The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 15 ｜ Dr. Stephen Hicks

00:00:00.000 Let me start with questions that I don't think the average American can give you a good answer

00:00:22.960 on three of them. What's socialism? Now you want me to answer that. Well, socialism is partly an

00:00:35.160 ethos, partly it's a politics. The ethos is that you belong to a social unit, not an individual

00:00:44.900 self, that your allegiance, your values, and in some cases your identity comes from being a part

00:00:52.280 of that social unit. Politically then... Does pure socialism go as far as anthem or we?

00:01:06.500 Oh yeah, absolutely. Yes, that's right. You are born into a social unit, you are shaped by that

00:01:13.240 social unit. And you're a cog. Well, you can become a cog, absolutely. And your job is to perform a

00:01:19.340 function in that social unit. Okay. Now that's an ethic, but then if you politicize it, then you say

00:01:26.580 whatever authorities are that wield the power in that society, they can use you and direct you for

00:01:34.960 social ends primarily. Individual doesn't exist or exists only to the extent that he or she is

00:01:41.940 performing a social role and so can be used by the political authorities for that purpose. So the

00:01:49.180 political formulation usually is just the standard is to say the collective ownership of the means of

00:01:54.540 production. But the core means of production is a human being. So that is to say the human being is

00:02:01.540 owned by the collective and should be used by the collective. What is capitalism? Well, capitalism is

00:02:09.500 a more variably defined thing. If you take capitalism as the opposite of socialism, and I think that's

00:02:16.280 one legitimate usage, then you say it is an individualistic ethos that I make myself, I am

00:02:25.300 responsible for myself, the values that I pursue in my life should be mine. And then I enter into

00:02:30.800 social arrangements, family, friendships, business, sports, voluntarily. And at the purpose of

00:02:38.280 the power institutions in society is to protect individuals as they pursue their lives. And so

00:02:44.740 that would then imply the economic portion of that, which is an economic free market, and that typically

00:02:49.580 is capitalism. Now, capitalism is more slippery here. Sometimes capitalism is meant only to refer to an

00:02:58.620 economic system where we have private property and free exchange and so forth. Sometimes it's used more

00:03:04.720 broadly to mean liberal individualism. And then that's the contrast to socialism.

00:03:11.780 Between the two of them, it's easier to sell socialism. Because we have, as Jonathan Haidt would say, we all

00:03:25.840 share the care-harm platform or pillar together, that we want to take care of people. Capitalism

00:03:37.140 kind of just leaves you out there in the cold. And socialism is about making sure we all make it across the

00:03:45.120 finish line together. Right? Well, I think socialism is a, in its political form, a perverted version of the care

00:03:54.140 principle that you talk about. So care, I think we do have this. I think we do have a natural benevolence.

00:04:01.180 But it's not automatic. Infants, right from day one, they size up people they are interacting with. And if the

00:04:08.840 person is a basically decent human being, then of course we form positive attachments and we want to

00:04:13.780 work out mutually beneficial whatever. So on the other hand, if the infant senses that this person

00:04:19.720 is not treating me appropriately at my infant level of understanding, then we start putting barriers up

00:04:26.000 and the care doesn't happen. So I think most of us as human beings want to give people initially the

00:04:32.860 benefit of the doubt. And so I'm open to care, open to forming relationships, but it does have to be

00:04:39.900 earned at some sense. So what socialism, I think, wants to do is, and it can start this way. There are

00:04:47.020 many routes to socialism, but it can start from I'm a nice person and I want everybody to get across the

00:04:52.440 finish line, as you put it. And I am afraid of what might happen to me if I fail in my life. And I can

00:05:00.220 also then empathize with other people who are not doing well with their lives. And so I just want the

00:05:06.220 problems solved. And in many cases, socialism is just a knee jerk, I want this problem solved

00:05:11.980 instantly. And the best way to solve the problem, if it's an economic problem, is to take money from

00:05:15.980 people who have it and give it to the people who don't have that. Now, I think that's a plausible

00:05:22.100 explanation for some avenues towards socialism, and it can come out of that care and a healthy

00:05:28.180 benevolence. What's the difference? Is Canada a socialist country or a capitalist country?

00:05:36.660 Hmm. I don't think it's socialist. I think the way to do this is to say, any culture is made up of

00:05:46.180 any number of subsectors. So you can say, here's the economy. Here's how we do family. Here's how we do

00:05:52.340 religion. Here's how we do our leisure activities. Here's how we do our politics. And so an overall

00:05:59.540 label like capitalism or socialism is going to try to capture each of those. And I think for the most

00:06:05.180 part, Canada would then be an individualistic, freedom, capitalistic country. We make our own,

00:06:12.340 I'm born in Canada, raised in Canada. So...

00:06:14.820 I heard you say out.

00:06:16.020 Yes, that's right. Now I'm down here in the south.

00:06:18.660 South, yes.

00:06:19.220 So just throw that out there. So, you know, there's no socialism with respect to

00:06:24.580 your dating life or your love life. You're perfectly free to date whomever you want and to get married

00:06:29.780 or not, right? Whomever you want. So that's perfectly liberal individualist in the proper sense of the

00:06:34.740 word. Religion is done entirely liberal individualistically. Make your own choices,

00:06:40.340 start your own chores, do whatever you want. People in their artistic lives, you can consume

00:06:46.420 whatever media you want. If you're a poet or a filmmaker or a writer, you can do pretty much

00:06:51.460 anything that you want. So all of those things are very much free market, individualist, liberal

00:06:56.580 capitalist and so on. Then if we just focus on the economic sector of society there, of course,

00:07:02.580 the record is a lot more mixed. And I think you would have to say Canada is a mixed economy. It has

00:07:09.620 a significant number of capitalistic elements, but it also has a significant number of

00:07:14.660 socialistic elements as well. The same with Sweden. The same with Sweden. And the point

00:07:19.540 about both of those is that we are talking about by most indexes, you know, so there's 190 or so

00:07:25.220 countries around the world. And there are all these wonderful now in the last generation social

00:07:29.860 science indexes that come out and measure this, that, or the other thing. On economic freedom,

00:07:34.580 Canada and Sweden are all in the top 10 percent of nations right around the world. They got there

00:07:42.340 by largely being free market capitalist oriented nations, but because they've become so rich,

00:07:47.060 they can now to some extent afford some redistribution, some more interventionistic,

00:07:53.300 and in some cases outright socialistic measures. What is the difference between that and state

00:07:58.980 capitalism like China? Yeah. Well, I think state capitalism is a, is a misnomer that comes out of

00:08:06.180 a corrupted intellectual tradition. So if we go back and say that capitalism means individualistic,

00:08:14.500 that's right. Then China's out, then China is out. So what people on the left have wanted to do

00:08:20.660 because of the terrible track records of most socialist regimes is part of the saying that they weren't really

00:08:26.740 socialism is to then assign all of the corruptions and the things that go wrong to capitalism, whatever

00:08:32.900 you mean by that. So the move that they're making though, is to say, if you put economic concerns at

00:08:39.860 the top of your, uh, social hierarchy, this is what we are about. We're about money. We're about

00:08:47.380 capital. We're about economic production. Then that scale of values makes you a capitalist.

00:08:54.180 If you're prizing that rather than some other social thing that you're trying to achieve.

00:08:58.420 Right. And then from that categorization scheme, uh, if you then say, well, individuals can do this

00:09:04.100 money-making, then you're a free market capitalist. If you think the government should take care of

00:09:09.940 the economy and money-making, then you have state capitalism. But I think that's a

00:09:13.620 miscategorization from the beginning. Difference between socialism and communism.

00:09:19.380 Communism is a subspecies of socialism. So it's a bit like saying, uh, someone's a Christian,

00:09:25.700 and then immediately you've got six or seven, an Eastern and so forth. Right. So the broadest

00:09:33.300 version is socialism, where you say, uh, people belong to society. People should serve society and

00:09:40.180 societies, organizers, the politicians should be managing all of society.

00:09:46.100 Uh, communism is one particular subspecies of that. So Marx's name for it was, uh, scientific

00:09:53.540 socialism, right? Or communism. And those are equivalent. Now what he means by the

00:09:58.500 socialism and the particular version, or sort of the science in the scientific socialism,

00:10:03.380 that's another avenue that we can go down. Uh, but he is contrasting his version of socialism with

00:10:10.100 earlier, say, religious forms of socialisms, where say we are monks and we hold all of our

00:10:17.460 property communally. We sleep communally. We eat communally. We don't have any personal

00:10:22.180 possessions. So those would be religious socialisms. And then earlier utopian socialisms from Saint-Simon

00:10:28.740 and Proudhon and, uh, and, and Rousseau to some extent. Right here in Dallas. Dallas was a,

00:10:34.340 is the first socialist experiment in the United States. If you take away Jamestown and, and, and

00:10:41.780 even some of the pilgrims. I'm not familiar with that one. Oh yeah. I'll, I'll have, of course,

00:10:45.620 the upper Midwest. So there was a whole number of socialistic experiments as well. New harmony,

00:10:50.260 Indiana and others. So Marx and Engels were trying then in the middle part of the 1800s to distinguish

00:10:57.140 their version of socialism, which they thought was more materialistic and more scientific from the

00:11:02.420 other earlier versions of socialism. Any time this has ever worked?

00:11:08.500 Uh, depends on what you mean by work. Didn't end in death and, uh, and totalitarianism. Well,

00:11:16.420 I think, uh, uh, if you think that monasteries and convents are a kind of communalistic or

00:11:25.620 socialistic experiment, then you could say that they can work in a country size. Ah, okay. Right.

00:11:34.100 Then where you're not all volunteering to go serve God. I think, right. I think, you know, I'm, I'm a

00:11:40.180 Christian. So Jesus comes back and rules over the earth. It probably will look very socialist. You

00:11:47.300 know, we'll all be putting our money in a big pot and everybody will only take what they need.

00:11:52.100 Cause we'll all be honest. That is a great utopian idea. But when you actually put men in charge and

00:12:00.340 you're dealing with a large society, anytime it's ever worked. Well, I don't think it's a great utopian

00:12:07.140 idea. Um, so I do think it's bad in theory, but your question is about whether it's working,

00:12:12.900 no, it has never worked on any large scale. Uh, why do we keep trying it? Well, that's because

00:12:19.540 it's got nothing to do with economics. It's really got nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with

00:12:24.020 historical understanding. Uh, the, the thought experiment I like to do, and I've done this

00:12:29.620 experiment myself is talking with socialists over the years is no socialist ever comes to socialism by

00:12:35.460 studying economics deeply. No socialist says I have studied the history of socialism. I've figured

00:12:42.100 out what the flaws are and I know what's going to work this time. None of them have done a serious

00:12:46.660 study of political governance. Uh, what it is, is morality. They think it is moral. Many socialists

00:12:54.740 of, uh, of my generation, I'm now a middle-aged guy, but, uh, when the Soviet Union fell, uh, and in the

00:13:01.700 lead up to that, most socialists of that time would say, no, it's, it's not going to work

00:13:06.980 practically, but I think it's moral and I still believe it. Okay. Maybe we have to make some moral

00:13:12.740 compromises with capitalism and allow markets to some extent, but we're going to rely on some

00:13:18.740 socialistic ethos as our kind of, uh, guiding principles. And we're going to try to forge a

00:13:25.540 middle ground. So for the practicality, yes, we'll have to, you know, deal with the capitalists,

00:13:30.660 but for the morals, we're going to get that from socialism. So I think it's,

00:13:34.100 they believe in a certain conception of justice, fairness, decency, and that's very different from

00:13:41.460 the individual liberal conception of justice, fairness, and decency. So it's a moral collision.

00:13:48.980 And that's where the battle I think really has to be fought. All right. So I think I'm going to get

00:13:53.620 there in two questions here. First, um, the

00:14:03.220 socialism would be the exact polar opposite of we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men

00:14:12.100 are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Correct?

00:14:17.940 Well, uh, yes. If you take what the founders meant by those principles, yes.

00:14:24.900 Correct. What they meant was we all are born. Nobody's a king over anything. Nobody has a right

00:14:30.660 that somebody else doesn't have. And that's a political equality.

00:14:34.340 Right. Yes. Right. So socialism is the exact opposite of what we have,

00:14:40.820 or what our founders were striving for in our mission statement in the declaration.

00:14:45.380 Yes. Well, the founders were individualistic. So all of the rights that they hold to be inalienable

00:14:51.460 inhere in the individual. And from that, they're largely drawing on a Lockean tradition. So each

00:14:57.940 individual, according to Locke, should be free in his own person, in his conscience, right? And in his,

00:15:04.420 uh, in his property. So all of those are individualistic rights, but we all hold them equally.

00:15:11.940 And when you're in a socialist society, who is the grand holder of rights or the bestower of rights?

00:15:24.900 Yeah. Well, I think rights language ultimately has to, has to go out the window because, you know,

00:15:30.180 you can't say you have a claim against anybody else.

00:15:34.980 Right. Just to say that you have a right is to say that you, something belongs to you. And then

00:15:41.460 that puts a boundary against everyone else, including the state. So the bill of rights,

00:15:47.140 for example, is a limitation on what states can do to the individual.

00:15:50.660 So when, let me finish this point. So the socialists are saying you have no rights with

00:15:56.260 respect to the community. There are no boundaries that you can put, put against the community. So

00:16:02.260 you don't have rights. Instead, you have obligations, you have responsibilities to society.

00:16:08.260 So when a democratic socialist says, look, we're just looking for some common sense

00:16:13.460 tampering down of rights. That's dishonest.

00:16:16.980 I don't know. I think if, you know, I'm inclined to give younger people always the benefit of the

00:16:23.220 doubt because they don't know the history, they don't know the economics and so on. But I would say

00:16:27.140 if you are a college graduate and you are now intellectually mature and you are going to make

00:16:35.540 public political claims, if you don't know what you're talking about and you're still saying

00:16:41.540 things, then there's a kind of dishonesty there. You just haven't done your homework.

00:16:45.540 Okay. Right. But then I think most socialists who are more articulate, you know, in their heart of

00:16:51.380 hearts, they know that they, they want power. They say, yeah, it's going to be democratic, but I'm going

00:16:56.180 to be the one who gets elected or I'm going to be the wiser person who's going to be wielding power on

00:17:02.180 behalf of the community. Define freedom. Well, freedom is a negative.

00:17:12.420 Political freedom is to say, I'm not subject to a higher authority. And that then comes down to

00:17:20.660 saying, I have zones in which I'm free to think and which I am free to act. Now that's to define

00:17:26.980 freedom in terms of freedom. But that is to say, whether I believe something, whether I say something,

00:17:31.860 whether I do so is as a result of my initiative, not because of compulsion by some other authority.

00:17:40.500 When you are in that state, then you are free. Now, the political freedom rests on a kind of

00:17:47.700 understanding of what it is to be a moral human being, because rights are a kind of moral claim

00:17:53.940 to say that politically we can't do certain things to each other. And that's to understand that we

00:18:02.020 want human beings to be able to act a certain way, that we want people to be moral agents. And that

00:18:08.660 moral agency, which is pretty political, also requires a notion of freedom, because if we're just

00:18:14.180 being pushed around by forces beyond our control, we're not moral agents. So a deeper understanding of

00:18:19.540 freedom comes down to a kind of volition, that I have a capacity that many other species do not have

00:18:27.140 to regulate my own thinking, to regulate my own behavior. And because I have that capacity, I can be

00:18:33.540 held responsible for it. I'm a moral agent. And because I'm a moral agent, then that has social

00:18:39.220 implications. And one of those social implications is we have to respect people as moral agents and not

00:18:45.780 to try to treat them like animals.

00:19:07.060 So there's Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. Yes. The problem, I think, that we have now is nobody's read the

00:19:15.300 first volume of moral sentiments. And can you have freedom that lasts? Can man

00:19:27.140 rule himself? Can you have capitalism where the individual, where the invisible hand doesn't choke

00:19:33.060 everybody to death? If you don't have a set of, I would call them Judeo-Christian values, but

00:19:41.540 values that help self-governance. Can you have that? No, absolutely not. Because if you think about

00:19:50.740 it, a free society has to be the society that is most moral. Because what you're doing is you're

00:19:57.140 giving people huge amounts of freedom to say you can do basically whatever you want. And your assumption

00:20:03.060 really is an optimistic one. The optimistic assumption is you think most people, as individual,

00:20:09.220 can get their act together and make a go of their lives. That if you leave people free,

00:20:14.100 that they can work out together without their moms and their dads or a nanny state telling them what

00:20:20.180 to do and doing oversight. So you do have a very optimistic assumption that is built into any sort

00:20:27.060 of free market capitalism or liberal individualistic society. And this is why, while socialism often has a

00:20:33.540 reputation, I think, for being an optimistic utopian view, I do actually think it's based on very pessimistic

00:20:40.420 assumptions about human beings. Socialism typically argues that there's so many people out there who

00:20:47.300 are just so incompetent, they can't run their own lives and they need everybody else to chip in and look

00:20:53.940 after them. Or if we leave people to their own devices, they're just going to be at each other's throats.

00:20:59.540 And we need them to have a big state to protect people from tearing each other apart. And all of

00:21:05.220 those are very pessimistic assumptions about human beings. But then to come cycle back to your point,

00:21:10.580 no, absolutely right. If you are going to give people a lot of freedom and behind that,

00:21:15.860 a lot of responsibility, the assumption is that they're going to be able to develop some sort of

00:21:20.660 a moral code that will keep them going in the in the proper direction. Now, I'm much more of a fan of

00:21:27.540 the Greco-Roman tradition than the Judeo-Christian tradition on this point here. Which is what?

00:21:34.900 Well, the core virtues there are in the Aristotelian tradition, a kind of prudence or a practical wisdom

00:21:44.100 that individuals are capable of exercising their minds, figuring out the world around them,

00:21:49.860 understanding their own appetites, regulating their own appetites, and then thinking in terms

00:21:55.140 of principles so that when you and I start interacting with each other, we can figure

00:21:58.820 out what principles are going to work for us. Courage is another important one in the tradition

00:22:09.380 here. Life is challenging. There's always the risk of failure. And so developing your capacity

00:22:17.460 to be willing to think about the hard problems, to be willing to, in many cases, say that you've made a

00:22:23.060 mistake. That's an act of courage to change your mind, to deal with other people who have different

00:22:29.060 views, and to be willing to let them criticize your views. If we're going to have a free society,

00:22:35.540 we're gonna have to have lots and lots of conversations, because we're gonna have to work

00:22:39.300 out our differences through conversation, hopefully not through violence. And so being willing to speak

00:22:45.860 in public to challenge other people, including people who have more authority, that's an act of

00:22:51.140 courage, and so on. So the virtues of practical rationality, courage, temperance is another big

00:23:00.260 one, being able to regulate yourself, also prized in the Greco-Roman tradition as well.

00:23:05.460 Tell me about Ayn Rand. I know, uh, I consider myself, uh, I have kind of all over the board, um,

00:23:15.300 libertarian for the most part. Um, uh, but I read Ayn Rand. I love, uh, I love her philosophy,

00:23:25.300 I love her writing. For instance, Anthem is one of my favorite books, but at the very end,

00:23:29.460 ego, I'm like, I don't, I don't connect with that. Um, but, um, uh, she has this view that,

00:23:43.940 you know, I don't, uh, the charity is not necessarily a, uh, uh, a virtue, um, and wanting

00:23:51.300 to give to others, unless you choose to, et cetera, et cetera. It seems very selfish.

00:23:56.340 Hmm. Can you, can you debunk that or? Well, sure. Well, on the, on the ego point, uh, think about,

00:24:07.380 you know, what makes, what makes your life meaningful? Uh, if you let other people choose your core values

00:24:19.540 for you, just from, from, from simple things, what your musical tastes are going to be, uh,

00:24:26.500 what foods you like, what your clothing style is going, who your friends are going to be,

00:24:32.260 what your career is going to be, whom you're going to date. None of these things,

00:24:38.340 if they're going to be meaningful, can be done for you. And if you kind of shut down your ego and just

00:24:44.580 let your mom dress you and your dad choose your spouse for you. I think royalty. Yeah. Or,

00:24:51.540 you know, you like music just because everybody in your social crowd, right? Like that same kind of

00:24:55.700 music. Uh, then you will not have a meaningful life. So I think one of the points that Rand is

00:25:02.020 insisting is on all of the core values, including all of the social values, the things that are

00:25:08.500 socially enriching friendship, love, business acquaintances, and so forth.

00:25:14.260 The precondition of those things working is that each individual involved has to see the value of

00:25:21.540 it and choose that value for himself or herself. Okay. So I think that's the, that's the ego point.

00:25:27.620 Now, the second part of your question though, is about charity. And I think, according to Rand,

00:25:32.660 charity is a minor situational virtue. And certainly one of the things that's outstanding about her is

00:25:38.580 she's downgrading it from being a major virtue. And in some traditions, of course, it's the primary

00:25:44.100 virtue. But I think the reason for that is that Rand does have a rather optimistic view about human

00:25:50.900 beings, that human beings don't need to be treated like charity cases. And if you think about it, that,

00:25:57.060 that is a kind of pejorative thing. If I go around in the world saying, I'm looking for ways to find

00:26:03.860 people who need my charity. That's, you know, and I think for most of us who have some measure of

00:26:10.020 self-respect, under what circumstances will you accept charity? It's got to be pretty desperate

00:26:17.380 situations. And you've tried everything that you possibly can not to be putting yourself in a charity

00:26:22.340 situation. So I think part of the assumption is that most human beings can, with effort,

00:26:29.780 make a go of their lives and they don't need charity. And if you start from that assumption,

00:26:34.820 then you say, what is it that's going to make it possible for people to make a go of their lives?

00:26:41.220 What skills, what habits, what attitudes do we need to encourage in ourselves and in other people?

00:26:48.660 That's going to be the focus of your ethics, not on how can I assume that certain people just can't

00:26:56.340 solve their problems and fix their problems. So of course, there are going to be some people who

00:27:01.700 fall between the cracks. They have bad luck. They make bad decisions. They're orphans. The zombie

00:27:07.860 apocalypse happens or whatever. Right. And in those cases, absolutely. If you're dealing with a decent

00:27:13.620 person who's had a run of bad luck, that person's your friend, or there's some sort of a non-profit

00:27:18.420 charity out there. Sure. Charity, of course. You're crippling people. You're crippling people

00:27:24.020 when you don't allow them to fail. I mean, Benjamin. Oh, absolutely. Benjamin Franklin said,

00:27:28.500 the best thing you can do is make someone uncomfortable in their poverty. Right.

00:27:34.020 Um, and I don't think that is, uh, uh, that's, that would be, I think they might stone him to

00:27:41.460 death if somebody said a politician said that today. Yeah. Well, certainly the political ethos has, uh,

00:27:46.980 has shifted. No, but that point about failure is, is right. Um, you know, failure is part of life and

00:27:53.860 you're not going to be actually living a, a meaningful life if you're not putting yourself out on the edge and,

00:28:00.100 and, and accepting a certain measure of failure. So if, if from the get go, we say there's not going

00:28:05.060 to be any failure, no matter what happens to you, you're always and automatically and instantly going

00:28:09.620 to be bailed out. Well, then you're setting people up for, for the more general failure of not

00:28:15.700 putting together their own life on their own terms. That's where we're at. We're at a place now where the

00:28:22.020 world is saying, you know, too big to fail or too little to fail. Yeah. Um, guaranteed jobs,

00:28:28.740 guaranteed houses. These are all the things democratic socialists are now talking about,

00:28:32.500 which I think is just corrosive to the soul. Absolutely. Um, but it's kind, it's so warm and

00:28:40.740 fuzzy. How do you get a group of people that really haven't had to work for anything? I mean,

00:28:50.180 we are the first generation I am. I'm 54. I'm the really first generation. I haven't had to really,

00:28:56.020 I hadn't had to fight for something. I didn't have World War II where we were fighting good

00:29:02.020 versus evil. The Soviet Union didn't fight that. Politicians fought that. So I haven't had,

00:29:09.940 nobody's picked me up by the jacket on political philosophy and thrown me up against the wall

00:29:16.500 and said, what do you really believe? Right. We now kind of just expect it's always going to be

00:29:24.340 this way because it always has been this way. How do you get people to value what we have

00:29:33.540 before we lose it? When everyone will go, oh crap, that was pretty good actually.

00:29:39.220 Right. Well, that's, that's the big problem and it's a, it's a parenting problem. It's a,

00:29:44.500 it's an education problem. I think there is great value to being in such a successful culture as we

00:29:50.340 have, and we have been successful in so many, at being able to take that for granted and then just

00:29:54.820 get on with the business of enjoying your life and doing something. But it's also important to realize

00:30:02.180 where that came from and what the preconditions of that are, that there is real evil out in the world,

00:30:08.420 that success and progress are not automatic and that all of the goodies that we are able to enjoy

00:30:13.460 don't just appear magically right from heaven. And so I do think, uh, there's a lot of traction to

00:30:19.460 the kind of criticism that I think he was making that we do have now probably two generations of

00:30:24.660 people, our generation included, who haven't had it that hard where we've not had to get down to

00:30:31.220 the fundamentals and really think about what we are willing to die for. And then conversely,

00:30:37.060 what are we actually living for? So that value clarification, uh, at a very fundamental level

00:30:43.220 probably hasn't, hasn't happened. Can you be a fulfilled human being?

00:30:50.100 I look at this as, this is the luckiest time for people to live right now, I think.

00:30:56.900 Not only because it's really good, but because it has the potential of being very, very bad as well.

00:31:02.260 And if it goes that way, we are going to have something that

00:31:07.780 I haven't had my whole life. And that is, I get to find out for sure who I am. The best or the worst of

00:31:15.860 me is gonna come out. Uh, and that I'm an alcoholic. I would not be here if I hadn't had my crash

00:31:27.460 and decided to get back up. Can you be a full person who you really are without that crash,

00:31:36.420 without that real pain?

00:31:40.180 Well, I think I'd have to say, I don't know. Uh, but I think we can live the best life without

00:31:47.060 necessarily having alcoholism or war, uh, force it upon us. I think all of us do recognize in most

00:31:57.220 areas of our lives that if we're going to make them meaningful, we do really have to put ourselves

00:32:04.100 out there. Uh, in relationships don't work, for example, if you're, if you're holding back. And so

00:32:10.660 we might all go through heartbreaks in our teen years and go through divorces and those test your

00:32:17.380 metal at a very deep level. Uh, and the same thing can happen in careers. If you really have some

00:32:24.340 business aspirations, you start a business, you have to put yourself out there. And most entrepreneurs

00:32:29.620 do go through failures several times before they achieve the success. And because they have really

00:32:34.820 put themselves into their business, it is a, a soul wrenching experience to go through. No different

00:32:39.780 than I think, uh, uh, um, a failed marriage or a various serious relationship. I think it can also

00:32:47.700 happen in religion, right? Where if you are going to make your religion or your philosophical views

00:32:53.620 serious, you can't just be formulaically going through things. You have to put yourself out there.

00:32:58.260 And so going through a philosophical crisis or a religious crisis is another variation.

00:33:03.860 So it may not be, it may not be the actual bottom or crisis. It's just the risk.

00:33:09.780 Well, uh, the risk always has to be there. Yeah, that's what I mean. But the crisis doesn't have to

00:33:15.780 be there, but you have to be willing. And you have to be aware, right? That the risk. And if you're

00:33:20.100 putting, you have to be, you know, the bankruptcy, I could get my heart broken. I could find out that

00:33:25.700 I'm believing in something that doesn't exist. That has to be there. I don't think that I think,

00:33:30.340 or artists, I think as well as another good cultural example, if you're going to be a real

00:33:34.500 artist, you're out there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where,

00:33:40.180 I think that's the courage that we may be missing right now is I think we, as a society,

00:33:46.500 we're not all that sure that we as individual, that there's anything in there, that there's anything

00:33:54.580 great in there, that there's not sure. And so many people hang on to their pain or their troubles or

00:34:00.980 whatever. And that defines them is what, at least for me, when I started really,

00:34:06.500 really starting to want to learn, you have to, you come to a point to where you say,

00:34:16.900 if I take this step and this is true, that means I'm going to change here, here, and here.

00:34:24.580 And you're not sure. It's why people sometimes don't read things. They don't want to necessarily

00:34:32.180 know that because they don't want to change. Exactly. Yeah. Sure. Right. So there's a,

00:34:37.860 a laziness, right. Or a lack of ambition that's characteristic of lots of people. Or a lack of

00:34:43.620 courage. Sure. Because you don't think that that's going to be any better, or you just don't want to

00:34:48.340 do that because kind of you like this over here. Sure. Yeah. Tell me one more definition,

00:34:57.460 and then I want to talk to you about postmodernism. Okay. Tell me the difference between

00:35:08.660 the actions of Antifa and the Nazi brown shirt.

00:35:18.020 Great. So if you just let your eyes go out of focus just a little bit, and you're looking at the

00:35:26.900 two groups, you don't see very much difference. You have to toe the line. Yes.

00:35:31.860 They will beat you in the streets if you don't. Yeah. It's their way or the highway. They're against

00:35:37.780 whatever the other totalitarian, you know, idea of the time. What's the difference? Yeah. So you do have

00:35:45.380 a shutdown of rationality. They're past the point of saying discussion matters. So they've rejected

00:35:53.460 at a very fundamental, any sort of liberal, democratic, Republican approach to politics.

00:35:59.060 So they bought into a view that only forceful action is going to do so. At the same time,

00:36:05.700 they have people divided into groups. There are people who are in the in group and people who are

00:36:11.380 on the out group and anybody who is in the out group is dehumanized from their perspective. You

00:36:17.220 have to have a strongly dehumanized perspective on other people if you are willing to punch them in

00:36:23.540 the face, hit them with a stick and so forth. There also is a kind of cowardice that you wear your uniform

00:36:33.380 and you are losing your individuality by merging into the group. You don't go out as an individual

00:36:38.660 person. You travel in a pack and everybody's wearing the same group and you're letting that

00:36:44.580 group social psychology take over. And then you are deliberately putting yourself in situations where

00:36:55.060 you're trying to incite violence. And there's the game of street fighting chicken. Who's going to hit

00:37:01.780 first? And you might hit first, they might hit first, but you know somebody's going to hit first and

00:37:06.500 it doesn't really matter to you. Uh, and whatever you, uh, whoever hits first, you're, you're going to

00:37:11.780 just use the excuse that they were asking for it. That's right. So, um, I don't see a significant

00:37:21.220 difference. The only significant difference, and I think this is on a second order is that Antifa is

00:37:28.020 in its intellectual origins. It's not particularly ethnic or racist. It's just a more generic approach to

00:37:36.500 collectivism or some sort of socialism. But of course the brown shirts were socialists as well.

00:37:42.020 So it really does come down to gang street fighting and that's, that's their political model.

00:37:47.300 And would you put the, I mean, nobody, everybody calls them the Nazis, but national socialists,

00:37:52.980 that's what they were. Um, do you put them, I think in the European right, perhaps? Yes. But in America,

00:38:00.180 are they on the right or the left? Left, right doesn't work. Uh, hasn't worked for a long time.

00:38:06.660 So, I mean, I think it's fine to say we're defined some political spectrum and then we can say there's

00:38:12.420 a left position and a right position here. But the first thing you have to do is say,

00:38:16.740 what, what are you trying to measure? Are you trying to measure individualism to collectivism?

00:38:22.180 Are you trying to measure, uh, uh, democratic procedures versus authoritarian procedures? What,

00:38:28.980 what's the left and what's the right here? The way we use left and right now are just,

00:38:33.700 there's this bundle of beliefs over here, this bundle of beliefs over here. There's not necessarily

00:38:38.820 any internal inconsistency in those bundles of beliefs. So it's purely, uh, a journalistic

00:38:45.700 labeling that's just slapped on. Right. So I think the important thing to say then is if we want to

00:38:52.100 categorize the national socialists, then, uh, I think they were truth in labeling. They were

00:38:58.660 nationalists and they were socialists. They did take the racial slash ethnic identity of human

00:39:06.500 beings to be a fundamental. They were not at all individualistic. You are born into a nationalistic

00:39:12.980 group. You're born into an ethnic group that gives you your identity. You belong to it. Your national

00:39:19.860 ethnic group is in competition, if not outright conflict with all of the other national and ethnic

00:39:24.900 groups that are out there. So it's a collectivism plus a conflict. So there's zero individualism,

00:39:32.180 zero understanding that you and I, if we are on different, uh, ethnic groups or additional national

00:39:38.100 groups are both human beings under the skin. We have the same values that we can work things out

00:39:43.700 in a win-win way. So all of that very strong nationalism is they believed it, but that's

00:39:48.980 one kind of collectivism. The, uh, socialism, uh, from them, that meant a kind of an economic

00:39:55.940 collectivism, right? There was no, we, we favor private property. We favor free trade, right? We, we,

00:40:02.500 we favor the free movements of people across borders, right? And so forth. All of it was

00:40:07.620 very, there should be government management of the economy as a, as a whole, uh, Goebbels loved

00:40:14.100 Marx. Uh, uh, uh, uh, and if you read through the original Nazi party program, 1920, when the party was

00:40:23.380 formed, 25 points in the program, arguably 14 of them are just straight socialistic demands,

00:40:32.740 confiscation of profiteering, uh, organization into cartels, uh, government management of this,

00:40:39.860 that, and the other thing, government redistribution of wealth in this way and the other way. So

00:40:44.180 those 14 points, no socialist has any disagreement with any of those 14. Those were formed in 1920,

00:40:50.340 all through the 1920s. They didn't change any of that. When they came to power in the 1930s,

00:40:55.300 they put them into practice. So theory and practice, it's a species of socialism.

00:41:10.020 Let's talk about postmodernism. And I want to talk to you about it, um, in this framework. I don't

00:41:16.500 think most Americans know. I think if we're not there yet, we're very close, um, that we are not

00:41:24.420 in the progressive era. We're in the postmodern era. Um, the progressives, they've been eaten by the

00:41:31.940 postmodernists. Um, and most people get up every day and they hear a new term or a new name or a new

00:41:39.300 thing that they have to do or say or call somebody. Um, and they hear how bad they were or some group

00:41:45.780 was, uh, and they don't know where this is coming from. Uh, and, and without understanding,

00:41:55.780 we're, uh, we're playing into their hands, I fear. Hmm. So understanding postmodernism.

00:42:03.620 Yeah. Postmodernism is a thing. It's an important thing. Uh, but you're also partly asking a

00:42:11.060 demographics question. If we try to say, here's our era. So as we take our era to be, uh, just say,

00:42:18.180 North America, just to keep it relatively simple. Uh, then I do think you have to go and ask what are

00:42:25.540 the main beliefs that most people believe. And I do think there are a lot of progressives out there.

00:42:30.100 There are, there are a significant number of postmoderns and we'll come back and say what,

00:42:33.620 uh, what that means. But I do think, uh, I mean, you're very precise with words. You're very much

00:42:39.780 like Jordan Peterson. I don't know what it is about you Canadians, but you're very precise.

00:42:43.380 All right. Um, maybe it's the nerd element. Uh, so the, uh, what I mean of a postmodern era that,

00:42:51.380 um, the, what's controlling the dialogue. Uh, yes. Okay. I would say that we

00:43:00.020 still are largely a modernist enlightenment culture, but as we were talking earlier,

00:43:06.580 a lot of that is taken for granted. And so it has a lot of cultural staying power, but it's,

00:43:12.820 it's in our bones and we haven't necessarily articulated what those principles are.

00:43:18.020 So what is important then is that postmodernism now for two generations is the most articulate,

00:43:24.580 the most vigorous, and they to a large extent are setting the terms. So since they are loud,

00:43:29.780 since there's a lot of momentum there, it is tempting then to say we're now into a postmodern

00:43:35.620 era. I think what's again, meaning just that we are all being forced to live under this rule from a

00:43:43.700 very small number of people, but we, they're dragging us into this and we don't even know where it is or

00:43:50.820 what it is. Yes. Okay. That's, that's fair to say. So yeah, the most active voices and the ones who

00:43:57.140 are setting the terms of the discussion, right, are coming from an alien philosophical and cultural

00:44:02.500 framework. And that's the one that we call, yes, postmodernism. And since it is relatively new,

00:44:07.780 and since it is coming from, uh, uh, some intellectual and cultural sectors that a lot of people never

00:44:14.740 interact with, it does take them by surprise, a lot of the brazenness and the extremity of

00:44:19.940 some of those views. Now, of course, this is a huge topic. Anytime you're talking about postmodernism,

00:44:26.100 then you have to say something about modernism and what the postmoderns are doing is reacting against

00:44:32.660 and rejecting what they take to be the core beliefs, the core institutions of basically the last four

00:44:39.700 or 500 years of what we call modern history. Yeah. Or the enlightenment as the most articulate,

00:44:47.140 mature expression of the values that have come to dominate in the modern world. Empirical data,

00:44:54.660 science, reason, technology, individualism, tolerance for people, uh, respect for the

00:45:01.940 industrial revolution and its achievements, a kind of universalism that all human beings should have the

00:45:07.700 same rights. And so slavery is a moral abomination. The second class status of women is a moral

00:45:12.740 abomination. Who actually believes those things are bad? How did they get there?

00:45:22.020 Well, uh, now we have to have arguments about kind of five or six major philosophical issues.

00:45:29.540 So if they're not, if this is a, if this is, you know, a waste of time, but I just can't imagine

00:45:35.460 how someone could see, I understand, you know, lots of problems, but if you actually look at the

00:45:41.860 world and you understand history, it's getting better every day for people all over the world.

00:45:48.580 So how do you get there? Yeah. Well, I think you can get there from a number of routes, but let's just

00:45:54.740 talk once. Suppose that we take a kind of political route. Suppose we say we're gonna have a kind of

00:45:59.940 democratic republic. We're going to, uh, say that all individuals have equal rights, life, liberty,

00:46:06.340 property, right? And so on. And, uh, uh, we're going to do a lot of things democratically.

00:46:13.780 Then what does that presuppose? Well, partly it believe it means that you believe that there is such

00:46:18.740 a thing as universal human nature. And that's going to be one point of attack. Is there such a

00:46:25.220 thing as universal human nature? Can we even articulate universal principles or not? And if

00:46:33.220 we become skeptical about our capacity to think universally and in terms of very broad principles,

00:46:39.700 then we're going to start thinking smaller scale and start focusing on smaller groups. And that's going

00:46:44.820 to be one dynamic. But if you just think about democracy, why do we do democracy? And we say,

00:46:49.620 that's a very messy process. And we say, well, the ideal of democracy is going to be every adult is

00:46:55.540 going to participate in the process. Every adult is going to have a say, and we want people to vote,

00:47:02.660 and we want them to vote in an informed way. But how are they going to become informed? Well,

00:47:07.140 we expect them to do a lot of thinking, a lot of reasoning that they can think about very complicated

00:47:13.460 issues, foreign policy issues, environmental concerns, problems in the third world, and so

00:47:19.700 forth, that they can gather a lot of data, they are willing to listen to arguments by people who have

00:47:27.700 different political positions, we can run experiments, and this is the science part coming

00:47:32.500 out, we're going to give power to these people for a little while, we're going to assess the results,

00:47:36.660 is it working or not? If we say I made a mistake four years ago in voting for this guy, I'm going to

00:47:41.700 change my mind, and I'm going to vote for these other people over here as well. That's a very

00:47:46.020 optimistic pro-reason view of human beings. And an amazing thing that has worked as well as it has.

00:47:52.580 That's right. That's right. So democracy is in part coming out of the Enlightenment, because the

00:47:57.780 Enlightenment had a very optimistic assessment of the power of human reason, and that it was by and

00:48:03.620 large universally distributed across all individuals, and that with the right kind of education and the

00:48:09.380 right kind of freedom, we can make people politically competent, and you're going to get good results

00:48:16.180 out of that process. Now, if you don't believe in reason, and all the postmoderns stand at the end of

00:48:23.300 a long skeptical tradition that came out of my discipline philosophy, that by the middle part of

00:48:29.140 the 20th century said, reason really is impotent. Reason really is a fraud.

00:48:35.380 And that is not what drives human beings. But we'll come back to the how in just a question.

00:48:40.900 But then the question is going to be, if you don't think that people are rational,

00:48:44.900 or that reason is particularly competent, then your understanding of how politics has to be done

00:48:49.860 has to change. It has to be done non-rationally. If at the same time on the individualism,

00:48:56.260 if you don't think people are able to understand and respect universal principles of tolerance,

00:49:04.900 universal principles of dignity, universal principles of rights, if you think that people

00:49:10.580 are really narrow-minded and that what they believe is really shaped by more local, more selfish in the

00:49:18.980 negative sense kinds of concerns, then you're going to say it's impossible that we can educate all human

00:49:25.220 beings to believe in universal rights, that we're all brothers and sisters under the skin. That's

00:49:29.140 just too pie in the sky. What's real is that people are parts of groups. That's where their tribal

00:49:35.140 loyalties are. And once you start believing that, you're going to take politics in a very different

00:49:40.180 direction. Now, the question about why so many philosophers and then people who are philosophically

00:49:48.020 trained in literary criticism, in law, in historiography, came to be skeptical. Well,

00:49:53.540 there's a long counter enlightenment story that starts

00:49:58.020 also back in the late 1700s, early 1800s. There are important philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

00:50:05.380 Kant, in my understanding of the of the story. And there's a long discussion that the philosophers are

00:50:12.740 having. And the way I read it, and this is in my book, I'm glad that it's on the table so people can see it.

00:50:18.500 Thanks for that. Is that things move slowly in the academic world, but the skeptical arguments about

00:50:27.060 the power of reason lost by the time we got to the middle part of the 20th century. And then for

00:50:32.980 a little generation or so, philosophers and philosophically educated people were kicking

00:50:37.380 around and we didn't have a positive philosophical framework that grounded science, that grounded

00:50:44.260 rationality. And that left a vacuum for various non-rationalist movements to gain some traction.

00:50:52.580 Explain the last part of that. I'm not sure I know what a non-rational.

00:50:56.740 Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you think about, since we're talking about collectivism, socialism,

00:51:07.300 antifa, and so forth, these are all movements that come out of the left, right, broadly speaking.

00:51:12.580 So by the middle part of the 20th century, that's when the big shift is going from the old left to

00:51:16.980 the new left. And so people who are of our age now, we are old enough to remember when the new left

00:51:24.900 really was new and it was vigorous. But what was the new left all about? Well, it was about a

00:51:31.700 splintering of what had been a kind of monolithic, quasi-Marxist, neo-Marxist movement. Marxism really

00:51:40.180 was the only game in town for the left for about a century. But when that came widely to be seen as

00:51:48.740 a failure, including by people who were fellow travelers on the left, there was a lot of soul searching

00:51:54.180 on the left and the left did splinter into a lot of new factions. And that's what the new left was all

00:52:01.220 about. But a lot of it was anti-rational. So, for example, if you think of Maoism, which became very

00:52:10.100 popular in the 1960s, well, Maoism is a much more irrationalistic version of Marxism. And it's

00:52:19.380 explicitly to say we're coming out of our Marxist traditions, but we think that Marxism was too wedded

00:52:24.660 to rationality, to logic, to science. And what instead we need to do is not wait for rational,

00:52:31.380 industrial, logical change in the march of history to occur. What we need to do is have strong

00:52:38.100 assertiveness and will, and it's going to be these non-rational political energies that are going

00:52:43.860 to cause the right kind of revolutionary change. You have people in the Frankfurt School who are

00:52:51.620 explicitly saying that what has happened, and so Herbert Marcuse is an important person in the 1960s,

00:52:58.580 he's a thinker of the New Left, that capitalism and science and technology have succeeded in taking

00:53:06.500 over the world and normalizing things and giving us all of these goodies so that we're, you know,

00:53:11.860 we're comfortable working our nine-to-five jobs and then watching the TV and doing whatever it tells us, and

00:53:17.300 we're bought off by all of the gadgets and so on. That if you're going to retain any sort of humanity, you have to become an outcast,

00:53:24.580 and you have to try the drugs, you have to try the crazy sex, you have to be willing to engage in the

00:53:30.260 criminal activities, you have to go in the fight club direction, thinking of the movie. That's the way that

00:53:37.060 we have to break out of what is too rational, too logical a system. And in the chaos, then we just hope some

00:53:44.740 sort of new form of collectivism, socialism, or whatever our idealism is going to emerge. So it's an explicit

00:53:51.860 embrace of non-rational or irrationalist techniques. But that's given space by the failure of the

00:54:00.020 intellectuals to say that, no, we can understand the world rationally and logically and scientifically.

00:54:07.220 So take me back to, I think it's Foucault that is over in Paris in 1968, and they look at

00:54:22.420 postmodernism a little differently than it had been looked at, correct?

00:54:29.380 Who's they in this kind of the French?

00:54:31.220 Yeah, the French philosophers, yeah.

00:54:33.460 Yeah, well, again, postmodernism is a bit like saying Christianity. So immediately you

00:54:40.900 then have to say there's going to be Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox. So there is a Foucauldian

00:54:45.140 strain that is, I think, properly categorized as postmodern. So yes, Foucault and his followers

00:54:52.820 do look at things differently than the American versions and some of the other strands that are

00:54:58.340 prominent in the subsequent generations. Absolutely.

00:55:01.060 Okay. So tell me, because I can't find a good reason, because it's all really about deconstruction,

00:55:06.260 right?

00:55:07.620 Well, deconstruction is most associated with Derrida, and it comes out of literary criticism.

00:55:14.660 It's a way of reading texts.

00:55:16.340 Right.

00:55:16.740 Yes.

00:55:17.300 But isn't, I mean, basically that says, I can put that text, basically I can put my words into

00:55:27.140 that author's mouth if I can draw the storyline together.

00:55:31.780 Yes.

00:55:32.340 Right?

00:55:32.900 Well, the idea then of deconstruction is to say, when we are reading texts, there is no such thing

00:55:40.180 as an objective reading of the text, that the text amounts to evidence, that we can come up with

00:55:46.180 hypotheses, consider various hypotheses and reject ones that don't fit with all of the evidence and

00:55:51.620 come up with one that is the right or the best way to interpret a text. What they want to argue,

00:55:57.140 and this takes us into some lots of technical issues in language and epistemology,

00:56:02.020 sadmatics, and so forth, that says, we think that language is much too fluid, much too indeterminate,

00:56:09.380 much too subjective, so there is no way to say there's a right reading of a text.

00:56:15.540 Also, there's-

00:56:16.420 Even if you have the author saying, this is the right, this is what I meant.

00:56:21.860 Sure. And then, well, of course, then one of the things we can just say is, well, authors can lie.

00:56:25.940 Right.

00:56:26.340 That's right.

00:56:27.060 Right.

00:56:27.460 I mean, there's a famous painting. I think it's a painting of, that's not Trafalgar. I can't remember.

00:56:33.300 It's a famous painting of the Americans defeating the British. Maybe it's, I can't remember. And

00:56:42.580 there is a black man kind of hiding behind a white guy. Well, the black guy is Peter Salem,

00:56:51.060 who was a very important player in the American Revolution. The, the painter at the time is on

00:56:59.540 record saying, that's Peter Salem. He's a hero in that battle. The, the way it's now this art is

00:57:07.460 being taught in, in universities is, no, that's a slave. He was a free man. That's a slave. And it

00:57:15.700 doesn't matter what the artist said at the time. Right. Now here we should say something about

00:57:21.300 Freud though, because one of the things that feeds into postmodernism via the Frankfurt School

00:57:28.740 is the idea that surface pronouncements in our minds are not necessarily the real agenda. Right.

00:57:37.300 And they can also be invisible to the speaker. And so only the specially trained psychoanalysts or

00:57:43.700 the specially trained critical theorist is the one who can know what's really going on. So I don't

00:57:49.460 know this particular interpretation of the Peter Salem issue, but the argument is certainly going to

00:57:53.780 be that there's a kind of false consciousness. Right.

00:57:56.340 We know better right then the artist does himself. If there was no Nietzsche and no Freud,

00:58:02.740 would there have been, uh, the, uh, struggle of the 20th century, the way it was?

00:58:11.140 Uh, that's an interesting what if question, yes, nasty, toxic brew of about 40 years with

00:58:20.900 all kinds of stuff mingling and mixing. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think Nietzsche and and Freud are

00:58:28.180 justly read for the reason they were geniuses. They were brilliant. I think we would have gotten there

00:58:34.580 anyway. It just may have been different rather than saying that there's one towering genius like

00:58:39.460 Nietzsche who put it all together. Effectively, it may have been worked out by four or five

00:58:43.940 individuals of second tier statutes, but there is a logic to the way the intellectual discourse was

00:58:50.260 going. Nietzsche put the package together. We would have gotten there. I think he anyways.

00:58:54.980 Do I read it right? You know, God is not dead or I mean, God is dead, meaning good luck.

00:59:04.260 What are we going to do next? Because you're going to replace him with something. What are we going to

00:59:08.980 do next? Kind of a, kind of a warning in a way. Um, it's not a celebratory. God is dead. Is it?

00:59:16.820 Well, uh, I think it is. Do you? Yeah. No, if now we're talking about Nietzsche interpretation.

00:59:21.940 Yes. Yes. His interpretation. Yeah. I think Nietzsche is ultimately

00:59:25.940 seeing that as an affirmation. So his view is that God is dead, but he has, of course,

00:59:31.220 a very negative view about religion, that he thinks religion is a matter of, uh, saying we are not

00:59:39.940 going to take charge of our own lives. And so we are expecting a higher being to legislate for us,

00:59:47.140 to keep us in line and so forth. But doesn't, isn't he also worried though about, okay, but

00:59:52.500 people are people. You have to be careful on what you feel. We will fill that God thing in with

00:59:57.700 something. Yes. So isn't he saying, well, some of us will. He thinks most people, right, when they

01:00:03.220 lose their faith, they become less religious. They don't know what to do.

01:00:06.580 And I think he believes that actually he's kind of pessimistic about the broad

01:00:12.660 range of human beings. They don't have what it takes in order to actually put together a meaningful

01:00:17.060 life for themselves. So they're just going to wallow in some sort of mediocrity and, uh, and

01:00:22.740 ultimately nihilism. So he does see the 19th century that he's living in as an era of, this is a little

01:00:29.140 bit anachronistic kind of bad faith where people don't really have the old style faith that gave

01:00:36.180 meaning to their lives, but they haven't really abandoned it. And so they, they kind of sort of

01:00:40.420 go to church. They kind of want to believe in religion or they go to socialism and say,

01:00:44.900 you know, the state's going to look after us. Um, so he does think since we've relied on religion for

01:00:51.620 so many centuries that it can't just be an instant, oh, we don't believe anymore. And that's okay.

01:00:59.380 But he does think for people like him and other stronger spirits, as, uh, as he would call it,

01:01:05.460 that this is a liberating movement or, uh, uh, that realizing that there isn't a God who's got his eyes

01:01:13.700 on you all the time and is telling you what to do. And you're just here to do God's will,

01:01:17.700 that you're a free agent. Although freedom, we have to say more about freedom in Nietzsche,

01:01:23.460 uh, that that is a kind of liberation. So then you are free to go and live your life on your own

01:01:28.980 terms. But he does think that's only a realistic option for a small percentage of, of the population.

01:01:35.140 We go into world war one and it's a mess and you have, you get the Dadaists in, and, and you have

01:01:58.660 kind of this toxic stew. And then I think the, I mean, the Dadaists are making fun of the elites

01:02:07.940 really saying, I can do anything. Nothing has any meaning at all anymore. Is this part of postmodernism

01:02:16.820 and the modern? Interesting. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying at all? Because it has no,

01:02:24.820 life has no meaning and it kind of just kind of, kind of works its way into all of the nastiness

01:02:33.620 that comes in the next 10 years without a recognition, I think of what they were actually

01:02:39.380 trying to say, but maybe I'm wrong. Well, I think it's fair to say that the, you can see the seeds

01:02:44.900 occurring culturally among then high culture before world war one. World war one certainly is

01:02:52.180 extremely important. So Nietzsche is doing his writing in the 1880s and he's becoming a thing

01:02:58.900 before his death in 1900. So that whole end of the century transition, particularly in high culture,

01:03:04.740 you can see a lot of proto Dadaist nihilism, despair, and so forth. And so just at a purely

01:03:12.900 intellectual cultural level, if you are a well-educated person and you're a sensitive person,

01:03:17.140 the way an artist is, you're, you're, you're channeling the zeitgeist or the spirit of the

01:03:21.300 times. And you have things like Darwin, right? Saying, and this is not Darwin, you know, nature

01:03:29.380 red in tooth and claw and we're all just animals and it's instinct, sex and aggression. And you've

01:03:35.380 got scientists developing theories like entropy, and it's going to be ultimately, you know, the heat

01:03:40.740 death of the universe. And there is no God and happily ever after. If you are channeling all of that,

01:03:46.340 you're looking into the abyss to use Nietzsche's language here. Well, one reaction of that,

01:03:52.580 of course, is just to become profoundly depressed. But I think another is to go in a humor direction,

01:04:00.820 to find life is ultimately just absurd. And again, anachronistically to go in a kind of Monty Python,

01:04:08.580 play around with the absurdity direction. So Dada, I think, is coming out of that. It is an

01:04:15.940 embracing the absurd in a somewhat whimsical, but nonetheless, at the same time, serious way.

01:04:23.540 So it's coming from a deeply pessimistic place, but nonetheless, you've got some creative energy

01:04:29.380 and you're not just going to go totally into nihilism. Now, then you add to all of those

01:04:35.780 intellectual currents, World War I, and I think that must have been psychologically devastating.

01:04:41.780 All of the allegedly civilized nations of the world just engaged in total brutality for four years.

01:04:48.980 And the way I read it, the churches pretty much said, oh, God's on our side, on both sides.

01:04:56.180 And it kind of was that final collapse of the lower class of the faith in God. And you

01:05:05.940 had nothing, and they started turning to occultism, looking for any heritage, anything to hold on to.

01:05:15.140 Well, World War I would be, if you're of troops, one of the millions of troops, and you're not

01:05:24.020 an educated person, you're just an ordinary working person or whatever, and you've got standard

01:05:28.420 religion, of course, the problem of evil or the theodicy problem is going to be real for you.

01:05:33.780 God is on my side, and I'm doing this to other men, and they're doing this to me, and this is not

01:05:40.820 part of God's plan. It can't possibly be. And that, of course, how can there even be a God if

01:05:46.420 this is the world that he's put us in? So yes, absolutely.

01:05:49.540 So my line of questioning here is really, I think that there are patterns that repeat,

01:05:56.100 and it's not exact, but they are the same general tune. We have the same kinds of things

01:06:05.540 happening with us now to where society is collapsing. We've had shocks to the system,

01:06:13.460 not like World War I, but we don't really know what we're doing. The great American empire is

01:06:22.980 seemingly coming undone. Nobody has an answer. There's nonsense from postmodernism. There's a

01:06:30.420 hundred different genders, and it's just all fraying the way it did, you know, 1920 Europe,

01:06:40.580 Germany. Am I reading too much into that? Well, that's a big picture assessment. I think

01:06:48.500 things are actually better. I'm less pessimistic. We do have a lot of things to worry about,

01:06:53.140 absolutely. And, you know, crystal ball gazing, we can't go too far down that road. In one sense,

01:06:59.220 I'm not worried, because I do think in American culture, Canadian culture, broadly Western culture,

01:07:06.660 which is now becoming global culture, we have huge cultural reserves that are very good. I think the

01:07:14.020 vast majority of people are basically decent, basically rational, and so on. But we do have

01:07:19.940 a problem with the fringe, with the edges. And I don't have good demographics on whether that's

01:07:26.100 3% or 7% or whatever. The latest study shows 8%, about 8%, which is really insignificant.

01:07:33.220 Okay. Now then, it's insignificant in a quantitative demographic sense, but then the qualitative issue

01:07:40.420 is where are those 8%. And if they are in important cultural institutions like universities,

01:07:46.580 where all of the future professionals and teachers and journalists and so forth, and politicians are going

01:07:52.980 to be educated, then that 8% matters a whole lot more. So there's got to be a qualitative measure as

01:08:00.100 well. But at the same time, you know, if you think about what people were struggling with in the first

01:08:05.940 half of the century, you mentioned World War One, the Depression, World War Two, the Holocaust, I don't

01:08:12.660 think we are dealing with cultural and political enemies on that scale. We are dealing with postmodernists,

01:08:20.980 and they are mostly intellectuals. We're dealing with Islamists who are, you know, politicalized version

01:08:27.780 of Islam. We are dealing with political tensions in Russia and China and so on. But I don't think those

01:08:37.380 are on the scale of World War One or World War Two. I agree. So in a sense, our enemies are much

01:08:46.180 smaller. So let me just say this. Part of my job is to see a little bit over the horizon and to map

01:08:57.540 it. And, you know, as soon as the star field roll starts rolling the other way, great. But as long

01:09:03.940 as the star field is rolling that way, okay, what do we do now to prepare in case those things happen?

01:09:12.500 Right. You have global economic collapse, which is, you know, somewhat of a pretty good chance that

01:09:22.020 that could happen in the next five to ten years. So we have to identify all the possible apocalypses

01:09:25.780 in different sectors and have a contingency plan. Yes, reasonable ones. What we have to do right now

01:09:31.780 is start to come back together. Because what happened in the 1920s, after all those things

01:09:38.100 happened, then you had the Great Depression. Morals meant nothing in the 1920s. People started getting

01:09:44.660 rich. They started, you know, I'm talking about Germany. They start to get rich. The morals kind of go out

01:09:51.060 the window, et cetera, et cetera. Then somebody comes and says, I'm going to reset it. And people

01:09:57.300 were ready, at least 30%, ready to have that. And the rest just kind of went along. It was too late.

01:10:04.580 We are having political enemies. We're starting to enter a time that could begin to resemble 1968

01:10:13.060 America. We have to learn how to have dialogue with the people we've been trained to hate.

01:10:22.580 Hmm. Yes.

01:10:24.260 Or we're going to go down that road. Right.

01:10:27.540 That has happened before. Yeah.

01:10:29.220 So I want to talk to you about postmodernism in that framework here. Right.

01:10:33.940 Because most people get up and they hear, oh, I have to, I have to now accept this gender too,

01:10:41.540 or I now have to say this. And yesterday that was okay. But today I could lose my job for saying

01:10:48.260 that. Yeah.

01:10:49.140 They don't know where that's coming from. Nobody's recognizing it. Nobody is, you just comply.

01:10:57.140 And so there's a large.

01:10:58.260 Well, the problem is the compliance element. I have no problem with us having a vigorous

01:11:02.580 national discussion about how many genders and so forth there should be. That's absolutely right.

01:11:08.100 The biology is complicated. The psychology is complicated. Right. Absolutely.

01:11:12.500 Yes.

01:11:12.900 So we should exactly have that discussion. So we might then say the fact that there are

01:11:18.020 some cultural sectors that are very loud, that are forcing this discussions on us, and it's all very

01:11:22.740 bewildering. That actually is fine as long as we, as long as we can discuss it. And that's the,

01:11:28.100 that's the issue. The issue, the problem is the politicization of the discussion.

01:11:32.580 Right. I don't think anybody, look, I don't know what the reality is, but I don't know anybody that

01:11:38.180 looked at Bruce Jenner and did anything but, oh my gosh, you felt that way your whole life?

01:11:42.580 Why didn't you say something? We don't want you to feel that way. Right.

01:11:45.540 Nobody was like, oh, well, you're a freak. I think we're beyond that for the most part.

01:11:49.220 I think we're beyond that.

01:11:49.940 Again, we got the three percent or whatever. Right. So I don't think we have that problem.

01:11:55.860 The problem is, is that half of the country is being told you're stupid, you're racist,

01:12:03.300 you're a bigot. And then that half now is starting to say to the other side, you're totalitarian.

01:12:10.420 You are, you just are going to gas us all. The vast majority on both sides, neither of those are

01:12:17.140 true. Yeah. But we're not talking. So how do we do it? Right. Well, this is where I think

01:12:22.900 postmodernism is dangerous because we all, I think as human beings, we have these frustrations

01:12:29.620 that when we're arguing about various things, we don't necessarily like our views being challenged.

01:12:35.140 And we always have to, you know, go the extra effort to open ourselves up to that.

01:12:41.780 We're good at challenging, not challenging ourselves.

01:12:43.940 Right. Well, in many cases, we're not good at challenging constructively. So being able to

01:12:48.740 to learn how to do that. So all of these are emotional skills. All of these are cognitive

01:12:52.900 skills. And I think it's part of the human condition that good thinking, good civil discourse

01:12:57.860 takes a lot of work. And there are always temptations to engage in shortcuts. Even if we are people who

01:13:03.620 have thought about various things and we know we're decent people, we've we've thought things through,

01:13:08.420 we have various views. It's hard for us to want to open ourselves up to having to rethink things

01:13:14.660 through again. Right. So at a certain point, it's easy for us to to to close the door. So I think that's

01:13:21.700 a part of human condition. But what good parenting does and what good education does is gives people

01:13:28.420 the intellectual, the emotional and the social resources to be able to do that throughout their

01:13:33.380 lives. So the real danger is that what we now have is an elite in universities who are not teaching

01:13:43.940 those skills. They have come to believe this is the postmodern position that rational discussion is

01:13:51.060 not where it's at. Emotional tolerance and a willingness to engage in civil discussion is not

01:13:58.260 where it's at. And when the teachers of the teachers stop teaching those skills and start to model

01:14:06.420 different things, then you're on a slippery slope. So Steve, wait, wait, before you go any further,

01:14:12.260 unless you think you need to complete that to complete the whole file. Well, go ahead. I can come back to

01:14:17.060 that. All right. I, I, again, I don't, how can a teacher, an honest teacher who thinks they're doing

01:14:27.300 the right thing say, no, I, you're just going to listen and take it and you're going to repeat it.

01:14:37.540 Right. And if you step out of line, you know, and use some sort of rational thought, I don't.

01:14:43.300 Well, you use the word honest and I think that's the problem. Yes. Okay. And I think there are two

01:14:47.860 things, two things here. There are lots and lots. We always have these in any generation of teachers

01:14:52.500 who are not honest about being teachers in the sense of liberal education, that we're supposed

01:14:57.060 to train people to think for themselves, give them all the arguments, right. And so forth.

01:15:01.300 There's always the temptation. Once you have a position of power, you become a teacher. You can mold

01:15:05.460 young minds. You have your agenda and you become an indoctrinator. So every generation always has that,

01:15:10.820 even in the most gung ho liberal education context that are, that is possible. So people though,

01:15:17.380 who know that they are doing that, they know that they are being dishonest and they might mouth certain

01:15:22.740 liberal education platitudes, but they know that in their heart of hearts, they really are just in

01:15:27.300 the game for indoctrinators. And so part of what universities should be doing is policing themselves

01:15:33.940 against people who are just ideologues and not giving them tenure, right. And so on. So

01:15:40.260 we don't do that as well as we, as we used to, right. But then I think there is another subspecies

01:15:45.460 here that I don't think that they are dishonest, but they have convinced themselves that rational

01:15:51.460 dialogue is, is, is impossible. This is why I think the philosophy is most important. We have to

01:15:57.860 have good epistemology that shows, in fact, we can identify facts that there is something to

01:16:04.260 scientific method and that each of us, even if we're not professional scientists should know

01:16:08.980 something about evidence, argument, refutation, be able to follow a chain of thought. And as long as we

01:16:16.260 don't have a significant number of philosophers, first rank philosophers, teaching that it's not going

01:16:21.700 to trickle down into the other disciplines. What you will then have is a lot of people who are

01:16:26.180 semi-educated, but the, what they will learn is, well, as with deconstruction, you can always make

01:16:31.060 up a story, whatever story you want. There's, you know, you can lie with statistics, you can lie with

01:16:37.220 words and, and the distinction between truth and lie doesn't, doesn't mean anything. Once that becomes

01:16:42.580 the widespread intellectual ethos, then people will say, well, I'm not being dishonest if I'm just making

01:16:49.300 up my own narrative because it fits my value framework and using whatever social power I have

01:16:54.180 as a teacher to get my students to believe that I'm just doing what everybody else does. I think

01:16:59.620 that's where we are. And that's where we are. So, uh, you mentioned deconstruction earlier.

01:17:04.500 There's a, an interesting right point here. Uh, that's Jacques Derrida, who is most associated with

01:17:10.020 that, but Stanley Fish, uh, who was a very famous professor at Duke for many years. And he came to my

01:17:16.340 home state of Illinois. Interestingly, he was the highest paid public servant in the state of

01:17:22.180 Illinois, making more money than the governor for a while. He was a superstar professor who was,

01:17:27.620 uh, who was recruited. And, uh, one of the quotations I like from him, I don't agree with

01:17:32.740 it, but he's, you know, deconstruction basically saying there is no truth. There is no objectivity.

01:17:37.460 There's no such thing as a right interpretation of text. He said, this is very freeing. I don't have

01:17:41.060 to worry about what the right interpretation of text is. All I need to do is just be interesting.

01:17:46.500 Right. So just be playful. And, uh, and then if I'm interested in some strange reinterpretation

01:17:52.820 of a given painting or a given Shakespearean text, as long as it's someone reads that, oh,

01:17:57.780 that's kind of fun or a new way of looking at it. Uh, that's fine because no one can say I'm wrong.

01:18:03.460 But, uh, once there is no such thing as a right way to interpret things, and we shouldn't be arguing

01:18:10.740 about things, then what are professors supposed to be doing when they're doing with their students?

01:18:16.420 If we're not training their minds, if I'm not training them to look at both or all sides of an

01:18:22.660 argument, you have power. And if you are a politicized person at all, you will use your power

01:18:28.820 for indoctrination purposes. And so the connection I make here is, uh, Franklin Trichia, who is one of

01:18:34.980 Stanley Fisher's colleagues at Duke, and he's speaking for a whole generation. Uh, this is a book published

01:18:40.420 by University of Chicago Press, very prestigious press. You're saying, look, and I'm paraphrasing

01:18:45.460 now, uh, the task of a professor is to train political activists. We live in a horrible,

01:18:53.540 horrible regime where they're basically capitalism, industrial revolution, everything is awful. Sexism,

01:19:01.300 racism, the whole shebang that's taken as axiomatic from that perspective. Uh, but people are being

01:19:07.620 indoctrinated by the major cultural organs that are out there. My job as a professor is to the

01:19:13.300 extent I have power over these students to get them angry about the system as it is. And we know

01:19:20.340 what comes out of the anger is a sense that I need to go out and do something. And that will be the

01:19:25.540 activism. So the lineage from Derrida to Fish and Lantrichia is well worn out. Derrida in the sixties,

01:19:36.260 right? Fish and Lantrichia writing in the eighties and nineties. And now we are one generation where

01:19:41.700 those very bright individuals have influenced the whole generation. And now we have a more

01:19:47.060 significant demographic who are exactly doing that.

01:20:01.780 So how do we get it back? How do, how do we, uh, how do we not embrace our anger and punch back?

01:20:20.260 Well, I think, uh, we should be angry because I think this is a betrayal. Uh, so I think the anger is

01:20:28.420 there, but then we go back to the Greeks and anger management, uh, the stakes are high.

01:20:35.380 And anytime we have a major injustice and an anger assault, we should be worked up about it.

01:20:40.980 I find it very difficult to talk to people because when I say we cannot strike out,

01:20:48.020 they think they interpret that as you don't have a reason to be angry. This is righteous anger. This is

01:20:55.540 my culture. I feel my country, the enlightenment facts are, have been stolen and they are,

01:21:06.500 they have trained a new little army to enforce it. So you damn right. We're pissed. That's right.

01:21:14.020 But now we have to be smart on how we fight. Exactly. That's right. So your anger has to work

01:21:20.660 with your reason, your passions have to work right with your mind. So we should be activist ourselves

01:21:29.300 in the cause of truth and justice and the American way in the American context. Those values

01:21:35.620 are legitimate values and they should be fought for vigorously. But right now the battle is not

01:21:42.580 World War I, World War II. It's an intellectual battle. And so, and this is not just me as a professor

01:21:48.820 saying, you know, I'm a hammer and everything is a nail. This is the most important battle. It is

01:21:53.540 an intellectual battle and it has to be fought in the universities.

01:21:59.380 Who's fighting it?

01:22:00.260 Well, I am a little bit optimistic at this point because my sense is that most people who were

01:22:06.900 first rate in the academic world in the eighties, nineties, in the first decades of the 2000, they

01:22:11.300 were off doing good work, whatever it was that they were doing. They are aware of postmodernism

01:22:17.300 in various manifestations. And they're just saying, that's just a bunch of fringe

01:22:21.460 people. I don't need to take them very seriously. Who can possibly take that seriously? And it doesn't

01:22:25.940 make any sense to me anyway. So that didn't leave a vacuum. And part of postmodern strategy or sub

01:22:34.500 strategies is the long march through the institutions to capture those institutions. So they were playing

01:22:39.380 the political game, right? They are capturing those institutions, but then once they are

01:22:43.540 in enough of a position to become a more serious nuisance, then I think the first rate people

01:22:49.700 start to pay attention. And so for the last 15 years or so, there has been an increasing number

01:22:55.540 of people in all the major disciplines, right? In psychology, in history, in law, in my home field

01:23:02.980 of philosophy who are taking postmodernism seriously. And so the intellectual debate is

01:23:07.860 being joined. And that's a good sign. And I think also a very good sign is that, you know,

01:23:14.820 postmodernism is in part an activist strategy. And so, you know, now that it's done well in higher

01:23:20.900 education, it's stepping out into all their cultural spheres. And so the more general public, who's also

01:23:26.900 out there doing good work, are starting to become aware of it. But we're also starting to see engagement

01:23:32.020 on other cultural fronts as well. Now, I don't think there are any shortcuts. It's going to be

01:23:36.980 unpleasant. It is going to be nasty. And I think, as you are suggesting, in one sense, we have our

01:23:42.900 or at least one hand tied behind our back, because we're not willing to initiate certain tactics that

01:23:48.820 they are willing to. We're going to take the high road. And I think we should take the high road.

01:23:52.900 Well, it doesn't use physical force only as a last resort and in self-defense.

01:23:57.860 Right. And it wouldn't if it is about creating chaos and dismantling by by and not using reason

01:24:07.460 by allowing yourself to be angry and reacting in and creating more chaos. Aren't you just hastening

01:24:16.420 what they're trying to do? Yes, absolutely. That's right. And, you know, this is maybe a cheap shot,

01:24:22.260 but I do think the postmoderns and a lot of the activists, they recognize that if they have to

01:24:29.780 come up with evidence, they're not going to win that game. If it's a matter of logical,

01:24:34.740 rational, scientific, they're not going to win that game. So they are using the tactics that they

01:24:39.860 have. And that is that is street fighting, just as in other branches of the military. If you can't

01:24:47.220 compete on traditional tactics or high tech or whatever, you use guerrilla tactics.

01:24:55.220 And so I think what we have is an intellectual guerrilla strategy that is being mounted here.

01:25:00.580 And we do need to be willing to use force in self-defense and to keep that contained. There's

01:25:05.220 a legitimate role for security forces and police forces. Martin Luther King asked for a permit to carry

01:25:11.700 gun. He was denied, but he asked for it. That's right. But at the same time, we have to make sure

01:25:17.940 that we are reacting only legitimately in a self-defense fashion. And at the same time,

01:25:24.340 paying more attention to the cultural institutions, the issues of civility, what really liberal arts

01:25:32.340 education is about, what proper rationality and respect for human dignity and human rights requires,

01:25:39.940 and all of the arguments and understandings that go into having a decent rational philosophy that can

01:25:45.620 support a Democratic-Republican polity. We need to reinvigorate that. To a large extent,

01:25:52.900 the postmoderns are operating in a cultural vacuum. We have taken a lot of things for granted

01:25:59.060 and not defended them very well for several generations now. So we need to up our game.

01:26:03.380 Would you come back and help us with that? I would be happy to.

01:26:08.660 Help to teach some of the, the arguments that I don't think people can,

01:26:14.340 people haven't thought that deeply about things for a long time.

01:26:16.900 Yeah. One of the sad things I'm noticing, I'm now old enough to have been on several hiring

01:26:21.220 committees and I'm at a smaller liberal arts institution. And so I interact with faculty

01:26:27.220 is, and I hope I don't just sound like an, like an old person at this point here, but

01:26:31.700 an increasing number of people who come out with PhDs and they really have not gotten a full education.

01:26:37.860 And it's not just that, you know, in the first generation or so, obviously we can't all read

01:26:42.180 everything, but most of us have made an effort to read all of the greats and, and to know something,

01:26:48.980 to have some working. But an increasing, I noticed this about 15 years or so ago, people just say, no,

01:26:53.700 I haven't read that. And there's no need for me to read that. And it's one of the giants right in the,

01:26:58.180 in the literature. And sometimes it's just a matter of, well, I'm, I'm only interested in this.

01:27:03.700 Uh, but also it's just, you know, that's from an alien tradition and, uh, no point reading that.

01:27:11.780 Um, Stephen has written a book called explaining postmodernism, skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

01:27:20.100 Uh, it is well worth your time reading and I hope to have you back.

01:27:24.980 All right. Thanks for the plug. And thanks for the invitation.

01:27:27.540 Thank you.

01:27:33.700 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

01:27:37.940 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

01:27:50.100 Thank you.

01:27:57.540 Thank you.

The Glenn Beck Program - December 15, 2018

Ep 15 ｜ Dr. Stephen Hicks ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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