The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 140 ｜ We Paid for a College Cult INVASION of Society ｜ Peter Boghossian

00:00:00.000 Today I want to reintroduce you to one of really truly my favorite people on earth.

00:00:06.360 He is fascinating to talk to because he's real. Cancel culture has invaded every aspect of our

00:00:13.380 lives and it's an attempt to make people and their ideas just disappear. But not everybody

00:00:19.940 gives in and not everybody goes away. Sometimes they end up reinventing themselves like today's

00:00:25.280 guest. He was one of the first people to introduce me to the phrase cancel culture several years ago

00:00:31.360 on this podcast. He first gained praise and notoriety for the grievance studies affair.

00:00:38.440 It's a series of hoax of academic papers that you should check out if you haven't already.

00:00:43.820 It's amazing. And because of that, his life went into overdrive. He escaped academia. He is very

00:00:50.780 liberal. I don't policies we've never talked about. I'm sure we disagree on a ton of policies.

00:00:58.280 But we agree on principles. And he escaped and people all over the world wanted to know how

00:01:05.320 professors like this guest made me believe there is hope for college campuses. This conversation

00:01:13.820 may change that a little. Sadly, the students at the university where he taught in Oregon,

00:01:19.620 you can guess where, didn't like his devotion to intellectual curiosity and critical thinking.

00:01:26.280 He was harassed, heckled, threatened endlessly. He and his family have been terrorized. Last year,

00:01:32.740 he resigned as an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State, where he had taught for over a

00:01:38.600 decade. He posted a letter on Barry Weiss's substack where he detailed the death of ideas in the university

00:01:45.060 in exchange for ideology. But he has not backed down. He has refused to be disappeared. He joined forces

00:01:55.620 with powerhouse free thinkers like Ion Hirsi Ali, Jonathan Haidt, and Arthur Brooks, all of them friends of

00:02:05.800 mine. He was going to reimagine the university system. And they came out together with a new university,

00:02:14.120 an alternative to the social justice factories that claim to be colleges. Today, we are this a

00:02:22.540 fascinating conversation. And it includes just about everything, including should you send your kids

00:02:30.020 to college and so much more. This is a must listen all the way through. Please welcome Peter Boghossian.

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00:03:56.180 slash Glenn.

00:04:09.400 Welcome back. Thank you. So glad you're here. Thank you.

00:04:12.320 I don't even know what we call it. CRT is not even big enough for this. Whatever's happening to us as a

00:04:21.260 culture, I feel as though it's pretty easy to mark what's happening in our universities, especially as a

00:04:31.320 cult. There's right, there's indoctrination, they separate you from your family or friends, anybody who

00:04:37.820 disagrees. There's rituals, they shame you. Correct. We just, I just put out a series from Dr. Lyle Asher

00:04:44.760 about why colleges are becoming cults. Wow. But, but I interrupted you. No, go ahead. I just wanted to

00:04:50.720 talk about that. I'm sorry. I didn't know you had. No. So is that, is that the thing, is that what you've

00:04:56.820 been thinking about? No, I want to talk to you about something else I've said right before we went on.

00:05:02.760 Okay. Yeah. So, so, um, you cannot understand the problem that we have in our culture in this moment

00:05:10.220 without understanding colleges of education and teacher training programs. If I gave you a wand

00:05:16.220 and you wave the wand and all wokeism, critical social justice, all this madness, this divisive

00:05:22.900 racial CRT, everything just instantly evaporated from schools. You'd probably be thinking, Oh, this is

00:05:28.020 great. We have nothing to worry about. Well, you'd be gravely mistaken. And the reason for that is that

00:05:34.400 I can't just go in and teach in a K through 12 school system. You can't just go in and teach. So

00:05:40.920 you have to get credentialed through colleges of education. Correct. Those are all based upon

00:05:46.520 Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed, which is a book, which later, um, the basic idea is to

00:05:52.300 develop critical, a critical consciousness, critical methods. It's not about the truth. It's about,

00:05:58.100 it's not, it's also not, uh, if racism took place, it's how it took place. And so unless we change

00:06:06.100 the colleges of education, we're stuck because our school systems are just going to repopulate with

00:06:12.460 people who have been indoctrinated. And so I've always thought the, the education that I've won,

00:06:18.880 I'm a self-taught guy. Um, I went, you know, for one semester to college when I was 30,

00:06:25.240 I had to stop cause I couldn't afford it. Um, that's too bad. But, uh, I didn't want to be taught

00:06:31.600 what to think. I wanted to be taught how to think, how, what is critical, um, uh, you know,

00:06:40.160 critical thought. How, how do you question things critically to be able to find and balance everything?

00:06:46.820 And I don't think anyone has any idea of how to do that anymore.

00:06:51.960 So I've been doing this for well over a quarter century, writing about it, reading about it,

00:06:57.420 et cetera. And I'll just, I'll distill it down. And if there was like a unified field theory of

00:07:01.880 critical thinking, I'll tell you what I think it is. So there's a skillset and an attitude.

00:07:06.280 The skillset's pretty easy to learn, you know, analyze, explain, make inferences. Like if you see

00:07:12.620 numbers, like draw conclusions from that, but that's not genuine critical thing. If you genuinely

00:07:21.760 want to think critically about something, it's an attitude. And I would summarize it in, in one

00:07:29.040 thing. This is not me. This is the, uh, it's called the Adelphi report from the American

00:07:33.580 Philosophical Association. It's a willingness to revise your beliefs. Yes. That's what it is. Yes.

00:07:40.080 So that's really frightening. That's right. It's terrifying. That's what it is.

00:07:44.720 Actually live your life that way. Yeah. In some ways it's terrifying. Right. So, so it is scary

00:07:51.280 and we have a culture now. Yes, it starts in the universities, but it's ubiquitous throughout our

00:07:57.960 culture in which people who have disagreements about something shouldn't talk to each other.

00:08:02.420 Right. And we're shamed. Like I put a tweet, you know, what should we talk about Glenn Beck?

00:08:06.500 And someone's like, you know, I'm so disappointed in you or whatever. Like, like, what are you

00:08:10.880 talking about? Like, okay. So if you want any potential to find truth in your life, you

00:08:18.340 have to listen to people and talk to people with whom you disagree. There's just simply

00:08:22.500 no other. The problem is also if you don't, you become arrogant. What you're saying to me

00:08:28.860 is I have no value at all for you intellectually or in any, anyway, or anyway. Right. So, so

00:08:37.300 this idea, think about how arrogant that is, that not only does someone know, like I know

00:08:42.660 the truth. It's, it's like, okay, if you don't want to speak to someone, not you, if someone

00:08:47.060 doesn't want to speak, don't speak to them. But who are you to tell me not to speak to somebody?

00:08:52.860 Right. That's, it's like offense by proxy or you shouldn't talk to them. No. So that's

00:08:57.300 the division, but back to the critical thinking piece. So the reason the problem in, in, well,

00:09:03.620 there are many problems in academia, but part of the problem is that it's very easy to test

00:09:08.280 kids on, you know, like A, B, C, D, E, you know, you just, you know, if P then Q, Q

00:09:15.200 what's P, whatever. But it's very hard, if not impossible to test them on whether or not

00:09:19.620 they've changed their mind. Do they have the attitude of belief revision? Are they trustful

00:09:24.080 of reason? Like it, because they, there's just no way to test that. So we ignore that

00:09:29.340 whole component and we focus on what it is. It is. Look, this is a mind blow to me. When

00:09:37.280 I figured this out, it is actually better that you don't develop the skills of critical thinking

00:09:44.000 like analysis, inference, explanation, sir. It's actually better if you don't do that, if

00:09:48.160 you don't have the attitude, here's why. Because if you're not willing to change your beliefs

00:09:52.560 and you have all these, you develop the skills, you're just going to deepen the beliefs that

00:09:58.940 you have. So you could, you, it's like running down a rabbit hole where you become more convinced

00:10:05.380 of something. And that's the other thing. It's like conviction, convinced. Like we have

00:10:09.980 this idea that, oh, he's a man of conviction. He's, you know, well, no, I don't, I don't,

00:10:14.780 a man of conviction or a woman of conviction to me translates as there's a person who is not

00:10:19.900 willing to revise their beliefs on the basis of evidence.

00:10:21.840 Yeah.

00:10:22.560 I want to talk to you a little bit about relief factor. Relief factor is something that my

00:10:27.780 wife was like, I'm not going to listen to you whine anymore. And I'm like, with that

00:10:31.800 voice, really? You won't listen to me? She sounds exactly like that too. Anyway, she said,

00:10:37.420 you know, I'm not going to listen to you whine about pain anymore unless you try everything.

00:10:44.420 And I, I thought I had tried everything, but I wasn't going to do something that I'm seeing

00:10:49.380 some dope like me on television or radio talking about. That's not going to work.

00:10:54.600 So I started taking it and I went on vacation and it was over the Christmas holiday. This about

00:11:00.300 four years ago, I've lost track of time, long time ago. Uh, and I stopped taking it after three

00:11:06.460 weeks cause I was stubborn. It's not working for me when I stopped taking it. I realized,

00:11:10.500 oh no, it really was working for me and it has only gotten better since I still take it three

00:11:16.120 times a day. It's relief factor. Try it for three weeks cause I'm not going to listen to you whine.

00:11:21.960 70% of the people who try it go on to order more relief factor.com.

00:11:28.440 So this will bring me right to a question that I don't know. Maybe, uh, you know, maybe is best

00:11:36.160 left private usually, but I think a lot of people are like me and they're feeling this way and I

00:11:41.340 cannot square the circle on something. Okay. Usually when I, when I first, you know, 30, I sobered up

00:11:47.580 and I realized I'm a dummy and I would take, I went to the bookstore and the library and I would

00:11:54.300 get the people that I knew would disagree the most and I'd read them and then I'd start narrowing it

00:11:58.940 in on all subjects. And I took everything out. And when I said, okay, I think this is true. I would put

00:12:06.000 it back in me, but then I would compare it to the other things I believe. And when, if they were, if they

00:12:12.520 were coming up against each other, I had one of them wrong. Right. Okay. Correct. This is regarding,

00:12:19.740 and I know you're an atheist, um, but you're a man of reason. And I, I don't think God believes

00:12:26.860 in blindfolded fear. Um, he's, he's the ultimate scientist. So, um, right now, um, uh, I think a lot

00:12:39.880 of people have this problem. If let's say you have a family mother, a family member that is gay

00:12:46.060 and you're deeply Christian. Okay. Okay. Okay. Many family members are gay. Okay. We're going to add

00:12:52.580 that component. Okay. Um, okay. I have always been like, I don't, I don't care. Right. Okay. I don't

00:12:58.920 care. I'm, I've always been for gay marriage. I just don't think the government should be involved

00:13:03.640 in any way. You marry who you want. You're supportive of Dave Ruler. Yeah. Big time. I love him.

00:13:09.880 I love him. Um, you know, let's use him as an example. Okay. We just had a conversation. It was

00:13:16.080 very controversial, I guess. Um, because people couldn't handle the fact that both of us said,

00:13:23.600 you know, I said, Dave, I'm, I'm, I'm uncomfortable with, cause I know what families are the ultimate

00:13:30.560 family, what we should be shooting for. And I know that there's also lots of children that need to be

00:13:35.200 adopted. And now, now the two surrogate moms, two guys at the same time, this violates everything

00:13:43.860 that I think I know. Okay. But I love you and I don't have the answer and I don't, I'm not judging

00:13:51.280 you when it comes to, uh, when it comes to homosexuality, I believe you're born that way.

00:13:58.660 Okay. No question. No question. I don't know anyone, uh, Bruce Jenner. I, he felt this way

00:14:06.220 his whole life. He felt like he was a woman. Right. So just, just the question is, when did

00:14:11.940 you choose to be straight? I didn't choose to be straight. You didn't choose. Nobody chose to be

00:14:15.780 straight. Correct. But I do, I will, I will say, I think that's a little bit of a red herring to a

00:14:21.300 certain extent, because even if someone did choose it, I don't see what the problem is. But then again,

00:14:26.120 I'm not, I don't have like a structure that I'm, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to talk

00:14:32.000 to you about because I talked to liberal friends and they just immediately go bigot. Right. I'm not

00:14:38.540 bigoted. Right. I really am not. I'm trying to stay true to what the things that I believe are true

00:14:45.140 in my faith. Okay. And my faith will tell me family is this. Okay. Well, I know that. And I agree with

00:14:54.440 that, but I also know Christ teaches me love everybody. Right. Everybody, no matter what

00:15:00.340 they're doing, you love them. I know that I love my children. Right. My children come out as whatever.

00:15:08.640 I'm not condemning them. Never. Never. Wouldn't change your love for them. Would not change my love

00:15:14.200 for them at all. And I hope it wouldn't change the way you treat them. No, of course not. Right. Of course

00:15:19.600 not. Okay. Here's where I'm struggling. Yeah. I'm struggling with if I believe this, okay. But I

00:15:30.640 also can't, I know God doesn't make mistakes. If you're born that way, that's his doing, not anybody

00:15:36.900 else's. You know what I mean? Right. So who am I to say, but he also says, this is wrong. Okay.

00:15:43.500 I can't square that circle. So I, so I just say, I don't know. I don't know. I know I believe these

00:15:54.620 things, but I also know it's my duty to love unconditionally love and not treat anyone any

00:16:04.060 differently. And that's not acceptable to people who don't have faith. They immediately say, well,

00:16:13.180 you're just bigoted. It's like, no, I'm really struggling. Right. And so I guess I'm, I'm

00:16:18.940 curious. Why, why does their opinion matter to you?

00:16:26.160 If it's a family member. Oh, okay. So it's not just random people on Twitter. I don't care

00:16:32.640 about those people. So it's something good. Yeah. So, um,

00:16:37.320 so you're, I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. So you're, you're struggling

00:16:43.400 with the idea. I wasn't expecting this conversation. I know, I know, I know. I'm not struggling

00:16:48.340 with the, I'm not struggling with the idea of where I've landed. Right. Okay. I'm uncomfortable.

00:16:54.620 I can't square circles, but I can't square that circle. And you know, I think we should talk

00:16:59.540 about that squared circle too. But so there's a family member who was upset with you because

00:17:04.520 of the fact that I won't give up my faith that I won't reject my faith that this is that,

00:17:14.440 that I've, I've come to a place where I said, I can't answer that. I don't know. Right. So

00:17:19.500 why are they, why, why are they upset with you? If the faith is a personal thing for them? I think

00:17:24.480 it's more of a kind of this era thing. You're either all in or you're out. And I don't find that

00:17:34.660 reasonable. Uh, you know, it's not reasonable because the belief wasn't formed on the base of

00:17:40.820 reason. It's one of the base of something else. And so, and does that make it less? Does that make

00:17:50.460 it invalid for people who actually believe it? I can't just change, you know, it's, it is a hardcore,

00:18:01.440 hard fought faith that I have. You know, I did my, I'm not just an average person that just went,

00:18:08.680 I'm this, I was born this, I was raised this way. I wasn't. Okay. So, so let's, let's work through

00:18:14.180 this. So let's start with the, the assumption, which I think is true that you've thought about

00:18:17.880 this and you've worked, you've genuinely, um, you love the truth and I know that about you.

00:18:24.140 Yeah. And you're willing to change your mind if you think something is incorrect, even if the

00:18:29.420 consequences are social shaming or stigma. It doesn't matter. Right. So I, I've said this,

00:18:35.680 if, if I don't care what it is, the most foundational thing of me, if you can show me that God does not

00:18:44.860 exist and it's clear, I'm out. Okay. Okay. So, so I, I'm, I'm having, I'm struggling with the fact

00:18:54.740 with, with why, I don't understand why you're, so you've, you can't square the circle. I'm struggling.

00:19:00.200 So you're fine. You're fine with that, but you're not fine with a family member who doesn't accept

00:19:06.300 something about you. I am. I feel, uh, it's so weird because no one in the family is judging

00:19:17.680 the person who's gay. Right. They're judging you. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. They're judging me

00:19:22.960 for saying, no, I still believe this. I believe in the family and the nuclear family. And I believe

00:19:29.000 that's the fundamental building block of the universe. That said, I don't have a problem.

00:19:35.420 Why, why do you think sincere people should be judged like that? I mean, if you're a sincere

00:19:39.820 person, which you are, and you've really thought about your beliefs, then I don't understand why,

00:19:44.900 why isn't it just a disagreement in our book, how to have impossible conversation, but let friends

00:19:49.100 be wrong. I know. So why don't they just let you be wrong? I don't know. And I think there's,

00:19:54.320 and this is what bothers me is I thought maybe I'm missing something, but I think what I, the only

00:20:00.340 thing that I can come up with is this is a societal norm. Now you either accept it or you're out part

00:20:08.900 of the cult. You lose family members over things. We should never have this argument. You should never

00:20:14.980 judge me for any more than I could say, because I've said it, you don't have faith in this. Okay.

00:20:24.140 You don't have faith in anything. Right. Okay. So it's easy for you to change these long held

00:20:32.700 societal beliefs because all you have to do is go, yeah, well that makes sense. X, Y, Z.

00:20:38.800 But you have an overarching moral structure. Correct.

00:20:41.660 So, so we got two issues. We got the squaring the circle one, and thank you for talking to me

00:20:46.940 about this. I, um, I appreciate that. That's a, it's kind of an honor to help you think through

00:20:52.860 this stuff. You are, you are an honest and bright man. And you know, I don't know if you,

00:20:59.200 I don't know why I'm getting emotional on this, but one of the first things that I either asked you

00:21:05.080 or you asked me was, would you be willing to change your belief in God or, you know, in that there

00:21:12.120 was no God, if it could, I don't think it could be proven, but if it could be proven and we both

00:21:16.460 answered, of course, absolutely. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's, that's the kids call it

00:21:22.680 base. Now that's based, you know, that's, um, so, okay. So if somebody is a sincere person and they

00:21:29.640 did their best to arrive at their beliefs and they considered other beliefs, it would seem to me that

00:21:34.840 somebody, the person with whom you have, the person who has a problem with you, that's on them.

00:21:41.380 That's not on you. I mean, it's totally on them. So I don't know. I understand why it bothers you

00:21:48.900 from an emotional point of view, because I don't even want to know who this person is. Maybe you

00:21:52.840 live with them or what have you. But what I, what I don't understand is if you're sincere,

00:21:57.660 you're bulletproof, you're totally bulletproof. Yeah. I guess maybe I tie it into the overall

00:22:04.700 direction and, you know, knowing this person my whole life and them knowing their whole

00:22:11.240 life, it's like, really? Did you ask them why they just can't let you be wrong?

00:22:17.820 No. Yeah. No, I didn't. And I think because I was so hurt by it, I was like, you know me,

00:22:26.980 you know me, you know? Yeah. Um, it, it, from total outsider, it seems that this is their issue

00:22:35.700 and it's not your issue. And if you're honest and you're thought, and again, if, if something

00:22:41.220 is wrong with you, I always say to people, this is if something is wrong with my reasoning,

00:22:45.740 let me know. If I've, if, if, if, well, that's where it gets into it. Well, the reasoning

00:22:50.920 okay. Well, that stops here. Like, okay. If you're a religious person, you're expected

00:22:56.680 just to dismiss that because there's no reason. There's a lot of thought. I, okay. So, so

00:23:04.400 here's my, so in the Gorgias, Socrates says it is better to, uh, be refuted than it is to

00:23:10.700 refute. So going back to the first issue of, um, about squaring the circle, um, there are

00:23:19.140 different interpretations of the Bible. There are different physical copies. There is a kind

00:23:23.720 of, uh, presumed arrogance with this person knowing, not only knowing, um, what the truth

00:23:31.780 is, but knowing, but, but believing that if you're kind of out of alignment with their

00:23:36.560 personal interpretation that somehow you are, it's a moral failing on your part. I guess

00:23:42.560 the other question is, are you willing to let that relationship go? No, you're not willing

00:23:47.760 to let it go. No, no. Family is forever. You have it. No, no, not your gay, the other

00:23:56.260 person, the person who. No, family is forever. Okay. Okay. Both sides. And you sat down and

00:24:01.420 talked to them. Yeah. And I am, I believe we just have to always find our weight. Family

00:24:08.580 is family. You don't have it, you know, as long as everyone is honest. My father used

00:24:15.360 to say we can tolerate anything as a family except for lies. Right. You know what I mean?

00:24:19.700 As long as everybody is honest and really, truly seeking the truth, there's nothing that

00:24:25.840 could pull us apart. Right. Ever. So bottom line I would say is you have to have a conversation

00:24:32.620 about them. So I wouldn't frame it in terms of you letting them be wrong. Uh, you have,

00:24:38.060 I mean, again, this is from an outsider's point of view. You have your relationship with God

00:24:41.700 and your interpretation of scripture, et cetera. And that's what you've come to as a thoughtful,

00:24:46.920 sincere, honest person. And so they need to let you be wrong as you're on your own journey.

00:24:52.280 And if they can't do that, well, yeah, I would, I would, I would ask like, is this a deal breaker

00:24:56.920 for the relationship? That's an odd deal breaker for usually like pedophilia would be a deal breaker

00:25:01.340 or like murdering someone would be a deal breaker. We're kind of getting into this, uh, kind of going

00:25:06.960 down this road where, you know, I hate to say the slippery slope, but we're at the slippery slope

00:25:13.120 here where, okay, it's about love. It's about this. Okay. Now it's about my kindergartner and you're

00:25:20.060 teaching them what, right? I mean, my kindergartner is not even thinking about that stuff and I don't

00:25:24.760 want them thinking about that stuff. Let it be a kid. Right. So that gets back to what we started

00:25:29.640 talking about in the beginning of the conversation is what's the purpose of education. Right. And now

00:25:35.140 the ethos, the dominant, the dominant moral orthodoxy is you teach to overcome oppression.

00:25:42.340 You no longer teach for the truth. So that's when you understand that frame, you understand why all the

00:25:48.560 CRT stuff in school, why the gender ideology in school, it's not about truth. Okay. So, so,

00:25:53.660 so help me out. So they think, they think they've already found the truth, so they don't seek it.

00:25:57.540 So, right. So they want to, they want to teach people, but I interrupted you. Okay. So, so,

00:26:01.520 so help me out on this because this goes right, right on that. Um, if you believe that people are

00:26:09.520 born this way, let's talk transgenderism. Okay. You know that, I mean, when did you decide you liked

00:26:14.740 women? Assuming you do. I do. Yeah. And you didn't decide. I've never made a decision. And you knew it

00:26:21.240 when you knew it, right? I knew it when I knew it. Okay. So if you know it, when you are whatever age,

00:26:28.760 um, then if you, if you apply hormone therapy right away, then that hormone therapy is so much

00:26:40.560 better at that time. You shut things down, but if you do it, you can never turn it back on.

00:26:46.420 Okay. So that's okay. So those are two different things. Andrew Sullivan, uh, the author says he

00:26:52.760 doesn't even, the writer, he doesn't even know why the T is in the LGB. And if you read Abra,

00:26:58.040 Abigail Schreier's book or Deborah So's book, there's a kind of clustering effect with transgenderism.

00:27:03.320 My, my daughter told me something very interesting. She, she told me that people pretend to be trans

00:27:09.080 to fit in. And that just blew my mind. That just totally blew my mind. So the question is,

00:27:15.400 so hang on just a second, because I believe, you know, now it's 30% of society is one of those

00:27:21.880 letters. That's what they say. Right. I don't buy into that. I do buy. I, you don't either.

00:27:27.500 All right. Um, well, I mean, it's the question is, is it because it's more acceptable that people

00:27:33.320 can come out and do that? Yeah. So, so the, the, here's, let me lay this out and then add

00:27:38.360 that to it and tell me what you think. Yeah. I don't believe 30, 33% is. I think that I don't

00:27:44.920 know what the number is, but I think you can't dismiss, especially teens wanting to fit in yet

00:27:54.100 wanting to be special, wanting to be light. You know what I mean? All that stuff that played in

00:27:59.740 all of our heads when we were that age, that's going to skew your special, your brave, you know,

00:28:07.260 you, you, you get a lot fighting the system. You're yes. You get a lot just by one of the

00:28:12.840 labor. And that hurts the people who are truly struggling with it. Right. So what is the truth

00:28:20.600 there? And how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we grab the reins and pull

00:28:26.120 this back? Not to, you know, Iran, nobody's gay in our country. That's ridiculous. How do we,

00:28:33.260 how do we find this truth? Well, you got two issues. You've, one is how do you figure out

00:28:45.000 what's the case? And I don't think it matters at all in terms of homosexuality. It's, but

00:28:50.260 it does matter in terms of trans, as you said, the age at which one transitions has a huge,

00:28:55.680 huge impact. And you cannot go back. Well, so that's the thing that I'd like to talk about

00:28:59.920 for a moment. You know, that in order to do a study in a university, you need to go through

00:29:04.240 this thing called the IRB and it's basically human subjects. It's, it's almost impossible

00:29:09.780 anywhere to get IRB approval on people who detransition. In other words, people who went

00:29:16.400 through the transition process, decided that they made a mistake and went back. And the

00:29:20.180 consequence of that is we are not studying those issues. Like we don't, we don't have a

00:29:24.720 body of knowledge. It's, it's just ideological and political. No one will give you approval

00:29:28.500 for that. Have you read, when's the last time you read Eisenhower's farewell speech?

00:29:31.740 I don't know if I've read Eisenhower's farewell speech. Read it. Really? Because, you know,

00:29:36.080 it's the industrial, you know, military industrial complex. He goes into the educational industrial

00:29:42.160 complex and he says, huge problem that almost no one's talking about. He says, if you don't

00:29:47.480 watch this, they're paying, the government's paying for the answers. And so it's no longer the

00:29:55.040 independent guy who's like, I don't know, would that work? Thinks about it, does it because he's

00:30:00.320 curious or something in his garage. It's all paid for now. Yeah. So, so, so we have, and that's the

00:30:07.800 problem with this going back. Well, yeah, well that's the part is the colleges of education.

00:30:11.880 That's a huge part of it. But you know, and we've talked about gender ideology and school systems.

00:30:18.060 We've talked about the don't say gay bill. We've talked about this. What's what we're really

00:30:22.480 talking about is an ideology being taught to kids. Now, why would an ideology need to be taught

00:30:29.940 to anybody? If you want to teach an ideology, if you want to teach a value, the only value

00:30:35.020 that you should teach is don't care about it. It's totally indifferent what your sexual preferences

00:30:41.240 to me, to this interview. It's totally irrelevant. It's like color. We were going in the right

00:30:46.520 direction with Martin Luther King. I don't care what color you are. Correct. We should be indifferent

00:30:52.020 to that. Right. And so if you want to teach a value, that's the value that should be, be

00:30:56.660 taught. But every, so this is, this is something I've thought about for a while. Every time you

00:31:01.300 teach a value to somebody or a value in a system, it's, it's certainly possible that you're undermining

00:31:10.160 truth. Like one of the things that we've seen in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives

00:31:14.320 is if you contradict those edicts, if you question them, if you have a problem with them, if you ask

00:31:21.920 for evidence about them, it's not merely that you're wrong, that you're missing a piece of

00:31:26.440 information. It's that you're a bad person. It's that you hate trans people. It's that you're

00:31:31.320 transphobic or homophobic. And so it's not enough to be non-racist. You have to be anti-racist.

00:31:41.440 That's correct. And when you look at what Kendi himself has said is the only way to remedy

00:31:46.540 past discrimination is future discrimination. That doesn't make any sense. That's, that's two

00:31:51.760 rights, two wrongs make a right. That's equity. That's equity. But people are just tossing this

00:31:57.280 word around equity, equity, equity. So that's the other thing. Imagine how crazy this is. Nobody ever

00:32:02.560 even do these events. I say, okay, five years ago, is anybody outside of a financial context? Of course,

00:32:07.680 anybody ever heard the word equity? Now, you know, my kid's room is important. Equity, equity,

00:32:13.840 equity. Every time you challenge or question the idea that this should be a value. I mean,

00:32:19.480 it's, it's truly as if it was like a blitzkrieg without a war. I know. It's like the whole society

00:32:26.380 just adopted this value. And anybody who questions the value is a bad person. Wasn't equity the French

00:32:33.100 revolution and we were equality. Yeah. That's huge. That's a huge difference. American value

00:32:39.040 is, here's the other question I have for all these people who advocate for equity, equity,

00:32:44.960 promote equity. Show me an inner city school of African-Americans. It's been fixed since the BLM

00:32:50.400 movement. Show me one. Talking to Wilfred Riley about that in his podcast. Who's fantastic.

00:32:54.900 Um, I see, I see nothing. I see no, I see no practical consequences in terms of ameliorating

00:33:04.140 suffering, increasing education of young black. Of course it's gotten worse. And here's the other

00:33:10.020 thing that I was thinking about this in the back of my mind in the conversation is virtually every

00:33:14.700 person. And I, this is, I never thought that I would be in this category that I would say this to

00:33:20.020 anybody. Virtually every middle class person I know, like I'm in the middle class, my friends,

00:33:25.480 they want to leave America. Yeah. We're just sick. I'm sick of it. Yeah. I mean, I certainly want

00:33:32.280 to leave Portland. I mean, that place is just, are you still there? I am. I am. I know I am. I don't,

00:33:39.860 I don't understand why a single rational person lives there still. Yeah. Well, other than they don't

00:33:45.440 want to give up on it. No, I've totally given up on it. Um, wow. My daughter, my daughter's in

00:33:51.860 school and, uh, okay. Okay. So yeah, it's tough. Is it possible if I say something that we could

00:33:57.620 potentially edit it out later or no, it's just, you would be the first. Okay. But hang on. Can I get a

00:34:04.600 ruling on that? Yes. Both of my kids are gay. I have two kids. I have a biological son and I have

00:34:18.440 a daughter who's adopted and they're both gay and, um, hasn't changed my feelings for them.

00:34:26.300 Hasn't changed my love for them. Um, it is, um, in fact, it, it, it's, um, it's a rather remarkable

00:34:35.760 thing for me when I was raised with homophobia, when I was raised, you know, the worst thing we

00:34:41.980 could be called is faggot on the playground. When, when I appreciated that you shook my hand,

00:34:47.860 it was lovely. Um, and so when I, when I talked to my son, uh, or I talked to my daughter, I'll say,

00:34:55.100 you know, are you, you know, you seeing anybody, how's it going? Um, and, um, it's just been a,

00:35:01.380 it's been a lovely, it's, it's, it's, it's been lovely for me. Um, and I'm actually incredibly

00:35:08.440 grateful for that. But the other thing is like, I don't have any, like, like there's no other moral

00:35:14.700 structure on me. Like I'm kind of not trying to navigate this and figuring it out myself. And,

00:35:19.060 um, I don't, I don't consult, um, you know, holy books obviously, but, um,

00:35:26.100 makes it easier if you don't have that. It, it, it, it, it, it makes easier. It also makes it more

00:35:31.160 difficult in a sense too, because you have to kind of figure it out yourself and you have to figure

00:35:35.140 out whether or not the beliefs you hold are just, you know, cause we're all myopic in terms of our

00:35:40.400 own beliefs. Like we think that the beliefs we have are the beliefs we should be have, we should

00:35:44.740 have, but, but nobody, this is why I enjoy you so much. Um, the, uh, you know, you don't really,

00:35:54.920 I say this to my audience all the time. You can't live off of what I told you is true.

00:35:59.960 You can't, you'll never be able to repeat it. You'll never be able to argue it because you'll

00:36:05.300 end up saying, Oh, if Glenn Beck, he was talking about it. That means nothing. I believe the things

00:36:11.980 I believe. And I share the things that I believe because I've done the work to get there. You can't

00:36:18.460 just piggyback onto somebody else's belief. And it seems like the majority of people, and I don't know

00:36:23.740 if it's always been this way. Majority of people, unless I guess it's a moment of crisis,

00:36:31.080 don't really think about things. So I think to a certain extent, it has been this way. I certainly

00:36:40.580 know in my life, my parents used to have libertarian friends, green friends, friends from all across

00:36:46.760 the place. I don't see that anymore. I see clustering. Bill Bishop calls that the big sort. Like people are

00:36:52.200 just sorting out and they're moving into categories, which is, which is terrible. You should have

00:36:58.280 friends of, if, if your friends fear, it doesn't contain people of different religions. You need

00:37:03.600 new friends. Like you're going to find new. And I understand, like, I really understand that it

00:37:08.280 gives people a sense of comfort to be, be, let me speak for, for me. Yeah. Being on the conservative

00:37:15.480 side. I grew up in Seattle, man. Right. So, I mean, I've, my whole life I've lived around progressives

00:37:23.420 and hippies and everything else. I don't have a problem. Um, until lately to where, um, you are

00:37:32.940 immediately judged or shut down. And it's like, I don't, I don't want to be called a racist if I say,

00:37:39.340 you know, whatever. So here's the problem. So this is the, this is the, I'm going to say this and then I'm

00:37:43.980 going to get, well, what about ism? Well, what about this? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. It really is

00:37:48.100 true. Sometimes certain, um, and I'll give you, I'll give you one right. Sometimes certain political

00:37:55.380 ideologies are just more susceptible to more ideas like the QAnon on the right. Now, right now we have

00:38:00.900 a, an enormous problem on the left. It is, it is a, it is a, um, as my friend Gad Saad said,

00:38:09.920 it's like in the parasitic mind, it, it really is like a parasitization of the left. And they,

00:38:17.380 there was a, there's, in fact, there's a whole body of, of, of literature in the, the, what I call

00:38:24.380 the grievance study scholarships, you know, these ideologues who have jobs for life platforming,

00:38:28.980 right? We don't talk to this person. We don't want to give this person a stage in which he can,

00:38:34.620 you know, she can talk about their ideas. This problem is endemic on the left and it is on the

00:38:40.400 left. And that doesn't mean the right doesn't have its own problems. Of course the right has its

00:38:44.620 problems. Of course it does. But right now this is a problem on the left. Yeah. It's a critical

00:38:49.920 problem. The left is simply not talking to people. Like, let me give you an example. So I, after I

00:38:55.840 published my resignation letter from Portland state university in September, um, the right, you know,

00:39:02.420 Tucker Carlson, everybody was calm. They wanted me to go on the shows and I want to shows. And I kept

00:39:06.700 saying like, I want to talk to the people on the left. Like I, I won't, I genuinely want to talk.

00:39:12.540 And what do I want to talk about? Well, for example, the president of Portland state university said

00:39:16.620 that racial justice should be the highest priority. This is a public institution. I want to talk about

00:39:20.780 that. And I want to talk about that with people who believe it. And it's not a debate. It's a

00:39:25.140 conversation. I'll even give you the question. Should racial justice be the highest priority of a

00:39:29.180 public university. I think that's a very reasonable question for taxpayers and people who are

00:39:33.600 advocating it. Literally nobody would talk to me about it. And it's nothing special about me that

00:39:38.360 I have to say something and, but they weren't talking about it with anybody at all. And there's

00:39:42.880 this, this, I don't know. It's, it's a combination maybe of arrogance or of just, of just, I'll say it.

00:39:49.360 It's smug. That's what it is. It's smug. It's a kind of smug certainty that anybody who questions it

00:39:55.100 is morally corrupt or morally bankrupt or, or, uh, mentally corrupt or an imbecile. Correct. Yeah.

00:40:03.460 Correct. You know, and you're seeing this, I was just watching, I wrote a, I just wrote a book

00:40:11.140 called the great reset. All right. I didn't believe it two years ago. Okay. I saw this and I'm like,

00:40:16.580 oh geez, what kind of craziness is that? Right. And so I approached that and had my team and I,

00:40:22.720 we started researching and researching and researching and we came back like six months

00:40:26.740 later. We're like, I think this is real. Right. Okay. And had all the documents and everything

00:40:32.040 else, but publish a book immediately first dismissed. Then it was a conspiracy theory. Uh,

00:40:38.740 now you're a danger if you speak out about it, blah, blah, blah. The yesterday there was a meeting

00:40:46.780 in Dubai and I don't care. Um, it was called the, uh, the global government, uh, summit. Right. Okay.

00:40:56.280 Um, they, the first one, the first session was, are you ready for a new world order? Right. The

00:41:03.560 second one was digital currency, central bank digital currency. That's why the Bitcoin is such a threat.

00:41:09.520 Right. You, but if I, they're on, they're on stage leaders of countries on stage talking about

00:41:17.680 we're doing this, we're doing this, we're going to have digital currency. United States is next.

00:41:24.000 Yeah. Social credit. It will not be transparent. We'll know every transaction. And you know,

00:41:31.700 I have no problem if people want that, but what's going to happen is this group has gotten together

00:41:38.420 and I don't know, they just have contempt for us or they just don't think we're smart enough.

00:41:42.740 So we're not invited to the table. You know, the American people and the people of the world are

00:41:48.800 not invited to the table. Press and others are denying these things that we can show you are true.

00:41:57.400 We know that's happening. How is that going to work when the average person, all of a sudden their

00:42:06.400 life is dramatically impacted when they've been told none of this is happening. And here it is.

00:42:13.280 That's not good. What, why aren't we invited to the table? Arrogance.

00:42:18.880 I can't speak to that. I know very little about it.

00:42:21.460 Well, you know about cryptocurrency for sure. Yeah. And you know that central banking,

00:42:25.580 right? What they're going to be doing with central banks. No. Okay.

00:42:29.860 Way out of my, way out of my expertise.

00:42:32.080 Well, it's, it's disturbing. There was an article in the opinion section of the New York times today

00:42:38.240 that talks about how a Democrat from Massachusetts is trying to introduce legislation because he says,

00:42:47.600 we're trying to preserve some semblance of privacy. Cause that's the real thing. You want to do digital

00:42:56.180 currency? Great. Blockchain, Bitcoin. I was just going to say, it's done. Blockchain. Yeah.

00:43:00.300 The fed and the treasury want to do it because it goes to modern monetary theory where you can print

00:43:07.020 as much money as long as you control the labor. And as long as you control spending down to the

00:43:13.020 smallest level. Okay. So this central bank currency is programmable. So it knows who you are.

00:43:21.640 It knows your spending and it can, depending on where inflation is happening, it can curb you. It

00:43:28.500 can even disappear because they could say there's a limited time for this money. We're going to put it

00:43:36.000 in your, in your bank account, but you have to spend it in the next two weeks. That way they can

00:43:40.620 control all of the spending. I know nothing about it. Okay. I'm just, the only reason why I thought

00:43:47.460 about it is because I think there is this, we didn't have the conversation of really anything

00:43:57.680 that now is being enforced upon us. That's certainly true. It was happening in the universe. And

00:44:03.260 people like me, we get up in the morning and what was okay yesterday, suddenly not okay.

00:44:09.860 Yeah. It's interesting. And we're held to the same standard. I'm thinking about, you know,

00:44:13.000 Al Franken when he did this and all the woman and, and all the chaos that ensued. It, it really is a

00:44:21.720 different standard that we're held to dating. We've seen that in dating. We've seen that in,

00:44:29.180 in, but, but again, I guess I just keep coming back to this fact of like, it's like your friend.

00:44:34.760 Um, this is a very unforgiving time. This is a very uncharitable time. And I don't know how a society

00:44:42.480 can sustain itself with a complete lack of compassion, with a complete lack of, um, of, um,

00:44:52.540 I don't know if it's besmirching or smearing or insulting somebody who's an honest broker.

00:44:58.480 Like, I just don't think a society can sustain itself with that value.

00:45:03.540 It didn't during the inquisition. Yeah. When it was the church that was doing it. Yeah. I mean,

00:45:09.580 it burned itself out in the fifties with a communist witch hunts. I keep thinking about

00:45:14.900 what you said about your friend. Why is that so important to your friend? Like,

00:45:18.600 why is your relationship and your attitude? Why is that? So that seems a little bit, um,

00:45:24.360 thou, thou doth protest too much. Hmm. I don't know. Yeah. I'll, I'll go back and ask. Yeah.

00:45:32.240 I'll go back and ask. Let me, let me bring it back to the university here for a second. Yeah. Um,

00:45:38.580 my wife and I disagree on something. Okay. She still finds value in universities. Okay. Um,

00:45:45.360 because I disagree with her. Okay. You have to have, you know, you're going to go get a job.

00:45:51.140 Right. I believe in, at this point, right. Apprentice, go find somebody vocational school.

00:45:59.180 Yes. A hundred percent. Yes. You agree with that? A thousand percent. Why would I pay for

00:46:04.020 somebody to, to be indoctrinated? Indoctrinate them. And actually not only do I believe in it,

00:46:08.060 I told my daughter, I said to my daughter, I think maybe you should think about not going to college.

00:46:11.880 So here's a really weird thing. That's bizarre for a guy who's a professor. It is a, it is bizarre.

00:46:17.780 Um, my new affiliation is university of Austin, which I know. Yes. Um, I do want to talk to you

00:46:23.360 about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so it is a, it is a bizarre phenomenon, but okay. So think about it

00:46:30.240 like this. Like think about martial arts. It is better for you to look at a wall than to engage in

00:46:37.460 a practice that takes you away from reality. Like if I came in and said, listen, next time you're in a

00:46:42.080 fight, you just do this and you're going to knock the guy out and you, you spend thousands of hours

00:46:46.400 doing this, tons of money. You know, you do this since you're, and then you get in a fight and

00:46:50.260 someone just gives you a beat down. Right. It's similarly with education. It is better to not

00:46:55.420 learn something that is false than, than you don't want to learn things that are false. So it's better

00:47:01.300 to not do it at all. I've, I avoid people who have gone to broadcast schools, right? Like the plague,

00:47:08.360 right? Because whatever they taught you and it's easier to take somebody an apple from the tree

00:47:14.740 and pull out of that barrel. Correct. Because they've, they have to relearn.

00:47:19.600 Right. And so we have institutions now that are teaching people things that are totally untethered

00:47:26.760 to reality. They're just clearly false. They're demonstrably false. Like fat studies, you know,

00:47:31.680 the fat reader, the, you know, my mom died from complications of type two diabetes. She had

00:47:36.740 struggled with her, with her weight her whole life. And now we have people, ideologues with jobs for

00:47:41.780 life, teaching fat studies, telling people about fat acceptance, telling people, I mean,

00:47:45.680 this is a, this is a horror show. So it's far better that my daughter doesn't go. And the young

00:47:50.420 women are particularly susceptible to that. It's far better that my daughter does not go into one of

00:47:54.900 those environments and does something else. She's good at carpentry. She likes that. I'd completely

00:47:59.140 support that. And she can live a vibrant and rich intellectual life far better. Uh, if, if she's

00:48:04.880 thoughtful about it and I can help her with that, then being with people, that's the other thing,

00:48:08.940 you know, I'm going to go around the country this month in April and I have a reverse Q and

00:48:13.260 a tour. And so instead of, yeah. And thanks. Instead of me standing on the stage, talking to

00:48:19.700 people, I'm going to be students. I'm going to be in the audience and I'm going to be asking

00:48:24.020 students questions. Students are going to be doing the talking. I want to know what is your

00:48:27.180 experience with social justice? Woke is them in the classroom. Do you want that? Has that

00:48:31.680 because people outside the universities, they don't understand how bad it is. They don't understand

00:48:37.680 that people really are, as I said before, teaching in terms of a constant rate, like a race essentialism

00:48:43.920 teaching in terms of liberating oppression, but living, liberating oppression translates,

00:48:49.280 you know, ripping down statues, assaulting police officers, white supremacy everywhere. Uh, so,

00:48:55.380 so, okay. So we have a crisis. We have people in education who in our university systems,

00:49:03.180 who are basically ideologues. What do we do about this? Now, the weapon that everybody

00:49:08.920 is using is defunding. You don't like something, you defund it. You don't. And, and so here,

00:49:14.780 here is my solution. I've never agreed with that. However, it's not like I don't like something.

00:49:20.920 I think this is dangerous to society. Oh, it's, we should not divisive. It's poisonous. Poison.

00:49:28.280 Yeah. It's poison. It is poison. Yeah. And they have jobs for life and their ideologues and anybody.

00:49:32.840 And so that's the other thing. Not only is it divisive with people who have jobs for life

00:49:37.900 and let's be blunt. Now I can even be more blunt than I usually would. These are by and large petty

00:49:45.620 people. They're by and large, uh, look, let's think about this. My, my good friend, Matt Thornton,

00:49:50.880 who has a book coming out called the gift of violence, you know, Conor McGregor, the, the MMA

00:49:56.300 champion. Yeah. He's Conor McGregor's coach's coach. I love jujitsu. I practice jujitsu. He's my,

00:50:04.080 my primary teacher. He said something to me that was just so interesting that I think is apt for this

00:50:08.880 conversation. If somebody practices a martial arts that is not tethered to reality, in other words,

00:50:18.600 it just doesn't work over time. You see a few things happening. You see more rituals, bowing,

00:50:25.560 all this stuff you see over time, this person becomes an excuse of vulgarity, but they become a

00:50:32.080 dick. They just become a dick because they know that it doesn't work. So they have to kind of make up

00:50:37.740 for that somehow. And so I think that's what we see with these. And I'm not saying that they all

00:50:44.500 realize it's bankrupt. I'm sure maybe some of them are absolute true believers. It's, it's hard to tell

00:50:49.180 because we've created a culture of fear in our environments and in our college classes. So

00:50:52.740 nobody will tell you what they believe. Even worse, every, you have entire cultures in which people

00:50:57.400 are pretending to believe stuff. They're pretending to believe things they could not possibly believe

00:51:02.420 that a man should compete in a woman's sporting event who dominated. Like they're pretending

00:51:07.680 to believe that this is actually something that, that they believe. So, but again,

00:51:12.940 Supreme court justice cannot tell you what a woman is because she's not a bio, by a biologist.

00:51:18.800 Yeah. So that's interesting. And how could you decide, how can you really decide, make, I mean,

00:51:23.720 I understand it's a game and you got to pass the game, et cetera. But, but the problem is,

00:51:28.340 so we have a crisis in our, we have a legitimacy crisis. I'm throwing a lot of stuff up here,

00:51:33.240 but we have a crisis of confidence in our decisions. People don't trust our decisions. I don't trust

00:51:37.280 the institutions. Any, any institutions. And it's the, it, the more venerable. In fact,

00:51:43.460 the worst it is New York times, SPLC, ACLU don't trust them at all. Yeah. Okay. So, so now we have

00:51:52.060 a situation in which people are in teaching and kids stuff, the opposite, like I would call like

00:52:00.520 anti-civics, right? They're teaching them that the system is inherently corrupt. It has to be ripped

00:52:05.920 down. They're teaching them just values that are totally, forget about anti-American. They're

00:52:12.660 anti-freedom. They're okay. They're anti-human. They're anti-decency. Yeah. Don't, you know. Okay.

00:52:18.860 So, so I want my daughter on a personal level as a father to not go into that system because it's

00:52:27.020 almost everywhere. And I don't want her to go to a conservative college like Hillsdale or Liberty

00:52:32.040 or what have you. And why, why not Hillsdale? Uh, because I want her to go to a college that has

00:52:38.360 genuine intellectual diversity. I want her to be taught by a communist. I want her to be taught

00:52:43.440 by a Friedmanite. I want her to be taught by everybody. And so instead of, yeah, just, can I

00:52:50.820 just, I love, I loved my professor in my very short time. Um, I had no idea where he stood

00:53:01.460 on anything. And I love that. I love the fact that once I thought I had him nailed on where

00:53:09.160 he was coming from, I hit him with a question and he flipped on me and he started asking me

00:53:16.160 questions from the other point of view. And I had absolutely, I didn't know who he was

00:53:20.800 in the end. The best teachers. The best. I bet you that I bet you could use the Socratic

00:53:24.800 method too. Yeah. He, yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. Counter examples causing you. Yeah. And

00:53:29.120 I kind of felt like the people around Socrates at the time. Yeah, but we don't, we don't, we

00:53:33.040 don't have that anymore. Like we don't have that. If you do that, you go to the diversity

00:53:36.820 office. Oh, which was the other thing I was saying. Not only do we have ideologues who have

00:53:40.420 jobs for life, but they've weaponized title nine. They've weaponized offices of diversity, equity,

00:53:45.640 inclusion. So even the threat of going there is a theft of your time. And the, the, those

00:53:51.660 investigations, you know, people say, Oh, you know, you, you, why don't you ever say anything

00:53:56.420 charitable about people who perceive you as their ideological enemy? Okay. I'll say something

00:54:00.700 charitable about what I went through. These people are thorough. I mean, they are the most

00:54:05.420 thorough. They, they interview students, faculty, colleagues, people you've had 10 years ago.

00:54:10.440 They're, their offices in search of tasks. They're trying to find something on you. They're

00:54:14.220 trying, you're racist. You're bigger. You're misogynist. Okay. So take a step back. We can

00:54:19.980 talk about defunding all we want. We'll bracket that, but I want to build something. Yeah. Like

00:54:25.300 I want to make something. I don't just want to be the guy complaining about stuff. And that

00:54:30.760 is what the university of Austin to me represents. It is, it is the shining city on a hill. It's

00:54:36.840 the possibility that people can go and students can learn and they can ask questions and questions

00:54:44.200 that buck the moral trends that aren't morally fashionable. Isn't that the only way we progress?

00:54:50.920 Well, how else would it be? Right. Okay. So everybody, every idea that we now claim is right

00:54:57.380 and true. Okay. So this offensive, this is really important. Okay. This is so important. So

00:55:03.660 that, what you just articulated to me is a value that you and I share. So no matter what your belief,

00:55:12.880 other belief you have, abortion, capital punishment, Muslim immigration, immigration to Mexico,

00:55:18.040 it doesn't matter what it is. You and I are closer in moral values because of that core value.

00:55:24.260 Yes. Then the people who, who are dominating. And if you don't believe me, I know you probably,

00:55:30.960 but your audience look at the foundation of individual rights and education, nonpartisan,

00:55:35.240 nonpolitical group. They, they routinely publish people's political leanings overwhelmingly. It's

00:55:41.920 not just leftist. They don't refer to them as woke leftist. They go into the classroom with a set

00:55:48.380 agenda to teach people things. And they're not teaching them the other side of the story. They're not

00:55:53.140 even allowing those diverse viewpoints. And so the kids get out of those institutions and

00:55:58.340 four years, five years, six years, they go on to become management and they take these insane ideas

00:56:03.220 with them. Trigger warning, safe speakers, microaggressions. Not only is there no evidence

00:56:07.180 for these things, there's actually evidence against them. So I would argue that the belief that you and

00:56:12.880 I have a valuing truth, the belief that you and I have of the way that, you know, let friends be

00:56:18.360 wrong, engaging dialogue. So that's why I think it's so essential for the university of Austin to

00:56:23.940 succeed. It's vital. I agree. It's vital because there's nothing else doing that now. Now I shouldn't

00:56:31.420 say nothing. Um, a Stephen Blackwood's Ralston college of which Jordan Peterson is a chancellor is

00:56:35.940 coming is, is online now other universities. So it's like that in a sense, it's like a restaurant row

00:56:41.960 where people can look at those schools and choose, but we have to give kids an opportunity who are

00:56:47.740 genuine inquirers to think about issues and wrestle with issues in their young lives that we're not

00:56:54.300 giving them now. So what amazes me is MIT has had classes online for free, right? You can audit any

00:57:01.000 class you want for free. Right. And most people don't know that. And that tells me we value the

00:57:08.260 certificate more than anything else. I thought you were going somewhere else with that. No,

00:57:11.960 I wanted to know if, I wanted to know if you guys are going to do that. Are you going to

00:57:17.180 allow people to audit for free? Cause I think that I don't know. I'm just, so I'm a founding

00:57:23.900 faculty member. Yeah. And so one of the things that I do is I'll go into the classroom because

00:57:28.900 they're going to talk about some pretty radical, the forbidden classes among other things like

00:57:32.580 Ayaan Hirsi Ali is founding faculty. She's going to talk about things that you just wouldn't hear

00:57:37.420 in a traditional culture. Good. Right. We need that. Radical Islam, female genital mutilation,

00:57:42.760 child. We don't even, you know, Dershowitz had a child marriage. Dershowitz had a piece a few

00:57:48.420 years ago about we're not teaching rape law anymore. And the reason, because professors are

00:57:53.980 afraid to offend students or they'll be traumatized. But then people who are raped don't have adequate

00:58:00.620 legal representation. Right. I mean, this is a huge, this is a monstrous problem. So our institutions

00:58:06.820 have failed us at every level and it's actually worse at the elite institutions.

00:58:12.620 So we need to, we, we, we can sit in and we can complain about it all day or we can build

00:58:17.860 new institutions. We can, but, but the postmodernists, they have it exactly wrong. It's that people

00:58:25.320 don't trust the institutions because the institutions are no longer worthy of trust. We have to make

00:58:29.960 sure those institutions are worthy of trust and they have to be robust enough to withstand

00:58:35.040 some kind of external assault, like Antifa vandalizing the buildings.

00:58:41.420 Right. So, so we live in a cultural moment. That's like you said, that's divided, that's

00:58:47.280 inhospitable to people who have different beliefs. And we, we, we know for the most part, we know

00:58:54.100 some of the ways out of it at a personal level, large scale. This is, I, what do we do about the

00:59:02.000 New York time? The CNN, CNN is NP. Have you listened to NPR lately? Yeah. Okay. NPR is

00:59:07.820 like a woke machine. The whole raison d'etre of NPR. Now it's all race. It's all CRT. It's

00:59:13.800 all, this is an indoctrination. This is a complete propaganda bill. And lest anybody say that I'm

00:59:22.400 not criticizing the right, I'm more than happy to criticize Fox news. We have broken down into

00:59:28.000 our ideological camps and we have a problem that we need to talk about if we want to make progress

00:59:37.200 as a society. We have to.

00:59:40.420 Have you ever taken you over to my museum and vaults next door?

00:59:44.160 No, I don't think so.

00:59:44.780 So, um, I started collecting, uh, things, papers, documents, artifacts. Um, and I joined with another

00:59:53.360 friend who he was really focused on the good side of stuff. And I really wanted to focus on the bad

01:00:00.640 things that America has done. We now have more documents and pieces than anyone outside of the

01:00:06.880 National Archives in the Library of Congress.

01:00:08.780 What kind of documents? Um, anything from the Pilgrims to Jamestown to our founding documents to

01:00:16.920 you name it.

01:00:17.980 Wow.

01:00:18.240 I, uh,

01:00:19.040 Am I going to get a tour?

01:00:20.160 Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you a tour.

01:00:21.640 There's 1% next door of our, our stuff. But anyway, uh, I started collecting it. I started collecting

01:00:29.400 my side of it because if you don't, if, if you just think, and so many conservatives did for a long

01:00:37.960 time, Oh, America is great. We're red, white and blue, apple pie. No, I wanted to be able to sit

01:00:44.320 down with somebody who was critical and spend all their time bashing America and, and be in a position

01:00:51.620 to where I could go, you're a rookie and I have the evidence that it's worse than you say it is.

01:00:57.840 Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. That's great.

01:00:59.540 Cause you have to, you have to have that. You have to have that. So how do you, okay. So that's

01:01:06.120 my question too. So how do you help people? And I've, I've thought about this a lot. How do you

01:01:10.760 help people value things that they may not think are important for themselves or their communities or

01:01:17.520 their loved ones? Like, because I think we would both admit or not even admit, we would both agree

01:01:23.180 that people value the wrong things. And in their entire cultures valuing the wrong things.

01:01:31.400 I think the American culture has valued the wrong. I think I completely agree. Yeah. And you don't,

01:01:37.560 I mean, we're seeing it, the rate of suicide. I mean, I was lucky enough to, um, have some fame and

01:01:45.740 fortune in my twenties, you know, uh, and then just become a raging alcoholic and just a mess because

01:01:52.220 I didn't really believe in anything. Um, and then 30 resetting. So when real success came to me in my

01:02:01.040 forties, I knew the poison of fame and fortune, you know what I mean? Cause that's battery acid to the

01:02:08.360 soul. And right now that's all we value, you know, kids will do, you're not famous for something.

01:02:17.100 You just want to be known and seen and you have a network in your hand. Everybody, when I got into

01:02:24.880 this business, I had to work to build an audience. Now my audience has an audience, you know, and we,

01:02:33.320 we weren't prepared for that. People were not prepared for that. And it's just emptying us out.

01:02:42.560 You know, we don't have real people don't have meaning anymore. You know, they're nothing's real.

01:02:51.820 Nothing's real. Nothing has nothing. It's so distant from you. You'll be sitting next to somebody,

01:02:59.580 but you're still texting them. Right. My son did that on the phone with his friend. I said,

01:03:04.200 it's crazy. I said, did you tell Lauren to do, to do something? He said, yeah. And I said, you,

01:03:09.140 you didn't, I'm sitting right here. He's like, I texted her.

01:03:11.920 And she was sitting, she was sitting. Isn't that nuts? Right. And so it's not,

01:03:16.640 we're splitting our life from real reality, real consequence, real love. And then this other.

01:03:25.480 And it makes it easy to other people that way. Right. Cause you're behind a screen. It makes it easy

01:03:29.720 to just, uh, demonize, demonize. They're bad. They're evil. They're, they're somehow.

01:03:36.540 And that's something. So I think that's something that, I mean, that's something that I learned at the

01:03:45.060 height of my Fox career. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, um,

01:03:52.080 I believe what I say, but I also have, I'm a good performer, you know, so I, I know how to draw a

01:03:58.980 crowd. Right. Um, and, and some of the devices used to do that, to get people to the message. Yeah.

01:04:08.180 Wait, hold it. I didn't understand all the ramifications at the time. You know what I mean?

01:04:13.860 Yeah. Now the entire country is doing that. Yeah. Now the entire country is saying what they want

01:04:20.960 are calling this person, this thing, and they're not necessarily understanding their part of the

01:04:29.860 nailing the coffin shot. Yeah. Their contribution. Yeah. If you will. We all have it. We've all done it.

01:04:36.000 Yeah. One last question. Um, are you optimistic for the Western way of life? Western culture?

01:04:45.440 Um, I'm struggling, but I'm just going to give you, I'm struggling. I am beyond, I'm way beyond

01:04:57.600 concerned. I'm way beyond worried. Um, I, um, then what does it look like? Cause I'm at the point to

01:05:07.940 where it's coming and I'm now looking at for the first time, 20 years, I've been trying to piece

01:05:15.940 together. How is this going to come apart? You know what I mean? Cause you could see it. How is

01:05:21.400 this going to come? You can see it unraveling. Can't you? Yeah. You can see it unraveling. And so now I

01:05:25.340 know we're very close to that line. And for the very first time, my instinct is to go, okay, forget about

01:05:33.180 that. What's on the other side, right? How, what is life going to be like there? And, uh,

01:05:41.320 it's interesting. That's frightening environmental ethics. You have this idea of adaptation or

01:05:46.840 mitigation. So there's a coming, uh, economic ecological crisis. Let's just assume you either

01:05:51.940 adapt to it or you try to stave it off. And so I'm still in the mitigation stage. I tell you what,

01:06:00.220 I think that the issue as a country is, which I think caused your question in the first place is

01:06:06.160 that we're valuing the wrong things and we're not valuing the things that lead to human flourishing.

01:06:10.980 We're not valuing conversations. We're not valuing human decency. We're not letting friends be wrong.

01:06:15.900 We're not very valuing meritocracy. We're not allowing people who are poor, disadvantaged,

01:06:21.740 independent of their skin color opportunities. Um, we, we know, we know,

01:06:26.700 we know what the problems are, but we're not either. We're not valuing the right things or

01:06:34.420 we're valuing the wrong things like equity or we're afraid to look. We're afraid. We're afraid

01:06:42.400 to be honest about it. Right. We're afraid to be, we have a whole culture, even to ourselves. We're

01:06:46.760 afraid we have a tendency of this thing is so, this is why Superman was born because that was so ugly.

01:06:55.920 We didn't know how that was going to stop over in Europe. We need not us. That's right. We need a

01:07:02.480 Superman. Right. You know, we, we have a tendency to go, somebody else will fix this instead of

01:07:08.700 focusing in and go, it's my problem. Right. That's well, you know, Michael Shermer,

01:07:12.960 the skeptic has talked about that for belief in God or belief in conspiracies or belief in higher

01:07:17.560 things. But to answer your question, I, I genuinely do. I don't believe Western values are Western values.

01:07:23.540 I believe that Western values are rationally derivable. Yes. I agree. Freedom of the press,

01:07:29.260 freedom of the assembly. We don't have Western values now. Right. Like we, we can figure this

01:07:33.120 stuff out and it's, it's not particularly complicated, but we have people who don't value

01:07:38.000 those, those things. And this is the thing for the stupidest reasons. That's the other thing

01:07:44.360 about this whole thing. It's so idiotic. Like, okay, white guys came up with that. So therefore

01:07:49.440 what, like, right. I mean, it's, it's, it's just like, you're going to throw away the whole society

01:07:54.200 from an idiotic belief. And that's it. And all the other people, they go, oh yeah, well, white guy,

01:07:58.360 like, so there were people who, who participate, who, who are, there are people who participate in

01:08:03.840 that madness. And there are other people who are like, well, yeah, you know, that that's their lived

01:08:07.400 experience, you know? So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not optimistic. I'm not particularly hopeful,

01:08:15.160 but those values will endure. I know we make it through. We make it through and we have to teach

01:08:23.220 people. You have to give a punch and take a punch, you know, in your conversations in the way that's,

01:08:28.880 so I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know, but I do know that there's something that,

01:08:34.000 you know, the Descartes experience, we can all kind of sit in front of the fire where nobody wants

01:08:37.580 the secret police kicking in their door at 3am. Right. So we can kind of figure out at a level of what we

01:08:43.900 already have in the constitution of what's a good life and what, what are society now? Are there

01:08:48.820 problems? Have there been historical? Yeah. To be sure. Nobody's denying that. Correct. Well,

01:08:54.760 half, it seems like they're historical injustice. No one's denying that. Yeah. And half of the

01:09:00.100 country is denying that others are not denying it. You know, it's like, right. Okay. I agree with you.

01:09:06.880 So, so, so that's the thing we have to talk about when you, so Douglas Murray has a new book that I

01:09:12.420 highly recommend coming up, coming out about that. We have to talk about, we have to have an honest

01:09:18.240 conversation about what we are going to do right now. We have really serious, the homeless crisis and

01:09:23.860 Michael Schellenberger, my friend's running for governor of California. He's San Francisco.

01:09:28.440 Sicko is fantastic. Apocalypse never. Yep. Fantastic. We have to transcend partisanship. So like

01:09:34.880 Schellenberger, like here's a guy who has genuinely studied the problem. He, he is an evidence-based

01:09:41.800 guy and he's the guy to do it. We have to get beyond partisanship. Yes. We have to start talking

01:09:46.760 about what is the evidence for this. And you know what, if you have to be willing to cross the aisle,

01:09:52.220 just tweeted about this the other day. If you're not willing to cross the aisle, then you're, you're

01:09:56.700 an ideologue or you're on your way to become a coward. Or you're a coward. Or you're a coward. Yeah.

01:10:00.400 You're terrified. So we need, but that's the other thing. That's the, what I said about critical

01:10:05.320 thinking. That's the attitude piece, right? So it's not just figuring out what to do. It's the

01:10:10.940 attitude of doing it, of voting for someone who's going to do it because who loses? Let me give you

01:10:17.860 example, you know, mentioned Portland. So I, Ted Wheeler is the mayor of Portland. He is a disgrace.

01:10:24.360 It was unmitigated disgrace. So one of the things that he, he did, may I tell you this? Yeah. Yeah.

01:10:30.680 So one of the things he did was he found out that the gang reduction task force had a

01:10:35.640 disproportionate number of contacts with young African-American men. So he declared it racist,

01:10:40.400 his administration, and then they did away with the gun reduction task force. What do you think

01:10:44.280 happened? The number of murders went up. The number of young African-American men went up. So

01:10:51.160 he puts in back in the gun reduction task force, but I mean, it's really interesting. So the police have

01:10:56.340 a disproportionate contact with men as opposed to women, but nobody says that the police hate men.

01:11:03.200 I mean, it just, I mean, some of these things are just so obvious, like that nobody is either

01:11:08.480 they're caught up in the cultural moment of, you know, you know, racism and race essentialism,

01:11:13.000 and we have to work for equity or they don't believe that. And it's just, you know, it's just

01:11:18.280 kind of real politic. They're just doing something to advance their political career, but we have to

01:11:22.440 start voting for people who across the aisle, who believe in evidence, who are willing to work

01:11:26.820 on evidence. That's one of the ways out of this. We have to start demanding that our

01:11:33.180 politician you're going to run, that you actually are functioning human being that are thinking about

01:11:41.540 deeper issues. I'm so concerned. I'd love to have you back. Um, I am so concerned about the, um,

01:11:49.900 ethical decisions that are just flying by us right now. I couldn't agree more, right? We should be

01:11:57.560 having the deepest, this is the most important time. I believe completely in the history of mankind

01:12:04.280 and we're going to hit 2030 and everything will be changing because of technology. And we're all

01:12:10.140 going to go, well, wait a minute. What? Right. So we can't agree on basic things. I totally agree. So

01:12:15.140 we can't agree on basic because we don't have an infrastructure. We don't have it modeled in

01:12:19.820 colleges. It comes back to that. And we don't have it modeled in our educational institutions

01:12:23.320 because the North star is in truth, right? When your North star is in truth, you'll be like the

01:12:28.720 horse that, that runs furiously in all directions. Like you have to say, you have to put truth front

01:12:33.580 and center and you have to help people develop the attitudes to value those things. That's what we

01:12:38.900 need to be focusing on. The older I get, I'm telling you 55 now, the more I'm completely convinced

01:12:44.020 it's about what, it's about an attitude and what people value and valuing the right things.

01:12:50.400 And when you lose that, when you lose the, the desire to revise your belief, the willingness

01:12:59.660 to revise your belief, when, when, when you lose a love of wisdom, you know, that's what

01:13:04.340 philosophy is, or when truth becomes subordinate to whatever your, you know, moral impulses, you've

01:13:13.000 lost a lot. Like you've, that's a fundamental loss. That's not a mere triviality.

01:13:23.860 We are running so late, but let me just, I'm going to take, can I open up one more path?

01:13:27.780 Yeah, yeah, anything you want.

01:13:32.060 When you look at, um, as I told you in the, in the New York times today, saying, uh, we will

01:13:42.240 have absolute record of what everyone has done and spent instantaneously. And the question

01:13:52.040 is, that's kind of a panopticon of bits, you know, an economic panopticon. Um, that's disturbing

01:13:59.700 on many, many levels. Um, but, but, but people are, you, there's two things that are happening

01:14:09.740 and I don't know how to break this is one. It'll never happen. Good God. We had a game

01:14:15.880 show host as president. Anything could happen. You know what I mean? Um, this is so unpredictable

01:14:21.780 on everything that could happen. Totally. So that wouldn't happen or, well, I don't have

01:14:26.420 anything to hide. Okay. So the latter is important, you know? So, so just, we said about Al Franken

01:14:32.540 and the gesture over the woman on her breast. So what happens, what the moral, what's morally

01:14:40.300 fashionable in one generation might not be the next. I mean, what if it comes to, right,

01:14:44.940 right. So what if it comes to, it's kind of like meat eating. Oh my God, you ate sentient

01:14:49.380 beings like you horrible people. So you don't know, you can't project, like you can't look

01:14:54.240 at the past and say, okay, well, you know, this happened. No, you don't know what the

01:15:00.100 next thing is going to be. And so the idea that then people could hold your purchasing

01:15:05.820 power, your, your, your, your buying habits against, you know, he bought this from Amazon.

01:15:10.720 And I often wonder what would happen if my, uh, that's why people go to browsers like brave

01:15:15.080 and go because they don't want their, and you know, frankly, when I heard about that,

01:15:19.380 that years ago, I had a buddy of mine saying, Oh, he doesn't want that in a search engine.

01:15:23.600 And I thought that was crazy. Now I'm wildly aware. Now I'm, so now we're going to be facing

01:15:29.880 the question. And I think the time to think about it is right now before it happened.

01:15:35.440 If they introduce something like that, then I have to play ball and I'm not speaking up

01:15:43.020 against the school board because I could be deemed a terrorist and they could shut me down.

01:15:48.400 Correct. I'm not, you know, I'm going to make sure my house is green, as green as it can be,

01:15:53.360 or they'll shut me down. Or I have to now prepare because it's going to be what, when it happens,

01:16:01.540 you can't make the decision. Then you have to kind of know where you stand to have a chance of

01:16:08.660 standing. You have to say, I'm willing to be a pariah. I'm willing. But that's, that's the irony

01:16:13.780 or an irony in this is that the values that they want to institutionalize or forward,

01:16:19.680 those themselves are morally fashionable. You know, just like the, you know, you're green

01:16:26.680 enough, right? We now have a relooking at nuclear power, which is morally fashionable. I just listened

01:16:31.660 to this great thing about Hunter Biden's laptop. Like that was the thing. Oh no, it's not true.

01:16:35.760 It's not true. Turned out to be true. And they censored all people. So, you know, again,

01:16:41.280 I think it's a kind of arrogance, right? It's a kind of arrogance that you know what's true

01:16:45.080 and that you know the right moral values. But how do you even know those moral values if

01:16:49.380 many of the people who are pushing those moral values themselves haven't arrived at it from a

01:16:55.020 process that they can rely upon? They haven't engaged in serious scholastic work. They haven't

01:17:00.060 talked to people across divides. They haven't like read stuff about it. They haven't, they haven't done

01:17:04.580 any of it, but yet they have a kind of knee jerk certainty about it. It's a huge problem. And so,

01:17:11.160 you know, you say, are you optimistic? And I would love to tell you I'm very optimistic,

01:17:15.880 but I'm just going to tell you the truth. I'm not particularly optimistic.

01:17:19.540 Yeah. Yeah. It is a pleasure to talk to you. It's a pleasure to have you here.

01:17:25.280 Thanks. I appreciate it. And I, I genuinely appreciate the fact that you do listen to other

01:17:31.280 sides and you do, you've been very supportive of my work and I am profoundly appreciative of that.

01:17:37.060 Anyone who is truly seeking the truth, no matter where that leads them,

01:17:42.660 I will stand by your side. I'll watch your back. I'll stand in front of you as a shield.

01:17:46.780 Thank you. Whatever you need. Ditto. Same goes. Thank you.

01:17:49.440 Just a reminder. I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

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The Glenn Beck Program - April 02, 2022

Ep 140 ｜ We Paid for a College Cult INVASION of Society ｜ Peter Boghossian ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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