00:01:13.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:48.000So the Iron Law of Oligarchy was proposed by a German-born Italian sociologist named Robert Mikles.
00:01:55.000And it's very ominous sounding, but really it's just kind of stating a fact, a fact of life.
00:02:03.000And that is that when you look at political parties, because this theory is based on an examination of how political parties in democratic societies actually function, it doesn't matter if a political party calls itself a social democratic party.
00:02:22.000In that political party, what will inevitably develop is a kind of hierarchy.
00:02:29.000In any kind of organization, you have a leadership class.
00:02:34.000So again, it doesn't matter if a political party calls itself socialist or democratic or whatever.
00:02:39.000A leadership class will emerge that delegates tasks and makes decisions that affect the entire, the much larger group.
00:02:47.000That is what this sociologist Michels called an oligarchy or in plainer terms, an elite, basically just a leadership class.
00:02:57.000Now, this dynamic that he identified in the political party in any democratic society also applies to trade unions.
00:03:05.000It applies to companies and yes, democratic society at large.
00:03:09.000And the point of this theory, the point of the iron law of oligarchy, is to, I would say, to make people understand that, look, it doesn't matter if you live in a republic or a democracy, a constitutional republic, whatever label you want to use, there's always going to be a ruling class.
00:03:32.000Because once you accept that, then the task becomes, well, how do we ensure that our leaders are, on the one hand, competent and on the other hand, not abusing their control over key institutions the way a leader would a political party, not for the benefit of society, but for their own benefit.
00:03:52.000Do we ensure that the ruling class, again in key economic, political and and and even military institutions, do not abuse their power, their control over these mechanisms to to basically just foist uh, what they want, their worldview or or their agenda, on on the masses?
00:04:12.000That that is the iron law of oligarchy, in a nutshell, that elites are inevitable uh, and the best that we can do is just kind of face facts so that we can arm and protect ourselves from the worst and most autocratic kinds of elites.
00:04:28.000And that ties into, kind of, the whole Elon Musk thing, right?
00:04:30.000So is that in order to check power, you need power right, and and so?
00:04:35.000So how should we think about the Elon thing as American conservatives, right?
00:04:41.000So, I mean, I have a nuanced view of him as a person.
00:04:43.000I don't really appreciate, you know, his China um production or his Neuralink stuff, but I certainly love the fact that he's willing to use resources a lot of them to do something what seems to be admirable.
00:05:00.000I think it's important that we don't just become Musk cheerleaders and pretend that he's now, you know, based in right-wing I have I, I honestly know very little about his political views.
00:05:12.000I think he's an interesting person, but but I here's what we know for sure, right, the reaction from the incumbent elites, the people who own most of the media and most social media platforms, already was almost entirely negative toward the idea of Elon Musk wresting control of a key institution and Twitter is, I mean, the.
00:05:37.000The people that you know were yesterday saying Twitter is a private company.
00:05:41.000Therefore, if Twitter wants to ban the president of the United States, they can do that.
00:05:45.000And you know, now that Musk has taken over, it's like, well, hold on, it's not a private company.
00:05:50.000You know, suddenly it's actually correct when they say that Twitter is because of its, the sheer size it has, because of the sheer size and the control that it has over information, it is actually correct to say Twitter is not just a company.
00:06:02.000It is, in its own way, a kind of public institution at this point, just because of the size of it.
00:06:07.000Right, and I think that the fact that Musk taking control of Twitter seemed to enrage all of these other elites.
00:06:16.000You know, you've got the former CEO of Reddit writing an article in the Washington POST, which is owned by a billionaire, Jeff Bezos, saying, you know, we need more regulations to prevent rich people from owning the means of communication.
00:06:28.000That should tell you that these people are afraid of losing control over a tool that allows them to control information the way Twitter does.
00:06:40.000OK, look, Musk might not share my political views on things like immigration, abortion or foreign policy, but he seems to be making all the right people sweat.
00:06:52.000And for that reason, his his hostile takeover of Twitter was disruptive.
00:06:58.000And I, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic that he's going to take it in the right way, because, again, when you've got like guys like Max Boot squealing in the Washington Post that.
00:07:10.000Musk's takeover of Twitter is a threat to democracy, you know, that tells you that again, the right people are sweating about this.
00:07:16.000Yes, so this kind of enter National Review, where they're telling us this is somehow against our principles, which is hilarious because last year they were telling us that it's a private company, do whatever you want, but it's like a private transaction.
00:07:30.000And again, it's not National Review as a company, but there's plenty of the chattering people.
00:07:45.000Well, there's nothing principled, by the way, of allowing yourself to get plowed over by people who want to destroy your country and shred what remains of what we still call the American way of life.
00:08:01.000There's actually, there's nothing principled about losing with what you think are your principles intact.
00:08:07.000It's just a totally absurd argument to me.
00:08:11.000Again, that's really the only thing I can say to these people is there's nothing principled about letting your family, your country, and your neighbors get plowed over by people who hate them.
00:08:22.000Again, yeah, it just, so I mean, that argument just kind of goes and bounces off my head because it's so ridiculous.
00:08:29.000And I think that ultimately, again, kind of going back to this idea of oligarchy and elites, we have to face facts.
00:08:38.000We actually have to deal, because that's at the heart of the iron law of oligarchy, is we have to deal with the world with how it actually is, rather than how we would like to imagine it is.
00:08:50.000In other words, the real versus the ideal.
00:08:53.000And in the real world, you actually have to fight for what you believe in.
00:08:57.000And I mean, there's several different kinds of battles playing out.
00:09:01.000So on the one hand, you've got the whole Twitter thing with Elon Musk seeming to upset the right people.
00:09:08.000And on the other hand, you've got this stuff going on in Florida where DeSantis is taking on Disney.
00:09:14.000And on that front, it's similar in the sense that it's, you know, we're talking about a massive corporation that has influence over what the public thinks.
00:09:24.000And in that case, specifically, you do actually have conservatives.
00:09:28.000Like you, I think you were alluding to this at places like National Review, who are saying that, you know, the right needs to respect the sacred rights of corporations to, I don't know, push transgenderism on kids.
00:09:44.000Because I think that's really important.
00:09:46.000This has been omitted from the conservative criticism in this case of what Republicans are doing in Florida has totally omitted that on the one hand, Disney vilified the bill that was proposed by Republicans in Florida, the parental rights and education bill, which was renamed as the Don't Say Gay Act or Don't Say Gay Law, which is obviously just ridiculous.
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00:11:22.000So, look, I just had dinner with Andrew and Todd in Orange County.
00:12:38.000You might say, oh, Charlie, I don't need to refinance or whatever.
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00:12:42.000Maybe you young millennials out there, maybe the millennials listening to our show, my fellow millennials, you're going to buy a home soon.
00:12:48.000Maybe you're getting married and you want to buy something.
00:12:50.000It's AndrewandTodd.com for a quick mortgage checkup.
00:12:53.000Use the equity in your home before it's too late.
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00:13:18.000So, Pedro, let me ask you: now we have this kind of more consequential fight happening, not in the halls of Congress, but now in corporate America.
00:13:28.000In my 10 years of doing this, I can't remember a chapter of advocacy where what's happening in the corporate world gets more attention and honestly has more significance than actually what's happening in the legislative chambers.
00:13:43.000Well, before we went to break, I was getting to strike three with the Disney versus DeSantis feud.
00:13:50.000Strike three was when Disney then threatened to withhold campaign contributions in Florida in retaliation to this law being passed.
00:14:00.000So that has, again, see getting to your point.
00:14:03.000You have a corporation that is basically trying to influence state legislatures.
00:14:10.000Obviously, Obviously, they're doing that on the national level as well.
00:14:13.000But yeah, this is a problem when corporations are, we all know that they do this, right?
00:14:20.000But they typically, I think, do this in a more covert way.
00:14:24.000We're talking about lobbying and doing things behind closed doors.
00:14:28.000But yeah, I mean, we're really in the era of woke capital where corporations vary publicly in ways that are, maybe it just seems so insane because of the things that they're advocating for, like in the case of Disney, you know, transgenderism for kids and stuff like that.
00:14:46.000But yeah, we've really entered new waters in the sense that you're now starting to see the historic allies of big business, which is the right, the conservative movement, whatever you want to call it, is now starting to actually realize, okay, these corporations are actually a huge problem.
00:15:05.000And it's actually the corporations in many cases that are undermining our way of life.
00:15:12.000These corporations that have what seem to be their own value systems that they're trying to forcibly impose on Americans.
00:15:20.000And again, it's really weird to think about this, to think that Disney has a value system, but it does.
00:15:26.000And it's telling you it does when it vilifies people who say, like, look, I don't want my kid learning about weird concepts about sex and gender in kindergarten.
00:15:37.000And when Disney freaks out about that, I mean, that tells you that there's something significant going on here.
00:15:43.000And I think that the most interesting development is that you're starting to see the right fight back and realize, again, okay, yeah, big government's a problem, but so is big business.
00:15:55.000And it's also just the left has understood this game for much longer than we have.
00:16:01.000And we're just starting to wake up to it.
00:16:03.000And that's something I want to explore with you, which is they wrote openly about power dynamics post-70s and 80s, that if you do not have the institutions, you must capture them.
00:16:12.000If you're able to control other people or actually have the power over a society, whether, you know, how people consume information, how people transport themselves, then you can actually control the entire society.
00:16:26.000We as conservatives always felt as if we were kind of in this like neoliberal detente, like, oh, there are certain things that will kind of be off limits, like, you know, the production of child movies or, you know, whatever it might be.
00:16:38.000And now the right is like, wait a second, all these institutions aren't just captured, but they're used as, they're used as just flagrant instruments of the regime.
00:16:49.000And so how are we supposed to counter that?
00:16:52.000How should we use power as conservatives?
00:16:56.000Because it seems by our kind of default setting, we're really afraid to use power for understandable reasons.
00:17:02.000We don't like totalitarianism, so we just kind of get away from it.
00:17:08.000Well, I think what you're seeing in Florida is probably the best example that I've seen in recent history of basically rewarding friends and punishing enemies.
00:17:21.000And again, that doesn't sound like a very innovative concept, you know, not helping people who want to hurt you.
00:17:29.000But it seems to be that that actually is kind of a brand new way of thinking for Republicans and conservative intellectuals, yes.
00:17:38.000And in some sense, I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but it's understandable because I think what's at the back of these criticisms, if you want to take them in good faith, is, well, look, we need to respect and not incinerate what remains of a common ground.
00:17:54.000But the existence of a common ground presupposes a shared value system, right?
00:18:00.000We have to agree on fundamental things in order for there to be a common ground to which we can return to.
00:18:09.000I don't think that's the case anymore.
00:18:11.000That hasn't been the case for a while.
00:18:13.000It hasn't been the case that there is really a kind of shared thing in America.
00:18:19.000It really seems like there are basically at least two competing value systems.
00:18:25.000And we're seeing on the level of on the level of, I guess, business and also politics what seem like kind of like back and forth on terms of legislation or back and forths between the governor of Florida and a corporation.
00:18:43.000These are actually just kind of manifestations, I think, of basically two a battle between two competing world views, which I'm sorry to say kind of makes it that there actually isn't a middle ground anymore.
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00:19:59.000We would all like there to be a kind of common ground to which we can return to, but for now, that just isn't the case.
00:20:09.000I mean, this is really, we've really entered the era of Thunderdome here, where it's either someone like DeSantis stands up to people who are trying to essentially groom your kids, or that happens, or these people get to push like these bizarre ideas of sex and gender and even race on your children.
00:20:30.000There is no middle ground to return to.
00:20:32.000And I think that there are conservatives who I'll say are misguided and kind of still yearn for that common ground.
00:20:40.000They just want to go to Disneyland and pretend that this isn't happening.
00:20:44.000I kind of understand it, although I don't agree with it.
00:20:46.000But then there are other conservatives who are, I would say that they're actually kind of actively undermining these meaningful efforts by people like DeSantis to basically fight for a real value system that is, in my view, much preferable than what woke corporations are.
00:21:06.000Yeah, and I mean, it's just, I yearn for common ground.
00:21:10.000I want to live in the country I was raised in, but I'm also not as naive as I was five or 10 years ago to act as if these people are going to stop.
00:22:14.000So Pedro Gonzalez, do you think it's just straight white men on Twitter?
00:22:18.000I mean, but they immediately racialize it.
00:22:20.000Again, I'm not exactly sure if we should take what she says seriously, but you're starting to kind of hear all these kind of other like racial abstractions now inserted into a conversation about what is obviously one of the most important social media companies out there.
00:22:38.000It's not worth actually entertaining arguments like that.
00:22:40.000But it does show, to your point, that they actually don't take you seriously.
00:22:46.000So in other words, there is a strong case to make that Twitter has basically been very oppressive, that it has, I mean, it's ridiculous.
00:22:57.000We even have to, we still have to actually argue with people about this.
00:22:59.000But yeah, like Twitter has actively taken a side.
00:23:03.000It has suppressed stories that undermine certain narratives.
00:23:08.000And I think one of the most obvious and flagrant examples of this is the Hunter Biden story.
00:23:14.000The New York Post getting locked out of its Twitter account for like two weeks.
00:23:19.000And then afterwards, Jack Dorsey admitting, okay, that was a mistake to basically suppress a story about Biden family corruption ahead of the 2020 election, right?
00:23:29.000Like, oops, that was a small mistake that we made.
00:23:33.000So there's actually like a legitimate case to make that Twitter has kind of lost its mandate and does not deserve public trust.
00:23:41.000But the person that you just played, that clip, they'll never take your argument seriously.
00:24:26.000Taking on corporations that represent or corporations that share their values or taking over them, which I think we would like to hope is what we're going to see out of Musk's takeover of Twitter, that people are not going to be locked out of their accounts for saying that ex-transgender person is actually a male or female, right?
00:24:49.000I think that's really all you can do is try to reduce their influence in the institutions that express their influence over society as much as possible.
00:25:01.000That mean that we're talking about a kind of a wide battlefield that takes place over the arenas of culture, over the over economic fields, over political ones.
00:25:15.000I mean, this is this is not only is this like a huge fight in terms of scope, but it's also a long one.
00:25:21.000This is not something that is going to be won in the upcoming elections or something like that.
00:25:25.000We're in this for the long haul, but so are they.
00:25:28.000I think you had referenced earlier, you know, going back to like the 70s and stuff.
00:25:33.000I mean, yeah, this is going to be a long fight.
00:25:38.000It's going to take resources and it's going to take commitment.
00:25:41.000Things that I think, again, the conservative movement has, it's not really, it seems like it's kind of reluctant to commit itself to that.
00:25:49.000Like we basically want to imagine that if we can just, you know, get more Republicans in office without actually looking at who those Republicans are, things are going to be fine.
00:25:59.000And I think this is an important point because Democrats seem scheduled for some pretty serious losses.
00:26:05.000But when you look at the state of the GOP as it is right now with leadership like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, I mean, do these guys seem like they're going to lead us on a successful march to the institutions?
00:26:18.000Like we have some serious soul searching to do if we're going to take on the institutions that share the value systems of the people that you call race hustlers.
00:26:30.000And the long march to the institutions, I think was Grammichian in its core, but it was this guy, Rudy, can never pronounce his name, Dutchke, who came up with this idea that we must patiently walk through all the institutions.
00:26:45.000And to answer your question, no, the establishment Republicans aren't going to be the ones that lead us there.
00:26:52.000Because this is something that I think a lot of older Americans and people that are more neoliberal are uncomfortable with, where is it possible?
00:27:01.000Because there was this belief, and I think it was falsely rooted in a mirage, that we could have neutral institutions, right?
00:27:11.000That you might say what you want to say and we could all be kind of agreed upon agree to disagree, right?
00:27:17.000This is kind of the ideal of the neoliberal West.
00:27:21.000While that might be possible in pockets, given where we are in America, is that just kind of unrealistic?
00:27:28.000And if so, then how do we respond to that?
00:27:32.000Yeah, no, I think unfortunately that time is past.
00:27:37.000But I think calling it something like an illusion is actually right because that kind of what we're talking about, that way of life, it was only really possible for as long as conservatives had control over institutions.
00:27:59.000Which we don't really think about because maybe we've, I guess the change is so recent and so radical that we've never had to think about, well, what happens when we lose really, really, you know, what does it look like when you actually have lost control of the institutions?
00:28:18.000So ultimately, what you're just kind of dealing with is this problem where conservatives, like I should say, older conservatives, are kind of longing for a world that doesn't exist anymore because they've lost control of the institutions.
00:28:35.000So now it's our job to take them back.
00:28:38.000And that is just the reality that we live in.
00:28:41.000So again, wanting to return to this kind of neutrality is impossible because the people who hate you control the institutions.
00:28:49.000So I asked a group of people the other day.
00:28:53.000I said, would you rather control the United States House of Representatives or Google, Harvard, and the New York Times for 10 years?
00:29:24.000I think this is very difficult because it's also, it gets at this problem of how conservatives view institutions.
00:29:35.000There's a good study by Richard Hanania on this exact problem.
00:29:39.000Like even when we look at like administrations, presidential administrations, Democrats seem to more aggressively staff other Democrats versus Republicans.
00:29:50.000Like if you look at the difference between Obama's administration and Trump's administration, Obama largely only staffed with Democrats, right?
00:29:58.000Trump's administration was actually more mixed.
00:30:00.000In other words, there was more of a mixture between Republicans and Democrat staffers.
00:30:04.000But yeah, let me tell you, like, what the justification was, and I don't agree with it at all.
00:30:09.000Is that like, we're the better person, though?
00:30:43.000And but basically, Hanania's study boiled down to liberals care more about being engaged and taking control of institutions and then filling them with their friends and excluding their enemies.
00:30:58.000That is, again, this is a difficult thing.
00:31:01.000But let me ask you: do you support that?
00:33:55.000Saul Linsky famously said, Pedro, that a true radical does not go in the streets and throw a Molotov cocktail at buildings or whatever.
00:34:04.000It wasn't that explicit, but a radical will wear a three-piece suit, slick back his hair, and work patiently to pretend to be somebody he isn't.
00:34:12.000Do you think, just from a tactical standpoint, the left or the degenerative forces of the West, if you will, the neoliberal kind of union of these different forces, do you think they're making a tactical error by now no longer disguising or camouflaging some of the radicalism, but instead now they're leading with it?
00:34:33.000I wish I could say confidently yes, but it does seem like it, I mean, there's a kind of there's a real genuine anti-Americanism that has become so mainstream where you're actually rewarded for kind of flamboyantly hating this country and saying things about like that clip you played earlier, that woman who's talking about how straight white men are awful.
00:35:00.000So on the one hand, I would like to think that there's still a, you know, a sizable part of the population that does still recoil at that kind of stuff, that is appalled by that when it's so in your face.
00:35:12.000But on the other hand, I think that we really have entered this era where more people than ever actually reward this kind of behavior and actually do appreciate it.
00:35:22.000So I don't know if the Alinsky thing applies so neatly as it does.
00:35:26.000Well, yeah, the Alinsky had another part, though.
00:35:29.000And so this is the question, which is Alinsky did not believe that a political movement would be sustainable if you waged war on its history and its cultural institutions.
00:35:38.000He believed that a left-wing movement should take the flag and make it their own.
00:35:45.000And so they're almost, they're kind of putting that aside.
00:35:48.000Yeah, I think there is some truth to that still.
00:35:51.000But I guess what I'm getting at is that, you know, the level of hatred for this country that is rewarded by the popular culture, I think that's we're at a time where that's unprecedented.
00:36:02.000But I do think that all the signs right now show that the left might be kind of overplaying its hand.
00:36:12.000But on the one hand, that does certainly owe to them attacking the history, the traditions of this country.
00:36:18.000But on the other hand, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they're actually going directly for people's kids.
00:36:42.000I like the grassroots parents' rights movement, where you're seeing parents going to school boards and throwing out administrators, getting teachers fired, that I have never seen that in my lifetime.
00:36:57.000And that is, I think, the most formidable movement in this country right now.
00:37:03.000And it is based on parents basically acting to protect their children from threats.
00:37:10.000And I think that is where the left has really, really overplayed its hand, is thinking, we're going to take your kids from you.
00:37:16.000And we're going to, and not only like brainwash them, because I think this is really important.
00:37:20.000A lot of what the left is doing to kids is turning them against their parents.
00:37:26.000So, I mean, it's more primal than tribal, but both the words work.
00:37:29.000This is what you're talking about, though.
00:37:30.000When parents see videos like this of a gay men's choir say, we're going to convert your children, it tends to trigger something that's beyond reason, actually.
00:38:04.000Yeah, it's that certainly triggers something primal.
00:38:09.000But I think that that's really important, right?
00:38:11.000So not only are they coming for your kids, but they're also turning them against you.
00:38:15.000Like I've interviewed parents who have told me about school staff basically encouraging their kids in private behind their backs.
00:38:25.000So you drop your kid off, you go to work, and then with, you know, you don't know this is happening, but the teacher is encouraging your daughter to transition into a boy, but also telling them, your parents don't understand, but I do.
00:38:39.000And basically kind of insinuating themselves into the role of a parent, of the trusted person, the most trusted person in their life over their mother and father.
00:38:50.000And I think that is, again, I mean, like this, this really provokes something in people that, like you said, is like sub-rational, but that's a good thing.
00:38:59.000Well, it's actually spiritual, I believe.