The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 23 ｜ Arthur Herman ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 you are one of my favorite historians this is like a dream come true to sit with you

00:00:18.880 at your service it is great um you have written so much and i want to i mean i want to hit on

00:00:27.100 a lot of these uh the idea of the decline in western history joseph mccarthy how the scots

00:00:33.600 invented the modern world the the rule to rule the waves how the british navy shaped i've had

00:00:40.360 questions on that one gandhi churchill i am fascinated by those two one of my favorite

00:00:45.980 books of all time is freedom's forge that you wrote uh how american business produced victory

00:00:51.200 in world war ii the cave and the light douglas mccarthur and 1917 lenin buys i know you do

00:01:00.060 i know you do and my my feeling is as an historian you can't afford to despise your figures what

00:01:07.520 you're trying to do is get inside their minds right and figure out why they did what they did

00:01:12.220 and what the consequence of what they did was it a good thing or was it ultimately a bad thing and i

00:01:17.900 think we have to say about wilson ultimately it was a lot of bad things a lot of bad things he was

00:01:23.540 do you think he was a really a bad guy the way he loved the clan and all of that stuff that was part

00:01:32.560 of the times i think and also part of his background it was there are many things to dislike about

00:01:39.480 wilson and a lot of his thinking on things like race is very very different from where we think now

00:01:45.260 not so different from the way a lot of people did at the time of course particularly if he came from

00:01:49.920 virginia rural virginia as he did um but the thing that's so fascinating about wilson uh is that he was

00:01:58.580 a man so utterly convinced of his rightness of a level of self-righteousness that would allow him

00:02:06.640 in his own mind to lie to people yeah that would allow him you know the the meaning you know the

00:02:13.840 ends justify any means yeah that's very much part of wilson's personality very much and i guess what

00:02:21.140 i don't like about him and some of the the people that surrounded him and the progressive uh era that

00:02:28.520 he really kind of pushed forward um is that arrogance yep um and and we're seeing it today

00:02:38.400 we're seeing i think so i think it i think it permeates it's always permeated the progressive

00:02:43.220 mind and the progressive movement in this country and uh uh but and in europe but in this country

00:02:50.120 particularly because it's able to latch onto that kind of protestant evangelical zeal

00:02:56.860 that lies at the basis of so much of american culture good and bad but when it's linked to

00:03:02.540 political movements boy watch out yeah because it can cause so much pain and suffering all for a

00:03:09.260 higher cause and all for a higher motive so would you because people don't they don't realize that

00:03:17.300 social justice you know started out as a catholic thing in the 1800s and it was a good thing and then 0.92

00:03:22.800 it has morphed and morphed and morphed and it became more and more about politics and and uh the

00:03:29.000 government's uh power to create justice social justice even things out i think you go ahead you

00:03:36.580 know i think it took on a marxist yes sheen and now it's become virtually the equivalent the marxist

00:03:43.340 social and historical analysis which is really at the bottom very very simplistic

00:03:48.800 now underlies so much of what the left does um that i think if you go to marx you go to lenin

00:03:57.720 you understand so much more about the american left today uh than you would by reading any of the

00:04:04.980 classic figures of american progressivism like herbert crowley uh or or bellamy or edward bellamy any

00:04:12.780 other figures who were wilson's contemporaries and wilson's admirers um but uh but marx is the name

00:04:21.880 of the game today and that's been that's part of what drives the extremism that you get on the left

00:04:28.780 and it's also i think what makes uh the the the life of the mind in places like universities and

00:04:36.940 colleges now really so what's the word i'm looking for so stagnant so so lacking in any kind of any

00:04:45.820 kind of intellectual vitality at the same time of course in which they're shutting down dissent

00:04:51.880 shutting down any view which in any way deviates from what they consider to be the party line

00:04:58.700 you mentioned um you know when when social justice is connected to you know the protestant um you know

00:05:10.660 viewpoint or evangelical the left has its own religion now i mean it is getting to the point to

00:05:19.280 where science doesn't matter nothing matters it is a religion and if you dare to question

00:05:27.360 it is almost it's it's heresy uh and to and to cross when you when it's when a system of beliefs

00:05:36.660 becomes an orthodoxy it signals two things one is dissent is not to be tolerated and or even the

00:05:43.220 hint of dissent i mean that's really where we are now it's not even if you don't dissent but you don't

00:05:50.320 don't you don't stand up enough right or or you don't hit the exact points when discussing issues such

00:05:56.180 as race issues such as class issues such as gender uh you can be cast out uh but what it also what it

00:06:05.420 also does is that uh at the same time it becomes as i say this this fierce enforcer of that orthodoxy

00:06:14.600 what it also is glenn is a sign of vulnerability orthodoxies the the whole nature of orthodoxy is that

00:06:24.000 they're rigid they can't adjust to change they can't deal with reality reality has to be seen

00:06:31.500 through a lens which is defined by the ideology or by the system of religious beliefs and the the

00:06:39.820 hardening of that system into an orthodoxy is a sign that it knows it's in trouble and this is where we

00:06:45.260 are today we're with an a uh a left which is intellectually bankrupt i would argue too morally

00:06:52.060 bankrupt um but which has seized the means by which to enforce its standards and its creed so that

00:07:01.260 being a conservative being a conservative commentator uh having a different view of these kinds of issues

00:07:10.800 becomes a form of social death i mean that's really what's happening i know people who worked in the

00:07:14.920 obama administration and say they are no longer welcome in the circles of the left nothing surprised

00:07:20.840 me right revolutions devour their own children yeah and this is exactly what we're seeing with the left

00:07:25.600 today wilson and lenin for sure since since marx plays a big role now let's go to lenin and and show me

00:07:35.740 how that plays out here well in the case of lenin what you have is uh someone for whom marx was less

00:07:47.120 of a way to understand the world and more as a way to understand power lenin in the end was only

00:07:53.380 concerned about one thing and that is getting power and holding on to it um he didn't he isn't the one

00:07:59.440 who sort of said power comes from the barrel of a gun but that basically underlies everything that he

00:08:04.040 believed and understood about the politics of his own day how it was that the czarist government was

00:08:09.340 able to control the masses and dominate dominate that empire and that was the power that he wanted

00:08:14.960 in order to reshape it and didn't he say right around the time of the revolution no no we're not

00:08:20.880 communist we're i think he used social democrats didn't he or something along those lines he well

00:08:27.100 social democrats yeah social democrats at that time were of course mainstream marxists right and in a

00:08:32.680 country like russia social being a social democrat you were bound to endorse some form of revolution

00:08:38.360 because it was on very unlikely that you were going to wait long enough for a a conscious working

00:08:45.020 class to come into existence to create the kind of revolution that marxists were anticipating in 0.97

00:08:51.440 countries like germany and uh great britain and france and the other leading industrial nations

00:08:58.160 so you were going to be you were bound to endorse some sort of revolution um in in lenin's case the

00:09:06.740 revolution that he saw was one that would be driven not by a a certainly not by the masses and not by the

00:09:15.140 workers but we driven by a tiny revolutionary elite who understood how to seize events to topple the old

00:09:24.300 order and then to use it to impose a new order run by them and from his standpoint the whole question

00:09:33.760 of sort of waiting for the right occasion waiting for the right opportunity in terms of what was

00:09:39.880 happening in society itself waiting for that moment when industrialization which was as i explain in

00:09:45.260 the book was already well underway in russia russia was on its way we would call today we would think

00:09:51.720 about it uh as basically uh an emerging emerging economy uh and where it was headed uh but the the

00:09:59.780 event that he seizes on as the moment to seize power is is when russia makes the terrible mistake

00:10:05.100 of entering world war one uh and fighting a war which is way beyond its capacity yeah to sustain uh or to

00:10:13.720 to deal with the consequences with uh when defeat comes uh in the on the battlefield if you read fabian

00:10:20.780 socialists in um england and all throughout europe they know the pain that's going to happen with world

00:10:28.940 war one they know it they're looking at it like lenin did this is a good opportunity to redraw the draw

00:10:35.740 the map and and to bring in a new world order do for instance with lenin and stalin now do they at any point

00:10:50.060 stop and say this doesn't work that's a really great question is there even a moment of self-reflection

00:10:59.180 just a moment or do they just not care i think that they don't particularly care yeah i think that's

00:11:06.000 exactly right and i think also to what again uh as i was going to say with regard to lenin and marx what

00:11:12.340 marx does is justify a way to seize power and hold it and once you have power power is itself self-justifying

00:11:21.380 right you there are no moral principles there are no ethical standards uh to appeal outside

00:11:29.380 the realm of power and the realm of politics and once you've located yourself in that space

00:11:34.680 and all the men that you just described did we can throw hitler into the mix too if we want to

00:11:39.740 and himler and the other key figures who who organized that particular totalitarian dictatorship

00:11:46.300 then you're in i mean then there's there's never a moment of doubt you know exactly what you need to

00:11:51.860 do and that is to consolidate power and to hang on to it and that every move you make is a means by which

00:11:57.920 you extend it uh and grow it probably the only one of that mix who had any kind of lingering self-doubts

00:12:04.320 was probably mussolini actually i'm not i'm not writing about yeah franco's in a totally different

00:12:09.540 totally different camp but mussolini he is after all the founder of fascism as a as a as a political

00:12:16.360 doctrine uh and even as a as a working ideology for running a state uh in this case his his own

00:12:23.440 italy and yet at the same time when you look at mussolini you look at him he's a man i think who

00:12:28.720 is ultimately really plagued by self-doubts and a deep sense of shame about the country that he runs

00:12:34.060 you know his his son-in-law became foreign minister canciano and you read canciano's diaries

00:12:40.380 which are fascinating reading glenn you really got to pick them up and look at them but one of the scenes

00:12:45.240 in which he in the book in the 1930s is where the a delegation of peasants have come from i can't

00:12:52.540 remember where it was from sardinia or from piedmont and they've come to see mussolini and just before

00:12:59.040 they go have the you know the the meeting in his office and so on they relieve themselves underneath

00:13:05.440 the stairwell going up that and mussolini finds out and he's so this is destroys his day destroys his

00:13:13.160 week here i am trying to make this country a modern you know efficient state and government and a new

00:13:19.820 model a new order that's going to emerge from it and then they do this and then i'm still dealing

00:13:24.480 with this sort of peasant this peasant material leftover so behavior like that makes mussolini

00:13:30.640 ashamed behavior like that you're shot if you're in if by stalin or by lenin uh or by mao in those

00:13:38.780 circumstances but mussolini uh the the there was still an element of conscience left for him that for

00:13:46.820 those other dictator figures uh it had all been it all been wiped away

00:13:51.860 there's this thing in america that uh we just don't want to look at russia you know it's the soviets

00:14:13.680 we we you know fdr there's not a communist uh that i've met that i don't like i think is one of

00:14:20.460 his phrases something along that i know a lot of great communists i think that's what he said

00:14:24.180 um we all know you say fascist you immediately think of hitler and you immediately think of the

00:14:31.480 death camps and that's really bad but it's a direct association correct one to the other correct

00:14:37.500 mao stalin killed many more than hitler i mean it's not a contest but it's just as bad and evil

00:14:47.420 if not worse and yet we don't have that where is that where's that breakdown well you know i did this

00:14:57.460 book biography of joseph mccarthy and i explored a lot of those issues there the very important issues

00:15:02.960 you're just raising why is it now from our modern lens and we think about really evil societies and

00:15:10.460 evil dictators why is it that hitler is always front and center in those discussions stalin a 0.77

00:15:17.180 little bit stalin more so than it used to be you know when i was went to university of minnesota

00:15:21.700 there was a professor in the physics department who actually had a portrait portrait of stalin on his

00:15:28.840 wall and the kids sort of chuckled about it um i think now that would be more difficult to get away

00:15:35.060 with i think there would be more fuss would be made about that but certainly not the fuss that would be

00:15:39.920 created if you know you had a picture of hitler or yo-yo or had yeah had an ss banner in your office

00:15:46.760 of course this this you would be in serious serious water uh if you tried something along those lines

00:15:52.680 and i think there's two things one is of course that the writing of history

00:15:56.360 uh has tended to be dominated by the left and it's the it's the left's view of that books like

00:16:04.420 howard zin's uh for example uh his history the united states look at the numbers how much of that

00:16:11.520 book is used as the standard textbook and it's crazy that's nuts it's a very bad gary nash is another

00:16:17.820 one too uh they're very smart they they have targeted schools uh and textbooks as a means by which

00:16:24.660 to spread uh that propaganda which it really is i have very i have one-sided lopsided view of history

00:16:31.040 i have a first edition of zin signed and inscribed by him to somebody i don't remember who it's inscribed

00:16:37.260 to and it talks about camille sung perhaps uh yeah uh it talks about how you know we've held for a long

00:16:44.140 time we just have to keep you know keep on pushing through and uh all of us who are on this side

00:16:50.860 will understand that these kinds of books will change the world that's right what it and it's

00:16:57.180 the old uh uh german student leader uh rudy dutchke right who coined the phrase the long march through

00:17:04.240 the institutions and he was talking about in the early 70s and they've succeeded it's been it's been

00:17:10.360 a impressive enterprise the means by which they have seized key institutions in this country

00:17:16.300 and made them purveyors of and now enforcers of a leftist orthodoxy it's amazing because um people

00:17:25.060 will say americas americans don't have long vision i think the left does uh the the left has a much

00:17:32.020 longer vision i mean this has been something in in the works since turn of the century last century

00:17:38.540 yep i think that that's true and they know how to use they know how to use allies and dupes 0.98

00:17:44.080 yeah the useful idiots right yeah they know how to do that and american progressives became 1.00

00:17:48.820 part of that team of useful idiots the people who were recruited by uh the nkvd and by soviet 1.00

00:17:58.020 uh espionage and by the communist party usa to become tools by which to infiltrate the federal 0.99

00:18:04.640 government in the 1930s men like alger hiss for example harry dexter white there's another ingredient i

00:18:11.560 think also and that is and this is something that i know you're very interested in and that is is that

00:18:17.660 what has what is able to make that leap from hitler fascism to the death camps yes visual images yeah

00:18:25.420 images of buchenwald and dachau which by the way were not actually the worst of what was happening

00:18:32.620 you know what was happening at places like auschwitz uh and places like treblinka the holocaust was 0.88

00:18:39.300 played out uh dachau and buchenwald although they shifted later to becoming part of the death factories

00:18:46.060 of the nazi regime um they were that was sort of collateral damage really by comparison to where

00:18:52.820 the final solution was really headed which was east not in germany but set that aside the point is is

00:19:00.220 that the is that we have visual images of this film of it uh being able to watch again and again to be

00:19:08.380 played and to be linked in people's minds to what's happening the visual images for the great leap forward

00:19:14.260 not very much uh for the you the great famine in ukraine a few photographs of people lying dead in the

00:19:21.960 streets not much else than that you talk about the hold hold of no one knows what it is no one's ever

00:19:29.280 heard of it no they don't and you know and again the household names right auschwitz treblinka

00:19:35.900 buchenwald dachau but um the but the camps the gulag camps i don't know the name of any of them

00:19:45.900 they're they're not very well known uh kolima um for example which was the great gold mine at which

00:19:54.180 you know thousands and thousands of people died working that for stalin um the white sea canal

00:20:01.640 this pointless effort to to cut thousands of miles of of a canal uh to connect the white sea to the to

00:20:11.300 the baltic i think it was in any case the point is is that these were as much death factories as 0.91

00:20:17.300 anything that auschwitz and birkenau uh were involved were involved and but we don't have

00:20:24.660 and we live in a visual age now glenn the written in written word is being replaced and has been

00:20:31.340 replaced by the visual image as the key carrier for cultural transmission today and it's one of the

00:20:38.340 things that you and i and all of us who are engaged in how do we get our country back how do we get

00:20:43.620 our heritage back need to really think about and that is is it's through the visual image

00:20:49.700 through the icon uh that we now have to carry on that fight that's not to say i love my written

00:20:58.220 words and i'm very proud of that work but it has to be it had the the key transmitter is this i talk

00:21:04.680 about this all the time i in fact i was just on tour recently and i i showed a picture of proud boys

00:21:10.960 fighting antifa in the street and i asked the audience tell me who the good guys and bad guys

00:21:16.480 are can't tell they all look alike they're all moving the same way they're all throwing punches

00:21:21.780 you can't tell then i showed a picture of martin luther king and groups without king in it walking

00:21:28.060 through with the police and the dogs and the batons tell me who the good guys the bad guys are

00:21:33.540 you know immediately you know immediately and the the struggle that's happening here in america is is

00:21:42.120 that both sides are not understanding that it's visual first it's visual first and if you blow it

00:21:51.180 on the visuals if you are eaten and you are not defending yourself what's left of the judeo-christian

00:21:57.160 value in society will say you are the oppressed and that is the oppressor and without those images

00:22:04.980 you don't you don't it remains too abstract yes for most people you know this has happened in history

00:22:11.440 before i mean the the the advance of christianity in the in the fourth and fifth century was driven by

00:22:18.440 christianity's ability to monopolize and to seize control of visual images and that's going to

00:22:24.120 continue all the way through the middle ages we go you know you go to a gothic cathedral right

00:22:27.900 the the the car the statuary the stained glass windows uh the mosaics on the floor all of this

00:22:36.060 were the means by which christianity was able to convey its message to the masses when the written word

00:22:43.200 had become more and more marginal to the way in which way in which culture was good and and cultural

00:22:49.240 messages were both transmitted and reinforced so i think this is a shift that we can say uh has

00:22:56.560 happened before and it can it can swing back again it did in european history with the reformation

00:23:01.140 the written word and the book came back as the powerful tool of christianity and christian thought

00:23:07.860 but we have to now think about our strategies going forward and come to realize that it's it's in the

00:23:15.080 it's in the realm of the visual the realm of the icon that this battle now has to be joined you have

00:23:20.800 that with triumph of will oh of course you know you have that um but you also have exactly what i was

00:23:27.320 talking about with the jews the jews did not fight back so you have all these pictures of the jews

00:23:32.780 peacefully being rounded up and you would know better than i do this is my guess i have been trying to

00:23:39.080 figure out um dietrich bonhoeffer he he said in amazing man amazing and he said you know i gotta

00:23:48.020 talk to gandhi he has the answer i gotta talk to gandhi well my guess is that what dietrich bonhoeffer

00:23:55.780 was doing even if he would have you know been able to lead the march wouldn't have worked because

00:24:01.180 the people of germany had already gone over the cliff away from those judeo-christian values

00:24:06.520 and gandhi was playing to england not to india that's he was playing marvelous point very profound

00:24:15.380 insight and yes if dietrich bonhoeffer had tried to conduct the equivalent of the march on selma

00:24:22.080 we can just imagine what carnage would have resulted from that and if you would have had

00:24:27.320 the west covering it it may have worked it may have worked but it may have worked but he was

00:24:33.300 it was much too late it was far too late for that kind of for that kind of change to take place

00:24:37.580 and you know this happened you have for example in the netherlands you had days of solidarity yeah

00:24:44.520 in which dutch citizens would put on for example yellow stars right or even interfere right with

00:24:50.880 the efforts to round up dutch jews and what happened well the nazis came down and rounded up

00:24:54.900 everybody yeah and shot them all but at least they kind of kept their soul i mean if you look at that

00:25:00.900 it's not the same story as the germans the dutch in the end still they did a lot and i'm finding out

00:25:08.080 in the new book that i'm working on that the danes did a lot norwegians did a lot um raul wallenberg he

00:25:15.640 had company he had company in his efforts to protect jews in a very very dangerous situation which was in

00:25:21.040 which was in nazi occupied budapest um so there were there were efforts underway

00:25:26.800 but when you have the apparatus of the total police state at your behest as we they do in china

00:25:35.000 as vladimir putin does in russia um there's all kinds of ways in which you can deal with dissent

00:25:42.900 in ways that no one knows about and no one is able to confront and no one dares confront

00:25:47.880 uh when it's when it's aimed at them let me uh stop with rollin wallenberg for a second

00:25:54.300 six years ago christmas my wife came to me and uh she gave me a present she handed it to me and

00:26:02.580 then she took it back and she said i can't give this to you on christmas and i said what and i said

00:26:07.740 i want to open it and she said i know you you're going to spend all day crying so if you promise you

00:26:14.760 won't cry and i said of course i won't i opened it i cried all day it is it was one of the last

00:26:21.500 uh letters uh passports that raul wallenberg gave to how precious oh my gosh it's unbelievable

00:26:31.020 and i went over to sweden and i was talking to one of the main historians of wallenberg she was

00:26:39.300 surprised an american and even heard of him um kidding and uh i talked to her and in the way i

00:26:46.720 understand the story maybe you can shed some light on this we asked him to go but the americans came

00:26:54.420 to him and said hey we need you to go over there we need you to help out we need you to get some

00:26:59.560 information yada yada he then became so committed to it the guy was a giant that's my impression too he

00:27:08.760 was in effect an intelligence agent first right and then a humanitarian yeah and then and then a

00:27:15.080 humanitarian second when he saw what was actually taking place and then we don't even ask for him

00:27:21.460 when he when he goes to the soviets how does america i mean that's just one of the great this is this is

00:27:29.020 the atmosphere of the immediate post-war period i mean think of all the think of the british right and all

00:27:35.300 of the uh baltic and uh and uh russian uh citizens who had fled soviet tyranny who were handed over

00:27:47.000 to stalin for disposal by the british because he didn't want to cross an ally he didn't want to get

00:27:53.000 mixed up with this it seems sad and it seems brutal to say so but uh in those 46 47 48 there were

00:28:01.480 lots of issues that were being dealt with big issues and the question of of a of a figure like

00:28:10.020 raul wallenberg slipping through the cracks it's not surprising it's not it's tragic but you know

00:28:18.620 what glenn this is what i'm this is one of the things i think it's important always to emphasize

00:28:22.340 how much of history reveals to us not the not the fact that some are you know uh

00:28:31.180 inescapably good and some are uh simply insuperably bad but how much of what happens in the world is

00:28:38.140 really involves a tragedy of human beings who find themselves in circumstances in which they are forced

00:28:45.180 to act according to their either their social role or their cultural assumptions or their religious

00:28:50.460 beliefs or even a sense of you know what this sounds like i have to do this because i have a

00:28:56.880 feeling this will lead to the consequences that we all want and you make the wrong decision you make

00:29:01.200 blunders one of my favorite sayings in history is it's always difficult for us to remember that events

00:29:08.040 that are in the past were once in the future and that the people who initiated those actions and who

00:29:14.400 made those crucial decisions and think about the long list i don't have to walk through them

00:29:18.700 all the time never knew what the outcome would be and simply had to make a guess or a judgment based

00:29:25.760 on their own experience and their own context and their own humanity their own humanity we don't

00:29:31.680 like to look at the worst case scenario it goes against everything in us as an animal and it rests

00:29:37.240 rests upon our self-confidence or lack of confidence to make those decisions and sometimes i think it's

00:29:44.000 important it's one of the one of my main beefs with the way in which the left has twisted and distorted

00:29:50.420 how we look at history like for example the civil war that we don't see it through that lens of

00:29:55.720 individuals making decisions which have tragic consequences sometimes for the right reasons

00:30:02.080 sometimes for wrong but sometimes for reasons which were understandable at the time and that has in it

00:30:07.980 and that being able to understand that and understand our own humanity through history this is one of

00:30:13.980 the missions that i've set for myself from the very first book i wrote and it's one which i think uh

00:30:20.620 i hope that readers and those who appreciate my books also understand it's an exploration of the nature

00:30:28.200 of humanity of human nature through our actions in the past and the more you can illuminate what it is

00:30:35.240 it makes us us as human beings by understanding what has been done in the past what's possible and

00:30:41.500 what's not that's i think a key enterprise for for an historian whereas right now i think a lot of

00:30:48.060 history is driven by the idea of either assigning blame yeah or absolving blame yeah

00:30:52.840 i think that most people that we look at as heroes uh it's important to see that they didn't know

00:31:11.360 how it would work out that's right and uh that's exactly my point right and they you know my son said

00:31:17.900 to me i have all these artifacts and pictures in the raul wallenberg you know stuff on my walls in

00:31:24.020 my office and uh we were having a conversation about courage and he i said you know i have them all

00:31:30.900 these people he said yeah because they were all heroes i said yeah well they were but that's not

00:31:34.320 why i have them and he said because they weren't afraid and i said no i think the exact opposite is

00:31:40.240 true i think each you know courage is not the absence of fear it is the oh well it's right to do

00:31:49.040 anyway come what may i think these people were terrified but they did it anyway do we all have that

00:31:58.620 in us or there's just a few of us that have it in us we're because i have no idea if crap hits the fan

00:32:06.580 i don't know who i'll be i hope i know i i hope i will be some you know one of these guys but i don't

00:32:13.640 know what what what is that when you're looking at the great men of history what is that that's a very

00:32:21.560 profound that transcends history really you've brought us into the realm of philosophy i think

00:32:27.480 and and how we understand and how we evaluate human behavior um within the within the purview

00:32:36.440 of of our ability to make judgments based on what we know what we draw upon from our experience

00:32:47.300 from our perception of the world around us and how we make right decisions versus wrong decisions

00:32:54.580 that's an issue that i think uh haunts all of us isn't it i mean what would you do what would what

00:33:01.580 i do if it was if i were a german in 1935 uh what would i do if i were a russian in in 1917 1918

00:33:10.980 you know would i join the whites would i join the reds who who would i be fighting because if you look

00:33:17.580 at the look at the record of human carnage during the russian civil war it's pretty bad on both sides

00:33:24.560 um what would i do if i'm in uh if i'm in living in virginia in in 1860 uh all those decisions are

00:33:33.680 going to be made i would like to think i would make the decisions that would make me look really

00:33:38.020 good right in in 2018 what's the likelihood of that happening almost none well i think on that

00:33:45.200 particular case i think we know there are more slaves today today than there were in the entire 400

00:33:53.080 year of the western slave trade combined combined um and nobody wants to talk about it no nobody's

00:33:58.600 going to talk about that we're not and no one's going to talk about the other aspects of the slave

00:34:02.640 trade either the way in which it was run uh and uh profited uh the arab world yeah for hundreds of

00:34:10.200 years before the western europeans and it's still and it's never stopped and it's never stopped and so

00:34:14.500 we're no different people are saying the one the one thing that one thing that the the arabs did 0.98

00:34:20.880 which has helped to sort of eliminate obliterate the traces of the human carnage they left was as

00:34:27.820 they castrated all their slaves so you don't have the problem of large numbers of offspring as you do

00:34:32.940 in the western hemisphere that keeps it again come back to the visual right that keeps that that that's

00:34:39.680 a history which has been obliterated visually whereas the history of slavery in the western hemisphere

00:34:44.660 in both north and south america lives there to look at uh let me just stop on some people here while

00:34:54.500 we're in this territory sure uh fdr in your in your book freedoms forge um you know you you you don't

00:35:04.700 say anything surprising to me about fdr in writing a book where you're spending time with these people

00:35:12.880 as much as you can what do you walk away with on fdr i would say in general with with the books that

00:35:19.800 i've written and it's a fair number of biographies you mentioned the gandhi and churchill um i'll tell

00:35:25.940 you the story about the the pulitzer prize finalists and how i found out about that at some point too

00:35:30.560 but the uh the mccarthy book the douglas mccarthur biography and then then the characters who who

00:35:39.020 really dominate the stage in freedoms forge um the the view that i took when i came into the book

00:35:46.240 it was usually different from when i came out right and this was a case with with fdr you know people

00:35:52.660 have urged me to write a biography of fdr you know lay it out there talk about you know all the kinds of

00:35:58.000 really awful things that he did both domestically but also in foreign policy look at the record at

00:36:03.540 yalta for example of his of his gullibility and and cunning and dealing with stalin and really 0.86

00:36:11.660 if churchill would have been if we would have flipped those two those two and and and roosevelt

00:36:17.740 wasn't there so when i came to this book i was sort of thinking about roosevelt and that kind of

00:36:22.340 that kind of light but what i found out working on this book was i came out with a more of a

00:36:27.620 positive view in this sense and that is is that everything for those of you who don't know the

00:36:32.840 book he calls up when when it becomes clear the united states is going to get involved in world

00:36:37.100 work it's going to happen and this is in the may of 1940 when france is falling apart britain is

00:36:42.460 isolated the war is going to come to come to america within two years his military advisors tell him

00:36:49.080 we've got to gear up for war we've got nothing to fight a modern war with what are we going to do

00:36:55.160 how are we going to arm ourselves he calls the ceo of general motors big bill newtson and says come

00:37:01.600 to washington help me get it oh he's a fantastic character he's a guy he's a guy that that had been

00:37:07.520 targeted by fdr as a guy who's a bad capitalist who's just you know money grubbing and his family

00:37:15.820 when he gets the call from fdr says you're crazy to do this going you're crazy to sign up with this guy

00:37:22.060 why would you do that and he goes it's because i'm an american my president called me and i'm i

00:37:28.660 have to go and yet everything that bill newtson represented was the exact opposite of what

00:37:34.740 roosevelt believed and thought about i mean you talk about and talk about sort of a someone who

00:37:41.320 who stands for everything that you're against but fdr as i explain in the book understood that if

00:37:49.220 america was going to gear up to fight this kind of modern warfare to have the equipment and resources

00:37:56.440 that it would need for war on this scale and we're just talking about europe now not the war in the

00:38:02.740 pacific wasn't even on the horizon just to fight the war in europe the war in europe um he realized

00:38:08.680 it can't be done by government fiat this has to be a bottoms-up effort led by the businesses that

00:38:15.400 i'm going to need and and and newtson's my tool in which to do that so fdr liked mussolini's policies

00:38:21.860 generally hitler said he's one of us fdr he's one of us he did believe in you know the big state etc but

00:38:29.700 the thing that's different about fascism as i understand it is it it it directs companies we 0.96

00:38:39.480 all have to do this but then it lets those companies do it so is this a was this a crap i 0.88

00:38:46.960 was wrong about the capitalist system and we have to have these guys in or was this

00:38:51.020 kind of in his head kind of a well this still works because the government is really kind of

00:38:56.820 in charge and it's kind of this new modern i think there's a certain amount of truth to that

00:39:01.160 and i think also too he realized there were limits to what government could really do

00:39:05.280 and you know roosevelt would always say to people i don't know why they're beating me up

00:39:10.840 about uh about the the new deal uh destroying capitalism hell i'm saving capitalism now george

00:39:18.440 bush said the same thing i think i think roosevelt's case and probably in george bush's too i think

00:39:23.340 i think too i think roosevelt did actually believe that in the end what separates roosevelt out from

00:39:30.140 the other figures you mentioned uh in my view is his base including wilson this is basic humanity

00:39:37.700 he in the end is still a human being and except for the japanese well in the japanese thing again

00:39:44.860 i mean we're gonna have to look at the historical context yeah and the context was that

00:39:50.120 it wasn't bill newtson but it was others who told him uh we are going to have huge problems if

00:39:56.900 we're going to have um uh plants doing wartime production on the west coast if we have a large

00:40:07.580 japanese uh population there who may be able to spy on it who may be right able to do it's going to 0.51

00:40:15.180 create all kinds of problems for us later on but you had the whole issue of the the prejudice

00:40:21.540 against japanese americans that was part of west coast politics including democratic politics at the

00:40:26.600 time i think in i think in roosevelt's case this was one in which uh the end justifies the means

00:40:34.480 the pentagon though said don't do it don't do it don't do it and who else said don't do it jager

00:40:39.420 hoover said we've got them all we've rounded up all the all of our all the spies here you don't have

00:40:43.460 to go through this length no the one person who emerges is a real hero and all that and by the way

00:40:48.100 i'm not excusing roosevelt somebody saying this is this is what was in his thinking the one person

00:40:52.840 who emerges is the real hero that is bob taft the one person in the senate the one person in congress

00:40:58.700 who said this is wrong and i'm going to vote no and everybody else was shocked and horrified at the

00:41:04.500 decision that he had that he had made uh just as they would all be horrified uh when um he said

00:41:12.920 these nuremberg trials there's no there's no basis for this is international law you're making it up as

00:41:18.840 you go along uh this these trials shouldn't take place likewise your support for israel which again

00:41:24.280 flew in people's what you want to send arms to israel i'm telling you right now i think glenn

00:41:31.520 one of the most interesting movies that you could make right now would be a life of bob taft

00:41:37.080 never heard of him robert taft senator from ohio he was mr republican in fact that was his name

00:41:44.080 mr republican ran for president a couple times um may have been able to beat out dwight eisenhower

00:41:51.800 in the 1952 election as a matter of fact but eisenhower working behind the scenes and his team

00:41:56.760 were able to able to thwart him he was well known as being an isolationist during the 1930s

00:42:03.360 he was an opponent of nato so what are we doing getting ourselves involved in this north atlantic

00:42:09.520 treaty organization what's this going to involve what's going to involve us in uh and he's a

00:42:14.960 dedicated anti-communist he is a dedicated foe of the new deal he's a strong and staunch supporter of

00:42:22.880 civil rights in the south he is the one who even mounts a campaign to expel uh theodore bilbo of

00:42:30.120 mississippi from the senate because of his demagogic racist speeches here he's an extraordinary man

00:42:37.960 robert taft okay look him up i will i will um let's let's um kind of stop here for uh in the

00:42:48.300 kind of the 1950s and talk a little bit about uh mccarthy sure mccarthy you know edwin black's book

00:42:56.280 blacklisted by history so i i read that and i read the first couple of chapters and as i was reading it

00:43:02.300 i thought this is going to change everything i think i know about mccarthy and i uh i didn't know

00:43:11.400 if i was prepared for it and i wanted to call and make sure i wanted to call edwin and make sure that

00:43:15.880 he wasn't out of his mind crazy um what was your conclusion

00:43:20.820 i think he's buttoned up um i i think he's buttoned up on the holocaust for sure

00:43:31.740 um he's quirky he is quirky but i i read that i have not read yours and i wish i would have before

00:43:40.780 this um but i walked away from that thinking okay mccarthy is not this evil dude he's just a bad mess 0.97

00:43:52.380 he's a mess of a guy he really is um and uh made some stupid mistakes and claims and he's just he's 0.93

00:44:01.660 just a mess but there is there was this uh group in the state department etc etc whether whether he 0.99

00:44:10.920 knew it or not he was just a bad messenger but he was not the guy that we learned about in history

00:44:18.040 yeah he was a bad messenger who who came to distort the message uh as he as his as his influence grew

00:44:24.980 and his self-importance right he just became yeah it's all about me and yet again in the point of

00:44:32.240 view from the context of the time what's interesting if you look at the trajectory i talk about this in

00:44:37.740 the book of his popularity and his support in the country um and really the springboard to all this

00:44:44.840 was the revelations about alger hiss the man who really stands out as i think the hero of the

00:44:51.020 anti-communist movement and revealing what was really happening it's not joe mccarthy but it was

00:44:56.120 actually richard nixon and his single-minded pursuit of that case of saying no whitaker chambers the guy

00:45:04.460 is a physical mess that's true uh and alger hiss is this handsome gregory peck looking you know wasp

00:45:11.840 uh male model with impeccable credentials and uh again visual visual that's right exactly and letters

00:45:19.920 of recommendation you know resume that is just outstanding he's a soviet spy whitaker changes

00:45:26.760 telling the truth about who he is and who he was who he was working for and what he was doing to this

00:45:32.620 country uh through his through his espionage efforts at the behest of the soviets what is a result of

00:45:40.620 that and when you look at mccarthy's career as he begins to sort of say who is this political party

00:45:45.820 that allowed someone like alger hiss to rise to important posts influential posts in the corridors

00:45:53.720 of power not simply at the at the uh yalta conference but in line to be the next secretary

00:46:01.940 of state for god's sake how did this happen how are the democrats so soft on this threat this

00:46:07.780 totalitarian threat to the free world when he preached that message mccarthy's popularity soared

00:46:15.600 his influence grew he became really a leader of his political party because the american people sort

00:46:21.460 of said looked at the record to say yeah the democrats have a lot to answer for what turned

00:46:26.180 around for mccarthy what turned his career in a downward trajectory was when he began making the

00:46:33.300 accusation of republicans and began to say that dwight eisenhower ike had been soft on communism and allowed

00:46:41.800 confidence in for late infiltration in the u.s army in the defense department uh and that he was really

00:46:50.040 as soft on communism as truman and his cohorts had been in the democratic party and the american people

00:46:58.000 sort of said forget it i don't believe this everybody puts the you know the assigns edward

00:47:03.940 r murrow in this great heroic role of exposing mccarthy and turning around america from seeing

00:47:10.200 mccarthy as the great crusader for anti-communism and seeing him as a demagogue instead mccarthy's

00:47:16.760 popularity had fallen off long before that and murrow was simply riding on a on a on a on a train which

00:47:23.800 was already headed out of the station and had left mccarthy behind um that was his that was his

00:47:30.240 crucial mistake that was his crucial error and it sprang from the same elements that we see in other

00:47:36.540 uh figures who rise to a level of a position of feeling as if they can do no wrong that they

00:47:43.820 understand the world and that their judgments are the ones that really uh will determine the future

00:47:50.800 here and everybody either it's my way or the highway right that hubris mccarthy had it wilson had it and

00:47:58.820 these are the things that make their stories both tragic but also so predictable you know we we we hear

00:48:06.300 about the um uh the industrial the military industrial uh complex and it it's become this conspiracy

00:48:14.460 thing it's become almost a joke but if you really go back and listen to what eisenhower said in that

00:48:22.760 speech it is so prophetic and i'm trying to put myself into his shoes as a guy who he was mr pentagon i mean

00:48:34.460 he was the war machine and the courage that that must have taken to come out against his own

00:48:43.500 set of people you know never you know you don't cross the blue yeah you don't cross the blue line

00:48:48.700 he did he crossed the green line you did you know i've spent a lot of time analyzing that speech and

00:48:54.260 looking at it um because it is as you were suggesting it is a slightly sort of jarring phrase to come from

00:48:59.900 a person whose life was spent in the u.s army yeah commander-in-chief the person who really

00:49:05.480 built it he didn't he didn't establish the the defense department but who gave it this sort of

00:49:12.420 central role in terms of the development of the key technologies in air and in in aerospace uh in

00:49:20.900 in in in nuclear power uh in nuclear weapons this is all springs out of the eisenhower

00:49:26.340 administration what they call the new look the new look for the military uh was all

00:49:32.040 rested on a new technological base which was inevitably an industrial base for america at the

00:49:37.720 time and what you see is the what were his what were eisenhower's overriding concerns one was

00:49:43.940 the question of debt that this was going to be a growth in terms of america's ability to

00:49:51.640 spend itself into oblivion trying to maintain this technological edge

00:49:56.280 and the cost that would go with it his fear that out of this would emerge a kind of garrison

00:50:02.280 state that american military figures would uh now suddenly take on a dominant role in american

00:50:10.100 politics because of the ways in which the american economy was geared around their needs and their

00:50:15.780 requirements and then i think also there was another fear that he had which was is that the

00:50:20.900 is that the purely military um objectives that any soldier would understand when looking at the

00:50:30.080 world or looking at a situation which should america go to war or not that these decisions would be

00:50:35.120 dictated by uh industrialists by civilians who had a if you like a financial stake financial stake in

00:50:42.380 in going to war uh kind of the merchants of death sort of stereotype about people who are involved in

00:50:49.460 armaments industry and i think you have to say in the final analysis that all of those concerns on the

00:50:56.700 part of uh eisenhower were never really realized military men did not emerge as sort of key figures in

00:51:04.960 politics i mean after macarthur you know they occasionally pop up but they're always contained

00:51:12.460 in the right way they're contained in the right way civilian leadership has not been long so we've

00:51:17.240 hardly become a garrison state uh and from the point of view of going to war for the sake of

00:51:21.780 industrious if you look at the wars that we've been involved in yeah from vietnam on it's not the

00:51:25.880 industrious who push for or even the military guys it's the civilians who have these these these

00:51:30.660 grandiose ideal ideas about you know saving the world from itself very wilsonian causes as opposed

00:51:36.360 to that and then from the point of view of cost how could eisenhower have ever guessed that the costs

00:51:42.960 for the defense department's budget would be totally dwarfed by the costs for the american welfare state

00:51:51.980 and that that is in the end what is going to consume us from as a as a debtor nation not

00:51:59.220 the cost for more planes or more missiles or or even for even for more uh more soldiers and and and

00:52:06.640 service personnel what do you think of uh i'm trying to remember his name he wrote tragedy and hope

00:52:13.720 in what's 1962 um harvard he's the he's the guy who came out he was with eisenhower he was with

00:52:23.320 kennedy and then he went low for a while after this book came out and then he was with uh

00:52:29.200 nixon and maybe with carter but he he wrote that the great tragedy of the world uh was these last

00:52:37.780 two wars and now we have something even worse um on the horizon and so the hope is that we have tied 0.96

00:52:46.380 our economies together and we've made it mutually assured destruction so if we fire these missiles or

00:52:54.560 even if we fire even if we fight an all-out global war we'll all collapse the financial situation i've

00:53:03.220 always thought he was uh gosh that's really comforting notion isn't it yeah i know in the

00:53:10.420 book it's about you know it's about 800 pages and in the book there's only one reference and nobody

00:53:14.520 seems to recognize this because what he said has happened whether he said it happened the way he said

00:53:19.920 or not i don't know but it did happen and he says the only problem with this is if there's ever

00:53:25.180 an unflagged group of people that uh do not care about the nation states and do not care about

00:53:34.700 finance industry banking if they're living you know some nomadish kind of culture it's almost if

00:53:42.940 he's talking about isis it is it is and yet in some ways you know the the isis phenomenon i have

00:53:48.820 to say i think has turned out to be rather more transitory than a lot of us had worried about in

00:53:53.240 the shadow of 9-11 i think there was a feeling that the war with islamic terrorism was going to go on

00:53:58.520 and get worse and i think what we've seen is that it has been more what shall i say it has had more to

00:54:09.720 do with the transitions that were taking place in the middle east than it did with a head-on

00:54:15.640 confrontation between islam and the west now that's not to rule out the importance in the 0.87

00:54:21.620 philosophical sense uh or even you could say theological sense of that confrontation but in

00:54:27.460 terms of how it affects events on the ground and the developments of movements that much of what was

00:54:33.240 happening here had to do with what was the internal dynamics of these middle eastern countries and

00:54:38.780 societies egypt saudi arabia iraq of course but also iran what the lot of the work that i'm doing

00:54:46.700 now glenn at uh hudson institute uh has really been focused on the issue of advanced technologies

00:54:55.520 and the ways in which they are going to be changing and altering how we think about national security and

00:55:01.780 economic security and one of the questions i always get asked about this book freedoms forges

00:55:07.000 could we do it again could this happen again and you know funny you should say that because

00:55:12.940 right after i published that book my answer was yes we can we just have to harness all of the advanced

00:55:19.060 technologies that we see emerging in look at google silicon silicon valley yeah and it will happen what

00:55:27.760 i've come to realize working now in washington for the last five years and working on this problem

00:55:32.740 these issues is we face an enormous challenge i don't say we can't do it but the biggest challenge

00:55:38.860 we face towards getting us into this shape to to fight a protracted war to sustain our military

00:55:47.260 and technological edge over our adversaries particularly china isn't financial it isn't

00:55:54.620 technological we still lead in all of these areas it's cultural you know i was invited to attend

00:56:00.180 a symposium at the national defense university which was about the book and to talk about because

00:56:06.480 they were working on a project what would happen how would america be able to ramp up its military

00:56:11.340 for a protracted conflict with a near peer competitor competitor read china in 2040 and so i spelled out for

00:56:20.080 them what would be different from where we were in 1940 to 2040 it was a good discussion but the main

00:56:27.280 thing that i stressed was the biggest difference is cultural when bill newtson goes out to the leading

00:56:32.880 uh industrialists and business executives and technology and engineers and says america needs you

00:56:40.320 to work to build the planes and the ships and the and the equipment that we're going to need to fight a

00:56:47.500 modern war they say you bet bill i'm right there for my country we're not going to get that kind of

00:56:53.100 response not right now and it's precisely goes back to what you were talking about those stereotypes

00:56:58.800 about what it is to become part of the military industrial complex and companies like google and

00:57:04.540 all across silicon valley there's this fear and concern that if you join forces with america in

00:57:11.440 terms of protecting national security that you are basically working for the evil empire but they

00:57:17.940 don't under underlies a lot of what's happening there with those 20 and 30 somethings i agree

00:57:22.640 here's the problem they don't see that with working with china i think that's one of the big problems

00:57:30.280 that's the real problem here is they see us as a an evil force um where uh they don't see that way

00:57:39.200 well i think what they see is they see a globalist agenda and they see china as part of the globe and

00:57:43.820 america's part of the globe and that we're all involved in a in a in a in a marvelous convergence

00:57:49.600 of our of of humanity's goals that again the part of the whole globalist agenda that underlies it is

00:57:57.180 this belief that we have more in common than we do in difference and in a rather sort of physical

00:58:04.420 or physiological even psychological way that's true i tend to agree that human nature is the same

00:58:09.620 but it completely ignores all of the other factors that make us all different rather than the same

00:58:16.000 it ignores culture it ignores uh social dynamics and social social evolution that makes a society

00:58:24.380 like the united states different from a denmark or from a saudi arabia these aren't just cultural

00:58:30.260 differences is where we are as societies uh and how we how we are how we think about confronting the

00:58:37.580 problems and issues that we deal with the globalist agenda sort of says 80 percent of what humanity's

00:58:43.180 experience has been in the present and in the past we just set aside as irrelevant we're just going to

00:58:48.120 focus on that 20 percent where we see that commonality after all right every time i pop on a plane flying

00:58:54.520 from los angeles to bali right i'm able to go there i mix with other people who are who think like i do

00:59:01.420 who are in the same in you know they're software engineers like i am right or i fly to uh i fly to

00:59:08.740 thailand or i fly to sri lanka uh the world looks very small from uh the business class seat uh on a uh on

00:59:18.840 an airliner as you're moving from place to place doing business or engaged in charitable work uh of one

00:59:25.980 kind or another environment working on environmental kinds of issues it's bound to reinforce that globalist

00:59:31.400 bias but down on the ground down where the rest of us are 80 percent of the human experience runs in

00:59:37.040 a very different direction which is there's lots that divide us around the world there's lots that

00:59:42.340 unites us in a nation state uh in a community and the globalist agenda tends to ignore what unites us

00:59:51.560 as well as what's what what divides us

00:59:53.900 you know i try to explain to members of the media tried to do this privately and they just there's no

01:00:15.320 interest um you know if you look at europe they don't have the american system of left and right

01:00:23.260 their their system is communist fascists you know that's that's the left and right it's not the

01:00:27.540 american right here the american right is as close to anarchy as you can possibly get without it grabbing 0.79

01:00:32.900 you right um uh so it's it's different but when they look at what's happening in europe and they

01:00:40.760 interpret they interpret people as being racist there are racists there are racists and probably 0.58

01:00:48.220 a bigger racist movement over there by far than i would say that's currently true yeah correct but

01:00:53.840 it's because they have no place to go but what feeds that every time all those issues have been

01:00:58.980 channeled into the fringe yes into marginalized political groups and that's where that's where

01:01:03.580 they've popped up yes because the media and the ruling elite will not listen to the people on the

01:01:11.060 ground who are very different than the people in the front of the plane who their communities are

01:01:17.000 being disrupted they're being told i can't fly my flag because i'm a racist their children are being

01:01:22.900 raped or whatever that's right and they're being accosted in the street right and because the media

01:01:29.380 won't admit it because of political correctness and because the government won't admit it the first

01:01:35.720 person on the scene usually a fringe group that says i can solve your problem they go to because i may

01:01:43.540 not agree with anything they're saying except this one thing and they see the problem but i'm desperate

01:01:49.120 enough to turn to someone who can offer an answer this has repeated itself over and over and over again

01:01:55.760 and i think we're going to we're kind of moving in that direction too as we become more and more pc

01:02:00.360 driven in terms of a media and in terms of government and in terms of leading institutions i think we're

01:02:06.440 even to raise the issue to even raise the issue of whether men and women are built differently in

01:02:13.180 terms of their response to questions of science and math gets you ejected without even a moment to

01:02:20.660 explain what you were thinking or to justify or what you were or even present the arguments to be

01:02:27.440 true or false or not but you're simply even to raise the issue kicks you out that's that's that's kind of

01:02:33.460 where we're going right now what do you think about this analysis his as a historian and i know you'd

01:02:39.300 you have to put yourself in the future to look back so i get it but that's why donald trump won

01:02:46.920 it's not his border policy it's not anything else what it is is his willingness to say things that

01:02:55.560 everyone says you're not supposed to say and then he never backs off it backs off he doubles down yeah

01:03:02.240 yeah and and and because that's the beginning of that i'm tired of being told i'm a racist i'm tired of

01:03:10.860 all these things and the people that i know that support donald trump they'll all say i wish he would 0.89

01:03:15.660 get off of twitter i wish he would stop saying some stupid stuff but it is that sense that enough 0.97

01:03:22.240 americans have had enough of this political correctness yeah and and the twitter feed it's 0.99

01:03:29.200 his bully pulpit yeah and it is i think very strategic i think it's aimed in order to force

01:03:38.260 the mainstream media to deal with issues they don't want to deal with

01:03:42.180 uh for example with the christine uh ford case you know he he was able to bring that out in a

01:03:49.300 rather sort of i suppose not in the way in which you would think a politician would bring it out

01:03:53.640 the fact that her story really had no no no substantive basis and the media was forced to

01:04:00.260 cover it because he had made it not case not in the twitter but at one of his rallies this is one of

01:04:05.960 the things that i think trump has done it's been a two-edged sword because i think it's alienated

01:04:10.700 many and we've seen that in the midterms we've seen the the ill effect yeah of that approach to

01:04:16.740 to using your bully pulpit i think cnn could you say the same thing about cnn same thing the way

01:04:21.680 they're using it is isolating and polarizing and and strengthening their core and donald trump's

01:04:27.600 and i think there's a lot of us in the middle going i don't want to talk to either of you guys

01:04:32.480 knock it off you're like acting like seven-year-old kids stop it well i understand trump's position more

01:04:37.400 than i do cnn's to tell you the truth and what i find with cnn what i find with cnn is a level of

01:04:43.180 hypocrisy uh with regard to where they are on these kinds of issues and the way in which they

01:04:49.260 deal with you know someone some wise person said once there is no such thing as a double standard

01:04:55.580 is only a single hidden standard and those who play that game i think uh get earned the title of 0.96

01:05:04.780 hypocrisy hypocrisy i don't think anyone would ever accuse donald trump of being a hypocrite

01:05:10.800 in that in that standpoint he says what he thinks and puts it out there and there are millions and 0.97

01:05:15.340 millions of americans who agree with it and who as you just pointed out have been so fed up

01:05:20.180 with the hypocrisy and the can't that's come from the other side that they're willing to tolerate 0.58

01:05:26.420 uh the uncouthness of this president because they see a larger you see him pushing a a larger truth

01:05:34.380 that needs to be put out there and hasn't been

01:05:36.620 wow uh so much um how much time do we have left do you know

01:05:45.020 it's two o'clock now

01:05:49.660 at what time do we start

01:05:52.380 okay good we got another nine minutes um

01:05:58.540 let me finish up world war one world war two and then

01:06:04.060 you want to do franco-prussian war i'm happy to talk about i know i know i know you know i started

01:06:09.260 you know i started when i was a kid my interest in history really sprang from ancient history

01:06:13.260 you know when other kids were going out playing baseball and stuff i was reading herodotus

01:06:18.240 and livy and caesar's commentaries my parents have you know some of my first drawings

01:06:24.480 that i ever did just about the time i was learning to write the first drawings were like the battle of

01:06:29.600 pharsalus oh my gosh i know i know but my other great fascination was civil war and so the earliest

01:06:36.400 drawings are you know roman legionaries you know bashing each other on the plains of plains of pharsalus

01:06:42.240 but or hannibal's elephants but the other ones are of uh soldiers in blue soldiers in gray

01:06:48.480 and uh so history was something which i it's like it's it's it's built in uh ancient history

01:06:54.960 medieval history is what i did is a does it an undergraduate that i thought i was going to become

01:06:58.640 a medievalist was my uh my plan here so what i'm saying to you glenn is that if you want to go and

01:07:04.720 explore fundamental issues having to do with the late roman empire i'm your guy and i can't wait to

01:07:10.080 take you up to one of our vaults we have a lot of museum pieces i have oh i can't wait i have mary

01:07:15.440 lincoln's uh funeral dress we have a we have a lot of stuff from the civil war that i think you'll just

01:07:22.160 that's the other thing i like about you you're a collector and i'm a collector yeah my stuff is

01:07:26.560 political memorabilia and particularly campaign buttons and i've been doing that since i was a kid

01:07:31.520 i think the i still had the very first button i got was for the 1964 campaign it was a johnson button

01:07:37.760 and all the other kids were telling me that um you know that was would come clear that if goldwater

01:07:45.040 were elected that we'd all have school on saturdays that was the level of that was a level of sort of

01:07:51.520 campaign propaganda i don't know if it's really improved very much this last year right but that

01:07:56.480 was that was part of it you know what's in what interests me in the political of me i've been i was

01:08:01.360 just thinking about this and talking to my wife about it like a week ago i was looking at my collection

01:08:05.840 which is pretty extensive at this point a range of range of candidates and stuff and what i've

01:08:12.000 noticed is is that over the years over the decades i've been doing it i've gravitated towards the

01:08:17.680 losers in presidential campaigns when i was a kid i read a really interesting book by a guy by the name

01:08:23.520 of irving stone you remember irving stone he did agony in the ecstasy the life of michelangelo he did 0.68

01:08:30.960 one on van gogh they both made into into movies but he did a book called they also ran which was

01:08:36.800 about defeated presidential candidates uh that ran out the book was written in 1949 so you got only got

01:08:43.680 as far as tom dewey right but my dewey collection is quite extensive uh my truman collection i have a

01:08:49.920 handful uh i have a big richard nixon collection but it's really focused on the 1960 campaign the year he

01:08:56.240 lost there's something to me that's fascinating about and this goes back to human nature and and

01:09:02.560 the issue of of of human beings making decisions for which there are often tragic consequences

01:09:10.080 these were the stories of men and they are predominantly men after all who ran for the

01:09:15.040 nation's highest office who were nominated in many cases by their presidential but by their by their by

01:09:22.560 their party in the not in the convention who had every reason to believe that they would wake up in

01:09:28.720 the morning and be president and they lost and some of them tried again i mean the man who's always

01:09:37.200 fascinating to me is william jennings bryan how can you do that how can you run three times for a

01:09:43.120 president and and and lose each time but keep coming back and keep thinking you can make it you can make it

01:09:48.720 work again how do others think that somehow the third is going to be a charm hillary clinton

01:09:53.200 hillary clinton exactly well she's too you know what she's too close yeah she's too close to events 0.93

01:09:58.400 for for me to become a collector in those in those areas but but the losers in presidential candidates

01:10:04.080 there's something interesting to my mind distinct and special about them and the way in which the

01:10:09.760 winners the trumans and the eisenhours eisenhower nice collection it hangs in my office right now

01:10:16.160 but it doesn't draw me the way an adlai stevenson does i have a campaign button that i bet you don't

01:10:22.640 have let's hear it and it was uh for uh in the truman era and it was for israel and it's truman

01:10:32.080 i want to say it's haim solomon but it's not the the uh hey invites man yeah uh they made very few

01:10:39.200 but it's the two of them on a button together to campaign for israel oh that's really that's tremendous

01:10:46.080 tremendous that's tremendous i was at the jewish leadership conference in new york the weekend

01:10:51.200 last and though one of the things that they were talking about was the you know emphasis the the

01:10:58.240 role of jews and jewish americans in presidential campaigns and on the cover of one of the brochures

01:11:03.360 was a picture of a button william a dual portrait of william jennings bryan and his running mate adlai

01:11:12.240 stevenson the third right the first adlai stevenson and so on and all of the lettering in hebrew oh wow

01:11:19.520 i said oh i gotta have that button i need to get that button but i don't know how that's going to

01:11:23.120 happen all right you were going to say something yeah so let me let me take you just i just want to

01:11:26.960 kind of hit these quickly sure okay um you wrote to rule the waves how the british navy shaped the modern

01:11:33.680 world just one question i believe that a case could be made that had we not sunk the british navy and

01:11:43.920 been so uh arrogant under wilson that perhaps we wouldn't have had all the problems that we had with

01:11:53.200 world war ii well you know i have an op-ed which is coming out on monday okay on wilson's responsibility

01:12:01.040 with the way in which world war ii ended that set the stage for world war ii which i think you'll

01:12:09.120 find very fascinating and and i think that will uh raises a lot of the issues you just raised here

01:12:14.720 um the real problem the real problem that i think one of the points i was trying to make in that book

01:12:21.520 um was that uh the the british were the first empire in history in which conceived

01:12:30.960 of their use of power uh military power in the case of the navy as a means by which to create

01:12:41.840 a global community on which freedom and prosperity would would persevere and it's that role that we

01:12:51.200 inherited uh after world war ii you know the passing of the torch the the transition of power from from the

01:12:57.600 british empire the the pax britannica to the pax americana um and it was i think you have to say

01:13:05.440 that there was a lot of good that came as a result of that uh but just as with the rise of the of of

01:13:13.120 britain's empire as it became a expanded to become a colonial empire not a mercantile empire yes right

01:13:20.720 protecting the seas and keeping the lanes of commerce open and free for the use of all merchants not just

01:13:26.960 british merchants but the merchants of all nations that was the great mission that emerged in the 19th

01:13:32.320 century for the british navy but as in the as they emerged as a colonial power with possessions in

01:13:38.800 africa possessions in asia uh with its uh concessions in china the character of that empire changed the

01:13:47.440 character i think also of britain changed in ways that were not good and that ultimately led to the

01:13:55.360 the downfall of that empire and one of the things that i think we have to worry about when we think

01:14:00.240 about the what comes after the pax americana is how we preserve those aspects of the idealism of

01:14:07.200 what american power can do without being absorbed into into the temptations that american power bring to

01:14:13.200 us and unfortunately we've seen that played out in time and time again and we keep making the same

01:14:19.600 mistakes all right um churchill i love i love churchill um but i as i read about churchill from the 0.97

01:14:30.480 asian perspective not a good guy it's screwed up racist screwed up not you know you make all kinds of 0.80

01:14:39.760 excuses but not a good guy from that perspective gandhi everybody loves gandhi he's great unless you go to 0.98

01:14:46.320 south africa he's a racist and i spell that all out right his problem was his fight in in in south 0.59

01:14:54.960 africa and where he really creates the whole the whole ideology of civil disobedience and and develops 0.84

01:15:01.280 the tools by which it will work in india later on when he goes there um was all about getting what

01:15:08.320 was not breaking down the color line it was getting the indians on the right side namely on the right 1.00

01:15:12.480 side which you say that to people and they're like no what that's not true yeah that can't possibly be

01:15:17.040 gandhi but it is but it is so real quick the left well everybody loves gandhi uh but it's because

01:15:27.360 they don't know the other side of him um the left hates churchill the right loves churchill

01:15:35.280 and the left will say well churchill is bad we look what he did yada yada no no they're both the same

01:15:41.280 kind of people they're both they're all of us they're they're both good and glad that's exactly

01:15:46.160 right and that was that was one of the things that i think that emerged from the course of that book

01:15:51.520 was how very different these two men were how they saw the world very differently and yet under the

01:15:57.280 skin what made them what made them do what they do and what made them great men sprang from the same

01:16:04.640 roots right incredible courage indomitable will right uh at times enormous blindness

01:16:12.720 again belief in the rightness of their decision and following it through to the end and in gandhi's

01:16:18.160 case at the end of his life it costs it costs maybe a million and a half lives in the in the partition of

01:16:24.240 india which i describe in i think it's it's a harrowing story what takes place again often forgotten

01:16:30.640 when we think about not just gandhi but the whole history of that subcontinent why the relationships

01:16:36.240 between pakistan and india are so tenuous so tenuous and and well went to the brink of nuclear war yeah

01:16:45.760 uh if you don't understand partition you won't understand what happens in that part of the world

01:16:49.920 in that subcontinent uh and yet at the end i think when i started that book i was thinking

01:16:55.040 in my own way gandhi is going to come out as the big villain churchill is the big hero and yet the

01:17:01.680 more i worked on it the more the two converged and a lot of my churchill admiring friends like andrew

01:17:07.040 roberts for example still haven't forgiven me for that because of course they do want to see churchill

01:17:12.000 as being very distinct and seeing and and see gandhi as someone who was in the end a political

01:17:18.000 opportunist and manipulator and and more than his share of hypocrisy which i acknowledge

01:17:23.200 um but i don't think i don't think if you look at the look look at the man himself look at what he

01:17:30.000 had to deal with and the forces uh and his skill in being able to bring great britain and you're right

01:17:38.160 you said this earlier his audience was great britain right it wasn't even india and it wasn't it wasn't

01:17:45.360 the soviet union or no or the nazis or anyone like that who could have snuffed a movement out in the

01:17:50.160 yeah uh when you look at the skill in which he was able to do that and and to transform himself

01:17:57.040 this unlikely figure physically um linguistically all the thing counts against him and yet he would

01:18:06.480 emerge as a as as a world icon yeah it's an extraordinary story

01:18:10.240 you wrote a book i just started reading last night and i'm so bummed i'm gonna have to have

01:18:17.520 you back um uh the idea of the decline of the west right and it's stress on the idea that it's not a

01:18:26.640 book about the decline of the west it's about those who have prophesied it and have been wrong again and

01:18:33.360 again and again and explaining why and understanding what why they were wrong but also most importantly

01:18:39.280 understand what the impact of that loss of faith in our western heritage has cost us

01:18:46.160 over the course of the last well really the last uh century and a half so you you've listened to me

01:18:53.440 before or watched me before right certainly i mean i'm a i'm a pretty gloomy guy on oh i don't get

01:18:59.920 that impression at all oh i'm anxious to get that at all i get i get very much uh a person who is

01:19:08.000 both depressed and hopeful i love you i'm an optimistic catastrophist do you know i first found

01:19:13.840 you no i first found you uh i was in i can tell you exactly where it was i was in in the borders

01:19:19.280 bookstore in richmond virginia remember borders and i was i was going around i was signing copies of

01:19:25.040 of i don't remember what it was it may have been i don't remember which book it was and there it was

01:19:30.880 your book was sitting on a table and it was booked by glenn beck and there was this picture and it was

01:19:37.840 i had heard something about you having a radio show and i was like who is this guy this glenn beck

01:19:44.240 sort of pasty-faced character with the with the with a plain vanilla name and he said what is this he's

01:19:51.600 trying to be the next rush limbaugh or something and then i heard you for the first time on the

01:19:55.920 radio and i said this is a guy who exists in a totally different plane from rush rush limbaugh is

01:20:02.160 and the key to his success he knows who he is yeah he knows what he thinks he knows what he believes

01:20:07.120 and it's been part of his part of his upbringing and he must have had the most extraordinary family

01:20:12.000 don't you think the bond that existed with his father his grandfather his his brothers it's just

01:20:18.720 it's an it's amazing but he's a man who knows his mind who knows what's important and what's not and

01:20:24.480 speaks on that you're a searcher like me you're look you have more questions than you do answers and

01:20:31.520 the more answers i get the more questions i and that's what and that's what i appreciate about you

01:20:35.600 and what you've done right up for ever since i started listening to you uh and uh and and up to

01:20:43.200 this moment i realized that's who you are do you ever get frustrated you're like how is nobody

01:20:48.640 interested in asking these questions i i walk i was in a theater last week and it was the uh

01:20:55.840 carnegie theater in uh pittsburgh carnegie homestead i think and i was down in the basement with the old

01:21:04.480 coal burners before the audience got there and i was i was literally down on my hands and knees in the

01:21:10.080 looking reading who made the seats in the theater i'm i'm fascinated by everything and

01:21:18.640 most people are not they're just not no i think so i mean i'm a relentlessly curious person this is

01:21:24.000 why i've written the number of books in the in a range of topics that i have and i won't walk you

01:21:29.440 through it but every book has sort of led to the next one it's out of out of writing one book there's a

01:21:36.320 problem has developed and i said no one else has worked on this but i need to know the answer

01:21:40.000 myself so the way in which i deal with it is i write a book on it that's the easiest path for me

01:21:46.400 to get some answers with it and you're a searcher for truth and i in my own way i've tried to do that

01:21:53.120 in the historical field um and now that i'm now that i'm working at the hudson institute working in

01:21:59.520 washington dc which i've been doing for the last five years i've now began to sort of pursue that

01:22:06.320 the same endeavor but now not so much to the writing of books although i'm still writing books

01:22:10.960 but rather through through policy through analyzing why we're doing what we're doing in policy ways

01:22:18.160 and going to capitol hill and organizing conferences and hitting up commissions to deal with these real

01:22:25.440 problems uh and and finding ways to to try and get a handle on them and to understand how we can get

01:22:33.040 some answers to the questions we both have about all of these things how do we get beyond the military

01:22:38.720 industrial complex stereotypes how are we going to stay ahead of china in the competition for high for 0.62

01:22:45.200 the high-tech supremacy in these areas that whether you're talking about quantum computers or artificial

01:22:50.800 intelligence um autonomous systems unmanned unmanned vehicles both undersea and in the air uh how we

01:23:00.080 go glenn how are we going to get americans interested in science and engineering ways that we can win that

01:23:07.200 contest and win that do you see that china this week they they just did a contest they're recruiting all of

01:23:13.760 their brightest children for their ai projects it should be a moonshot for us and we're not

01:23:20.480 and we're not doing it we we need a sputnik moment and if we wait for a sputnik moment it's gonna be

01:23:25.200 too late too late um and this is this is one of the big issues that i'm addressing now is how do we get

01:23:31.680 american students uh involved at at the at the k-12 level because right now glenn right now look at our

01:23:40.080 colleges and universities all of our major science and engineering programs the majors the graduate students

01:23:48.160 um the numbers of americans there are shockingly low computer science computer science of every 10

01:23:53.840 students who's a computer science graduate student or a major of the 10 two are americans

01:24:00.400 i don't think anyone has captured you know when i was a kid i grew up around the space program yeah

01:24:18.080 so that's right i had all the little toys that were space program and that was walt disney nobody

01:24:23.680 nobody captured has captured the imagination i go out and i talk about ai and what's just over the

01:24:31.360 horizon just even the 5g network and how we have a conference coming up next week on 5g in china and

01:24:38.320 it's going to change everything and nobody knows it i'll i'll sit and i could talk to an audience for

01:24:45.280 an hour and i'm telling you you can hear a pin drop people are starving for it they don't they don't

01:24:51.680 know it and all you have to do is explain because it is both terrifying if you look at the moral machine

01:24:59.360 of mit both terrifying and exhilarating the opportunities are endless endless endless unlike

01:25:08.160 anything anything anyone has ever dreamt and we face a competitor in the case of china who does not fear 1.00

01:25:17.040 the risks involved they don't worry about that for a minute right all they see

01:25:20.880 is the opportunities and the means by which the comparison i draw and it goes back to rule the

01:25:29.520 waves it's like the british and the germans before world war one and the race for naval supremacy in

01:25:36.800 which uh the germans decided that they needed to pour all of their industrial resources all of their 0.63

01:25:42.960 technical skill into building a battle fleet that would give them maritime supremacy and the british who

01:25:50.800 took that supremacy for granted suddenly woke up one day and said and said oh my god if we don't act

01:25:58.960 it's over we need to step up we're at that point we're at the point now where and just as the german

01:26:04.640 military time five years well i would say this i would say that with with 5g in fact the timeline

01:26:12.720 may even be shorter china is in the process of getting countries around the world to uh sign

01:26:20.800 memorandum of unders of understanding to allow the test of chinese built equipment for 5g oh my

01:26:27.360 gosh and the no they've got 45 countries signed up now including many of our closest allies by the

01:26:33.360 way glenn why we make the stuff we make it better than anybody else but we're dithering over the

01:26:38.720 question of well what kind of standard should we set oh my gosh who is it going to pay for because

01:26:43.520 it's enormously expensive the fiber optic networks on which it depends will cost billions of dollars

01:26:49.120 and so while we dither they're moving the chinese are moving oh my gosh and likewise with high-tech 0.57

01:26:54.400 stem and with education the children right the children are being recruited at grade school level

01:26:59.920 to go into these areas artificial intelligence quantum china is a command economy they can say

01:27:06.080 to a kid you are going to study computer engineering and you are going to go to mit and learn everything

01:27:12.560 you can from your professors and download every file you can give out and you're going to come back here

01:27:17.280 and you're going to work for the people's liberation army as so that we can we can apply what you've learned

01:27:22.560 there to to to boosting our military edge here we don't have that kind of thing thank god i know what

01:27:28.640 we have to do is incentivize okay it's developing incentivization and to to get america where we were

01:27:35.840 at the time of this at the time of the space race to get people minorities women this is their moment

01:27:43.120 when you look at quantum physics quantum technology it's the coming thing it's going to dominate the 21st century

01:27:49.760 why not draw kids into what's going to give them the future for the rest of the century here the

01:27:56.880 the moments are here it's all here waiting for us right now all we have to do is be aware of it and

01:28:02.480 start moving on the to incentivize it and then this will then this will happen again glenn i am totally

01:28:08.080 convinced i i have to have you i have to have you back uh because i i i've got another hour and a half of

01:28:17.040 uh topics uh with you let me happy to do it let me leave you with this one question please

01:28:26.160 you're a historian 2075

01:28:31.600 look at today in america how does that how does that book start with you wow that's very interesting

01:28:43.040 no how how where would this story start in in what you're gonna have to be a little bit more into

01:28:52.960 politics in terms of american society the american experiment the american experiment i love that

01:29:01.760 where has that happened what i would say i would see two inflection points

01:29:08.800 one would be 1968 which is when our politics took a really bad turn with the assassinations the

01:29:20.320 radicalization of american campuses radicalization of a major american party the democratic party

01:29:27.920 i would also point uh where i think the american experiment also

01:29:32.000 nearly ran aground and received scrapes on its hull that we're still suffering from and still trying

01:29:40.400 to plug the holes was the clinton clinton presidency i think that though and you remember what that was

01:29:46.240 like the clinton impeachment the whole monica lewinski all at the time was it was it all consuming soap 0.97

01:29:54.880 opera but what we're going through an hour but this was this is where it started this is where the

01:30:00.240 polarization of american politics and the shift from where what the media was able to do in the with

01:30:09.680 regard to absolving bill clinton from real crimes real crimes not serious crimes they weren't physical

01:30:16.880 crimes but they were real crimes of in of of of getting of what's the term i'm looking for for

01:30:23.840 inducing people to commit perjury for lying to a federal judge uh contempt of court this this was the

01:30:29.680 kinds of things which seriously damaged the fabric of the american presidency the most important

01:30:35.760 institution uh at the time uh in in our in our in our polity uh i would talk about the trump presidency

01:30:46.800 i would talk about barack obama of course but i think in the end and here i may surprise you

01:30:51.840 i think in the end the theme of the book from 20 20 75 is how did we go from being as low as we were

01:31:01.360 at that point to being as high as we are today i hope you're right neither of us will be around to

01:31:09.280 see unless oh i intend i intend to be there you better be there too i'm counting on it if ray

01:31:14.160 kurzweil is right we will be thank you so much thanks glenn what a pleasure cheers

01:31:25.440 just a reminder i'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

01:31:29.680 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people

01:31:44.160 uh

The Glenn Beck Program - February 09, 2019

Ep 23 ｜ Arthur Herman ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript