Cornell West and Robert P. George join me to discuss their new book, "Truth Matters" and their friendship with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a political organization dedicated to fighting for freedom on college campuses.
00:00:51.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:59.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:51.000But two men in the public eye have modeled what it means and what it looks like to have fruitful disagreement in an age of division.
00:02:03.000And they are two professors at Princeton University.
00:02:07.000First, it's Dr. Cornel West, who is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.
00:02:18.000And Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
00:02:27.000Both Dr. West and Dr. George join us for the full hour.
00:02:33.000And you have both now co-authored, I should say, this book, Truth Matters.
00:02:39.000Dr. West, I'll start with you because we are the least ideological aligned, so it'll be fun to start with you, but it'll be great to be chatting.
00:04:29.000I knew you before you were Charlie Kirk, and now you're Charlie Kirk, a big important contributor to our public discourse here, and just so delighted that things have gone this way for you and that you're a force out there.
00:05:09.000One of the great blessings of my life has been my friendship with Brother Cornell.
00:05:13.000And this really began in earnest back in 2005, 20 years ago, when we began teaching together.
00:05:20.000Teaching the great books of Western civilization to these brilliant young Princeton students.
00:05:28.000Teaching Sophocles' Antigone, Plato's Apology, St. Augustine's Confessions, and on and on up to the 19th century with figures like John Stuart Mill and John Henry Newman into the 20th century teaching John Dewey and C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther King.
00:05:45.000And I just found that working with Cornell, I was learning every day.
00:05:51.000It didn't matter whether we ended up agreeing or not.
00:05:53.000I was deepening my own understanding in my engagement with him.
00:05:57.000Kindly says that he has the same experience and has had the same experience deepening his understanding whether we happen in the end to come to the same place or not.
00:08:05.000But Dr. West, let me ask you a more fun question right off the bat based on that, which in this dialogue, and I'll ask it of Dr. George, has your mind changed?
00:08:15.000Has any of your opinions shifted because of this 20-year ongoing dialogue with your friend?
00:08:25.000Brother Robbie pushes me against the wall and makes me come up with specific ways in which markets themselves may have virtues that I may have downplayed.
00:08:35.000And I push him against the wall and he begins to see the crucial role of government and the need to balance.
00:08:42.000But fundamentally, see, Robbie and I are abolitionists in terms of we want the abolition of poverty.
00:08:47.000We want the abolition of cowardliness.
00:08:50.000Of dogmatism, the abolition of tribalism, we know it will never happen because human beings are human beings, but we can fight against it.
00:08:58.000Philosophically, I thought that Vico was the greatest Italian philosopher in the history of all time.
00:09:03.000He's convinced me now that Aquinas is.
00:09:05.000I've always had a great appreciation of Aquinas, but what does that mean?
00:09:09.000Well, Robbie is a Catholic, and I'm very much a hang-loose Baptist, and therefore I had to have an appreciation.
00:09:17.000We've struggled over claims about faith and grace and what have you.
00:09:22.000So it's philosophical, it's theological, and it's political.
00:09:26.000On abortion, for example, we've had sustained discussions and debates on abortion.
00:09:32.000And he pushes me against the wall, and I try to push him against the wall in a loving way.
00:09:38.000We just want to make sure that we are true to the Imago Dei.
00:09:43.000Precious human being made in the image of a loving and almighty God and therefore have a certain sanctity and dignity that the world didn't give them and the world can't take away.
00:09:53.000We take very seriously that Christian practice and our Christian faith, and therefore when we talk about gays or lesbians or trans or what have you, it's not out of hate, even as we have disagreements in terms of what kind of practices ought to be enacted.
00:10:10.000That's the crucial thing that I love about Robert.
00:10:13.000He says what he means, means what he says, and he's got an integrity.
00:10:16.000He's got a compassion, and that makes a difference, my brother, Charlie.
00:10:28.000How do you respond when someone says there is no truth and there is just power?
00:10:32.000Because in some ways they're rejecting the idea of dialogue.
00:10:35.000And I'm curious how, because what makes your partnership so exciting is you both have actually consented to a principle that dialogue will bring us closer to the truth.
00:10:44.000That's literally what dialogue means, dialogos.
00:10:47.000What happens when you're talking to somebody that rejects that, though?
00:10:49.000What happens when you're having a dialogue?
00:10:51.000They say, no, no, no, actually speech is a waste of time.
00:10:54.000So I'm interested how you both would respond to that or deal with that.
00:11:00.000Many clients aren't even able to make a minimum monthly payment on their private student loans.
00:11:04.000Private student loan debt in America totals over $300 billion.
00:11:09.000Well, they provide you with a custom loan payment based on your ability to pay.
00:12:06.000We also form animosities and so forth.
00:12:09.000But friendships are integrated around common activities and common goals.
00:12:14.000And one activity that we can integrate a friendship around is the one that Cornell and I have fundamentally integrated ours around, and that is the pursuit of truth.
00:12:23.000And we both realize that we've got a better shot at getting nearer to truth, nearer to the fullness of truth, if we cooperate, if we pursue truth together.
00:12:37.000Than we do if we just try to pursue truth individually.
00:12:42.000And we do that by presenting the best arguments that we can think of on the competing side.
00:12:48.000So if I'm inclined in a certain direction on an issue, it could be a philosophical issue, it could be a public policy issue, it might be the question of abortion, it might be the question of whether we should have affirmative action policies, whatever the question is.
00:13:02.000If I'm inclined in a certain direction...
00:13:04.000I lay my considerations on the table for Cornell in the form of reasons for my beliefs, and I invite him to tell me if there's something defective in my reasoning, if I've got something wrong.
00:13:24.000He'll give me his reasons for his position.
00:13:27.000And then I'll think about those and I'll tell him why, if I'm not persuaded, I'm not persuaded.
00:13:32.000What the considerations are that still leave me where I was, that don't move me.
00:13:39.000But as I say, in my experience, and I think this is the experience of anybody who's worked together with someone else or a group of people in the pursuit of truth, even if you don't end up reaching agreement, you're deepening your understanding of the issue.
00:13:54.000You come out of it in a better place, a fuller, richer understanding of the truth than you would otherwise have.
00:14:00.000And it doesn't matter in the end whether you have persuaded each other.
00:14:07.000The deepening of understanding is itself a good thing.
00:14:10.000Now, ideally, you got to the truth of the thing.
00:14:13.000But if you're deepening understanding, you're at least getting closer to the truth of the thing.
00:14:19.000So, Dr. West, let me ask you about two and a half minutes.
00:14:22.000I'm going to ask you the million-dollar question.
00:14:30.000There's truth, capital T, that none of us have access to, and there's truth, small t's, that we have access to, but we have to recognize we could be wrong.
00:14:37.000And he claims we put forward a failure.
00:14:39.000Now, as a Christian, you know, I believe that Jesus Christ is the truth, the flesh of occasion, the concretization of truth.
00:14:46.000And that is in the form of a love that has the capacity to transform who we are.
00:14:52.000So I make a radical distinction between love of power versus power of truth.
00:14:56.000But the truth itself, capital T, none of us have access to.
00:16:56.000It's a very difficult thing for me to do, and that's the whole part of your book is that truth matters.
00:17:01.000And you guys have something very rare because in your friendship you both have at least the teleological agreement that you want to try to get closer to ultimate purpose.
00:17:11.000I don't always find that with the students I talk to, so maybe you guys can help me.
00:17:17.000The world is waking up to the power of gold.
00:17:20.000National banks are scrambling to secure it.
00:17:23.000According to the World Gold Council, central banks added 1,000 tons of gold in 2024, the third straight year of net gold buying.
00:17:32.000They understand what many investors don't.
00:18:21.000Dr. George, there is a belief that is taught in many universities across the country, I'm sure you guys don't teach this in your particular classrooms, that it don't give the opposition the right to speak.
00:18:34.000Speech is just kind of a construct that instead it's all about power.
00:18:39.000There's an element of repressive tolerance that why would we allow conservatives to have a voice?
00:18:47.000Draw back to Marcuse and some element.
00:18:50.000But I see this all the time when I go to college campuses where students, some will say, not a majority, but a very vocal minority, that speaking to you is a waste of time, that this is just all about power.
00:19:46.000So, the belief that it's really just all about power and that reason is impotent, that reason's role is merely to...
00:19:59.000Help you to figure out how to get what you want, whatever it is you happen to want, by whatever means necessary.
00:20:07.000And that at the end of the day, all of our aims, goals, objectives are given not by rational reflection, deliberation, judgment, but rather by desire, by the will, the will to power.
00:20:24.000We find this in Plato's Republic, in the figure of Thrasymachus.
00:20:29.000Arguing, essentially, that makes right.
00:20:31.000So, first thing we should notice, and this is why I bring it up, is there's nothing new here.
00:20:36.000This didn't just arise in the 1980s or 1990s or 1960s.
00:20:53.000What's wrong with the view is that it's false.
00:20:55.000We can reason our way to judgments, even judgments about very important, deep matters, questions of human nature, the human good, human dignity, human rights, human destiny.
00:21:08.000But it's hard, and we're fallible, which means we can get it wrong.
00:21:14.000But the fact that we're fallible and can get it wrong doesn't mean that there is no truth there.
00:21:19.000It's simply a non-sequitur to suppose that you can infer from our fallibility.
00:21:24.000The absence of truth, or even that it's impossible for us to get at the truth.
00:21:30.000Nobody's going to know everything that there is to be known and know it perfectly.
00:21:35.000And we all know that in our heads, even right now, all of us, every single one, every single person on this planet has some false beliefs in his head.
00:21:43.000But presumably, we don't want to have false beliefs.
00:21:46.000We want to have true beliefs in our head.
00:21:47.000We'd like to swap out the false beliefs for true beliefs.
00:21:52.000Charlie, to your question about why we should respect the freedom of speech of others, and not only respect their freedom of speech, but also listen to them and engage them in a truth-seeking spirit.
00:22:27.000We don't punish him for challenging our cherished, deeply held, identity-forming convictions.
00:22:33.000And not just that, the only way we're going to get those false beliefs out, at least some of them, is by listening to whatever the reasons and arguments and evidence is that our critic can produce in the hope of showing us that in fact we're...
00:22:53.000I haven't always believed exactly the same things.
00:22:56.000I had a very dramatic intellectual conversion experience when I was a sophomore.
00:23:01.000College, as a result of reading one of Plato's dialogues, the dialogue called Gorgias, which caused me to change my mind about a whole lot of things.
00:23:09.000What was the same me, the moment before and the moment after, the same desires, interests, background, tribal allegiances, and so forth, but somehow I moved from one position about politics to a different one, from a more liberal to a more conservative position.
00:23:23.000And that's because Plato, my interlocutor, made me think.
00:23:28.000He offered criticisms of views that I had held, rather uncritically as it turned out.
00:23:41.000Of increasing the number of true beliefs and decreasing the number of false beliefs that we have.
00:23:46.000We've got to allow our critics to speak.
00:23:49.000We can't immunize ourselves from criticism of our views.
00:23:52.000And we need to listen to that person, not just sit by and politely let him talk.
00:23:57.000Genuinely listen in a true speaking spirit, understanding that he might be right and we might be wrong.
00:24:03.000Or at least he might be partially right and we might be partially wrong.
00:24:07.000So, Dr. West, I agree with everything that you guys are trying to do.
00:24:12.000Do you believe that the modern state of the academy in higher education is a place that fosters free dialogue, civility, respect and speech, especially when it comes towards those that might hold concerns?
00:24:25.000No, I mean, unfortunately, it isn't what it ought to be, my brother, that every university...
00:24:35.000And any historical moment has its own forms of orthodoxy and dogmatism.
00:24:41.000And you can have a dogmatism of the right, a dogmatism of the center, a dogmatism of the left.
00:24:46.000Robbie and I are committed to Socratic energy.
00:24:49.000We don't believe in safe spaces in universities.
00:24:52.000When you enter a space, you ought to be unsettled and unnerved and unearthed.
00:24:57.000You ought to be willing to be critical and self-critical, just like when you have a conversation with the other brothers and sisters.
00:25:03.000They need to be unsettled, and they need to unsettle you, mediated with respect, though.
00:25:12.000Unfortunately, the way we are in our universities, as you know, I'm in the situation, I got pushed out of Harvard myself because of my commitment to the Palestinian cause, not because I'm anti-Semitic.
00:25:23.000I love my Jewish brothers and sisters, because as a Christian, I want a Palestinian baby to have the exact value as any other baby, Israeli, black, white, red, whatever.
00:25:34.000Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight.
00:25:42.000And therefore, I don't want any kind of orthodoxy of a left, right, or whatever.
00:25:46.000We want Socratic action, mediated with respect.
00:25:49.000But then as Christians, we got something that the world believes is foolish and absurd.
00:25:54.000We're going to love everybody, beginning especially with the least of these.
00:25:59.000That's what the biblical text says to me, and I believe it.
00:26:04.000So either one of you could take this, but I looked this up.
00:26:08.000On FIRE's website, a survey done in 2020 said that, Four out of ten Ivy League students said that shouting down a speaker is always or sometimes acceptable.
00:26:34.000I guess this does enter into some news of the day, which is President Trump with some of the funding of Harvard and the bigger institutions.
00:26:43.000I don't want to get too far into the politics of it, but you guys are a rare example of the pursuit of freedom of speech and dialogue.
00:27:04.000Cornell and I had the privilege of joining together with, we're now up to a thousand, almost a thousand, professors from universities all over the country.
00:27:14.000And across the ideological spectrum, we formed the Academic Freedom Alliance.
00:27:20.000We're doing the work that, at another time, at a better time, the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, would have done.
00:27:29.000But they don't seem to be holding up the standard of free speech and academic freedom in the way they should, in my opinion.
00:27:37.000So we created a new organization of people who are dedicated to freedom of speech, and we're trying to preach this gospel.
00:27:44.000We're trying to preach it to our colleagues, and we're trying to preach it to our students.
00:27:50.000And the main way we're trying to preach it, it's not the only way, but the main way we're trying to preach it is by example.
00:28:01.000We want to show people how you engage in robust but civil truth-seeking discourse.
00:28:10.000We want to try to model the frail, fallible human beings that we are.
00:28:15.000You know, as Cornel says, craft vessels, we're still doing our best to model.
00:28:20.000What it means to listen to somebody else in a truth-speaking spirit.
00:28:24.000Let me just interrupt, only interrupt because in the spirit of time, Veritas, which literally means truth, which is what Harvard is supposed to care about, right?
00:28:31.000Is the pursuit of truth the most important thing, do you think, to the current composition of elite universities?
00:28:38.000Dr. West, do you think that if you had to distill, if they had to self-describe their mission statement, because to be perfectly honest, Dr. West, when I hear their own university presidents talk, it's...
00:28:52.000But keep in mind what we mean by truth here, though, that yes, the pursuit of truth ought to be central.
00:29:00.000But truth is a species of the good in the sense that the way to truth requires trust, integrity, humility, openness, and respect for others saying what they say, even when you radically disagree.
00:29:16.000So truth is not some abstraction that you're just trying to grab.
00:29:19.000It requires a process so that character formation, what I'd call soul craft, that's old language going back to medieval times, right?
00:29:28.000Your soul has to be shaped in such a way that you have an integrity, honesty, decency, so that your quest for truth is a genuine one, not just a rationalization of your own opinions and dogma.
00:29:48.000So, I mean, we've got to get back to the mission of universities, which is truth-seeking.
00:29:53.000Truth-seeking for scholars as researchers, truth-seeking for students as learners.
00:29:58.000And that means that the fundamental mission is not social justice, and the fundamental mission is not training people to go into Goldman Sachs.
00:30:21.000As long as we keep our focus where it belongs, on the central mission, getting at the truth of things.
00:30:27.000Whether the truth is pleasant to us or not pleasant to us.
00:30:30.000Whether it's what we want to hear, whether it flatters our preconceived notions, whether it serves our tribal interests, or whether it doesn't.
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00:31:44.000Dr. George, why don't you plug the book, how people can find it, and how they can see more of the dialogues between you and Mr. West, please.
00:31:52.000Well, yes, the book is available at all the online booksellers.
00:31:57.000It's available in both paperback and, as I just learned, in hardcover, wherever books are sold.
00:33:13.000Most of them came from non-voters, but they'll go right.
00:33:16.000I'm here publicly thanking you for your service to the republic, my friend.
00:33:22.000You played a critical role in saving the civilization.
00:33:25.000So with that, though, what would you say, and nothing you could say will offend me or the audience, are some of the barriers towards the pursuit of truth in our society and our culture today, and what can we do about them?
00:33:38.000I think we have narrow ideological lens and we're not willing to learn from a variety of perspectives.
00:33:46.000Lift every voice is the very anthem of black folk.
00:33:48.000When you lift every voice, you're like a jazz woman or a blues man.
00:33:51.000You're willing to go beyond being an echo and become a voice.
00:33:55.000You know, you all were talking about Hillsdale College.
00:33:57.000I just want to shout out my dear brother Bradley Berzer and his magisterial text on Russell Kirk as well as Christopher Dawson.
00:34:13.000Because we're involved in the quest for truth.
00:34:17.000And I, Charlie, let your listeners in on a little secret here.
00:34:23.000There is nobody, there is no conservative scholar, including myself, who knows more about or has a deeper appreciation of the conservative intellectual tradition than Brother Cornel West here.
00:34:35.000Now, he just revealed a little of that with his reference to Brad Bircher's book about Russell Kirk.
00:35:24.000Would you encourage them to find or to, let's just say, resurrect a broken relationship that fell apart because of politics?
00:35:31.000How do you guys keep the humanity in your dialogue?
00:35:34.000Because so many people in this audience have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and grandkids that won't talk to them anymore just because they might wear a Bernie Sanders shirt or wear a Trump hat.
00:35:44.000I'm sure both of you guys are saddened and troubled by that.
00:35:47.000What is your final marching orders for the millions of people in the audience that have seen severed relationships because of differing worldviews?
00:36:16.000Around your family, with your mama and grandmother and aunts and uncles, keep the love flowing, even though you might have political differences, because love produces the fruit of the rare joy that will help sustain you in your move from mama's womb to tomb.
00:36:34.000Dr. George, final thoughts, please, on the severing of precious relationships over politics and worldview.
00:36:46.000If you want humanity, practice humility.
00:36:50.000It is very difficult to be inhumane, to treat other people as things or objects or even as enemies to be destroyed if you have humility.
00:37:00.000And humility is the fruit of our recognition of our own fallibility, our own weakness, our own failings.
00:37:07.000When we recognize that, not just notionally, but existentially, we genuinely acknowledge our fallibility, our weaknesses, then we can relate to others with humility.
00:37:17.000And you need intellectual humility if you're going to be a truth seeker.
00:37:21.000And then the other virtue that I think we all need to practice and model, especially for our children and for our students, is the virtue of courage.
00:37:29.000Being willing to state your opinion with love toward others who disagree, but nevertheless, to be willing to take a chance, speak an unpopular truth, that takes courage.