The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 122 ｜ Why the Radical Left Is DESTROYING Our Cities ｜ Michael Shellenberger ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 So a homeless person walks up to a progressive and says, I don't want to be homeless anymore.

00:00:04.560 And the progressive laughs condescendingly and says, well, you can't change yourself.

00:00:09.540 You have to change society. Well, how do I do that?

00:00:13.120 Progressive laughs again and says, by defecating in the streets and buying heroin with all of the stuff you just stole from Walgreens.

00:00:22.120 Now, a progressive would tell me that we're not supposed to say homeless anymore.

00:00:27.280 It's too insensitive. So I apologize.

00:00:30.100 Acceptable alternatives include unhoused residents, people experiencing homelessness, individuals who are unhomed, those struggling with homelessness, and my personal fave, neighbors in need.

00:00:44.240 That's great. Which makes it sound like all progressive neighborhoods, you know, are shared with homeless people.

00:00:49.520 Not probably good for their retail sales.

00:00:53.000 Today's guest knows progressives. He knows their game.

00:00:56.820 He, not too long ago, worked side by side with them during his environmental work.

00:01:01.720 He was so good at it. In 2008, Time magazine named him hero of the environment.

00:01:08.020 In the 90s, he played a role in important policy change.

00:01:11.680 And in 2018, he actually ran for governor of California as a Democrat.

00:01:16.420 He's not a Democrat anymore. In fact, he's a villain to the left.

00:01:20.060 And why? Well, because he still says homeless instead of unhoused resident.

00:01:27.120 Mostly, the left doesn't like that he disagrees with their excess and their hypocrisy.

00:01:33.360 Meanwhile, his contributions to policy have done more for the environment than any of their climate change's real bumper stickers ever could.

00:01:41.760 As a journalist and as an author, he has mostly covered environmental issues.

00:01:46.560 But the events of 2020 motivated him to write his latest book called San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

00:01:57.120 Now, he's a guy who lived in San Francisco for over 30 years.

00:02:00.820 He lately says, I don't even I barely recognize it.

00:02:04.000 We've all seen the sprawling homeless encampments, the sidewalks covered in feces and syringes.

00:02:10.640 But it's more than just San Francisco.

00:02:13.280 It's a problem now all over our country.

00:02:16.340 And the common denominator is not lack of funding.

00:02:19.880 It's not capitalism. It's not housing prices.

00:02:23.000 It's not racism. It's not the police.

00:02:25.360 The common denominator is progressive leftist leadership.

00:02:29.860 Leftist radicals who promote glamorous solutions instead of dealing with actual problems.

00:02:37.380 Just last week, another five Walgreens locations closed in San Francisco.

00:02:42.740 They closed in response to a constant state condoned looting.

00:02:48.320 How do progressives respond?

00:02:50.860 It was Walgreens fault.

00:02:53.660 Please welcome Michael Schellenberger.

00:02:56.120 The leading cause of death in the United States and around the world is abortion.

00:03:03.380 Since Roe versus Wade, over 62 million babies have been aborted in the U.S. alone.

00:03:09.280 Nearly one in four pregnancies end in abortion.

00:03:14.500 I want to talk to you about pre-born.

00:03:18.180 This ministry is partnering with Blaze Media to help rescue 10,000 babies in 2021.

00:03:23.920 And you can be a part of it.

00:03:26.000 Pre-born is the direct competition to Planned Parenthood.

00:03:29.280 And here's how they work.

00:03:31.040 They offer free ultrasounds in the U.S.

00:03:34.020 And by letting a woman see her baby on ultrasound and hear the heartbeat,

00:03:39.300 you bring the chances that she's going to choose life for her baby up a staggering 80%.

00:03:45.180 Pre-born partners with clinics in the highest abortion rate cities and regions.

00:03:51.220 And they have a passion to save babies.

00:03:54.180 And to see these women come to Christ.

00:03:56.200 Over the past 15 years, they've counseled over 340,000 women.

00:04:01.800 Considering abortion, these women changed their mind. 1.00

00:04:10.200 169,000 babies have been saved.

00:04:13.060 51,000 women have turned over a new leaf and changed their life and gave it over to Christ.

00:04:19.960 Will you help rescue 10,000 babies?

00:04:23.980 I want you to donate pound 250 and say the keyword baby.

00:04:29.580 That's pound 250, keyword baby.

00:04:33.000 Or you can go to preborn.com slash Glenn.

00:04:36.220 So, Michael, for those on the right who may not be so familiar with you,

00:04:53.740 you are a fascinating guy because you seem to be somebody who just searches for the truth

00:04:59.820 and let the chips fall where they may, which is very rare today.

00:05:03.620 Well, thank you very much.

00:05:06.600 Yeah, I definitely come from the left.

00:05:09.040 I came from the radical left.

00:05:10.880 But I'm also, I've always been evidence-based.

00:05:13.260 And so, both in Apocalypse Never, which came out last year, and San Francisco,

00:05:17.320 I wanted to take a close look at kind of where the left has gone wrong

00:05:21.600 and what are the reasons for that, not just how it goes wrong.

00:05:25.220 So, I just want to spend just a couple of minutes going into your past.

00:05:29.580 You were Noam Chomsky reading.

00:05:33.860 Would you have been one of the Black Flag guys?

00:05:37.100 Because I know you got involved with the environmental movement

00:05:39.440 and you were on the radical side of that.

00:05:44.200 How would you describe yourself then?

00:05:45.520 Definitely, radical left.

00:05:48.920 I mean, I went and worked with the Sandinistas when I was still a teenager in high school.

00:05:54.240 I worked on radical political movements in Latin America for many years.

00:05:59.040 I was always pretty committed to nonviolent political action.

00:06:02.100 So, I was in Seattle when the black bloc started breaking windows at McDonald's, 1.00

00:06:07.700 but I wasn't one of the people breaking windows.

00:06:09.880 Because, you know, I was raised Christian, a congregationalist,

00:06:14.600 and so, I've never held the really anti-human, Malthusian values of many

00:06:20.900 in the radical environmental movement.

00:06:23.540 And I always thought that there was something a bit odd about celebrating homelessness,

00:06:28.680 which is something I discovered when I moved to San Francisco.

00:06:31.960 But I worked for George Soros, funded think tanks and organizations.

00:06:36.520 I advocated for drug decriminalization and needle exchange,

00:06:41.980 which is the passing out of clean needles to drug addicts.

00:06:45.600 You know, some of that work I still support.

00:06:47.580 Other parts of it I am skeptical of.

00:06:50.600 My understanding was always that we were going to help addicts to get drug treatment.

00:06:55.660 And what's happened instead is that we basically just allowed open-air drug use,

00:07:00.560 open-air drug scenes, which we euphemistically call homeless encampments.

00:07:05.260 And really the breakdown of public order, public safety in big progressive cities.

00:07:10.840 It's amazing to me, because I'm actually for drug legalization the way Portugal did it. 1.00

00:07:17.240 Portugal did a great study on it and found the more they spend, the worse it gets.

00:07:22.260 If they legalize all of it and spend that money, really, I think it was even a fraction of that money,

00:07:27.620 on drug rehabilitation, their problem was virtually solved.

00:07:36.580 And we're just approaching it the wrong way.

00:07:39.460 But I don't think anyone in this country, and I mean this on left and right,

00:07:43.880 I don't know how many people are actually serious about solving a problem

00:07:48.680 compared to those who are just wanting power and keep us all divided.

00:07:56.540 Yeah, I mean, in San Francisco, I describe going to Amsterdam, which is a very liberal city.

00:08:02.400 Marijuana is decriminalized.

00:08:04.820 Prostitution is decriminalized.

00:08:06.580 I also interviewed the head of Portugal's drug program.

00:08:09.820 These are cities that do not have open-air drug scenes.

00:08:12.960 They do not have homeless people living on the streets.

00:08:16.200 I asked the head of Portugal's drug program,

00:08:18.700 if you're using heroin in public in Lisbon, what would happen to you?

00:08:24.760 And he said, you would be arrested.

00:08:26.760 You can't shoot heroin in public in Lisbon.

00:08:29.820 You can't camp in a tent in downtown Amsterdam.

00:08:34.760 So yes, it's decriminalized in the sense that if you get caught with a certain amount of drugs,

00:08:40.720 they don't send you to prison.

00:08:43.060 However, if you have an addiction and you're displaying,

00:08:46.540 you're engaged in behaviors that are clearly self-destructive or destructive to the people around you,

00:08:52.040 you get brought before something called a commission for the dissuasion of addiction,

00:08:56.080 which is just as terrifying as it sounds,

00:08:59.240 in part because it includes both prosecutor, defense attorney, judges, social workers,

00:09:05.320 but it also includes members of your family.

00:09:07.160 So the Portuguese put pressure on addicts to quit, to get their lives together. 0.89

00:09:13.260 They understand that that's the alternative to prison.

00:09:15.540 The alternative to prison should not be what we've done in San Francisco and other progressive cities,

00:09:19.280 which is just to let people use drugs wherever

00:09:21.420 and basically enter into really severe states of psychosis

00:09:26.080 related to intense meth use, unabated meth and heroin use.

00:09:31.020 So really, it's just gone.

00:09:33.100 We just went too far.

00:09:34.060 It just became too radical, too, you know,

00:09:37.680 you would call it some of a progressive libertarianism,

00:09:40.040 where the idea is that once you're declared a victim simply for being African-American

00:09:45.520 or homeless or addicted to drugs or even mentally ill,

00:09:49.460 then nothing is required of you and everything is given.

00:09:52.600 And we know that that's a terrible way to treat people suffering from what is basically a mental illness.

00:09:57.880 Yeah, you know, it always gets slammed and conservatives always get slammed for this kind of idea.

00:10:05.680 But Ben Franklin, after spending time in London, wrote to one of his friends and said,

00:10:12.640 you know, you are growing the system.

00:10:16.320 The best thing you can do is care for them, but make them uncomfortable in that situation.

00:10:20.960 So they want to get out.

00:10:22.600 They want to do something themselves.

00:10:25.720 And we do just the opposite.

00:10:27.620 It's it's more uncomfortable in America today to start your own business and and go your own way than it is to sit at home,

00:10:36.440 do nothing, collect from the government or maybe do drugs in San Francisco while you're crapping in the streets.

00:10:42.380 Well, yeah, I mean, I document in San Francisco that we basically give cash welfare still in San Francisco in San Francisco to people suffering drug addiction,

00:10:54.340 which even the most progressive drug treatment advocates say is a terrible idea.

00:10:59.560 We give away free housing without any conditions.

00:11:03.040 This is completely bonkers.

00:11:04.700 And Republicans honestly went along with this under George W. Bush.

00:11:08.420 We created something called a housing first policy, which is the federal policy.

00:11:12.900 And the idea is to just give people housing.

00:11:14.940 It was a very alluring, simplistic idea.

00:11:18.400 But like a lot of simplistic ideas turned out to have terrible consequences.

00:11:22.960 That's not what they do in civilized developed nations, whether in Europe or Asia or Japan in Amsterdam.

00:11:28.960 If you want to get your own apartment, you have to pass a sobriety test.

00:11:36.520 You have to make or you have to make progress on your personal plan.

00:11:39.460 If you're suffering from mental illness, you need to take your psychiatric medications.

00:11:44.700 You know, if you I watched social workers interact with a man with autism and he wasn't going to his work.

00:11:51.480 He wanted his own apartment and they were like, you got to show up for your job.

00:11:54.720 So there has to be this thing of reciprocity.

00:11:57.540 It's a very basic idea, which is that you don't get something for nothing.

00:12:01.100 There's carrots as a reward, but there's sticks that are consequences.

00:12:04.820 So what we need to do is move from a housing first policy to a shelter first policy.

00:12:09.700 Everybody should be sheltered and required to stay in shelters.

00:12:12.620 You can't sleep on the street.

00:12:13.820 It's not safe.

00:12:15.000 It's not hygienic.

00:12:16.500 And then if you want to get your own housing, you have to earn it.

00:12:19.760 There has to be some reward for it.

00:12:20.940 But the goal is independence for people.

00:12:22.700 It should not be constant dependence on the government.

00:12:25.880 We also just need to treat people treatment first.

00:12:29.500 It's just not if you're breaking the law.

00:12:32.040 And I stress this part because people get confused about what I'm saying.

00:12:35.720 My view, and this is consistent with, I think, a more libertarian view.

00:12:39.420 If you want to kill yourself using hard drugs and the privacy of your own apartment and you're not hurting anybody, I don't think that should be a priority for law enforcement to go hunt you down. 0.88

00:12:47.900 I think it's nuts. 0.95

00:12:48.740 I think it's bonkers that one would use meth or fentanyl or heroin in your own home.

00:12:54.840 But that's not a priority for the public.

00:12:57.520 By contrast, if your addiction is leading you to live in a tent on the street and shoot heroin and smoke fentanyl in public and defecate in public spaces, you're breaking the law.

00:13:08.120 And we should enforce the law and require that you stay in a shelter, get treatment.

00:13:13.160 And if you don't want to do that, then you can go to jail.

00:13:15.320 But we have to enforce the laws in this country.

00:13:18.040 We have to enforce them, including in progressive cities.

00:13:20.280 But here's the problem.

00:13:23.620 There doesn't seem to be any actual law anymore that people abide by or they you'll pay a penalty if you don't have the right friends.

00:13:35.800 We are no longer a nation of laws.

00:13:38.060 We are a nation of men.

00:13:39.760 And that's really, really dangerous.

00:13:42.040 How do we get that back in place first?

00:13:48.680 Well, that's a great question.

00:13:49.900 And part of the reason I wrote San Francisco is I wanted to get to the bottom of how did we go from trying to redress some of the the sins of the past?

00:13:59.820 You know, we've had a terrible, obviously, history of racial discrimination.

00:14:04.860 You know, people have been oppressed and victimized in the past.

00:14:08.080 But we went to this really bizarre extreme, which is this idea that whole groups of people can be categorized as victims.

00:14:16.400 That in itself has been racist.

00:14:18.540 The idea that all African-Americans are victims is a terrible idea.

00:14:22.600 But even for people.

00:14:23.580 But then you then they start putting people in that category, including the mentally ill, the homeless, people suffering from drug addiction.

00:14:32.800 You know, and in some cases people are victims.

00:14:34.360 But then you have to ask the question, is that the end of the story?

00:14:37.380 Victimization is a moment towards heroism.

00:14:40.620 And the heroes of San Francisco are actually recovering drug addicts.

00:14:44.940 They're totally inspiring people.

00:14:46.860 They've gone through 12 step.

00:14:48.000 They've gone through recovery.

00:14:49.320 They're the most honest people I've ever met.

00:14:51.900 They're funny and interesting.

00:14:53.880 And so I tell their stories of recovery because I think that's such an inspiration for us.

00:14:58.560 But that's how we have to view people.

00:15:00.120 Stop viewing people as objects or as victims.

00:15:02.800 They're on a road to recovery and we need to help them on that road.

00:15:06.320 So, you know, one question I had is, is this victim ideology or victimology? 1.00

00:15:11.180 Is it as stupid as it seems? 1.00

00:15:13.120 Is it really that dumb? 1.00

00:15:14.980 And the sad truth is it really is. 0.99

00:15:18.180 So my hope is to answer your question.

00:15:21.000 How do we solve this?

00:15:22.060 I think we have to drag this ideology into the sunlight.

00:15:25.880 I think when people see it for what it is, including liberals, they will say, this is just bizarre.

00:15:32.880 So where did it go wrong?

00:15:35.440 We should not treat anybody that way.

00:15:36.460 Where did it go wrong?

00:15:37.320 Because there are many of us that, you know, you can still be compassionate and want to have people.

00:15:45.640 You know, I grew up an abusive family.

00:15:48.380 I'm an alcoholic.

00:15:49.360 My mother was an alcoholic. 0.63

00:15:50.720 Her bottom was suicide. 1.00

00:15:52.340 I could claim I was a victim.

00:15:54.120 But it doesn't matter when I'm at the bottom of the barrel and I have a choice.

00:15:58.580 I'm either going to live or die.

00:16:00.540 And it is the moment of heroism when you say, I want to live and I want to live differently.

00:16:06.660 And you find the way to do that.

00:16:09.600 But we don't celebrate that.

00:16:11.400 And in fact, many Americans feel like we've been discouraged.

00:16:16.340 So let me just let me play devil's advocate here.

00:16:18.940 Michael, you've been on this for a long time.

00:16:24.520 We feel like we've been on this for a long time. 0.99

00:16:28.060 And I don't talk about our politicians because they suck on the right. 0.92

00:16:32.500 But where did it go wrong? 0.95

00:16:35.280 Where did you wake up?

00:16:36.560 And why should we why should we listen to you now?

00:16:39.880 And why should the people on the left listen to you?

00:16:42.320 Because you have this new revelation.

00:16:44.740 Yeah, I mean, and first of all, no one should take my word for anything.

00:16:50.320 I mean, just as with Apocalypse Never, San Francisco includes over twelve hundred footnotes from the best available science.

00:16:56.440 It's basically this book, more than Apocalypse Never, consists of many, many interviews with people that self-identify as liberals and progressives.

00:17:04.000 And they're the ones that offer the most devastating indictment of the mentality and the system.

00:17:10.300 I mean, Glenn, what your work has been so important in doing is drawing attention to this importance of mentality and of faith.

00:17:16.600 And those are two things that I feel like I got some clarity about, which is that, you know, for a lot of liberals who embrace self-help, we love you know, I talk about one particular self-help, really a founder of cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:17:30.000 Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Me, he survived the concentration camps under the Nazis because he got his mentality right.

00:17:37.500 He knew that he had to have a purpose, a goal, which was to be reunited with his wife and his parents and to write a book and to be an inspiration for the world.

00:17:45.440 Liberals love this book.

00:17:47.040 So my question was, why is it that liberals embrace self-help in their private lives, but then declare self-help to be blaming the victim?

00:17:55.640 That's what they call it when it comes to political life. 0.85

00:17:58.740 So you won't be surprised that terrible idea that that asking people for some responsibility and accountability is the same as blaming the victim.

00:18:07.640 It comes out of the late 60s.

00:18:09.360 It's really a backlash to all the success that had been made in the United States by the radical left.

00:18:16.820 It's a completely toxic idea.

00:18:19.980 Accountability, reciprocity, responsibility.

00:18:22.160 These are pillars of our civilization.

00:18:25.780 And so what's occurred is the radical left has basically been attacking the pillars of Western civilization.

00:18:31.380 I mean, you see it.

00:18:32.260 Every institution is under attack.

00:18:34.320 They started with psychiatric hospitals after World War II.

00:18:38.020 It also started.

00:18:38.720 It also now is obviously including our universities, our police departments.

00:18:42.880 I described the attacks on the police, which if you really care about black lives, 30 times more African-Americans are killed by civilians than by police in this country.

00:18:52.180 If you care about homicide or about saving black lives or all lives, you should be pro-police. 1.00

00:18:58.100 If you're worried about police violence, the worst thing to do if you care about police violence is to cut the police force because you need police.

00:19:07.040 You need sufficient police forces so they're not stressed and under strain.

00:19:11.140 So I think there's what gives me hope is the response to this book has been incredibly positive, not just from conservatives, but also from liberals.

00:19:18.840 Good.

00:19:18.860 The radical left, as usual, it goes too far.

00:19:21.900 And so, you know, it's hard to find progressives in San Francisco who think that things are fine, who think it's okay to have people with schizophrenia, people, you know, that are attacking other people.

00:19:35.600 I mean, there's a lot of violence against women that is occurring in not just an inner city, but in the downtowns of our greatest cities. 0.97

00:19:42.160 So I do think things have reached a tipping point, but I think that there's something that the progressives do need to deal with, which is that you do need some kind of faith.

00:19:51.040 You need some sort of belief and some higher power.

00:19:54.440 Otherwise, it descends into this really dogmatic religion that they think is they think it's not a religion at all, but it really is a kind of San Francisco sickness, which is basically the idea that love is all you need, that compassion is all you need.

00:20:08.720 And we know that we also, people also need discipline, hard work, structures, and some sense of personal responsibility.

00:20:16.400 You are, I mean, you are singing the gospel to a lot of people that watch me.

00:20:24.440 I'm thrilled to hear that there are a lot of people that have followed you, that they are starting to feel this way.

00:20:31.140 Because we're in a place now where we're completely detached from reality, completely detached.

00:20:39.680 And we're being told to ignore what we actually see with our own eyes or what we experience at the supermarket or on the streets in a city.

00:20:49.880 You're like this.

00:20:50.440 None of this makes sense.

00:20:52.020 You know, this last weekend, the White House saying inflation is good because it shows people are buying stuff and the economy is good.

00:21:01.200 No, we don't know.

00:21:02.560 No, that's not.

00:21:03.300 No, it's not.

00:21:05.800 But when it comes to, let's say, California, California just reelected Gavin Newsom.

00:21:13.020 And that seems to me, and maybe I'm reading it wrong, as let the status quo go because he starts doubling down on things now that he wasn't removed from office.

00:21:25.360 How do you see that?

00:21:28.700 Yeah, well, and just to agree with you, I mean, we have seen, you know, California decriminalized three grams of hard drugs, including fentanyl.

00:21:37.360 And we, in the same legislation in 2014, we also decriminalized shoplifting $950 worth of goods.

00:21:44.620 So the Walgreens, our biggest drugstore chain or one of our biggest drugstore chains, has been shutting down stores in San Francisco.

00:21:51.840 And the radical left has been claiming that this is not a problem.

00:21:55.700 They've been saying, oh, there's no real problem at the Walgreens, basically denying this incredible reality.

00:22:01.240 Well, the reason is, is because, you know, for because one paradox or a parent paradox is that progressives are concerned about victims, but then they're not concerned about the victims of theft.

00:22:14.220 They're not concerned about the African-Americans being killed by other African-Americans.

00:22:19.640 They're only concerned about African-Americans killed by police.

00:22:21.880 So why is that?

00:22:23.480 And the reason that I got at in San Francisco is that progressives are only concerned with victims of the quote unquote system.

00:22:30.080 They're only concerned with victims of capitalism.

00:22:33.120 They're not concerned with victims of other people.

00:22:35.880 So that's the heart of the problem.

00:22:38.300 I think that is not a mainstream view, however.

00:22:40.880 Most people, most Democrats reject that mentality.

00:22:44.900 That's a radical left view.

00:22:47.220 As for the last elections, you know, my my understanding, if you look at the polling data, is that most voters were still voting on covid.

00:22:55.160 We have a much we have a very affluent, pretty wealthy population in California now because of home prices went up so much.

00:23:03.620 People tend to be very, you know, it's funny to use the word conservative on covid.

00:23:09.100 They really are in favor of very restrictive measures.

00:23:12.080 And that was the main thing they were voting on.

00:23:15.120 You know, when we tested, we did many polls, but so have many other groups testing the broad agenda that we're proposing, which is a shelter first agenda, a shelter requirement, treatment first, housing earned, as well as universal psychiatry, which we're calling Cal Psych.

00:23:31.080 We find support for that agenda around 70 to 80 percent among registered voters in California.

00:23:37.920 So I think there is a real opportunity for some fresh candidate next year to run against Gavin Newsom and win.

00:23:45.200 I don't know if it's a Republican because, you know, we have an open electoral system in California.

00:23:50.140 So it could be two Democrats.

00:23:51.540 It could be an independent.

00:23:53.160 But I do think the people of California are ready for for something that is there's an alternative to the radical left.

00:23:59.640 You know, the interesting thing is when I explain what San Francisco is doing to people, to a lot of just ordinary Democrats that I know, they absolutely reject it.

00:24:10.960 They say, I'm not in favor of defunding the police.

00:24:13.420 I'm not in favor of giving money to drug addicts.

00:24:16.160 And I'm not in favor of letting drug addicts sleep on the street, shoot drugs on the street and defecate in public.

00:24:21.640 So I don't think that that that that reigning in those excesses is is in any way a fringe idea.

00:24:29.660 I think it's actually quite popular.

00:24:30.960 But it seems as though it is.

00:24:34.160 I mean, it feels as though that what's happening in California is now the national stance.

00:24:43.320 And, you know, I hate to see the rest of the country go down that road.

00:24:50.680 But we're we're enacting the same kinds of policies all over the country now.

00:24:57.900 Yeah, it's true.

00:24:58.940 I mean, I was just in New York City.

00:25:00.940 You know, New York traditionally had done a pretty good job of actually requiring people to be in shelters.

00:25:06.100 But I saw people, you know, on 6th Avenue on a mattress with their cell with their cell phones sleeping out on the sidewalk to police officers, one block away, staring at their at their phones like so many of us do.

00:25:19.400 When really you need to you need to do what I saw social workers that I shadowed in Amsterdam, Netherlands do, which is when we discovered someone trying to sleep on a park bench, you'd say, look, we have a bed for you in a shelter.

00:25:32.260 You can't sleep on the park bench.

00:25:34.300 It's not safe for you.

00:25:35.840 It's not safe for you.

00:25:37.280 It's not safe for anybody else.

00:25:38.520 New York used to do that.

00:25:40.460 I mean, they're there.

00:25:41.360 They did have they knew who all the homeless were.

00:25:44.520 This is what was told to me.

00:25:46.100 We know who they are and we know who refuses to go in and who doesn't.

00:25:51.800 But we have a bed for for everybody.

00:25:54.600 But now apparently we don't.

00:25:56.260 That's right.

00:25:57.940 Yeah, that's right.

00:25:59.080 I mean, you know, and I really get at the people in particular responsible for this.

00:26:03.040 And by the way, I'm a lifelong ACLU supporter.

00:26:05.380 But unfortunately, and I support a lot of what ACLU has done in the past.

00:26:09.320 But unfortunately, ACLU has been a terrible bad actor in this situation.

00:26:12.940 I asked them, you know, when one of our grandparents, when they suffer from dementia, whether from Alzheimer's or some other cause, when they suffer from dementia, we don't let them wander around in the seat where they're in the city where they're at risk to themselves or something bad could happen to them.

00:26:29.520 So why do we do that with people suffering from other forms of mental illness?

00:26:33.540 Why do we let people suffering from psychosis, whether from schizophrenia or extensive meth use?

00:26:38.960 Why do we let them wander around the city?

00:26:41.320 It's immoral.

00:26:42.640 It's not safe for them.

00:26:44.100 And in Amsterdam and other civilized cities, they say to folks that with psychosis, they say, you have to go stay in a shelter.

00:26:51.420 You will be able to see a psychiatrist.

00:26:53.980 This is, for me, fundamental to the operation of cities and a civilization.

00:27:00.880 Glenn, honestly, well, after I wrote San Francisco, I declared myself no longer a progressive.

00:27:06.840 I changed my party registration from Democrat to independent because I feel like I'm living in an immoral society.

00:27:13.900 And I don't mean for that to sound the way that I think it may sound to a lot of people.

00:27:17.560 But I feel like I'm living under, like, apartheid in South Africa or in some system where I'm like, I feel wrong paying taxes to basically allow hundreds of people to die every year on the street.

00:27:31.200 I, for different reasons, I feel the same way.

00:27:34.220 I think the government is so disconnected now from morality on multiple subjects that I don't I don't know what I pay my taxes for anymore.

00:27:46.160 I don't I don't recognize, you know, the one thing that I have always felt is that the system is it will correct itself when the people correct itself.

00:28:01.980 You know what I mean? When the people are all going down one way, somebody like Martin Luther King appears and we do correct it and we start to move in a better way.

00:28:12.640 I don't I don't see that now.

00:28:15.040 I don't see. Well, I don't see a lot of people standing up, but I also don't see the self-correction on anything.

00:28:20.600 Policies that are clearly not working.

00:28:24.400 What we're doing down at the border is the most immoral thing I've ever seen.

00:28:29.080 Remember, I'm the guy who got in trouble with the right because I brought food and things down to the people who had crossed the border under Obama.

00:28:39.260 And I said, look, you can disagree, but you have to see people as people.

00:28:44.460 You have to see the plight that they're in right now.

00:28:49.220 No one seems to be talking about the kids.

00:28:52.860 We lost 40,000 minors.

00:28:56.940 Well, do you think they're in healthy situations now?

00:29:00.320 We lost 40,000 of them in the last six months.

00:29:03.340 That is immoral.

00:29:05.660 It's immoral what's going on.

00:29:08.260 But it doesn't seem like it matters to people.

00:29:13.660 Why?

00:29:15.960 What happened to us?

00:29:17.300 I totally agree.

00:29:19.160 We're losing our humanity, Glenn.

00:29:21.100 And that's the most severe thing that you could say about a people or a civilization or a culture.

00:29:26.740 That's what happened in Germany with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

00:29:31.960 It's why he failed.

00:29:33.880 The Germans had lost their humanity. 0.99

00:29:36.640 And no matter what he said to appeal to the humanity, that door was already closed.

00:29:42.760 We can't let that happen here or we're going to make them look like rookies.

00:29:48.740 I mean, Glenn, to give you some numbers here, 93,000 people died last year from drug deaths or poisonings or overdoses.

00:29:57.280 That's a five-fold increase from the 17,000 people that died from drugs in the year 2000.

00:30:03.600 That's almost three times as many people died of drugs last year as car accidents, almost five times as many as that of homicides during a normal year.

00:30:11.920 This is out of control.

00:30:13.280 I do have one quote at the end of San Francisco because even though the book is focused on why progressives ruin cities, I do offer a critique.

00:30:21.400 In fact, what I do is I quote conservatives making a critique of the right and why the right hasn't been able to offer a powerful alternative politically in progressive cities.

00:30:31.600 And I quote the late Patrick Moynihan, who is a very interesting figure, someone I really identify with in a lot of ways.

00:30:38.440 He was a Democrat, but he worked for Nixon, as you know, and raised concerns about the disintegration of the family.

00:30:45.860 And Moynihan said something really important.

00:30:47.280 He said, the central conservative truth is that culture determines the political life of a nation.

00:30:53.060 But the central liberal truth is that politics can intervene in the cultural life and change the direction.

00:30:59.740 So I do think that what you're pointing out is correct.

00:31:03.060 I mean, I see voices like yours, voices like Joe Rogan, whose podcast I did last week, Jordan Peterson.

00:31:10.240 I do see it having a very courageous liberals like Barry Weiss, who used to be at The New York Times.

00:31:15.400 Yes, I do see are people coming moving from left to right a little bit more Glenn Greenwald, for example, Matt Taibbi.

00:31:21.620 These are voices that I see really making a difference in the culture.

00:31:25.360 But I agree with you. We need some sort of new political formation, some sort of new political leadership that I think transcends a lot of those old left right boundaries, because, you know, what I'm proposing is something that, you know, is called we call it cal psych.

00:31:39.840 It's basically saying, you know, shocking idea that you need to treat people with mental illness.

00:31:44.920 You need to treat people with addiction.

00:31:46.680 That really, that's a moral issue, that this is not just a kind of technical question.

00:31:51.440 That should be something that appeals to both reasonable conservatives and reasonable liberals.

00:31:56.340 So let me, let me take it to, to this question, because I think we agree on most of what you said.

00:32:06.440 I mean, you know, you pull up the hood, we're going to have disagreements on things, but I mean, the direction I think we agree on.

00:32:12.060 Um, what I, the conservative, uh, has been wildly wrong because we didn't fear the corporation.

00:32:24.400 And that's because we never, I think we never saw the corporation as getting that out of control.

00:32:31.800 We should have listened to Eisenhower.

00:32:33.480 It's been out of control for a long time, but now it's more powerful than all nations on earth combined.

00:32:40.820 Um, and we failed that the, the conservatives have been warning about an out of control government.

00:32:50.600 Um, and I don't understand how, um, how the left doesn't fear that it's still power.

00:33:01.060 And, and that one is even harder to stop because they're the police.

00:33:07.320 Who do you call when the government has gone bad?

00:33:10.200 You got nobody to call.

00:33:12.460 Um, so why, why is there this trust of the government?

00:33:17.100 You were saying, uh, Cal psych, the first thing that went through my mind was good heavens.

00:33:22.260 Do you remember all of the horrible things that used to happen in psychiatric, uh, hospitals

00:33:26.800 back in the fifties and sixties?

00:33:28.500 And it stopped.

00:33:29.420 Thank God.

00:33:29.960 That was where my mind went.

00:33:32.480 Um, and I don't understand how we can bridge that gap.

00:33:37.520 How come we, many conservatives are going, holy cow, were we wrong on corporations?

00:33:45.060 How come the left doesn't see that on the government?

00:33:48.020 Yeah, well, that is such a great point.

00:33:51.640 And, and, and frankly, why doesn't the left see it on the power of corporations too, right?

00:33:56.740 We're seeing critical race theory, take over corporations.

00:33:59.400 You know, I, after I, um, last year when my book apocalypse never came out, I was censored

00:34:04.000 by Facebook.

00:34:04.720 Now Facebook is censoring my friend Bjorn Lomborg and others were for telling true facts about

00:34:09.980 climate change and the environment.

00:34:11.360 So I share your concern, you know, in San Francisco, I do describe the horrible treatment of mentally

00:34:17.960 ill people.

00:34:18.880 I mean, before they were mistreated in hospitals, you know, people were chained into basements

00:34:24.100 and barns and it horrible experiences after we, we deinstitutionalized and really progressive

00:34:31.760 shut down psychiatric hospitals with the, uh, consent of, of many conservatives, um, um, mentally

00:34:39.180 ill people were literally dumped on the street.

00:34:41.080 I mean, they were literally taken from the hospitals and put on the street.

00:34:44.560 Many of them ended up in jails and prison.

00:34:47.080 The institution that has the most mentally ill people in the United States is the Los Angeles

00:34:50.860 County jail.

00:34:52.200 I don't even want to describe the horrors that occur inside there, but literally it was trans 1.00

00:34:56.880 institutionalization.

00:34:57.840 We put, we took people out of hospitals and put them in jails and prison.

00:35:00.460 So that was terrible.

00:35:02.040 In terms of the corporate influence, you're absolutely right.

00:35:05.360 Many people know that Gavin Newsom, our governor in California was caught without a mask at a very

00:35:10.780 expensive, one of the most expensive, fancy restaurants in the world, French Laundry.

00:35:15.080 But few people know that he was there with lobbyists for the California Medical Association

00:35:20.880 and for some of our biggest healthcare companies.

00:35:24.300 My view is that there is a role for obviously private sector companies, but you have to have

00:35:28.980 a system that is accountable.

00:35:31.000 And so what CalPsych would do is it would say there has to be somebody in charge.

00:35:36.060 Nothing gets done in our society without a hierarchy.

00:35:38.720 It's why our military, we still rely on it, even with all the various problems that it's

00:35:42.740 been having.

00:35:43.500 It still is a hierarchy and you can count on things to be done.

00:35:46.180 So we need some accountability in the system.

00:35:48.760 We need the head of CalPsych to report directly to the governor.

00:35:52.420 And the CalPsych would then oversee private contracts, certainly, but it would be transparent.

00:35:58.220 There would be accountability right now.

00:36:00.240 It's completely opaque.

00:36:02.160 It's a Byzantine system.

00:36:03.880 There's both.

00:36:04.660 There's two problems.

00:36:05.840 There's both overlapping services.

00:36:07.720 Sometimes people have two or three social workers and then there's fragmentation.

00:36:11.620 So people will get out of drug treatment, go back on the street, overdose and die from

00:36:15.560 drugs because there's no connectivity in the system.

00:36:18.600 So that's something fixing the system is something that is going to require, I think, a consensus

00:36:24.300 between, like I said, I think forward-thinking conservatives, forward-thinking progressives

00:36:29.020 because it'll be a mixed model.

00:36:31.580 It's going to have to involve the government.

00:36:33.200 It's going to have to involve the private sector and simply doing what I think a lot

00:36:37.160 of Republicans have done, understandably, but also for a number of liberals, which is

00:36:41.000 to kind of point to this or that charity and imagining that they can deal with people

00:36:45.660 in meth-induced psychosis or that they can deal with these big homeless encampments.

00:36:49.480 I think those days are long past and so the real opportunity for us in progressive cities

00:36:54.500 and states like California and the San Francisco Bay Area is that it's just become chaos.

00:37:00.000 There's just too much violence on the street.

00:37:02.840 People are leaving.

00:37:03.760 People are being made unsafe.

00:37:05.800 We're having public health disasters.

00:37:07.560 So it's in those crises that I think creates an opportunity for new political leadership.

00:37:12.200 And why do you say that private charities, I mean, I have a charity that basically, for

00:37:21.420 the most part, what we do is we go find the best people on the ground closest to the problem

00:37:27.540 and we just help fund them.

00:37:30.180 And it's all just based on who's giving us the biggest bang for the buck.

00:37:36.320 Why do you say private charities couldn't do that?

00:37:38.840 Well, there's several reasons that I go through in some detail in San Francisco.

00:37:44.580 But in short, you know, that's the model that we've had for the last 50 years is private

00:37:49.400 charities that receive contracts from cities and counties.

00:37:53.400 And the first reason it hasn't worked is that we're dealing, when you're dealing with drug

00:37:56.580 addicts and the mentally ill, you're dealing with a highly transient population.

00:38:01.520 Often they're moving around the state.

00:38:02.780 And if you're if you're someone who is arrested multiple times and finally sentenced or given

00:38:08.440 the choice between prison and drug treatment, your drug treatment should probably not be

00:38:13.940 anywhere close to where you were doing drugs, because the drugs are a trigger.

00:38:18.000 We know that getting out of the open drug scene is necessary.

00:38:21.680 You may you may be familiar with a major study that was done of Vietnam of American soldiers

00:38:25.980 who became addicted to heroin in Vietnam when they came back to the United States.

00:38:30.240 Most of them were able to kick their addictions simply because there wasn't any heroin near

00:38:34.960 them.

00:38:35.440 You go back to Kansas City or something from Vietnam, it's not easy to go find heroin, at

00:38:39.240 least not in the 60s or early 70s.

00:38:41.820 Today, we don't we have that problem where so much of our rehab is right there in the middle

00:38:45.680 of the open drug scene.

00:38:46.900 So the open drug markets, it's way too triggering for people.

00:38:50.620 What we need is a statewide solution so that you can actually do drug rehab or adult foster

00:38:54.840 care or psychiatric help in cities outside of those big open drug scenes so that you may

00:39:01.540 go to if you're arrested in San Francisco or Los Angeles, you may end up getting drug treatment

00:39:05.500 in places like Bakersfield or Fresno, where the rent is cheaper and you're not in the middle

00:39:10.140 of so much chaos.

00:39:12.620 Can you you because you mentioned in the book, Michael Foucault, an awful lot.

00:39:17.640 Um, I think I'm pronouncing that right.

00:39:20.660 Uh, Foucault, Foucault.

00:39:23.820 Michel Foucault.

00:39:24.960 Yeah, thank you.

00:39:26.060 Uh, sorry.

00:39:26.800 Foucault, yeah.

00:39:27.940 I know.

00:39:28.560 No, it's fine.

00:39:29.220 I know who he is on the surface.

00:39:31.440 I know enough.

00:39:32.760 Um, not a, not a likable guy, not a guy that you would want to hold up and say, hey, he's,

00:39:39.900 he's our man.

00:39:40.940 Um, but you return to this over and over in the book, um, and saying he's, it's his influence

00:39:49.140 all the way through.

00:39:50.680 Can you explain that?

00:39:53.340 Yeah, sure.

00:39:54.140 So this is a French historian.

00:39:56.360 His name is, yeah, it would be in English would be Michael Foucault, but it's Michel because

00:40:00.560 it's French Michel Foucault.

00:40:02.280 And Foucault is maybe the most influential intellectual of the last 50 years.

00:40:07.960 Um, he's taught in every major university in the United States.

00:40:11.540 He's a hero to most, many people on the left.

00:40:15.400 He was a, um, anarchist, meaning that Marxism and socialism were not radical enough for him.

00:40:22.300 Um, he wanted even more libertarian form of, of, of Marxism.

00:40:27.560 And the, Foucault's big idea is that really mental illness is a myth.

00:40:32.660 That's just a way of stigmatizing people that are different.

00:40:36.320 Um, that's a completely crazy idea.

00:40:39.580 We know mental illness is a thing. 0.68

00:40:41.260 Um, my aunt suffered from schizophrenia.

00:40:43.480 It often manifests that particular, uh, mental illness manifests when people are often in college.

00:40:49.800 It's a clear genetic environment interaction.

00:40:52.000 So the denial of it is really itself crazy.

00:40:55.260 He also was, he also condemned rehabilitation.

00:40:58.700 He condemned where we had got where we'd been going with prisons, which is to try to rehabilitate

00:41:03.500 prisoners, he viewed prisons and the criminal justice system in general, like many radical

00:41:09.820 left people do as basically a way that capitalism enforces its oppressive system on the people.

00:41:17.560 So he was a really toxic influence, um, on the way people think, the way the radical left

00:41:23.300 thinks, uh, he, his ideas helped to lead to basically emptying people out of mental hospitals

00:41:29.560 without any support system for them whatsoever.

00:41:31.820 So, so again, help me understand the thinking.

00:41:34.940 Cause it, I, I don't, you have a hard time.

00:41:41.240 Let me put it this way.

00:41:42.580 Kennedy said in like 1961, an error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it.

00:41:50.700 So there's all kinds of errors being made, but they're all being made into mistakes because

00:41:57.800 you have the evidence.

00:41:59.580 This does not work.

00:42:02.120 And then you have to say, okay, now it's intentional.

00:42:05.740 Now you are intending to do these things.

00:42:08.940 What is the attraction to these guys and, and to this philosophy and the attraction to,

00:42:14.880 to just let it go on and on and on with data piling up saying it doesn't work.

00:42:23.920 That's what they, so yeah, you have to, the conclusion is that that's what they want.

00:42:27.760 They want it not to work.

00:42:29.080 So, you know, the motivation for Foucault and the radical left is that they hate the system.

00:42:35.380 They think the system is the capitalist democratic system that we have.

00:42:39.840 And frankly, even though France is more socialistic than we are, even the French system was too

00:42:45.780 capitalist for them.

00:42:46.920 So they hate the system.

00:42:49.020 They think the system is responsible for creating victims.

00:42:52.020 They have in their minds, this romantic utopia.

00:42:55.780 And this really goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century.

00:43:00.620 So these are all marks in the 19th century.

00:43:03.080 So these are this radical tradition.

00:43:04.760 There's a utopia in the back of people's minds where there's a world that exists without any

00:43:11.120 suffering or any inequality.

00:43:14.620 And the current system is viewed as, as evil because there is inequality.

00:43:19.740 It's a part of, of our societies.

00:43:22.300 And so there it's coming from a really, it's coming from hatred.

00:43:26.340 You know, that's the emotion that, that it comes from.

00:43:30.200 I will say, wait, wait, wait, how does it come from hatred, hatred of the system, hatred

00:43:35.000 of inequality, hatred of what?

00:43:39.760 Yes.

00:43:40.400 So it would start in, I get, I get into some of this at the end of San Francisco because

00:43:45.200 I draw on some of the work of the psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, but basically, you know, it

00:43:49.020 starts with sadness at the cruelty of the world. 0.60

00:43:53.240 It then becomes a kind of anger and a kind of, you know, dumb ideology that blames all

00:43:59.720 the inequality and suffering of the world on something that we imagine to be a system. 0.92

00:44:04.020 It's based on a really dumb idea that there's some utopian alternative where under which 0.50

00:44:08.820 there would be none of the suffering or oppression. 0.91

00:44:11.780 And then it, and then it builds from there.

00:44:13.540 And so that you just get a kind of what I call victim ideology, which is a much broader

00:44:19.220 ideology than Marxism, which was really focused on workers.

00:44:22.840 It gets to basically the idea that there, you can categorize people in the world, real

00:44:27.740 people, you can categorize them as victims or oppressors and victims should be given

00:44:33.440 everything with no accountability or responsibility and oppressors should be punished and things

00:44:39.680 should be taken from them.

00:44:41.060 And so you end up with basically a denial of things in the real world.

00:44:45.460 I just got the most, the best email I've received so far after writing San Francisco was

00:44:49.820 from a psychologist who worked with the mentally ill in San Francisco for many decades.

00:44:55.320 And he said, the so-called homeless advocates, again, this is just radical left activists who

00:45:02.280 put themselves forward as defenders of the homeless.

00:45:05.480 He said they, they get up and they would basically defend the right of mentally ill, drug addicted 0.89

00:45:11.340 people to destroy themselves and destroy the system around them because they viewed it as

00:45:17.060 a, as an F you to the system.

00:45:19.700 They viewed it as a way to stick the middle finger to the system, which they hated.

00:45:23.180 But in that sense, Glenn, it's so sinister because what the radical left is doing, so-called

00:45:29.000 progressives are doing is that they're actually using people.

00:45:32.680 They're using people as means to an end. 0.85

00:45:35.660 And in the end is the destruction of Western civilization.

00:45:39.200 That's why they keep attacking institutions that you need to have a civilization, whether

00:45:45.400 it's mental hospitals or police stations or jails and prisons or universities.

00:45:51.060 These are things that you need to have a functioning civilization.

00:45:53.620 Or quite honestly, just the basic understanding of mankind.

00:45:59.960 It is so destructive to say you're a victim and you can only grow when I or my people take

00:46:10.100 care of these people and get them out of your way.

00:46:12.460 That is the most evil thing you can teach.

00:46:19.320 You have to teach people you can do anything.

00:46:23.800 And if you're just, you have to take the first step.

00:46:27.280 I can't take it for you.

00:46:28.780 You have to take it.

00:46:30.040 But I'll be there.

00:46:31.580 And you've got to stop blaming other people.

00:46:33.360 And just why?

00:46:34.640 Why are you in this situation?

00:46:36.440 Maybe it's bad luck.

00:46:37.600 Maybe you've done some bad choices.

00:46:39.880 But that's empowering.

00:46:41.240 And I look at the way the left talks about African-Americans and talks about homeless people

00:46:50.060 of color, the people on the border, Hispanics.

00:46:53.260 And I think, my gosh, I mean, who do you think you are, Mr. White politician, telling all of

00:47:01.920 these people what they need to do and what they need to do is for you to keep all of the

00:47:09.300 bad guys away from them because you know what their life is like.

00:47:13.400 It's awful.

00:47:16.740 People, the people in Chicago that have lost their children from gunfire. 0.99

00:47:24.820 I honestly, I would feel like the father who was, they tried to arrest and suck, sick the 0.86

00:47:31.300 FBI on, to the school board where his daughter was arrested.

00:47:39.460 And to cover what they had done, when he speaks out at the school board meeting, they make

00:47:45.140 him into the villain.

00:47:46.620 And at some point, you just say, you know what?

00:47:49.380 I can't, I can't do it anymore.

00:47:51.480 I can't do it.

00:47:52.360 They're, they are actually injuring while they're saying they're trying to help.

00:47:58.140 And they're doing it intentionally.

00:47:59.780 Yeah.

00:48:02.180 Yeah, you got it.

00:48:03.400 I think, look, I think most liberals, most progressives are, they don't understand.

00:48:10.000 They're, they're not sociopathic.

00:48:11.800 They're in the grip of a religion. 0.94

00:48:13.380 They're in the grip of believing themselves to be compassionate people.

00:48:17.360 But I do think there is a hardcore, uh, leadership here that is, uh, sociopathic in its view of people

00:48:25.420 as objects.

00:48:26.360 It's a dehumanizing ideology.

00:48:29.120 It's disempowering.

00:48:31.220 As you point out, it's absolutely power hungry because it's looking to use people as objects

00:48:36.500 in a power game.

00:48:37.360 It's looking to make people dependent on them and on the system that they, uh, that they

00:48:43.820 otherwise would condemn.

00:48:45.160 So I do, I did find many times in this work.

00:48:49.740 I, there were moments that were, I found them chilling when I would be speaking to the architects

00:48:55.260 of these policies and getting a sense of the ways in which they were really committed to

00:49:00.120 the ideology and really didn't seem to care very much about the actual human lives that

00:49:06.480 were being sacrificed.

00:49:07.440 Example.

00:49:08.280 But you're absolutely right.

00:49:09.940 What's that?

00:49:10.760 Example.

00:49:11.360 Oh, well, the biggest one, I mean, obviously this book is, is very concerned with, uh,

00:49:17.280 drug addicts who are basically being enabled to die on the streets.

00:49:21.460 But I think you point to the other one.

00:49:22.820 And I have three chapters in the book on homicides and we know that you can prevent homicides

00:49:28.620 with police.

00:49:29.540 It's just not that complicated.

00:49:31.000 And we know also, by the way, we now have seen it in 2015 and in 2020, this thing where

00:49:37.400 when you demonize the police, when you demand, when you cut the police, it has two effects.

00:49:43.140 The first effect is on the police themselves.

00:49:45.600 They withdraw from policing.

00:49:47.960 You know, policing is, is one of the things that I interviewed the best criminologists in

00:49:51.660 America, delightful people, totally clear about this.

00:49:55.680 Police, police, no criminals, like the criminals and the police.

00:49:59.440 It's just like in the Hollywood movies.

00:50:00.660 You know, they have a relationship.

00:50:02.100 They know who the likely killers are and they get up in their face.

00:50:06.300 They talk to them.

00:50:07.060 They interact with them.

00:50:07.980 They spend time with them.

00:50:09.400 And we know that that, that works to actually prevent.

00:50:13.400 It doesn't seem rational, but it prevents potential killers from killing people.

00:50:17.740 So when the police pull back, that results in homicides.

00:50:23.460 And also we know that when the criminals are emboldened, when they are told that the

00:50:28.180 system is against them, that the system is racist, system is out to get them, that the

00:50:32.480 system is evil, they're more likely to commit homicide.

00:50:35.860 So this is something that's called the Ferguson effect, because after the Ferguson shooting and

00:50:41.200 protests that led to Black Lives Matter protests in 2015, we saw an increase in homicides that

00:50:47.000 was spectacularly confirmed in 2020, tragically confirmed in 2020.

00:50:51.440 We've now seen homicides rise 30% in the United States as a whole, rose almost, rose 50% or

00:50:57.640 more, 60% it rose in Portland, it rose 30% in Oakland.

00:51:03.280 So we're sacrificing African-Americans. 1.00

00:51:05.860 And it's not just young men, it's also kids getting shot, it's people, it's bystanders 0.87

00:51:11.180 being killed.

00:51:12.360 And so the radical left is sacrificing African-Americans on the altar of a radical anti-police, anti-civilization 0.98

00:51:22.400 agenda. 0.99

00:51:23.060 It's absolutely depraved. 0.96

00:51:25.160 It's despicable.

00:51:26.440 I can't use strong enough words to denounce the anti-policing movement.

00:51:31.720 There's nothing progressive or liberal about it in the best senses of those terms.

00:51:35.080 It's totally radical.

00:51:37.260 Everybody, I came away from doing the research for San Francisco being like, everybody should

00:51:41.400 be pro-police.

00:51:43.040 Like, police are just good.

00:51:44.540 The more police you have, the evidence is overwhelming.

00:51:46.760 The more police you have, the less crime you have.

00:51:48.860 And the less crime, it's not just that that's good in and of itself, but if you're worried

00:51:52.580 about mass incarceration, as I am, I don't want a lot of people to go to prison that shouldn't

00:51:56.780 go to prison.

00:51:57.780 But if you're worried about mass incarceration, then you should be pro-police, because police

00:52:02.340 are what prevent crimes from occurring in the first place.

00:52:06.760 So let's talk about the end of the book.

00:52:09.020 You talk a little bit about the conservatives and what they can do and also like to know

00:52:14.260 what we've done wrong.

00:52:16.320 What is turning people like you off that we've got to stop doing?

00:52:20.720 Well, I think the first thing, and by the way, I interviewed the best conservative minds

00:52:27.660 on this issue.

00:52:28.580 I interviewed Christopher Rufo, who's now a celebrity because he's almost single-handedly

00:52:32.860 taken down critical race theory.

00:52:35.220 Before Chris went after critical race theory, he was a brilliant journalist documenting the

00:52:41.500 drug addiction crisis, the open drug scenes that we mislabel homelessness, which is a propaganda

00:52:46.980 word.

00:52:47.560 I interviewed Chris Rufo, I interviewed scholars with the Manhattan Institute, which

00:52:52.340 is a very thoughtful and important center-right think tank in New York.

00:52:57.020 The first thing is just that I think Republicans and conservatives need to have an urban agenda.

00:53:02.560 You know, Giuliani is the major figure here.

00:53:04.820 So whatever you think of Giuliani today, Giuliani obviously as mayor of New York, really cleaned

00:53:10.000 it up, shut down the open drug scenes, allowed for the redevelopment of bad neighborhoods,

00:53:16.120 of bad areas.

00:53:18.200 So there is a tradition here, but I think a lot of conservatives have kind of withdrawn,

00:53:23.540 you know, and even moderates.

00:53:25.900 People just leave.

00:53:26.900 They just check out.

00:53:27.940 They kind of look down on cities.

00:53:30.360 And I get it.

00:53:31.300 I live in the suburbs, and I love the suburbs.

00:53:33.820 But we need cities because cities are places of innovation.

00:53:37.340 It's often where people go in their 20s before they have a family or kids to do business.

00:53:42.120 They work really hard.

00:53:43.380 It's a social environment.

00:53:44.500 It's very important for entrepreneurialism and innovation.

00:53:47.200 So the first thing is just to care about cities and have an agenda for cities.

00:53:51.180 I think the second thing is we've got to get beyond this dumb libertarianism.

00:53:55.880 I'm a big advocate, as you know, Glenn, of free markets.

00:53:58.780 In Apocalypse Never, I defend markets as important for sending the price signal for resource scarcity.

00:54:04.580 They promote innovation.

00:54:05.680 So I think markets are of huge importance.

00:54:07.920 But there's some things for which there's no market.

00:54:09.940 There's no market for treating people with schizophrenia.

00:54:13.780 You just have to treat them.

00:54:15.580 You know, my aunt had schizophrenia, and she had a pretty darn good life for somebody with

00:54:19.860 that particular mental illness, which is a pretty devastating mental illness.

00:54:24.120 There's just not – this is not – so a person with schizophrenia is not the same thing

00:54:28.920 as somebody who is a 25-year-old who just got addicted to heroin.

00:54:32.500 They need two separate things.

00:54:34.700 But so I think we have to get beyond the idea that there's a libertarian or a free market

00:54:38.560 solution to some of these mental illnesses.

00:54:41.120 They're going to be covered by – at least the hard – the severe mental illnesses are

00:54:44.680 going to be covered by taxpayers.

00:54:46.360 That doesn't mean that we shouldn't require things of people because even people with pretty

00:54:50.500 serious mental illnesses can do things.

00:54:52.680 In fact, they want to do things.

00:54:53.880 They want to be – they want their lives to have purpose and meaning and value.

00:54:57.200 But again, that's not something that is obviously – it's going to be a market provision.

00:55:01.960 And it's – there's going to be a role for government there.

00:55:04.320 So it means that the role for government should be smart.

00:55:07.000 It shouldn't just be what we're doing now.

00:55:09.720 What we're doing now in progressive cities is, as I've been describing, just giving people

00:55:13.680 things with no obligation.

00:55:15.760 And so I think the main thing conservatives can do is come in here and focus back on the

00:55:20.400 basics.

00:55:21.340 You need carrots and sticks.

00:55:22.700 When I asked the main character in my book who's a social worker in the Netherlands who

00:55:27.460 was responsible for helping to shut down the open drug scenes, the open drug markets,

00:55:31.880 he says, you need carrots and sticks.

00:55:33.960 The social workers and the police should work together.

00:55:37.240 You know, if you – one of the things that the progressives have done that they went too

00:55:41.920 far on is they wouldn't have sent social workers by themselves without a police officer

00:55:46.160 to respond to calls around somebody with mental illness and a state of psychosis often.

00:55:51.740 But often those – 90 percent of those situations are potentially dangerous.

00:55:55.880 So you really need police with social workers together.

00:56:00.060 It seems obvious, but that is a radical idea for progressives.

00:56:03.620 And I think in the past, conservatives just haven't spent a lot of time thinking about

00:56:07.680 it.

00:56:08.200 So I think we need to get back to basics.

00:56:11.140 Carrots and sticks.

00:56:12.460 Police and social workers break up the open-air drug scenes.

00:56:16.380 Shelter first.

00:56:17.200 Treatment first.

00:56:17.940 Housing earned.

00:56:18.620 That's the success sequence that we need for the cities.

00:56:22.800 I have to tell you, I think if – I think a lot of conservatives would be for that if

00:56:30.460 you included workfare, that there was – you have to take responsibility.

00:56:38.320 If, you know, if you need a place to stay, great.

00:56:41.200 The minute you start running it down, you're out, you know, that you've got to take care

00:56:46.800 of things.

00:56:47.220 You have to earn your way.

00:56:50.200 And if that was part of – I mean, because how many people – how many kids have become

00:56:57.540 suicidal because they've been at home for the last two years?

00:57:01.980 They haven't had anything to do.

00:57:05.020 And, you know, you sit around and do nothing.

00:57:07.660 It destroys – there is something about hard work, you know.

00:57:12.540 Even for me, I go out and I work on a fence or I actually do physical labor.

00:57:19.060 It's invigorating compared to even just mental behavior or labor.

00:57:24.000 But when you have neither mental labor or physical labor, you just waste away.

00:57:30.460 You waste away.

00:57:31.400 And there's no self-esteem.

00:57:33.180 Absolutely.

00:57:34.220 100% agree.

00:57:35.600 100% agree.

00:57:36.620 We all need physical labor.

00:57:38.680 I mean, this is where – this is obvious.

00:57:40.780 I mean – and so, yes, it's bad for people.

00:57:44.300 It's bad for self-esteem to be given things that you did not earn.

00:57:47.900 We know this.

00:57:48.680 It's also true for raising children.

00:57:50.840 Children should be involved in keeping the classroom clean.

00:57:53.500 You know, one of the things that I noticed in Japan is that the kids were heavily involved in maintaining the classrooms and doing physical labor.

00:58:02.040 Same thing for homeless shelters. 0.96

00:58:04.440 Same thing for the – you know, I saw mentally ill people, they want to have a purpose too.

00:58:10.240 Everybody does.

00:58:10.780 Everybody does.

00:58:11.560 Maybe they can't – they can't – you know, not everybody has to be a computer programmer.

00:58:16.880 But everybody should be involved in keeping where they live clean.

00:58:20.380 Everybody should be involved in keeping where they live clean and orderly.

00:58:24.500 You know, one of the most beautiful books ever written on homelessness was written about guys that maintained their drug habit.

00:58:30.600 They were all addicts.

00:58:31.760 But they did it by collecting aluminum cans and bottles.

00:58:34.480 They would describe how it gave them a high that was much more lasting and much deeper than the high they got from drugs.

00:58:41.160 There's no reason that we should not be doing that for everybody who is getting care at the taxpayer dime.

00:58:49.620 And, Glenn, I would even go further.

00:58:50.880 I think maybe you've introduced this idea into the culture, which is this idea of national service.

00:58:56.780 I just – I see what happens in Israel.

00:58:58.640 I think one of the reasons Israelis get such good training is that they do – they are required to do some kind of national service.

00:59:05.280 Glenn, in California, we have a lot of forests that have been badly managed and maintained.

00:59:09.640 No.

00:59:09.940 We should have some kind of service for – yeah.

00:59:13.040 Of course, all blamed on climate change.

00:59:15.220 Yeah.

00:59:15.340 The real issue is that we haven't maintained our forests.

00:59:17.440 There's plenty of work for young people to do.

00:59:20.040 Right.

00:59:20.680 But getting the ability to go into those forests and just clean the underbrush, only take things that are dead, you'd never get the permission to do that.

00:59:30.460 You'd never get the permission to do that.

00:59:33.840 Well, I – well, let's disagree on that part of it.

00:59:37.280 I have – I'm a bit more – I keep some of my idealism – I like to think of myself as a practical idealist or as an idealistic pragmatist.

00:59:46.880 I do think that the public wants it, and yes, the radical left doesn't want it.

00:59:52.760 But we're still talking about 70 to 80 percent of the public that support all of these things, including some kind of work requirement, including an abstinence requirement.

01:00:02.580 If you're going to get your own apartment at the taxpayer subsidy, you should have to earn it through abstinence, through making progress on your personal plan, which in every case has to include work.

01:00:12.340 This is something that the Dutch and the Portuguese are very clear about.

01:00:15.580 Work is essential to building up our character and our self-esteem and a big part of recovery from addiction.

01:00:24.020 Well, music to my ears.

01:00:25.740 Michael, thank you so much.

01:00:27.460 We'll talk again.

01:00:28.460 The name of the book is Sam Francisco.

01:00:32.240 I know that I've learned a ton.

01:00:36.540 I can't wait to read it myself.

01:00:38.680 Thank you so much, Michael.

01:00:39.600 Thanks for having me, Glenn.

01:00:47.480 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:00:54.620 We'll see you next time.

01:00:58.420 Bye.

01:00:59.420 Bye.

01:01:00.500 Bye.

01:01:01.140 Bye.

01:01:02.800 Bye.

01:01:03.060 Bye.

01:01:04.960 Bye.

01:01:05.940 Bye.

01:01:06.940 Bye.

01:01:08.180 Bye.

01:01:10.520 Bye.

01:01:11.240 Bye.

01:01:12.980 Bye.

01:01:13.360 Bye.

01:01:13.400 Bye.

01:01:13.560 Bye.

01:01:13.900 Bye.

01:01:14.800 Bye.

01:01:16.640 Bye.

01:01:16.760 Bye.

01:01:16.940 Bye.

01:01:18.880 Bye.

01:01:18.940 Pa.

01:01:20.780 Bye.

01:01:21.000 Bye.

01:01:21.080 Bye.

01:01:21.980 Bye.

01:01:22.660 Bye.

01:01:22.960 Bye.

01:01:23.000 Bye.

01:01:23.020 Bye.

01:01:23.700 Bye.

01:01:23.760 Uh.

The Glenn Beck Program - October 23, 2021

Ep 122 ｜ Why the Radical Left Is DESTROYING Our Cities ｜ Michael Shellenberger ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript