The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 Hello everyone. I'd like to tell you very briefly about my new book called An ABC of Childhood

00:00:05.540 Tragedy. I wrote these poems. It's 26 poems, one for each letter of the alphabet, when I was doing

00:00:10.780 a lot of clinical work and seeing the sorts of terrible things that happened within people's

00:00:15.080 families. And I suppose in some sense it was an attempt to blow off some steam. Maybe I'll read

00:00:19.700 you a couple of the alphabet poems so you get some sense of what you're in for if you dare to

00:00:25.740 buy the book. It's pretty rough, so be warned. A. Adela, an abusive sprat, was fond of teasing

00:00:32.520 little brats. They finally jumped her one fine day and now Adela's locked away. F. Frederick was

00:00:40.300 sadly flawed after he was madly pawed by his neighbor, deeply awed. Where the hell was Christian

00:00:48.260 God? If you liked A Nightmare Before Christmas, if you like Edward Gorey, then maybe you'll like

00:00:53.780 the ABC of Childhood Tragedy. You can find it at abctragedy.com. Happy reading, folks!

00:01:01.260 Hello, everyone, and thanks for tuning in to everyone who's watching and listening. I have

00:01:23.880 the privilege today of speaking with Senator Joshua Hawley. Republican Joshua Hawley is a lawyer who

00:01:32.540 has served as the junior United States Senator from Missouri since 2019. From 2017 to 2019, Senator

00:01:42.560 Hawley was the 42nd Attorney General of Missouri. He graduated from Stanford in 2002, completed a

00:01:50.080 postgraduate internship at St. Paul School in London from 2002 to 2003, and then attended law school at

00:01:57.760 Yale, graduating in 2006. He was a law clerk to Tenth Circuit Judge Michael W. McConnell and Chief Justice

00:02:05.400 John Roberts from 2006 to 2008, and worked as a lawyer in private practice from 2008 to 2011. Senator Hawley

00:02:12.780 also served as an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, where he taught

00:02:18.460 constitutional law. And he served as a faculty member of the Conservative Blackstone Legal Fellowship. He's

00:02:25.560 known as a powerful and upcoming voice on the social conservative front. Welcome, Senator Hawley.

00:02:32.000 Thanks very much for agreeing to speak with me today. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. I think

00:02:38.120 we might as well dive right into the political, although we're going to get into the philosophical and

00:02:42.060 perhaps the theological, arguably, as the conversation progresses. And so we're recording this

00:02:47.780 mid-October. The midterms are coming up in the U.S. This is a crucial election in many ways. What do you

00:02:55.220 see happening on the midterm front? Well, I think that the Republicans are going to retake the House. I

00:03:01.360 think we're going to retake the Senate as well. We're at a 50-50 balance right now in the United States

00:03:05.440 Senate. It's actually, Jordan, the longest 50-50 split in the United States Senate in history,

00:03:10.160 in American history. I think that's going to come to an end here in a few weeks. I predict

00:03:14.200 Republicans will take back majorities in both houses. And then in many ways, the really difficult

00:03:19.260 work for Republicans and conservatives is going to begin, which is, A, to stop this deeply unpopular

00:03:25.180 and, I would argue, deeply destructive agenda of the radical left, which has taken over the Biden

00:03:29.900 administration. But then also we're going to have to start to put forward an alternative agenda.

00:03:35.780 And that's something I think conservatives need to give a lot of thought to. I'm not sure that

00:03:39.520 we've given it enough thought as a party, as a group, and it's going to be very pressing, I think.

00:03:45.480 Yeah, well, the conservatives are always pilloried by the left as reactionary. And I think the reason

00:03:51.420 for that is, well, first of all, the right, the conservatives do react to the excesses of the

00:03:57.160 left constantly as the left nibbles away like piranhas at the entire structure of the society.

00:04:04.420 But I think conservatives are often set back on their heels on the vision front, too, because

00:04:10.380 it's not that easy to articulate a defense of, let's say, axiomatic presumptions.

00:04:16.760 No, I've often thought if you approach someone who's conservative and you say something like,

00:04:22.380 justify marriage, it's easy to render the person so assaulted, let's say, inarticulate,

00:04:30.660 because, well, we've basically agreed that marriage is a good thing for some tens of thousands

00:04:36.100 of years. And it's not that easy to formulate a visionary defense of institutions that, in

00:04:42.520 some sense, you might think that everybody takes for granted in terms of their value.

00:04:48.100 And so I see this on the conservative front. It's not easy at all. I've talked to conservatives

00:04:52.620 all over Europe and Canada and the US. It's not easy at all for them to formulate a vision

00:04:57.160 that, particularly one that's attractive to young people. So what do you think beckons

00:05:01.400 on that front for conservatives?

00:05:05.000 Well, I think that what we're seeing right now, what's at play in this election,

00:05:08.880 really, is the sort of fundamental foundations of American culture. Jordan, I think what's

00:05:13.820 driving American politics is culture and its society. And if you look at what the left is doing

00:05:19.480 in our country, in the United States, the left is attacking the foundations of American culture

00:05:25.480 and the foundations of American society. It's really a campaign of political nihilism.

00:05:30.720 And what they're saying is, is that America is systemically unjust, systemically oppressive,

00:05:36.700 systemically evil. And their whole effort is, and by the way, so is our free market system.

00:05:42.560 It's systemically warped. And so their entire campaign, really, and their message to the American

00:05:48.480 people and to young people is that we need to bulldoze it and start all over. And they want to

00:05:54.120 reconstruct our society and their image. Really, there's a very French revolutionary

00:05:58.280 aspect to this. I mean, it really sounds a lot like the liberals, the so-called liberals,

00:06:02.740 the so-called left of the French Revolution, which was a very similar project. I think today's

00:06:06.680 liberals have embraced that big time. And I think what conservatives need to say is actually,

00:06:11.360 the foundations of American society are very strong. The dignity of the common person, that's what

00:06:18.000 our country is built on. The dignity of the ordinary working man and woman, that still is

00:06:23.680 the foundation of this country. The individual liberty, the idea that work has dignity, has worth,

00:06:32.560 has value, that a family is something that is a great and noble pursuit in life. That as a man,

00:06:38.260 you can contribute to your society and make the world a better place. That as a man and woman,

00:06:43.080 together you can build a haven and a home. These very fundamental foundational things, I really

00:06:48.680 think is what our politics is about today. And the left has no longer believes those things. And I

00:06:53.780 think that for conservatives, it's not just about we need to improve the economy, although we do because

00:07:00.040 the left is destroying the American economy, especially for working people. But it's really

00:07:04.320 more fundamentally that we've got to preserve the foundations of our culture that allows people

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00:08:46.820 Well, you know, the idea that the U.S. is somehow systemically racist in its essence is an accusation

00:08:59.160 that's really troublesome to me because I don't just think that it's merely a lie. I think it's

00:09:06.360 an anti-truth. Like most lies are lies that are sort of like truth, but a little bit. They have the

00:09:12.600 details are modified here and there so that people can get away with whatever they're lying about. But

00:09:17.320 now and then you hear a lie so egregious that it couldn't be farther from the truth. And so

00:09:21.920 what I find mysterious about all this is the credibility of the claim. So we could give the

00:09:29.800 devil his due and we could say every institutional structure ever generated by human beings has a

00:09:36.400 corrupt element. And it's corrupted by, let's say, the desire for narcissistic power on behalf of the

00:09:43.700 people who occupy the structure. And since time immemorial, it's been necessary for human beings

00:09:49.440 to keep an eye on their institutions so they don't become entirely corrupt. But to point out that

00:09:55.940 institutions contend towards corruption, let's say, as a consequence of the inappropriate expression

00:10:03.180 of power is a very different thing than to say that the institutions themselves are built on

00:10:08.920 something approximating exploitation. And then when I look at the Anglo-American tradition, let's say,

00:10:15.560 which the U.S. firmly sits in the middle of, obviously, what I see is the manifestation of the

00:10:24.460 only great society in human history that's been essentially anti-slavery. And so the spirit,

00:10:32.980 the spirit that produced, well, both Great Britain in its democratic manifestation and then out of

00:10:38.280 that the United States, the spirit that's produced that and the autonomy that's part and parcel of that

00:10:42.860 is exactly the spirit that's fought against the status quo of slavery, which is something

00:10:49.460 approximating human universal. And so I find it so utterly preposterous that this insistence has been

00:10:57.780 put forward that, in its essence, the American enterprise is somehow racist and oppressive,

00:11:04.580 even though it might be contaminated with that, as all systems are. So I don't understand why this

00:11:09.780 has become so acceptable to people. Maybe you can expand on that.

00:11:19.080 Well, you know, I think that a couple of things. I mean, the first is that there's a big difference,

00:11:23.140 and you're getting at it, between thinking of the founding of the United States, let's say,

00:11:28.320 as in 1776, which is indeed when the country was founded with the Declaration of Independence,

00:11:33.020 and 1619, which is what the American left now says with their infamous 1619 project. Why did they

00:11:38.980 pick that date? Because that's the date that the slave trade began to be practiced at scale on the

00:11:43.720 North American continent. So now if you think that, 1619 was the true founding of the United States,

00:11:50.280 what you're saying is the country is founded on the principle of oppression. The country is founded

00:11:57.300 on the idea of exploiting some people so that other people can get ahead. And that's what America is.

00:12:03.920 Now, if you think that's what America is most fundamentally, then you probably think that

00:12:09.240 America needs to be fundamentally changed and reformed and overhauled from top to bottom. And that would

00:12:15.180 explain the left's program, because that's what they're arguing for today.

00:12:17.940 Well, but if that is America in its fundament, then why isn't there still slavery?

00:12:24.080 Because look, this is the crucial issue here, because look, slavery isn't a mystery. The idea

00:12:30.580 that might makes right, and that if I can, I can compel you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise do

00:12:36.100 using force, that's been a governing principle of many societies as far back as we can look in the past.

00:12:41.980 And then recently, there's been some societies who have more or less managed to escape from that

00:12:48.200 temptation. And certainly, the Western democracies are first and foremost among those countries. And

00:12:54.460 maybe the US and Great Britain, first and foremost among those. And so if it's the case that the US was

00:13:00.300 founded on the principle of enslavement, then why did slavery disappear? What's the explanation coming

00:13:07.480 from the left for that?

00:13:08.480 Yes. And I think, Jordan, you've laid the finger on the problem with that worldview. I mean, I think

00:13:14.440 that what they would probably say is that, well, you had a farsighted vanguard that realized that the

00:13:21.080 fundamental tenets of American society were terribly mistaken. And so in order to correct,

00:13:26.280 in order to end the oppression, you have to then introduce something that is, in many ways,

00:13:30.760 fundamentally anti-American. This is the point. If you think that America was founded in 1619,

00:13:37.080 founded on oppression, then the only way to get rid of the oppression is to do something that is

00:13:41.800 contrary to America's traditions. I would argue, by contrast, if you believe that the country was

00:13:46.920 founded truly in 1776 upon the principle that all men and women are endowed with unalienable rights,

00:13:55.160 in Jefferson's phrase, from their creator, well, then you have something quite different. And then we get to

00:14:00.440 what you were just saying a moment ago. Then the story of American history becomes the story to

00:14:04.200 realize that principle. And of course, in the face of injustice, certainly in the face of

00:14:14.360 backsliding, if you like, but it's always pushing forward towards that principle. And that is, in fact,

00:14:20.280 the truth, which is why did America eliminate slavery? That's why.

00:14:23.480 Okay. Okay. So let's take that particular tack. So if slavery is wrong, which I think we can all agree

00:14:33.240 is true, then we might have to ask ourselves, well, on what grounds do you make the claim that slavery

00:14:39.880 is wrong? And your point with regards to the founding document, the Declaration of Independence,

00:14:45.480 is that there is an axiom being put forth there that all human beings, men and women alike, regardless of

00:14:51.720 race, have some intrinsic inviolable worth that's associated with the fact that they're an image

00:14:58.920 of the creative principle itself, the image of the creator itself. And so that's what's self-evident.

00:15:05.960 And so it's the consequence of that self-evidence that the moral claim that slavery is in fact wrong

00:15:11.480 can be put forth. And so that's where the impetus comes from. So if you're opposing that idea and you

00:15:17.240 say, well, no, the US is based on an alternative anti-slavery principle, and that's generated by

00:15:24.680 this vanguard, what's the basis for the derivation of the anti-slavery principle that hypothetically

00:15:30.280 motivates the vanguard? Where did that come from? Because I think that's completely historically

00:15:34.200 inaccurate. If you look carefully at the manner in which opposition to slavery made itself manifest,

00:15:42.600 it appears to me that it's part and parcel of a much older biblical then British tradition. And

00:15:48.520 that is the flowering of this idea, this strange idea that despite surface appearances, that might

00:15:55.800 be differences in wealth and status, the difference between the aristocracy even and the commoners,

00:16:00.840 human beings have an intrinsic dignity that's not to be trifled with, certainly not economically.

00:16:10.200 And that's the spirit that manifested the rise of democracy in Great Britain, and also the spirit

00:16:17.640 that animated the formation of the US. Now, I don't understand how you can lay out an alternative to

00:16:25.880 that. So how do you think this is being managed on the left? Who is this vanguard? Is this enlightenment

00:16:33.320 rationalists or some damn thing? Because that's not going to fly.

00:16:36.360 No, I think that is what they believe. I think they think that they have true... Listen, I think

00:16:42.280 just to take a step back, you mentioned the Bible, I'm glad that you did, because I would make the

00:16:47.240 strong claim that I know is controversial in many quarters of the elite today, in many quarters of

00:16:53.000 the educational establishment in America and elsewhere, that actually the American tradition of individual

00:16:59.080 liberty, the American tradition of self-government, of individual dignity, really runs back to what I would

00:17:05.080 call the revolution of the Bible. It goes all the way back to the tradition that comes to us through

00:17:10.600 Jerusalem and Athens that says that, in fact, we are created in the image of a creator. Every person has

00:17:16.760 inherent dignity and worth. That was a revolutionary concept, as you know, in the ancient world, incredibly

00:17:22.040 disruptive, incredibly disruptive. And I would argue as a historical matter and as a philosophical matter, that

00:17:27.800 great disruption of the ancient status quo, which was built on power, which was built on status, that

00:17:34.680 disruption begins with the revolution of the Bible and it ripples through, as you said, through English

00:17:39.560 history, British history, through American history, and it's really the foundation, the philosophical

00:17:44.360 foundation of the United States. Now, the left, I think, is fundamentally opposed to that tradition. They view that

00:17:51.080 tradition as oppressive. They think it's not a source of liberation. They think it's a source of oppression.

00:17:56.680 And so I think much like the French revolutionaries of the 1700s, or for that matter, Marx, a century

00:18:03.800 later, they think that to end the oppressiveness of that tradition, you've got to, in fact, reinvent

00:18:13.000 it. That you have to depart from the biblical tradition. But on what principles? But on what

00:18:17.960 principles are you going to reinvent it? Well, we know how the French Revolution turned out. That wasn't so

00:18:22.520 good. I mean, you make these new principles out of whole cloth and you start with the axiomatic

00:18:29.640 presupposition, for example, that slavery is wrong and that just floats in the air somehow. There's no

00:18:36.280 ground underneath that. This is what I don't understand is if the radicals on the left are so

00:18:42.680 opposed to the imposition of arbitrary power, let's say, in its ultimate form, that being slavery,

00:18:49.480 then they are standing for something like the intrinsic dignity of the individual. And that

00:18:55.320 principle, as far as I can tell, as you just laid out, is a biblical principle. That's where it came

00:18:59.720 from. And I don't see how you... I don't understand how that can be disputed. I mean, you see that,

00:19:04.920 for example, in the book of Exodus with the insistence that there's something intrinsically wrong with

00:19:11.880 the slavery of people who should be free, even if they don't want to be free, because the Israelites

00:19:16.840 aren't necessarily that happy about being freed is that there's something intrinsically wrong with

00:19:21.480 slavery itself. And I think the intrinsic wrong of slavery is something like violation of the

00:19:30.360 principle of the intrinsic divine worth of each individual. And that is a biblical presupposition,

00:19:37.400 obviously. So I still can't get a grip on why that would be opposed if the opposition that's

00:19:46.920 being generated is in fact opposition to slavery itself. Why would you go after the spirit that freed

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00:21:06.200 I think it's a good question, and I don't know that I have the answer since I don't hold to that

00:21:11.720 worldview, but I think Jordan, I think what it really comes down to is the left, whether we're

00:21:17.400 talking about the left of the French Revolution or the left of today, and I do think that they share

00:21:23.000 a fundamental animating spirit, I think the left sees any sort of authority higher than their own

00:21:30.920 desires and their own will as fundamentally oppressive. So as soon as you mention the word God,

00:21:36.600 that becomes a source of oppression. Oh, wait a minute, there's some higher standard than what

00:21:41.880 I want to do with my life? There's some higher standard than my whims or passions? No, no, no,

00:21:47.000 no, no, no, no, that's oppressive. I'm being oppressed. And so they almost see the individual

00:21:51.560 as a self-sustaining, self-generating, self-originating entity. The problem with that is

00:21:58.760 that if that's true, then on what basis are you going to claim that all individuals have equal

00:22:03.740 dignity, that no one individual should oppress another, and that we should work together in a

00:22:09.160 form of self-government and common liberty? I mean, it gets to the problem that you've been talking

00:22:12.320 about. But I think it's the idea really of God, if we're coming right down to it.

00:22:16.320 Oh, well, I was just thinking about the argument that can be laid forth on the conservative front

00:22:22.720 with regards to a vision that might be attractive, let's say, to young people. Because one of the things

00:22:28.720 that I've noticed on my tours, in particular, talking to young people about the meaning that can be

00:22:35.440 derived from life that can sustain you through tragedy, is that that's not found in an atomistic

00:22:42.160 subjectively defined liberalism. And there's an interesting clinical element to this. So

00:22:47.040 we know that thoughts that are associated with self-consciousness are statistically

00:22:55.200 indistinguishable from experiences of negative emotion. So it's literally the case that the more

00:23:03.220 you think about yourself, the more unhappy you are. Unhappy, anxious, grief-stricken, frustrated,

00:23:10.100 disappointed, disappointed, hurt. And so then you think, well, where do people find the meaning that

00:23:17.320 helps them abide through tragedy and turn their attention away from themselves? And the answer is,

00:23:23.880 well, we don't even have to introduce God into the picture at the moment. You say, well,

00:23:29.620 you find a fair bit of that sustaining meaning through reciprocal relationships. You want to have an

00:23:35.000 intimate relationship of some duration, or it's just a series of short-term psychopathically

00:23:41.980 narcissistic pit stops, which don't seem to do anyone any good. So you want to have an intimate

00:23:46.960 relationship of some duration. You probably want to have a family, at least to have some contact with

00:23:53.380 your parents and your siblings, and perhaps even children, if you dare to do that. Likely you need

00:23:58.400 some friends. You probably need something approximating a job or a career. You have to be nested inside a

00:24:04.760 series of superordinate social structures in order to be a functioning individual at all.

00:24:10.900 And so I think conservatives can offer a rejoinder to the liberals and say, you are assuming that

00:24:18.340 individual autonomy is a higher good only because for centuries the individual was so ensconced in

00:24:25.280 superordinate social community by default that you could just ignore that that existed. And now we can't

00:24:31.160 do that anymore because people are so fractionated that they're abandoning, well, marriage, they're

00:24:36.280 abandoning family, they're abandoning friendship, I suppose, in favor of its virtual alternative.

00:24:42.420 And that's catastrophic. And I think young people know this.

00:24:46.560 I agree with that. And I think that there's a message that young people want to hear, Jordan,

00:24:53.060 which is that their lives can matter and that their sacrifices can matter and that you find meaning

00:24:59.480 in life, not so much by what you gain, but by what you give up. It's not so much by what you accrue to

00:25:05.640 yourself, but it's what you give away to other people. It's who you choose to serve, what you

00:25:10.140 choose to spend your life on. And I think what modern liberalism tells people is demand your rights,

00:25:15.400 demand entitlements, demand the fulfillment of your desires. What conservatives should be saying is,

00:25:21.600 go and find somebody to serve. Go and find something greater than yourself to be part of.

00:25:26.940 Go and give your life to something. And as you do, you'll find that you are able to make the world

00:25:32.700 around you a better place. And you don't do that by, again, accruing things to yourself. You don't do

00:25:38.460 that by piling up more rights. You do that by giving yourself away, in a sense, which is, I think,

00:25:43.460 a very fundamental truth that every husband knows, every father knows. And I think that that's

00:25:48.860 something that young people want to hear. They want to be called to something greater than

00:25:53.440 themselves. And liberalism just doesn't offer that. Liberalism is, at the end of the day,

00:25:57.860 it's a cult of satisfying your own desire, whatever it may be today. And it leaves people fundamentally

00:26:02.840 alone, adrift, and isolated.

00:26:05.380 Well, that, what you mentioned, that it satisfies the liberal ethos, satisfies what you want today,

00:26:13.380 or what you want at this moment. And that also makes it shallow in a non-sustainable way. Because

00:26:20.240 I think that if you treat yourself properly, which might be part of a more mature liberal ethos,

00:26:27.420 let's say, then you're not a prisoner of each momentary whim. And the reason for that is that

00:26:34.760 all that happens, if you are that, is that you betray yourself. And so we know, for example,

00:26:39.680 that psychopaths who are motivated by power, and very manipulative, and who are in it for the

00:26:44.980 gratification of their own whims, do very badly across any reasonable length of time. They're

00:26:50.380 completely incapable of learning from experience, technically. And what that means is, they constantly

00:26:55.620 betray themselves. And so, if you're pursuing an impulse of hedonism, then to hell with you

00:27:01.740 tomorrow, fundamentally. And next week, and next year, you continue to do things that are pleasurable

00:27:07.600 or escapist in the moment, but all it does is drive you downhill across time. Because you should

00:27:13.300 treat yourself as a community that extends across time. And so, and I do think that young people are

00:27:20.180 cottoning onto this in a major way. And it is something that conservatives can lay out in great

00:27:26.780 detail. And this idea about giving, you know, even if you do want the best for yourself in some higher

00:27:33.000 sense, let's say, yourself across time, it's clearly the case that the most effective way to achieve that

00:27:40.980 is to be unbelievably useful and generous to other people. Because there are a lot of other people.

00:27:47.220 And so, if you're interacting with them in a manner that is, let's say, self-sacrificing in a

00:27:53.500 reciprocal manner and generous, then they're going to want to interact with you. And so, if you interact

00:27:59.820 with a thousand people in your life and you're generous to all them and they reciprocate, then

00:28:04.540 you're the beneficiary of a thousand acts of generosity, a thousand continual sets of acts of

00:28:09.680 generosity. How can that not be a better approach than trying to maximize your momentary,

00:28:17.220 whim, let's say?

00:28:18.820 I think that's exactly right. And I think that today, in our contemporary culture in the United

00:28:25.140 States, at least Jordan, today, because of the rise of technology, big tech, social media,

00:28:30.620 the problem is not that young people feel that they can't, that they're too enmeshed in community,

00:28:40.680 that there are too many people who care about them. It's not that they feel smothered,

00:28:44.400 it's that they feel totally isolated because they're losing face-to-face contact with friends,

00:28:50.500 they're losing meaningful relationships. I mean, they feel isolated, they feel alone,

00:28:55.460 they feel alienated. And we know this is true because if you look at the statistics,

00:28:59.740 what people tell pollsters in terms of the feeling of isolation, what we see from treatment of

00:29:04.040 depression, what we see from suicide in the United States, suicide rates in the United States,

00:29:08.440 among, unfortunately, all demographics, but particularly young people, particularly young

00:29:13.540 men, are rising to levels that we haven't seen in the country really ever. And this should tell us

00:29:19.920 that there's something that is fundamentally amiss with the sort of culture of self-gratification

00:29:26.280 that liberalism has on offer, that people want more than that. They sense that there is more to life

00:29:31.760 than that. They want to be connected with something greater than themselves.

00:29:34.800 Well, you talked about young men there and their despair. I mean, if your culture is telling you

00:29:41.980 constantly that all of your ambition is either part of the patriarchal process of oppression and

00:29:50.000 corruption, and that even if you manage something despite that particular caustic criticism, then

00:29:57.080 everything ambitious you ever do is only contributing to the despoiling of the planet, then you have

00:30:03.500 a story about social interaction that is predicated on the assumption that every single kind of social

00:30:13.060 structure, marriage, friendship, all of that, certainly employment, civic engagement, political

00:30:19.020 endeavor, that's nothing but the manifestation of the brute will to power. It's no wonder that would

00:30:26.720 make you cynical, especially if you're actually ethical, because you might think, well, I don't want to be

00:30:32.100 corrupt, and I don't want to be a corrupt despoiler, so I just won't do anything. And then, well, then, of

00:30:39.480 course, you don't do anything, and all you do under those circumstances is suffer. And it's so corrosive

00:30:46.200 and acidic, that critique. Again, you could say, well, when relationships deteriorate, they deteriorate

00:30:55.780 in the direction of narcissistic expression of power. But that doesn't mean at all, ever, that

00:31:02.760 the basis for any relationship is power. I don't think there's any evidence for that at all. I think

00:31:09.560 it's a completely preposterous claim. And my worry is, is that what the left, what the modern left leaves

00:31:14.420 us with, Jordan, is really nothing more than the narcissistic expression of power. My worry is that

00:31:19.460 as the left's program has come to take root, as they've attacked these cultural institutions like

00:31:25.540 the family, like the church, like even the local neighborhood, as they have attacked the very idea

00:31:33.580 of finding your life in sacrifice and service to others, what are we left with? We're left with

00:31:39.520 whoever has the most options and the most power is the most free. What are we left with? We're left with

00:31:45.240 a new hierarchy in the United States, which is, if you have an advanced degree and can earn a lot of

00:31:51.880 money, then you are the best. And you have the most choices in life. And you are the most valuable

00:31:58.160 member of society. If you're not, if you are not somebody who wants to go get a four-year college

00:32:02.500 degree, if you don't earn a lot of money, then you're somehow less than, you're lesser. So what we end up

00:32:07.140 with is a hierarchy of elitism, a hierarchy of educational attainment, a hierarchy of status.

00:32:14.180 And this, I would argue, is what happens when you take away the idea that every individual has

00:32:20.280 fundamental worth and dignity, that every individual is created in the image of God, and that every

00:32:24.680 individual finds his or her ultimate purpose and meaning in serving others. And so my concern is, is

00:32:29.700 that even as the left attacks American tradition and cultural institutions as being oppressive, what

00:32:35.020 they actually give us through their campaign of cultural nihilism is a form of hierarchy and elitism,

00:32:41.260 and of course, also expanding government, government control, government supervision,

00:32:47.220 government surveillance.

00:32:48.240 You know, as people abandon their subsidiary social organizations, so you abandon your long-term

00:32:57.200 marital commitment, you abandon your decision to have children, you abandon your willingness to

00:33:05.240 engage in reciprocal friendships, you don't shoulder your civic duty, you isolate yourself in your

00:33:11.240 job and your career. All of that responsibility that you undertake is then vacuumed up by people

00:33:17.380 who will use it for the purposes of their own power. That's definitely the case. I mean, you see this

00:33:24.740 with the emerging tyranny, let's say, and pathology at levels of civic organization like the school

00:33:31.880 boards where ordinary people who share a common vision have abdicated their responsibility for

00:33:40.900 these mid-level bureaucracies, and they're instantly invaded by people who are ideologically possessed

00:33:46.320 and power mad. And so another useful message for young people is that if you don't take on the

00:33:53.220 responsibility that's commensurate with a properly integrated life, then tyrants will take all that

00:33:59.780 responsibility from you and use it to, in the name of the maintenance of oppressive power.

00:34:06.800 You have atomized individuals and a centralized state. That's all there'll be left.

00:34:11.300 Exactly. And by the way, that's a historical pattern. We saw that pattern with the French

00:34:15.840 Revolution, right? I mean, in the name of liberty, fraternity, equality, what did we end up with?

00:34:21.520 We ended up with the terror, which was managed by just a very few people, and then you ended up

00:34:26.060 ultimately with Napoleon. I mean, you talk about an oppressive dictatorship that happens when you

00:34:32.620 take away those institutions that actually gather together individuals, that pool, if you like,

00:34:39.640 individual sovereignty, and that act as a way in which the individual expresses himself or herself.

00:34:44.600 You know, the other thing I would say about modern America, Jordan, is this, is that if you believe,

00:34:48.040 like the left says, that modern American society is systemically corrupt and oppressive and all the

00:34:52.800 rest, the question becomes, well, who's going to remake it? And the left's answer is the government.

00:34:58.260 The government's going to remake it. You know, the government is going to use the power of the

00:35:01.980 state, which is the power of coercion, to fundamentally change this society. And I just argue to you,

00:35:08.940 that's what Joe Biden has been doing. If you want to know why the Biden administration is putting

00:35:13.220 their diversity, inclusion, and equity agenda into every nook and cranny of the federal government,

00:35:18.860 that's why, if you want to know why they're turning the FBI loose on parents who complain at school

00:35:23.840 board meetings, that's why they are willing to use and eager to use the power of the state to try and

00:35:31.080 change what they believe is the oppressive nature of American society. And the danger of that, the

00:35:36.020 coerciveness of that, I think it's hugely, hugely alarming.

00:35:39.580 Why do you think that a remedial vision has been lacking so intensely on the conservative side?

00:35:48.700 And then, so that's question number one. And question number two, do you see a reactionary danger

00:35:57.200 emerging on the side of the reactionary right?

00:36:02.900 Yeah, I think that yes. On the second question, yes. I mean, I think that what we have to be careful of

00:36:08.680 is you've got the left that wants to really, in a sense, burn it all down, metaphorically speaking.

00:36:15.320 Although for some of the riots that we saw in, for instance, 2020, it's not metaphorical at all.

00:36:20.160 I mean, they really are willing to torch buildings and storm government centers and assault cops and so

00:36:26.300 on. But you've got this spirit of nihilism on the left. And I think it is the danger on the right is

00:36:32.680 we mustn't react with a concomitant spirit of nihilism ourselves, where we say, yeah, that's

00:36:39.100 right. It's all corrupt. It's all destroyed. It's all worthless. We've got to completely start over.

00:36:44.960 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What we want to say is, what we should be saying is, no,

00:36:48.680 America, actually, the foundations of this country is fundamentally good. It's fundamentally sound.

00:36:54.620 Does there need to be reform? Yeah, of course there does. I mean, it's the Burkean point,

00:36:58.400 right? A society without the means of change is without the means of its conservation and its

00:37:02.540 preservation. So yeah, there's corruption that needs to be addressed. There are reforms that

00:37:07.260 need to be made. There's, I would argue, we're seeing in the Biden administration deep corruption

00:37:12.260 in many levels of our government. But the foundations of our system, our constitution,

00:37:18.020 our philosophical beliefs, going back to the foundations of the biblical tradition, those are

00:37:23.460 not only sound. Those are the things that make America, America. And I think for conservatives,

00:37:29.520 our vision has to be centered around preserving those and returning those to their rightful place.

00:37:34.980 And so it's not a campaign of nihilism. It's a campaign of building up. It's a campaign of saying

00:37:40.640 that, listen, Americans are proud of thinking that we're the greatest country in the history of the

00:37:44.920 world. I think that. And if you believe that, then you've got to put forward an agenda that's

00:37:49.760 about returning and strengthening the foundations of America's strength. And I think that's what

00:37:54.240 conservatives should be for. We've got to resist the siren song of saying, yeah, we'll join the left

00:37:58.420 and just burn it all down. That I think is dangerous. This is one of the things that has been perturbing

00:38:03.200 me about the, and we could talk again about the midterms and maybe about the 2024 presidential election.

00:38:10.840 What I see happening on the right, on the Trump side in particular, and it's quite shocking to me in

00:38:16.380 some sense is that the narrative seems to be that the institutions are so corrupt that even

00:38:22.960 the democratic process itself can no longer be trusted. And the problem I see on that front is

00:38:29.000 that it does, first of all, it plays against the Trump brand as far as I can tell, because Trump was

00:38:34.540 the guy who didn't have things stolen from him and who came out victorious even if he was confronted

00:38:40.260 by tyranny itself. He can deal with people like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, no problem.

00:38:47.680 And so for him to claim that the country was pulled out from underneath him seems to me to be off

00:38:52.940 brand. But even more dangerous is that it leads to this kind of corrosive cynicism about the fundamental

00:39:00.220 utility of institutions in the United States. And that does play into the hands of the radicals,

00:39:07.840 whether they are right or left wing. And so, um, so I would like you to comment about that. Um,

00:39:15.040 and because it seems to me the Republican party in some sense is tearing itself apart over the,

00:39:19.920 uh, over the election issue. And, and then I would also like your opinion about why

00:39:27.400 there is a swing towards the Republicans in this midterm, um, and who, and who is at the forefront

00:39:34.300 of that swing. Yeah. Let, let me start with the first. I think that as I talk to conservative

00:39:41.740 voters, I represent the state of Missouri, as you said at the beginning. And as I talk to folks at

00:39:46.140 home, the thing that concerns me most and, and where I, I, I, I think the, the, the spirit we have

00:39:54.300 to guard against is when people say, you know, I just am so, I am so upset and I am so distraught over

00:40:01.680 what's happening in our country. I just don't think it's worth it anymore. I don't think that

00:40:05.200 what I do anymore matters. I don't think my vote matters anymore. Uh, I, I just, I just don't think

00:40:10.760 it matters. And so I just, I just am willing to give up that I think is a very alarming. Um,

00:40:17.820 and ultimately of course, self self-fulfilling, uh, attitude and, and, and one, I think we've got

00:40:23.420 to combat against. So what I always say is, is listen, that this, this is a democracy. I mean,

00:40:27.920 at the end of the day, let me put it to you this way. Theodore Roosevelt, who is one of my boyhood

00:40:32.000 heroes, Theodore Roosevelt once said that in America, we're not ruled over by other people in

00:40:37.280 America. Every man and woman is a sovereign. And so we have the responsibilities that a sovereign

00:40:42.760 would have. There is something that is extremely dignifying about that. And also very true. And I

00:40:48.660 think that in this moment of turmoil in the United States, what we have to say, conservatives

00:40:53.480 especially has to say is this is a time for we, the American people to stand up and to take

00:40:58.780 seriously our responsibilities as the sovereigns of this nation. We've got to make decisions and act

00:41:04.820 and engage in a way that is going to be for the benefit of the country. That's going to work toward

00:41:09.820 a future that we want to see. So it's got to be pro engagement, not disengagement. It's got to be

00:41:14.300 toward reforming our institutions, not destroying them. And by the way, I don't hear, I don't think

00:41:18.720 conservative voters. I mean, I listened to my voters at home. You don't hear that. They're not the

00:41:22.420 ones who are saying, oh, this country's corrupt. They don't believe that. They think the country's

00:41:25.800 good. They think the country's badly led. And they're right about that. But the solution to that

00:41:29.940 is not to say, we give up, we withdraw. The solution to that is to press in and say, we're going to make

00:41:36.080 change. We're going to engage in the democratic process. We're going to go forward. And I think

00:41:41.540 that that's key. The second thing about the midterms, I was struck, Jordan, recently. I read

00:41:46.440 something by a Democratic pollster, a guy who's a really sharp guy. And his name is David Shore.

00:41:51.500 And I'm sure he would not like me praising him because I'm probably terrible for his reputation.

00:41:56.420 But he's a liberal. Let's be very clear about this, a political liberal. But he's a very smart

00:42:02.220 analyst, worked for President Obama, former President Obama. And something that he said

00:42:06.180 recently really caught my attention because I think it's right. He says that everywhere around the

00:42:11.000 industrialized world, the so-called developed world, and every country in which the left party

00:42:17.840 has emphasized cultural and social change, cultural and social critique, much as the left in America

00:42:27.680 has. In fact, everywhere where they've elevated this idea that the foundations of Western society

00:42:32.180 are fundamentally oppressive and illegitimate, in every single instance, the working people of the

00:42:39.260 country have moved towards the right. Why is that? Because the working people of the country

00:42:44.660 don't believe that. The working people of the country want to preserve their culture and their

00:42:51.320 liberties. They don't want it taken from them in reform. So what does that have to do with the

00:42:55.220 midterms? I think Republicans, why are Republicans benefiting from the swing away from Biden? It's

00:43:00.460 because Joe Biden is out there saying in word and deed that American society needs to be overhauled.

00:43:07.180 And I think that the people of this country, and I keep saying working people, is in contrast to

00:43:11.240 the more educated elite. Because the educated elite, as the products of our educational system,

00:43:17.900 elite educational system, they increasingly are part of, they take the left liberal view. But I think

00:43:24.380 the working people of this country, they say, no, my family, I believe in family. Church, synagogue,

00:43:32.240 I believe in those things. I want my neighborhood to be safe. I want my kids to be taught in school

00:43:36.640 to love America, not to hate America. I want them to be taught that individual liberty is good, not

00:43:40.980 fundamentally oppressive. And they see these things, they say, I'm going to vote for somebody who will

00:43:45.300 keep my family safe, who will preserve these institutions, and who will give me a shot to make

00:43:50.000 something of myself in life. And I think if the Republicans in this country can open their eyes

00:43:55.180 and understand that's why voters are coming to them, then we can begin to craft an agenda that

00:43:59.800 responds to that. If they think that voters are coming to them for just about any other reason,

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00:45:19.860 Yeah, well, you're seeing this swing to a more conservative ethos in all sorts of places all at

00:45:29.200 the same time. It's happened in Italy. It looks like it's going to happen in France. It happened

00:45:34.680 in Sweden of all places. And so, and now with the flip in the midterms, it looks like it's happening

00:45:42.820 in the US. And so, this is an opportunity for conservatives to put forward an alternative

00:45:50.200 vision, and one that seems to be focused on responsibility strikes me as the right rejoinder

00:45:55.120 to the left's constant clamoring about rights. Because the thing is, rights are always obtained

00:46:00.340 at the expense of someone else, in some sense, if you only concentrate on rights. Because every

00:46:06.140 person's rights is the collective's responsibility, let's say, or each individual's responsibility.

00:46:11.440 And the other issue that you brought up is something like the dignity of work and service. And

00:46:17.160 if it's all about your rights and not about your responsibility, and the meaning in your life is

00:46:22.260 actually attendant on the responsibility, then all that clamoring for rights just makes your life

00:46:27.860 devoid of any purposeful meaning. And that strikes me as highly probable, given that most purpose

00:46:33.840 is equivalent, in some sense, to self-sacrifice. To have a purpose is to go do something,

00:46:40.800 right? Not just to sit around and wait, in some sense, for some kind of instantaneous trivial

00:46:46.020 gratification, but to strive forward for something worth attaining. And that is always in the domain

00:46:53.940 of responsibility.

00:46:55.520 And I think that the left and the right, when it comes to the subject of rights, I think the left

00:46:58.760 and the right have a fundamentally different view about rights. The right says that what the Declaration

00:47:04.780 of Independence says is true, that our rights come to us by virtue of the fact that we're made in the

00:47:10.600 image of God. Our rights come to us because they're given by God. And our rights, by the way, point us

00:47:15.340 toward our responsibilities. We have rights that open up to us fields of action where we're supposed

00:47:21.180 to serve. You know, we have the right to follow our conscience, for example. You know, what is that

00:47:25.700 really? Well, that says that we're obligated to follow the truth. And that as we feel, as we understand the

00:47:31.740 truth, you know, what was it Lincoln said? I mean, I will follow the right as God gives me to see the right.

00:47:36.720 You know, that is, it is a right, but it is also a responsibility. That's the rights view, our view,

00:47:41.660 conservative view of responsibility, of rights rather. The left, the left's view is, well, actually, rights

00:47:46.880 are entitlements that come to you from the state. And so, therefore, the state needs to expand its power

00:47:54.300 for you to have more rights. And the problem with that, Jordan, is that the real message to individuals is

00:47:58.840 you're weak and in need of help from the state. You know, you're fundamentally weak. The state needs

00:48:04.320 to help you by giving you all of these things, by taking care of you, by giving you these rights.

00:48:08.820 The conservative message needs to be, you're not weak. You are strong. You have the capacity in

00:48:14.000 yourself to do something, to change the world, to contribute to society. And let's get up and do it.

00:48:19.060 Let's go do something together. Let's go, let's get up there and actually give ourselves to a cause

00:48:23.780 greater than ourselves. I think you look at that difference. It's a very fundamental one.

00:48:28.380 And it results in a very different program for America. Do you want to strengthen people

00:48:33.380 to go dive into their responsibilities, to shoulder more responsibility, to be able to do more on their

00:48:39.680 own? Or do you want government to take care of them while government, by the way, fundamentally

00:48:44.300 reform society? Yeah, well, I suppose it depends on whether or not you think that people are victims

00:48:49.460 or citizens. And if they're victims, then they have to have their oppression remediated. And it would

00:48:58.040 require a central authority to manage that. And of course, that should be the alarm bell

00:49:03.000 right there. It's why in the world are you going to trust a centralizing authority when

00:49:08.160 you have every reason not to? And alternatively, you could say, well, life is difficult. There's

00:49:13.660 no doubt about that. And some people are dealt worse hands than others in some ways. But that

00:49:18.600 doesn't mean that you can't put your best foot forward in service and find the meaning in your

00:49:23.500 life in pushing back against that which enshackles you, let's say. And that strikes me as highly

00:49:30.780 probable and psychologically appropriate. And also a very marketable message, especially to young men.

00:49:37.240 Now, you're also writing a book at the moment on manhood. That's right. We talked about that

00:49:42.380 briefly. Well, so tell me about that and tell me why you're doing that. Well, I'm writing it because

00:49:47.680 as I look out at the problem of at the plight of men in America, you know, it's just what you what

00:49:53.640 you see, Jordan, in the numbers is you see that men are increasingly turning away from work.

00:50:00.260 They're increasingly turning away from education. Let's take some numbers. I mean, since 1965 in the

00:50:05.440 United States, there are 500 percent more men who are out of able-bodied men. I should stipulate able-bodied

00:50:12.760 men of working age who are out of the labor force. That means not even trying to look for a job.

00:50:17.100 500 percent more now than there were in 1965. That is an astounding number. You look at the

00:50:23.620 number of men who are pursuing education, both high school education and higher education. It's

00:50:27.760 collapsing. Right now in the United States, it is 60-40 female-to-male enrollment in colleges. That's

00:50:34.280 great. That's great for women. But for men- Well, it's great for women unless they're looking for a

00:50:39.500 man, in which case it's not so great. A marriageable partner. I've heard recent statistics suggesting that

00:50:45.200 when the ratio of men to women goes lower than 65-35, sorry, women to men lower than 65-35, the women

00:50:53.000 stop going to college too. Wow. Well, we may soon find out because the trend line is down, down, down for

00:51:01.460 male participation. You look at male suicide rates. You look at male drug abuse. All of these things would suggest that

00:51:08.820 there is a pathology or series of pathologies that is afflicting men in the United States, and maybe

00:51:14.860 particularly young men in the United States. And I think this is one of the biggest challenges that we

00:51:20.100 face as a society. So I wanted to think about that. I wanted to do my part to try and say something

00:51:24.920 constructive about it. And I think, Jordan, one of the big things is that I think men don't often have a

00:51:30.740 vision anymore for their lives as to what their lives could be. And they're told, and you referenced it a

00:51:35.380 minute ago, they're told incessantly from the time that they are in grade school that they are part of

00:51:41.740 the problem. And that if they try to go out and be a contributor to society, if they go out and try to

00:51:47.980 exert any kind of leadership in any field or endeavor, that they contribute to the patriarchy, that they

00:51:53.960 contribute to the climate disaster, the so-called climate disaster, as you said earlier, that they

00:51:59.760 contribute to the systemic injustices of America. This is the constant message to men. And I think that

00:52:05.320 that's fundamentally untrue. And we should be saying something to men that's very different. We should

00:52:09.740 be saying to them that this country needs you, that your families need you, that your neighborhoods

00:52:14.280 need you, that you can make the world a better place. And you were born to do that. And so what I

00:52:19.120 try to do in the book is I try to go back all the way back to the very beginning, back to the Bible,

00:52:25.360 back to Genesis, and say, what does that begin to open up for us, this very foundational story?

00:52:30.620 What does it open up for us about what a man is supposed to be? And if you look at the book of

00:52:35.720 Genesis and what God calls Adam to do, he calls Adam to work with him to help finish the world,

00:52:43.120 to help perfect the world and bring it into perfection. And not to get too deep into the

00:52:48.760 details here, but if you look at Genesis 1 and 2, what the Garden of Eden really is in many ways is

00:52:54.580 it is a temple. And it's a temple where God dwells and Adam is there and Eve too, cooperating,

00:53:01.020 working with God. That's the symbolism of it. What is supposed to happen? Adam is supposed to

00:53:06.780 work with God to make the rest of the world a temple, to expand the garden, if you like, to make

00:53:12.000 the world beautiful, to make the world what it could be, to bring the world further into perfection

00:53:17.280 and to work with God to do that. Now that I would suggest to you, that's a pretty high calling.

00:53:21.920 That suggests that, wow, a man can really make a difference in life, that a man has a high calling

00:53:27.700 in life. That's a vision you could give yourself to and sacrifice for.

00:53:31.240 When I've been going around the world doing these talks, I think I've done 60 since January,

00:53:37.460 something like that, in different cities all around the United States and Canada and Europe.

00:53:44.380 I meet about 150 people after each lecture or each question and answer period.

00:53:51.120 And they're very, very positive events. And the fundamental reason that they're positive is

00:53:57.100 because, first of all, most of the people who come are dressed up. It's kind of like a wedding

00:54:02.980 reception. So lots of the young men who come, and the young women too, because more and more of the

00:54:08.580 young men who are coming have partners with them who look quite happy to be with them. They're dressed

00:54:13.000 quite formally. And so they all look like adults. And they're all standing up straight, which is really

00:54:17.800 lovely to see. And, you know, they're kind of a well-put-together bunch. And they talk to me,

00:54:24.160 not for very long, because it takes a while to meet 150 people. But I get a few fractions of a minute

00:54:30.140 with each person. And it's very moving, because they tell me variants of the same story, which is

00:54:40.600 something like, you know, I've been listening to your lectures for five or six years. And I wasn't

00:54:47.220 doing very well back then. I was pretty nihilistic. I didn't think there was much point to my life.

00:54:51.960 I was, I wasn't really, you know, pursuing my education or working. I didn't have a partner.

00:54:57.400 Things look pretty bleak for me. And then I decided I was going to put some effort into it,

00:55:01.600 you know, and straighten up a bit and stop lying. That's a big one. I was going to start telling the

00:55:06.880 truth. And I was going to start shouldering my responsibility. And I was going to try to

00:55:10.680 get a partner and be someone for that partner and start a family and so forth. And you know what?

00:55:17.040 It's really working. Things are so much better for me that I can hardly believe it. And then,

00:55:24.480 you know, if their partner's there, she's usually pretty happy with the whole situation too. And

00:55:28.340 often they're getting engaged, or they've just got married, or they have to have their first child

00:55:32.600 because now they've decided to have children. I can meet all these people who are getting

00:55:36.840 a life. And it's so heartening that it's, well, that's why my wife and I continue to do it and

00:55:44.060 travel around the world. And what's so sad about this, as far as I'm concerned, is that these young

00:55:51.120 men didn't need that much encouragement to get out there and get at it. They just needed some

00:55:56.000 encouragement, or at least maybe they needed at least one person who wasn't actively telling them

00:56:01.220 every second that every single shred of ambition they might manifest is nothing but the path

00:56:06.580 pathology that drives tyranny and the raping force that destroys the planet.

00:56:12.080 Yes.

00:56:13.300 Enough of that, man. Really. Like, enough of that.

00:56:18.380 Agreed. Agreed. I think we need to send a fundamentally different message, which is that

00:56:24.680 their lives—the world will not be what it could be without them. I think that's the message.

00:56:29.800 By the way, I think that's the message of the Bible. I think that's the message of American

00:56:34.800 history. It's that the world—there are things that can be done in the world, things that should

00:56:40.140 be done in the world that only you can do. And that if you don't do them, they won't happen. And

00:56:45.600 the world and the people around it—your family, your spouse, your children—they will be impoverished

00:56:51.240 if you don't shoulder the responsibility that you can shoulder. That's a high vision. That's a high

00:56:55.820 colony. By the way, that's true of our country. Our country will be less if you don't take on the

00:57:00.020 obligations of citizenship. This country can be greater. It can be more with you as part of it.

00:57:05.560 And it won't be what it could be without you. We need you. And I think that is the message

00:57:09.500 mid-needed here.

00:57:10.940 Yeah. Well, I—and I think that's true, is that to the degree that each person is unique, and

00:57:15.620 each person is unique to a great degree, then each person has something to bring into the world

00:57:21.600 that only they could bring into it. And that's literally the case. And I do believe that that's

00:57:27.520 part and parcel of the idea that human beings are made in the image of God, is God is presented in

00:57:33.360 the biblical corpus as the fundamental creative force of reality itself. And that's echoed inside

00:57:40.360 of us. And so if we don't bring forth what is within us, then there's a lack in the structure of

00:57:46.720 reality. And that lack produces undue pain and misery and suffering. And so it is the case that

00:57:53.620 each person needs to shoulder the responsibility for improving the garden, you might say, as you

00:57:59.360 pointed out earlier, or working towards the perfectibility of existence itself. And that's

00:58:05.180 a heavy load for each person to bear, too, because it turns out that it isn't true that nothing you do

00:58:10.660 matters. What's true is that everything you do matters a lot more than you think, and you should

00:58:14.840 get the hell at it now. Because, or else, in some sense, you know, the other thing we know,

00:58:21.000 as a consequence of having blundered our way through the entire 20th century, is that when

00:58:25.700 people do abdicate their responsibility en masse, which is what you saw in, well, Nazi Germany, what

00:58:31.400 you saw in totalitarian Soviet Union and in Maoist China, that things turn into hell very, very rapidly.

00:58:38.520 Yeah, that's right. And this goes back to a point that you've made, Jordan, that I think is

00:58:43.120 exactly right, and I think is just deeply true, is that we can either be moving the world to be

00:58:50.220 more like what it should be, we can make it a little bit more like heaven, or we can make it

00:58:53.960 more like hell. And we're going to do one or the other. And so if we abdicate our response, if men

00:58:58.960 abdicate their responsibilities, if they create a vacuum, then you've got to expect that malign forces

00:59:06.040 will come into that vacuum and will do terrible things, which is what we saw in the 20th century.

00:59:10.780 On the other hand, if men will shoulder their responsibility and be faithful husbands, faithful

00:59:17.200 fathers, strong workers, and by the way, these don't have to be dramatic things. I mean, I think

00:59:22.820 that our world is so ordered that even small things, even small acts of faithfulness, small

00:59:28.080 acts of sacrifice, small acts of constructive work, have huge effects over time in our own

00:59:33.960 lives and the lives of people around. So it's not as if you don't have to go cure cancer in order

00:59:37.520 to make a difference. They're only small if you're blind. All those, all those, there's not

00:59:43.320 nothing that's done right is small. So really, and I really believe that's the case in the

00:59:50.260 therapeutic process. When you're working with someone as a behavioral therapist, you almost

00:59:55.660 always help them initiate small transformations. But first of all, that small transformation often

01:00:01.880 means a reversal of direction. And a reversal of direction isn't small. It couldn't be more

01:00:08.580 different to go 180 degrees in the opposite direction. That's a big change. And just because

01:00:14.660 you start small doesn't mean you end up going slow, especially if the consequence is that with each

01:00:21.200 victory you accrue in the new direction, the next step is likely to, more likely to occur. And in a larger

01:00:28.400 manner, you get that power law starting to kick in so that you don't improve linearly, you improve

01:00:35.520 exponentially once you start moving forward. And so I think the smallness of right action is only a

01:00:42.280 consequence of a kind of, of an inappropriate perspective that assumes that the local and daily is

01:00:50.460 minimally important when there's no evidence for that at all. I mean, you can think about this,

01:00:57.360 this way to some degree, the most intense relationships that you're going to have in

01:01:04.460 your life are local. The relationship you have with your wife and with your child. And you might

01:01:09.560 think, well, that's only my child. It's not every child in the world. It's only my wife. It's not every

01:01:14.120 woman in the world. But that local focus has an intensity that is truly indicative of its significance,

01:01:23.440 I would say. And so the, that, that's another reason why conservatives can help people put the

01:01:29.520 local back in, in, in a superordinate position. It's like, it isn't only that your family matters.

01:01:37.780 It's, it's, it's that your family matters more than anything else. And that's appropriate. It's not

01:01:43.940 that you're abdicating your social responsibility that way as you're manifesting your true social

01:01:48.420 responsibility through your intense engagement with the local. And that might mean you're a

01:01:53.700 dishwasher. So you get the hell out of bed and you show up to work 15 minutes early. So the restaurant

01:01:58.040 can run properly. And that's not trivial. And if you think it's trivial, it's because there's

01:02:03.820 something wrong with your attitude, not because it's trivial in and of itself.

01:02:07.040 And I think that the, I think that, that presenting men with a, with a vision, again,

01:02:13.560 young men in particular with a vision that says that, yeah, even those things, getting to work

01:02:18.540 early, um, doing something kind for somebody, uh, uh, being faithful to your partner, those things

01:02:25.960 can, can literally change the fabric of the universe. You're working on the fabric of the world

01:02:32.520 in doing these things. And you are making the world more of what it could be. That's a high

01:02:37.000 calling. It's a noble calling. And I just think that, that kind of vision, the, the, the leftist

01:02:43.300 rhetoric, I think suppresses and destroys that sort of vision and therefore suppresses and destroys a

01:02:49.500 healthy ambition. And instead what it substitutes is a desire just to fulfill momentary pleasure,

01:02:55.020 to indulge momentary whims. And I think that's what you see a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of,

01:02:59.140 a lot of young men doing. And there's one other aspect to this, Jordan, that gets to a,

01:03:02.520 gets to more of a policy issue that I think conservatives in a political sense need to

01:03:06.620 address in this country, in the United States, a lot of men who don't have an advanced college

01:03:13.180 degree or a four-year college degree, their economic prospects in terms of the kind of job

01:03:18.440 that they can get in terms of their ability to support a family are, are severely diminished and

01:03:23.200 have been getting worse over decades. Conservatives, if they're going to call men to responsibility,

01:03:28.180 and we should, if they're going to say that, that you can, you, we need you, we've also at the same

01:03:34.220 time got to say, we need to have a society and an economy that provides you with productive work

01:03:39.560 on which you can sustain a family. That there is a legitimate shot for you to go out there, get a job,

01:03:45.400 get married, have a family, and sustain them if you will work hard and apply yourself. And

01:03:50.500 conservatives need to be about crafting that kind of an economy. And I worry, Jordan,

01:03:54.460 that part of what's happened in the last 30 and 40 years is we've increasingly had an economy that's

01:03:59.420 in the United States has become hyper-globalized that works for a small set of people. It's the

01:04:05.600 people who have advanced degrees in certain sectors and does not work for the vast majority

01:04:11.760 of the rest of the population and does not work for a lot of working class men. And that's tied up

01:04:17.180 with this. And I think conservatives have got to open their eyes and say, we've got to go out and say,

01:04:21.680 we need a society and an economy that is going to be able to support work, support a family. And you

01:04:27.640 can't be pro-family unless you're pro-an economy where you can actually support a family.

01:04:32.880 Yeah. Well, it's a form of regulatory capture by the intellectual elite.

01:04:37.240 That's right. That's right. And also, you know, the globalist agenda, which is really an elite

01:04:44.840 project. You know, it's a project of people who don't believe in nations, who don't believe

01:04:49.440 in the local community, who don't believe in local traditions. What they believe is, is they think

01:04:55.860 that their values, which they share with other educated elite around the country, around the

01:05:03.360 world, rather, that those ought to be what structures the world. Those ought to be what

01:05:07.040 structures the economy. They pursued this agenda of hyper-globalism that has in the United States

01:05:12.600 resulted in shipping working class jobs overseas, shutting down jobs that were good paying jobs

01:05:20.980 in small towns like the one that I grew up in. And it has really decimated not just the economic

01:05:26.540 fortunes of many, many men and women too, but it is also badly damaged the fabric, the social fabric

01:05:34.720 of this country. And so part of what I think conservatives in America need to do is we need to say,

01:05:38.500 listen, we're going to be for an agenda that is unapologetically pro-American worker,

01:05:45.000 unapologetically pro-work, and unapologetically for the kind of work that you can support a family

01:05:51.040 on. And we've got to make some changes in order to do that. What kind of changes do you think might

01:05:57.420 need to be made at the political level in order, let's say that the goal was to foster

01:06:03.360 a working man's commitment to his family and to his job and to the advancement of his career,

01:06:10.580 let's say, through that job? What sort of transformations of policy do you think might be

01:06:15.600 helpful at the level of detail to facilitate that kind of vision?

01:06:21.480 Yeah, I think the first thing is we've got to be able to give that man some prospect that if he

01:06:27.600 actually will get a good, if he'll get a job, if he'll commit himself to work, if he'll show up,

01:06:31.520 as you said, and he'll invest himself, that he'll be able to support himself and to advance. In order

01:06:36.260 to do that, Jordan, we've got to get jobs back into the United States of America where we actually

01:06:40.680 produce things and make things where a guy who does not have a college degree, and listen, only 35%

01:06:46.600 of Americans have a four-year college degree or more. Right, and a decreasing percentage of men

01:06:53.560 are going to have that as well. That is correct. And so, you know, you're looking at almost 70%,

01:06:59.300 let's say, of men, I think it's more than 70% of the workforce does not have a four-year

01:07:04.040 college degree. We have to have an economy where a man can get a good-paying job. So how do we do

01:07:10.320 that? We have to bring production back to the United States. Jordan, we've got to bring, we've got to

01:07:15.180 produce things here, we've got to grow things here. Let me give you an example. The average salary

01:07:20.400 of a manufacturing-type job in the United States, of a production-type job, a year or two ago,

01:07:26.580 was, I think it was $22.50 was the average hourly wage, $22.50. In retail, the average hourly wage

01:07:34.240 is like $13. In services, it's slightly higher, but not much. The point is that manufacturing jobs,

01:07:41.620 production jobs, historically pay better. You can support a family on those. They drive research

01:07:49.080 and development, by the way. They drive the services industry. And what's happened in this country is,

01:07:53.360 I think we've had, and conservatives, unfortunately, Republicans have been part of this problem,

01:07:57.460 big part of it. We've had a stupid economic policy that for 30 and 40 years or longer has said,

01:08:04.420 we're willing to see jobs go overseas to places like China. We are willing to trade away our

01:08:10.920 manufacturing and our production of all kinds, whether we're talking about precision tooling or

01:08:15.720 whether we're talking about advanced farming. We're willing to see those things go away in

01:08:20.820 order to get more cheap stuff from overseas and in order to build up a services and Wall Street-driven

01:08:27.360 economy. I think that has been a fundamental, fundamental mistake. And conservatives need to

01:08:32.960 change it. And you asked about how do we do it. One of the things we've got to do is we have got to set

01:08:37.780 a tariff policy and a trade policy that actually works for America. And I think that works for

01:08:43.580 American workers and is geared, Jordan, towards bringing back and fostering good-paying production jobs

01:08:49.840 in this country. So that is a different way of thinking than most Republicans in the United States

01:08:57.620 have thought for the last 30 or 40 years, where they've been very pro-globalization. And I think that

01:09:02.100 it's hard to be pro-globalization and pro-family, pro-worker at the same time.

01:09:07.940 Tell me more about the book that you're writing and what you're hoping to accomplish with regards

01:09:14.520 to your communication to men. And why are you writing a book instead of concentrating, let's say,

01:09:21.620 or in addition to concentrating on the political issues?

01:09:23.800 Well, I think it's a matter of both and. I think that it's imperative to talk about the kind of

01:09:33.120 policy issues that we were just talking about just now to go out there and to advance legislation and

01:09:38.100 to advance a policy agenda. And I'm certainly going to do that. But I do think that it's important

01:09:44.320 right now in American culture to put forward an alternative vision of what a man can be and what

01:09:50.040 good a man can contribute. And I think the real need is here is when men are beat over the head,

01:09:54.980 as we've talked about from the time they're in grade school. And listen, I say this because I've

01:09:58.340 got two, I've got three kids. I've got two little boys, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, and then

01:10:02.940 I've got a baby daughter. And, you know, as the father of the parent of school-age kids and school-age

01:10:10.360 boys, I pay a lot of attention now to what my kids are taught in school and to what other kids are

01:10:15.740 taught in school. Of course, I hear it from parents who I represent all the time. So I think in this,

01:10:19.780 in this cultural milieu where you have the left in control of many of the cultural institutions,

01:10:28.340 the media, much of the entertainment industry, increasingly the corporate suites, the head

01:10:34.140 offices, the relentless message to men is that you're a problem, male ambition is bad. And I think

01:10:43.160 that we need to present, conservatives need to present an alternative vision. And I think that we

01:10:47.340 need to show men what a different kind of vision for manhood could look like. And that's really

01:10:54.320 what the book is about, is trying to do that.

01:10:55.780 So, okay, on the Republican front, back again to the midterms, there is a swing in the Republican

01:11:02.460 direction. Who's at the forefront of the swing? Who is it that's, whose votes are moving at the

01:11:08.460 moment and why?

01:11:10.160 Well, who's really moving are working class folks, both men and women, but particularly working class

01:11:16.960 men and across, by the way, different racial demographics, which you see is working class

01:11:23.260 Hispanic men, working class African-American men, particularly younger working class African-American

01:11:28.260 men, and then working class white men are moving in a big way towards the Republican Party. This

01:11:34.320 actually really started with Donald Trump in 2016. You saw an acceleration of it in 2020 with Trump among

01:11:42.420 voters who were Hispanic working class voters and African-American working class voters, and especially

01:11:47.820 men. And you see the same thing continuing and maybe even accelerating in the midterm. So there's

01:11:52.780 a big switch. And Jordan, it's a huge change for the Republican Party in my lifetime. I'm 42. It's a big change

01:11:58.880 in my lifetime, where right now, increasingly, the base of the Republican Party in the United States

01:12:04.420 is working class voters, blue collar voters, we often say in America. And that hasn't, that has not

01:12:11.780 been the case for most of my lifetime. And I think right now what you're seeing is Republican leaders

01:12:16.920 are having a hard time wrapping their heads around that. You see this to a certain extent in Britain,

01:12:21.140 too. In Canada, as well. That's interesting. Yeah, well, a lot of the groundswell of support for the

01:12:28.000 new conservative leader here, Pierre Polyev, who's likely to be the next prime minister,

01:12:32.920 God willing, is that there's been a big swing by younger working class people to the conservative

01:12:41.060 party. And that's certainly something, that's always been a big business party in Canada. This

01:12:44.860 is definitely a new thing. And so yeah, as you said, it's happening in the UK and the US as well.

01:12:49.560 So interesting, eh? Because hypothetically, the left stands for the oppressed and the voiceless. And yet,

01:12:56.180 you see a migration of working class people to the Republican Party, especially, especially young men,

01:13:03.400 which sort of belies the idea that the left, I mean, the left historically, at least insofar as it

01:13:09.840 had its roots in the labor movement, I think, was sporadically, at least, a genuine voice for the

01:13:17.020 for the labor movement. But the fact that all the working class people are stampeding over to the

01:13:22.680 conservative side seems to indicate in some fundamental sense that the left has lost the plot.

01:13:27.200 Yeah, I think in the United States, certainly, the left, Jordan, if you just look at their voting

01:13:32.360 returns, the Democrat Party today is increasingly the party of the extremely well-educated and the

01:13:38.580 upper class in this country. I mean, it's just a fact. You could just go look at the exit polls,

01:13:43.040 and you see that increasingly the base of that party are folks who have at least four-year degrees

01:13:48.340 or advanced degrees, folks who make above working class wages, middle class and really upper middle

01:13:53.980 class. That is the base now of the Democrat Party. And this gets back to the cultural stuff. That

01:13:58.760 segment, and it's an increasingly narrow segment of American society, they tend to buy into all of

01:14:05.060 the leftist stuff about how systemically unjust America is. What you have is the vast swath of the

01:14:10.540 American public that says that's not true, and particularly working people say, no, no, no, no.

01:14:16.040 That is not true. And by the way, if you destroy the family, and if you destroy the community,

01:14:22.200 and you destroy the local church, the local synagogue, you're going to destroy all of my

01:14:25.420 opportunities in life. And if you keep shipping my jobs overseas, you're going to destroy

01:14:29.260 my economic opportunity in life. And I think that is the new sort of center of the Republican

01:14:35.620 part needs to be the Republican Party in the United States. But the real challenge for us, Jordan, is

01:14:39.760 wrapping our heads around that and getting a set of policies that responds to the reality of where

01:14:45.440 voters are. And you mentioned big business a second ago. My own view is that the Republican Party,

01:14:50.920 particularly in the last 20 years, has been too enthralled to big business. You know, big

01:14:56.320 business is, in many ways, an increasingly malign force in America. Listen, I'm a free market

01:15:01.860 guy. I'm a capitalist. I believe in robust competition. But I don't really believe in

01:15:07.760 monopoly. In fact, I don't believe in monopoly at all. And I believe increasingly many of these

01:15:11.900 businesses in the United States, huge multinational corporations, they have monopoly status. They're

01:15:17.940 also woke. And so they're pushing an agenda of economic control and an agenda of social control

01:15:24.320 at the same time. Republicans, I think, need to go out and say no to both of those things.

01:15:29.160 Yeah, well, that's a very fascist combination, economic control and social political control

01:15:34.660 at the same time. And so what do you think's driven the emergence of these larger scale

01:15:41.480 collusionary monopolies? Well, I think a couple of things. Part of it is the program, the economic

01:15:49.600 program of hyperglobalism. I mean, I think that these companies, let's take just the social media

01:15:54.100 companies in the United States, for example, companies like Facebook, or now I guess they

01:15:57.800 want us to call them Meta, I think is an absurd name. But, you know, they feel the need. They're

01:16:03.940 truly, they're based in the United States, but they're multinational corporations. They say that

01:16:08.440 they've got to become absolutely gargantuan and huge in order to compete on a global scale. So

01:16:13.280 the globalization helps drive massive scale. I mean, just gigantic. So they get to be huge.

01:16:19.200 They get to be multinational in size. And then many of these companies in the United States

01:16:23.960 have had special deals with the United States government. And when it comes to the social media

01:16:28.680 companies, the social media companies benefit from special exemptions under American law that no

01:16:35.220 other company does. And so we treat them differently. They've been given special exemptions

01:16:39.640 that are worth billions to them, Jordan, a year since the 1990s. So this combination of government

01:16:44.500 favoritism along with globalization, I think has led to increasing monopolization. And that's not been

01:16:52.320 good for anybody. It's been bad for competition. It's been bad for innovation. It's been bad for

01:16:57.360 Americans as consumers. But maybe worst of all, it's been bad for them as producers.

01:17:03.820 So that's an interesting platform for conservatives and revolutionary in some sense to concentrate on

01:17:12.140 the local again, to concentrate on the working class, to be concerned about the development of

01:17:17.100 fascistic monopolies at the higher end. It's an interesting... When I talked to Poliev or watched

01:17:25.680 Poliev's campaigning in Canada, it's so interesting watching his rallies because they look to me

01:17:31.860 like working class rallies that were characteristic of the labor movement in the 1970s. It's the same

01:17:38.720 people attending. And I think it is this concentration on the local that is driving that rather than

01:17:44.840 concentration on big business, let's say. And so that is an opportunity for conservatives in the U.S.

01:17:49.820 to capture that massive base of 70%, you said, who are fundamentally working class in orientation

01:17:55.640 by actually serving their needs properly. And since the entire infrastructure of Western culture

01:18:02.560 depends in some ways on the integrity of the working class in some fundamental manner, then that seems

01:18:08.260 to be good policy all around.

01:18:10.640 I think what you just said is absolutely critical, which is that

01:18:14.860 in the United States, the culture that we've been talking about, the culture of work, the culture of

01:18:23.280 family, the culture of faith, that has been and still is a fundamentally middle class, working class

01:18:28.980 culture. And so what you've seen is that as the middle class and working class in this country has

01:18:34.400 become economically weaker in these last few decades, as they have become culturally weaker,

01:18:40.160 they've also become in some sense politically weaker. And the left has capitalized on that.

01:18:45.080 And I think part of what Republicans and conservatives need to be saying is we want to make

01:18:49.260 all Americans, but especially working Americans, stronger. We want to make their voices stronger.

01:18:54.760 We want to make their life prospects stronger. We want to make their institutions stronger,

01:18:58.800 their families stronger, their neighborhoods stronger. We need to be a party and a movement that

01:19:03.540 says we are for the strength of the working people of this country. We're forced because

01:19:08.520 they're the foundation of this country. And we're for strengthening the fundamentals of America. I

01:19:13.300 think that is a hopeful, forward-looking, affirmative agenda that can be built out and

01:19:20.420 should be built out in a number of different ways. And that's my view.

01:19:23.100 What are your hopes for the Republican Party as we move out of 2022 in the midterms towards the 2024

01:19:29.400 presidential election? If you had a best case scenario for what the Republican Party does in the next

01:19:35.600 two years, what would that look like? Well, I hope that what we'll do is, in Congress at least,

01:19:40.700 which is where I'll be serving, I hope that we will be putting forward an alternative agenda

01:19:45.800 that will be along the lines that we've just discussed. I hope that we'll come forward and

01:19:49.340 we'll say, we want to give you more control over your kids' education. You ought to be able,

01:19:54.180 for instance, to know what your kids are being taught. You ought to be able to have a say in that.

01:19:57.720 You ought to be able to have control over your kids' curriculum. We want to give you more control

01:20:02.540 and more opportunity economically. We want to bring back good-paying jobs to this country.

01:20:07.080 We want to strengthen the family. We want to reward you for having kids, not punish you for

01:20:11.420 having kids. I propose a Jordan legislation that would give parents, working parents, a massive

01:20:18.480 tax cut if they stay together and have kids. And I think what we ought to be saying is, it's not just

01:20:24.520 that we shouldn't be penalizing you for being married. We ought to be rewarding you. If you get married

01:20:28.540 and having a family, you are contributing to society. You ought to get the benefit of that.

01:20:33.000 We should be explicitly rewarding that and strengthening families, strengthening marriage,

01:20:37.760 strengthening kids. So I hope that we'll put forward an agenda that's focused on that

01:20:41.600 as an alternative. Joe Biden, of course, is going to be president for the next two years.

01:20:45.880 We need to not just be stopping what he's doing, although in my view, that's very important.

01:20:50.000 But we need to be putting forward an alternative that fundamentally contrasts with

01:20:53.600 the campaign of nihilism that he and the left are attempting to foster. So I hope that's what

01:20:59.980 we'll do. And I think if we do that, we'll go into 2024 and we'll be able to offer the country

01:21:04.300 two fundamentally different visions.

01:21:07.560 What do you think is going to happen on the leadership front?

01:21:11.540 I don't know the answer to that. Listen, if I had to predict, I would say

01:21:14.820 Donald Trump is giving every indication that he will run again. And I think that he'll be the

01:21:20.040 nominee. I mean, I haven't asked him directly if he's going to run, but I think he is, Jordan.

01:21:25.520 I mean, he's said it publicly. I'd be very surprised at this point if he didn't. So I think

01:21:30.700 that he will be the nominee. And I hope that if he is the nominee, that he will put forward

01:21:36.460 an agenda that will be focused on the best of what he did as president. And I think the best of

01:21:42.020 what he did as president was he focused on bringing back American jobs. He focused on trying

01:21:46.700 to strengthen the economic conditions of the working class and the middle class. And he tried

01:21:51.540 to defend American culture. Those are good things. I hope that he will put forward a positive agenda

01:21:56.460 that will do that and will seek to move the country forward to a position of strength.

01:22:01.600 And, you know, we'll see. I mean, we'll see.

01:22:03.800 Who do you see as potential contenders against Trump in the primaries? You think DeSantis will throw

01:22:09.320 his hat in the ring?

01:22:10.040 You know, I don't know the answer to that. I sort of doubt it. I mean, my feeling is that

01:22:16.960 if Trump wants to be the nominee, he will be the nominee. And I think that most folks probably

01:22:24.820 think that. So I would be—listen, I don't know Governor DeSantis personally, so I couldn't

01:22:29.120 speculate. I'd be a little surprised if any serious presidential contender decided to run

01:22:36.420 if Trump ran because I think it would be almost certain defeat. But who knows? I could be wrong.

01:22:42.340 And two years is a long time. I mean, the primaries won't kick off for over a year,

01:22:46.460 year and a half. I mean, that's an eternity in politics. So who knows?

01:22:52.000 And what do you think the immediate necessities, let's say, are that are going to confront

01:22:58.480 a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate, assuming that that's the way things turn out

01:23:04.120 in the midterms? What would you like to see happen on the political front in the short to

01:23:10.220 medium term?

01:23:11.720 Well, I think one of the things we have to look at immediately is energy in the United States,

01:23:15.920 Jordan, and the rampant inflation. That is, you talk about just cutting the guts out of the working

01:23:20.500 people and their families. This rampant inflation that this government has given us is doing that.

01:23:26.960 And energy costs are a huge part of that. Joe Biden, when he came to office on one of the first

01:23:30.980 things he did, Jordan, the series of executive orders he signed, you talk about power. The

01:23:35.080 president has a lot of it. He shut down new oil and energy production in this country. He canceled

01:23:40.600 existing leases. He stopped the future issuance of leases on federal lands, which is a huge part of

01:23:48.360 our oil production. We need to reverse all of those policies. I mean, we need to be a pro-energy

01:23:53.220 production in this country. To me, to see the president go from country to country and getting down and

01:24:00.620 begging these dictators to increase oil production because we won't produce it in the United States

01:24:06.880 of America is insane. It is the definition of insanity.

01:24:10.940 Flirting with Iran, flirting with Venezuela, going cap in hand to the Saudis while also playing moral

01:24:17.100 tricks on them. Yeah, yeah, that was really quite spectacular. Canceling the Keystone pipeline system,

01:24:23.200 which, of course, grated on Canadian sensibility, except perhaps, well, I would say even on the

01:24:28.060 sensibility of our prime minister, interestingly enough. So, yeah, well, it's also the case, we

01:24:33.280 might point out, too, that America is one of the only countries that has managed to cut carbon

01:24:38.420 dioxide output, and that was mostly a consequence of fracking, which isn't something that the

01:24:42.880 environmentalists would have ever, first of all, predicted or certainly not trumpeted once it

01:24:47.160 happened. And so it's certainly possible that a U.S. that's dynamic in relationship to its energy

01:24:53.320 production could be a net force for good, even on the environmental front. So I think that's almost

01:24:58.060 certain. And as well as on the economic front, particularly in relationship to the finances of

01:25:03.600 the poorest people, because they're so dependent on energy. That's right. And I just don't know two

01:25:09.860 things about that. The first thing is, I don't know why you would want countries, dictatorships,

01:25:16.580 like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and others, to be reaping the benefit of the billions and probably

01:25:24.440 eventually trillions of dollars of energy production that we are foregoing and have it

01:25:28.260 benefiting their dictatorships. I also don't know why you'd want countries that, to your point,

01:25:33.020 don't have the same environmental standards, have lower environmental standards than the United

01:25:36.960 States have. Why should they be the ones who are producing all the world's energy? But finally,

01:25:40.420 why shouldn't American workers? This energy agenda, Biden's climate agenda, is a deeply anti-worker

01:25:48.220 agenda. They are telling the men who work the rigs, the men who work the pipelines, they put them out

01:25:55.860 of work. The men who go down into the coal mines put them out of work in favor of buying oil from

01:26:02.300 Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and Iran. It is just crazy. And so I think that a fundamental, in the short

01:26:08.760 term, a fundamental cornerstone of a pro-worker agenda, frankly, pro-America agenda is we have

01:26:14.560 got to turn on American energy production and put American workers back to work. The other thing,

01:26:19.060 Jordan, we have to do is crime in this country is just at stratospheric levels. And it is a,

01:26:25.440 you talk about the basic fabric of society. If a parent, if a mom can't send her kids out

01:26:30.460 to go, you know, get a gallon of milk at the local gas station, if they can't go wait for the bus

01:26:36.340 on the corner and not be afraid they're going to get shot at, you have a problem. And that's

01:26:41.140 increasingly where we are in many cities today in America. We have got to restore some basic

01:26:46.540 respect for the rule of law. And that's not hard. Listen, I'm a former prosecutor. That means you

01:26:51.020 prosecute criminals, you put them behind bars, and you reward those who follow the law. And we've got

01:26:58.060 to start doing that. And why isn't Joe Biden doing it? It's because, once again, they think that the

01:27:03.100 criminal justice system is systemically racist. And therefore, we shouldn't prosecute criminals,

01:27:07.820 that there's something wrong with that. Well, there isn't something wrong with that. There's

01:27:11.400 something good about punishing those who do wrong, rewarding those who do right. And I think a basic

01:27:16.600 thing Republicans have got to do is, we have got to say, we're going to get serious about crime and

01:27:21.200 restore some basic safety to families in this country. Well, that seems like a salutary point to

01:27:28.700 end our discussion. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring to the attention of people who

01:27:33.700 are watching and listening? When is your book coming out, by the way?

01:27:37.040 It'll be out next spring. It'll be out in the spring of 2023. And I'm really excited about it.

01:27:43.340 It's just been a great privilege for me to get to work on this topic and to get to talk to so many

01:27:48.620 men and young men. And I look forward to getting to do that more and more.

01:27:52.180 Well, good. Maybe we can have another podcast when your book comes out.

01:27:55.400 I look forward to that. I'd look forward to that.

01:27:57.880 Yeah, it'd be good to talk maybe jointly with someone like Warren Farrell and dive deep into

01:28:03.940 that particular set of issues. So, well, thank you very much for talking with me today. I hope we

01:28:09.240 continue to stay in touch. I'll be in touch with you and some of the other issues that we discussed.

01:28:14.240 And I appreciate very much your candor and your willingness to talk to me today. And

01:28:19.400 everyone who's watching and listening, your attention is always appreciated. And I hope you found

01:28:24.700 today's discussion useful and maybe even optimistic and hopeful, at least on the American

01:28:29.500 front. It'd be lovely to see the U.S. thrive mightily over the next few years, especially on

01:28:35.800 the energy front in a world that's increasingly in dire straits because of utterly foolish and

01:28:42.600 preposterous energy policies. And so you may have done a bad job in the United States, but you haven't

01:28:48.580 done as terrible a job as most countries have. So that's something.

01:28:53.480 Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest

01:28:58.380 on dailywireplus.com.

01:29:01.100 Hey, everyone. Real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

01:29:08.100 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling

01:29:13.440 depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we

01:29:19.000 wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. With decades of

01:29:23.440 experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this

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01:29:46.460 Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future

01:29:52.760 you deserve.

300. Men and the Conservative Vision ｜ Senator Josh Hawley

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