The Charlie Kirk Show - How Identity Politics Destroys American Equality with Dr. David Azerrad

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00:01:46.000 My conversation was with David Azerod today.

00:01:49.000 We talk about identity politics, race, what was wrong with the Civil Rights Act, thought crimes incoming.

00:01:54.000 This episode is one of my favorites recently and rather provocative.

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00:02:24.000 Here we go, Charlie.

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00:02:45.000 Turning Point USA.

00:02:46.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

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00:02:58.000 Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk show.

00:03:02.000 I'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.

00:03:10.000 I couldn't wait.

00:03:11.000 I read a Lot of what he publishes.

00:03:13.000 And we missed each other actually over the summer at a Lincoln fellowship deal that I did with Claremont Institute.

00:03:18.000 But everything we're going to be talking about is brought to you by Hillsdale College, the Beacon of the North, the last college.

00:03:23.000 You guys can check it out at charlie4hillsdale.com, charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:03:27.000 I have completed six online courses about to be number seven, but I have not yet taken the civil rights course.

00:03:34.000 But first, David, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:03:38.000 Thanks for having me, Charlie.

00:03:39.000 Good to be with you.

00:03:40.000 So 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.

00:03:56.000 Let's put it that way.

00:03:57.000 Why do you put it that way?

00:03:58.000 I thought that was really smart.

00:04:00.000 Because 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.

00:04:09.000 So you would think, oh, we used to have class-based politics.

00:04:13.000 And now we're going to have identity politics.

00:04:15.000 But it turns out that in the realm of identity politics, not all identities are created equal.

00:04:20.000 They basically come in two varieties.

00:04:21.000 It's a Manichean framework.

00:04:23.000 You have the people who claim to have been and to be oppressed.

00:04:28.000 You know the roster, right?

00:04:30.000 So-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. 0.66

00:04:42.000 You know, they're having problems with the Asians because they do too well in America. 1.00

00:04:47.000 Then, of course, LGBTQ, women, sometimes immigrants, Muslims, but the Holy Trinity is really the first three.

00:04:55.000 And then you have the bad identities.

00:04:56.000 You know, I don't know if this is news to you, Charlie, but you seem to fit the bill of people who are a problem in America.

00:05:03.000 I mean, I don't know what you identify as a male.

00:05:03.000 Oh, I am.

00:05:06.000 Yes, I do identify as a male.

00:05:07.000 I will not, my pronouns are whatever the traditional Western CISO heteronormative patriarchy would say they are.

00:05:15.000 I'm also a wasp.

00:05:15.000 But I'm the worst.

00:05:18.000 Yeah, that's not good.

00:05:19.000 And then you, you know, you could do something about your sex and transition, but your race, you're not allowed to change. 1.00

00:05:26.000 You're part of the accursed white race. 1.00

00:05:26.000 That's right. 1.00

00:05:28.000 So, you know, even oppression.

00:05:31.000 I mean, I don't look, I don't exactly know what to call the current dispensation in America.

00:05:37.000 Identity politics isn't good.

00:05:40.000 CRT is too abstract.

00:05:42.000 What the hell is critical race theory?

00:05:44.000 It'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. 0.78

00:06:03.000 And however, if you're a so-called person of color and you deviate from the script, they get very angry at you. 0.88

00:06:09.000 So Clarence Thomas may be black, but in their mind, he's closer to the Ku Klux Klan. 0.53

00:06:14.000 That's right.

00:06:15.000 So it's a very, you know, scripted way to approach politics that based on these characteristics, you need to espouse certain positions.

00:06:24.000 And 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.

00:06:43.000 No one cares about them.

00:06:44.000 No one's tracking how they're faring in life.

00:06:45.000 So your oppression has to be recognized.

00:06:48.000 You get a whole bunch of privileges.

00:06:49.000 You know, standards are lowered to admit you into institutions.

00:06:54.000 We're expected to believe whatever absurd claims you make about sexism, racism, or homophobia in America.

00:07:01.000 You have a unique voice of color.

00:07:03.000 You should not be challenged.

00:07:04.000 You should not be contradicted.

00:07:06.000 So 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.

00:07:21.000 It has made serious inroads in our laws, but thankfully it has not fully conquered the American mind.

00:07:28.000 And 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. 0.71

00:07:43.000 You have this phenomenal line in this lecture.

00:07:45.000 You guys, everyone can listen to the lecture by enrolling at charlieforhillsdale.com, charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:07:52.000 You 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.

00:08:03.000 No, 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.

00:08:15.000 It is to say something, whether intentionally or not, that either offends protected identity groups or that the elites find offensive on their behalf.

00:08:23.000 And 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.

00:08:33.000 And 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.

00:08:44.000 Can you explain that, please?

00:08:45.000 Yeah, at the heart of every society is something at which it is, you're categorically forbidden to laugh.

00:08:51.000 And so if you think about it, you know, humor comedians at their best are subversive.

00:08:59.000 Because look, I'd say humor comes in one of two varieties.

00:09:02.000 Either it's kind of slapstick, you know, absurd, you fall on a banana, or you make fun of things you're not supposed to make fun of.

00:09:11.000 So look at the recent brouhaha with Dave Chappelle.

00:09:14.000 You know, he is touching one of the pieties that the trans, the claims of the transgender are sacred and holy.

00:09:21.000 You know, even in his first show, I mean, you may be too young.

00:09:24.000 I don't know if you remember the Dave Chappelle show when it was on.

00:09:27.000 I do.

00:09:27.000 It was, he did, there was one skit.

00:09:30.000 I won't say what it was, but it was incredibly politically incorrect.

00:09:33.000 But it was hilarious.

00:09:34.000 Yeah, he was, he was quite subversive. 0.76

00:09:36.000 I mean, he made fun of black people, not in a malicious way. 0.96

00:09:40.000 He's black, but we're not allowed to laugh today. 1.00

00:09:43.000 You know, how many women does it take to change a light to screw in a light bulb? 1.00

00:09:49.000 That's not funny.

00:09:50.000 I mean, that's kind of the view.

00:09:51.000 And then you could say the same thing for gays, for black people, you name it.

00:09:56.000 So the central piety in America pertains to the protected aggrieved identity groups.

00:10:04.000 We're not allowed to laugh.

00:10:06.000 We're not allowed to contradict them, the claims made on their behalf. 0.66

00:10:11.000 And we need to nod along as the most ludicrous lies are pronounced on their behalf.

00:10:17.000 Let me give you one of my favorite ones.

00:10:19.000 Slavery built this country. 0.70

00:10:22.000 I mean, that is nonsense on stilts. 0.90

00:10:24.000 Slavery, 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.

00:10:34.000 Slavery held this country back because it taught people to devalue labor, that there was something shameful in working.

00:10:43.000 So why do we do this?

00:10:45.000 Because, well, we need to redistribute honor in this country and puff up the accomplishments of the oppressed identity groups. 0.96

00:10:53.000 And 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.

00:11:02.000 One 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.

00:11:09.000 Did you hear this?

00:11:09.000 Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but I have seen it.

00:11:13.000 He told me, you know, this was in at the time, they didn't have supercomputers.

00:11:17.000 They basically needed people to do like eighth-grade level mathematics.

00:11:22.000 And they, you know, singled out these two women to say that this was key to the mission.

00:11:27.000 I mean, it's utter nonsense.

00:11:29.000 So I think one subversive thing we can all do, which I think you do well, is just laugh in their faces.

00:11:35.000 And one thing they do not like is people who seem to not be afraid of them.

00:11:41.000 People who laugh in their cathedral.

00:11:44.000 This makes them very angry.

00:11:46.000 And it's still a weapon we have at our disposal.

00:11:49.000 Subversive humor.

00:11:50.000 Just laugh in their faces, call out the lies. 0.92

00:11:52.000 I mean, sometimes it's good to get angry, but there's real value in just laughing at the utter nonsense that they're peddling. 0.96

00:11:59.000 Laugh in their cathedral.

00:12:01.000 I suppose that's what we do when we go and visit college campuses, not Hillsdale, which is terrific.

00:12:08.000 Yeah, no, that's exactly it.

00:12:09.000 Laugh at their pieties, laugh in their institutions. 0.98

00:12:15.000 You know, with the caveat that, you know, you ought to be careful.

00:12:18.000 I mean, you have some prominence and you've established yourself, but for the average American citizen, there are serious consequences to saying impious things.

00:12:30.000 We 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.

00:12:38.000 But, 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.

00:12:53.000 And 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.

00:13:02.000 But 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.

00:13:15.000 I totally agree.

00:13:16.000 So can you talk about how this became the central piety?

00:13:20.000 And I love your paragraph here because I know plenty of people that have now it's been publicly revealed cheat on their wife.

00:13:29.000 No, yeah, okay, there's forgiveness for that.

00:13:32.000 Or, and I'm not saying there shouldn't be, but you'll get where I'm going with this.

00:13:36.000 People that have laundered money, not exactly friends of mine, but I know of.

00:13:40.000 People that do the most unspeakable acts you can imagine.

00:13:43.000 Ray Lewis, who basically murdered somebody when he was a linebacker for the Ravens.

00:13:48.000 But if you people who betray their country.

00:13:51.000 Yes, that's right.

00:13:51.000 I mean, what greater shame can there be than to sell out America?

00:13:57.000 Either for ideological reasons.

00:13:58.000 I can think of a couple things.

00:14:00.000 It's up there.

00:14:01.000 So it's up there.

00:14:01.000 You're right.

00:14:03.000 You're right.

00:14:06.000 It's in the bucket or the basket of things that are deemed, I think, unconscionable.

00:14:10.000 But yes, I completely agree.

00:14:12.000 But that's okay.

00:14:14.000 Can I turn the tables on you one second and ask you a question?

00:14:17.000 Because this is something I haven't figured out.

00:14:19.000 We agree that their piety is untenable.

00:14:22.000 But to me, the hard question is: what piety should replace it?

00:14:27.000 I 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.

00:14:41.000 You can't have a society without a piety.

00:14:44.000 What do you think it should be?

00:14:46.000 I think the greatest piety should be intentional and flagrant living out of a hypocritical, inconsistent life.

00:14:56.000 And this at its core is being somebody different in public who you are in private, which we tolerate all the time.

00:15:02.000 And 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.

00:15:16.000 And it basically goes back to this idea of, you know, are you who you say you are?

00:15:21.000 Are you going to tell the truth in all circumstances?

00:15:23.000 We just kind of put up with this, right?

00:15:24.000 We just kind of put up with people being completely different in front of the cameras.

00:15:29.000 And the kind of mask charading of politicians kind of, you know, exposes this.

00:15:34.000 But I think that's really where a lot of this comes from, isn't it? 0.92

00:15:37.000 And so I think, and Jesus being, you know, having great disdain for hypocrites.

00:15:42.000 I mean, he was, this was one of the things he believed was one of the worst things a human being could do.

00:15:48.000 And that's a nice way to put it.

00:15:51.000 And 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.

00:16:12.000 I feel that I'm running out of outrage for how corrupt, incompetent, and unpatriotic the elites are.

00:16:21.000 I wish I just, the thing is, I mean, there's only so many hours in a day.

00:16:26.000 What are you going to spend in a perpetual mode of outrage?

00:16:29.000 But you're right, that these things should be unforgivable.

00:16:32.000 But I find we've become somewhat desensitized because my default assumption is, you know, they're all charlatans and then prove me wrong.

00:16:41.000 Well, they're not.

00:16:42.000 And 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?

00:16:55.000 And that's the whole idea.

00:16:56.000 That was the original citizen government.

00:16:58.000 And then they said, God, give us a king and basically be careful what you wish for.

00:17:01.000 And it all kind of went into a cycle of chaos from there.

00:17:04.000 But 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.

00:17:18.000 Like that's, that's one of the things that is ultimately trying to be somebody who you're not.

00:17:22.000 Like you're some sort of like upstanding, you know, member of the citizenry and you're doing something treachery in the shadows.

00:17:28.000 And we just kind of say, oh, yeah, that's perfectly fine.

00:17:30.000 But 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.

00:17:39.000 Or 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.

00:17:39.000 Yeah.

00:17:48.000 But the guy who sits on Michael Jordan's foundation, I think admitted to murdering someone when he was younger, that's okay.

00:17:56.000 Let me just, though, remind you of one thing.

00:17:59.000 Look, this is the late republic.

00:18:02.000 The country's in bad shape.

00:18:04.000 We may need someone like a Donald Trump at times whose private life has been fallen short of moral perfection, but who has other virtues.

00:18:17.000 So I do agree with you that I would want there to be more shame to people who betray their family.

00:18:26.000 But 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.

00:18:37.000 So 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?

00:18:49.000 Unquestionable whole total devotion to this country and utter contempt for the ruling class and opposition to their corruption.

00:18:58.000 I totally agree.

00:18:59.000 And we're long past in the late stage cycle.

00:19:02.000 And also, I will say, you know, being with Trump, he is the same person in a private meeting than when you put him in a press conference.

00:19:09.000 There is that is true.

00:19:10.000 And, but, and as far as the personal stuff, that is a point well taken.

00:19:15.000 But let me ask you a question, which is always and I'm Caldwell's book, and I, our audience is reading it together.

00:19:21.000 We get hundreds of emails about age of entitlement.

00:19:24.000 Whenever I, if I ever meet him, I want commission because we are just talking on his book all the time.

00:19:30.000 It clarified for me in a way that I never thought a book could do what went wrong after the Civil Rights Act.

00:19:36.000 And just full transparency, my audience knows this.

00:19:39.000 I started reading that book thinking there's no way I'd be persuaded that the Civil Rights Act was nothing but the greatest thing ever.

00:19:45.000 Like literally, that was the bias I had.

00:19:48.000 And by halfway through the book, I was my mind was blown.

00:19:51.000 And so, how did race become the central piety?

00:19:55.000 And talk about how the Civil Rights Act was in some ways this just kind of obliteration of the American way of life.

00:20:03.000 Well, first of all, let me tell you, you got to meet Caldwell.

00:20:06.000 I mean, he's even better in person.

00:20:08.000 He's just such a well-read person, well-traveled.

00:20:13.000 He knows so many things.

00:20:14.000 He's pleasant to talk to.

00:20:16.000 I mean, I think the world of him.

00:20:17.000 So he's even better in person than he is in print.

00:20:21.000 You know, look, I used to be like you.

00:20:24.000 I used to think that basically there was Civil Rights 1.0.

00:20:28.000 You know, the I Have a Dream speech.

00:20:28.000 Yes.

00:20:30.000 We shouldn't discriminate.

00:20:32.000 And then there's Civil Rights 2.0, racial preferences, affirmative action, disparate impact, quotas, timetables.

00:20:41.000 That's bad.

00:20:42.000 And that we should defend the Civil Rights 1.0 and oppose the 2.0. 0.77

00:20:47.000 The 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.

00:21:06.000 We started having racial preferences at elite universities in America in the 1950s.

00:21:12.000 The 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.

00:21:31.000 So as a matter of history, it's very hard to distinguish the two.

00:21:37.000 Now, 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.

00:21:51.000 And 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.

00:21:59.000 I don't like quotas.

00:22:01.000 I just want the MLK line.

00:22:03.000 I 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.

00:22:12.000 I think that sounds wonderful.

00:22:13.000 Here's the problem: Does America today have the stomach for colorblindness? 1.00

00:22:21.000 Are 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?

00:22:38.000 In some sectors, you'll have very few, if almost no women. 0.98

00:22:43.000 So 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.

00:23:08.000 So 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,

00:23:30.000 and which accepts the idea that we need to have some measure of diversity, come what may of standards.

00:23:39.000 I put it to you this way, we need to have the courage to enforce standards.

00:23:46.000 And 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.

00:23:59.000 The Army, from what I'm told, I don't know if this is still true.

00:24:02.000 There's a book that was written by two sociologists in the 90s on race, you know, race relations in the military.

00:24:09.000 And their basic point was the Army doesn't lower its standards, it elevates its cadets.

00:24:14.000 So 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.

00:24:23.000 So you could do that or just say, not our problem.

00:24:26.000 We're not in the business of rejigging outcomes.

00:24:29.000 This is America.

00:24:30.000 We're committed to excellence in all realms, period.

00:24:35.000 It is, I got to tell you, I hear myself speak and I realize what a stretch it is because you are going to face a lot of heat.

00:24:42.000 It's not just outside heat.

00:24:43.000 It weighs on our conscience.

00:24:45.000 Look, Charlie, I put it to you this way.

00:24:48.000 What if you set up the Charlie Kirk scholarships and you gave out 100 of them each year and you awarded them?

00:24:56.000 You didn't even know the names of the students.

00:24:59.000 You just looked at their resumes and test scores.

00:25:02.000 What if the first year you ended up with 100 scholarships, not one of them goes to a black kid and not one of them goes to a woman?

00:25:12.000 Even though you didn't even, you don't even know who the applicants were.

00:25:15.000 Admit it.

00:25:15.000 I mean, admit it.

00:25:16.000 I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but you'd feel uncomfortable. 0.98

00:25:19.000 You would think, man, the optics is not good. 0.97

00:25:21.000 People are going to think that there's something fishy, even if there isn't.

00:25:25.000 So my challenge to all of this is we need to build the courage to embrace colorblindness, come what may of the outcomes.

00:25:36.000 And the promise of the Civil Rights Act was colorblindness, and instead we got more color consciousness.

00:25:42.000 That is a line out of Caldwell's book.

00:25:45.000 So maybe you disagree with that.

00:25:47.000 No, I look, the act as written forbids discrimination.

00:25:52.000 The 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.

00:26:04.000 But less than a year after LBJ signs the act, he gives a speech at Howard University saying equality of opportunity is not enough.

00:26:12.000 We need equality as a factor as a result.

00:26:14.000 And then the Supreme Court blesses racial discrimination in all sorts of realms.

00:26:20.000 So I guess the good news is the law as written can still be used to condemn racial preferences. 0.85

00:26:28.000 You 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.

00:26:42.000 But, you know, good luck assembling the coalition to enforce it.

00:26:46.000 Good luck finding the lawmakers will have the or the people to stand up to the courts.

00:26:53.000 You 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.

00:27:04.000 I 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.

00:27:12.000 That's another big problem that needs to be remedied.

00:27:15.000 The other branches of government need to learn to flex their constitutional muscles and put the judges back in their places.

00:27:22.000 If a law can be unconstitutional, then a Supreme Court ruling can also be unconstitutional.

00:27:28.000 But very, very few people think this way today, especially in the Republican Party, which is where you would expect such thinking to exist.

00:27:35.000 There's been an overinvestment, some would say, in the court strategy, an underinvestment in others.

00:27:43.000 Although, look, you know, maybe it's about to start paying off a little bit.

00:27:49.000 You know, I most emphatically don't think that the courts are going to save us.

00:27:53.000 But look, let's see what's about to happen.

00:27:56.000 I 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.

00:28:04.000 But 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?

00:28:14.000 You know, they're few and far between.

00:28:16.000 I mean, guns is probably the best example, the partial reinvigoration of the Second Amendment. 0.53

00:28:22.000 And life.

00:28:24.000 Well, but life, okay, you say and life.

00:28:26.000 I mean, we're one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective late-term abortions.

00:28:30.000 Not in all 50 states, but I think in seven states.

00:28:33.000 Sweden has a more restrictive abortion regimes than we do.

00:28:37.000 You know, that never makes it into Bernie Sanders speeches.

00:28:40.000 So, yeah, let's see what they do now on life.

00:28:43.000 But I'm not expecting the Supreme Court to save us.

00:28:47.000 No, no, I agree.

00:28:48.000 I'm saying, though, the public opinion of conservatives are growing even more hardened in some of their life positions.

00:28:55.000 Even more than 10 years ago, Romney tried to de-emphasize it.

00:28:58.000 McCain tried.

00:28:59.000 Bush was pro-choice and never said it out loud because his wife was pro-choice.

00:29:03.000 The people are actually getting more conservative.

00:29:06.000 The ruling class is basically unsalvageable at this point.

00:29:12.000 So could you explain, though, a little bit further for our audience that might be confused?

00:29:17.000 What was it about the Civil Rights Act?

00:29:19.000 And you talk about this in your speech, and also Caldwell writes about it a lot, that was so damaging.

00:29:26.000 There 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.

00:29:38.000 So 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,

00:30:02.000 and 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?

00:30:12.000 So 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.

00:30:28.000 You're missing out on clients and you're missing out.

00:30:30.000 You're not hiring good employees.

00:30:32.000 This was Barry Goldwater's argument in the 60s.

00:30:34.000 Yeah, it was Goldwater's argument.

00:30:35.000 Richard Epstein wrote a fantastic book on this called Forbidden Grounds.

00:30:40.000 Harry Jaffa said that it changed his mind about the 64 Act.

00:30:44.000 Epstein's point was: let markets take care of it.

00:30:47.000 You know what? 1.00

00:30:47.000 If at Kirk Industries, you're dumb enough to say we don't serve women and don't hire blacks, people will boycott you. 1.00

00:30:54.000 I 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. 1.00

00:31:04.000 Well, there are ones that say they don't want to serve unvaccinated, but that's a whole different thing.

00:31:08.000 Okay, that's a separate.

00:31:09.000 Yeah, that's not a protected class.

00:31:10.000 No, you're right.

00:31:11.000 That's not vaccinated.

00:31:12.000 It's not there.

00:31:13.000 Race is still higher. 0.98

00:31:14.000 Yeah.

00:31:15.000 So 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.

00:31:42.000 And what ends up happening is you may say, okay, well, then it's pretty easy to comply with that law, right?

00:31:48.000 You just don't put up a sign saying Jews need not apply at Azerat Industries.

00:31:55.000 But 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.

00:32:04.000 How are we going to prove it?

00:32:06.000 Because no one is going to explicitly discriminate.

00:32:10.000 And then on the other hand, corporations, which at first initially oppose the act, then realize: look, it's better to just comply with it.

00:32:18.000 It's a cost of doing business and you're left alone.

00:32:20.000 But how do we prove to the government that we're not discriminating?

00:32:24.000 And 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.

00:32:34.000 They settle on racial preferences, on basically ensuring that you hire a set number of black people.

00:32:42.000 And really, I think the two main groups, as I told you, are black people and women, the main beneficiaries of affirmative action.

00:32:50.000 And that way, you get the government off your back.

00:32:53.000 So it comes from the conviction on the one hand that the government has that there is surely more discrimination than we can catch.

00:33:02.000 And the fact that the business sector thinks that, you know, this is just, let's absorb it in the cost of doing business.

00:33:08.000 You do some performative wokeness, some light diversity hiring.

00:33:13.000 You 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.

00:33:26.000 The 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.

00:33:37.000 And 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. 0.91

00:33:47.000 And 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.

00:34:01.000 And I mean, this is the real face of government tyranny today.

00:34:05.000 It comes in the guise of enforcing, eliminating discrimination in the private sector.

00:34:12.000 And 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.

00:34:19.000 And 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.

00:34:32.000 Forget all the laws.

00:34:33.000 That is a cultural norm.

00:34:35.000 How do we, yeah, I'm not saying we should excuse racism.

00:34:38.000 Of course.

00:34:39.000 That's not what we're saying at all.

00:34:40.000 That would be a misapplication of an inference.

00:34:44.000 But how do we break through with this in this in this regard?

00:34:50.000 It's really unhealthy and it's destroying the republic.

00:34:54.000 So what the right has been doing, which doesn't work and is doomed to fail, is the Democrats are the real racist line.

00:35:01.000 So try to outdo the left at displays of anti-racism, at black outreach.

00:35:09.000 And that's going to fail.

00:35:11.000 I mean, they invented the game.

00:35:13.000 You're not going to beat them at it.

00:35:14.000 Clearly, as you pointed out, the solution is not to embrace racism. 0.98

00:35:18.000 That's silly. 0.75

00:35:19.000 That's as much a violation of the American creed as the current regime is. 0.93

00:35:24.000 I think the solution is a clean conscience on race, i.e., yes, we had slavery.

00:35:33.000 Yes, we had Jim Crow.

00:35:35.000 The debt has been discharged.

00:35:37.000 We're not, we can't forget, but it's not going to be at the forefront of our minds anymore.

00:35:46.000 If we keep on going down this route, it will destroy the country.

00:35:50.000 So we need to de-escalate racism in the totem pole of sins.

00:35:56.000 It's not a virtue.

00:35:58.000 But 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.

00:36:05.000 Whereas if he, you know, sold out his country to the Chinese for a buck, that's a reason to cancel.

00:36:10.000 Let me just make sure I'm understanding this.

00:36:12.000 So, and I've made this mistake before, and I agree with you. 0.99

00:36:15.000 Someone mentioned this at Claremont, I can't remember who.

00:36:18.000 So 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.

00:36:26.000 Is that right?

00:36:27.000 Yeah, that this is, there are much worse things you can do.

00:36:33.000 Like, let's be honest, the kind of racism that existed in the 19th century or in America prior to the 50s doesn't exist anymore.

00:36:42.000 Black people are not lynched.

00:36:44.000 Churches are not burned.

00:36:45.000 So we don't even need to police that anymore.

00:36:48.000 You 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.

00:36:58.000 So the left is never going to stop doing that because it's their source of moral power.

00:37:03.000 To 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.

00:37:14.000 What I think we should do is, here's at least one thing for the right.

00:37:17.000 We do not shoot our own in the back of the head anymore.

00:37:21.000 So 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. 0.84

00:37:33.000 But you know what?

00:37:34.000 We don't applaud you for it and say, oh, say more, Charlie. 1.00

00:37:37.000 Like, okay, it's dumb. 0.99

00:37:39.000 Not a big deal. 0.96

00:37:40.000 Charlie's right about bigger issues.

00:37:43.000 We don't cancel them.

00:37:44.000 They can try to cancel us.

00:37:46.000 We don't cancel our own anymore.

00:37:49.000 You know, we're done with the Buckley style purges on the right.

00:37:53.000 We 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. 0.99

00:38:05.000 But if you offended them, to hell with them.

00:38:08.000 Why should we police our own sides?

00:38:11.000 You know, I almost want to say, padin mi adwat, no enemies to the right.

00:38:17.000 Obviously, look, with some limits, let's be honest.

00:38:19.000 If there's a, you know, a neo-Nazi, but this, you know, they always want to push this.

00:38:23.000 This is not the issue in America today.

00:38:26.000 No one is defending slavery.

00:38:28.000 No one is defending, denying the Holocaust. 0.98

00:38:30.000 This is not what we're dealing with.

00:38:33.000 And what that does, it then disempowers the left from one of their greatest ways to control society.

00:38:40.000 Yes.

00:38:41.000 Yeah, because they count on us.

00:38:43.000 They count on us to be their henchmen with our own.

00:38:46.000 Yes, that's right.

00:38:47.000 Like, you know what?

00:38:48.000 You want to cancel one of our own?

00:38:49.000 You try and do it.

00:38:50.000 We're not going to do your dirty work.

00:38:53.000 And as soon as that happens, everything changes.

00:38:57.000 A great example of this was the gut instinct of so many with this Covington kids.

00:39:03.000 And then as soon as the Covington kids were innocent, well, all of a sudden people are like, oh, wait, they're on our team.

00:39:09.000 Yes.

00:39:10.000 And it became a popular opinion story.

00:39:13.000 So let me give you another example related.

00:39:17.000 When 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.

00:39:39.000 Hillsdale faced pressure.

00:39:41.000 We faced pressure from our alums.

00:39:43.000 Larry Arn, God bless him, put out a fantastic letter.

00:39:46.000 He's amazing.

00:39:47.000 A fantastic letter.

00:39:48.000 And this was an instance of courage under fire where they want you to affirm their piety.

00:39:53.000 And these are two institutions, Ryan Williams, the president of Claremont, and Larry Arn, the president of Hillsdale, said no.

00:40:01.000 And good for them.

00:40:02.000 We need more of that.

00:40:04.000 We went all in and not with the bad thing, but we were part of the Hillsdale Claremont group.

00:40:10.000 And it was empowering.

00:40:11.000 And other people then follow.

00:40:13.000 I know other groups in DC, I won't say any names, that wrote op-eds right after on how America is a systemically racist country.

00:40:19.000 It was very revealing.

00:40:21.000 It was very revealing.

00:40:23.000 You 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?

00:40:42.000 I mean, and have shown that they can defend themselves from these baseless accusations.

00:40:46.000 Because otherwise, you can't trust people to lead you into battle.

00:40:50.000 Amen.

00:40:51.000 Because this is how they get you.

00:40:52.000 This is how they silence you.

00:40:54.000 This is the most important point.

00:40:55.000 So true.

00:40:56.000 I 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.

00:41:05.000 I want to see a scar.

00:41:08.000 I want to see that you went out, staked out a bold position, was excoriated by the New York Times, and you laughed in their face.

00:41:17.000 I love it.

00:41:18.000 I think it's terrific.

00:41:19.000 David Azarat, Hillsdale College.

00:41:20.000 You got to come back next week or whenever.

00:41:22.000 Charlie4Hillsdale.com.

00:41:24.000 Really enjoyed it.

00:41:25.000 Thanks so much.

00:41:26.000 Thank you.

00:41:26.000 It was a lot of fun.

00:41:29.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:41:30.000 Make sure you check out CharlieF4Hillsdale.com.

00:41:33.000 God bless you guys.

00:41:34.000 Speak to you soon.

00:41:37.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - October 23, 2021

How Identity Politics Destroys American Equality with Dr. David Azerrad

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