The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program ｜ Guest： Christopher Rufo ｜ 2⧸18⧸21

00:00:00.000 Rush Limbaugh and I have had one thing in common, one thing in common, and that is every

00:00:23.380 show, Rush didn't know what his first words were going to be.

00:00:27.680 You could ask him right before he went on the air, and he'd prepare for hours, five or

00:00:35.260 six hours the night before, four hours before every program in the morning, and by noon

00:00:41.600 Eastern time, he had his, what he called, stacks of stuff arranged in front of him in

00:00:47.780 columns.

00:00:49.040 He could see the subject matter on everything he had, and he could look at it, he would

00:00:55.480 grab it, and early on, before Rush Limbaugh was, Rush Limbaugh, people would come in and

00:01:03.880 say, okay, Rush, what are you going to talk about today?

00:01:05.980 What do you, you know, what's the most important thing you're going to talk about today?

00:01:09.120 What is it?

00:01:10.340 And he'd always respond, I don't know.

00:01:12.380 Until the on-air light went on, and he said those first words into his golden microphone.

00:01:23.040 It was a spontaneous coming together of his thoughts, and no one, no one except talk radio

00:01:35.200 people can understand that.

00:01:39.540 The greatest actors, the greatest performers, they don't write their own script, and if

00:01:46.040 they do, they write it in advance.

00:01:49.560 Unlike us, unlike Rush, we speak for three hours every day unscripted.

00:01:57.560 Unlike most, his desk was his broadcast studio.

00:02:05.760 He didn't move from an office into a studio just before the program.

00:02:09.460 When he arrived every morning, it was about a mile down from his house, he worked in his

00:02:16.240 studio.

00:02:18.200 It was built to be soundproof, but also have the very best creature comforts for a person

00:02:23.380 to work from seven, eight, ten hours with minimal movement.

00:02:30.460 My studio was next to his in Radio City.

00:02:37.620 My studio didn't have all the bells and whistles that his studio had.

00:02:43.200 One of them was a secret cigar smoke vent because you couldn't smoke in Radio City.

00:02:53.380 It was illegal in New York.

00:02:59.220 And nobody wanted to smell the recirculating cigar smoke.

00:03:03.540 So God only knows how he got it done on a historic building, but he had a cigar vent put

00:03:10.740 into the window and the window put back together so it didn't disturb the historic building and

00:03:17.920 no one even knew it was there.

00:03:23.380 The mornings before his show were quiet.

00:03:36.260 He really was a man of few words.

00:03:39.260 In his studio for many years, there wasn't even a broadcast engineer.

00:03:47.940 It was just him.

00:03:53.800 Later, when he lost his hearing, he needed a broadcast engineer to help hear the audio.

00:03:59.580 So his cochlear implants wouldn't pick up or discern.

00:04:06.040 I was there when they found out that Rush Limbaugh had lost his hearing.

00:04:12.160 I remember that night.

00:04:13.360 I think Stu was with me.

00:04:14.620 We were in Gabe Hobbs' office.

00:04:16.000 And we had just heard that Rush, it was still quiet.

00:04:21.640 No one was going to talk about it for at least another two weeks, that Rush had lost his hearing.

00:04:27.520 And I remember listening to him at that time, and he was talking like this an awful lot.

00:04:36.760 From behind my golden microphone.

00:04:39.440 And he was forcing his voice down, and it sounded weird.

00:04:44.360 And I wondered what was going on with Rush.

00:04:47.020 That night, I found out.

00:04:50.700 He thought he was losing his lower register.

00:04:54.440 He thought his voice was getting higher.

00:04:56.980 And so he was forcing his voice down just a bit.

00:05:01.780 He wasn't losing his lower register.

00:05:03.740 He was losing his hearing.

00:05:09.740 I remember how the company did everything they could.

00:05:15.840 To help him through that.

00:05:20.160 I remember he came back on the air, and he had two stenographers, an oscilloscope.

00:05:26.000 And they had wired his board right where you would hear him do this.

00:05:32.920 That board was wired.

00:05:35.480 So it would send vibrations.

00:05:38.380 So when someone was speaking on the phone, he could feel their voice.

00:05:42.480 He could see the voice pattern through the oscilloscope.

00:05:46.800 He could feel it through his hands.

00:05:49.540 And two stenographers were writing down everything the caller was saying.

00:05:54.320 In case one of them didn't get it right, he could compare the two.

00:05:58.500 So he could watch in real time what they were saying, watch the voice pattern of the caller,

00:06:05.200 and feel the voice with his hands while still processing what he was going to say.

00:06:16.620 Tell me the person that can do that.

00:06:20.520 Tell me the person that can do that.

00:06:23.120 And you never knew.

00:06:24.580 He didn't know what his own voice sounded like anymore.

00:06:41.900 While he was talking on the air, he couldn't hear himself.

00:06:45.720 We hear ourselves on tape, and we think, that doesn't sound like me.

00:06:53.420 But it actually does.

00:06:55.640 It sounds exactly like you.

00:06:57.160 You're just not used to not hearing it from the inside.

00:07:01.000 You hear your voice different because it's coming from the inside.

00:07:04.900 So you're not hearing it without all the resonance inside of you.

00:07:13.660 Rush couldn't hear that anymore.

00:07:15.720 From behind my golden microphone.

00:07:24.540 He had that inflection because he had to remember what his muscles felt like when he was using inflection.

00:07:39.540 I didn't know Rush Limbaugh.

00:07:45.720 I guess in some ways, I'm a little like Rush.

00:07:50.540 He didn't like to take telephone calls.

00:07:52.940 And after the cochlear implants, he couldn't.

00:07:55.380 But he didn't like off-air conversation.

00:08:00.460 He would email, later text message, instant message.

00:08:04.800 But when you did meet him, he listened.

00:08:11.120 For a guy who's on the air all the time, you'd think that he'd have a lot to say, and people around him would want to hear him talk.

00:08:21.580 All right, Rush, what do you really think?

00:08:25.180 What do you think really is going on?

00:08:28.020 But 90% of the conversations with Rush off-air was your voice.

00:08:35.840 He was a profound listener.

00:08:46.000 I think that's one of the reasons why he knew the country so well.

00:08:49.920 Rush Limbaugh is responsible for saving the AM band.

00:09:04.340 All around the country.

00:09:07.440 I grew up on AM radio.

00:09:12.560 RCA had invented FM radio back in the late 40s.

00:09:18.220 The guy who actually invented it, I think his name was Armstrong, he killed himself because of RCA.

00:09:27.460 He realized he had been used by RCA and Sarnoff.

00:09:32.840 He had invented something much better than AM radio.

00:09:37.020 But RCA and Sarnoff said, there are too many AM radios to sell before we give up on this thing.

00:09:42.560 And they locked FM up into their vaults.

00:09:45.700 And they sold more and more AM radios until they couldn't sell anymore.

00:09:50.640 And that's when they introduced FM.

00:09:53.380 I grew up, I started on AM radio.

00:09:59.540 Before FM was really anything.

00:10:02.680 It was still, and here's another rock and roll hit.

00:10:07.460 In a God of the Vita, man.

00:10:08.780 By the time the 1990s came, I was programming AM radios, AM radio stations, and they were dying.

00:10:26.580 There was nothing.

00:10:27.320 And a guy who used to be the head of ABC, ABC radio, decided towards the end of his career that he would take some of his salary in something brand new.

00:10:47.040 Satellite time.

00:10:48.080 And ABC was like, okay, all right, dude, if that's what you want, you want X number of hours this year is satellite time.

00:10:59.380 Okay, what are you going to use it for?

00:11:01.400 I don't know.

00:11:03.280 I don't know.

00:11:04.280 Just keep storing them up for me.

00:11:07.280 And by the time he left AM radio, or I'm sorry, ABC radio, satellite was really starting to come into its own.

00:11:18.080 But it was still mainly television or radio news.

00:11:23.320 I remember when ABC News used to come in not on a satellite, it had come in on a telephone line.

00:11:31.820 Satellite was just beginning to start to be used by radio, but not for syndicated talk.

00:11:37.720 It didn't exist.

00:11:39.300 There was the fairness doctrine, which made AM radio impossible.

00:11:44.160 Talk radio, impossible.

00:11:46.080 Because everything I said had to be followed by a guy who was just as insane as Glenn Beck, except on the other side.

00:11:55.320 Nobody wanted to listen to a station like that.

00:12:00.040 The fairness doctrine was dropped.

00:12:03.420 Rush Limbaugh, who had been turned down by so many great people.

00:12:08.160 Jack Swanson from KGO, right?

00:12:12.160 Wasn't that where Jack was?

00:12:13.400 KGO?

00:12:14.600 In San Francisco.

00:12:16.080 Jack was a guy who was one of the first to reach out to me and say, you know, I think you have something, kid.

00:12:24.040 I think there's something to this talk radio thing.

00:12:26.860 Don't give up.

00:12:27.600 And I said, wow, that's great.

00:12:31.940 Would you hire me?

00:12:32.980 And he said, oh, no.

00:12:34.680 But remember, I'm the guy who didn't hire Rush Limbaugh.

00:12:41.640 Jackie got two now.

00:12:48.540 He went to work.

00:12:49.840 Rush went to work with this little radio station in Sacramento.

00:12:53.060 And nobody thought it would work.

00:12:56.160 Nobody thought it would work.

00:12:58.460 Rush did.

00:13:00.160 He knew from his childhood.

00:13:02.660 He knew he was going to be successful.

00:13:08.260 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

00:13:23.060 From behind my cardboard microphone, this is the Glenn Beck program.

00:13:34.440 With no hands tied behind my back and talent on loan from Milton Berle, who's been dead for a long time.

00:13:44.940 Welcome to the program.

00:13:46.280 I will tell you, I got into this business, this talk radio business, in the late 1990s.

00:14:00.320 But I only did shows, fill-in shows.

00:14:05.000 I was doing comedy morning shows.

00:14:09.260 And I was sick of it.

00:14:12.680 And I got into talk radio because I felt I had something to say.

00:14:16.660 But I really got into it also because I wanted to make fun of it.

00:14:21.320 All these intellectuals that just, you know, were high and mighty.

00:14:25.920 And most of them.

00:14:26.640 And this time, all the local ones were like attorneys.

00:14:30.640 That were all trying to get on.

00:14:32.220 And I'm an expert.

00:14:33.460 I'm a local official on the school council.

00:14:36.620 And they were boring as snot.

00:14:38.880 And I got into it because I wanted to make fun of all of it.

00:14:43.180 And I saw things in a completely different way.

00:14:45.720 I think Rush Limbaugh did the same thing in a way.

00:14:49.080 He was making fun of the media.

00:14:51.560 And he mocked all of that.

00:14:53.980 Most people don't know that the roots of this show really kind of stem back to Florida and Rush Limbaugh.

00:15:10.640 So, I knew the first time we ever did a talk radio show.

00:15:16.760 Stu will verify that this is true because it was just like he was so sick of me.

00:15:22.260 And this is like 19, what, 98, 97?

00:15:26.000 We did our first talk radio show.

00:15:28.300 And it was just it was for like an hour, two hours maybe.

00:15:32.360 And I took my headphones off after the first break.

00:15:36.440 And I looked at him.

00:15:37.240 And he was running the board and helping produce.

00:15:39.220 And I looked at him over the board and I said, we're going to replace Dr. Laura.

00:15:44.660 And he said, what?

00:15:47.180 And I said, this show is going to replace Dr. Laura.

00:15:49.880 And he said, how about we finish our first show?

00:15:55.180 And I told him, I said, mark my words.

00:15:58.520 Well, the first time I was on kind of a job interview.

00:16:04.500 I had done shows for WABC and I had filled in here and there.

00:16:09.660 And but nobody would give me a job.

00:16:13.200 And.

00:16:16.560 I changed my life.

00:16:18.080 I was really struggling in the 90s.

00:16:19.900 I changed my life.

00:16:20.640 I was an alcoholic.

00:16:21.440 I was I was going on five years sober.

00:16:25.120 I had found a an amazing woman that loved me and also was just really good for me.

00:16:34.820 And then I met my wife, too.

00:16:36.380 No, I'm kidding.

00:16:37.620 But I married her, Tanya.

00:16:40.660 And.

00:16:41.140 My life changed, but I couldn't get a job.

00:16:48.540 I get baptized and the the day after my baptism, I just remember this because of the I tried for two years to try to get somebody to to, you know, represent me.

00:16:59.740 I talked to everybody.

00:17:01.000 I couldn't get anybody to represent me.

00:17:02.720 And it was a Monday afternoon and my phone rings at my apartment and guy on the other side of the phone said, hey, I understand you're looking for an agent.

00:17:15.140 And I said, yeah, I have been for two years.

00:17:20.240 And he said, my name is George Hiltzik.

00:17:23.180 He was the biggest agent of radio at the time by far, by far.

00:17:28.280 He had done everything in his career.

00:17:31.060 He was an NBC executive.

00:17:32.360 He was part of the original Saturday Night Live legal team.

00:17:37.800 A legend.

00:17:38.320 George is a legend.

00:17:39.060 He's a legend.

00:17:40.180 He's a legend.

00:17:41.440 But anyway, he calls me up and he said.

00:17:46.240 Well, I heard from Jack Swanson at KGO that maybe I would I should pay attention to you.

00:17:55.180 And I said, OK, well, thanks.

00:17:57.040 And he said, well, Jack's the guy who passed on Rush Limbaugh.

00:18:01.520 So let's not get too excited.

00:18:03.860 Joking.

00:18:04.980 And I said, well, that's great.

00:18:07.900 What do we do?

00:18:08.600 And he said, well, I want to check you out.

00:18:10.660 I want to check you out.

00:18:11.500 And he said, I've heard many things about you.

00:18:13.760 Good and bad.

00:18:14.380 He calls me back on Wednesday and he said, all right, I'll take you on.

00:18:21.020 Now, I'm thinking to myself over the last couple of days, I'm thinking to myself, there's a chance this guy won't take 10 percent of my money.

00:18:27.800 And I said that to George.

00:18:31.340 He said, I'll take you on.

00:18:32.260 I said, really, honestly, I've been thinking about this for a while.

00:18:34.460 You mean to tell me that you would pass up 10 percent of what I'm already making?

00:18:40.560 Because you wanted to check me out and see.

00:18:42.700 And he said, you're entering a new territory.

00:18:45.280 He said, you want to go into talk radio.

00:18:48.080 He said, you can't be a fraud in talk radio.

00:18:50.640 And I've heard stories about you in the past, but I understand that you're trying to change your life.

00:18:56.680 You've sobered up.

00:18:58.360 You're stable and you're a good man.

00:19:02.060 And I said, wow, well, thank you.

00:19:05.420 Yes, I am.

00:19:06.160 And he said, well, that's why I'm taking you on, because no one can fake who they are for three hours without a script every day.

00:19:16.320 The audience is too smart.

00:19:18.160 They will figure you out and you're done.

00:19:20.820 He said, and I've wasted my time.

00:19:25.560 So I take that job.

00:19:28.080 I take him as a client.

00:19:30.440 I get a job at WFLA in Florida.

00:19:34.880 And I had to do kind of a job tryout before.

00:19:42.420 And what they decided to do was to let me do my first network show.

00:19:48.920 I had never.

00:19:49.860 I mean, I like what did we have?

00:19:52.100 Twenty shows in our back pocket that we had done.

00:19:54.720 And and they said, we want you to do this, this network show.

00:20:00.900 And Rush Limbaugh has allowed you has allowed us to put you into his studio in New York City.

00:20:07.780 And I'm like, wait, wait, what?

00:20:10.780 So I go in to the Rush Limbaugh studios and Stu and I'll never forget this giant oil painting.

00:20:16.960 There's a picture I think I tweeted today.

00:20:18.540 Giant oil painting of Rush behind the microphone.

00:20:22.140 And there's the golden microphone.

00:20:26.380 And Stu and I look at each other like, I can't believe this.

00:20:31.200 And I did my first show because of his kindness of letting us use that studio.

00:20:39.500 Two years go by.

00:20:40.900 I'm working in Florida and we went from worst to first.

00:20:44.480 Actually, we went from worse to a lot worse to first in a two year period.

00:20:53.080 And there was this one week and I don't even know.

00:20:56.740 I don't even know if I've asked you this.

00:20:58.000 Did you know who was on that phone line that week?

00:21:02.480 You don't even remember this.

00:21:04.780 So one week just before Premier offers me a position, the phone line at WFLA is tied up all week during my show.

00:21:20.120 Started at three o'clock, was over at seven.

00:21:22.780 One phone line was tied up.

00:21:24.940 And I didn't know why.

00:21:26.360 And nobody would tell me.

00:21:29.840 Well, I find out later that Rush Limbaugh was listening to my show every day that week.

00:21:38.520 Good thing they didn't tell me.

00:21:42.040 That would have freaked me out.

00:21:45.180 But he was he had been asked to listen to my show by Premier.

00:21:49.400 Now, I find this out later.

00:21:55.180 The head of Premier, Craig Kitchen, goes down to Florida to meet with Rush.

00:22:03.240 And Rush knows that the meeting is about me.

00:22:07.580 And Craig said to me later after we started to really know each other, we were talking about this bogus with talent alone from God and how how much of an act that was.

00:22:25.840 How humble he really was in person, how quiet he was in person, how quiet he was in person.

00:22:31.280 He wasn't that beat his chest guy.

00:22:33.940 That that part was an act.

00:22:35.880 But his listeners knew that.

00:22:37.340 They're in on the joke, in on the joke, in on the joke.

00:22:43.720 And he said, in fact, you know, we had to ask Rush for permission out of courtesy to hire you.

00:22:53.360 And I said, what?

00:22:56.900 They said, yeah, he listened a few weeks ago, you know, when you were when you were, you know, on the air before we before we offered you this gig.

00:23:08.340 He listened.

00:23:09.260 We asked him to listen.

00:23:10.340 And I remember the phone line.

00:23:11.620 I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's who it was.

00:23:14.240 They had him listen for a week because they had so much deference for him.

00:23:19.000 Because I was going to be before him on the network.

00:23:24.320 They wanted to make sure that Rush was OK with the lead in.

00:23:29.400 Apparently, he said yes.

00:23:31.080 But the point of the story is, is while he was sitting there at dinner, when Craig sat down, the first thing he said was, it's been a good run.

00:23:40.640 It's been a great run, Craig, hasn't it?

00:23:44.160 And Craig said, yeah, it has.

00:23:46.940 It's like we've accomplished a lot.

00:23:49.700 And I'm I'm comfortable.

00:23:52.720 So.

00:23:54.160 Don't worry about it.

00:23:56.420 You know, not everybody lasts.

00:23:59.340 You know, forever.

00:24:02.100 He actually thought that he was having dinner because they were going to say to him, it's over.

00:24:10.940 Are you kidding me?

00:24:12.400 Most people don't last 30 years in this business.

00:24:16.660 But Rush Limbaugh didn't know he wasn't most people.

00:24:22.160 He still had the excitement and he still had the humility.

00:24:28.160 To go.

00:24:29.200 It could be over at any time.

00:24:31.600 That's hard for somebody who's worth six hundred million dollars.

00:24:36.720 That's hard for somebody who has twenty seven million listeners a week.

00:24:42.900 To put that into perspective, Colbert has about three million a night.

00:24:48.800 Rush had twenty seven million a week.

00:24:53.340 Do the math.

00:24:54.540 How humble.

00:24:57.920 He really was.

00:25:03.280 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

00:25:06.140 Many members of the media are taking sick, twisted glee in the death of Rush Limbaugh.

00:25:21.080 And they're also trying to set the history against him.

00:25:26.940 Make sure that that's cemented in by playing all kinds of bad things that he have said that he has said, either in jest or in mistakes that he later apologized for.

00:25:40.040 You know, it doesn't matter to people anymore.

00:25:43.500 If it's even true, it doesn't matter anymore.

00:25:47.740 Uh, and he may be the last example of of somebody who is just, uh, really bulletproof, really bulletproof.

00:25:58.240 And even he had some scary times.

00:26:00.760 I was we were supposed to be with him the day he lost his Monday night football gig.

00:26:06.480 And that was a really weird day.

00:26:09.920 Um, and, uh, and yet, you know, yet he had carved himself a place where he could, you know, continue to do what he did because he listened to the listeners.

00:26:22.980 And that's what I did with the blaze.

00:26:25.240 And we are grateful, truly grateful that the only people we have to answer to are you.

00:26:31.460 And we ask you to join us, um, at, uh, blaze tv.com slash Glenn save 30% on your subscription now.

00:26:40.760 But, uh, talk radio is going to come under attack because everything is, and they have to shut you up.

00:26:46.860 Uh, last night I did a show, uh, our Wednesday night special on, uh, national suicide and what's actually killing our kids.

00:26:56.160 And I started the show with Christopher Roo folks.

00:26:58.880 We started with the, um, non-literal suicide, the national suicide, uh, that, that really comes from critical race theory.

00:27:07.460 Christopher is the contributing editor for the, uh, city journal and the director of center on wealth and poverty.

00:27:12.740 He is the guy who is really responsible for, for rooting this out and, and letting people know what critical race theory is and how deeply embedded in the system.

00:27:24.940 Um, if you missed last night show, we talked about, um, this curriculum that is in public schools up in New York, uh, and they identify the eight white identities, uh, that you have.

00:27:40.060 And it starts at white supremacist.

00:27:41.980 And then I think the, I think one of them is a race trader. 0.95

00:27:45.960 And that's on the good side of the scale, by the way, if you're a race trader, if you're selling out the white race, it's, it's, it's crazy. 0.67

00:27:52.640 Um, I wanted to bring Christopher back.

00:27:55.260 This is the only thing that we have done today that is not, uh, related to Rush Limbaugh, because I think this is so important.

00:28:03.280 Chris, welcome to the program.

00:28:05.320 It's great to be with you.

00:28:06.660 Thank you.

00:28:07.760 Um, first of all, any thoughts on Rush Limbaugh?

00:28:10.440 Did you listen to him?

00:28:11.340 Yeah, you know, I, I, I didn't, you know, I grew up actually, uh, I don't know if you know this, Glenn, as a kind of, uh, liberal bohemian in California.

00:28:19.500 That was my upbringing and political orientation for, for most of my youth.

00:28:24.440 And then I started kind of questioning those assumptions.

00:28:27.640 It started to not match with reality.

00:28:29.220 I started veering more towards the center.

00:28:30.880 And, uh, I wrote one of my first pieces for city journal, um, where I was still kind of in the center, maybe center, right.

00:28:37.020 And Rush read it on air.

00:28:38.400 I got a flood of emails and it was very strange because I had been grown up hearing all of these bad things about Rush Limbaugh.

00:28:44.540 And then I started listening.

00:28:46.620 I said, oh, interesting.

00:28:47.460 I, Rush Limbaugh's reading my story.

00:28:48.840 I started listening.

00:28:49.420 I said, man, what you hear, what people in California and the people that are spewing so much venom on Twitter here is so different than what you actually hear from his words.

00:28:59.480 And, uh, I, I became a fan, uh, subsequently.

00:29:02.760 And, um, you know, it was very sad, uh, to hear the news.

00:29:06.380 Yeah.

00:29:06.600 I wanted to get Tammy Bruce.

00:29:08.120 Maybe we'll get Tammy Bruce. 1.00

00:29:09.140 See if we can get Tammy Bruce on the show tomorrow. 1.00

00:29:10.600 She tweeted something.

00:29:12.000 She was very, very, you know, she was the head of the national organization of women for a while. 0.96

00:29:16.040 And then she met Rush Limbaugh and, uh, it changed her life.

00:29:20.120 And she said the same thing.

00:29:21.480 Everything I believed and everything I had been told about him and his audience just wasn't true.

00:29:26.780 Um, let, let's talk about critical race theory, uh, because I am getting, um, messages from people who want to know.

00:29:33.780 I have to go into a critical race theory kind of thing in my office and they'll fire me.

00:29:40.220 If I say anything, I saw Accenture, I think, let a 30 year partner go because he spoke up against this and said, we shouldn't be doing any of this.

00:29:50.700 Tell me about how critical race theory is going to be affecting people.

00:29:55.180 If it hasn't already in their places of business and what they should do.

00:30:00.460 Yeah.

00:30:01.140 I mean, if it isn't already in your workplace and your workplace is like a large corporation, a publicly owned firm, uh, it's coming and it's going to come under the guise of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which, which sound great.

00:30:14.200 Um, but sometimes are really aggressive, uh, propaganda and indoctrination campaigns.

00:30:21.920 Can you, can, can, can you say first what, what the difference between equality, which our constitution talks about and equity, which is critical race theory.

00:30:31.500 What is the difference?

00:30:32.300 Because they sound the same and people think, ah, equity, equality.

00:30:35.780 It's the same.

00:30:36.360 It's not.

00:30:36.900 Yeah.

00:30:38.240 Equality is the idea that we're all created, uh, equal under God and that we, the government, uh, should protect individual rights, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, et cetera.

00:30:50.360 Um, and essentially it's the equal protection, uh, under the law.

00:30:54.380 Equity is the, the critical race theory is basically say, Hey, equality hasn't worked.

00:30:58.180 We still have large racial disparities.

00:31:00.400 Uh, there's still kind of systemic racism in society.

00:31:03.780 Uh, so they've abandoned the idea of equality, treating people equally and replaced it with equity, which is treating groups as units and then trying to equalize outcomes based on group identity.

00:31:15.560 Um, so it's a very kind of quick way to think about it is equality is something like the equality of opportunity, uh, and equity, uh, is the equality of results, uh, which we've seen, um, over and over in the 20th century lead to, uh, human and, uh, social disaster.

00:31:32.620 Okay.

00:31:33.520 Okay.

00:31:34.120 So I'm in my office.

00:31:35.820 Thank God, this isn't happening at my company, but I'm in, I'm in my office and I get a note that says I have to attend this racial diversity and equity class and I want nothing of it.

00:31:48.780 And maybe there are people in my office, but no one will say anything.

00:31:54.040 What do I do?

00:31:55.600 And what, what happens if nobody does stand up against it?

00:32:01.580 Well, there's a couple, there's a couple of things you can do.

00:32:05.860 One is if you feel confident enough and you feel like you have the conviction to do so, uh, you can stand up, you can speak out, you can send a letter to the HR department, letting them know that, uh, these theories don't actually lead to better outcomes in the business literature.

00:32:21.200 Uh, they, they, they put the firm at legal risk for lawsuits, um, and that they conflict with your own deeply held beliefs.

00:32:29.220 How do you, wait, wait, wait, how do, how do they open up the firm for lawsuits?

00:32:33.520 Well, you know, I'm working on this, uh, but I think there's a strong case to be made and there's some, uh, some kind of analogies in case law that if critical race theory, for example, traffics and racial stereotypes, they say, uh, white people can be reduced to the essence of whiteness.

00:32:51.160 And it's, it's, it's, it's analogous with oppression.

00:32:53.860 Um, you know, that's a violation of the civil rights act.

00:32:56.660 If they compel speech, especially in public institutions, um, that's also a violation of the law.

00:33:03.180 And then if it creates a toxic work environment, which in many cases it does, it's pitting people against each other.

00:33:08.820 Um, it's, it's, it's creating a kind of race-based harassment, which is a protected category. 0.93

00:33:14.340 Again, these are all actual violations of the law.

00:33:17.000 And I think big companies are maybe the quickest to potentially change, uh, change tack because, uh, their legal departments, if this starts becoming a cost center, if it starts becoming a legal risk, if they start fearing lawsuits, um, they're going to probably,

00:33:33.160 probably disband a lot of these programs pretty quickly.

00:33:35.300 So I think that's one, you know, excellent way forward that we could hopefully see unfold in the next few years.

00:33:41.300 You have giant companies.

00:33:42.820 Are you, you're read up on, uh, the great reset, Chris?

00:33:47.060 Yeah.

00:33:47.820 Um, I mean, you see these, uh, what are called ESGs, uh, these standards in these big companies.

00:33:55.060 And that's the first red flag.

00:33:57.080 If you're, if your company has an ESG environmental, social justice, and governmental standards, um, you're already in trouble.

00:34:08.560 Yeah.

00:34:09.120 And I think people are going to have to make a big decision.

00:34:11.580 If your beliefs, uh, your politics, uh, your faith is important and you work at a company that is actively, uh, kind of mobilizing against it.

00:34:20.460 Um, you have a tough ethical and moral choice to make.

00:34:23.580 Do you stay and fight, uh, or do you find employment with a company that lets you express yourself more authentically?

00:34:28.920 And I've talked to a lot of people in the last six months where they say, you know, I, I have these obligations.

00:34:34.360 I have a family, I have a career, I have a reputation, but this is just eating away at me.

00:34:39.440 Um, this political indoctrination, trying to shame people, trying to create collective guilt based on race or faith or identity.

00:34:48.040 Um, and I, I tell them, you know, you really have two options.

00:34:51.420 You have, you're going to have to sit and take it, uh, or you're going to have to have some courage and stand up for those convictions.

00:34:58.000 And in some cases, people are actually starting to fight back.

00:35:01.480 And in, you know, some cases, even fewer, unfortunately, they're actually having success at shutting down these programs.

00:35:07.860 Um, you, um, you did a great story in the city journal on anti-racism comes to the heartland and you talk about Springfield, Missouri, how the teachers are being forced to locate themselves on the oppression matrix, which is what?

00:35:27.060 The oppression matrix is a, is a kind of graph or grid that was designed by some social justice academics that basically said,

00:35:34.900 these are the, the checklists that makes you an oppressor.

00:35:38.180 These are the checklist that makes you an oppressed person. 0.51

00:35:40.760 So, uh, white male, heterosexual, English speaking Christians were the kind of dominant oppressors. 1.00

00:35:47.820 And then, you know, the other side.

00:35:50.320 And, and it was a middle school in Springfield, Missouri, a place that is not a kind of progressive stronghold.

00:35:56.440 It's not LA or New York.

00:35:57.880 And they were forcing teachers to essentially locate themselves on this oppression matrix and telling white male teachers, you are an oppressor, uh, telling female or people of color that were teaching in the system.

00:36:10.180 You are an oppressed, um, taking in none of the actual reality of the situation, no one's individual stories and categorizing them in this way.

00:36:19.620 And teachers were absolutely outraged.

00:36:21.900 Um, you know, they leaked me the documents and, uh, and, uh, hopefully the school district will think twice before doing it again.

00:36:27.700 But it, it, it, it also, they handed out, uh, flyers or some, you know, um, uh, training materials.

00:36:35.500 And the handout originally listed MAGA as quote, a form of covert white supremacy.

00:36:42.700 Now they took that off because people found out about it. 0.91

00:36:46.200 And so they went back into the hiding and they scampered under the refrigerator like cockroaches do.

00:36:51.620 But, uh, MAGA, this, this is, this should show you where we're headed when they say, Hey, we got to find extremists.

00:37:01.180 The, the stuff that is being passed out to our teachers in schools is really revealing on, on who they think those dangerous extremists are.

00:37:11.160 And they're the people in the red States.

00:37:12.780 Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:16.020 That's right.

00:37:16.460 And I think we've seen an evolution of language for the last four years under, uh, the Trump administration, there was this drumbeat from the media constantly saying, uh, making the association that white conservative Christians, uh, are, are by definition white supremacists.

00:37:32.220 And there was a attempt to tie those two phrases together.

00:37:36.220 And then on January 6th, and I know you condemned it.

00:37:38.640 I condemned it.

00:37:39.380 The, the, the, the, the violence at the Capitol, uh, they were gleeful.

00:37:43.460 You could, you could, those 72 years after they said, this is our big opportunity. 0.97

00:37:46.380 We can now move from white supremacists to white supremacist, domestic terrorists. 0.64

00:37:51.880 And, and, and it's a really a kind of maybe spontaneously coordinated, but clearly a, a coordinated language campaign to basically create the connotation between conservative and Republican voters and white supremacists and domestic terrorists. 0.92

00:38:06.700 And these phrases are, are dangerous.

00:38:09.300 I mean, it's a, it's a truly, you know, the worst thing that can be, uh, and they're trying to basically annex all conservative voters, uh, into that kind of linguistic umbrella, um, which then they could use to silence, to de-platform, to, uh, outlaw and to marginalize.

00:38:29.000 Um, what I think is, you know, it's not a majority, a strong plurality of the country.

00:38:35.060 Christopher Ruffo, thank you so much.

00:38:36.620 We'll talk again.

00:38:37.300 Thank you for all of your hard work.

00:38:38.920 Uh, you can follow him at, on Twitter at real Chris Ruffo, R-U-F-O, or his website is ChristopherRuffo.com.

00:38:47.880 Thanks, Chris.

00:38:48.360 We'll talk again.

The Glenn Beck Program - February 18, 2021

Best of The Program ｜ Guest： Christopher Rufo ｜ 2⧸18⧸21

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