated, that, you know, you cheat on your wife.
00:17:18.000Like that's, that's one of the things that is ultimately trying to be somebody who you're not.
00:17:22.000Like you're some sort of like upstanding, you know, member of the citizenry and you're doing something treachery in the shadows.
00:17:28.000And we just kind of say, oh, yeah, that's perfectly fine.
00:17:30.000But if you are a racist or if you say something off color in an email like John Gruden 10 years ago, your whole life is just.
00:17:39.000Or if you 20 years ago in college, you were drunk at a frat party and you used the N-word because you were quoting a rap song and you've been an upstanding citizen since then, it's the end of you.
00:18:04.000We may need someone like a Donald Trump at times whose private life has been fallen short of moral perfection, but who has other virtues.
00:18:17.000So I do agree with you that I would want there to be more shame to people who betray their family.
00:18:26.000But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to create a position right now where we impose impossible standards of moral purity on our leaders and we end up having no one to lead us into battle.
00:18:37.000So long term, I'd agree with you, but in the short term, I'm willing to compromise some of these things if someone has on the one hand, a, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:18:49.000Unquestionable whole total devotion to this country and utter contempt for the ruling class and opposition to their corruption.
00:20:42.000And that we should defend the Civil Rights 1.0 and oppose the 2.0.
00:20:47.000The more I read, the more it seems to me that you can't hold up that distinction, that 2.0 was almost baked into 1.0, that 1.0 almost immediately, I mean, in essence, let me put you this way: 2.0 precedes 1.0.
00:21:06.000We started having racial preferences at elite universities in America in the 1950s.
00:21:12.000The EOC, from the moment they had to enforce the 64 Civil Rights Act, started using disparate impact analysis, which basically says that a non-discriminatory standard of employment is problematic if it produces unequal group outcomes.
00:21:31.000So as a matter of history, it's very hard to distinguish the two.
00:21:37.000Now, someone could say, and I wrote a review of Chris's book, and I said, Chris shows that we immediately went to civil rights 2.0, but he doesn't show that we cannot today have 1.0.
00:21:51.000And so this would be my challenge to your audience and to all well-intentioned Americans who would say, look, I don't like racial preferences.
00:22:03.000I think we should judge people based on the content of their character, their CV, their test scores, their accomplishment, not the color of their skin.
00:22:13.000Here's the problem: Does America today have the stomach for colorblindness?
00:22:21.000Are Americans capable of accepting that if you impose colorblindness in many sectors, at least for the time being, you will have considerably few, if all, if not almost none, African Americans?
00:22:38.000In some sectors, you'll have very few, if almost no women.
00:22:43.000So we like the idea of colorblindness, but all of us, to some extent, our minds have been corrupted by the morality of identity politics, which basically teaches that you need black people and women to lend moral legitimacy to an institution, to an organization, to a college, to a corporation, to a neighborhood, to a club, to you name it.
00:23:08.000So I think that the prerequisite to doing anything is patriotic Americans who don't like discrimination, who don't like racial preferences, need to unshackle their minds from the morality of the left, which makes racism the one unforgivable sin which prompts all others,
00:23:30.000and which accepts the idea that we need to have some measure of diversity, come what may of standards.
00:23:39.000I put it to you this way, we need to have the courage to enforce standards.
00:23:46.000And if that means that some groups are underrepresented, then look, either we say, well, that's the name of the game, or you could say, well, let's try to raise the ability of these groups.
00:23:59.000The Army, from what I'm told, I don't know if this is still true.
00:24:02.000There's a book that was written by two sociologists in the 90s on race, you know, race relations in the military.
00:24:09.000And their basic point was the Army doesn't lower its standards, it elevates its cadets.
00:24:14.000So if it turns out that Black cadets are not passing the test to make rank, well, they invest in a training program to get them up to rank.
00:24:23.000So you could do that or just say, not our problem.
00:24:26.000We're not in the business of rejigging outcomes.
00:25:47.000No, I look, the act as written forbids discrimination.
00:25:52.000The act, as it was debated on the floor of Congress, you know, I forget who it was in the Senate and the House famously said, I'll eat my shoes if it ends up leading to reverse discrimination.
00:26:04.000But less than a year after LBJ signs the act, he gives a speech at Howard University saying equality of opportunity is not enough.
00:26:12.000We need equality as a factor as a result.
00:26:14.000And then the Supreme Court blesses racial discrimination in all sorts of realms.
00:26:20.000So I guess the good news is the law as written can still be used to condemn racial preferences.
00:26:28.000You know, if you want to have any kind of originalism, whether it be of intent or public meaning, you'd have to say at the time, people understood that the 64 Act was not going to be applied selectively in favor of people of color against white people.
00:26:42.000But, you know, good luck assembling the coalition to enforce it.
00:26:46.000Good luck finding the lawmakers will have the or the people to stand up to the courts.
00:26:53.000You know, so much of this is the courts either blessing bad interpretations of the law or imposing them, and everyone else going along with it.
00:27:04.000I mean, the extent to which the regime has been corrupted, because everyone accepts the idea that the Constitution is whatever the heck the courts say it is.
00:27:12.000That's another big problem that needs to be remedied.
00:27:15.000The other branches of government need to learn to flex their constitutional muscles and put the judges back in their places.
00:27:22.000If a law can be unconstitutional, then a Supreme Court ruling can also be unconstitutional.
00:27:28.000But very, very few people think this way today, especially in the Republican Party, which is where you would expect such thinking to exist.
00:27:35.000There's been an overinvestment, some would say, in the court strategy, an underinvestment in others.
00:27:43.000Although, look, you know, maybe it's about to start paying off a little bit.
00:27:49.000You know, I most emphatically don't think that the courts are going to save us.
00:27:53.000But look, let's see what's about to happen.
00:27:56.000I think it would be foolish to give up on the courts right now when there's the promise that some good things could come out of it.
00:28:04.000But the last 40 years, for all of the justices that have been appointed by Republicans, if you look at jurisprudence, where have things decisively shifted to the right?
00:28:14.000You know, they're few and far between.
00:28:16.000I mean, guns is probably the best example, the partial reinvigoration of the Second Amendment.
00:28:59.000Bush was pro-choice and never said it out loud because his wife was pro-choice.
00:29:03.000The people are actually getting more conservative.
00:29:06.000The ruling class is basically unsalvageable at this point.
00:29:12.000So could you explain, though, a little bit further for our audience that might be confused?
00:29:17.000What was it about the Civil Rights Act?
00:29:19.000And you talk about this in your speech, and also Caldwell writes about it a lot, that was so damaging.
00:29:26.000There were some parts that were good, Caldwell admits, or at least he alludes to, but there was a couple elements, a couple titles that basically opened up this entire racial policing regime.
00:29:38.000So look, let's, I think the only way to approach this, given the sensitivities and the country's very ugly history on race, is one needs to distinguish the moral question of should you discriminate Charlie Kirk when you're hiring from the constitutional question of should the federal government,
00:30:02.000and I'm about to sound like a libertarian, I mean, this is not a libertarian point, but should the federal government have the power to police the private sector to eradicate discrimination?
00:30:12.000So you can make a very solid argument, one that I espouse, that it is immoral and actually even counterproductive as a business to discriminate maliciously and arbitrarily on the basis of race.
00:30:28.000You're missing out on clients and you're missing out.
00:30:47.000If at Kirk Industries, you're dumb enough to say we don't serve women and don't hire blacks, people will boycott you.
00:30:54.000I mean, can you imagine today in 2021 in America, if there were a single bed and breakfast in the whole country that said, I don't want to serve black customers.
00:31:04.000Well, there are ones that say they don't want to serve unvaccinated, but that's a whole different thing.
00:31:15.000So they would pay a price for it, but the problem with the 64 Act is that it empowers the federal government to police in the Act public accommodation, so restaurants, hotels, inns, theaters, and then employers with more than 15 employees to ensure that they're not discriminating.
00:31:42.000And what ends up happening is you may say, okay, well, then it's pretty easy to comply with that law, right?
00:31:48.000You just don't put up a sign saying Jews need not apply at Azerat Industries.
00:31:55.000But what ends up happening is, on the one hand, the EEOC that is tasked with enforcing the law says, we know that there's discrimination.
00:32:06.000Because no one is going to explicitly discriminate.
00:32:10.000And then on the other hand, corporations, which at first initially oppose the act, then realize: look, it's better to just comply with it.
00:32:18.000It's a cost of doing business and you're left alone.
00:32:20.000But how do we prove to the government that we're not discriminating?
00:32:24.000And what they end up settling on is, you know, affirmative action, which would be, you know, would get my vote for a euphemism of this 20th century in America.
00:32:34.000They settle on racial preferences, on basically ensuring that you hire a set number of black people.
00:32:42.000And really, I think the two main groups, as I told you, are black people and women, the main beneficiaries of affirmative action.
00:32:50.000And that way, you get the government off your back.
00:32:53.000So it comes from the conviction on the one hand that the government has that there is surely more discrimination than we can catch.
00:33:02.000And the fact that the business sector thinks that, you know, this is just, let's absorb it in the cost of doing business.
00:33:08.000You do some performative wokeness, some light diversity hiring.
00:33:13.000You park the underqualified hires in cost centers like marketing, HR, not in productive centers like engineering or sales, and then you move on with your day.
00:33:26.000The other part of the puzzle is the government has the stick of threatening you with lawsuits, but then they've got a big carrot, which is government contracting.
00:33:37.000And they use the promise of government contracts to dole them out to contractors that are owned by minorities, by women that hire a set number of all the protected groups.
00:33:47.000And this is how the civil rights regime metastasizes from the start and evolves into the anti-racism state, the anti-sexism state we live under today in America.
00:34:01.000And I mean, this is the real face of government tyranny today.
00:34:05.000It comes in the guise of enforcing, eliminating discrimination in the private sector.
00:34:12.000And few people are willing to even talk about this, which is, but I see more and more people starting to kind of turn around to it.
00:34:19.000And so, kind of as we're at this moment, as we conclude this kind of conversation, The central piety that's basically been built is there's nothing worse than being called a racist.
00:35:58.000But you know, if some kid 20 years ago at a Frat Party used the N-word, then he shouldn't have, but that's no reason to cancel him.
00:36:05.000Whereas if he, you know, sold out his country to the Chinese for a buck, that's a reason to cancel.
00:36:10.000Let me just make sure I'm understanding this.
00:36:12.000So, and I've made this mistake before, and I agree with you.
00:36:15.000Someone mentioned this at Claremont, I can't remember who.
00:36:18.000So instead of saying, no, they're actually the real racists, look at all these things, which might be true, we should just try to dismiss it as even a factor in conversation.
00:36:45.000So we don't even need to police that anymore.
00:36:48.000You know, the racism that still exists today is someone slips up in the way they speak and they say something slightly off script and everyone crucifies them.
00:36:58.000So the left is never going to stop doing that because it's their source of moral power.
00:37:03.000To call people racist allows them to continue to claim the upper moral ground in politics and you never seize, you never cede the high ground.
00:37:14.000What I think we should do is, here's at least one thing for the right.
00:37:17.000We do not shoot our own in the back of the head anymore.
00:37:21.000So if it turns out, you know, heaven forbid, Charlie, that some email of yours is leaked from 10 years ago in which you made some off-color remark about immigrants, Muslims, women, Jews, or gays.
00:37:49.000You know, we're done with the Buckley style purges on the right.
00:37:53.000We don't purge on the, if we purge on the right, is because you violated a piety of the right, is because you sold out America, because you did something truly disgraceful.
00:38:05.000But if you offended them, to hell with them.
00:39:10.000And it became a popular opinion story.
00:39:13.000So let me give you another example related.
00:39:17.000When George Floyd happens and America goes through the latest round of racial hysteria, there were, I know of two institutions that faced pressure to jump on the bandwagon that issued principal refusals to indict America and the police, the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College.
00:40:23.000You know, Charlie, I'll say one last thing and then I need to run, but, you know, I think we should only trust people on our side who have scars, by which I mean people who have already been called a racist or a sexist or a homophobe in public and have said, what the hell?
00:40:42.000I mean, and have shown that they can defend themselves from these baseless accusations.
00:40:46.000Because otherwise, you can't trust people to lead you into battle.
00:40:56.000I don't get excited about anyone, no matter how great their resume is, how great they're talking about China and trade and the founders and you name it.