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Summary
Former Vice President and current House Speaker Liz Cheney joins Glenn Beck on The Glenn Beck Program to discuss her loss to Sen. Joe Manchin in Tuesday night's primary election, and why she's now running for president in 2020. Glenn and Stu also discuss why it's so sad that Liz Cheney is no longer running for President.
Transcript
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and for some reason just never does those things
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kind of the way the Wyoming voters feel about Liz Cheney.
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Really? You want me to be president of the United States?
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and so much more and some great, great guests on today's show.
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The pain that I had that I thought I was going to have to live with
00:01:02.660
And so many people, 70% of the people who try Relief Factor
00:01:11.020
I've actually woken up on the operating table two times.
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And all I can remember is just the face of each of the anesthesiologists
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It can keep me out of pain and everything else.
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that, you know, didn't have modern pharmaceuticals in it
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But 70% of the people go on to order more month after month.
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So, Stu, I think we have to start with the audio of Lynn Chaney.
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Or, sorry, Liz Chaney in her speech last night.
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The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln,
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was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House
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before he won the most important election of all.
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And he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.
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I think she just compared herself to Abraham Lincoln.
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I'm not sure what her point was there other than,
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And, you know, in all honesty, she has a lot in Abraham Lincoln.
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We don't have old Liz Cheney to kick around anymore.
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And one of the strangest elections probably of all time.
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you know, Liz Cheney voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
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She was then obviously turned against him and said the stuff that he did after the election she didn't like.
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But then survived a Republican leadership vote after all of this.
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And then eventually was thrown out of leadership and has become the enemy.
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And was defeated handily by an opponent who Glenn was so anti-Trump in 2016
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that she was among the people organizing the overturning of the primary on the convention floor in 2016
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to get Ted Cruz to be the candidate instead of Trump.
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And she's come so far the other way that she's now the pro-Trump candidate.
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And Cheney, who voted for Trump in 2020, is now the anti-Trump candidate and lost by 40 points.
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It is like all of our beds are on the edge of a wormhole.
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And every day we get out of bed, we put our feet on the floor,
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We're into another America that is kind of like the one we were in yesterday.
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And, you know, so the final was 66 to 29, basically.
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About what I think people expected going into this.
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There were some crossover votes from Democrats, but again, not enough of them in Wyoming
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As we said yesterday, you could tell it was a blowout because of the way the media was covering it.
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It was talking about how she's got more to her than this.
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This is just one bump in the road of a longer journey.
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And she leaked this to every single reporter in the mainstream media to tell that, you know,
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I did think it was a little much when she started singing, my heart will go on.
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You know, she is trying to make herself into this.
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This is a martyr type of period here for her, I suppose.
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You know, I was talking to someone who follows politics, but not like super closely.
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And he's just like, look, you know, I don't know anything about Liz Cheney other than she
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But when you dedicate your entire life to be obsessed with one individual, this is you're
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going to be defined as to how people in your state feel about that individual.
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And when it comes to Donald Trump, people in Wyoming like him quite a bit.
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You know, here's the amazing thing is my problem with her is, like you said, she was all in
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And then he does his thing on January 6th, which he didn't cause, he didn't do any, but
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I just thought, like, hey, Mr. President, get on TV right now and say stop.
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Um, and, and, you know, on the day I was really, really pissed and I'm like, what are you doing?
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And, uh, and then I kind of got over it, you know, you know what I mean?
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Uh, he wasn't responsible, uh, so I kind of went, I didn't like that, but I'm not going
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to dedicate my life to destroying him because that's kind of a, I don't know, psychotic break.
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Uh, it, it might be a little manic in its approach to life.
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It's like going to, going someplace where you've had, you know, good meals and you've
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recommended the place and then you have one meal that's cold and you set out to destroy
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I want to burn their business down and I want to piss on their ashes.
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I mean, look, I think we've certainly asked for, uh, for this over the years, politicians
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who believe in something that's not popular to stand up for it.
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I have no problem embracing that general, uh, vibe and that, and I, you know, a lot of
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I think she genuinely seems to believe this now.
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I don't know what, it's hard to understand that from someone who voted for the guy, right?
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Like, you know, it's one thing if you really thought he was a terrible president for four
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years and then you say, okay, this is the, this is pushing me over the edge.
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You're someone who wanted four more years of this guy, right?
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I think she is someone who held her nose and said all the right things.
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And at the first opportunity to knife him, she did.
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I, I, I really, you cannot make it psychotic, Stu.
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I mean, there's certainly no, it did change some people's minds, I suppose.
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But I mean, I think overall, when you, when you look at it, it's, it's like, I don't think
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she did this because she thought it was going to help her win this election.
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I think she had to have known going into this, this would have made her political life more
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So if she really believes it, let her go out and do this.
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But along with that comes the consequences from voters and voters don't agree with you.
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You know, the Republican voters in Wyoming, I think what you're doing is, you know, completely
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But I think, Stu, I mean, think of this strategically.
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I think a humiliating and devastating loss puts you right where you need to be to launch
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Beto's like, there's somebody out there who gets it.
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It doesn't make I don't like the bigger thing here is what is the constituency for a Liz
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She basically runs the state of Wyoming and her family runs the state of Wyoming and she
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So what what is the constituency other than the possibility of her running as an independent
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Give the presidency to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or whoever else is running.
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I mean, if that's the strategy, which I don't see what the alternative is there.
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I don't think that there's any I don't think there's any other path for her to make an impact.
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But, you know, that's that's a strategy that does not support someone who does have a relatively
00:11:01.560
She's going to be brave and she's going to take that stage with Donald Trump.
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And as he's there, that's she's going to she's going to be the one that takes him on and
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And then she'll really be set up for a presidential run.
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I mean, there's no, by the way, audience for this is not how you would win a primary.
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There's no one that's going to come in to the Republican primary and take a stance like
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Liz Cheney is taking and you can take a stance and say, hey, I'm different than Donald Trump
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But to come in and just say this man is Satan is not there's no way to win a primary doing that.
00:11:58.620
So here's here's where I think I could have tolerated.
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I could have tolerated and maybe the people of Wyoming would have as well.
00:12:10.960
But I think if you had if you were with Donald Trump and then you, you know, something happened
00:12:19.860
on January 6th and you're like, OK, that was really bad.
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You'd handle it like everybody that I know who is was a Donald Trump supporter or is a
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And now they're to the point of I didn't like how he handled January 6th.
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But, you know, he's you know, it's Donald Trump and he's going to do what he does.
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And, you know, while it bothers me, he either is the candidate or isn't the candidate for
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And if he if they would have said, look, if she would have said, look, I was for Donald
00:13:00.400
I was with him the whole time and and I love him, just loved him.
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But then instead of going psycho over it, I decided just to come out and say, guys, I
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not sure if he is the guy for the next election.
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He was great in the time, but he may not be the right guy because, you know, he's he's
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And we need somebody a little more calm than Donald Trump.
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And, you know, he stirs it up and I don't know, but it should be left up to the people.
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Is this the is this what is this the best way to defeat this socialism, a socialist Marxism?
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But I think maybe, you know, Ron DeSantis would be better.
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OK, I think those conversations are happening, but those conversations are not, you know,
00:14:03.760
It's interesting because, you know, obviously we do have a lot of guests that come on the
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And one of I think the most I'm always interested to ask guests and people who are other hosts,
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And and I I'm mostly interested to ask people who are Trump supporters, people who love Donald
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Trump, who are with him the whole time, who would walk through a wall of fire to vote for
00:14:39.360
And and all of these people that I've asked have been if Trump is the nominee, I'm 100 percent
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Like there's no there's they're totally on that on that realm.
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But I would say the answers have been about 50 50, about 50 percent want Trump to run that.
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About 50 percent of it's like, look, I love Trump.
00:15:03.300
But like, honestly, if I had a preference, I'd rather have someone like DeSantis because
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I don't there's too much baggage already built into that package.
00:15:30.760
But I'm I'm here and I talked to some some real heavy Republican heavy hitters and they
00:15:46.160
But if he would not run, I think that might be a better path because the temperature would
00:15:54.760
And I just I just wish we could lower the temperature on things.
00:16:06.640
It's it's this weird thing that the Lynn Cheney thing doesn't exist.
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I think they have the same feelings on the issue.
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Yeah, but you don't think that Dick has the same feelings, do you?
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I do believe he got a commercial for her on that front.
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You have basically the last two eras of Republican politics on the ballot last night in a way.
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With Liz Cheney, kind of continuing the Bush Cheney vibe.
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And then Sarah Palin, who kind of came up during that Tea Party era and, you know, sort
00:16:47.680
of converted more to maybe a more MAGA character if you want to separate those two movements.
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And she, you know, the way the Alaska election works, we're not going to know who wins that
00:17:04.380
Yeah, well, here's the, well, you know, most likely.
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What was at stake last night was, are we going to go back to the Bush kind of Republicans?
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Are we going to stick with the, you know, the tried and true, gosh, we're going to compromise
00:17:26.760
and work together on this and we'll always lose every compromise?
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And I think most voters last night, at least in Wyoming, were like, I don't want this anymore.
00:17:42.240
I'm tired of the kind of George Bush approach to globalism and America.
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This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.
00:18:01.300
So tonight on the Wednesday night special, I'm going to show you proof that America's
00:18:11.340
And this is so important for you to understand, because they are setting a giant trap for a lot
00:18:20.600
You know, they signed the inflation reduction bill.
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In fact, do we have that audio we just played on the spokesperson at the White House?
00:18:31.120
Not really able to, really able to explain why they called it the inflation reduction bill.
00:18:38.740
But if you passed a bill called the Fill Every Pothole Act, I mean, voters should expect you
00:18:43.660
I mean, so should voters measure the success of this bill on how much you reduce inflation
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And so the tax provisions, for example, some of the tax revenue will happen immediately.
00:18:57.740
Some of the benefits in terms of deficit reduction will materialize over time.
00:19:01.760
So again, this is really an investment in our economy.
00:19:05.500
It represents the president's economic vision for transitioning to an economy that works
00:19:10.020
better for American families by generating the kind of growth that's based on stable,
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steady productivity gains in the language of economists.
00:19:19.280
So that kind of growth that we know we need to be making in order to ensure that we continue
00:19:34.260
It's so funny how you lied to the American people.
00:19:37.680
You lied and you raped us and you left us for dead.
00:19:45.640
How you took a problem that's affecting real people and ruining their financial lives and
00:19:52.380
You put a sign on the door that said safe space and we all went in and there were killers
00:20:00.720
That is funny that you put safe space on the door.
00:20:08.620
Anyway, the CBO came out yesterday and they were talking about how it's not going to reduce
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Oh, and we'll raise taxes on the middle class as they would not do.
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They're going to come after you because they have to.
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And by the way, the CBO is known for making things look better than they actually become.
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So that fills me with we're in for a hellscape.
00:20:53.200
I will say, Glenn, I did hear some pretty important things about the IRS.
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And this is important because they said before.
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I don't know if you've ever called the IRS before, which I'm sure you have.
00:21:07.680
I'm still on hold, but they're going to pick up any time.
00:21:10.120
Well, that was the big selling point of this bill.
00:21:12.000
They said because they're hiring 80,000 new employees, someone might answer the phone when you call.
00:21:20.240
And you know what's really great is they're going to be so efficient.
00:21:28.180
Anyway, this is all about the the the United States government has a no, I shouldn't say that the United States president.
00:21:40.400
The administration includes the Department of Education, Agriculture, Commerce, all of it.
00:21:51.560
Let me ask you, why does the Department of Agriculture have armed officers?
00:22:02.760
I mean, the the very well-known wars that go between the corn farmers and the Amish, you know, when they when they get their extremist yogurt feud going on with the Amish,
00:22:16.220
there's nothing that will quell that other than the United States Department of Agriculture Army.
00:22:24.020
They are developing things and they are putting you into the extremist position.
00:22:30.080
Look, over in Europe, they're they're already forcing the farmers to live on these ESG rules, which are, by the way, completely nonsensical.
00:22:48.920
They're already protesting and the farmers are being called the extremists.
00:23:03.900
They are targeting anyone who disagrees with them as an extremist.
00:23:08.540
And this is why the special tonight on the blaze TV is so important.
00:23:13.740
You have to understand what is coming for you as a Christian.
00:23:20.960
Now, as somebody who is in a faith, that's not the most popular.
00:23:30.860
I will tell you, you're going to look at these days, if you were, let's say, a Mormon or a Jehovah Witness, you're going to look at these times for those for those people as those days don't come back.
00:23:53.300
I mean, it's not going to be easy to be a Christian soon.
00:23:58.520
And it all starts with white Christian nationalism.
00:24:20.740
They're not calling any witnesses on the other side.
00:24:23.260
They're calling witnesses that agree with them.
00:24:28.920
You need to understand how they are painting Christianity in America.
00:24:38.260
Give you the rebuttals to these things so you can share them with your friend.
00:24:45.100
I did say share it with your friend because if you're actually a Christian today and you're willing to stand up with it, stand up for it, you probably have one friend.
00:24:53.360
But you need to be able to answer and tell your friends and have them share with others.
00:25:03.700
This is an amateur smear campaign, but it is going to be relentless.
00:25:15.600
Catholics weaponized the rosary from the Atlantic.
00:25:21.620
The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists.
00:25:27.960
Now, you would ask yourself, what is a Christian nationalist?
00:25:31.680
Stu, if I asked you this, I said, what is a Christian nationalist?
00:25:43.420
What would you – honestly, what would you say a Christian nationalist is?
00:25:47.100
There's a vision of a Christian nationalist that basically is an idea of an America that is built on Christian principles but is closer really to a theocracy and is exclusionary toward other faiths.
00:26:05.700
Other races usually is included in that as well.
00:26:09.900
Can you give me a country in history that might be labeled a Christian nationalist country?
00:26:21.340
An example that was named – I mean, certainly they like to say that about Hitler back in the day.
00:26:28.900
Germany, of course, it was completely ridiculous.
00:26:34.860
But Hitler, not a Christian, not a fan of Christianity, wanted to end all of the churches, was literally outspoken throughout his not only commentary with close advisors, but admitted much of this publicly that this was a long-term goal of fascism.
00:26:56.840
But let's call it Christian nationalism anyway, I think is the approach of the media.
00:27:02.320
So Christian nationalism, they've defined this, and you'll find out all of this tonight at Blaze TV.
00:27:08.900
If you are not a member, may I ask you to join us?
00:27:25.900
But I know, I know, I think and pray about you all the time.
00:27:32.460
I honestly, every time I go to the grocery store or go fill up a tank, I wonder, how are you making it?
00:27:47.540
And so I know it's tight, but we really try to give you much more than your money's worth on Blaze TV.
00:27:55.900
And even if you just watch our Wednesday night special, you get so much more and so many more talent.
00:28:01.720
You get Mark Levin and Steven Crowder and everybody else.
00:28:08.120
It is going to get harder and harder for all of us to survive soon.
00:28:14.720
And if we can stick together, we will be able to make it.
00:28:23.520
And my staff, I think we do more research on my staff than any other talk show on radio or television.
00:28:30.920
And we sure would like your support at Blaze TV.
00:28:38.380
Use the promo code Glenn, BlazeTV.com slash Glenn.
00:28:42.380
So tonight we're going to be talking about this.
00:28:47.320
But let me continue with this from The Atlantic.
00:28:50.260
The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists.
00:28:55.240
Now the radical traditional Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement.
00:29:04.420
On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and an absolutist gun culture.
00:29:16.240
You know, I have to tell you, I can remember Sister Siobhan and Sister Uno and Sister Julie.
00:29:23.300
As they would be whispering the rosary on their knees, I remember walking in to the church as a kid.
00:29:31.400
And the candles and the smell of the church and the incense.
00:29:37.660
And I'd walk up behind them because I didn't want to disturb them.
00:29:43.660
And all I heard was, and they took their ARs out.
00:29:59.720
The armed radical traditionals have taken a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil.
00:30:19.340
Like, I always thought the rosary and doing things like praying was a weapon in the fight against evil.
00:30:43.000
I mean, they've changed it, you know, from reality.
00:30:45.660
But the real Jason Bourne, when he goes and he chokes people out, he uses a rosary.
00:30:57.040
Anyway, social media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms.
00:31:08.440
This is the thing they do now to show a movement when they can't find one.
00:31:12.200
Like, the other day, they were saying, after the raid on the Mar-a-Lago residence of Donald Trump, they said the words Civil War were being tweeted once a minute.
00:31:39.580
Any combination of words is being tweeted once a minute on Twitter.
00:31:51.580
It's so ridiculous, but this is what they want to do.
00:31:54.560
So, here's something, and I just want to point this out.
00:31:58.560
If you are a non-traditional Catholic theologian, so you're for this new, more open, progressive,
00:32:08.640
hey, everybody can be whoever they want to be, and we should marry everyone and everything else.
00:32:16.100
You should not be written about, and you might want to reconsider your name.
00:32:22.580
The theologian Massimo Fagoli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as the Catholic cyber militia
00:32:39.260
that actively campaigns against LGBTQ and the acceptance of them in the church.
00:32:46.160
These rad trad, this is a new word, rad trad, they're radical traditionalists.
00:32:55.620
These rad trad rosary as a weapon memes represent a social media diffusion of such messaging,
00:33:02.580
and they work to integrate ultra-conservative Catholicism and other aspects of online far-right culture.
00:33:09.980
The rosary in these hands is anything but holy, says Mr. Fagoli.
00:33:18.740
But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide for a sequence of devotional prayers
00:33:26.460
that have been always traditionally looked at as a source of strength,
00:33:41.360
Noah Rothman, a guy who I think really gets it.
00:33:52.820
He has just written the book, The Rise of the New Puritans, The War on Fun.
00:34:07.720
So, Stu and I are in the midst of reading your book.
00:34:13.780
But I have to ask you, do progressives know that they're almost embarrassingly unfun right now?
00:34:30.400
They would reject the premise, and they sort of recoil at the assertion
00:34:35.600
that they're pursuing some sort of a moral framework,
00:34:38.180
that they have imposed this moral framework on every aspect of life,
00:34:45.320
They don't see themselves as less fun, less chill, less accommodating
00:34:51.440
than their parents and grandparents, but they most certainly are.
00:35:08.180
So that is my very salacious chapter on sex and booze.
00:35:13.940
All the chapters are organized around unimpeachable moral values
00:35:17.280
because they are pursuing a moral ideal about how society should organize itself.
00:35:22.840
So when you think of progressives, you don't think they have sexual prescriptions, right?
00:35:27.700
But if you dig into the literature around the many proliferating sexual identities,
00:35:31.980
it's not about self-gratification or self-fulfillment.
00:35:35.340
It's about the political program associated with these things.
00:35:39.280
This has to pursue and advance a political agenda.
00:35:43.020
You couple that with the labyrinthine consent requirements now in statute in places like California,
00:35:51.640
And you have this unnavigable labyrinth that has been erected around consent,
00:36:00.580
But we've created now real legal and moral and social consequences.
00:36:05.580
If a cue is misread or a signal is overlooked or it's just human behavior intervenes in this process,
00:36:12.020
this complicated process, the result is less sex.
00:36:15.740
People are reporting, especially young people are reporting,
00:36:17.720
having much less casual intercourse than their parents did.
00:36:21.640
Okay, I have to tell you, first of all, it is a religion.
00:36:32.700
But I look at people who are like this and I think to myself,
00:36:41.920
If you believe all the things that they believe,
00:36:51.160
but they are making their compatriots miserable.
00:36:54.360
Maybe nine out of the ten people I spoke with are who would,
00:36:58.500
most of them wouldn't go on the record for fear of consequences,
00:37:05.460
Yeah, well, I mean, there are real social and professional consequences
00:37:10.460
It's not a big movement, but it punches way above its weight.
00:37:16.440
They wouldn't vote Republican with a gun to their head.
00:37:18.300
But they didn't get into the business of making delicious food
00:37:22.440
and writing screenplays and broadcasting sports
00:37:30.540
And it's sapping them of enthusiasm for their life's work.
00:37:36.780
You have so many great examples in the book of this type of thing.
00:37:51.120
These two women went down to Mexico, fell in love with the food,
00:38:03.520
In fact, a lot of the people who are targeted by this movement are successful.
00:38:06.460
And I think that their success engenders quite a bit of resentment.
00:38:10.720
But they brought it back to the Pacific Northwest.
00:38:15.300
which is beholden to this progressive set of ideas,
00:38:29.000
They weren't giving them the proper remunerations they were due.
00:38:32.580
It's a very nebulous idea of what they violated,
00:38:43.640
And their burrito truck, which was feted, which was loved,
00:38:52.800
But they had violated some unspoken, unwritten ideal
00:39:26.920
But it taught me something about Elvis I didn't know.
00:39:30.060
I didn't know that he was so poor after his dad died
00:39:33.420
that he and his mom lived in a black community in Memphis,
00:39:39.780
He was like the only white kid in this black community.
00:39:56.140
many of them would have loved to play the black music,
00:40:03.520
it was the black culture and black music sung by a white guy.
00:40:09.260
And, you know, it shows B.B. King and all of these legends
00:40:12.940
who were friends of his going, man, take it, take it.
00:40:20.360
Now you would look at that and it would be cultural appropriation.
00:40:24.140
And they would hate, and I think they probably do,
00:40:26.540
hate Elvis and anybody like him because he was just stealing that.
00:40:42.060
And there is this idea abroad that synthesis in music and culture and cuisine
00:40:51.320
There needs to be, there's a racial essentialist element that's put to this
00:40:55.480
that suggests that any creativity in creating works of art
00:41:00.640
and amalgamating and synthesizing various influences into some finished product
00:41:11.400
Even though what you just said is absolutely correct in art and food and in music,
00:41:18.840
You're creating a broader understanding and acceptance of these cultural traits,
00:41:24.480
albeit perhaps amalgamated, not necessarily adulterated.
00:41:31.280
But the expansion of and broadening of the exposure to these ideas,
00:41:37.060
these cultural traits, used to be something that we would celebrate and accept as an
00:41:43.880
I know there was a guy who I grew up listening to on the radio.
00:41:51.420
He was originally at KJR in Seattle and then Cube.
00:41:58.100
I was lucky enough to work with him when I was very, very young.
00:42:04.040
When I started doing my own show, I called him up and I asked him,
00:42:07.660
Hey, Charlie, can I steal this and this and this from you?
00:42:11.340
And he just laughed and he said, and I think this is true with almost everything
00:42:16.560
because it's not, you're not living in a vacuum.
00:42:24.880
And that's what we don't understand that it all is just kind of,
00:42:30.320
that's where you get your inspiration and you take it and you make it your own
00:42:34.000
and you move, not stealing things word for word, et cetera, et cetera.
00:42:37.320
Let me ask you, because I'm watching, I mean, I know your IQ is a lot higher than mine.
00:42:45.480
And I don't know if you're watching like The Marvelous Miss Maisel,
00:42:52.660
But it centers around this woman in the 1950s, early 1960s, who wants to be a comedian.
00:42:58.440
And one of the running characters is Lenny Bruce.
00:43:02.260
And Lenny Bruce would absolutely be in progressive jail right now if he lived today.
00:43:10.920
And you had all of these great comedians that were there to push back on the man,
00:43:20.740
These people like Ricky Gervais make it, I think, because they don't apologize and they don't stop.
00:43:30.520
Can you talk a little bit about the effect of apology and what's happening in comedy?
00:43:39.960
Yeah, the very same sentiments, policing of public morality that took aim at Lenny Bruce,
00:43:47.180
at George Carlin, at Richard Pryor, are at work today.
00:43:50.900
The executors of this campaign are not on the right.
00:43:56.340
The tendency that saw something that would corrupt you and degrade society and innocent cultural affair
00:44:02.800
used to be a tendency native to the right, in part because we are all heirs to this puritanical tradition.
00:44:09.080
It has found a home in both political coalitions over the years.
00:44:11.740
But when it comes to comedy, one of the things that you see now among this particularly puritanically inclined progressive
00:44:18.740
is to emphasize the pain that someone had to endure in order for you to enjoy something as trite as a punchline.
00:44:28.080
You see this in the fans of the comedian Hannah Gadsby, who's an anti-comic and who is funny when she wants to be.
00:44:37.000
And sometimes she will build the same tension that would otherwise lead to a punchline and give you that release
00:44:41.860
and doesn't break the tension, just lets you sit and marinate in it and absorb her pain
00:44:47.480
and then maybe interrogate you about that joke that she told five minutes ago
00:44:57.500
They love the ardor because it is a sign of your prudent understanding that suffering exists in this world.
00:45:07.180
And if you don't dutifully dwell on it every second of your life,
00:45:11.120
you are sacrificing a moral mission to advance the progressive project
00:45:15.380
and make the human experience just a little bit more tolerable.
00:45:20.200
No, I would love to do a podcast with you and spend at least an hour with you on this topic.
00:45:35.520
So when we are often bombarded with demands that you apologize for your conduct,
00:45:43.520
And that's where I differ from a lot of the very brilliant scholars
00:45:53.900
I don't see it as entirely a faith because in a faith in the Western tradition,
00:46:02.060
There can be no absolution for sin in this particular faith because there is no deism.
00:46:08.000
And because it is such an all-encompassing social code,
00:46:10.720
I liken it more to puritanism because puritanism wasn't just a faith.
00:46:17.740
It was a totalitarian philosophy by definition because it was total.
00:46:22.340
When it comes to the apology, the apology, as we've all observed,
00:46:26.940
makes you just a more delicious target and trains more fire on you.
00:46:33.960
There's several examples of that in the comedy chapter,
00:46:36.960
but there's a particularly interesting anecdote that I lead off the book with
00:46:40.780
about a grocery, a grocer in Minnesota that was, again, very popular, very successful.
00:46:49.820
It was vetted by Keith Ellison on the floor of the House of Representatives.
00:46:54.560
Diners, drive-ins, and dives, Guy Fieri featured it.
00:46:57.720
So it turned out that the owner of this grocer had a daughter who, in her youth,
00:47:02.340
14 and 18 respectively, made racially insensitive remarks online.
00:47:06.980
This was picked up by the online community that they attempted to force him to apologize
00:47:22.620
He pledged that she would devote herself to good works for the community.
00:47:26.960
Eventually, the holder of his lease terminated the lease because that was the penitence that was deserving
00:47:35.400
of the sin he had committed, the careless parentage of a willful daughter.
00:47:47.020
But when you are apologizing in any other tradition, you would find some absolution.
00:47:53.640
This particularly uncompromising tradition offers no absolution for offenses against it.
00:48:01.220
I will tell you you're right about this as a completely different—you don't call it a religion.
00:48:08.860
I just think it's an anti-Christ-style religion.
00:48:15.380
And without forgiveness, we cease to function normally as a society.
00:48:19.620
You just can't live in a society where there is no forgiveness, where you're held accountable
00:48:25.200
not only for everything you've ever done, but also anything your ancestors have done.
00:48:30.760
That's a pretty shallow pool of good people that can be swimming around.
00:48:38.660
Noah, thank you so much for being on the program today.
00:48:43.960
The book is The Rise of the New Puritans Fighting Against Progressives' War on Fun.