The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 214. Fortitude： American Resilience ｜ Dan Crenshaw

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00:01:16.880 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:01:21.560 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression

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00:02:00.480 B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:02:09.500 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, season four, episode 71. I'm Michaela Peterson. This was a

00:02:16.300 great episode. Congressman Dan Crenshaw and my dad discussed the fallout of withdrawing from Afghanistan

00:02:22.780 and the details of a conflict that kept us there for over 20 years. They also get into topics like

00:02:29.480 what life is like as a U.S. congressman, the relationship between social media and politics,

00:02:35.680 modern conservatism, Dan's experience as a Navy SEAL, and more. I don't want to spoil the rest.

00:02:41.740 Dan Crenshaw is a Republican congressman in Texas and former Navy SEAL officer. In one of his

00:02:48.820 deployments to Afghanistan, an IED, improvised explosive device blast, led Dan to losing his

00:02:56.660 right eye. If there was anyone I would want to be an eventual president, it would be him.

00:03:02.800 In 2018, he was elected to Congress and he serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee,

00:03:07.220 which has the broadest jurisdiction of any legislative committee. Dan recently published

00:03:13.180 his book, Fortitude, American Resilience in an Era of Outrage. I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:03:19.480 Be sure to subscribe if you like this kind of content. Before we get started with the episode,

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00:05:13.240 Hello, everybody. I'm very pleased today to have with me Congressman Dan Crenshaw. Dan and I have

00:05:20.120 talked before, but here we are talking again. Originally from the Houston area, Dan Crenshaw

00:05:27.100 is a proud sixth-generation Texan. From an early age, he knew that he wanted to serve his country

00:05:31.920 with the most elite fighting force in history, the U.S. Navy SEALs. His father's career in the Texas

00:05:38.000 oil and gas industry moved his family all over the world, including Ecuador and Colombia,

00:05:42.580 where he attended high school. As a result, Dan is fluent in Spanish. In 06, Dan graduated from

00:05:48.920 Tufts University, where he earned his Naval Officer Commission through Navy ROTC. Following

00:05:54.540 graduation, he immediately reported to SEAL training. That's something very difficult to do,

00:06:00.300 by the way, in Coronado, California, where he met his future wife, Tara. After graduating SEAL training,

00:06:06.080 he deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, to join SEAL Team 3, his first of five deployments overseas.

00:06:12.580 On his third deployment in 2012, after six months of combat operations, he was hit by an

00:06:20.220 improvised explosive device blast during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was evacuated

00:06:28.360 and awoke from a medically induced coma, learning that his right eye had been destroyed in the blast,

00:06:32.860 and that his left eye was badly damaged. He was medically retired in September of 16 as a lieutenant

00:06:38.800 commander, lieutenant commander in the U.S. after serving 10 years in the SEAL teams. He left with

00:06:44.120 two bronze stars, one with valor, the Purple Heart, and the Navy Commendation Medal with valor, among others.

00:06:51.180 Soon after, he completed his master's in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of

00:06:55.640 Government. In November of 18, Dan was elected to serve the people of Texas' second congressional

00:07:02.080 district in Congress. He serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest

00:07:07.860 jurisdiction of any legislative committee in Congress. He also serves on the House Select Committee on the

00:07:12.980 Climate Crisis, among others. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.

00:07:18.360 Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor. As I've noted to you many times, one of our intellectual

00:07:24.680 heroes. I appreciate you.

00:07:25.920 It's something, yeah, well, that's really something to hear from someone like you. I can tell you that.

00:07:31.880 So, we just had an election in Canada, and one of the things that wasn't discussed was what happened

00:07:38.960 in Afghanistan, because Canadians served there as well. And I've been putting together this idea that

00:07:44.060 I'd like to put four or five people who served there together on a podcast and get a grounds-eye

00:07:50.380 view of the situation. But I've got you right now. So, what in the world were we doing there? And

00:07:57.720 what happened? And was it any use? And what's your opinion about that? Because I just don't know,

00:08:06.800 you know? So, anything you can tell me would be real helpful.

00:08:09.240 Well, yeah. It's a complicated one. But at the same time, it's not that complicated. You know,

00:08:16.240 why? Let's start with some of the first questions. I mean, why do we go in there in the first place?

00:08:21.820 We went there in the first place because of 9-11, and the United States invoked Article 5 of the NATO

00:08:27.080 Treaty, which is how Canada gets involved, because you're our friends. And if we get attacked,

00:08:33.260 we ask you to come help, you say, sure. And Americans have a long history of working with Canadians.

00:08:39.240 Special Operations. And, you know, actually where I was stationed in Kandahar, at least for a while,

00:08:45.680 that was a purely Canadian base. That's why there was a hockey rink, for instance. And so, you know,

00:08:53.440 long-time partners. But why were we there? Well, because of 9-11. And we decided that, and I think

00:08:59.460 rightfully decided, that there needed to be a response to the attacks on 9-11, because they

00:09:05.660 originated from Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda was being harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan. And so we

00:09:11.340 decided that the Taliban no longer should be in control of Afghanistan. That was day one, and

00:09:16.160 basically everybody agreed with what we should do on day one. Now, day two, and I'm speaking in kind of

00:09:22.160 general terms, but let's call it day two. The question becomes, now that we kick some butt, 0.92

00:09:29.180 do we leave? And this was always a difficult question. And this kind of gets to the rest of 0.95

00:09:34.700 the questions as far as what we're doing there, why? And there's a question people have been

00:09:39.880 wrestling with for 20 years. And there's been disputes about it. And it's not exactly a simple

00:09:46.000 question or a simple answer, because your alternatives are basically come away with the win,

00:09:52.080 you know, call it a win. I don't know if it's a win, but it's certainly retribution. Call it revenge.

00:09:59.560 But the next question is, okay, do we have an interest in prevention? Do we have an interest

00:10:04.900 in future prevention of future attacks? And the answer to that question became, yes, we do,

00:10:12.320 which is why the global war on terror became the buzzword for 20 years. And the difficult question

00:10:21.540 was always, do we let Afghanistan just fall back into the hands of the Taliban? Or do we stay

00:10:27.820 and try to at least create some semblance of a government that will be our partner that we can

00:10:34.420 align with and that we can conduct counter-terror operations with and prevent another 9-11? And that

00:10:40.780 became the choice for 20 years. And that's what we chose to do. And we can argue, and people like to

00:10:46.720 take easy swipes at that and say, well, look, they were never really prepared. It seemed like an

00:10:53.180 endless war. We're just sort of institutionalized the war. We're just doing the same things over and

00:10:58.340 over again. But they forget what the alternative is. And life is always about assessing what the

00:11:03.300 alternatives are. It's easy to be disenchanted with the present or the current choice. It's a

00:11:09.720 little bit harder to actually think about it and assess what the alternative is. And it turns out there

00:11:14.240 isn't really good alternatives in a situation like this. So you can stay at war, or you can

00:11:19.460 say that you ended it and refuse to acknowledge that there's actually an entire ideology out there

00:11:25.700 that has no interest in ending that war with you. And what I tell people is, and you can kind of get

00:11:31.740 what side of the debate I'm on. Call it an endless war, call it what you want. The fact is, is you send

00:11:37.560 guys like me over there as an insurance policy so that there's no more 9-11s. And what did we get for

00:11:42.840 20 years of war in Afghanistan? Well, we got no more 9-11s. And that's certainly not nothing.

00:11:49.140 It's actually pretty significant.

00:11:51.480 And do you think that's a reasonable causal link?

00:11:55.460 I mean, you did get Osama bin Laden, or we did, I suppose, is another way of looking at it. Not that

00:12:00.620 I'm taking any credit for that. But so that did happen. And as you said, there hasn't been another

00:12:05.960 major attack. And the incidents of terrorism worldwide, or that sort of terrorism, does seem

00:12:10.120 to have declined. It's always a trick to attribute the cause of that correctly.

00:12:15.560 So it's, it's hard. I mean, it's, but the Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda is an organization that exists

00:12:22.580 primarily to externalize their operations. And they exist to attack the homeland, whether

00:12:28.420 that's Europe or the US or Canada. ISIS, for instance, is an organization that exists to build

00:12:34.360 an Islamic caliphate. Now, they're all kind of under the same umbrella. I mean, and the Taliban, 0.51

00:12:39.240 ISIS, Al Qaeda, to the extent that they fight with each other, it's mostly about power structures,

00:12:44.580 as opposed to, you know, ideological differences. They're all on the same team there. They just might

00:12:49.200 have different strategies. And so we decimated Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda tried to move to Iraq,

00:12:55.300 tried to move to Yemen, and we just go after them. And what that does is, is it an endless war? 0.97

00:13:00.640 Yes, because these people are in an endless war with us. You know, we weren't at war on September

00:13:04.420 10th, 2001. We weren't at war in the year 2000, when the USS Cole was hit. We weren't at war

00:13:10.000 when our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were hit in 1997. And we weren't at war in 1993,

00:13:15.720 when the World Trade Center was bombed. But somebody was at war with us. And this is what I have to

00:13:19.140 remind people. And we can say we ended a war a couple months ago, but we didn't end any war.

00:13:23.680 And the intel suggests that Al Qaeda is rapidly reforming. And, and is now now they have the 0.86

00:13:30.740 space and the time because somebody like me is not going after them anymore. And that that's the

00:13:35.400 key ingredient there. Are they on the run? Or are they or are they kicked back and planning the next

00:13:41.800 the next big operation, the next really, really glamorous operation, the really dramatic attack

00:13:48.120 that they like to do? You know, that's better than just a underwear bomber going on an airplane.

00:13:54.620 And so do you think they have that they have that space now in Afghanistan? And so I got to tell you

00:13:59.540 a brief story. There was a Canadian federal election just not too long ago, and maybe a month before that

00:14:05.100 or so. One of the cabinet members of our prime minister's government, he was reelected with the

00:14:10.260 minority government, Justin Trudeau. She referred to the Taliban, the new government in in Afghanistan,

00:14:15.960 under the Taliban as our brothers. And, you know, that wasn't so different in some sense from some

00:14:22.800 of the missives that have been coming from the US State Department. But many people weren't too

00:14:26.840 thrilled with that description. And, you know, the feeling of more hard headed people, and maybe

00:14:31.760 they're wrong is that, you know, it's the same old characters now that have obtained power, and we

00:14:37.500 better watch the hell out. And so is that over suspicious? Should they be offered an olive branch? It's like,

00:14:44.280 what's your sense about the right way forward with that new government?

00:14:49.760 Well, I don't think it's overly suspicious at all. These are certainly the same people

00:14:53.960 that took my eye. These are the same people. Now, granted, I get to wear cool eye patches as a result

00:15:00.640 of it. So, you know, I'm not complaining too much. Yeah, you do look cool. You look cool.

00:15:05.200 It's not there's no doubt about that. I read a comedian's comment about you. I think he apologized for

00:15:11.040 it was something like, looked like, what was it, a private eye in a porno flick or something like

00:15:15.580 that, which is a good joke. But that was that, that part was the good joke. That was that part

00:15:22.000 was the good joke. It actually was pretty funny. That kind of sparks the history of my, of the birth

00:15:28.280 of my political career, I guess we could talk about that. Yeah, yeah. It's a funny. Well, let's finish

00:15:34.260 off with the Taliban and then let's finish off with the Taliban. Taliban are terrible. And they 0.99

00:15:41.440 haven't changed one bit. If anything, they're emboldened and ruthless. Look, the Haqqani network, 0.98

00:15:46.060 again, a ruthless, ruthless terrorist organization and drug running operation. You know, the head of

00:15:51.060 that, I think is the second in command for Taliban right now. The people in charge, you know, there's

00:15:57.320 there's groups that we have intel, there are groups in charge of security around the Kabul airport.

00:16:03.480 The Taliban groups were suicide bombing experts. I mean, these people all come, they're all cut from 1.00

00:16:09.560 the same cloth. Nothing has changed. We're seeing plenty of videos of them hanging people, murdering

00:16:14.360 people, executing people, rounding up women, selling them off. You know, women are under attack in 0.95

00:16:20.260 Afghanistan in a very serious way. So unfortunately, 1.00

00:16:22.560 Yeah, and yet the State Department is calling on them to be diverse, inclusive and equitable.

00:16:28.720 And it's infuriating.

00:16:29.940 I tweeted something nasty about that.

00:16:32.660 I think it did. I think I remember. It's just, it's like, I mean, I'm not opposed to working with,

00:16:38.840 you know, questionable characters around the world. I mean, I come from the special operations

00:16:43.820 community. I also come from the intelligence community. This is what you have to do sometimes.

00:16:48.720 But this isn't necessarily one of those cases. This was this was a time to put your foot down

00:16:54.140 and refuse to let this happen. Now, when you let it happen. And the question is, what do you do after

00:16:59.740 the fact, because we're not going to go back in and invade. And so you do have to work with them to

00:17:03.520 an extent. And it was the sort of deal with the devil. And I do understand that, but but you don't

00:17:08.120 have to speak so favorably about them either. I mean, come on. I mean, there's, there's,

00:17:12.620 there's at least some, there's at least some dignity that we might preserve, I would hope,

00:17:17.960 but our state department, you also maybe might not, you might also not say things that would lead

00:17:23.760 them to overtly mock you, like, yeah, diversity, inclusivity and equity missives. That's a bit

00:17:30.240 on the, let's call it naive side, to say the absolute least.

00:17:34.280 Yeah, it's, it's how wokeism has infected, serious people. I mean, to say the least, it's,

00:17:42.400 it's, it's, it's infuriating. And it's, it's, it's caused, you know, quite a bit, quite a bit of

00:17:47.920 angst in the United States. People on both sides of the debates, and both sides of the aisle are

00:17:54.420 deeply unhappy about it. And we feel deeply embarrassed. And as we should, especially because

00:17:58.660 it was so preventable. One of the key takeaways from the hearings this week, where General Milley's

00:18:04.240 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense were testifying before the

00:18:08.660 Senate and the House in front of the Armed Services Committees, I'm not on those committees,

00:18:12.220 I didn't get to, and get to ask them questions. But, but one thing that really came out and that I

00:18:17.660 hoped would come out was, you know, our, our Defense Department told them very clearly, you need

00:18:22.700 to leave at least a few thousand troops there. There's a very, it's almost guaranteed that if we go

00:18:28.940 down to zero, because, you know, slogans, right, this is, this is where I get very upset with

00:18:33.560 the debate about all this, because I feel like the, the push to remove troops is effectively

00:18:39.820 based on a slogan, an emotional slogan, maybe two. Do you know what slogan means? The derivation

00:18:45.660 of that word? It's very interesting. It's from sluag garum. It's Welsh, sluag garum. It means

00:18:53.240 battle cry of the dead. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Perfectly. And if it's perfectly with

00:19:01.740 how I'm using the word slogan now, because it, I think it caused these, I think these emotional

00:19:06.500 slogans were effectively political battle cries that caused death. And, um, when you say, you know,

00:19:12.800 this emotional cries to bring the troops home as if I need your help, right. As if I, as if I'm not a,

00:19:17.300 a smart individual that volunteered to go and, and, and defend America as if I need somebody's

00:19:24.080 sympathy, I don't, uh, and the other slogan, no more endless wars, you know, and it just, it just,

00:19:30.280 it just reduces a very complex and important topic into a very foolish debate. And I think that's how

00:19:38.440 we ended up in this place where, where the number had to be zero. It couldn't be 2,500. It couldn't

00:19:43.160 be 5,000. Couldn't, couldn't be something reasonable. Right. Cause I'm not saying we have a hundred

00:19:48.060 thousand troops there. Like when I was deployed in Afghanistan, it might've been 120,000 troops there.

00:19:52.460 And, you know, maybe as a surge, it's debatable whether that's necessary or not, but, but it's

00:19:59.160 certainly not sustainable forever. And, and I think what people became unable to do is distinguish

00:20:04.640 between this enormous resources being expended on nation building, let's call it. I think that,

00:20:10.120 again, I think that's an overly simplistic term, but they don't like hundreds of thousands of troops

00:20:14.320 there indefinitely fair enough. I mean, why would you, I totally get that. I don't think we should do

00:20:19.520 it either. And I also don't think that we should be trying to export democracy.

00:20:22.460 But that's, but that's been a bit of a straw man argument or a red herring really

00:20:27.180 obviously related terms, but it's, you know, this whole idea that we're trying to export democracy.

00:20:32.720 That was never the point, you know, and it's, it's an unfair criticism of the Bush administration.

00:20:37.660 Their goal was not to export democracy. Now you might make a different argument on Iraq.

00:20:41.900 I think they got over their skis on that one, but let's set that debate aside.

00:20:46.140 Well, Afghanistan, it was never the point. It was just that on day two, like I said,

00:20:51.580 you have a question. Do you try to build some semblance of a government that you can work with,

00:20:55.260 or do you just let the Taliban take it over? And then, and then you're right back to where you

00:20:58.840 were right before September 11, 2001. And what have you gained?

00:21:02.460 So what do you think would have happened if you would have left five or 10,000 troops there?

00:21:08.500 We'd be in a very good situation right now. The Afghan government would still be 0.99

00:21:12.140 up and up and running. And there'd be little skirmishes, little combat operations for a while.

00:21:19.680 They're just wood.

00:21:20.920 Yeah. And why do you think that, that, that small number of troops, sorry, we have a bit of a lag,

00:21:25.180 so I'm a bit being a bit rude here, but why are you convinced that a number, 5,000, 10,000,

00:21:31.820 something like that, why are you convinced that that would have been sufficient?

00:21:35.680 Well, because it's, it's sufficient enough to hold certain airfields, commit certain air power to

00:21:42.280 our Afghan partners, and honestly give them the morale boost that they need to go fight it on their

00:21:48.080 own. It also provides logistical support to them. I mean, a true, truly modern army is, you know,

00:21:54.720 5% combat, 95% logistics. That's what makes the American military so unbelievable, is that we can

00:22:00.520 deploy anywhere in the world and our logistics are second to none. And, you know, that's something

00:22:05.360 that's not, not quite realized. And we're also, it's not obvious. I watched an extensive series on

00:22:13.720 World War II that concentrated, and it was narrated by Eisenhower. It was, it concentrated a lot on

00:22:18.460 logistics, which I found absolutely fascinating. And it stunned me as well, just the sheer

00:22:23.800 difficulty of supplying tanks and men with gasoline once the English Channel was crossed. That was

00:22:28.560 amazing operation. They built these huge spools out of, with as much steel in them as battleships,

00:22:35.540 and unrolled pipelines across the English Channel. It's like, and that was like one of them.

00:22:39.900 It's amazing.

00:22:40.640 It's absolutely beyond comprehension that it, and, and that it was possible and that it worked. So

00:22:46.700 the logistics, the supply of the army, all of that, that's, that is really something. And people

00:22:52.300 don't know how complex that is. So, so you figure five to 10,000, and, and that was killed by slogans.

00:23:00.660 It was killed by slogans. It was killed by emotional slogans. Because I mean, like you say,

00:23:04.980 you can't overstate the importance of logistics. And if you, you know, and people say, well, we've

00:23:09.300 been there for 20 years. I mean, why can't they handle it? I mean, you, you handle it being a new

00:23:13.760 country after 20 years. That's not exactly a, a long standing, long, a long time, you know,

00:23:19.100 it's, it's difficult. You know, give, give these guys some slack. I mean, they've been trying to

00:23:24.280 build a plane while it's falling through the air for years, and it's not easy. And, and you've got

00:23:30.520 an insurgency that's ruthless and doesn't play by the same rules. You know, they've got IEDs set up

00:23:35.400 everywhere. You know, this, this stuff is hard and it takes time. You got to remind people, we are in

00:23:40.900 South Korea, since the 50s. They didn't have an election until the 80s. You know, it takes a while.

00:23:49.260 And would anybody say at this point that it wasn't worth it, that we should have just left and let

00:23:54.300 that fall to communist China control the way North Korea is? I don't think so. I mean, South Korea

00:23:59.660 is quite a place, man. Yeah, absolutely. Look at it thrive away, man. Hooray.

00:24:05.620 And, and that would have never happened without our presence there. Just never. And it's not like

00:24:10.760 they ever stopped the war either. They're technically still at war. So I just, I just

00:24:14.000 think they are now, now look, are we losing Americans there? No. But we also haven't lost

00:24:19.200 an American in Afghanistan for a year and a half until these Marines were killed just a few weeks

00:24:24.580 ago. So, you know, and before that, and people are like, well, that's because of the treaty with

00:24:28.820 the Taliban. It possibly, possibly got, you know, they, they have time on their hands. They're,

00:24:32.880 they're strategic thinkers. But before that, when we didn't have a treaty, we had an average of

00:24:37.920 six to seven deaths in Afghanistan every year. I'll tell you what, the U S military loses a hell

00:24:43.560 of a lot more than that suicide and random accidents. So, you know, it wasn't, I wouldn't

00:24:49.920 call this a war in the traditional sense. It was not like what I was dealing with. And even what I was

00:24:55.720 dealing with in 2012 was certainly not like 2010. Uh, it was, you know, it's, it war is relative.

00:25:03.820 Um, and, uh, I don't see what was going on since about 2014 as a full blown war by any stretch. It's

00:25:10.620 a. Okay. So let me summarize what you said and see if I got it right. So you think that 20 years of

00:25:17.100 involvement kept terrorism at bay pretty effectively and now that's done with and

00:25:22.320 whatever was there before is, is mounting again and has been emboldened. That was your word. And

00:25:28.500 emboldened by what exactly? Well, by the fact that they took over the government of Afghanistan

00:25:33.220 instantly and, and are back in control. And then I have some parallel questions along with that.

00:25:39.700 If I got that right. Um, what is this endless war that we're in apparently about and who's

00:25:48.200 underneath it? Cause I have been watching American foreign policy for a long time and I keep wondering

00:25:52.880 about Pakistan and I keep wondering about Saudi Arabia, which has all this immense wealth and has the

00:25:59.480 proclivity to fund rather radical ideas all around the world continually. And so I know those are

00:26:07.420 terrible things to ask you about, or even to talk about, but, but, and I'm not like an expert on

00:26:13.720 this, but I, but I know enough. Um, you know, what we're dealing with is, is Islamic extremism that 1.00

00:26:20.240 really originated from Saudi Arabia, the madrasas of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabi Islam, um, which is a very

00:26:27.600 extreme form of Islam. And that materialized over time. And I think what's interesting is, and I'm going 0.81

00:26:34.420 to get the year wrong and the exact attack wrong, but there was a major Islamic extremist attack in

00:26:39.520 Saudi Arabia decades ago. And ever since that moment, the Saudi Arabian government sort of had

00:26:44.760 this deal with the devil with them, leave us the hell alone. And we'll, we'll at least harbor you.

00:26:52.060 Right. And so that's why people kind of look to Saudi Arabia as this culprit, even though

00:26:55.640 at a governmental level, they're an ally. And again, it's deals with the devil.

00:26:59.380 Yeah. Because it's like, it's, and it's, you know, why are we allies with Saudi Arabia? Well,

00:27:04.680 because they're, because they're the only, uh, geostrategic deterrence to Iran and they're worse.

00:27:10.580 And this is life, you know, this is, this is, this is realism, um, as opposed to who we wish people

00:27:16.240 were. Um, but that, that's sort of where it came from. And this has been around for a while and they

00:27:21.380 hate us because they hate us, you know, and Westerners are always looking for this sort of this,

00:27:26.100 this logical reasoning. Why, why did they not like us? It must've been something we'd done

00:27:30.580 must be our foreign policy. And so I asked, okay, well, let's, let's take, let's take our

00:27:35.820 biggest example. Let's take Osama bin Laden. What exactly did we do to this guy? I mean,

00:27:40.180 was it, was it us aligning with him and the Mujahideen and Afghanistan against the Soviets in

00:27:45.140 the eighties and we helped him and was it, was it, or was it when we defended his homeland of Saudi

00:27:50.780 Arabia from invasion from Iraq, from Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, that we stopped Saddam Hussein 0.51

00:27:57.820 from invading Saudi Arabia. And, and that was actually, he, so he claimed that our mere presence

00:28:03.980 there was enough to, to radicalize him and start Al Qaeda. This is a, that doesn't make any logical

00:28:10.820 sense, right? Cause we're always looking for this sort of transactional relationship to help us

00:28:15.960 understand as Westerners, but they're not Westerners. They don't operate off the same logic.

00:28:20.920 They think we're infidels and they hate us because of who we are. And you need to accept that. And

00:28:26.020 that's why it's an endless war. They will always be at war with us and it will, we'll never snuff it

00:28:30.560 out. It's, it's a reality that we have to live in. And do you think about it as a religious struggle

00:28:35.700 or as a criminal enterprise that's essentially organized against the West, U.S. in particular?

00:28:43.320 Hmm. I mean, it certainly seems to me like a religious struggle, at least that's how they

00:28:48.560 paint it. Um, and, uh, you know, I can only go off of how they operate and how they, how that's

00:28:56.740 an interesting question. I mean, I, I don't know that I distinguish too much. I mean, you know,

00:29:01.300 in a sense it operates like an organized crime enterprise for sure. I mean, that's how we track

00:29:05.340 them. We track them through financing. We track them in all the traditional ways that you might hunt

00:29:09.060 down, uh, an organized crime unit. So in practical purposes, we kind of see it the same. Um, and you

00:29:16.760 know, the religious side gets into it because it goes back to the old adage of winning hearts and

00:29:21.140 minds. And, you know, it turns out that that ain't, that ain't that easy. And we're never going to win

00:29:27.920 over Muslims in this sense. So it's just not going to happen. Um, when we're over there, I mean, 1.00

00:29:34.120 the, the alliances that we, that we get when we're in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, they're,

00:29:39.700 you know, they're, they're based on practicality and, and look, the vast majority of Muslims there

00:29:43.480 are just not that extreme. So they don't, they're fine aligning with us. They don't necessarily

00:29:47.760 subscribe to this idea that you can't even speak to a Christian. Um, so it's, it's complicated.

00:29:55.840 It's complex. Life is complicated.

00:29:57.800 So tell me about life as a Congressman. You've been a Congressman now for three years and I spent

00:30:05.080 some time in Washington and I was surprised by many things and overwhelmed by many things and

00:30:09.960 impressed by many things, but what's your, what's your day-to-day life like? And you're, so I guess

00:30:15.480 maybe what we first should do is, uh, describe the difference between a Congressman and the Senator

00:30:20.740 for everybody that's listening. And then I'd like to know what you do day-to-day and what your fellow

00:30:24.960 Congressman do. Mostly senators are just much older. Um, um, look the, the, the American system.

00:30:35.340 And I guess I'm just, you know, and I'm speaking to the whole audience cause you know, there's

00:30:38.700 probably not a lot of Americans that quite understand the origins of our system, but it's

00:30:43.460 not a parliament, you know, and, um, the reason being our founders in creating a Republic, they

00:30:51.220 wanted it to move slowly. They didn't like this idea, this notion that the decisions over an entire

00:30:56.880 country could be made very easily. So they created sort of these national structures and federal

00:31:02.000 structures. And the house is a national structure, the, the Senate's a federal structure. And we've

00:31:07.700 kind of changed that over time. And we've, we've sort of destroyed that, um, by changing the

00:31:12.640 constitution, but it was originally intended where in the house really represents the people.

00:31:17.540 It's the people's house. Your election is every two years. It's very emotional. Um, the majority

00:31:24.360 rules. Absolutely. I mean, Nancy Pelosi only has four votes, uh, uh, majority and she just kicks our 1.00

00:31:33.200 butt. Um, we can't do, we have no power, uh, in the house because it's majoritarian and it's emotional 0.86

00:31:40.660 and it just, it just, it's the people. It really is the people. Um, Senate was supposed to be this

00:31:47.820 sort of kind of, it's like the house of Lords sort of in the great Britain, the UK. And, and it's

00:31:55.040 supposed to be this sort of a slower or methodical decision-making process. And the constitution was

00:32:01.020 actually written where there is no popular vote to elect your senators or your state legislatures

00:32:05.440 actually choose your senators because the entire point of the Senator, you get two per, per, per

00:32:10.980 state. And this is important too, when I say federal and national, right? Because national

00:32:14.500 implies that you're representing the people. So you represent just based on numbers of people,

00:32:18.780 but the Senate isn't like that. You know, there's two senators per state. And the reason it's like

00:32:24.520 that is to, is to, well, give more power to States that are less populated. So they don't just get

00:32:30.140 run over by everybody else because the foundation of our country, it's the United States of America.

00:32:35.640 The foundation of our country is this idea that we can all kind of live together peacefully if we

00:32:40.080 leave each other the hell alone for the most part and let States do what States do. I kind of like

00:32:45.120 that idea. I think it would get us out of a lot of our problems, but the idea was then that States

00:32:51.320 have representation, uh, and then they choose that. Now that got changed in the early 1900s in an

00:32:56.600 amendment. So now it's a popular vote. So the Senate got a little bit more populist. It got a

00:33:00.640 little bit more nationalized, but still a federal entity, still two, two votes per state that, that

00:33:06.600 matters. Um, the other big difference in the Senate, a Senator has more power. Individual Senator has

00:33:13.180 more power to block legislation than, than say I do in the house. Um, and with that power comes more

00:33:19.400 responsibility. So you hope that senators, uh, believe in that responsibility. I, one of the worries I

00:33:25.300 have is that, um, we were, we're, we're getting a little bit more of a kind of a wild West type of

00:33:31.040 Senator getting elected to Congress and a little bit more radicalized, the kind of people you'd see

00:33:36.280 in the house, because it's easy to be, it's easy to be a purist. It's easy to be a little crazy when

00:33:41.040 you just have no responsibility and it's easy to kind of, the diffusion of responsibility is quite

00:33:46.500 significant in the house. There's 435 members, but in the Senate, there's only a hundred. So your,

00:33:50.580 your status actually matters there a little bit more and need to, you'd act like an adult. Um,

00:33:56.640 and for the most part, that's how it's operated. Uh, you also, that's a four year term, uh, six

00:34:03.260 years, six year term in the Senate. Oh, sorry. So you've all, that's okay. It's a lot of people

00:34:10.220 don't know this. Uh, it just allows you to kind of escape the political ramifications, you know,

00:34:16.220 the, the emotions of the people for a while and just kind of make adult decisions. And that's,

00:34:21.260 maybe that's a good thing. And, um, I think the house should probably be a little bit more,

00:34:25.660 you know, if I were to change something, I'd say the house should be three years because we're

00:34:28.260 running for election constantly. It seems like, and it, yeah, that's, well, that is something I

00:34:32.000 wanted. That's something I really did want to ask you, but I just, when I went to Washington and met

00:34:36.800 a number of congressmen, congressmen, um, both Democrat and Republican, the first thing I

00:34:44.300 thought was, there is no way I would want to have this job. And there, part of it was, well,

00:34:50.120 when are you not running for office? And that's really hard and it's really expensive and it's

00:34:54.880 really demanding. And then, but you're also supposed to be working, but then also you have

00:34:59.500 to fundraise constantly. And that, that was really shocking to me. My, my sense of it was that

00:35:05.800 congressmen were spending like 25 hours in an office that wasn't their primary office on the phone,

00:35:11.880 raising funds for their party. And so that's like 20 hours a week. And then you have to

00:35:16.980 campaign for like, who knows 10, and then you have to fly because you know, you don't live in

00:35:21.780 Washington necessarily. And well, then you're, then there's your job. So that's got to take up a few

00:35:26.580 hours as well. So I have no idea. I have no idea how you do it and do, can people do it?

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00:41:23.180 It's not, it's definitely not glamorous. Um, and people ask if I enjoy it and I say, well,

00:41:32.060 what do you mean by that? Um, because I don't enjoy it the way I enjoyed the SEAL teams. I mean,

00:41:37.100 I got blown up in the SEAL teams and I still rather enjoyed it quite a bit. Uh, this is not

00:41:41.540 enjoyable in the same way. Now I personally, people who follow me, they know I do a lot of fun things

00:41:46.520 associated with my campaign that make it enjoyable. Like, uh, we throw big parties,

00:41:51.260 we have big 4th of July celebration. We do a youth summit, which of course you were,

00:41:54.800 you know, you were guesting at, I do fun things to make it enjoyable. And the reason I say it's

00:41:59.920 not quite as bad as people realize you are correct that a lot of, a lot of folks would say it's about

00:42:04.180 20 hours a week. You might spend on the phone fundraising. Now for me, it's not correct. I

00:42:08.960 don't do that at all. Um, I might spend an hour. And how do you get away with that? And why do other

00:42:14.740 people do it? If you can get away with not doing it, why does anyone do it?

00:42:19.160 Because I put so much effort into, um, into just trying to, I try to be somebody that somebody just

00:42:26.420 wants to donate to. Does that make sense? So, so I put a lot more effort.

00:42:31.260 It makes sense if it works.

00:42:32.540 And if it works, it works for me.

00:42:34.620 Yeah.

00:42:34.980 I was under the understanding that Congress people were under,

00:42:38.540 Congressmen were under tremendous pressure from their party brass to,

00:42:41.740 to do that sort of work. And you can understand why, because it's so expensive to run.

00:42:46.200 Maybe it doesn't have to be, you know, that is a question, but, um,

00:42:49.800 And that gets into a whole other set of questions. Um, so to answer your, it does work now. I'm very,

00:42:55.560 it works for me. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's hard for, it's hard to replicate it, to be perfectly

00:43:01.960 honest. Um, it works for me because, uh, hell, I don't know. I know how to use social media pretty

00:43:08.320 well. Um, I do things like this, right? Like I have my own podcast.

00:43:12.740 I know. Well, that's, I want to ask you about that too, because you wrote a book

00:43:15.820 and just a couple of years ago while you were doing all this, and then you have this podcast

00:43:20.440 as well. And so you are using this new media to speak directly to people. And so that begs one

00:43:26.840 question, which is how in the world do you have the time to do all that as well? And, but I would

00:43:31.100 like to talk, ask you about your experiences with social media. It's like, how is that working for

00:43:36.780 you politically? And what do you think it, it signifies, let's say for the future of politics,

00:43:41.660 because who needs the legacy media and 30 second soundbites? It doesn't look to me like anyone does.

00:43:48.160 Yeah. And, and look, the entire point of being a representative is to, well, there's a couple

00:43:54.040 points to it. Um, craft legislation, vote on that legislation. So I'm in the minority, which means I'm

00:44:01.500 not really crafting any legislation. I mean, I have legislation I'd like to craft, but I have no power. So

00:44:05.680 my duty is effectively just to vote on it. That doesn't take up a whole lot of time.

00:44:10.560 Um, and, uh, I, I, I think a lot of members, uh, uh, going to mislead the public a little bit when

00:44:18.580 they say, I don't have any time to read anything. Like, look, there's ways that we digest these

00:44:23.000 massive bills. Um, we're following their, their development over time. Staff is combing through it.

00:44:30.500 It, you know, they're, they're the reason they're so long too, they're, they're filled

00:44:34.800 with legal jargon, you know, and then you have to break apart the substantive part of

00:44:38.820 it, but there's ways to, to, there's ways to absorb it. Uh, so I, I never use that as

00:44:43.820 an excuse for why I'm voting against something because you basically know what's in it.

00:44:47.440 Um, anyway, that, that's sort of a, a side point, but, but you, anyway,

00:44:52.320 that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't like using that as an excuse. Um, so it could be an

00:44:59.060 excuse. I just don't like using it. Um, the, but, but another big part of your job is simply to

00:45:04.300 communicate with people and because you're representing them. So you need to communicate

00:45:09.220 both up and down, right. You need to communicate their voices, uh, what you said you would run on.

00:45:15.120 So obviously, you don't perfectly represent everybody. There's lots of Democrats in my

00:45:19.940 district. You don't feel that I represent them. That's fine. But I represent a majority of the

00:45:23.960 people in my district. And so, and I represent them based on what I ran on a set of values,

00:45:28.440 a set of conservative limiting principle values. And my job is to, is to explain things better than

00:45:34.820 they can themselves, which is sort of why they elect you. They're like, they kind of want you to be

00:45:39.040 like them, but just explain it better. And I knew, and I knew that's what I wanted because I

00:45:44.480 wasn't, I was never political. Uh, the first moment I got involved in politics was the moment

00:45:49.400 I declared running for office. And I always knew, so I was a normal guy is my point. Like I, I think

00:45:55.000 being involved in politics and being an activist can kind of change the, change the way you think

00:45:59.940 about politics. And I think it gets you detached from regular people who are just aren't thinking

00:46:04.660 about it all the time. But I was just one of these regular people, not really thinking about it all

00:46:08.320 the time. I was very interested in policy, but which is slightly related, but different than

00:46:13.760 politics. And so, so when I, so the point is, is I was kind of a regular guy and I knew what I

00:46:20.880 wanted. And I just wanted people to, to explain why the hell they were doing what they were doing

00:46:25.340 and don't talk to me in talking points. So, and, and to do that, you do need long form discussion.

00:46:31.160 And then you got to find, you got to communicate with people where they're at. So why do a podcast?

00:46:34.740 Well, so I can dive deep into issues and, um, and, and be willing and no, no things well enough

00:46:40.960 so that you can have a long form conversation. A lot of people will struggle with that.

00:46:45.340 And, and so that's number one, but not everybody listens to podcasts and not everybody wants to

00:46:50.040 listen to anything for an hour. And so you also have to be able to communicate your points on

00:46:54.500 Twitter, you know, and that's not great, but it is something. And that's what some people follow

00:46:58.600 you on. So communicate something there. Instagram is probably one of my favorites because I can kind

00:47:03.220 of do everything on Instagram and it's, I have the biggest following there. And, um, you know,

00:47:08.440 you put out videos, I put out explainer videos and I'm not, I'm not giving you a 20 minute,

00:47:12.440 you know, uh, informational episode on, on, on issue X, but I'm trying to do it in a couple

00:47:20.280 of minutes and go a little deeper than just Democrats are bad, you know, and they want to

00:47:24.420 kill jobs. Well, why do they want to kill jobs? You know, let's just, let's just explain it a few

00:47:29.040 layers deep, uh, just a few more layers. And that's what people are looking for. Um, and it's been

00:47:34.540 very successful. And so I can spend my time doing that, which is also my job because my

00:47:40.440 job is to communicate. I can spend my time doing that and, and, and being creative with

00:47:46.740 that and being good at that. And that takes away all those hours of fundraising that I

00:47:51.640 have to do. It's not, it's not like I don't do any, and I'm like, and I'm like one of the

00:47:54.720 number one fundraisers in the house. Oh, so that's part of the reason you can get away

00:47:58.920 with it because what you're doing is very effective. Right. Right. Yeah. So tell me

00:48:04.040 about this youth summit, more about the youth summit and how that got started and why you

00:48:08.000 do it and what you saw there. I know I did this Q and a, but my staff give me things and

00:48:13.180 I do it. And I don't know the context as much as I would like to, especially with something

00:48:17.720 like that. I wish you could have been there. Uh, love to get you there next time. We'll do

00:48:22.220 it every year. And it's, it's a very cool thing. If you're a conservative, you know,

00:48:27.660 that, um, one of the biggest electoral problems you have is young people. And, uh, this isn't

00:48:33.640 all that surprising. I think, I think the promises of the utopian left are very endearing to a young

00:48:39.380 person and to a certain extent, you'll never escape that. But my goal is to, is to give them

00:48:45.300 the tools of conservatism. Um, there's a, there's a lot of youth groups out there. Um, you're probably

00:48:50.380 familiar with, you've spoken at a turning point event, uh, and you, maybe you've, maybe you've dealt

00:48:56.420 with YAF too. So young America foundation, both good organizations, but this isn't what I'm doing.

00:49:01.200 I'm not doing either one of those things. I'm trying to do a mix of both because what YAF does

00:49:05.520 is, is a very intellectual, you know, like it's, it's been Ben Shapiro's pretty much their main

00:49:10.580 headliner. Of course, you know, Ben well. And, um, so it's a bit more intellectual. Uh, there's not a

00:49:16.600 lot of fanfare to it. Uh, it's just somebody on a stage and let's give a speech and let's answer

00:49:21.460 some questions. And then you got something like turning point, which is a very high production

00:49:25.780 lots. It's like a kind of a concert, like very much a rally. And, um, what I try to do is a mix

00:49:31.800 of both. So get, cause I want to give you that experience. And I'm also 100% only focused on high

00:49:39.960 school and college kids. So that's, and you have to have an age limit. And so mine was 24 and,

00:49:44.880 and I want to give them both intellectual tools that they can come away with, uh, which is why I invite

00:49:50.440 somebody like you to speak. Uh, and, and I want to also give them a good time because I know I need

00:49:56.520 to grab their attention. I need them to have fun. I need to, I need them to come away with an

00:50:01.360 experience that they're not going to forget. And so we just had, I mean, it's, it's a high

00:50:05.940 production, fun event. And, uh, there's like a, there's a, there's even a concert in the middle of

00:50:10.940 it. Um, you know, I don't know what's going on with the, with you conservative types, because

00:50:16.040 you've got comedians now and you've got entertainment and no, you're talking to young 0.99

00:50:20.220 people. It's like, this is very strange. So, Hey, I've got a question about the, about this

00:50:25.400 issue of young people. Cause I've been talking to lots of conservative folks in Canada, uh,

00:50:30.140 cause we have a conservative party and they're about as popular as our government, but not

00:50:34.020 quite. And I I've mentioned that I believe that their fundamental problem is that they can't

00:50:39.960 figure out what they have to offer to young people. But it seems to me that what they have

00:50:43.440 to offer is this notion. It's something like encourage something like paternal encouragement.

00:50:48.920 It's like, we really think you could be something if you behave properly in some essential sense.

00:50:53.420 And we really believe in you as an individual in alignment with your traditions more than we

00:50:59.140 believe, let's say in the utopian promises of government per se as a problem solving enterprise.

00:51:04.620 And I think one of the things I've really noticed, and I get a lot of letters from people

00:51:09.100 is that, and this just about killed me when I was on my tour, uh, cause I'm offering people

00:51:13.680 words of encouragement as individuals. And I had no idea how much starvation there was for

00:51:18.820 that. And that was particularly true of young men, but not only true of them. And that is

00:51:24.280 something conservatives can say is like, look, you know, we really believe in you. And we, we,

00:51:29.000 we are skeptical of the claims that big organizations per se, especially government can do what they

00:51:36.240 promise. Whereas you as an individual, especially if you get your act together, man, you're really

00:51:40.980 something deadly. So in the best possible sense, and that's a, that's a really attractive message,

00:51:47.760 especially to young people now, cause they don't really hear that. You know, they hear that they're

00:51:52.280 just spoilers of the environment or some guy wrote me, I just opened his letter today. He'd been in

00:51:57.140 prison. He'd been suicidal. Uh, he wasn't a good guy. And he, he sorted his life out when he was 30

00:52:02.820 about, he said, he encountered my lectures and he stopped regarding himself as intrinsically,

00:52:08.840 like an intrinsically bad despoiler of the planet, something like that. I'm not exaggerating. And

00:52:15.140 he had no idea that maybe there was something to the idea that he had intrinsic value and 0.99

00:52:19.660 he quit all his idiocy, stopped drinking and stopped taking drugs. And he got married, 0.99

00:52:23.920 he had a kid and he's got a job and you know, it's conservatives have something to offer young

00:52:29.260 people and they just don't know how to get it across. There's something about what you're doing

00:52:34.120 that, that does that. It's partly why I'm so interested in talking to you. And why do you

00:52:38.300 think the turning point thing is working? Exactly. You know, it's just, it's different than what I do.

00:52:44.260 I mean, what turning point does, what Charlie does is they're just, they just were the first ones to

00:52:48.920 give conservative kids a place to go hang out with each other, frankly. Um, which is pretty

00:52:57.200 meaningful. I guess people are just looking for, especially in a university setting, people are,

00:53:01.780 are desperate to find like-minded individuals who feel the way they do. They give them that,

00:53:07.040 you know, and the Republican clubs were just kind of outdated. Um, you know, young people don't go 1.00

00:53:12.080 joining these clubs anymore. So we sort of just look for different ways to do it. Um, and I, I think

00:53:18.720 that's, that's, that's what it gives them. I mean, it's, I don't think it's more, much more

00:53:22.360 complicated than that. Um, but, but to jump off of what you were saying about what conservatives

00:53:27.500 deliver, um, when somebody asks a question like that, I always, it kind of depends on my audience

00:53:32.420 on how I want to answer it, but, but jumping off of what you said, you know, um, it, because you said,

00:53:40.060 uh, you use the phrase paternalistic, um, encouragement, encouragement, which is different

00:53:46.080 than of course we have, which is different, of course, than paternalism, which is, I think a leftist

00:53:50.080 attribute, but, but what we do and what I want to jump off of there is what I often say. And

00:53:54.720 actually it was a speech I gave to that youth summit was because I'm always trying to explain

00:53:59.520 to kids, like how, how, how can I'm giving you a tool. I'm giving you a way of explaining something

00:54:05.200 simply so that when you're confronted by your classmate, you can have this tool. Now you've

00:54:10.280 got a tool in your toolkit that you can use. So I'm like, here's a way to think about the difference

00:54:13.820 between conservatives and liberals. And like, it goes something like this. The conservative

00:54:18.160 ideology is like, it's about love. Okay. And it's, it's about the kind of love that your parents

00:54:23.960 give you. And that's a little different than say the kind of love that you're like crazy aunt gives 0.98

00:54:28.820 you. She loves you, but she kind of wants to just spoil you, right? She just wants you to love her.

00:54:34.600 It's really important to her. She doesn't really have a lot of responsibility over you either. So your

00:54:40.200 parents create rules around you and they tell you that your actions matter. They tell you that you're

00:54:44.000 accountable. They tell you that you better work hard if you want to succeed. And they're not always

00:54:48.420 that nice about it. You know, it doesn't feel like love, but it is in a very profound way. That's love.

00:54:53.720 And then your crazy aunt's like, you're perfect the way you are. You know, you don't have to change. 0.98

00:54:59.100 So, you know, you're fine. And, and it's not your fault that you got a bad grade. And I want to do

00:55:05.400 things for you. Like, let me take you to the shopping mall. It doesn't mean she's a bad person.

00:55:09.680 It just means that it's, that's, that's not. There's nothing worse that you can tell young

00:55:14.920 people, especially around 16 or 17, that they're fine the way they are. It's like, well, they might

00:55:20.520 as well just die right there. And then, then, cause they've hit perfection. It's like, no, 0.95

00:55:24.760 you've got lots more to learn. There's way more to you than you've explored. And it's really necessary

00:55:29.820 that you find that out and, and develop it. And that's way more encouraging than you're okay,

00:55:35.400 the way you are. But I, you know, I get it in some sense because it's associated with the idea

00:55:40.300 that people have intrinsic value. And if you have children in some way, they are just perfect the

00:55:44.560 way they are, but in some way they're not because they're not everything they could yet be. So,

00:55:51.000 yeah. So the message, it's easy to get the message mixed.

00:55:54.020 Yeah. And it's like, there's a difference between, uh, not being perfect and being bad,

00:55:58.660 you know, and we shouldn't tell kids that they're just bad, but you also have to give them some room

00:56:04.020 to grow and something to aspire to. And, and that, that, yeah, well, that's the thing right

00:56:07.800 there. That, that, that issue of something to aspire to, you know, and part of the woke,

00:56:12.300 uh, what would you call it? Pathology that we're all engrossed in at the moment is the idea that,

00:56:17.740 you know, that there's something wrong with judgment per se. And that's such a preposterous

00:56:22.320 idea because to do it. And I'm, I could speak about that psychologically because to do something

00:56:27.280 like look at a room, you have to make judgments about what you're looking at and why you can't do

00:56:33.020 anything without judgment. There's a hierarchy of values. It's tied to our perception. And,

00:56:39.140 and there has to be, there has to be something at the top in some sense that unites us and we

00:56:44.680 should strive for that. And that is the sort of thing that conservatives can. Yeah. Along with

00:56:50.040 warnings about the overreach of government, because people who are conservative tend to be more

00:56:54.760 concerned about that. And so I think the two things that I like to say are foundations of

00:57:00.640 conservatism, one we just hit on, which is effectively personal responsibility, a sense

00:57:06.580 of accountability. It's a very, I think that's important. It's an important bedrock for any

00:57:10.320 civilization. Um, I would also say that it's the precursor to freedom. I don't think you can be a

00:57:15.200 free society if you don't at least have this sort of sense of personal responsibility ingrained in it.

00:57:20.080 I don't see how it's possible, right? Because for the, for the simple reason that

00:57:25.200 freedom requires a sense of responsibility, otherwise you're just asking other people to,

00:57:31.700 to be taking care of you. And if you're asking other people to be taking care of you,

00:57:35.820 a definition you're infringing on their freedoms, or you're asking a politician to infringe on their

00:57:39.700 freedoms. So these are necessary foundations. And this is what conservatives have to author is,

00:57:44.080 this freedom. And we kind of, you're also depriving yourself of the adventure of your life.

00:57:51.860 Because one, one of the things that's been so successful for me, in some sense, is to draw a

00:57:58.360 connection between responsibility and meaning. It's like you want some meaning to set against

00:58:03.280 the suffering. Well, where are you going to find that? Well, reliably, one place to find it is in

00:58:08.500 responsibility. Because that means you're shouldering something worth shouldering. And it's a burden

00:58:13.780 that's actually somewhat significant. And you can, you know, you can comfort yourself with some

00:58:20.680 sense of your own utility in the face of all your sins and stupidity. And that's, that's, you can't, 1.00

00:58:27.320 how can you live without that? It's not possible. Yeah, one of the struggles I have is,

00:58:33.760 is how that's not more persuasive. Because there's, there's just a lot of people who just,

00:58:38.920 I think, fundamentally disagree with what we're saying right now, they would disagree,

00:58:43.780 that freedom, as a virtue in and of itself, is even a virtue in and of itself. They would also

00:58:50.020 define freedom very differently. They would say, well, it can't be free unless, unless you have

00:58:54.580 housing, unless you have health, free healthcare, unless you have, unless you have at least, you

00:58:58.140 know, some living wage, then you can't go be free. And so we're like defining the word freedom

00:59:03.180 completely differently, right? Because I would define...

00:59:05.680 It's troublesome on the edges too, because, you know, you can certainly see that there are levels

00:59:09.980 of absolute privation that are so severe that your freedom is restricted in many ways, not in all

00:59:16.160 ways, and maybe not in the most important ethical ways. I mean, a lot, I read a lot of literature

00:59:20.840 written by concentration camp survivors who were in pretty damn rough situation and still insisted on

00:59:26.120 their own, what would you say, ethical responsibility. Certainly Solzhenitsyn's conclusion.

00:59:31.960 In some sense, he thought that was all you really had when everything was stripped away from you.

00:59:36.100 And Viktor Frankl, who I wouldn't regard particularly as a conservative, he pretty much

00:59:40.540 came to the same conclusion. And those are pretty powerful books. It's hard to read through them

00:59:44.860 without being, you know, somewhat convinced. So...

00:59:49.000 And I think that one of our challenges is convincing people that freedom is actually a good thing.

00:59:54.040 And maybe not just, not libertine freedom. I mean, like ordered liberty freedom, you know,

00:59:58.700 freedom within a moral framework, which is what makes me a conservative and not a libertarian.

01:00:02.180 Right. And it's just difficult. It's more difficult than you might think to convince people. Well,

01:00:07.520 I don't know. I think you, I think you understand it. I think it's a conversation you have pretty

01:00:10.780 often, but it's convincing people that freedom is indeed, even though it's risky and even though

01:00:15.960 it's messy, and even though it can allow you to fall on your face sometimes, and even induce

01:00:21.340 suffering, even in suffering that you might think is unjust, it's still in the aggregate improves

01:00:27.300 things. It improves everything. And it's harder to see that at the moment. And so what people are

01:00:32.940 swept up by is the sort of false promises of, of immediate action, immediate action to save

01:00:39.320 something, to fix something, and to take that paternalistic government view, that status view

01:00:44.740 of something. But the thing is, if we actually took a step back and saw the forest for the trees and

01:00:49.720 looked at the long span of history, it is, it is always true that more freedom leads to more

01:00:54.620 prosperity over time. And less of it leads to less, if not, if not complete and utter decay,

01:01:01.440 in fact. Well, I think the diversity argument is actually a weird, what would you call it? It's a

01:01:07.740 weird warped version of that in some sense, because speaking as a scientist, I hope, part of the reason

01:01:13.820 that freedom works is that we don't actually know what problems are going to come up next. Because

01:01:21.180 things actually change, and they change in an unpredictable way. And so we have our traditions

01:01:26.520 to guide us, and thank God for that, because we'd be making endless decisions all the time

01:01:30.700 otherwise, and we wouldn't, we wouldn't be, we would be in complete disunion. But we still,

01:01:35.040 that's not a perfect structure for moving ahead into unknown territory. Okay, and so you don't know

01:01:40.140 what the problems are, and you don't know what the damn solutions are, because you're not that smart. 0.98

01:01:44.340 So what do you do about that? Well, biologically, what has happened is that human beings are possessed 0.99

01:01:51.700 of very diverse individual temperaments, and that's the diversity argument. That's why diversity is

01:01:56.700 necessary, but it's temperamental. So there are creative and non-creative people, there are

01:02:01.520 extroverted and non-extroverted people, there are compassionate people, and there are tough-minded

01:02:06.160 people, there are conscientious people, and there are people who aren't burdened down by duty,

01:02:10.720 and sometimes that frees them up to be artists, let's say. Who's right? Well, the answer is,

01:02:16.100 it depends on when. And so, okay, so how do you cope with that structurally? Well, you let these

01:02:22.920 diverse people be free, so that they can think up ideas that might be appropriate for the next

01:02:27.940 problem, and then you let them talk, which is why free speech is so important. It's like, without that,

01:02:33.740 we do not have a problem-solving mechanism, we can't capitalize. This is biological diversity.

01:02:39.320 This is the manner in which organisms themselves have adapted to the entire structure of reality.

01:02:45.980 You don't mess with that. You certainly don't do it politically, and you need free speech.

01:02:50.980 You know, and it's part of, part of that is also opponent processing. You know, if I want to move my

01:02:56.100 hand as smoothly as possible this way, I put this hand up to stop it and push, and then I can do it.

01:03:03.800 And a lot of the processes that occur biologically are like that, opponent processes. They make for

01:03:09.320 precision and control. And a lot of our political structures in the West, because we allow for free

01:03:15.940 discussion, our opponent process, they're opponent processes. And so we have a problem, we get a

01:03:21.680 diverse range of opinions, God only knows which is right, and then we can talk them through. And then

01:03:26.940 maybe we don't implement something, you know, catastrophically stupid. And so I think the 1.00

01:03:33.300 other point to extract from what you said is, it's diversity. It's also the decentralization

01:03:38.440 principle. Yeah, right. Exactly. This is a key, key elements of conservatism is this, first of all,

01:03:46.160 a sense of humility. Conservatism is about a sense of humility, sense of humility about what you can

01:03:51.240 really know, and what you can control. And in my experience dealing with my colleagues,

01:03:58.100 Democrats, they have no, they have no such humility, they do believe that they can solve

01:04:01.640 every problem. And sometimes I think that's well intentioned. And sometimes it's not. I think it's

01:04:06.400 just important to kind of extract, you know, what what they want, but then but then let us figure out

01:04:12.100 how to get there. Yeah, well, that that actually, that works out temperamentally. That's exactly how

01:04:17.300 things should work. Because liberal people all, you know, insofar as psychologists have been able

01:04:22.960 to determine this, and it's not exactly accurate, because psychology as a field is prejudiced against

01:04:27.840 conservatives. So some of the scientific measures are biased. Yeah, it's terrible, especially in social

01:04:32.840 psychology. But, but none as well. So, so the the people who tend towards those more liberal utopian and

01:04:40.180 grand scheme views are, they tend to be high in openness, and that's creativity, divergent thinking,

01:04:45.080 and low in conscientiousness. They're not very detail oriented. Whereas the conservatives are

01:04:50.740 the opposite types. And so what you see happening in businesses is the open liberal types tend to be

01:04:55.860 entrepreneurial, at least in their vision, and the conservative types implement. And if you don't

01:05:00.560 get that right in your business, then it doesn't work. Because the open people, they're everywhere,

01:05:05.380 they can't settle down, they can't even catalyze an identity easily, because they're interested in

01:05:09.920 everything. And they're full of wild schemes. And great, because hey, some ideas, but if you want

01:05:15.520 implementation, and then the other problem with the grand scheme thing is, and conservatives always

01:05:20.940 say this, and it's really hard to teach young people about this, but it's really important. And

01:05:24.860 that's the law of unintended consequences is like, why are you so sure that your stupid idea will only do 1.00

01:05:31.080 what you think it will do, and not 100 weird things that you don't predict at all that are worse than 0.99

01:05:36.440 the original problem. And this this could lead us into a discussion of climate change politics,

01:05:41.240 for example. I've been watching the spot price of oil and, and natural gas as well. And what's

01:05:46.900 happening in China, which has just cut power to millions of people, because coal prices have gone

01:05:51.600 through the roof, and they're trying to meet their carbon targets. So it's like, yeah, well, that's a

01:05:57.000 solution, is it? Well, let's talk about that a bit, maybe if you don't mind, because I see you're on

01:06:01.560 that committee. You just talked to Bjorn Lomberg. Yeah, we just talked on a podcast. It's, it's a

01:06:06.960 subject I primarily deal with. Most people probably think I'm on armed services committee and primarily

01:06:12.100 deal with national security issues. But my two issues are healthcare and environment. Mostly,

01:06:17.980 I don't know, I've always tended to have a, to gravitate towards weaknesses. And I feel like those

01:06:25.860 are the two subjects that conservatives are weakest on in our messaging, even if I think we're correct

01:06:31.180 about our assessments of them. You know, can I say one more thing about the decentralization

01:06:38.080 part? Yes, definitely. Conservatism, and then let's move into climate change. We got a lot to say about

01:06:42.580 climate change. But one of the reasons I think this is so important, this this sense of humility,

01:06:48.820 it also, it also helps people understand, I'm always trying to help people understand what the

01:06:53.520 philosophical underpinnings are, why you're a conservative, because I think there's a really

01:06:57.100 rich tradition there. And I don't think there is one on the left, right? I think the left is about

01:07:01.340 what you want right now. And I don't see it guided by any kind of principle, or especially in it,

01:07:07.200 there's, there's no governing principles in there, either no limiting principles. And so

01:07:10.840 the decentralization argument is important. And it gets to the diversity argument, because it's,

01:07:15.500 it's really why we come, it's why it's why we end up supporting the free market.

01:07:19.120 All right, it's why we think that is important. Because, look, while it will never be perfect,

01:07:24.540 and while you can always imagine a utopia, where the centralized thinking just makes things better,

01:07:29.860 it never works. And there's good reason it never works. And in the entire point of that diversity,

01:07:34.820 and then the free market that underpins it, is the ability to, to do something and then test out

01:07:41.060 whether it's creating value or not. You know, because yeah, you can be that whimsical artist if you

01:07:45.500 want. But if nobody cares about it, then it's a good indication that you're not creating any real

01:07:49.840 value. But of course, some people do, and they find a way to do that. And I just think that's,

01:07:54.000 it's as good an indication as you can get. And that's the thing that makes it so tough is that

01:08:00.020 we produce these decentralized processes, and they're actually cognitive computational devices,

01:08:06.660 the environment's unbelievably complex, it's impossible to keep up with it. So you distribute

01:08:11.580 decision making, and that is a fundamental conservative principle, to the, in the most 0.97

01:08:16.480 diverse possible manner, right, right down to the level of the individual, because you're too damn 1.00

01:08:21.000 stupid to know what's coming. And so you need to build a computational machine. And that's really 1.00

01:08:26.040 perhaps how conservatives should talk about it, because that link is very seldomly made. How do you

01:08:31.020 keep up with an infinitely complex environment, with a infinitely complex mobile economy, that's so

01:08:37.920 diverse that you can't predict what it's going to do, you certainly can't control it, and you shouldn't.

01:08:42.840 And maybe someone somewhere will keep up a bit. And then you can copy them. That's a deal, man.

01:08:49.680 And I think it's a good one. And it's actually a good, it's a good segue into the climate change

01:08:54.620 debate. So, because what the left will say is, okay, well, there's market failures. Free market seems

01:08:59.400 nice, but there's market failures, you have to admit that. And I would say, yeah, I can admit that.

01:09:03.240 It can happen. And that's where environmentalism comes from, right? There's, there's externalized

01:09:09.880 costs. And yeah, yeah. And, and that's, that's effectively the arguments about climate change. But

01:09:14.740 then, but then you got to put your conservative hat back on and say, okay, again, a primary

01:09:19.580 tentative conservatism is assessing trade offs. Because I would, I would say conservatism is a

01:09:25.100 governing philosophy. It's a process oriented philosophy, that's that seeks to solve problems

01:09:30.940 within a set of limiting principles. Limiting principles means we ask questions like, what

01:09:36.220 are the second, third order consequences? What's the cost benefit? And that's really what the

01:09:41.340 climate change debate should be about. Unfortunately, it's not about that. It's about you're a denier

01:09:46.300 and a killer, or you want to save the planet like a good person. Which one do you want to be?

01:09:51.620 You know, they moralize over us on it, but it really is fundamentally about, about trade offs.

01:09:57.200 And so, you know, the, the, the Republican mainstream position on this isn't denying climate

01:10:02.640 change, right? It's, it's, it's just assessing the facts and saying, okay, there's certainly

01:10:06.780 some warming going on. There's certainly some loop warming, I would say. I'm just going to

01:10:11.280 use the same data that everybody else is using. Let's, let's use the UN data. Let's use the

01:10:15.900 intergovernmental panel on climate change. And let's see what they're saying are the costs

01:10:20.000 are going to be. And so their costs is the simplest way to put this is, yeah, there's a

01:10:25.520 cost. And how, how do we, how do we quantify that cost? Well, we can look at it this way.

01:10:32.820 According to the UN, again, the scientific consensus, we're going to increase global GDP

01:10:38.560 by 450% in a hundred years. Well, by 2100 with climate change costs, it's going to look more

01:10:46.840 like an increase of only 434%. So it's a cost, but it ain't that much. Okay. And so again, we're

01:10:54.840 not denying it, but we are saying, look, whatever actions we take need, need to be in somewhat

01:10:59.840 proportional to that cost. And that would be a good place to start.

01:11:06.020 Well, that's why I liked Lomberg so much is he was the only, I'm really interested in

01:11:10.160 environmental issues. I studied them for a long time and tried to figure out, you know,

01:11:15.020 what, what bothered me about most of the environmentalist discussion was there was no rank ordering of

01:11:19.700 priorities. And that was, that's a real problem. If you want to implement some solutions. And I came

01:11:24.460 across Lomberg and I thought, Hey, look, this guy, he's got a, he's got a sensible way of actually

01:11:29.660 generating policy out of this, right? Put his teams of economists to work and does cost benefit analysis

01:11:35.560 and tries to build something approximating what would be a policy generating machine. He, he takes

01:11:40.880 projections of precisely the sort that you just made into account. And that market failure idea,

01:11:45.900 we could, we could talk about that a little bit. It's like, well, of course the market fails

01:11:50.760 because even a decentralized cognitive machine made up of all these millions or billions of

01:11:55.920 human brains isn't going to be perfect. But that's not the issue. The issue is what makes you think

01:12:02.200 that you can jump into that gap with your theory and fix it. If the bloody market can't do it, why in

01:12:09.180 the world do you think you can't? Well, because I have an ideology. It's like, well, yeah, you and

01:12:13.980 everyone else. And dealing with market failures is, is essentially what politicians are supposed to,

01:12:20.060 it's why we create a government to, to deal with market. So, so deal with poverty. I mean,

01:12:24.740 you could argue that poverty, excessive poverty might be a market failure. Like it's just not

01:12:29.840 getting fixed. Now, now you really think about it, you know, there's, there's always going to be

01:12:34.280 somebody at the bottom, but you don't want them to be too far at the bottom. And so, so this is,

01:12:39.000 this is where you have a value based judgment and you have a political argument about it and you

01:12:44.740 kind of figure out what to do, but you know, the, the, the, the problem with what the left does is

01:12:49.480 say, this is an indication that the entire system is bad and we need to throw out the foundations.

01:12:55.400 A conservative says, right. It's an indication we might need to take some action and we should,

01:12:59.980 and we should be very careful about how we take that action. And we should do so within a set of

01:13:03.640 limiting principles. And it's, that's a difficult sell because, and it gets back to the climate change

01:13:08.120 debate because it's a difficult sell because, because the liberal will say, what do we want?

01:13:11.540 Action. When do we want it? Now. What does the conservative say? What do we want? Incremental

01:13:16.040 change. When do we want it? In due time. Yes, exactly. It's just not that exciting, especially

01:13:20.680 to young people. So, you know, there's that principle in science, Occam's razor, right? Do not

01:13:26.540 multiply explanatory hypotheses beyond necessity, which is the simplest solution is by default,

01:13:34.560 the most appropriate. Now, the same thing might apply with regards to problems. And that's another

01:13:39.440 conservative advantage in some sense. It's like, no, no, the smallest possible change that will

01:13:45.920 produce the end result. Right. Because you don't know what the change is going to do. And, and that

01:13:51.440 uncertainty, that's part of that humility of conservatism that you described. That is something

01:13:55.720 that's communicable to young people. It's like, it's not like we don't think, we don't think there are

01:14:00.420 problems. But we're also quite skeptical of grandiose solutions, and even more skeptical of

01:14:06.140 the people who put them forward. Yeah. And, and that's not foolish at all. I'm much more afraid

01:14:13.080 of the people dealing with climate change than I am of climate change. As you should be. Because

01:14:18.660 what we're, I mean, well, so this week, we're debating this reconciliation bill. And reconciliation

01:14:25.940 just means that you can pass it to the Senate with only 51 votes instead of the 60 vote threshold

01:14:31.160 required to overcome the filibuster. And that means it has to be related to budget items. Okay,

01:14:37.540 so that's not that anybody cares about that. But that's what we're debating. And within that big

01:14:41.800 3.5 trillion, which is actually closer to four to a half trillion, depending on how you estimate it,

01:14:47.360 there's a lot of, you know, let's call it Green New Deal provisions. And what a Green New Deal

01:14:53.820 basically is, is massive subsidies for solar and wind, massive incentive structures for only solar

01:14:59.100 and wind and renewables. But renewables, they really just define as solar and wind, okay,

01:15:03.660 they don't like hydro, they don't like nuclear. And we'll get to that. So it's that and also a full

01:15:10.200 on attack against the oil and gas industry, which should also trouble Canadians.

01:15:13.900 Hey, we're, we're plenty troubled by it. That's for sure. Yeah, I mean, what even Trudeau is like,

01:15:19.260 hey, why did you guys cancel the XL for the Keystone pipeline? Yeah, but he's secretly happy

01:15:24.660 about it. Yeah, that's true. So so this simultaneous attack is, is unbelievably dangerous

01:15:33.560 for the well being of people across the globe. It's gonna so so right away, you're gonna see

01:15:41.360 increases in energy prices. How much? How much? What are we gonna see in two years? What do you think?

01:15:47.840 300 bucks a barrel? Oh, oil? Geez. Yeah, no, no, I don't. That the data I see doesn't say that,

01:15:55.040 but you could get up to 90. I just read a Wall Street Journal article today, some estimates are

01:15:58.880 90 by the end of the year, just pretty damn high. I don't know about 300. I mean, but but but I don't

01:16:04.360 know if they passed this bill. And it was implemented their natural gas tax, which would put a lot of our

01:16:11.380 medium sized producers at a business. Yeah, just and also take away, take away the one thing that

01:16:19.240 has decreased carbon emissions back to the US levels. That's fracking. Ha ha fracking. Now which

01:16:25.680 Democrat would have predicted that zero? Nobody? No one predicted that man. And it just you know how

01:16:32.420 that? Nobody? Nobody? Nobody? That's right. No, because it just kind of happened. It's free

01:16:38.440 market. It just it just kind of happened. And it happened because of a government action. But the

01:16:43.520 government action was just liberalizing it. It was just it was just it was just removing a barrier to

01:16:48.940 it. And the export ban that even Obama signed, when we removed the oil export ban out of the United

01:16:56.540 States. What did you just create? Well, you created a powerhouse of energy in the United States. And why

01:17:02.480 is that a good thing? Does that make climate change worse or better? Well, the question isn't. That's

01:17:07.140 that's the wrong question, really, because the question is, what is demand for energy around the

01:17:11.400 world? And so turns out demand for energy in the next 20 years is going to go up almost 30%. That's a

01:17:17.340 guarantee. So who's going to provide that energy? It's not going to be solar and wind, all estimates show

01:17:24.680 it's going to have about its same same proportion of the energy mix. And so it's either going to be

01:17:30.420 the United States and Canada that actually care about environmental regulations and put all these

01:17:34.560 restrictions and, you know, on a per unit basis. And this is a this is a scientific estimate. It's not

01:17:41.700 the EPA that did it. It was one of our national labs that did this estimate. A unit of natural gas is

01:17:48.560 42% less emissions than a Russian unit of natural gas. So we're cleaner. We're like we're objectively

01:17:55.560 cleaner when we're when we're giving you oil and gas. And yet this administration counterintuitively in an

01:18:03.100 effort to reduce gas prices wants OPEC to increase production. So we're attacking US oil and gas and and trying

01:18:10.920 to get OPEC to increase their production. This is if you're trying to solve the problem of reduction of

01:18:17.640 emissions. This is the opposite of they're not exactly our friends always. No, and they want to put we see this

01:18:24.980 play out in Canada madly. Yeah. And so it's just it's just if we're trying to happen in Canada with regards. Sorry,

01:18:31.500 sorry. Well, I'm just saying if we're if we're trying to solve a problem, you know, of reducing emissions, and then

01:18:37.280 fine, let's solve the problem. And the other thing I we as Republicans are always wondering is, wait a second, if you

01:18:42.580 really think this is an existential threat, and we're done and like we're cooks in 12 years, the world is on fire.

01:18:47.620 They always say, well, then why not just instead of the trillions of dollars towards a bunch of

01:18:53.580 nonsense? Why not just build a bunch of nuclear plants? Really? Why not just build a bunch of

01:18:58.100 nuclear plants? Why don't you have just government? So what's the answer to that? Yeah, why not? Like

01:19:02.480 France did it? Their answer is, well, there's there's the truthful answer. There's the public answer. And

01:19:09.440 there's the real answer that I think is true. But so the public, you know, their answer is, well,

01:19:14.360 it's expensive, there's safety issues. I'm like, yeah, but on a per unit basis, it's still a better

01:19:18.720 deal. Again, if you think, I thought I thought no cost was too high, because we're in an existential

01:19:23.200 crisis. And so I would assume that you think it's priority to have reliable energy, and you don't get

01:19:27.640 reliable energy from solar wind, and you never will, it's impossible. And I don't care how far along the

01:19:32.860 battery technology comes, it'll never meet where we need it to meet, it just won't, it's physically not

01:19:37.440 going to happen. And so you need nuclear, and you need gas, but they're against it. They're shutting

01:19:43.220 down gas, nuclear plants in California and New York. And it's just, it's just, it's really mind

01:19:49.520 blowing. So it leads me to believe that they don't actually one, they don't actually think it's a

01:19:53.260 crisis. And to that, they're mostly driven by special interests in the solar and wind industries

01:19:59.520 that have really captured them. And again, I'm not against solar and wind, I just think, I just think

01:20:03.520 they should fit in where they fit in. I don't think they should be over subsidized at this point,

01:20:07.960 I think there should be technology neutral subsidies for carbon reduction, that involve nuclear, and it

01:20:13.540 also involve carbon capture for oil and gas. I mean, if the entire point is reducing carbon emissions,

01:20:19.080 and let's make that the technology goal, as opposed to just renewables, because it makes us feel nice.

01:20:25.200 And it really is about feelings. I mean, I, I don't think there's any other reasoning behind it.

01:20:29.340 Oh, there's, there is another reason, I think, is that the ideological morass out of which such

01:20:36.940 ideas emerge is extraordinarily confused. And it's, you know, 30% anti capitalism and 20%. What would

01:20:45.380 you say resentment about the nature of humanity itself, and then 40% concern about the environment

01:20:53.180 and our depredations. And so you have that mix, you can't think clearly, it's like, well,

01:20:58.080 are we saving the environment? Yeah, but what about capitalism, because it's actually the problem to

01:21:02.580 begin with. And so then you get these sorts of solutions emerging. And a lot of them are tainted

01:21:07.960 with this terrible, destructive anti capitalism, and which seems to be often more a more important

01:21:14.500 crisis than the environmental crisis itself. Yeah, I mean, you look at the Green New Deal, 0.91

01:21:19.840 and what AOC wrote up in this sort of like children's science project. It was very little about the

01:21:26.440 environment, and much more so about the substantive change in healthcare and the economy. And it was

01:21:33.460 kind of, it's kind of saying the quiet part out loud, which we all suspected, that this was mostly

01:21:37.940 about, you know, the sort of great reset that people talk about it kind of, it's kind of more about that

01:21:43.960 than it is climate change. But for you to, to get you to agree to these really substantive reforms to

01:21:50.280 the sort of revolution and thinking, you need to scare the hell out of you, which is why they use

01:21:55.000 terminology, like the world is on fire. And it's why they point to every hurricane and wildfire,

01:22:00.020 like this is what climate change looks like. I mean, I hear that all the time. But it's really

01:22:04.680 as if we've never had hurricanes, as if we'd never had wildfires, and as if there's not actually a much

01:22:09.260 better explanation for California wildfires, which is poor forest management, which every study shows,

01:22:15.020 right? And it's like, let me get this straight. If we all drive electric vehicles today, if we if the

01:22:19.500 United States stops producing carbon today, are you telling me there's no more wildfires? Are you

01:22:24.300 telling me all of our weather starts to look like San Diego? Are you telling me Houston's not gonna

01:22:27.520 have hurricanes anymore? That's, that's nonsense. I mean, that's complete nonsense. And it's, it's

01:22:33.220 not data driven. It's not fact driven. And truthfully, again, go back to UN intergovernmental

01:22:40.120 panel and climate change data. If the Western world, believe all developed countries, they stopped

01:22:46.180 emitting carbon right now, for good, you might get a reduction in temperature of I think it's like

01:22:52.300 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. Right, right. And that's what that that's actually

01:22:57.500 within the error bounds. So one of the problems with these climate projections is that if you go

01:23:02.220 out 50 years, you can't even tell if what you did 50 years ago had worked because the error bars

01:23:08.120 become are so big at that point. And that's actually a huge problem. Because what it means

01:23:12.540 is there's no way of testing whether your damn solution, your large scale solution had any effect 0.99

01:23:17.980 whatsoever. So how in the world are we supposed to solve a problem like that? 0.97

01:23:22.460 It's you can't. And I mean, you can't like, it's like, we don't want to do anything, right? I mean,

01:23:27.680 I listed some things that Republicans are in favor of, and primarily nuclear energy and gas, I think,

01:23:33.060 I think that's a healthy that puts us on a healthy glide path towards reduction in emissions. And,

01:23:37.460 and look, the other truth is, is the more a country develops, the more you industrialize it,

01:23:43.440 the more concerned they become about the environment. That's another truth. So maybe focus on

01:23:47.620 Yes, definitely. Well, also, you know, with the lefty types, you think, well,

01:23:51.640 they're concerned with poverty reduction. Okay, well, how to do that? Well, how about you make

01:23:55.900 energy real cheap? How about that? Because energy is what does work. And so if you give that to poor

01:24:03.420 people for as close to nothing as possible, then they can do almost everything free. How would that

01:24:10.120 be? So are you are you so sure you're concerned about those poverty stricken people? If you look

01:24:15.080 historically, can you really imagine anything that has done more for them than cheap energy? And how

01:24:20.900 would that even be possible? Even metaphysically, energy runs everything. So cheap energy means wealth

01:24:28.420 directly, or virtually no intermediation. So now you're going to make every energy all more expensive

01:24:35.480 to produce these trivial changes in, in climate that you won't even be able to measure. It's like,

01:24:42.040 what's up with you? Exactly. Yeah, it's true. And it's just, it's, it's, it's such a frustrating

01:24:48.960 conversation. I do think we're winning the debate on this, because it's not a winning argument to say

01:24:57.340 there's no such thing as climate change. The environment doesn't need our help. That's just

01:25:01.520 people don't want to hear that. But, but they would just want to hear something. And so and that's,

01:25:07.700 I think that's what we've, we're offering at this point. And so I think we're on a healthy track

01:25:12.380 as Republicans. I, I am still very worried about this bill that has the potential of passing, but

01:25:18.620 you know, Hey, let me ask you about that infrastructure bill. Okay. Cause I mean,

01:25:23.740 I've thought and, and talk to many people about this, that, you know, if the Democrats need something

01:25:31.520 to do because they need something to do and they're in power and well, maybe infrastructure

01:25:36.560 isn't such a bad preoccupation. There's something real about it, hopefully at least maybe 30% of it,

01:25:42.080 which might not be bad given, you know, large projects waste a lot always. And so pros and cons

01:25:49.120 of the infrastructure project, as far as you're concerned. Yeah, the, so there's two things for

01:25:54.500 people's understanding. There's this reconciliation package and you hear the number 3.5 trillion associated

01:25:59.920 with that. So that's one thing. And then there's the infrastructure, the bipartisan infrastructure

01:26:03.840 deal, which is like 1.2, 3 trillion. So a lot of money, the, the, the bipartisan infrastructure deal

01:26:10.200 substantively is not bad. It has a lot of good things, right? Like what, like what, what do you

01:26:15.940 see that's good? It's, it's just your typical boring infrastructure stuff, like, like highway funding,

01:26:21.540 like port funding, sewage treatment, this kind of stuff. Okay. Yeah. It's boring when it works.

01:26:27.700 It's legitimately, yes, exactly. It's legitimately decent infrastructure. Um, our opposition to it,

01:26:33.900 again, it's not everybody's opposed to it, but my personal opposition to it is it's, it's about four

01:26:39.520 times, three to four times too much money. Yeah. That's about what you'd expect though. Yeah. And

01:26:44.900 it, you know, it's just, if, if it was cut in half, at least you could get me scratching my head,

01:26:49.100 like maybe, but it is important for people to know the substance of it is not bad. It's the price tag

01:26:56.600 is just too much. Um, considering we've spent 6 trillion on, on getting our economy back on,

01:27:02.300 on track after COVID, which frankly, it was mostly money well spent. It's probably some of the best

01:27:07.840 work government has done in crisis, to be honest, especially with the small business loan program

01:27:12.960 that we instituted here in the U S but it's, um, in any case, it's not the time to just be

01:27:19.040 throwing money out the door, you know, with hyperinflation coming about it, you just need

01:27:23.620 to be more careful, uh, is, is really our only opposition to the infrastructure bill.

01:27:28.620 So that's, and what about the three? So now you separated out the 1.2 trillion, which you're

01:27:33.560 speaking reasonably positively about for, you know, a suspicious conservative type. And then there's

01:27:39.200 the 3.5 trillion. So let's talk about that. And, and, you know, because the fear was that

01:27:45.080 everything would be put into that basket, right? Of course that's going to happen. So tell,

01:27:49.220 detail out that. Yeah. So the reconciliation package is a series of tax hikes, um, about two,

01:27:55.600 over $2 trillion in tax increases, recorders of which will indeed, despite what the Democrats say,

01:28:01.400 they're lying about this because we have liberal think tanks that have done assessments and it will,

01:28:04.760 will increase taxes on at least three quarters of low to lower to middle income. People will

01:28:10.920 increase your taxes. Is it cause there's so many different types of tax increases, uh, and it's

01:28:16.180 going to hit you somehow. And if it doesn't hit you there, it's probably going to reduce your wages.

01:28:19.740 So we've already seen how much, how much are people looking at about 1%, um, which is it's,

01:28:26.180 it's not a ton, but it's something, but I think, I think what's worse about the way Democrats do

01:28:30.480 economic policy. It's not like it's going to make your wages noticeably decrease immediately,

01:28:34.880 but I'll tell you what, they're not going to increase. And, and I have proof of this. You

01:28:39.800 know, if we look at the last 15 years of data post, so let's look at two major recessions,

01:28:44.340 one COVID and one's 2008 financial crisis and two different types of, two different types of

01:28:49.280 economies, two different types of governing, uh, philosophies. And the first time was under Obama,

01:28:56.180 um, we need more tax. We need to tax the rich and just spend money on infrastructure. They had this

01:29:01.080 nearly trillion dollar infrastructure package back then turned out everybody agrees. Now that

01:29:05.680 turned out to be a waste and did not contribute to the economy the way we'd hoped it would the

01:29:09.420 shovel ready myth. Okay. Every that's, that's widespread agreement on that in hindsight. At the

01:29:14.820 time I can understand why you might think that stimulus is important, but in hindsight didn't work

01:29:19.120 out. Okay. But you're also increasing taxes. You're, you're a threat to businesses because you like

01:29:24.440 to regulate them and you, and you, you tend, they tend to see businesses as more of a bad actor than

01:29:28.800 a good actor that creates investment in jobs. Okay. And so then it's no fast. And so what did that

01:29:33.960 create? Well, it created plenty of wealth for the top. Everybody's mad about inequality under that 0.89

01:29:40.040 system. The top still get richer because they could figure it out, but the bottom quintile of

01:29:44.380 earners was stagnant. So that's not a myth that was true. Now, after the tax cuts and jobs act in 2017,

01:29:50.480 this is, you know, Trump's major accomplishment, obviously anyway, tax cuts and jobs act. So

01:29:58.060 what do we do? We cut corporate tax rates, cut everybody's taxes everywhere, right? Tax cuts for

01:30:04.460 everybody. And what happens to wages? Well, if you look at the wage growth, the bottom quintile of

01:30:12.600 earners skyrocketed. Now it doesn't mean that it like drastically reduced inequality. Okay. But as far

01:30:19.100 as the proportion goes, the percentage goes, the bottom people were growing much, much faster than

01:30:24.900 the top. No, in absolute terms, obviously not. And that's what everybody looks at, right? They want

01:30:29.300 to take the data that they care about and it makes their argument stronger. So they'll say, yeah, but

01:30:33.940 they made a hundred million dollars more. Well, okay. Well, there were a 50, they had $50 billion.

01:30:39.000 So percentage wise, they didn't make that much more, but the lowest quintile, you know, doing this

01:30:44.120 particular job, which, you know, I don't know what universe you could imagine where that particular

01:30:48.620 job is making that much more, but they were growing. Why? Because, well, pro-growth economic

01:30:53.400 policies create a tight labor market, right? Where businesses have to compete to hire people. I mean,

01:30:57.780 we're in a very tight labor market now. Wages are, no thanks to Biden, but mostly because of the

01:31:02.260 pandemic and a few other things, but wages are pretty high. I mean, it is still hard to hire people.

01:31:07.160 Um, you know, this bill could reverse that because like the reality is, is that Biden economics has

01:31:14.560 not really hit the United States because they haven't done any, they haven't passed anything.

01:31:18.000 All right. They're, they're, they've created this sort of, they've, what their general view on

01:31:24.520 business that it's bad and, and the increase in regulations has, I think, decreased investment,

01:31:30.080 but that's hard to measure. I think it's intuitive and obvious, but other than that,

01:31:34.420 there hasn't been a major shock to the system. All right. A lot of the, a lot of the shocks are

01:31:38.740 maybe too much spending and also supply chains problems, uh, which are more related to the

01:31:44.060 pandemic. Um, and maybe it may be a refusal of this administration to do anything about it and

01:31:48.780 loosen certain restrictions. So it's a long, long, anyway, point is, is pro-growth works and it

01:31:53.640 actually helps increase wages for the lowest quintile of burgers. That's just a decade. That's a data

01:31:57.660 driven fact that we can look at over the past decade or so. So getting back to this reconciliation

01:32:03.080 package, it's just doing the opposite. It's just doing the opposite. So you're going to reduce

01:32:06.900 wages, more importantly, reduce their potential growth because you're also creating an environment

01:32:12.060 because you're raising corporate tax rates. So businesses are just going to hire less, right?

01:32:15.900 It's never the CEO that gets hurt because of a corporate tax hike. It's just this absurd notion

01:32:21.060 that, that you're just like taking it to the, taking it to these mean corporations. Yeah. What these

01:32:24.980 corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people, what is it? You know, it doesn't mean

01:32:30.720 they should just do whatever they want. No, it is, it is the inequality in some sense that,

01:32:35.260 that bothers people. But one of the things I have trouble with, with regards to, to leftist policies

01:32:40.460 is that they actually underestimate the severity of the problem of inequality. And they assume that

01:32:46.260 restructuring capitalism would remove inequality. And there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that

01:32:51.060 that has ever worked in any way other than the opposite, because inequality is not a consequence

01:32:56.300 of capitalism. It looks like it's almost like a physical property of the, of reality itself.

01:33:02.880 I mean, there are physicists who model the unequal distribution of money using the same

01:33:09.020 equations they use to describe the dispersion of gas into a new environment. Like, it's a really

01:33:14.260 something fundamental. It can't be overstated. And it's a real problem, right? Because who the

01:33:18.560 hell wants terribly poor people? Like, that's such a catastrophe. But it's not like, 1.00

01:33:23.360 it's a consequence of capitalism. It's like, come on, guys.

01:33:28.520 The other thing about inequality, it's just, it's a, look, let's look at the following math

01:33:32.720 problem. If there's, if you and I are the, the sole citizens of country X, you make $50,000 a year,

01:33:39.380 and I make $100,000 a year. Well, there's a delta between us of $50,000. Now let's both double our

01:33:45.100 income. So now you make $100,000 and I make $200,000. Well, holy crap, inequality just doubled.

01:33:50.800 Because now there's the $100,000 delta. So it's just not always what people think. I mean, 0.89

01:33:56.140 the question isn't necessarily about inequality. I don't care that there's a lot of people who are

01:34:00.160 way, way wealthier than me. It doesn't necessarily bother me. What would bother me is if I have no

01:34:05.400 chance of ever being them. If I was the most talented, smartest person on the planet, it would

01:34:10.200 bother me if I had no chance of ever being that person. And I'm sorry, but that's just not the world

01:34:16.080 we live in. You know, there's, there's, if we look at what keeps you out of poverty, and I think

01:34:21.840 this is from the Brookings Institute, there's like three things. It's like finish high school,

01:34:25.660 have a job, any job, and don't have kids before you're married. And you've got like a 97% chance

01:34:30.820 of not being in poverty. So it turns out we do live in a society where choices matter. And you're,

01:34:36.700 and the value that you provide matters. And that's the society we want to live in. Is it perfect?

01:34:40.720 No. Is it the best we can do? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. And should we have a safety net for

01:34:45.880 those who just can't make it? Yeah, yeah, there should be a safety net. But you know,

01:34:50.400 when we should argue about how much of a safety net and then the fundamental

01:34:53.540 and about the negative consequences of that potentially as well, right? Because, you know,

01:34:58.540 dependent safety net doesn't make things worse. Say it makes you dependent and makes you unable or

01:35:04.340 on wanting to find more work and be productive, right? That would be the fundamental question of a

01:35:09.300 safety net. And, and I think their Democrat policies just generally don't care about that. 0.73

01:35:15.520 So can I dig in? Can I dig into the weeds on the three? I still don't understand the

01:35:20.320 differentiation between the 1.2 trillion and the 3.5 trillion.

01:35:24.060 Oh, yeah, yeah. So I got I got a long way to go on the left here. So let me let me do it more

01:35:28.980 generally instead of getting too much into the weeds on the on the taxation stuff. So okay,

01:35:32.500 so a lot of increase in taxes, a lot of increase in spending, a lot of that increase in spending is

01:35:36.580 on things like expanding Medicaid, right, expanding Medicare, like making Medicare benefits more

01:35:40.780 generous, even though like 96% of the Medicare population already gets dental and vision and

01:35:47.140 whatever. So it's just it's a lot of it. To me, it's a lot of bribery. Okay, it's like we're giving

01:35:52.180 you stuff. We're going to fund like the pre K, we're going to fund all of these things to the

01:35:57.540 government, we're just going to do so many things, any wishlist they've ever had, they're sticking in

01:36:01.480 this bill. Again, the subsidies, subsidies for solar and wind, just, you know, a new climate bank,

01:36:08.180 whatever the hell that means. I mean, with for with 10s of billions of dollars, it's, it's stuff

01:36:13.580 like that, that is, you know, some of it is extremely threatening, I think, to because of a

01:36:18.580 policy perspective, some of it's just incredibly wasteful. So that's where you see the over inclusiveness

01:36:24.460 of the infrastructure development project. It's that's where everything is being shoveled into.

01:36:29.120 Yeah, yeah. So again, it is separate from the infrastructure bill, what we call the infrastructure

01:36:33.960 bill and the reconciliation package. I remember when, if people remember when the Democrats were

01:36:39.600 talking about human infrastructure, like everything is infrastructure, right, right. They put all the

01:36:44.740 human infrastructure into the reconciliation package. And we kept the real, we kept the real

01:36:49.000 infrastructure in the infrastructure package. So again, substantively speaking, I think the

01:36:53.160 infrastructure package is good. I just think it's too expensive. And substantively speaking,

01:36:57.320 I think the reconciliation package is complete insanity.

01:37:01.440 Okay, well, let's close that off there, because we're going to run out of time here. There's some

01:37:05.660 other things, if you don't mind, I wanted to ask you about, we'll pop out of the political domain to

01:37:09.480 some degree to begin with. You have a book, you wrote a book not too long ago. And so maybe you

01:37:15.620 could, well, tell everybody what what the book is, and then talk about that a bit if you'd like to.

01:37:20.000 Sure, I appreciate it. Fortitude, American Resilience in the Era of Outrage. And came out

01:37:27.560 with this book in April of 2020. Interesting time to come out with a book, as you can imagine,

01:37:33.400 because that was the start of the pandemic. I never really done a book tour. But it's done

01:37:38.020 pretty well. And I think it's done pretty well, because it's sort of, you know, I, I'll be honest,

01:37:41.620 I kind of describe it as like a Jordan Peterson 12 rules for life, but like the JV version.

01:37:46.200 Okay, it's like the, it's like, if you're, if you're the, if you're the postgrad level,

01:37:50.720 like I'm trying to give people a bit more of a high school level of the similar thing. And I've

01:37:56.380 very, and specifically, trying to guide people through how to build more fortitude, more mental

01:38:02.080 fortitude. And I use a combination. So every chapter is a different lesson, sort of a different

01:38:07.820 concept that I'm trying to ingrain. And it's a, those lessons and concepts are imparted to the reader

01:38:15.720 through a series of stories from the SEAL teams. There's some philosophy, there's some Bible

01:38:21.300 verses, and there's some pop culture. You know, it's a mix of everything. I think it's multidisciplinary.

01:38:28.540 And I think it's interesting. I think it's unique. And I think that's why it's sold pretty well.

01:38:34.860 And it's, it's...

01:38:36.720 So where did you learn? Where did you learn to, to be resilient? I mean, after you were terribly

01:38:41.180 injured, you went back and continued in your military operations. I mean, that seems to

01:38:47.100 be, I mean, some resilience, you know, it's, it's, you're healthy, and you're tough. And

01:38:51.460 that's part of what's built into you. It's a gift in some sense. But then there's the role

01:38:56.280 that attitude plays and, and education and all of that. And I was fortunate enough to meet

01:39:02.160 a number of Navy SEALs in California and got to know some of them quite well. And, you know,

01:39:06.320 they're very respectable characters, and they go through hell to become Navy SEALs. That's

01:39:10.140 quite interesting. They told me some pretty hair raising stories. And where did you learn

01:39:15.420 to be resilient to the degree that you learned it? Was that mostly military? Was that mostly

01:39:20.400 a military consequence?

01:39:21.840 Of course, like any development, I think it's a consequence of a lot of experiences. But I

01:39:27.120 would, what I write about in the book, my first experience, and this experience is laid out in

01:39:33.160 in a chapter called perspectives from darkness. And I made a little bit of that chapter because

01:39:39.280 one of the first foundations of fortitude, being, you know, if we define fortitude is resilience to

01:39:47.480 the ability to overcome adversity. And perspective is a pretty good place to start. Because if you think

01:39:55.660 everything is worse than it is, you're going to have a hard time mentally coping with it.

01:39:59.420 Uh, if you have a sense of perspective, you're able to, you know what, this isn't that bad.

01:40:04.700 Like one of the, one of the things, one of the things instructors and buds, this is SEAL training

01:40:09.260 repeat to students constantly is, look, there's 10,000 men who have done this before you. So stop

01:40:15.060 your complaining. You can do this. And that's a, that's like a quick gut check. Like, God, I don't

01:40:20.640 want to be one of those who just quit. I mean, there's 10,000 that have done it before. It's probably

01:40:24.880 more than that, to be perfectly honest. But, and so, but, but what I write about is, is, um, my

01:40:29.960 mother, because, you know, I think that was my first real interaction with some kind of fortitude.

01:40:35.640 She, she, she lost her when you were 10.

01:40:38.460 Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I also, you know, I watched her deal with breast cancer for five years and,

01:40:43.300 and I had trouble recalling, uh, real suffering on her part, mostly because she hid it from me.

01:40:49.800 Um, and I have trouble recalling her complain. I have trouble recalling her have a bad attitude.

01:40:56.580 I have lots of other recollections of, of her being funny, of her being nice, of her being a good

01:41:02.460 mother. Wow. And it sort of begs the question, like, how does, how on earth can someone do that?

01:41:08.080 It's extremely difficult and not show that kind of resentment and bitterness, um, and just raise your

01:41:14.200 kids. And so that's, that's sort of, that's my first hero. Um, you know, first hero to look up

01:41:20.560 to, I also have a whole chapter on heroism. And frankly, I got some of that philosophy from you,

01:41:24.680 um, on, on how to build hero archetypes and the proper way to look up to people, uh, as, as a way

01:41:30.820 to develop yourself in a better way. Right. And I say like, don't take an individual, like, you don't

01:41:35.780 want to just be like Jordan Peterson. You want to see what makes him successful and see how he's done

01:41:41.440 well in his life and maybe copy some things from him. Like, how does he talk to people? How does

01:41:45.460 he think through things? What's the thought processes he use? And how does that apply to the

01:41:49.200 hierarchy you want to be better at? Because it might be different. Like, you know, you might be

01:41:53.820 an academic and you might be in media, might be in sports. Like it's, it's different. So you got to

01:41:59.140 look up to people within your own genre really. And in the SEAL teams, there's no different because

01:42:03.560 you're, what am I trying to be a better SEAL and a better leader? So what makes somebody something

01:42:08.760 that I want to follow? Uh, so that's like, that's chapter two, for instance, one of my favorite

01:42:13.380 chapters, because I think it's, it's a good way to start. Like, cause you got to know what you want

01:42:17.300 to, if you want to be somebody who lives with fortitude, you got to know what that looks like

01:42:21.100 first, right? You got to know what you're aspiring to. It's a really important.

01:42:25.040 Well, and you can look at, you can look at what you admire spontaneously. Like, obviously you admired

01:42:29.840 your mother spontaneously. And so that's an instinct. That's not, that's not rational exactly.

01:42:34.680 Although it might be hyper-rational, you know, and we all have that instinct to admire and

01:42:39.360 that does point us in the direction of what is better. Yeah, exactly. And it's just in a practical

01:42:46.300 way and kind of a materialistic way, it's like, well, just what works? Like what are the outcomes

01:42:51.200 that actually work for people and what don't? And, um, one of the problems with post-modernism

01:42:55.900 is, is trying to make the things that don't work, make them work. Like socialism hasn't been

01:43:00.740 tried, you know, it's like that kind of thing, right? Cause it feels good. And, and so,

01:43:04.540 you know, then my second real, uh, interaction, I suppose with fortitude. Yeah. It would be

01:43:09.080 the military. I mean, buds is a trial by fire. You come out a different person than you went

01:43:13.740 in. Um, how, how were you different? How were you to begin with? That's the first question.

01:43:18.960 And then how are you different? I just, I think you come, I mean, look, I just, I think maybe

01:43:24.340 I'll, maybe I'll take that back a little bit. I guess I'll say, cause one thing we say

01:43:28.200 in the SEAL teams is you were a SEAL before you got here. We just made you prove it. And then

01:43:34.420 we trained you, uh, but that mental capacity, it had to be there cause you wouldn't make 0.82

01:43:39.320 it through hell week otherwise. So you had it, but you hadn't proven it to anybody and

01:43:44.520 you hadn't proven it to yourself. And once you prove it to yourself, that's something,

01:43:48.840 I mean, you become something a little different, not too different, but it's a little different.

01:43:53.320 Um, and some people can become cocky, right? You don't want to be too cocky. You want to be

01:43:57.600 confident. So you definitely become more confident. I don't think you've met many SEALs who

01:44:01.180 aren't very confident in themselves. Uh, and, and so that's a good, but that's a good thing.

01:44:06.200 They weren't cocky. They were, most of them were unbelievably funny. They're unbelievably humorous.

01:44:11.080 And, and I think I'm very funny to be, you know, and I'm not being overly confident. I think I'm

01:44:15.680 very funny. I'm just, humility is not an attribute that we have very much of it. So it's a, yeah,

01:44:23.800 it changes you. I mean, it, there, there's a culture, like I can identify a team guy

01:44:28.680 really easily. Um, and first of all, there's definitely a look, right. And there's, but,

01:44:34.420 and it's, but there's a way there's something in their eyes. Like I can just tell like what you've,

01:44:39.580 I can just tell, and I don't know how to describe it. Um, to be honest with you. And because we all

01:44:45.540 kind of come from the same place where we wanted to do this particular job, we wanted to go through

01:44:50.140 the hardest training we could find and be in this elite team. And so that, that, I don't know.

01:44:56.420 I just, it makes you similar in some way, even though there's, I think a decent amount of diversity

01:45:00.320 in the teams, um, as far as backgrounds go, as far as backgrounds and wealth come from, I mean,

01:45:06.320 it's, it's very, very difficult to, it's also very difficult to see who's going to make it through

01:45:11.180 it. Um, this gets to another chapter, which I call no plan B and you can't get through buds unless you,

01:45:18.040 unless you decided that you would die before you quit. Um, you have to, you have to have given

01:45:23.620 yourself no choice in the matter. Um, that's the only way you make it through. If you're like,

01:45:28.140 you know what, I'm going to do that's like marriage. Yeah. Well, okay. That's a funny story

01:45:33.240 because, because one of the, one of the sayings in the SEAL teams is the only easy day was yesterday.

01:45:38.380 And, uh, that, that, that motto is plastered on the buds grinder. And so, uh, what me and my wife did

01:45:44.980 knowing and understanding that that there's so many, so many good parallels between SEAL training

01:45:50.580 and marriage. We went and took our, some of our wedding photos right in front of that sign.

01:45:54.400 The only easy day was yesterday. Um, and it's, it's, it's sort of this no quit attitude and this

01:45:59.460 understanding that, look, it's only things get harder. So what deal with it? Um, it's an, and,

01:46:04.940 and, and embrace it, embrace the suck. I'm just kind of using slogans from the SEAL teams at this 0.93

01:46:09.880 point, but, but they have, they have a quite a bit of meaning associated with them, embrace the suck.

01:46:14.320 And what does that mean? Fundamental? Well, they have meaning because people are actually acting 0.67

01:46:17.720 them out, right? They're not empty slogans. It's so they might be comical represent oversimplified

01:46:24.180 representations, but there's something actually happening. And I like that particular one embrace

01:46:29.980 the suck because it actually gets to another chapter in the book, which is simply called do 0.90

01:46:33.520 something hard. And the whole point of, of this discussion is embrace suffering. I'm not saying 0.65

01:46:39.760 embrace like swimming with sharks. Cause you can suffer swimming with sharks and getting bitten

01:46:45.320 like that would suck. But, um, I've been self-imposed suffering. Right. And so like buds

01:46:51.580 and how we can everything we do and it all is self-imposed. Like you do, you, you do have it in

01:46:56.880 the back of your minds. Like I'm not going to die. I'm not actually going to die. It feels like I'm

01:46:59.680 going to die. It feels like they're trying to kill me. Um, but, but I know, I know that they're

01:47:03.540 going to save me if I start drowning and people do drown and, uh, but we save them. Okay.

01:47:10.580 That's funny, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's horrible, but it's funny. Um, but, but there's a,

01:47:16.100 but there's a real value, um, to seeking out challenge and suffering. This is why people do

01:47:21.780 Spartan races. This is why people come together and they love group suffering too. This is why people 1.00

01:47:26.040 go, go organize themselves at CrossFit gyms and, and, and do these crazy things. Why don't you go

01:47:31.240 climb a mountain, right? Like, is it for the view? Did you climb the mountain for the view? No, no,

01:47:36.980 no, you did it. The means were the entire point. Like the, the path that you took was the entire

01:47:42.760 point because it's hard. And, um, I, I, I think that's pretty normal and intuitive. And I think

01:47:48.640 that's been really fundamental tenant of Americanism for a very long time. And I think we're losing it,

01:47:54.500 which is why I felt I had to write about it more and just kind of remind people of why these things

01:47:59.380 are important. I don't think there's anything novel in my book at all.

01:48:03.300 Well, you are a conservative.

01:48:05.180 Yeah. Yeah. Right. I just, I just think it's a, I just think what I did was take all the best ideas

01:48:10.400 from history and try to lay them out for people because, you know, if you're trying to come up

01:48:14.780 with something novel these days, it's a good chance that you're probably just wrong about it. Um,

01:48:20.080 because it hasn't stood the test of time. I think it's very rare that there's going to be

01:48:23.780 really new insights in today's world. Um, and it might, I think, I think the new insights are

01:48:31.380 really just the old ones, like personal responsibility and doing hard things and

01:48:35.440 challenging yourself and just, and feeling good about a challenge, even if it sucks, even if

01:48:40.480 it's an injustice, like I dive into that quite a bit in that because, because that's people's next

01:48:44.440 question. It's like, well, how can you say all suffering is good? Like even injustice, even things

01:48:48.780 that happened to you, like what, what if you lose your eye and go blind? I mean, like what, you know,

01:48:53.940 well, then just look at the silver lining. I mean, it's, I I'm oversimplifying it quite a bit. I,

01:49:00.820 there's a much, I think, deeper discussion in the book, but it really does just simplify to look at the

01:49:07.200 silver lining just because there's an injustice done against you. Doesn't mean you have to tell

01:49:10.600 yourself that story. Doesn't mean you have to tell yourself a story of being a victim. Um, you can be a

01:49:16.940 victor, even if it's false, like even if you really are a victim. Now I think people over victimize

01:49:22.680 themselves these days to an extraordinary degree. I think they either lie about their victimhood or

01:49:27.700 they, or they associate victimhood with bad luck, you know, and then there's a difference, right? And

01:49:33.720 in either case though, it doesn't actually change how you should react to it. And you can react like a

01:49:40.020 person with fortitude and tell yourself a story of, of being better for it and being a victor, or you can

01:49:44.400 tell yourself a story of being a victim and see where that leads you. And I promise you won't lead

01:49:48.480 you anywhere. Good.

01:49:49.960 I think that's a perfect place to stop. There's a bunch more things I would like to talk to you about,

01:49:55.200 but you know, we've, we, we traversed a lot of ground and you can have me back anytime, you know,

01:50:01.320 good, good. You thanked me for coming on, but I'm pretty sure I was like, can I come onto your

01:50:05.660 podcast, Jordan? That's actually what happened. So I appreciate it.

01:50:09.300 I'm, I'm really pleased to have you on it. I, I really appreciate it talking to you. And there

01:50:13.660 are other things I'd like to talk to you about in the future. I didn't talk to you

01:50:16.480 about, you know, potential political ambitions and many other things, but that's, this was

01:50:20.800 good. So, and that ended well. So thanks a lot. And I really appreciate it. Yeah. And

01:50:27.820 thanks for your service, you know, well, thank you. Yeah, really. I know us academics were

01:50:35.180 protected by a ring of people who put themselves on the line to make sure that we have the freedom

01:50:39.840 to complain. Well, you know, I, uh, I never really saw the SEAL teams of service because

01:50:45.160 it was, it was this adventure for us. Um, uh, if you look at, if you know, Matt best, uh, he was

01:50:51.260 actually the part of black rifle coffee with them. And he wrote a book called thank you for my service.

01:50:56.440 And I think that actually gets really to the, how a lot of veterans feel about their service.

01:51:00.520 They're like, I got to go jump out of airplanes and go, you know, blow things up with my best

01:51:05.460 friends. I don't understand how this is service. This is great. And yeah, sometimes you lose an

01:51:09.720 eye, but he signed up for it. Um, I will say politics feels a lot more like service. I will

01:51:15.980 say that there's zero glory in it. Uh, but it's important and you know, that's, that's, it's

01:51:23.400 fulfilling. That's why I do it. Hey man, thanks a lot. And for the invitation to the youth summit.

01:51:31.000 Yeah. Hey, we're going to keep, uh, when we get dates for next year, we're going to keep

01:51:34.600 bugging you about it. So love to, we'd love to see you there. Hopefully. How's your health?

01:51:39.320 Are you feeling better? Yeah, I'm still like running about 70%, but that's better than two.

01:51:47.400 It's a hell of a lot better than two. Yeah, it is. Yes. So thanks. 70 for you is a lot,

01:51:52.320 a lot more than most people. Um, well, we need you. The world needs you. Please, please take

01:51:58.360 care of yourself. Good luck with your political duties and hopefully we'll talk soon. All right.

01:52:04.300 Yeah, I need it. Thanks, Jordan.

01:52:06.340 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 03, 2022

214. Fortitude： American Resilience ｜ Dan Crenshaw

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