Ep 143 ｜ How Social Media Could Cause America's COLLAPSE ｜ Jonathan Haidt ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
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Summary
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and a professor at the New York University. He studies emotion, morality, and politics. In his 2008 TED Talk about the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, he turned that talk into a book called The Righteous Mind, which examines how politics and religion divide good people. In 2018, he co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind, a smart, common sense book about the major social distortions that are ruining college campuses and creating a generation of dysfunctional Americans.
Transcript
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Social media is terrorizing democracy. These platforms have damaged our trust,
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degraded our belief in institutions, and eradicated our shared stories.
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They are undermining the principles that raised America to the heights of civilization.
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Today's guest recently tackled this in a new way with reality. It was reality-based,
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an in-depth feature story for The Atlantic. It was titled After Babel, Why the Past Ten Years
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of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. In it, he uses the biblical story of the Tower of Babel
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as a metaphor for the fractured country we now inhabit. He argues that we live in a post-Babel
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era and that social media is largely causing our collapse. He's a social psychologist and a
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professor at the New York University. He studies emotion, morality, and politics.
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In his 2008 TED Talk about the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, after that went wild,
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he turned that TED Talk into a book called The Righteous Mind, which examines how politics and
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religion divide good people. That book was so insightful, I made it required reading for my
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entire Blaze Media team. In 2018, he also co-authored the national bestseller, The Coddling of the American
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Mind, a smart, common-sense book about the major social distortions that are ruining college campuses
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and creating a generation of dysfunctional Americans. He is a reasonable man, and he has become
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kind of a dinosaur in a way. I mean, he's not that he's old, it's just nobody says these things anymore.
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And he is troubled by the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across
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party lines. To fight against this trend, he founded the Heterodox Academy, a non-partisan,
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non-profit devoted to protecting diversity of thought on college campuses. What a concept.
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The idea that great minds don't always think alike, which I think should be the tagline of this
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podcast. Today, welcome my guest, Jonathan Haidt. You might have heard this about me, but in case you
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haven't, I'm a doctor, man. That means before I come on the air for this program every day, I'm busy
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doing doctor stuff, you know. I'm rushing patients in from stuff that they were doing, you know,
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shouting, bring me a scalpel or a sharp steak knife, you know, stuff like that. Save a lot of lives in my
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Hey, Jonathan, how are you, sir? Fine, Glenn. Great to see you again. It is good to talk to you.
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Um, you are, um, you're fascinating. I, I, I heard you this week with, uh, Barry Weiss
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and, uh, there were, I was, I was screaming at my iPad. I'm like, no, Jonathan, this, you're,
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you're missing a piece of, I think of the Babel story that, that I, tell me, tell me. Yeah. So
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you know more about it than I do. Let's talk about Babel. So first let's start with your theory on,
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on fragmentation and that we're living in this post Babel era. Sure. So, so I'm a, I'm a professor
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at New York university. I've been a professor since 1995. I love being a professor. I love
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universities, uh, but something got weird in 2014, 2015. And many of your listeners and viewers will
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remember that year with the student protests and the safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions,
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stuff we hadn't seen two years before. Where did it come from? And ever since then,
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I've been trying to figure out what on earth is happening because it wasn't just universities.
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It was a weirdness that spread, you know, clearly spread throughout left-wing progressive spaces,
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but there was also a weirdening on the right, a real amplification of right-wing populist movements,
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not just in the U S. So it felt like something was really going strange about the universe that was
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affecting us all. And I had a strong feeling that it was something to do with social media.
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That seemed to be what was messing us up. And I'd spent most of my career studying political
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polarization and tribalism, like left versus right. And you, you and I have talked about that
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in our previous, in our previous meetings, but what was weird, you know, the last few years is
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that it wasn't just that the left hated the right more than before and vice versa. It was that within
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the left, everyone was ripping everyone to shreds and within the right things were nasty. And so
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fragmentation is different from tribalism. Fragmentation is where everything is coming apart.
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And so when I don't remember when I reread the Babel story, but, you know, most people think they know
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the story. I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure you can quote the key line, but, you know, us more
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secular people, we kind of know, yeah, you know, people were so proud and God knocked over the tower.
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That's the story, right? But when you look at the story, it's a very short story. And the key line
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is God, he doesn't actually knock over the tower. What he does is he says, let us go down and confound
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their language so that they may not understand one another. And when I reread that line, it was
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like a eureka moment because yes, that is what has happened to us. We literally cannot understand
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people that we're related to, that we work with. They live in a different world. We can't break
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through. So that was the central metaphor for this essay that I wrote in the Atlantic last week.
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So I love it. And I think it's great, but I have been, the tower of Babel story has bothered me for
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a long time. Uh, and I, I keep feeling like it plays a real role here. There's something to this
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story. So when I heard you say that, I'm like, yes, yes. Um, however there, if I, if I may add a
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couple of things, cause I want to talk to you about how these might change, um, your thinking,
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if at all, um, you know, the part of that story that bothered me the first time was when Nebuchadnezzar,
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the leader says, you know, let's build a tower to reach the sky. He doesn't say that. He says,
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let us make bricks and build the tower to reach the sky. And I have a rabbi friend. And I said,
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rabbi, I've never heard a politician say that, Hey, let's raise some taxes and we're going to do
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these things. And then we're going to have this great tower. They always talk about the tower. They
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don't talk about that. Yeah, that's right. He said, because the oral tradition, um, means
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bricks is equal to slaves. Whenever the Bible talks about stones, each are unique and you build a stone
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wall, you put stones together. And that means the uniqueness of people coming together and building
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something. Okay. Bricks, they're all the same. So he said that it is the elite saying, look,
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these people are all interchangeable. If we just make sure if we treat them like bricks, treat them like,
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uh, slaves or they're all the same. We can do anything. We can build this tower to the sky.
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So he then also said that in the oral tradition, there are three faces of God that you always see.
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And it's important to know which one is talking. And this one is the merciful God. If they can do this,
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they can do anything. Let's confuse the language. Now I've always looked at this story and thought
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our language is ones and zeros. And with where we're going, I hope that God would come down
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before we destroy ourselves and confuse our ones and zeros. But I was fascinated with,
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with your telling of it. But does that information at all change the Tower of Babel's, uh, insight for you?
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Let me just get this straight. What you're saying is that there's a reading of the story
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where God does this to help us. Yes. That, that it's a good thing that he destroys the Tower. Yes.
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He's trying to, he's trying to, I mean, in a really butchered sort of way here, he's trying to say,
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um, authoritarianism, uh, where everybody is exactly the same and the leadership, just,
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you're dead, move on. That has to be destroyed because if it's done, um, like they were doing it
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then, man can't, these men can do anything. Right. Um, that's interesting. The idea that it
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was done for our benefit or as a way to stop us from being too proud. Um, I, I did a podcast with
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Russell Moore last week and he suggested that there are two obvious motives. I mean, the text is so short,
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it's so cryptic, but, but the, but he said the two motives that seem to come out from what we have
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is one is the hubris, the ambition. We want to have its top in the tower. And the other is fear
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because the people it's like, so that we would not be flooded again. You know, these are the
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descendants of Noah that just been flooded out. And if we build a city with a tower, then we can run up
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into the tower if God sends another flood. So it's fear. And, um, and so if those are the motives,
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those two translate easily into social media, because why do we do the things we do on social
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media? We do it for reputation. We want to boast and brag and put ourself forward and be an influencer.
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And that's the hubris. Um, and we do it, we attack people out of fear. We think they're going to
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destroy our way of life and we want to come together and attack them in a, in a, this petty,
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degrading sort of way. Uh, but your interpretation or your rabbi's friend interpretation is very
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interesting about the individualism and the interchangeability and the, and the bricks when
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it comes to social media, that's what it's doing to all of us. It is, it is demanding that everybody
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tow this line and say these things or they'll destroy you. Well, now hold on a second. Here's the
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weird thing about social media. It's not demanding that all people, a hundred percent of people say
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this thing. It's demanding that the people that I can influence in my domain or bubble must say this
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thing. Um, so the language policing is not necessarily enforced. It's not as though, you know,
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progressives and universities are saying you and your churches must use the, this language. Um,
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they're mostly harassing moderates on the left. They're mostly harassing people who are in their
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institutions. And this is one of the central ideas. I would beg to differ that it's mostly,
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I would say it's pretty fair on our side too. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But the, the key thing I wanted
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to get across in the article is that of course, we've always had conflict. We've always, we've had
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a culture war, left, right, cultural, cultural for a long time. But what changed about social media,
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um, is that it started, it wasn't so bad. You put up pictures of your family, your dog, whatever.
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It's when it's, it's between 2009, 2012, the dynamics of the platforms change. And it's, it's
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not about sharing photos with your friends. It's now about commenting on things, on things that
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people said and the retweet and the quote tweets. Um, it's much more about, so the metaphor I use is
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it's as though everyone got a little dart gun and, uh, Twitter in particular, that's the worst of
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them. It's like everyone has a little dart gun and you can shoot as many darts as you wanted,
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anyone you want. And there's no accountability, no due process, um, say anything you want. And,
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um, most people are nice. Most people don't want to destroy anybody, but that there are four groups
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of people who took up those dart guns with great enthusiasm. And I think they're mostly on the far
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left, the far right trolls, that is individuals, mostly men who are just jerks and just like to
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harass people. And then Russian intelligence agents who really used it skillfully beginning in 2014
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to, to make us hate each other. And they, they, they messed with people on the left and the right
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to increase hate. So, at least that's my argument. And very open about it, honestly. I mean, it's,
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it's been crazy how, I don't know if you know, um, Alexander Dugan, but he was, no, he, oh, you,
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oh, you should look into him. I can't write this down. He, Alexander Dugan is a guy you should study
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because he is, his influence, um, with Putin has been significant in the past, but he is also
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somebody who has got his fingers into the far right, um, and is posing as a small T traditionalist,
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but he is a capital T traditionalist. He's a dangerous man. The guy looks like Rasputin.
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I can't believe this. I know. He looks like, oh yeah, you will love your journey on him. He's,
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I think he's one of the most dangerous men in the world. Okay. Thanks for, thanks for giving me
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another rabbit hole to go down. Putin's philosopher. This is uncanny. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. He is,
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he's the guy who, uh, really developed the, uh, Ukraine strategy, uh, for Croatia. He is,
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he is very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. You know, my doctor said to me, Glenn,
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you got to get to the gym every day. And I have, and I went back to my doctor and he said,
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you haven't lost a pound. And I said, I'm going to the gym every day. He said, are you actually using?
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And I said, you didn't say that. Okay. But I'm there and I'm sitting there in that gym and I'm
00:15:04.040
eating, you know, built bars, which are healthy, healthy might be eating too many of them. Uh,
00:15:10.880
but they are like candy bars. They are so great. Full of protein have about 130 calories each. I just
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thought that meant for the box, 130 calories, four grams of sugar, four grams of net carbs,
00:15:24.040
17 grams of protein. Now my doctor says, if you mix that protein with lifting stuff,
00:15:31.660
it builds muscles. I don't know. He's a doctor. So am I, I'm not sure that's true,
00:15:40.260
but anyway, they taste great. Uh, and they're friendly to your waistline. Even if you're not
00:15:46.420
big on working out like me, uh, you should try it. It's great. Really, really great. It's built
00:15:53.700
built.com. Use the promo code Beck 15, get 15% off your order. Uh, use the promo code Beck 15 for 15%
00:16:01.680
off at built.com. We are divided. We are at this place where we can't understand each other. And,
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and Jonathan, I think you know me well enough to, to know that I may screw things up a lot,
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but I am actually trying to do the right thing. I have tried, I have tried. You've changed your
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mind. You've made apologies when you were wrong. So yes, I mean, that, that's why I'm happy to be
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here talking with you, but I've tried to use, um, you know, your tips and your language and the way to,
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to, um, reach out. There is, there are very few people and especially now it's getting much worse.
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There is no reconciliation on the horizon. And quite honestly, I don't know how to answer that.
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I mean, in a Martin Luther King way, you have to reconcile because if you don't, there's no winner.
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I mean, there's no, there's a winner and a loser and we can't have that. So we have to reconcile,
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but people are at the point where I can't live next to you. If you really believe that there is
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no freedom of speech or difference of opinion. And I have to toe that line. I can't, I can't do it.
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In fact, Glenn, let me ask you something. Um, I think, did you used to live in, in New Canaan,
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Connecticut? Yeah, I did. Um, yeah, my, cause I believe, did you live near Ponus Ridge road?
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I lived on it. Yeah. On it. That's right. Yeah. Cause my, my sister and brother-in-law,
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uh, lived there. They lived there while, while you were there. And I think they said that,
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did you leave because people were just nasty to you and harassing? And was that part of why you
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left? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, right. So that's, what's happening is that the culture war
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has, you know, it has spilled out into all channels. And this was even before, you know,
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it was in 20, what is it? Under Trump, it became much more common for, you know, for people to
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harass people in a restaurant. You're in the Trump administration. I'm not going to let you have
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your meal in peace. And I, but I guess they were doing that to you even long before then. Um, so
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yes, we, we ultimately will need to reconcile. And it seems that we're very far from that. Um, but let
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me, let me make this distinction that, um, we can either look at individual Americans and we can
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think about what the average person wants or, or we can talk about what we're like, or we can look
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at our public life, which is not a reflection of the average American. It's a reflection of various
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dynamics and pressures and incentives. And what I have always found in all of my research on morality
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is that most people are very reasonable, nice. If you talk to them in private, they're polite.
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Um, and they become jerks. They become not nice when they're performing in front of others.
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And so, um, uh, when you put them in the wrong sort of form, so think about it this way.
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Um, technology allows us to connect. People have always wanted to connect. It was amazing when,
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you know, humans got roads and the postal service and, you know, telephone and email,
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these things all let us connect. Um, but the social media platforms, that's what I'm focused on.
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This is not about the internet or technology. This is about a few platforms that use a particular
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business model in which users are not the customers, they're the product, and they are
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supposed to perform to get other people to watch. And so if you can imagine technology making it
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possible for us to have all these conversations, but all of a sudden we discover, I'm not talking
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to you privately over Facebook or Twitter or anything else. We're actually performing in the
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center of the Roman Colosseum. And the, the, the, the stands are full of people with their refreshments
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and their beer and their cheer and they want to see blood. They want to see a fight. And that's what
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changed in the 2010s. Um, that's my argument in the, in this Atlantic essay that when social media
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changed and became much more about, they, they changed the architecture so things could go viral
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much more quickly with the retweet button, the like button, the share button. Um, and people were
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much more incentivized, uh, to attack others, to be outrageous. Um, that's when everything changed.
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We were polarized before 2009, but, but in the 2010s, it was as though everyone got a dart gun
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and they were encouraged. Shoot, shoot, shoot. The more you shoot, the more points you'll get,
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the more followers you'll get. And that's when I believe our institutions, our groups became
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structurally stupid. This is not about individual Americans being stupid. We're not a stupid people,
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but our institutions became stupider in the 2010s because we're, most of us are afraid to say
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anything. We're afraid to challenge the orthodoxy. And that's what makes any group stupid.
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You know, when I was, when I was at, uh, Fox, people said that, uh, you know, I was just saying
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things for ratings, et cetera, et cetera. And I tried to explain to people, look, I am a performer
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because my job is to, there's two sides to it, to drive eyeballs to the show and then give them
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a message. Okay. And I know how to, I know how to perform. So it's an exciting show. It's a fun
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show. Okay. Yeah. It's always been fun to listen to you. Even when I intensely disliked you politically
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back when I was younger, but I got to give you credit. It's a lot more, it was fun to listen to.
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Right. So, uh, so I know that, but I have worked a long time to get there and I know there are some
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people and it almost happened to me, um, where, you know, you get to a place to maybe your ratings
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are starting to go down or your whatever, and you know how to manipulate it and you lose your soul
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once you do. But in 2010, what happened was I used to have an audience. Now my audience has an
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audience. And so you've unleashed millions of people who now are struggling with the same thing
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that they used to accuse me or others of. You don't really mean it. You're just trying to get
00:22:05.360
whatever. Yeah. And that's what's happening. I like it. Yes, it is. So let me introduce a psychology
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principle here that I think will expand on your, your metaphor, your, your insight. Um, so, you know,
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many of your listeners are parents and we all know how hard it is to change our kids. And my wife and
00:22:24.700
I've tried to get our daughter to make her bed and it's impossible. Uh, and finally my wife just gave
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up and she makes the bed. Um, and, um, it's very hard to change your kids. On the other hand, if you
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take a rat or a pigeon and you put them in a Skinner box, that is a box where this, where the scientists
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can press a button to instantly give them a reward or a punishment, you can train that pigeon to play
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ping pong, to play the piano. Uh, if you can give rewards and punishments instantly, uh, then you
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can train a creature very, very fast, even a rat or a pigeon. And so what happened when your audience
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got an audience? What happened when everyone got on social media? Well, social media is a way in which
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you do something like you post something. And I don't know about you, you know, even though I,
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I say how bad all this stuff is, you know, I've been posting a bunch recently because of my Atlantic
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article and I find myself checking. I go back and I check five minutes later. I see how many people
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liked it. How many little food pellets did I get? So it's incredibly powerful psychologically. It's
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called, you know, it's behaviorist conditioning. And so in the old days of mass media, where you were
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the performer, you had a big audience. It wasn't like that. There was all kinds of interesting
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psychology and they shape you, but that's part of what changed in the 2010s is suddenly all of us
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are in this little Skinner box. Um, you know, our account on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram
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and strangers are, are reinforcing us or punishing us. And guess what? A lot of us get trained to do
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weird, weird things. And that's part of the story of why everything went crazy in the 2010s.
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So I know that you, I mean, you really believe in the moral foundations of a society and they are all
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crumbling and you know, it is, it has happened before. There's been two great awakenings. Um,
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one in the 17 fifties and sixties, one in the 18 forties and fifties. And they have, they have been
00:24:19.400
led outside of the church because the church, you know, church is just like everything else. It'll just
00:24:25.960
go corrupt and it'll worry about its standing and its power and everything else. So usually it starts
00:24:31.600
from outside where people are like, Hey, this is wrong. And the churches usually start to attack
00:24:38.640
those people, but it changed. Martin Luther King did the same thing. Um, and, uh, we are hopefully
00:24:47.160
headed towards a new, um, awakening, but we are so close to losing all of our moral foundations.
00:24:57.900
I don't, I mean, I feel like we are really at the edge.
00:25:04.060
Yes, I think that's true, but let's go into that in a little more detail. Um, so, so I'm, I,
00:25:10.100
I'm a psychologist who's very interested in both evolution and anthropology. Evolution tells us how
00:25:16.380
we're all the same, how we're all members of homo sapiens. We all have human nature. Um, anthropology
00:25:22.820
tells us a lot about how we're different, how we have different norms and practices in different
00:25:26.660
societies. Um, and humans evolved to live in small groups with lots of small gods and worshiping
00:25:36.400
them, you know, with, with animistic practices and campfires and rhythmic music. And there's a sort
00:25:42.360
of a default or normal human pattern of, of spirituality and religion. Um, but after agriculture
00:25:49.760
and the agricultural revolution and, and surpluses, we began living in much larger societies. So that's
00:25:55.500
just about, you know, seven to 10,000 years ago, you know, five to 10,000 years ago, we began living
00:25:59.740
in larger societies. And so the question is, how does a society hold itself together rather than
00:26:04.760
splitting apart? Because we didn't evolve to live in large groups, but over time we've evolved cultural
00:26:11.100
institutions and religion is the preeminent one. So again, I'm, I'm coming at this from the point of
00:26:15.980
view. I'm, I'm a Jewish atheist. I'm, I'm raised Jewish. I'm a scientist. I'm an atheist,
00:26:21.560
but I have a lot of respect for religion. Um, which I think is why I, I get invited to,
00:26:26.400
to, to speak at Christian schools because, uh, you know, people are very tolerant about what I
00:26:30.500
believe as long as I don't show contempt for them, which, which, which I don't when some,
00:26:35.700
But that used to be what united us. We could disagree, but still listen to each other and
00:26:45.300
That's right. Because what you need for, as a human society grows, you have to look at what
00:26:51.080
are the forces holding us together and what are the forces splitting us apart? And traditionally
00:26:56.040
religion is religion and common language, uh, and a sense of shared blood. We're all descended from
00:27:01.660
the same ancestor, you know, so Jews, you know, it's, you know, Abraham, we're all the descendants
00:27:06.360
of Abraham. So these are the techniques. These are the psychologically powerful things that hold
00:27:11.060
the society together. Um, and as you get more diversity, for example, now diversity brings
00:27:16.540
many benefits for creativity, for trade economics, but cultural diversity, religious diversity and
00:27:22.280
linguistic diversity, those are like centrifugal forces that pull things out and you have to have
00:27:27.700
other forces pulling things in. So you said the moral foundations are crumbling. I would translate
00:27:32.260
that into a social science language, more like there are binding forces and there are dividing
00:27:38.180
forces. And in the post-World War II world, boy, those binding forces were really strong.
00:27:43.700
We just fought a war against fascism. And then when we pivot into the cold war, we had enemies,
00:27:48.760
we had life or death struggles. We had one dominant culture. Um, it was the wasp culture, uh, which
00:27:55.540
was actually pretty tolerant. Um, you know, my, my, my grandparents, you know, Jewish immigrants from
00:28:01.440
Poland and Russia, they were allowed to, to come to be themselves, to, they assimilated, their kids
00:28:06.680
became Americans. So there was a lot of things pulling us together with a sense of commonality.
00:28:11.600
Part of what is crumbling, um, is the, the, the sense that we have a shared story, the sense we
00:28:18.320
have anything that holds us together, uh, the sense that our founding institutions are good.
00:28:23.460
Every culture or many cultures worship their, their ancestors. And part of the American religion is
00:28:29.220
you worship the founding fathers, the constitution, the declaration of independence. We have our holy
00:28:33.520
documents. That's all fading away. Um, there's less respect, less, uh, uh, uh, less trust. So the
00:28:42.720
things that hold us together are what are loosening and social media has just accelerated that to an
00:28:48.540
extraordinary degree. Uh, anyway, that was a bit scattered, but yes, I, I do want to encourage
00:28:53.640
your listeners to think about the things that have been holding us together and the things that are
00:28:57.440
driving us apart. And right now we're out of balance, way out of balance throughout the whole
00:29:03.820
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00:30:35.160
You know, you say we're in a post Babel era. Um, and what scares me about the interviews I've heard you
00:30:44.380
give here recently is I've always thought of you as a guy who, uh, one of the good guys trying to bring
00:30:52.160
people together, trying just to speak the truth. Um, and, uh, and an optimist. And I haven't heard,
00:31:01.720
you know, uh, you know, the screaming optimism from you lately. I mean, I think you said recently,
00:31:08.060
uh, that, uh, gosh, where was it? Um, I just wrote it down just a second ago, but you basically are
00:31:16.340
saying, you know, we're, we're coming to an end here of democracy. Let, okay. Let me elaborate on
00:31:23.980
that. Okay. Um, I, by temperament, yes, I'm generally optimistic. Uh, and for a long time,
00:31:29.480
I believed the, there's some wonderful books. Steve Pinker has a book on the better angels of
00:31:34.920
our nature. Um, there's Matt Ridley's book, the rational optimist, you know, people have always
00:31:41.140
thought society is falling apart and yet, you know, prosperity rises, health increases, rights
00:31:46.500
increase. So I've long been a believer in that theory that there are temporary setbacks, but the
00:31:51.240
long-term trajectory of humanity is very good. In the last three or four years, I, I, I'm very,
00:31:58.400
I'm much more doubtful. I'm much more pessimistic. And what I would say is if we don't make these
00:32:03.340
big changes, if we continue on the path we're going on, then I believe we will fail as a country
00:32:08.840
within, it's hard to say a number, but within 10 years, I think we will have high levels of
00:32:14.840
political dysfunction. There'll be more political violence. There'll be less trust. Um, and our,
00:32:19.960
our young generation, which is already really messed up, they're going to be the ones running
00:32:23.520
the show. So if we don't make major changes, then yes, I think we will fail as a country.
00:32:28.460
Um, that doesn't mean civil war necessarily, but it means more like, I think there are many Latin
00:32:32.460
American countries, many countries around the world have tried to enact democracy with weak
00:32:36.280
institutions. And I think we will become like them, but that there's a big, if that that's if we don't
00:32:41.080
do anything, if we just continue fighting each other. All right. So then what are the things we have
00:32:46.100
to do to cure that? I mean, honestly, Jonathan, I've wanted to call you so many times ago, Jonathan,
00:32:53.460
can you just, can you spend a weekend with me and just tell me what to do? Cause I mean,
00:32:58.660
there are millions of people that want to solve this. We just don't know what to do.
00:33:05.900
That's right. So actually I am actually a lot more optimistic now than I was when I wrote the
00:33:10.980
article and that was just last month that I wrote it. And here's why. Um, you know, once I,
00:33:15.480
once I realized it's not that we're all going crazy, we're not, um, it's that there are four
00:33:20.240
groups that are super empowered by viral social media. And they are, as I said, the far right,
00:33:25.840
the far left trolls and Russian agents or other, uh, other intelligence agents that are trying to
00:33:31.800
split us. Um, then there's the middle 80% of the country. There's the most of us, the middle 80%
00:33:39.020
is very reasonable. And so the fact that I published this article and I'm not getting
00:33:47.160
attacked. In fact, nobody's disagreeing with it. There's a, there seems to, people are seeing,
00:33:50.980
seem to be saying like, I'm totally exhausted. Oh my God. Yes. This article at least explains
00:33:55.720
what the hell's going on. Why are we all exhausted? Why have we all been attacked by strangers for no
00:34:00.440
reason? Um, so I'm actually encouraged because we're on a ship that is sinking. We're on a ship that
00:34:06.460
is taking on water. It can be repaired. It's not destined to sink, but if we don't do anything,
00:34:11.840
it will sink. And we don't know what to do because all we see is the, you know, the, the sailors are
00:34:18.060
just fighting each other. The crew is just fighting each other and we're the passengers. And we're saying
00:34:23.600
like, what do we do? And I think now there's a dawning realization that the ship is sinking.
00:34:29.460
The people are supposed to be running it are just too busy fighting each other. So we, the passengers
00:34:33.580
have to actually take action. The middle 80% has to stand up. And what that means, actually,
00:34:39.840
let me run this by, cause I haven't said this anywhere else. Let me see if this makes sense.
00:34:42.800
What this means is, um, the, because, because our leaders are so intimidated by their extreme wings.
00:34:49.880
If you're a president of a university, you're intimidated by the, the young woke left. If you're
00:34:54.960
a moderate Republican politician, you're getting death threats from people on the right.
00:34:58.360
So I think what this means is the, the, the, the leaders and the, and the more moderate people
00:35:04.200
have to stand up to their wings. University presidents have to stand up and say, you know,
00:35:08.420
no, no, you know, this university is devoted to the pursuit of truth. We're not, we're not here to,
00:35:13.920
to fight for racial justice or any sort of, of social justice. You do that on your own time.
00:35:18.720
That's great. We hope we'll give you the tools, but we have a job to do. And our job is the pursuit
00:35:23.800
of truth and the passing on of the best that has been said and thought. Um, so, so if, if we have a
00:35:30.120
dawning realization that the ship is sinking, but the great majority of us don't want it to sink,
00:35:34.260
we want to fix the ship. We want to fix the game. Um, then I think there are some reforms that can be
00:35:39.880
done. So first, let me just check with you. Do you agree with that analysis that the more moderates
00:35:44.520
and responsible people, the leaders of the institutions, they have to stand up to their extremes
00:35:48.200
or do you, do you think there's any symmetry here? No, no, no. I, I, there's a perspective
00:35:52.940
here that you may not have that I could help enhance this a little bit, or at least pose the
00:35:58.400
question to you. I think you're right. Um, there has to, there, there are no, where's the Churchill?
00:36:04.320
Where, where's the Churchill of business? Where's the Churchill of, of universities? Where's the
00:36:09.600
Churchill of parties? You know what I mean? Um, they're scarce. Um, uh, and they have to stand up,
00:36:17.880
but I will tell you that I feel like the right, uh, you know, the, the, not the far fringe,
00:36:26.720
the regular person. And I think, I don't know, but I know when I go to my farming community,
00:36:34.840
I talked to Democrats and they're the same way that I am just, can we not just live together? Okay.
00:36:42.280
Um, and, and that has to be led, but the people on the right feel like we have been cast as wanting
00:36:54.100
to kill people because we disagreed, you know, uh, wanting to starve children to death. All of these
00:37:00.660
things were racist, were angry, were white, all of this stuff that until you start to see leadership.
00:37:07.780
And I think you are one of these, um, Boghossian is one, um, uh, you know, others like this,
00:37:15.460
Barry Weiss is one where they stand up and go, you know what? I'm not a conservative,
00:37:21.880
but this is nuts. Um, that's right. We can rally if we see that, but until conservatives start to see
00:37:31.820
people on the left going, okay, you, you Marxists that want to burn the entire thing to the ground,
00:37:39.500
you got to stop until we see that. I don't think we'll have the trust. Does that make sense to you?
00:37:47.840
Okay. It sure does. But, but I think this is where the asymmetry lies because people on each side point
00:37:53.900
to the extremes of the other with justification, but there's an interesting asymmetry. So what I said
00:37:59.520
in the article is that the problem on the left is not the democratic party per se, because the
00:38:05.160
democratic party per se is actually, it's usually the moderates who win. It's not, it's not the,
00:38:09.320
the extreme wing is not in charge. They, they have voice, they're involved, but they're not
00:38:13.840
dominating the democratic party. They are dominating the institutions, as you say. So, so people on the
00:38:20.460
right are correct in pointing out the nastiness, the, the, the instant, you know, they will instantly
00:38:24.920
call you racist for anything. Just so they're right. People on the right are correct in saying
00:38:30.620
the things you said, but you know, you've got to take the, take the plank out of your own eye
00:38:35.380
before you can point out the, the, the, the, the, the splinter in your neighbor's eye. What I argue
00:38:41.880
in the essay is that the asymmetry is that, is that normal conservatives are not doing this to liberals,
00:38:47.560
but the Republican party, I believe has gone off the deep end under Trump. The party of Mitt Romney
00:38:55.120
was at least a responsible center-right party. Now here, I'm sure many of your listeners will have
00:38:59.220
strong reactions against this, but it seems to me as someone in the middle, what I'm saying is the
00:39:03.940
cultural left is a huge problem because it's, it's warping institutions, but on the right, it's not the
00:39:10.040
cultural right, it's the Republican party. And the fact that they couldn't even stand up after the
00:39:15.120
January 6th insurrection and, and say that we should study this or say that this is something
00:39:21.400
wrong. Many of us did. Okay. And what happened? You tell, please tell me what happens to, what
00:39:25.940
happens to more moderate Republicans who stood up and, and, and, and, well, I will tell you on the
00:39:30.600
January 6th thing, um, until the Biden administration started going on this massive witch hunt and saying
00:39:38.420
it was the worst thing that has happened since the civil war. I mean, let's go back to the nineties
00:39:43.460
where the left blew the Capitol up, blew part of the Senate up. Um, it has happened before. And
00:39:50.880
quite honestly, I don't, I was disgusted by it. And quite honestly, I was disgusted that the president,
00:39:58.220
I was at home going, where's the president, where's the president. And then when he did something on the
00:40:03.400
phone online, I was like, that's, that's not what a president does. Most people that I know felt
00:40:10.300
exactly the same way. Most, uh, uh, if not all fell that way, felt that way that I know. Um,
00:40:18.640
however, once it became a tool, it stopped being about Donald Trump and started to be about the 90
00:40:28.000
million people that voted for him. You lost it. You know, it's just the, the left was like, what are you,
00:40:34.300
what are you doing? You didn't go after the people who were burning cities and you're going
00:40:40.000
after this group that most of us don't relate to at all. Yeah. Okay. But so here, here we're going
00:40:47.640
down the path of normal moral psychology and you see this when, in your kids, you know, if you, if you,
00:40:52.460
if you, you know, if your kid does something wrong, the standard response is, well, but he did it,
00:40:56.640
he does it too, or he did something else. And so, um, so, uh, everyone's complaints about the other
00:41:03.780
side are, are legitimate, are justified. Um, and the only way we're going to get out of that is by
00:41:09.500
totally breaking out of that dynamic. So wait, wait, wait, wait, um, help me out with this part
00:41:15.880
then, because I think, cause you remember I was not for Donald Trump, um, when he ran the first time,
00:41:22.260
not for him and took a bad beating for it for his policies. Don't like the tweets and all of that
00:41:30.920
crap that comes with it. Um, really great for president. Yes. Really despicable January 6th,
00:41:38.040
yada, yada. Even though, um, uh, you know, I thought there was foul play, but I couldn't prove
00:41:44.700
it. So nobody could prove it. I kept saying, if you got something, show it. If you don't shut up,
00:41:51.700
you know, you don't have anything. Right. Um, so, uh, when you look at that, but I have learned
00:41:58.780
what people see in Donald Trump is, you know, you said that the very beginning of this,
00:42:05.980
that you started to see people rise up all around the world, the right and everything else.
00:42:13.060
There's one thing that they have in common. Cause I've, I've watched this as well. Hong Kong,
00:42:19.400
France, Brexit, uh, Canada here in the United States, it's happening all over the world.
00:42:26.040
And it, what they all have in common is they feel as though their government is not listening to
00:42:35.680
them, you know, and, and demeaning them and the things that they believe in. And so they will
00:42:43.100
follow people who say, I listened to you. I listened to you. And that's right. That's what
00:42:50.760
Donald Trump has in spades to the people who voted for him. They're like, at least somebody is
00:42:57.160
valuing my, my opinion and my, my, my values. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think that's
00:43:05.220
a good analysis. I'm focused on the social media aspect, but there's an economic aspect here,
00:43:09.960
which is what you just put your finger on that the left used to be related to labor. It was the
00:43:15.080
party of the working man. Uh, it was really, you know, so, uh, and the Republican party used to be
00:43:20.580
the party of, you know, the rich country club business people. And what's happened, not just in
00:43:25.680
the U S exactly the same thing in the UK and, and, and, you know, in France and in all the Western
00:43:30.340
democracies, um, is as the, uh, as the highly educated people, uh, the knowledge workers, the
00:43:36.720
journalists, the professors, um, since they, as they're, they've come to be the center of the left
00:43:42.600
party, whether it's labor in the UK or Democrats here, they live in Paris and New York. I mean,
00:43:47.700
you know, Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, they, they refer contemptuously to the flyover
00:43:52.460
zone, flyover country. Um, they do treat most people with contempt. They have no connection to
00:43:57.920
the working man. Um, and so, yes, this has been a, uh, the changing economics of globalization,
00:44:05.020
education, knowledge work, all this stuff has changed the, the left, right, the nature of the
00:44:10.100
left, right conflict in our countries. And I agree. The left does treat the right with contempt.
00:44:14.980
Well, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, why they don't win elections now.
00:44:17.180
Right. But I think there's a difference. I think the split is because I talked to Democrats and we
00:44:23.440
may not agree on every policy, but we agree on direction and principles. Not everybody. I'm not
00:44:30.700
talking about the political class. I'm talking about the regular people. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And, um,
00:44:36.520
when you really look at it, it's really becoming the ruling class all over the world. This group of
00:44:45.640
elites that really look down their nose at everybody else and then everybody else. I mean, I think,
00:44:54.400
I mean, I'm finding strange bedfellows all the time that we don't agree on policies.
00:44:59.820
Tell me about it. Okay. So, so, so how would you go about, because I agree, I agree with you that
00:45:05.680
there is this rise of the elites and, and, uh, you know, bad elite. I mean, if you have good elites
00:45:11.280
and those are the ones that got us through world war two, that was Churchill. Yeah. You know, if you
00:45:15.300
have good elites with a sense of service, uh, you need elites to run a country. And if we have this
00:45:20.480
more meritocratic elite where they feel they're elite because they did so well on the SAT that they
00:45:25.460
got into the top schools and then they've got to the top schools. So our elite elite is great.
00:45:31.520
Yeah. If it's true merit, as opposed to test taking. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, so I, I agree
00:45:36.680
with you that a part of our problem is that we don't have elites with a sense of service. We have
00:45:40.760
elites who think that they deserved, they deserve their elite status. I mean, you have Elon Musk.
00:45:47.680
I disagree with Elon Musk on so much, I'm sure, but man, I would vote for him.
00:45:53.420
Vision. I love him because he's seeing, he sees past all this crap and like, this is crap. Let's go
00:46:00.680
here. He's the only one. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a problem too. The lot, the lack of
00:46:09.660
vision. So, but let me kick this back to you. I put this out as, I put this out as we need to somehow
00:46:17.240
mobilize the middle 80%, the reasonable people. And it's not like we need to like tear things
00:46:23.240
down. It's, we need to like restore reason to our institutions. We need to, to have our, our
00:46:29.080
schools need to focus on education. You know, the CDC needs to focus on health. We have to keep
00:46:35.380
political concerns out of things. I kind of, we need like a Geneva convention for the culture wars
00:46:40.000
that people don't assault you at a, at a picnic in New Canaan or at a, in a restaurant, you know,
00:46:44.760
in Washington. How do you think we can get there? You said before, you know, the left has to stop
00:46:51.060
doing this to the right. That's not going to stop. And as long as there's Twitter, as long as anyone,
00:46:56.480
as long as anyone has done anything, you're going to find out about it. So how do you think we can get
00:46:59.900
out of this? So it requires, just like you said, I think leadership in position, all positions,
00:47:06.700
you know, leadership, you're standing up at the PTA and you know, you're speaking to your school board
00:47:13.360
with respect and lead that way. Um, and then just follow the system and it's happening all over the
00:47:22.880
country. You come, you become, you know, the, the school board member and then somebody else has to
00:47:29.340
stand up and, and be courageous around you. If you start to go, you know, corrupt, um, we have to
00:47:36.300
have them in all levels of people who just really, truly want to, um, fix the problem and use common
00:47:44.700
sense. But I really don't think Jonathan, and this is new for me. Um, I really don't think you'll do it
00:47:50.960
until you reduce the size of the government. It is absolutely corrupt. You have to get the power
00:47:59.600
back closer to the people. This won't work in probably any other country, but ours,
00:48:05.480
if we still understand it, but I'm not sure the next generation understands capitalism,
00:48:12.700
understands hard work, uh, has the, has the courage to be an entrepreneur. I don't know if they have
00:48:20.900
that. Um, but no, I'm afraid, I'm afraid they don't because one of the hallmarks of Gen Z is that
00:48:26.900
they're anxious. They're fearful. They're risk averse because we never let them practice risk-taking.
00:48:31.780
Right. Um, so actually if I could just steer our conversation just for a moment, I want to come
00:48:35.220
back to what you just said, but, but a big piece of this and a big reason for my pessimism is that
00:48:39.780
we've messed up Gen Z in two ways. What we've done to them is kids need to be out playing,
00:48:45.760
especially between age seven and 12. That's when all the children's stories take place.
00:48:49.360
You know, the kid goes out on an adventure without parents. That's the crucial period of cultural
00:48:53.620
learning for, for, for human children. They need to have unsupervised free play. And what we did is we
00:48:57.960
said, instead of that, uh, we think you'll get kidnapped if we let you out, which doesn't,
00:49:03.320
which doesn't happen. Um, so we're not gonna let you out. Oh, and instead we're going to give
00:49:07.080
you a phone and an iPad and you can just be on that. And that basically blocks all the experience
00:49:11.660
that they need to grow. Um, so if, for, for everybody listening to this, think about your
00:49:17.680
community, think about what, what age kids are let out. Think about when you were let out and I've
00:49:22.380
done this all over the country. It used to be six to eight. It was first, second, or third grade by
00:49:26.320
third grade. Everyone's out playing with no adult supervision. That's the normal human thing. And
00:49:30.000
that's true in other countries I've been to all of a sudden in the nineties, we stopped that. We
00:49:33.880
freak out about child abduction, even though there are almost zero children abducted other than by the
00:49:38.220
non-custodial parent. We freak out about it in part because of cable TV freakouts. Um, and we,
00:49:43.880
we overprotect our kids. They don't learn the virtues that you're talking about the virtue. How do you
00:49:48.880
learn to be a leader? How do you learn to resolve conflicts? It's with unsupervised free play team
00:49:53.240
competition with no referee. You have to supervise yourselves. So kids need to have a lot more free
00:49:58.380
play and a lot less time on their devices. They should not be on social media in particular until
00:50:02.980
after puberty, until I think 16 is the minimum age. Um, I'm not telling your listeners to just get
00:50:08.900
your kid off right away because that could isolate them, but work in your community. This is the thing
00:50:14.160
work on your community so that there's a place where kids play or you have, you have, you know, you,
00:50:20.720
you and your friends, uh, you and your kids, friends, families are all agree kids should be
00:50:26.520
out or over at each other's homes playing out outside. Um, so we've got to, we've got to change
00:50:31.480
what we're doing to kids, more free play, less time on phones. I urge your listeners to go to
00:50:36.120
letgrow.org. It's a, an organization I co-founded with Lenore Skenazy who wrote the book Free Range Kids.
00:50:42.280
So that's just a little, this is an area, look, this is a totally nonpartisan issue. This is one
00:50:47.820
where we really can work together. Um, and actually four states have already passed laws
00:50:54.080
legalizing outdoor play. Sounds like a crazy thing to say, but in most states, if your kid is caught
00:50:59.000
playing outside, they could be taken, they could, you know, uh, child protective services. It's
00:51:03.360
insane. Completely insane. Yeah. Yeah. So Colorado was the most recent one to pass a, uh, pass a bill.
00:51:09.120
Uh, uh, Utah was the first. Um, so wherever you are listening to this, find, go to letgrow.org and
00:51:15.520
look at our page on legislation, find that if your state has a reasonable childhood independence law,
00:51:21.100
because we have to give our kids reasonable independence to develop those virtues that
00:51:26.160
you're talking about, virtues that conservatives in particular are eloquent about self-reliance.
00:51:31.240
Don't blame others, take responsibility, uh, you know, learn to share, work it out yourself. These
00:51:36.420
are the things kids learn in play. So we have to do that. We have to keep them off social media till 16.
00:51:41.320
And then the next generation will be a little more able to take risks. We've deprived them of the
00:51:46.500
chance to learn how to, how to calibrate risk. Um, so anyway, that's just building off what you said
00:51:51.960
about the importance of leaders who are willing to take reasonable risks. Jonathan, I know you've
00:51:58.140
got a tight time schedule. So do I, I would, I would love to do this again early and often. I, you are
00:52:05.760
a rare, uh, rare mind, uh, in a rare voice in today's world. Okay. Well, well, thank you, Glenn. I love
00:52:12.240
talking with you. I love the way you, you think about things. You, you, you'll, you'll change your
00:52:17.160
position when you, you think the facts have changed. Uh, and it's just fun to talk to you. So thanks for
00:52:22.680
having me on again. Thank you. God bless. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to
00:52:33.640
the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.