The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 301. Politics： Tradition and Vision

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. Ha! Happy reading, folks!

00:01:16.740 Hello everyone. I have the great privilege today of speaking with one of the most remarkable

00:01:21.880 political figures in the U.S. in the last four decades, five decades perhaps, Dr. Newton Gingrich.

00:01:29.080 Speaker Newt Gingrich is chairman of Gingrich 360, a multimedia production and consulting company based

00:01:34.800 in Arlington, Virginia. As former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich is well known as

00:01:41.660 the architect of the Contract with America that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994,

00:01:47.860 creating the first conservative majority in the House in 40 years. He was also a Republican candidate

00:01:54.900 for president in 2012. Gingrich is a Fox News contributor, podcast host, Newt's World, and

00:02:02.920 syndicated columnist. He is the author of 41 books, including 18 fiction and non-fiction New York Times

00:02:11.200 bestsellers. His latest books include Beyond Biden, Rebuilding the America We Love,

00:02:18.320 and Trump and the American Future, Solving the Great Problems of Our Time. Gingrich and his wife,

00:02:24.580 Ambassador Kalista Gingrich, host and produce historical and public policy documentaries.

00:02:30.500 Recent films include The First American and Divine Mercy, the canonization of John Paul II,

00:02:37.280 recognized internationally as an expert on world history, military issues, and international

00:02:44.460 affairs. Newt Gingrich is the longest serving teacher of the joint war fighting course for major

00:02:51.300 generals. He also teaches officers from all six services as a distinguished visiting scholar and

00:02:57.640 professor at the National Defense University. In addition, Dr. Gingrich served as member of the

00:03:04.640 Defense Policy Board. He was a member of the Terrorism Task Force for the Council on Foreign

00:03:09.660 Relations, and he co-chaired the Task Force on United Nations Reform, a bipartisan congressional effort

00:03:15.880 to modernize and improve the United Nations. The Gingriches reside in McLean, Virginia, and have two

00:03:23.280 daughters and two grandchildren. I thought maybe we'd start by talking about your contract with America,

00:03:31.420 which was a major political initiative back in the 1990s, mid-1990s. I think it originated in a speech

00:03:39.360 that Ronald Reagan gave in, I believe, 1985. I've been working with a variety of people recently on

00:03:45.820 formulating something approximating a manifesto of conservative values, and that was something that

00:03:51.480 you did essentially at a more political level with the contract with America. And so could you tell

00:03:57.700 me a bit about why you did that, what your motivation was, how that worked, and what occurred as a

00:04:05.900 consequence? Well, sure. First of all, if you are trying to be the party of change, it's very helpful, and I

00:04:14.960 think almost essential, that you outline a formula for change. It's something Margaret Thatcher did beginning

00:04:21.640 in 1975, and which I had studied a great deal. And I worked with Reagan starting in 1974. And in 1980,

00:04:31.740 we had the first Capitol Steps event, the first contract, and Reagan outlined five big ideas.

00:04:40.520 And it led to, and we had all of our candidates standing on the Capitol Steps, and it led to a

00:04:46.080 surprising series of victories in the U.S. Senate. We took control when nobody thought we would. So I

00:04:52.940 had that background of having already done that. I believed, and I still believe, and I think will

00:04:58.600 be true this year, that when you are the party seeking change, you have to nationalize the election.

00:05:07.120 There has to be a common theme, a common argument, because you have to build a wave of support

00:05:13.500 bigger than individual candidates can create. And so in 94, we really were working off of

00:05:21.900 that framework. I mean, the two books I always recommend to people are Claire Berlinski's

00:05:27.400 There Is No Alternative, Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, and Tom Evans' book, The Education of Ronald Reagan,

00:05:35.580 His Years at General Electric. And if you read those two books, you can almost see how the contract emerged.

00:05:43.500 It is true, as one of Reagan's biographers said, that about 70% of the contract can be found in the

00:05:51.580 1985 Reagan State of the Union. But that's because Reagan had begun articulating the need for profound

00:05:59.800 change as early as his speech for Goldwater, his national televised speech in 1964, which is still

00:06:08.200 available on YouTube called A Time for Choosing, and is a remarkable speech. And then when he ran for

00:06:14.840 governor in 1965, he began running, and he ran with welfare reform as one of his first topics. So

00:06:21.940 this, the concept of, for example, being for welfare reform had a long gestation and had been

00:06:29.080 dramatically accelerated by a book that Charles Murray wrote called Losing Ground, which proved pretty

00:06:36.320 conclusively that government-inspired dependency is very destructive, and particularly destructive for

00:06:42.640 people who are poor. So that was the background. We had a couple of very simple principles.

00:06:50.960 No issue was involved that wasn't above 70% approval. And the reason there is, if you're a conservative

00:06:57.700 in virtually every country in the world, the media will be opposed to you. And so you have to have

00:07:04.580 issues that are so powerful, that after they get done lying about it, you're still above 50%. So you

00:07:10.660 can't afford to wage a campaign on a 55% issue, because by the time the media is done lying about it,

00:07:17.060 you'll be down at 40%. But if you have a 70% or 80% issue, they can't lie enough to make the issue

00:07:24.500 unacceptable. So we consciously put those together. The other thing we did that was probably unusual,

00:07:31.060 and people, I think, didn't fully appreciate at the time, we did not pick up two of the issues I

00:07:36.820 personally believe in, right to life and school prayer, because we knew that the New York Times and

00:07:43.540 the Washington Post and others would use those issues to demagogue about the contract and to make

00:07:50.420 it impossible to ever get to the other issues. We then had to get all of our members to agree to it.

00:07:58.580 And the one person, the one proud politician at least, who understood what I was doing was Chuck

00:08:04.340 Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate, who wrote a book in 2007, and devoted a chapter to the

00:08:10.260 contract, and said correctly, that the greatest purpose of the contract was not just to win the

00:08:16.980 election. But it was to radically change the House Republican Party, that by getting them committed

00:08:23.300 to these really big changes, and to a timetable of voting on all of it in the first 100 days,

00:08:29.220 I guaranteed that the first majority in 40 years would be, by Washington standards, a radical majority.

00:08:37.460 And if we had simply won elections without the contract, the lobbyists and the interest groups

00:08:43.380 would have absorbed most of our members, and we would have been as useless as most Congresses are.

00:08:48.580 So there was a lot of conscious thought about what we were going to do, both in terms of values

00:08:56.100 and in terms of actually being able to implement it. And they also understood the Reagan principle,

00:09:02.660 that if you could get a 70 or 80 percent issue, and you had the nerve to stay with it,

00:09:07.700 that ultimately the President would have to side with you. And that's what happened. I mean, Bill Clinton

00:09:11.940 signed, bill after bill after bill, that normally no Liberal Democrat would have signed. But because

00:09:18.820 he wanted to get reelected, he got in the habit of working with us, even though it infuriated Liberal

00:09:25.060 Democrats. And the result was, we got welfare reform, the largest capital gains tax cut in history,

00:09:31.940 food and drug administration reform, telecommunications reform, Medicare reform in an election year,

00:09:38.740 which was amazing. And ultimately, we produced four consecutive balanced budgets, the only four

00:09:44.660 balanced budgets consecutive in our in my lifetime. What were the main platforms that that emerged out

00:09:51.940 of the contract for America? The idea that we wanted to move people from dependency to work, we wanted to

00:09:59.140 change the nature of the welfare system, so that it's when you went to a welfare office, instead of having a

00:10:07.380 clerk who tried to maximize your dependency. We turned them into employment offices. We were deeply affected

00:10:14.100 by a firm called America Works, which, interestingly, Mario Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York,

00:10:20.740 had helped create. And it was a very effective entrepreneurial work-oriented system, still exists,

00:10:28.980 designed to take the hardcore unemployed and train them into being able to hold down a job.

00:10:33.460 So I would say welfare reform is far and away our biggest success. The second one was, in a sense,

00:10:42.020 ironically, we campaigned on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. We got 306 votes in the

00:10:53.860 House, which was enough for a constitutional reform. We fell one vote short in the Senate,

00:10:59.860 so it didn't pass. But we realized if you had 306 votes in favor of a balanced budget,

00:11:07.060 and if you had 66 votes in favor of a balanced budget in the Senate, you could pretend that you

00:11:12.740 had passed it and just go ahead and pass a balanced budget. And so that decision, which was entirely

00:11:21.140 an act of will on the part of the House Republican leadership, led to a project which within four years

00:11:27.220 had balanced the Congress had balanced the federal budget when almost no one thought it was possible.

00:11:31.620 We also had very strong provisions about applying to the Congress, every law which applies to small

00:11:37.460 business. We had a provision for, you know, this is really ironic, the House in its entire history,

00:11:44.260 for over 200 years, had never had an audit. They spent money every year, members spent money every year,

00:11:52.420 and they had no capacity to be audited. And so part of what we committed to was creating an annual audit,

00:11:58.580 which still exists to this day. The tax cut we campaigned on, which included eliminating any

00:12:06.020 capital gains tax on your home, as long as you reinvested the money in another home,

00:12:11.620 and which had the largest cut in the actual capital gains tax in American history,

00:12:16.900 was just extraordinary in launching a generation of economic growth. And finally, we had very strong

00:12:24.500 provisions on deregulation, because we felt that the government bureaucracies were killing our

00:12:30.100 economic growth. And the result was, we had literally, I think, a decade of entrepreneurial and

00:12:38.340 small business activity that would not have occurred without the contract and without the Republican majority.

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00:14:24.740 So what do you think the consequences were of the welfare reform provisions that you introduced?

00:14:31.140 Well, I mean, we know from studies that getting people in the habit of going to work,

00:14:36.100 getting them into their first job, having them learn that it's okay to get up on Monday and go

00:14:41.860 do something. Having them begin to realize that if they worked hard, they could actually get a better

00:14:47.060 job. So if you see it as a motion picture and not a snapshot, it isn't just the first job. The

00:14:53.060 first job leads to a second job and a third job. And I think the net, there's no question the net result

00:14:59.540 was because there have been lots of studies. The net result was millions of people who left

00:15:04.660 dependency, got a job, the largest number of children taken out of poverty because the incomes

00:15:11.620 of their families went up in American history. And it was wildly successful, but it went straight

00:15:18.260 against the left, which hated the idea of having a work ethic and getting people out of dependency.

00:15:26.340 I mean, there was just this almost rabid feeling. One of the Democratic leaders, and then we split

00:15:33.140 the Democrats 50-50 because it was so popular that half of them voted with us to pass it and Bill

00:15:39.220 Clinton signed it. But the ones who didn't vote for it were from very liberal districts. And, you know,

00:15:44.500 one of them basically said, you know, this was like the Nazis. They're coming for your children.

00:15:48.500 They're going to starve children. I mean, the language was unbelievably hostile and personal

00:15:53.380 and vicious. And there's something on the left that loves dependency and hates work. I mean,

00:16:00.100 it's a very strange phenomenon. And I think probably goes back to the 19th century rejection of

00:16:06.100 industrialization. So you ran, your crew ran four balanced budgets as well. And so

00:16:13.700 let everybody who's listening know what the consequence of a balanced budget is. And then

00:16:19.460 more importantly, what the consequence of an unbalanced budget is and what the cumulative

00:16:24.580 consequence is that especially right now. Well, actually, I've been deeply shaped by studying

00:16:31.460 British budget policy in the 19th century and the recovery from the scale of debt in the Napoleonic

00:16:36.900 Wars and the way in which the British worked very hard to lower taxes, increase economic growth,

00:16:45.380 and were very frugal. Gladstone, as prime minister, would reuse all the message boxes

00:16:52.020 as a way of saving money, which is partly symbolic and partly real. And so I had, I approached this whole

00:16:59.060 issue of the budget from the standpoint, and I helped write the, our first budget of hope and opportunity

00:17:04.900 when I was a freshman in 1979 as an alternative to Democrats. And we were making a couple of

00:17:10.740 arguments. One is that a lower tax system creates a lot more jobs, that those extra jobs create a lot

00:17:17.300 more revenue for the government, because you have more people at work earning more money, more people

00:17:22.020 getting profits earning more money. Second, that the best social policy, as Ronald Reagan said,

00:17:29.300 was a job. And therefore, having a robust economy was a major goal. And that in the long run, you could have

00:17:36.900 much lower interest rates and much greater capital available to be invested if you had a balanced budget.

00:17:45.700 And that we were very anti-inflation and very much for lower interest rates, because we wanted to have a very robust

00:17:54.740 private sector that was rapidly creating new job, new technologies, new jobs, new opportunities.

00:18:01.060 And if you think back to that period, it was at the very beginning of the explosion of the internet,

00:18:05.700 of cell phones, of a whole range of technologies. So we were very interested in accelerating technological

00:18:12.660 change. And that's part of why we emphasized a dramatic lowering of the capital gains tax, because we wanted

00:18:19.220 to make it easy to liberate capital to move to new companies and new opportunities and new ideas.

00:18:25.300 Ironically, when we balanced the budget for four straight years, Alan Greenspan was chairman of the

00:18:30.900 Federal Reserve and actually reported publicly in a congressional hearing that they had a working group

00:18:36.980 trying to figure out that the projection was in 2009, we would pay off the federal debt.

00:18:43.060 And they weren't sure how they were going to technically manage the money supply if they

00:18:49.620 had no U.S. debt. It was a situation we had not seen since 1837. And nobody predicted it. I mean,

00:18:58.340 nobody predicted we'd be a majority in 94. Nobody predicted we could balance the budget in four years

00:19:04.420 and then keep it balanced. And it was really interesting. But part of the key to the balanced budget

00:19:10.740 was it forced you to make choices and it forced you to modernize the system.

00:19:15.060 So you couldn't afford this. You know, when you're willing to run deficits, everything sloppy becomes

00:19:20.980 acceptable. Because after all, it's all just money and nobody cares. And so you end up with

00:19:27.380 huge levels of corruption. It's an estimated $20 billion in theft in the California unemployment

00:19:35.380 compensation last year just by itself. You end up with huge volumes of waste. The Pentagon is an

00:19:41.700 embarrassment. It is so bureaucratic and so wasteful. You end up with all sorts of sloppy projects because

00:19:49.620 politicians say, look, since the budget is going to be in deficit anyway, why can't I have my half

00:19:55.620 billion dollars? And you have no yardstick. There's no way to control the system. And so we wanted to

00:20:03.460 establish a genuinely controlled government that had to constantly improve itself. And I had been a

00:20:10.980 student of both Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, and Peter Drucker, the best

00:20:17.540 management writer of the 20th century. So I really brought a very management-intense approach to

00:20:24.660 thinking about the federal government. And I wanted the pressure of the balanced budget to force us into

00:20:30.260 the kind of reforms we needed. When were the projections being made that the debt would be

00:20:35.860 paid off by 2009? 99 and 2000. Right, right. So that was at the end of the internet boom. That was a

00:20:45.140 remarkable decade in the 1990s of American economic expansion. Exactly what we had predicted. We said,

00:20:52.020 you're going to get dramatically more growth. That will produce revenue. And if you control spending,

00:20:57.620 for example, welfare reform led to such a dramatic drop in the number of people taking money from

00:21:03.380 the government, and those people now working and paying money as taxpayers, that you take the both

00:21:09.060 sides of that equation. The government's paying out less, and it's getting in more. So for almost

00:21:14.820 every state, in almost every state, welfare reform was a huge advantage to their fiscal budget.

00:21:20.420 So why did the balanced budget vote fail? I know it was only by one vote. Why were people opposed to

00:21:28.260 it? You mentioned a little earlier about the Democrat objection to work. Look, first of all,

00:21:34.420 there are people who like big government. I mean, look at the Biden administration. Look at Bernie Sanders.

00:21:39.780 I mean, they genuinely, sincerely like big government. Second, there were people who didn't want to get in a

00:21:47.220 straitjacket. They were thinking, oh my God, what if we get into a crisis and now we're constrained?

00:21:53.380 Well, my view, I mean, first of all, you always have an escape valve. So if you go to war, or if

00:21:57.940 there's a gigantic emergency, you can respond to it. But as a general principle, in the absence of war

00:22:04.980 and emergency, I think having a balanced budget requirement is good. But there were people who

00:22:09.860 simply wanted to avoid that kind of control.

00:22:13.140 Okay. So now, given that things worked so well on the economic and the social front in the 1990s,

00:22:18.820 I lived in the United States during the 1990s, and it was quite a remarkable boom period. Very,

00:22:24.180 very optimistic, and maybe a period unlike any that has been since, particularly now. Given the massive

00:22:31.700 success of that program, why did Republicans and Democrats alike relapse in the aftermath?

00:22:41.860 Because we went right back to huge deficits and a growing and spiraling debt,

00:22:48.100 even with that object lessened. So why did people fail to learn? And why more particularly,

00:22:52.900 was that also true of Republican administrations?

00:22:55.220 Well, look, I don't think either George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush had a clue

00:23:00.900 about Reaganism and about modern conservatism. I think they were just managers. And they managed

00:23:08.180 the system as it existed. I mean, when George W. Bush announced he was going to work with Teddy

00:23:12.340 Kennedy on education reform, you knew it was an absurdity. I mean, Teddy Kennedy was the chief

00:23:18.580 leader for the teachers unions. There wasn't going to be any education reform. They were just going to

00:23:23.140 spend a lot more money and accomplish nothing. And I think that there's a wing of the Republican Party,

00:23:31.300 which is a managerial wing. It likes things to be tidy. It doesn't like fights.

00:23:37.460 Well, if you're going to actually control the government, it is a struggle because the government

00:23:43.140 doesn't want to be controlled. So if you're going to actually, for example, examine how we managed to

00:23:49.620 build the F-35 as a bad airplane at such enormous cost, you're going to have every lobbyist who helped

00:23:56.260 build the plane petitioning the Congress to avoid the investigation. And so you end up in a situation.

00:24:04.660 I once said that the future has publicists, but the past has prison guards. And those prison guards

00:24:12.660 are mostly lobbyists. And they do everything they can to stop the future. I'll give you an example.

00:24:20.020 I've done a lot of stuff. I founded the Center for Health Transformation. I've done a lot of work

00:24:23.780 on health reform. So somebody built a computer model that could evaluate your eyes and could,

00:24:32.340 we currently have a system where every year you have to get your eyes checked if you need,

00:24:36.980 for example, a prescription for contact lenses. Well, the recommendation actually, technically,

00:24:43.220 is you ought to get your eyes examined every other year. But of course, if you're an optometrist or

00:24:47.460 an ophthalmologist, you like a provision that requires annually because that doubles the

00:24:52.020 income. So this company comes along and actually has figured out you can have a home application

00:24:58.820 using your laptop or your iPad. And it is literally technically as good as going in. So one year you'd

00:25:06.180 go in and the other year you'd give it to yourself. In state after state, the optometrist and the

00:25:12.980 ophthalmologist lobbied to get the state to outlaw the new technology in order to protect their ability.

00:25:20.260 Now this is something that Adam Smith wrote about in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, that any gathering

00:25:27.620 of businessmen is a conspiracy against the consumer. And so all of these interest groups like a sloppy,

00:25:36.580 influence-ridden, bureaucratic and political structure, and they don't particularly want a lean,

00:25:43.220 aggressive, competitive environment.

00:25:45.620 Yeah, you said that, okay, so you talked about this managerial tendency, but also the proclivity,

00:25:52.900 let's say, to shy away from a fight. The other thing that I see happening on the conservative front,

00:25:57.540 I would say, is that the left is capable of offering young people something approximating,

00:26:05.620 you might call it a utopian vision. And so there's a psychologist, Jean Piaget,

00:26:12.660 talked about a late stage in cognitive development among young people, was the latest in his

00:26:19.940 stages, in the stages that he laid out in his stage theory, developmental account of human,

00:26:28.180 let's say, cognitive progress. He called the late adolescent stage messianic.

00:26:33.620 He believed that that was a time, and it wasn't the case for all young people, but for many,

00:26:38.660 where moving from their group affiliation, say their peer group, to full independence required

00:26:45.860 something like the abiding by a set of universal principles. And so there's a search for universal

00:26:51.940 principles that can be a guideline for life, and that would be part of high-end enculturation.

00:26:58.820 And I think the left has been particularly good in capitalizing on that by making the case,

00:27:04.180 for example, that if you're concerned about climate change, then you're serving the long-term,

00:27:09.620 best long-term interests of the planet, that you're engaged in some noble goal that's outside of

00:27:14.100 yourself. And conservatives have been, I would say, spectacularly bad at offering that sort of

00:27:20.580 alternative to young people, a vision. And I think if you look at what predicts

00:27:26.900 conservative political belief temperamentally compared to

00:27:31.940 liberal or left political belief, the biggest predictor is creativity, is the trait openness.

00:27:37.940 And so open people tend to be more liberal in their political preoccupations, and open people are

00:27:43.380 actually more visionary in the technical sense. They're more imaginative. And then you might combine

00:27:50.900 that with the fact that conservatives tend to stand for traditional values. And it's not that easy to

00:27:57.220 articulate a vision that's based on traditional values, because a vision tends to be future-oriented. And so

00:28:04.340 one of the things that strikes me about your contract with America, and the work Reagan did, and the work

00:28:09.540 that Thatcher did, was that it was visionary in some real sense. And then that seemed to evaporate in

00:28:15.540 the aftermath of that era, and hasn't been replaced by anything on the conservative side since. And I've

00:28:22.900 spoken to conservatives all over the world, and to centrist liberals as well, and the degree to which

00:28:27.620 they're starving for a forward-looking vision can hardly be overestimated. So you managed this, and what

00:28:37.060 made your era different, and the people that you worked with? And why were you able to

00:28:43.220 communicate it in a manner that was effective enough to have it adopted by such a wide swath of people?

00:28:49.060 You know, without being presumptuous, you could make an argument that the three most disruptive

00:29:00.180 Republicans of modern times were Reagan, Trump, and me. And that all three of us are outside the norm

00:29:09.220 for the Republican Party. The Republican Party norm is to raise a lot of money, hire really good staff,

00:29:20.180 hope somebody near you is thinking, and actually almost deride

00:29:26.820 the idea of visionary language and all that fancified stuff. This is, by the way,

00:29:35.940 an enormous problem in the American military. There was a point around 2004 or 2005 where

00:29:45.460 John Petraeus called me from Iraq, and he said, I really had to get to know a guy named Nagel,

00:29:51.700 N-A-G-E-L, who was at that time an army major, and who had written a brilliant book called Eating Soup

00:29:59.220 with a Knife, which is actually a phrase from Lawrence of Arabia, who said that fighting a guerrilla war

00:30:06.500 is like eating soup with a knife. It's very, very difficult. So I read Nagel's book, I called Nagel and

00:30:13.700 talked to him. The book is a scathing, unending example of the army's absolute inability to think

00:30:24.900 in Vietnam. I mean, it's just astonishing how bad the U.S. Army's thought processes were in Vietnam.

00:30:32.260 And I called Nagel and I said, hasn't this really hurt your career? And he said, no,

00:30:37.380 nobody in the army reads. Well, you know, I did some work with the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland,

00:30:44.980 and we were looking at personality factors that predict military ranking and, to some degree,

00:30:51.540 academic success. And it was pretty clear from that investigation that general cognitive ability

00:30:57.540 was a predictor, like it is for most activities that are complex. But the next most powerful predictor,

00:31:03.620 and this isn't that surprising, was trait conscientiousness. And that's basically

00:31:06.980 orderliness and industriousness. Certainly, openness, which is the creativity dimension,

00:31:12.580 predicted not at all. Now, it also doesn't predict standard university grades, by the way.

00:31:17.620 You were talking a little bit earlier about the managerial proclivity of the run-of-the-mill

00:31:22.340 Republican and also about the fact that you and Trump and Reagan were all outsiders. It seems to me

00:31:29.060 that in managed bureaucracies that openness is a detriment to progress from the bottom up.

00:31:40.500 When you're in the bottom ranks, what really predicts your success is conscientiousness, dutifulness,

00:31:46.740 the ability to run out an algorithm that's already pre-established. And if you're open and creative

00:31:52.420 at the bottom rungs of an organization like that, all you're going to do is cause trouble.

00:31:56.900 Now, the problem with that is that as people progress through the ranks,

00:32:00.820 all the people who are creative get winnowed out. They might be absolutely vital

00:32:05.940 at the highest levels of organizations, but there are a tremendous amount of trouble at the bottom.

00:32:10.740 And that combined with that intrinsic skepticism that you described

00:32:15.380 among the, let's say, run-of-the-mill Republican acolytes means that vision and ideas are in very short supply.

00:32:28.180 It's a very difficult thing to overcome because, as I said, the visionary types are going to-

00:32:33.300 I mean, there's this great moment in the 19th century where the Peel decides that he cannot refute

00:32:48.020 the argument of the people who want to change the corn laws and allow the price of corn drop dramatically

00:32:54.820 to feed the industrial working class. And in the middle of the debate, he turns to his deputy and says,

00:33:00.660 you have to answer this. I can't. I think they're right. Peel then splits the conservative party

00:33:06.900 because the conservative party base is farmers who are growing wheat, which was what they meant by corn,

00:33:13.700 who really wanted these tariffs to protect their price. So Peel takes with him

00:33:19.300 all of the great bright members of the conservative government. And this is why Gladstone ends up as a liberal.

00:33:27.860 The only person left who is articulate is a half-Jew who had been considered a fop, which was a term of derision,

00:33:39.060 who had worn velvet coats, had toured Europe with his mistress and her husband, and had written novels.

00:33:46.660 Now, in the absence of Peel splitting the conservative party, the Israeli would never have emerged.

00:33:56.180 And yet, he was the only articulate person on the floor of the House of Commons who could defend the conservatives.

00:34:03.140 And as a result, all of these wheat farmers, who would normally have disdained him, decided he was their leader.

00:34:13.860 Now, you only need a handful of visionaries. We didn't need seven Reagans. You know, one Reagan was enough.

00:34:20.980 The tragedy was, Reagan picked a managerial personality from the anti-Reagan wing of the party to be vice president.

00:34:31.700 And that's how you end up with George H.W. Bush, who never understood Reaganism, promptly broke his word about raising taxes,

00:34:38.580 and had no notion of the degree to which Reagan had fused together social conservatives and economic conservatives and nationalist anti-Soviet conservatives.

00:34:50.780 Then, when Bush leaves, and frankly, my standing up to Bush on tax increases was a key moment in creating the credibility that led to the success of 94,

00:35:03.360 because I proved to the average Republican grassroots person, there was somebody there who actually cared enough to fight.

00:35:09.840 And we actually had more votes in the House Republican conference than Bush did.

00:35:13.680 And at that point, the die was cast for the future.

00:35:19.000 But in the process, I ultimately infuriated the Bush wing of the party.

00:35:24.840 And as soon as they could get away from what I had, and basically what I was doing was Reaganism.

00:35:30.020 So as soon as they could get away from what I was doing, they reverted to the norm.

00:35:35.360 And the norm is, frankly, a pretty dull managerial party.

00:35:39.740 This doesn't have any sense of what, you know.

00:35:42.680 Now, H.L. Mencken once wrote of the Harding administration that it was like an army of ants crossing the desert,

00:35:49.760 which, when it came upon an idea, wondered what it was and trampled it to death, trying to study it,

00:35:54.320 and then resumed its march across the desert.

00:35:57.120 Well, that described a large wing of the Republican Party.

00:36:01.040 Now, the difference is, on the left, you have lots of vision and fanaticism,

00:36:05.680 but they tend to be out of touch with reality.

00:36:08.160 I tell people the reason the left can't deal with violence, whether it's criminals, terrorists, or Russia,

00:36:14.380 is that they saw the Lion King movie and thought it was a documentary,

00:36:19.320 and they think that lions and zebras actually sing and dance together.

00:36:23.020 And we cannot convince them that lions eat zebras.

00:36:26.600 So while they have a vision, it's insane.

00:36:29.640 I'm actually working on a paper that there are two wings of the modern Democratic Party,

00:36:33.600 a weird wing and an insane wing.

00:36:37.180 Yeah.

00:36:38.260 Yeah, well, I mean, that does seem to be that paradox that you just described

00:36:46.620 with the visionary Democrats who are out of touch with reality

00:36:50.120 and the managerial Republicans who are out of touch with vision

00:36:54.300 does seem to be a logical consequence of the excessive control

00:37:01.560 that people at different temperamental extremes might have of both parties

00:37:06.040 because the stereotypical personality who's going to lean to the left

00:37:12.300 on the pathological side is someone who's extraordinarily visionary

00:37:15.900 but completely impractical.

00:37:18.400 And then on the right, you're going to have someone who's so practical

00:37:21.180 that they can't shift direction when it's necessary.

00:37:24.780 And I would say those are stable states in some sense on both sides.

00:37:29.200 And you talked about outsiders like Reagan and yourself,

00:37:33.460 and you put Trump in that category too.

00:37:35.560 Those are people who come along, I suppose, now and then

00:37:37.760 and shake up the Republican Party.

00:37:39.500 Why would you put Trump in the same categorical domain in that sense

00:37:43.820 as Reagan and yourself?

00:37:45.420 Well, because he had actually a pretty coherent vision.

00:37:49.200 He really did want to make America great again.

00:37:51.500 He really did believe in a pretty sophisticated America first foreign policy.

00:37:57.860 He was really prepared to take on the bureaucracies and shake them up.

00:38:01.100 I mean, part of what defines the entire process with Donald Trump

00:38:08.320 is that the establishment, whether it's the bureaucracy

00:38:11.320 or it's the news media or it's the FBI or it's the billionaire elites in New York,

00:38:20.400 they all understood that he was their mortal enemy,

00:38:23.600 that if they didn't go after him every single day in every single way,

00:38:28.380 that he would destroy their world.

00:38:31.080 And that's what he was doing.

00:38:32.500 I mean, there's no question in my mind,

00:38:33.860 he was waging war on a corrupt establishment,

00:38:37.660 and the establishment was fighting back.

00:38:40.520 I mean, I think he was the most disruptive person since Andrew Jackson

00:38:43.940 in terms of actually taking the establishment head on

00:38:46.900 and being prepared to violate all of its norms.

00:38:52.580 And I guess I'm curious, too.

00:38:54.400 I haven't been able to figure out for a very long time

00:38:56.680 why conservatives have been unable to be attractive to minorities,

00:39:01.700 especially immigrants,

00:39:02.540 because, by and large, immigrants to Canada and the U.S.

00:39:07.100 are much more conservative than the population itself.

00:39:11.240 And so why do you think the Republicans have been historically unable

00:39:14.780 to make the connection with minority voters?

00:39:17.440 Is it the policy on immigration, do you think,

00:39:19.500 or the notion that they're a status quo party?

00:39:23.400 Well, I think, first of all,

00:39:24.680 that historically they were the status quo party.

00:39:28.860 And I think that immigrants are basically told,

00:39:32.620 you're supposed to be a liberal Democrat.

00:39:34.620 What's happened is,

00:39:36.420 as liberal Democrat has turned into radical Democrat,

00:39:40.200 they've said, that's not me.

00:39:42.900 And I think that you're seeing,

00:39:45.140 this has been a gradual, steady drift in the right direction.

00:39:48.680 And I think you're seeing,

00:39:50.300 I think Bush actually got up to 44% of the Latino vote in 2004.

00:39:55.520 And then we backslid for a little while,

00:39:59.220 and now we're back again.

00:40:00.600 And I suspect that this year and in 2024,

00:40:06.460 we'll actually carry a majority of Latinos.

00:40:09.020 And from the standpoint of the Democrats,

00:40:10.720 that's the beginning of the end.

00:40:12.780 If they lose working class whites and they lose Latinos,

00:40:18.200 they can't be competitive.

00:40:20.120 It's so interesting to see, too, isn't it,

00:40:22.700 that as the Democrats beat the oppression drum

00:40:25.920 and claim to be standing up for the victimized

00:40:28.280 in this remarkably moral manner,

00:40:30.640 that they're in fact alienating

00:40:32.220 exactly the people that they claim to support.

00:40:34.720 First of all, the working class,

00:40:36.020 because they did a cataclysmic job

00:40:37.660 of alienating the working class,

00:40:39.760 especially in the Clinton campaign.

00:40:42.220 It was something stunning to watch.

00:40:44.440 And now exactly the same thing

00:40:45.800 is happening on the minority front.

00:40:47.280 And so the very people whose tender mercies

00:40:50.620 are supposed to be being targeted

00:40:52.160 by this victimization narrative

00:40:53.780 are the people who, as soon as they understand it,

00:40:56.320 do everything they possibly can to reject it.

00:40:58.760 But I think that's happening in part

00:41:00.420 because among the graduate school educated elites,

00:41:07.520 you're really dealing with a secular religion

00:41:10.060 rather than a political movement.

00:41:12.340 And therefore, you have all of the fervor

00:41:16.000 and intensity and blindness of a religious movement.

00:41:20.820 So they have to assume

00:41:23.640 that these other people are just wrong.

00:41:26.800 They can't hear them

00:41:28.560 because the messages being sent to them

00:41:31.460 by minorities and by working class whites

00:41:34.360 are messages which are heresy

00:41:36.540 given their secular religion.

00:41:39.240 And I think that that's at the heart of this.

00:41:42.080 That's why you kind of something like Bill Gates

00:41:44.280 say recently that it's really good

00:41:46.760 we have these really high prices for fossil fuels

00:41:51.140 because that's really going to lead people

00:41:53.240 to understand how important greenism is.

00:41:56.440 Well, you know, if you're a family

00:41:57.920 that's going to have an electric blackout this winter

00:42:00.580 or you're somebody who can't afford to buy heating oil,

00:42:03.740 you somehow think a billionaire telling you

00:42:05.560 how good it is for you to be in pain

00:42:07.040 is probably pretty stupid.

00:42:09.180 Yeah, well, you know,

00:42:09.780 the deputy prime minister in Canada,

00:42:11.680 Chrystia Freeland,

00:42:12.440 said exactly the same thing

00:42:13.560 about high gas prices in Canada at the pump.

00:42:16.240 It's like it's good for people to pay

00:42:17.680 a little bit more

00:42:18.740 when they're filling up their car

00:42:19.800 because it helps them understand

00:42:21.360 just how serious the climate crisis is.

00:42:23.840 You described this as a secular religious movement

00:42:26.740 on the left.

00:42:28.880 What do you think the elements

00:42:29.900 of that secular religious movement are?

00:42:32.120 And I'm going to put another codicil

00:42:33.840 on that question too.

00:42:35.340 You know, so there's famous gospel dictum,

00:42:38.000 obviously, that you render unto Caesar

00:42:40.500 what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.

00:42:42.920 And one question that arises

00:42:44.920 as a consequence of that

00:42:46.400 is that is what happens

00:42:48.180 if you don't render unto God what is God's?

00:42:50.900 And it looks to me like what happens

00:42:52.520 is that the sacred collapses

00:42:54.200 into the political

00:42:55.500 such that the political becomes sacred

00:42:58.300 for those who are a-religious.

00:42:59.780 It's inevitable.

00:43:02.380 And I was, I've been, sorry,

00:43:04.280 I've been thinking about this

00:43:05.200 from a psychological perspective, you know.

00:43:07.740 So if you think about,

00:43:10.600 if you imagine that

00:43:11.740 we have a hierarchy of conception

00:43:13.560 such that some things we perceive

00:43:16.280 and conceive of are shallow

00:43:17.520 and other things are deep

00:43:18.740 and the deep things are those

00:43:20.180 upon which many ideas are dependent.

00:43:24.200 So constitutional axioms, for example,

00:43:26.500 in that manner would be deep.

00:43:28.620 And the self-evident presuppositions

00:43:31.080 upon which the constitutional axioms

00:43:33.120 are predicated would even be deeper.

00:43:35.780 The deeper down you go,

00:43:37.420 the more it becomes religious

00:43:39.080 in some real sense.

00:43:41.040 And there's no getting away

00:43:42.800 from depth in that manner

00:43:44.660 because without that hierarchy of depth,

00:43:47.020 you have a kind of incoherence at best.

00:43:49.680 And so there's no getting away

00:43:51.060 from the religious

00:43:51.820 if you think about it technically

00:43:53.460 in that manner.

00:43:54.940 And then if you don't have

00:43:55.820 a religious story

00:43:57.360 or a religious substrate,

00:43:58.600 then it seems to me

00:44:00.080 that what happens is

00:44:01.040 the political starts to become

00:44:02.400 the substitute for that depth.

00:44:05.120 And then we get into a situation

00:44:06.860 where we can't even talk

00:44:08.000 about political things anymore

00:44:09.240 because it becomes taboo.

00:44:11.000 And that seems to be part

00:44:12.280 of this secularized religion

00:44:14.980 that's part of what?

00:44:16.760 It's part of woke activism.

00:44:18.820 It's part of the insistence

00:44:20.660 that human beings are a cancer

00:44:22.200 on the planet and destroying it.

00:44:24.180 It's part of this insane insistence

00:44:27.580 on climate remediation

00:44:29.480 before everything else,

00:44:30.880 including providing food

00:44:32.320 and shelter and energy to the poor.

00:44:35.100 And that seems to be

00:44:36.320 what's being rejected en masse

00:44:37.840 by the working class

00:44:39.500 and also now increasingly

00:44:41.100 by minority voters.

00:44:42.520 Well, I mean,

00:44:45.180 Dennis Prager has a very nice formula.

00:44:47.760 He says,

00:44:48.500 big God, small government.

00:44:50.260 Big government, small God.

00:44:52.900 And in a way,

00:44:54.180 when I described...

00:44:55.120 Oh, yes.

00:44:55.540 I haven't heard him say that.

00:44:56.420 When I described

00:44:57.460 big government socialism

00:44:58.820 in my most recent book,

00:45:01.280 I was trying to get at this notion.

00:45:05.140 What you have in some ways

00:45:06.820 is the ferocity

00:45:07.900 of the Reformation.

00:45:12.160 You have the kind of attitude

00:45:14.640 which was captured

00:45:15.660 in A Man for All Seasons

00:45:16.940 where the son-in-law is asked,

00:45:21.860 you know,

00:45:22.060 would you knock down a law

00:45:23.200 to get at the devil?

00:45:24.760 And he says,

00:45:25.260 well, of course.

00:45:25.840 And he said,

00:45:26.220 and then would you knock down

00:45:27.120 the next law?

00:45:28.260 And then when you finally end up

00:45:30.320 having driven the devil

00:45:32.000 all the way to Wales

00:45:32.840 and he turns,

00:45:34.200 what is going to stand

00:45:35.140 between you and him

00:45:36.260 now that you've knocked down

00:45:37.640 all the laws?

00:45:39.120 And I think what you have

00:45:40.420 on the left

00:45:41.080 is the ferocity

00:45:43.860 of the Reformation,

00:45:46.040 the ferocity

00:45:46.760 of the French Revolution

00:45:47.900 at its peak.

00:45:49.520 Calista and I visited

00:45:50.420 the cemetery

00:45:51.920 in Paris

00:45:54.100 where the Marquis de Lafayette

00:45:56.080 is buried.

00:45:57.660 And it was a cemetery.

00:45:59.540 He personally was not harmed

00:46:00.980 by the revolution,

00:46:01.940 but his wife's relatives

00:46:03.560 were all aristocrats

00:46:04.960 and they were all guillotined.

00:46:06.200 And they were buried

00:46:07.080 in that cemetery

00:46:07.720 and so she asked

00:46:08.560 that he and she be buried there.

00:46:10.080 It's also the cemetery

00:46:11.280 in which the Catholic nuns

00:46:13.400 were buried

00:46:14.880 who had gone singing

00:46:16.120 to the guillotine

00:46:17.720 because they refused

00:46:19.000 to give up Christ

00:46:19.780 and they therefore

00:46:21.140 had to be guillotined.

00:46:23.020 It's the ferocity

00:46:24.140 of Leninism

00:46:25.240 which annihilated

00:46:27.540 much of the social structure

00:46:29.360 of Tsarist Russia.

00:46:31.020 It's the ferocity

00:46:32.000 of Maoism

00:46:32.700 which annihilated

00:46:33.980 much of the structure,

00:46:35.000 the Confucian structure

00:46:36.400 of China.

00:46:37.340 Well, that ferocity

00:46:38.320 is what leads people

00:46:40.460 to say

00:46:40.960 that we ought to have

00:46:42.820 transgenderism

00:46:43.800 for three-year-olds.

00:46:45.420 We ought to make sure

00:46:46.640 that we have

00:46:47.980 black dormitories

00:46:49.860 in the name

00:46:50.480 of anti-racism.

00:46:52.160 That we ought to

00:46:53.220 make sure

00:46:54.340 that white males

00:46:55.160 don't get hired

00:46:55.860 for anything

00:46:56.440 because they're clearly

00:46:58.120 the source

00:46:58.680 of all of our problems.

00:47:00.220 That we ought to condemn

00:47:01.260 Christopher Columbus

00:47:02.540 for having discovered

00:47:03.520 the new world

00:47:04.240 because somehow

00:47:05.780 he eliminated

00:47:06.600 the purity

00:47:07.240 of Native Americans

00:47:08.880 which requires

00:47:09.540 a stunningly

00:47:10.400 ahistorical understanding

00:47:11.780 of Native Americans.

00:47:14.820 All of this

00:47:15.680 is a modern religion

00:47:17.800 and I think

00:47:18.700 has to be dealt with.

00:47:20.040 You know,

00:47:20.260 that's why I'm working

00:47:21.280 on this paper

00:47:22.180 on the Democratic Party's

00:47:23.980 two wings

00:47:24.460 as weird and insane.

00:47:26.240 The weird wing

00:47:27.060 is sort of in touch

00:47:27.960 with reality

00:47:28.500 but weird.

00:47:29.600 The insane wing

00:47:30.460 is totally out of touch

00:47:31.280 with the real world

00:47:32.080 and is drifting off

00:47:33.980 into a never-never land

00:47:35.280 in which it is

00:47:37.420 quite prepared

00:47:38.380 to kill people

00:47:40.160 like you and me

00:47:40.940 if that's the cost

00:47:41.880 of getting to nirvana.

00:47:44.460 Yeah, well,

00:47:44.760 this is the thing

00:47:45.440 that strikes me.

00:47:46.820 I was just in Europe

00:47:47.640 for several months

00:47:48.840 touring through the UK

00:47:50.280 and through Holland

00:47:52.340 and Finland

00:47:53.600 and Germany

00:47:54.900 and Jerusalem

00:47:55.720 all sorts of places.

00:47:57.160 It was very interesting

00:47:58.320 to be in Berlin

00:47:59.320 because of course

00:48:00.140 the Germans

00:48:00.800 as well as

00:48:01.580 the people in the UK

00:48:03.760 it looks like

00:48:05.000 they're going to be in

00:48:05.640 for an unbelievably

00:48:06.380 harsh winter.

00:48:07.780 There are estimates

00:48:08.380 in the UK

00:48:08.960 that up to 40%

00:48:10.160 of small businesses

00:48:11.140 now face the risk

00:48:12.320 of bankruptcy

00:48:12.880 and even The Guardian

00:48:14.840 that horrible

00:48:15.600 left-wing rag

00:48:16.480 published an article

00:48:18.200 about two weeks ago

00:48:20.500 which was actually

00:48:21.540 a pretty good article

00:48:22.280 all things considered

00:48:23.220 pointing out that

00:48:24.480 because of the climate

00:48:25.540 of the UK

00:48:26.200 that if people

00:48:27.500 aren't able to heat

00:48:28.360 their houses

00:48:28.860 up to a reasonable

00:48:30.260 temperature

00:48:30.800 which might be

00:48:31.760 the temperature

00:48:32.260 that drives out damp

00:48:33.560 that the houses

00:48:35.300 start to develop

00:48:36.160 black mold.

00:48:37.460 Of course,

00:48:37.860 black mold destroys

00:48:38.800 houses structurally

00:48:40.620 but worse than that

00:48:41.580 it produces

00:48:42.160 airborne toxins

00:48:44.320 that damage

00:48:45.280 the respiratory systems

00:48:46.840 particularly of children

00:48:48.560 and so The Guardian

00:48:49.420 pointed out

00:48:50.000 that one of the

00:48:50.740 unintended consequences

00:48:52.080 let's say

00:48:52.640 of the energy crisis

00:48:53.640 is that perhaps

00:48:55.280 millions of British children

00:48:57.920 are going to develop

00:48:58.740 permanent respiratory problems

00:49:00.240 as well as compromising

00:49:01.700 the structural integrity

00:49:02.740 of a good chunk

00:49:03.600 of the US

00:49:04.160 or of the UK

00:49:05.400 real estate market

00:49:06.860 and all of that

00:49:08.560 insanity

00:49:10.100 on the energy front

00:49:11.220 appears to me

00:49:12.360 to be driven

00:49:13.000 and the Conservatives

00:49:14.120 are responsible

00:49:14.780 for this in large part

00:49:15.940 by these appallingly

00:49:17.680 moralistic

00:49:19.120 say net zero policies

00:49:20.780 that have

00:49:22.400 as one of their

00:49:23.280 immediate

00:49:23.900 consequences

00:49:25.660 the

00:49:26.740 impoverishment

00:49:28.900 of those

00:49:29.520 who are already

00:49:30.180 struggling

00:49:30.680 and so it looks to me

00:49:32.200 that the left

00:49:33.580 is perfectly willing

00:49:34.540 to sacrifice

00:49:35.240 the poor

00:49:35.940 which are hypothetically

00:49:37.780 the people

00:49:38.280 that they are standing for

00:49:39.440 in order to

00:49:40.520 well let's say

00:49:41.640 to not save the planet

00:49:43.180 we're going to get the best

00:49:44.220 we're going to get the worst

00:49:45.040 of both worlds

00:49:45.780 say we're going to

00:49:46.560 throw a couple of billion

00:49:47.580 people into poverty

00:49:48.520 including a bunch of people

00:49:49.580 in Europe

00:49:50.000 we're going to make

00:49:50.940 the environmental crisis

00:49:52.040 such as it is

00:49:53.040 much much worse

00:49:54.680 and we're going to make

00:49:56.320 the environmental crisis

00:49:57.460 much much worse

00:49:58.260 by doing so

00:49:59.080 and so this is

00:50:00.320 this is a

00:50:01.400 this is a stunning

00:50:02.240 set of affairs

00:50:03.040 as far as I'm concerned

00:50:04.160 and I can't understand

00:50:05.640 for example

00:50:06.200 why people like

00:50:06.900 Boris Johnson

00:50:07.580 in the UK

00:50:08.120 marched

00:50:09.440 so forthrightly

00:50:10.900 into the maw

00:50:11.700 with these idiot

00:50:12.920 net zero policies

00:50:14.080 with no evidence

00:50:16.800 whatsoever

00:50:17.300 that the crisis

00:50:18.120 that they were designed

00:50:19.040 to prohibit

00:50:20.100 or to forestall

00:50:21.460 actually existed

00:50:22.340 and at the expense

00:50:23.400 of conservative principles

00:50:24.780 and at the expense

00:50:26.060 of the poor

00:50:26.700 it's like

00:50:27.380 what's going on

00:50:28.320 on the conservative side there

00:50:29.680 I mean you know

00:50:30.480 the UK government

00:50:31.300 at the moment

00:50:31.860 is imploding

00:50:32.640 mostly under the weight

00:50:33.980 of the aftermath

00:50:35.600 of these crazy

00:50:36.520 net zero policies

00:50:37.460 and the economic havoc

00:50:38.860 they're wreaking

00:50:39.500 so why do you think

00:50:41.940 the conservatives

00:50:42.500 there have abandoned

00:50:43.320 their principles

00:50:43.960 to such a stunning degree

00:50:45.440 and are following

00:50:46.760 this crazy

00:50:47.520 left-wing

00:50:48.200 utopian scheme

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00:51:55.200 slash jbp

00:51:56.300 I think the combination

00:52:00.340 of the applause

00:52:01.360 of the media

00:52:02.160 and the applause

00:52:03.560 of the elites

00:52:04.200 going to the right

00:52:06.060 cocktail party

00:52:06.900 to be surrounded

00:52:08.360 by people

00:52:08.940 who pat you

00:52:09.560 on the back

00:52:10.060 and tell you

00:52:10.620 what a heroic

00:52:11.600 figure you are

00:52:12.500 I always

00:52:14.000 you know

00:52:14.300 I try to tell people

00:52:15.160 that you can put

00:52:16.140 eggs

00:52:17.040 in a freezer

00:52:18.560 and they will

00:52:20.300 get hard

00:52:20.940 but that doesn't

00:52:22.880 mean they're

00:52:23.220 boiled eggs

00:52:23.840 and if I can't

00:52:26.500 get you to

00:52:26.960 understand

00:52:27.480 that to get

00:52:28.280 a boiled egg

00:52:28.920 you have to put

00:52:29.540 it in hot water

00:52:30.440 then I can't

00:52:31.900 deal with you

00:52:32.400 because you're

00:52:33.020 crazy

00:52:33.360 and it's not

00:52:35.140 an ideological

00:52:35.600 problem

00:52:36.240 it's an insanity

00:52:36.960 it's a mental

00:52:37.400 health problem

00:52:38.020 and what you have

00:52:39.460 is a worldwide

00:52:40.240 elite

00:52:40.820 sort of the

00:52:41.940 Davos generation

00:52:42.980 of people

00:52:44.020 who are

00:52:44.320 suffering

00:52:44.640 mental illness

00:52:45.420 and if you

00:52:46.920 just understand

00:52:47.440 this is

00:52:47.800 this is a

00:52:48.440 extraordinary

00:52:49.640 it's like

00:52:50.640 the flagellante

00:52:51.460 in the middle

00:52:51.920 ages

00:52:52.220 who went around

00:52:53.300 from city

00:52:53.780 to city

00:52:54.180 beating themselves

00:52:54.940 on their back

00:52:55.580 with whips

00:52:56.420 in order to

00:52:57.440 atone for

00:52:57.980 their sins

00:52:58.660 you know

00:53:00.300 it was a

00:53:00.580 very widespread

00:53:01.280 movement

00:53:01.760 for a very

00:53:02.280 brief period

00:53:02.900 and then people

00:53:03.460 realized it was

00:53:04.040 really stupid

00:53:04.720 what you have

00:53:06.380 now is the

00:53:07.000 ultimate

00:53:07.640 catharsis

00:53:09.540 of the

00:53:10.480 insanity

00:53:10.880 for example

00:53:11.440 of thinking

00:53:11.860 that a

00:53:12.220 teenager

00:53:12.580 from sweden

00:53:13.320 is somehow

00:53:14.520 with no real

00:53:15.360 knowledge of

00:53:15.900 science

00:53:16.300 no real

00:53:17.300 understanding

00:53:17.880 of history

00:53:18.440 and no real

00:53:19.480 thoughts to

00:53:20.020 consequence

00:53:20.620 somehow going

00:53:21.760 to be the

00:53:22.160 fact that she's

00:53:22.980 now blessed

00:53:23.640 keeping open

00:53:24.700 the german

00:53:25.200 nuclear power

00:53:26.280 plants

00:53:26.740 and that that

00:53:27.680 somehow has

00:53:28.340 meaning

00:53:28.800 tells you how

00:53:30.840 truly sick

00:53:31.660 the system

00:53:32.240 is

00:53:32.600 yeah well

00:53:33.920 i've thought

00:53:34.740 for 15

00:53:36.040 years that we

00:53:36.820 were living

00:53:37.340 in the

00:53:38.420 in the

00:53:40.240 fantasy of a

00:53:41.700 delusional

00:53:42.300 13 year

00:53:43.040 old girl

00:53:43.620 and that

00:53:44.580 was long

00:53:44.960 before

00:53:45.260 greta

00:53:45.560 thunberg

00:53:46.020 hit the

00:53:46.900 press

00:53:47.520 and to

00:53:48.340 see world

00:53:49.040 leaders

00:53:49.580 kowtow to

00:53:51.320 her as if

00:53:52.400 she's an

00:53:52.880 oracle is

00:53:53.900 something quite

00:53:54.820 stunning to

00:53:55.480 behold

00:53:55.880 there's something

00:53:56.780 truly archetypal

00:53:57.820 about that

00:53:58.360 that that

00:53:59.000 worship of

00:53:59.800 of something

00:54:00.360 like oracular

00:54:01.140 feminine

00:54:01.660 innocence

00:54:02.120 it's it's

00:54:02.920 something like

00:54:03.480 that and it

00:54:03.980 really is

00:54:04.560 it really is a

00:54:06.000 form of

00:54:06.520 delusional

00:54:07.320 insanity

00:54:07.960 so it's

00:54:09.340 always been

00:54:09.860 fascinating to

00:54:10.400 me you know

00:54:10.660 when churchill

00:54:11.520 goes on the

00:54:14.020 umderman campaign

00:54:15.040 in 1898

00:54:15.840 he writes a

00:54:17.900 book about

00:54:18.620 the river war

00:54:19.240 which is a

00:54:19.880 my wife actually

00:54:20.820 got me an

00:54:21.880 original copy

00:54:22.600 which is one

00:54:23.540 of my real

00:54:24.080 treasures

00:54:24.440 and he

00:54:26.380 praises

00:54:27.040 kitchener

00:54:27.640 thinking that

00:54:28.940 this will lead

00:54:29.460 general kitchener

00:54:30.280 to be pleased

00:54:31.380 with churchill

00:54:32.000 well kitchener's

00:54:33.480 reaction was

00:54:34.200 who in the

00:54:34.820 hell is some

00:54:36.060 young lieutenant

00:54:36.840 to render

00:54:38.740 any judgment

00:54:39.740 on my

00:54:40.760 generalship

00:54:41.380 he doesn't

00:54:42.480 know enough

00:54:43.220 to render

00:54:43.760 judgment

00:54:44.240 and even if

00:54:45.140 it's positive

00:54:45.740 judgment it is

00:54:46.540 stupid for him

00:54:47.780 to have rendered

00:54:48.340 it now this

00:54:49.660 was a great

00:54:50.120 shock to

00:54:50.680 churchill who

00:54:51.600 thought that

00:54:52.180 somehow writing

00:54:53.320 well of

00:54:53.840 kitchener would

00:54:54.820 improve his

00:54:55.580 standing only

00:54:56.840 to discover that

00:54:57.660 in fact

00:54:58.060 uh

00:54:58.820 kitchener did

00:55:00.060 not think it

00:55:00.520 was appropriate

00:55:00.960 for him to

00:55:01.500 render judgment

00:55:02.060 because he

00:55:02.380 didn't have any

00:55:03.040 judgment as a

00:55:04.100 lieutenant and

00:55:05.440 that's my

00:55:06.020 reaction

00:55:06.360 we've been

00:55:07.120 through two

00:55:07.740 generations

00:55:08.380 in which

00:55:09.940 parents

00:55:10.560 have thought

00:55:11.600 that teenagers

00:55:12.280 should like

00:55:13.340 them

00:55:13.600 and have

00:55:15.340 reshaped their

00:55:16.440 policies

00:55:16.840 there's a

00:55:17.920 great line

00:55:18.620 that Dr.

00:55:20.900 Ben Carson

00:55:21.420 the first time

00:55:22.000 I heard him

00:55:22.400 speak

00:55:22.760 and he spoke

00:55:24.280 at a prayer

00:55:24.720 breakfast

00:55:25.120 and he was

00:55:25.680 marvelous

00:55:26.220 he got up

00:55:27.700 as you know

00:55:28.380 he's African

00:55:28.920 American

00:55:29.340 and he got

00:55:30.780 up

00:55:31.040 and he

00:55:31.900 started by

00:55:32.620 describing a

00:55:33.660 series of

00:55:34.380 things about

00:55:34.980 your brain

00:55:35.560 and he

00:55:37.740 stopped and

00:55:38.260 he said

00:55:38.540 no nobody

00:55:39.100 in this

00:55:39.440 audience

00:55:39.740 understands

00:55:40.300 anything I

00:55:40.940 just said

00:55:41.480 because you

00:55:42.800 have not

00:55:43.180 studied to

00:55:43.720 be a

00:55:43.980 neurosurgeon

00:55:44.640 and it's a

00:55:46.500 function of

00:55:46.940 learned knowledge

00:55:47.680 and then he

00:55:49.240 started talking

00:55:49.880 about how he

00:55:50.600 got there

00:55:51.080 and he said

00:55:52.220 his mother

00:55:52.660 was a single

00:55:53.260 mother and

00:55:54.400 she was raising

00:55:55.040 he and his

00:55:55.580 brother and

00:55:56.820 she said to

00:55:57.400 them if you

00:55:58.320 don't both

00:55:58.900 get A's

00:55:59.680 straight A's

00:56:01.060 the television

00:56:02.500 goes up in

00:56:03.460 the closet

00:56:04.140 until the

00:56:04.900 next grading

00:56:05.400 period

00:56:05.700 and he

00:56:06.900 says people

00:56:07.340 will say

00:56:07.740 to him

00:56:08.120 how could

00:56:09.420 your mother

00:56:09.840 have done

00:56:10.320 that

00:56:10.600 and he

00:56:11.580 said well

00:56:11.900 you know

00:56:12.120 she thought

00:56:12.620 she was

00:56:13.040 the parent

00:56:13.580 and we

00:56:15.520 went through

00:56:15.960 two generations

00:56:16.800 now where

00:56:17.920 the parents

00:56:18.440 thought that

00:56:18.980 they needed

00:56:19.400 the approval

00:56:19.980 of their

00:56:20.360 children

00:56:20.720 it's led

00:56:21.760 us to

00:56:22.100 fentanyl

00:56:22.560 it's led

00:56:23.240 us to

00:56:23.540 we have

00:56:24.300 an intern

00:56:24.820 at

00:56:25.880 Gingrich 360

00:56:26.680 who's working

00:56:27.320 on a really

00:56:28.240 interesting

00:56:28.580 question

00:56:29.080 given that

00:56:30.140 we lost

00:56:30.580 55,000

00:56:31.760 people

00:56:32.260 in the

00:56:32.960 Vietnam War

00:56:33.660 over eight

00:56:34.160 years

00:56:34.480 and we

00:56:35.420 have a

00:56:35.700 wall

00:56:36.060 that's a

00:56:36.760 little over

00:56:37.220 500 feet

00:56:37.920 long

00:56:38.200 if you

00:56:39.260 had a

00:56:39.600 wall

00:56:39.840 for the

00:56:40.140 last decade

00:56:40.840 of drug

00:56:41.280 overdoses

00:56:41.860 next to

00:56:43.240 the wall

00:56:43.780 for Vietnam

00:56:44.360 how long

00:56:45.260 would it

00:56:45.460 be

00:56:45.540 it turns

00:56:45.840 out it's

00:56:46.160 about

00:56:46.380 1.1

00:56:47.220 miles

00:56:47.620 that's

00:56:49.080 how many

00:56:49.360 Americans

00:56:50.520 we've lost

00:56:51.060 to drugs

00:56:51.460 in a decade

00:56:52.020 without

00:56:53.280 anybody

00:56:54.040 having

00:56:54.380 gotten

00:56:54.660 enraged

00:56:55.240 anybody

00:56:55.960 having said

00:56:56.660 enough

00:56:56.980 of this

00:56:57.420 anybody

00:56:58.120 having come

00:56:58.760 down for

00:56:59.320 a ruthless

00:57:00.620 intense

00:57:01.380 anti-drug

00:57:02.220 policy

00:57:02.680 we've lost

00:57:03.940 over a

00:57:04.920 million people

00:57:05.640 in a decade

00:57:07.020 so on

00:57:08.240 on the

00:57:08.880 elite side

00:57:09.820 let's say

00:57:10.800 on the

00:57:11.160 left

00:57:11.500 you're

00:57:12.020 you're

00:57:12.420 characterizing

00:57:13.140 the typical

00:57:13.980 adherent

00:57:14.580 of the

00:57:14.980 woke

00:57:15.320 enterprise

00:57:16.360 on the

00:57:16.760 left

00:57:17.020 as

00:57:17.480 highly

00:57:18.380 educated

00:57:19.200 in the

00:57:19.740 in the

00:57:20.360 technical

00:57:20.680 sense

00:57:21.180 products

00:57:22.560 of

00:57:22.900 higher

00:57:23.480 education

00:57:24.040 on the

00:57:24.640 liberal arts

00:57:25.180 front

00:57:25.440 or what

00:57:25.800 passes

00:57:26.160 for it

00:57:26.540 now

00:57:26.800 and so

00:57:27.960 that is

00:57:28.480 a form

00:57:28.880 of

00:57:29.340 intellectual

00:57:30.120 privilege

00:57:30.740 and you

00:57:31.620 might say

00:57:32.040 that along

00:57:32.840 with that

00:57:33.280 privileged

00:57:33.800 position

00:57:34.360 comes a

00:57:34.920 fair bit

00:57:35.280 of existential

00:57:35.920 guilt

00:57:36.360 which is

00:57:36.880 something like

00:57:37.440 I have

00:57:38.160 all this

00:57:38.480 privilege

00:57:38.840 but I

00:57:39.200 really

00:57:39.380 haven't

00:57:39.700 earned

00:57:39.980 it

00:57:40.220 which is

00:57:40.720 of course

00:57:41.100 the

00:57:41.380 accusation

00:57:42.260 that the

00:57:42.580 radical

00:57:42.840 left

00:57:43.220 doles

00:57:44.240 out

00:57:44.500 in no

00:57:45.020 small

00:57:45.860 amount

00:57:46.360 continually

00:57:47.400 with regard

00:57:48.140 to western

00:57:48.640 culture

00:57:48.980 as a

00:57:49.300 whole

00:57:49.560 but you

00:57:50.340 could say

00:57:50.620 it really

00:57:50.880 does

00:57:51.160 typify

00:57:51.780 the

00:57:52.020 typical

00:57:52.640 liberal

00:57:53.500 art

00:57:53.840 elite

00:57:54.200 type

00:57:54.740 who's

00:57:55.480 then

00:57:55.720 guilty

00:57:56.160 for that

00:57:56.680 unearned

00:57:57.160 privilege

00:57:57.600 and is

00:57:58.540 driven

00:57:58.940 to atone

00:57:59.740 in some

00:58:00.180 real sense

00:58:00.800 and maybe

00:58:01.580 that's

00:58:02.420 because as

00:58:02.920 far as I

00:58:03.340 can tell

00:58:03.760 that all

00:58:04.740 that privilege

00:58:05.600 that is

00:58:07.020 acquired

00:58:07.460 through what

00:58:09.140 passes for

00:58:09.720 education

00:58:10.240 isn't being

00:58:11.140 put to the

00:58:11.940 proper higher

00:58:12.560 order purpose

00:58:13.300 and so

00:58:14.040 is accompanied

00:58:15.120 by a

00:58:15.520 tremendous

00:58:15.840 amount of

00:58:16.400 guilt

00:58:16.640 and that's

00:58:17.380 part of the

00:58:17.740 religious issue

00:58:18.500 here

00:58:18.800 so that the

00:58:19.580 guilt is

00:58:20.020 looking for

00:58:20.520 expiation

00:58:21.220 constantly

00:58:21.980 Thomas

00:58:22.940 Woof's

00:58:23.360 essay

00:58:23.680 on

00:58:23.920 radical

00:58:24.300 chic

00:58:24.700 taking

00:58:26.160 apart

00:58:26.580 a

00:58:26.860 cocktail

00:58:27.240 party

00:58:27.660 at

00:58:27.840 Leonard

00:58:28.060 Bernstein's

00:58:28.760 penthouse

00:58:29.260 which was

00:58:30.240 raising money

00:58:30.880 for the

00:58:31.240 poor

00:58:31.520 in which

00:58:32.520 Woof

00:58:33.060 focuses

00:58:33.860 in on

00:58:34.940 the

00:58:35.340 Filipina

00:58:36.740 maids

00:58:37.580 who are

00:58:38.320 serving

00:58:38.760 the champagne

00:58:39.720 to the

00:58:40.540 rich people

00:58:41.160 who are

00:58:41.820 there out

00:58:42.300 of noblesse

00:58:42.840 oblige

00:58:43.300 is one

00:58:44.500 of the

00:58:44.700 most

00:58:44.920 devastating

00:58:45.620 insights

00:58:46.260 and this

00:58:47.260 of course

00:58:47.580 was written

00:58:47.860 in the

00:58:48.120 70s

00:58:48.640 but what

00:58:50.060 you've

00:58:50.340 had is

00:58:50.840 the emergence

00:58:51.400 of the

00:58:52.880 world's

00:58:53.280 first

00:58:53.700 mass

00:58:54.440 aristocracy

00:58:55.340 people

00:58:56.500 so well

00:58:57.240 off

00:58:57.480 they don't

00:58:57.800 have to

00:58:58.080 do

00:58:58.220 anything

00:58:58.640 they don't

00:58:59.300 have to

00:58:59.600 know

00:58:59.880 anything

00:59:00.320 so what

00:59:01.140 they know

00:59:01.540 is trivial

00:59:02.140 shallow

00:59:02.620 and has

00:59:03.300 no relationship

00:59:04.020 to wisdom

00:59:04.660 and they

00:59:06.060 in a sense

00:59:07.480 it's the

00:59:07.800 perfect

00:59:08.120 postmodern

00:59:08.800 world

00:59:09.260 it's a

00:59:10.300 world in

00:59:10.680 which no

00:59:11.060 fact

00:59:11.420 matters

00:59:11.840 no taste

00:59:12.480 matters

00:59:12.860 there is

00:59:13.260 no standard

00:59:13.880 and you

00:59:15.060 can pretend

00:59:15.620 to be

00:59:15.960 something

00:59:16.320 by having

00:59:17.280 read three

00:59:17.840 totally irrelevant

00:59:18.780 books and

00:59:19.340 seen five

00:59:19.920 totally irrelevant

00:59:20.640 movies

00:59:21.120 and therefore

00:59:22.560 you're clever

00:59:23.320 and cleverness

00:59:25.060 has replaced

00:59:25.600 wisdom

00:59:25.980 and you

00:59:28.740 of course

00:59:29.080 are superior

00:59:29.660 to all of

00:59:30.240 these people

00:59:30.620 you know

00:59:30.820 one of the

00:59:31.440 reasons that

00:59:32.040 the elites

00:59:32.540 dislike Trump

00:59:33.480 so much

00:59:33.960 is that

00:59:34.780 Trump talks

00:59:35.760 like a

00:59:36.580 blue collar

00:59:37.000 worker

00:59:37.400 I always tell

00:59:40.000 people there's

00:59:40.580 a movie

00:59:41.020 that Mark

00:59:41.800 Wahlberg is

00:59:42.420 in about

00:59:43.320 the guy

00:59:44.600 in Philadelphia

00:59:45.420 who tried

00:59:45.980 out for the

00:59:46.460 Eagles and

00:59:47.360 ended up being

00:59:48.000 accepted

00:59:48.440 actually played

00:59:49.140 for three or

00:59:49.580 four years

00:59:49.940 with the

00:59:50.200 Eagles

00:59:50.400 and if

00:59:51.200 you see

00:59:51.440 the movie

00:59:51.880 the opening

00:59:53.960 scenes are

00:59:55.200 in a

00:59:55.400 South Philadelphia

00:59:56.680 bar

00:59:57.320 and they

00:59:58.640 talk exactly

00:59:59.600 like Donald

01:00:00.160 Trump

01:00:00.540 and if

01:00:02.440 you are

01:00:02.920 a Yale

01:00:03.560 Princeton

01:00:04.100 Harvard

01:00:04.740 elitist

01:00:05.780 and there's

01:00:06.980 a terrific

01:00:07.480 book by

01:00:08.580 Charlie Murray

01:00:09.260 called

01:00:09.740 Coming Apart

01:00:10.380 in which he

01:00:11.800 goes through

01:00:12.380 and analyzes

01:00:13.180 by zip code

01:00:14.060 and says

01:00:15.340 that people

01:00:15.900 from elite

01:00:16.440 universities marry

01:00:17.480 people from

01:00:18.080 elite universities

01:00:18.940 and live in

01:00:20.200 zip codes

01:00:20.780 with people

01:00:21.260 from elite

01:00:21.700 universities

01:00:22.280 and I used

01:00:23.260 to tell

01:00:23.540 reporters in

01:00:24.300 2016

01:00:25.380 the reason

01:00:26.540 you don't

01:00:26.980 understand

01:00:27.420 Trump

01:00:27.840 is that

01:00:28.700 The Apprentice

01:00:29.300 was not on

01:00:30.100 PBS shortly

01:00:31.020 after Downton

01:00:31.840 Abbey

01:00:32.080 and therefore

01:00:33.380 you never saw

01:00:34.160 it and you

01:00:34.580 had no idea

01:00:35.800 that this guy

01:00:36.700 had done

01:00:37.120 television for

01:00:37.840 13 years

01:00:38.760 and of course

01:00:41.260 to have

01:00:42.000 done to

01:00:42.400 actually watched

01:00:43.420 The Apprentice

01:00:44.060 if you were

01:00:44.640 working for

01:00:45.480 the Post

01:00:45.940 of the Times

01:00:46.580 would have

01:00:47.360 been to

01:00:47.780 risk your

01:00:48.720 status

01:00:49.280 because as

01:00:50.580 a snob

01:00:51.240 you couldn't

01:00:52.100 watch that

01:00:52.660 kind of

01:00:53.140 so-called

01:00:53.840 reality TV

01:00:54.680 and I think

01:00:56.380 that's a

01:00:57.080 significant part

01:00:57.960 of where we

01:00:58.320 are

01:00:58.600 the

01:00:59.980 intellectual

01:01:02.540 left

01:01:03.300 the dominant

01:01:04.160 wing of the

01:01:04.740 Democratic Party

01:01:05.460 has to believe

01:01:06.900 in nonsense

01:01:07.520 because it's

01:01:08.820 what it believes

01:01:09.500 in

01:01:09.720 and so it

01:01:10.820 goes around

01:01:11.320 prattling

01:01:11.860 nonsense

01:01:12.520 releasing

01:01:14.540 murderers

01:01:15.260 is a

01:01:15.560 good

01:01:15.780 policy

01:01:16.340 having

01:01:18.780 no bail

01:01:20.820 is really

01:01:21.320 clever

01:01:21.700 and then

01:01:23.600 you're

01:01:23.820 shocked to

01:01:24.340 discover

01:01:24.680 that when

01:01:25.060 you release

01:01:25.580 murderers

01:01:26.240 you send

01:01:27.160 a signal

01:01:27.600 that being

01:01:28.080 violent is

01:01:28.620 okay

01:01:28.940 and then

01:01:30.940 you find

01:01:31.400 out that

01:01:31.740 the average

01:01:32.140 person doesn't

01:01:32.900 think it's

01:01:33.260 very clever

01:01:33.800 to be mugged

01:01:35.080 raped or

01:01:35.640 attacked or

01:01:36.260 carjacked

01:01:36.860 by people

01:01:37.900 you let

01:01:38.400 back out

01:01:38.860 on the

01:01:39.140 street

01:01:39.420 and that's

01:01:41.200 part of the

01:01:41.620 great crisis

01:01:42.240 of American

01:01:42.760 society today

01:01:43.580 to say that

01:01:44.940 the entire

01:01:47.140 historic

01:01:47.800 tradition of

01:01:48.600 male and

01:01:49.080 female

01:01:49.400 the entire

01:01:50.400 story coming

01:01:51.100 out of

01:01:51.400 genesis of

01:01:52.120 God creating

01:01:52.820 man and

01:01:53.300 then creating

01:01:53.740 woman

01:01:54.020 the entire

01:01:54.980 process

01:01:55.480 biologically

01:01:56.260 which seems

01:01:57.260 to be

01:01:57.600 relatively

01:01:58.160 common

01:01:58.680 as it

01:01:59.400 relates to

01:01:59.780 human beings

01:02:00.280 for several

01:02:01.160 hundred thousand

01:02:01.860 or million

01:02:02.460 years

01:02:02.900 is actually

01:02:04.140 phony

01:02:04.580 and you

01:02:05.780 get to

01:02:06.700 reinvent

01:02:07.160 yourself

01:02:07.780 so you

01:02:09.620 have replaced

01:02:10.280 God

01:02:10.760 and instead

01:02:11.780 of trying

01:02:12.240 to accommodate

01:02:12.900 God's will

01:02:13.980 you will now

01:02:14.920 reshape yourself

01:02:15.940 and be who

01:02:16.900 you want to

01:02:17.520 be

01:02:17.740 and that will

01:02:19.020 somehow make

01:02:19.660 you happy

01:02:20.180 even if it

01:02:20.740 makes you

01:02:21.060 miserable

01:02:21.480 yeah well

01:02:22.260 God's

01:02:22.860 God's

01:02:24.980 self

01:02:25.420 active

01:02:25.900 self

01:02:26.320 naming

01:02:26.700 to Moses

01:02:27.320 in the

01:02:27.780 desert

01:02:28.060 is

01:02:28.540 something

01:02:29.460 approximating

01:02:30.240 I am

01:02:30.700 that I

01:02:31.100 am

01:02:31.460 or I

01:02:32.120 will be

01:02:32.580 what I

01:02:32.940 will be

01:02:33.520 and it's

01:02:34.580 very difficult

01:02:35.120 for me

01:02:35.740 not to see

01:02:36.340 a direct

01:02:36.820 analogy

01:02:37.280 between that

01:02:39.420 and the

01:02:39.980 claim that

01:02:40.640 identity

01:02:41.080 is subjectively

01:02:41.960 defined

01:02:42.460 I am

01:02:43.660 that I

01:02:44.000 am

01:02:44.260 and that's

01:02:44.680 something like

01:02:45.180 the attribution

01:02:45.980 of omniscience

01:02:46.880 and omnipresence

01:02:47.840 and omnipotence

01:02:48.780 to the

01:02:49.700 subjective

01:02:50.200 self

01:02:50.640 and it's

01:02:51.320 even worse

01:02:51.880 than that

01:02:52.280 in some

01:02:52.660 sense

01:02:52.960 because

01:02:53.300 the subjective

01:02:54.820 self there

01:02:55.580 that's being

01:02:56.060 elevated

01:02:56.500 which is

01:02:56.940 something like

01:02:57.460 what I

01:02:57.920 feel I

01:02:58.680 am

01:02:59.080 seems to

01:03:00.120 me to be

01:03:00.580 technically

01:03:01.080 indistinguishable

01:03:02.160 from whim

01:03:03.120 so because

01:03:04.540 you could

01:03:04.900 imagine that

01:03:05.640 you could

01:03:06.240 regard yourself

01:03:07.620 properly

01:03:08.300 in a selfish

01:03:09.720 sense

01:03:10.200 and by

01:03:10.540 properly

01:03:10.960 I mean

01:03:11.480 you would

01:03:12.660 regard yourself

01:03:13.440 as an entity

01:03:14.200 that actually

01:03:15.180 propagates

01:03:15.920 itself

01:03:16.500 across time

01:03:17.480 and so

01:03:18.260 you're bound

01:03:18.940 by fealty

01:03:19.940 to yourself

01:03:20.760 not to do

01:03:21.600 spectacularly

01:03:22.820 stupid things

01:03:23.520 in the present

01:03:24.120 even though

01:03:24.620 they might

01:03:24.980 feel good

01:03:25.540 if they

01:03:26.240 would compromise

01:03:26.920 you tomorrow

01:03:28.280 or next week

01:03:29.080 or next month

01:03:29.740 or next year

01:03:30.480 right

01:03:30.740 you have to

01:03:31.220 view yourself

01:03:32.000 as an iterating

01:03:32.920 game

01:03:33.400 and this

01:03:34.400 notion

01:03:34.760 that identity

01:03:35.460 is somehow

01:03:36.440 subjectively

01:03:37.600 defined

01:03:38.120 and that

01:03:38.480 that subjectivity

01:03:39.480 can be pinned

01:03:40.140 down to the

01:03:40.620 moment

01:03:40.920 couldn't possibly

01:03:42.200 be a claim

01:03:43.480 that's more

01:03:44.040 preposterous

01:03:44.800 and immature

01:03:45.280 now I told

01:03:46.620 the Senate

01:03:47.700 in Canada

01:03:48.680 when Canada

01:03:49.660 passed Bill

01:03:50.320 C-16

01:03:50.980 which was the

01:03:51.760 pronoun law

01:03:52.460 that every

01:03:53.040 idiot country

01:03:53.980 in the world

01:03:54.440 seems to be

01:03:55.020 jumping on

01:03:55.580 now

01:03:55.900 and passing

01:03:56.940 that the

01:03:57.980 consequence

01:03:58.400 of confusing

01:03:59.240 people about

01:03:59.960 the difference

01:04:00.460 between men

01:04:00.980 and women

01:04:01.320 would be the

01:04:01.860 production of

01:04:02.420 a psychogenic

01:04:03.080 epidemic

01:04:03.640 because I

01:04:04.520 knew

01:04:04.840 I knew

01:04:05.880 that young

01:04:07.500 adolescent girls

01:04:08.480 in particular

01:04:09.080 are prone

01:04:09.960 to well

01:04:11.020 we've seen

01:04:11.600 like three

01:04:12.540 epidemics

01:04:13.160 in my lifetime

01:04:14.080 bulimia

01:04:14.900 anorexia

01:04:16.100 and cutting

01:04:17.100 and it was

01:04:17.720 always adolescent

01:04:18.520 girls

01:04:18.940 and I think

01:04:19.860 there's psychological

01:04:20.460 reason for

01:04:21.420 assuming that

01:04:22.180 the distinction

01:04:23.560 between male

01:04:24.780 and female

01:04:25.340 is the most

01:04:26.480 basic cognitive

01:04:27.820 category

01:04:28.500 it's the deepest

01:04:29.560 cognitive category

01:04:30.580 it's the most

01:04:31.120 profound

01:04:31.620 might be the

01:04:32.400 most sacred

01:04:32.980 in that sense

01:04:33.840 and that if

01:04:34.660 you throw

01:04:35.060 uncertainty

01:04:35.640 into that

01:04:36.460 you imagine

01:04:38.060 that there's

01:04:38.440 a hierarchy

01:04:39.040 of psychological

01:04:40.960 instability

01:04:42.060 and there are

01:04:43.420 people who are

01:04:43.980 barely clinging

01:04:44.700 to the edge

01:04:45.660 and there's

01:04:46.340 lots of them

01:04:46.900 just like they

01:04:47.560 cling economically

01:04:48.560 if you add

01:04:49.560 uncertainty

01:04:50.180 into the

01:04:50.760 conceptual hierarchy

01:04:51.840 you make

01:04:52.760 marginal people

01:04:53.720 you drop

01:04:54.280 marginal people

01:04:55.120 into the realm

01:04:55.760 of insanity

01:04:56.420 and so I felt

01:04:57.640 that for every

01:04:58.320 one trans child

01:05:00.740 that we

01:05:01.140 hypothetically

01:05:01.700 saved

01:05:02.160 we'd probably

01:05:02.720 doom a thousand

01:05:03.580 and that seems

01:05:05.020 to have played

01:05:05.520 itself out

01:05:06.160 with near perfect

01:05:07.180 accuracy over the

01:05:08.120 last six years

01:05:08.960 and there is some

01:05:10.100 unbelievable narcissism

01:05:11.700 and self-aggrandizement

01:05:12.960 in that proposition

01:05:13.900 that you can define

01:05:15.700 your identity

01:05:16.440 subjectively

01:05:17.460 by whim

01:05:18.180 at any moment

01:05:19.000 and that everyone

01:05:20.100 else has to abide

01:05:21.180 by that

01:05:21.720 as if it's

01:05:22.620 incontrovertible fact

01:05:23.960 well you know

01:05:24.920 first of all

01:05:25.660 you get to

01:05:27.100 shift who you

01:05:27.860 are

01:05:28.180 and that's

01:05:30.180 that whole

01:05:30.660 process of

01:05:31.380 your definition

01:05:32.620 at three

01:05:33.140 may be different

01:05:33.740 than your definition

01:05:34.360 at five

01:05:34.960 which may be

01:05:35.800 different than

01:05:36.260 your definition

01:05:36.800 at seven

01:05:37.340 but we're supposed

01:05:38.400 to take you

01:05:39.200 seriously

01:05:39.800 at this instant

01:05:41.680 if that's who

01:05:42.780 you have defined

01:05:43.500 yourself as

01:05:44.200 this evening

01:05:44.920 or today

01:05:45.540 secondly

01:05:47.300 I think

01:05:48.000 it is at the

01:05:49.860 heart of the

01:05:50.680 Ten Commandments

01:05:51.480 that you shall

01:05:52.440 have no other

01:05:52.980 God before me

01:05:53.820 and what we've

01:05:54.640 now said is

01:05:55.320 oh no

01:05:55.680 you are your

01:05:57.420 own God

01:05:58.040 you are therefore

01:05:59.920 by definition

01:06:01.780 in front of God

01:06:03.300 because you get

01:06:04.560 to redefine

01:06:05.360 whatever you want

01:06:06.020 to redefine

01:06:06.680 well once you

01:06:07.920 get into that

01:06:08.560 kind of relativism

01:06:09.700 you have everything

01:06:11.820 begin to

01:06:12.520 disintegrate

01:06:13.260 because there is

01:06:15.320 no framework

01:06:16.160 of reference

01:06:16.800 you can cling

01:06:17.380 to it

01:06:17.740 ironically

01:06:18.400 there are

01:06:19.260 34 languages

01:06:20.400 that have

01:06:21.920 different

01:06:22.440 declensions

01:06:23.540 based on

01:06:24.260 sex

01:06:24.700 so

01:06:27.060 you

01:06:27.660 have to

01:06:28.460 ask yourself

01:06:29.020 how in

01:06:29.980 Spanish

01:06:30.380 or French

01:06:30.860 for example

01:06:31.400 are you going

01:06:32.300 to deal

01:06:32.660 with a

01:06:33.040 relativistic

01:06:33.840 multi-gender

01:06:35.300 environment

01:06:36.440 when the

01:06:37.060 language in

01:06:37.640 fact

01:06:37.920 assumes

01:06:39.260 two

01:06:39.660 yeah

01:06:40.960 well it

01:06:41.300 seems to

01:06:41.840 have something

01:06:42.340 to do

01:06:42.700 with this

01:06:43.180 disintegration

01:06:44.160 of the

01:06:44.500 intermediary

01:06:45.320 hierarchy

01:06:45.920 so

01:06:46.280 one of the

01:06:47.220 things Carl

01:06:47.840 Jung

01:06:48.120 the psychoanalyst

01:06:48.960 said

01:06:49.380 back near

01:06:51.000 the end

01:06:51.640 of the

01:06:51.920 second

01:06:52.140 world war

01:06:52.780 was that

01:06:53.420 well he

01:06:54.480 said two

01:06:54.880 things that

01:06:55.340 were quite

01:06:55.700 striking

01:06:56.100 one was

01:06:56.640 that the

01:06:57.340 biggest threat

01:06:57.900 that was

01:06:58.220 going to

01:06:58.520 confront us

01:06:59.000 in the

01:06:59.220 future

01:06:59.460 would be

01:06:59.840 something

01:07:00.080 like mass

01:07:00.800 psychological

01:07:01.680 instability

01:07:02.420 rather than

01:07:03.540 let's say

01:07:04.340 material want

01:07:06.120 and privation

01:07:06.860 per se

01:07:07.440 and he also

01:07:08.800 pointed out

01:07:09.480 that the

01:07:10.080 logical

01:07:10.580 conclusion

01:07:11.380 of the

01:07:11.960 protestant

01:07:12.440 revolution

01:07:12.900 would be

01:07:13.380 that everyone

01:07:13.960 would become

01:07:14.620 their own

01:07:15.140 church

01:07:15.560 right

01:07:16.540 that was

01:07:16.860 the degenerative

01:07:17.600 tendency

01:07:18.080 because of

01:07:18.900 the destruction

01:07:19.840 of intermediary

01:07:21.340 hierarchical

01:07:23.560 systems

01:07:24.060 one of the

01:07:25.000 things

01:07:25.260 conservatives

01:07:25.860 can offer

01:07:26.540 and I

01:07:26.860 think this

01:07:27.280 works out

01:07:27.860 well on

01:07:28.320 the front

01:07:28.680 of sanity

01:07:29.300 itself

01:07:29.780 a front

01:07:30.340 of bolstering

01:07:31.040 sanity

01:07:31.420 is there

01:07:32.280 is a

01:07:32.620 concept

01:07:33.100 among

01:07:34.220 humanistic

01:07:35.580 psychologists

01:07:36.080 in particular

01:07:36.760 that the

01:07:37.400 atomized

01:07:38.120 self is

01:07:38.720 the center

01:07:39.200 of the

01:07:39.500 world

01:07:39.740 and that

01:07:40.060 self-actualization

01:07:41.140 is the

01:07:41.820 essence

01:07:44.260 of sanity

01:07:45.120 but there's

01:07:46.960 a more

01:07:47.400 sophisticated

01:07:49.100 version of

01:07:50.300 that I would

01:07:50.740 say stemming

01:07:51.460 mostly from

01:07:52.060 Piagetian

01:07:52.660 thought that

01:07:53.360 there isn't

01:07:54.560 any difference

01:07:55.120 between sanity

01:07:56.040 and proper

01:07:56.860 nesting inside

01:07:57.700 a hierarchical

01:07:58.460 community

01:07:59.000 so you can

01:07:59.980 imagine that

01:08:00.600 well if your

01:08:01.760 marriage is

01:08:02.260 really unhappy

01:08:02.940 you're not

01:08:03.360 going to be

01:08:03.800 very sane

01:08:04.460 and if your

01:08:05.960 children are

01:08:06.540 miserable and

01:08:07.180 misbehaving

01:08:07.900 and your

01:08:08.800 marriage is

01:08:09.280 unhappy you're

01:08:09.900 even going

01:08:10.260 to be less

01:08:10.780 sane and

01:08:11.780 that will

01:08:12.400 also be true

01:08:13.020 if your

01:08:13.320 friends have

01:08:13.740 turned against

01:08:14.280 you and you

01:08:14.680 have no

01:08:15.080 position in

01:08:15.720 the community

01:08:16.260 with regard

01:08:17.280 to a job

01:08:17.880 or a career

01:08:18.520 so it's

01:08:20.720 better to

01:08:21.160 conceptualize

01:08:21.920 identity and

01:08:23.100 sanity as the

01:08:24.700 consequence of

01:08:25.520 proper nesting

01:08:26.520 in a hierarchical

01:08:27.480 social structure

01:08:28.400 so that you're

01:08:29.720 sane if you

01:08:30.900 have a marital

01:08:31.840 partner who

01:08:32.480 provides you

01:08:33.100 with corrective

01:08:33.740 feedback the

01:08:35.160 two of you

01:08:35.780 have a good

01:08:36.340 marriage and

01:08:37.040 are sane if

01:08:37.720 you are

01:08:38.720 together jointly

01:08:40.360 back to back

01:08:41.380 in relationship

01:08:42.400 to your

01:08:42.880 children who

01:08:43.500 are then

01:08:43.880 stabilized

01:08:44.460 because of

01:08:45.200 your stability

01:08:45.940 now you're

01:08:47.020 nested inside

01:08:47.920 a stable

01:08:48.420 family you

01:08:49.620 can walk

01:08:50.160 outside of

01:08:50.680 that family

01:08:51.200 into the

01:08:51.640 community and

01:08:52.700 you can orient

01:08:54.020 yourself properly

01:08:54.900 in relationship

01:08:55.560 to a job or

01:08:56.420 career and that

01:08:57.560 also provides

01:08:58.340 you with

01:08:58.640 corrective feedback

01:08:59.420 from all your

01:09:00.100 compatriots and

01:09:00.880 your peers and

01:09:02.100 that scales

01:09:02.740 politically at the

01:09:03.780 level of the

01:09:04.320 city and the

01:09:04.940 state and the

01:09:05.520 country and so

01:09:06.680 sanity and

01:09:07.820 identity then

01:09:08.580 becomes the

01:09:09.200 entire hierarchy

01:09:10.200 of hierarchical

01:09:11.500 relationships and

01:09:12.400 that's another

01:09:13.240 thing that

01:09:13.780 conservatives can

01:09:14.580 offer as a

01:09:15.240 vision as an

01:09:16.360 antidote to this

01:09:17.400 atomized liberalism

01:09:18.840 that results in

01:09:21.140 the final analysis

01:09:21.980 in self-aggrandizement

01:09:23.800 to the point of

01:09:24.840 claiming divine

01:09:25.880 attributes that's

01:09:28.040 how it looks to me

01:09:28.780 anyways

01:09:29.280 well that I think

01:09:31.900 at times you are

01:09:32.640 probably a deeper

01:09:34.080 thinker than I am

01:09:35.020 I'm only a

01:09:35.700 politician

01:09:36.140 so let's talk

01:09:39.740 about vision a

01:09:40.500 bit on the

01:09:40.980 conservative front

01:09:41.720 so we have the

01:09:42.540 midterms coming up

01:09:43.520 and hypothetically

01:09:44.620 the House and

01:09:45.320 the Senate are

01:09:45.920 going to flip

01:09:47.340 now it isn't

01:09:49.200 obvious to me

01:09:50.000 that there are

01:09:51.100 visionaries working

01:09:52.320 effectively on the

01:09:53.460 conservative front

01:09:54.420 the Republican front

01:09:55.420 in the US

01:09:55.940 and so what do

01:09:58.400 you see as the

01:09:59.300 way forward for

01:10:00.340 the Republican

01:10:01.360 Party if it

01:10:02.480 got its act

01:10:04.080 together let's

01:10:04.740 say and

01:10:05.120 develop something

01:10:05.940 approximating a

01:10:06.700 vision and do

01:10:07.260 you see any

01:10:07.720 sources of that

01:10:08.680 vision emerging

01:10:09.500 yeah I think

01:10:10.500 there are a lot

01:10:11.040 of entrepreneurial

01:10:11.880 personalities who

01:10:13.760 are each

01:10:15.500 developing different

01:10:16.920 approaches on

01:10:17.580 different topics

01:10:18.400 different solutions

01:10:19.760 and I think what

01:10:21.400 you'll see is both

01:10:23.360 in the House and

01:10:24.060 Senate and among

01:10:25.040 governorships we

01:10:25.720 have we have a

01:10:26.220 number of governors

01:10:26.880 who are actually

01:10:28.020 solving problems

01:10:29.120 and and developing

01:10:30.800 a general sense of

01:10:32.420 a productive

01:10:33.320 system but but

01:10:37.460 I mean part of

01:10:38.540 the challenge is

01:10:39.460 I think if you're

01:10:42.100 a conservative

01:10:42.640 you're trying to

01:10:43.880 create a frame of

01:10:44.780 reference or a

01:10:45.740 framework within

01:10:47.260 which people are

01:10:49.060 able to improve

01:10:49.920 their own lives

01:10:50.780 so we're not

01:10:52.800 we're not trying

01:10:53.440 to set up the

01:10:54.620 government which

01:10:56.340 then decides for

01:10:57.440 you what your

01:10:58.140 vision is we're

01:10:59.400 trying to set up a

01:11:00.260 system or structure

01:11:01.280 in which you get

01:11:02.580 to pursue the

01:11:03.240 vision you

01:11:03.820 believe in and

01:11:05.540 we believe that

01:11:06.360 that kind of

01:11:07.040 freedom is in

01:11:08.620 fact really really

01:11:09.480 important and I

01:11:10.200 think it's

01:11:11.120 interesting you

01:11:11.780 know I think

01:11:12.100 Lincoln in that

01:11:12.780 sense may have

01:11:14.080 been the the

01:11:14.940 greatest visionary

01:11:16.300 of of American

01:11:18.220 conservatives because

01:11:19.840 when when he

01:11:21.460 described government

01:11:22.300 of the people by

01:11:23.320 the people and

01:11:23.960 for the people he's

01:11:25.180 really describing a

01:11:25.980 very open-ended

01:11:26.800 concept he's not

01:11:28.620 describing any one

01:11:30.320 specific thing he's

01:11:31.860 describing freedom

01:11:32.780 he really believed

01:11:35.520 that people had

01:11:37.500 the right to

01:11:38.100 pursue happiness as

01:11:39.160 explained in our

01:11:40.020 declaration of

01:11:40.960 independence he had

01:11:42.140 done it in his own

01:11:42.980 life had come out

01:11:43.780 of relatively real

01:11:45.960 poverty and risen by

01:11:47.860 his own efforts and

01:11:48.780 his own studies and

01:11:50.820 I think he thought

01:11:51.500 that that the job of

01:11:53.620 government was to

01:11:54.400 create a framework

01:11:55.340 within which people

01:11:56.740 would go and work

01:11:57.600 Lincoln would be

01:11:58.860 appalled at

01:11:59.500 today's massive

01:12:00.780 number of people

01:12:01.520 living in

01:12:02.000 dependency so I

01:12:03.440 think the vision

01:12:04.980 that we have to

01:12:05.680 offer is one that

01:12:07.220 says you know we

01:12:08.500 want everybody to

01:12:10.160 have an opportunity

01:12:11.020 to get a good

01:12:11.880 education but and

01:12:13.900 that's a good

01:12:14.360 example Betsy

01:12:16.540 DeVos the former

01:12:17.280 secretary of education

01:12:18.960 under Trump has

01:12:20.060 come up with this

01:12:20.600 idea of education

01:12:22.560 freedom that it's

01:12:24.120 not just school

01:12:24.860 choice but it's

01:12:26.280 also homeschooling

01:12:27.500 it's also

01:12:28.320 apprenticeship it's

01:12:29.940 also online

01:12:30.760 learning that there

01:12:31.900 are many many

01:12:32.860 different ways that

01:12:33.740 people can learn

01:12:34.580 and that it's not

01:12:36.320 just a 19th century

01:12:38.020 bureaucracy dominated

01:12:40.500 by a teacher's union

01:12:41.720 with various

01:12:43.680 credentialing requirements

01:12:45.160 that are now totally

01:12:46.620 obsolete and I think

01:12:48.600 that that kind that

01:12:50.040 sense that you're

01:12:50.980 going to see a

01:12:52.000 number of different

01:12:52.760 people in different

01:12:53.820 areas who are

01:12:55.400 offering specific

01:12:57.120 breakthroughs towards

01:12:58.720 a more dynamic a

01:13:00.340 more open a more

01:13:01.860 entrepreneurial American

01:13:03.080 society and frankly a

01:13:05.120 much more work

01:13:05.940 oriented American

01:13:06.820 society which is a

01:13:08.840 historically was a key

01:13:10.440 that emphasis that you

01:13:11.740 lay on work well in

01:13:13.800 in the lectures that

01:13:14.760 I've been doing

01:13:15.380 publicly around the

01:13:16.460 world I have placed a

01:13:18.540 fair amount of

01:13:19.140 emphasis on

01:13:20.600 responsibility and I

01:13:21.880 I think that your

01:13:23.160 emphasis on work and

01:13:24.360 and my emphasis on

01:13:25.540 responsibility are

01:13:26.440 likely the same thing

01:13:27.520 I've been trying to

01:13:28.700 point out to the

01:13:29.760 people who are

01:13:30.760 listening to my

01:13:31.900 lectures that most

01:13:33.820 of the meaning that

01:13:34.960 sustains people through

01:13:36.140 crises in life is

01:13:38.600 accrued as a

01:13:39.360 consequence of

01:13:40.000 adoption of

01:13:40.580 responsibility so if

01:13:43.280 you have good social

01:13:44.180 relations if you have

01:13:45.700 a good marriage if you

01:13:46.640 have good relations with

01:13:48.220 your children and your

01:13:49.060 friends and your and

01:13:50.480 your colleagues at work

01:13:51.400 you have a good social

01:13:52.580 community that's all a

01:13:54.520 consequence of the

01:13:56.000 sacrifices you make in

01:13:57.400 relationship to those

01:13:58.580 social interactions the

01:14:01.520 amount you give the

01:14:02.700 amount you put forward

01:14:04.180 the responsibility that

01:14:05.640 you take for the

01:14:06.460 integrity of those

01:14:07.280 relationships and then

01:14:08.340 when the crisis comes as

01:14:10.320 it will in your life

01:14:11.200 you'll have that to

01:14:12.780 sustain you when the

01:14:14.660 going gets hard

01:14:15.420 hedonism isn't going to

01:14:16.660 sustain you and your

01:14:17.940 whim isn't going to

01:14:19.000 sustain you but the

01:14:20.360 meaning you can derive

01:14:21.560 through the voluntary

01:14:22.380 shouldering of

01:14:23.120 responsibility that's

01:14:24.260 always there for you

01:14:25.200 and it seems to me that

01:14:26.500 that's akin in some

01:14:28.160 sense to the emphasis

01:14:29.380 that you lay on on on

01:14:31.680 the necessity of work

01:14:33.100 does that seem

01:14:34.020 reasonable to you

01:14:34.740 actually I think your

01:14:36.140 formula is pretty close

01:14:37.140 I would say that I

01:14:40.680 mean the center of my

01:14:41.660 life has been

01:14:42.260 citizenship at least

01:14:43.980 since August of

01:14:45.240 1958 and that

01:14:48.060 citizenship involves a

01:14:50.400 sense of

01:14:51.320 responsibility and

01:14:54.300 that responsibility

01:14:55.340 inherently involves

01:14:56.860 work

01:14:57.320 that you you have if

01:14:59.980 you're responsible for

01:15:00.880 getting educated as you

01:15:02.620 know I mean real

01:15:03.240 education requires work

01:15:04.680 if you are trying to

01:15:07.380 sustain economically what

01:15:08.900 you're doing that

01:15:10.040 requires work

01:15:10.840 I found in my own life

01:15:13.180 through several failures

01:15:15.520 that to have a really

01:15:17.160 sustainable relationship

01:15:18.540 requires work

01:15:19.600 being close to my two

01:15:22.360 daughters requires work

01:15:23.760 so it's it's it's a

01:15:25.760 it's a sense that

01:15:26.800 there's there's sort of a

01:15:27.700 two sides of the same

01:15:28.680 coin if you will

01:15:29.540 it's it's not just work

01:15:31.820 for work's sake but

01:15:33.140 it's work in order to

01:15:34.160 achieve something that

01:15:35.880 fits your value system

01:15:37.460 and and I like the

01:15:39.520 relationship back to

01:15:40.680 responsibility whether

01:15:42.160 it's responsibility of

01:15:43.160 the society or to

01:15:44.720 your family or to

01:15:46.160 yourself or to

01:15:47.140 yourself well yeah so

01:15:48.280 you know the I don't

01:15:49.560 think that there's any

01:15:50.380 real difference between

01:15:51.620 the concept of work and

01:15:53.680 the concept of sacrifice

01:15:55.160 you know I used to ask

01:15:56.700 my students many of

01:15:58.180 whom were children of

01:15:59.120 first-generation

01:15:59.780 immigrants what's

01:16:01.540 trying to elucidate the

01:16:03.140 concept of sacrifice I'd

01:16:04.520 say to them what

01:16:05.680 sacrifices did your

01:16:07.120 parents make so that

01:16:08.780 you could attend

01:16:09.480 university in Canada

01:16:10.660 of course they had an

01:16:12.580 instant answer to that

01:16:13.560 because they knew

01:16:14.300 perfectly well what

01:16:15.360 their parents had

01:16:16.040 sacrificed and I don't

01:16:17.760 think there is any

01:16:18.500 difference between

01:16:19.260 sacrifice and work and

01:16:20.600 I'm some sense speaking

01:16:22.020 in relationship to the

01:16:23.460 biblical tradition here

01:16:24.640 is that you have to

01:16:26.280 offer up something that

01:16:27.780 you value in the

01:16:28.800 present to make peace

01:16:31.000 with the future that

01:16:32.980 really is the core

01:16:33.940 element of work and

01:16:34.900 it's the core element of

01:16:35.840 sacrifice right if if

01:16:37.260 you're just doing what

01:16:37.960 you want if you're just

01:16:38.800 gratifying every whim

01:16:39.900 it's not work but it

01:16:41.500 doesn't work out very

01:16:42.360 well for the future

01:16:43.320 what work seems to be is

01:16:46.060 something like the

01:16:47.200 continual sacrifice of

01:16:48.780 at least some element of

01:16:50.140 the present to ensure

01:16:51.500 iterable stability across

01:16:53.900 the long term and so

01:16:56.160 because human beings are

01:16:57.540 self-conscious creatures

01:16:59.220 and because we can see

01:17:00.140 the future we have to

01:17:01.740 work we have to integrate

01:17:02.780 the present with the

01:17:03.680 future and that does seem

01:17:04.940 to involve work and that

01:17:06.900 does seem to be the core

01:17:08.140 element of responsibility

01:17:09.280 and I don't see how that

01:17:11.120 responsibility can be

01:17:12.340 shirked without catastrophe

01:17:14.060 if it is precisely that

01:17:16.220 which defines our our

01:17:18.400 iterable stability both

01:17:19.940 individually and socially

01:17:21.280 this is something that

01:17:22.560 conservatives really have

01:17:23.600 to offer young people you

01:17:24.820 know and I don't think

01:17:25.880 that the conservatives

01:17:27.160 generally speaking have

01:17:28.560 cottoned on to this is to

01:17:30.220 point out to young people

01:17:31.420 that the sustaining meaning

01:17:33.180 in your life will not be

01:17:34.440 found in hedonistic

01:17:35.780 self-gratification it's a

01:17:37.380 counterproductive strategy

01:17:38.560 the sustaining meaning in

01:17:40.060 your life will be found in

01:17:41.820 the voluntary shouldering of

01:17:43.480 as much responsibility as

01:17:45.000 possible you know young

01:17:46.220 people they get that as

01:17:47.260 soon as you explain it to

01:17:48.200 them they're they

01:17:49.480 understand they understand

01:17:51.040 immediately and are vastly

01:17:52.660 relieved to hear it

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01:19:08.620 elevate your prayer life today

01:19:10.780 well it also takes you back to a

01:19:15.580 point you'd made earlier which is

01:19:17.460 that people get to a point where

01:19:19.900 they want a meaning larger than

01:19:21.400 themselves and that that's part of

01:19:24.320 this that uh ultimately uh you find

01:19:28.320 a better life by focusing beyond

01:19:31.700 yourself not by focusing inside

01:19:33.560 yourself well and that that inside

01:19:35.600 yourself is such a peculiar

01:19:37.100 formulation which i think is why the

01:19:39.660 radicals insist so much on feeling

01:19:41.840 because when i hear that as a

01:19:43.620 psychologist i think well what self

01:19:46.260 do you mean and the rejoinder is

01:19:49.100 usually well that's self-evidence

01:19:50.520 like well no actually it's not because

01:19:53.040 if you're asking acting in your own

01:19:55.020 best interest all things considered

01:19:57.460 you're not giving way to every

01:20:00.440 momentary whim all that does is put

01:20:03.700 you in the position of a dependent

01:20:05.000 two-year-old or a psychopath and none

01:20:07.540 of that's productive even if you're

01:20:09.940 abiding by your own true self in the

01:20:12.500 higher sense then you're going to make

01:20:14.280 sacrifices of your momentary whims to

01:20:16.600 your medium to long-term stability and

01:20:18.880 thriving and that's exactly what

01:20:20.480 happens when you mature because two

01:20:22.500 year olds have that proclivity to be

01:20:24.360 governed by whim but nobody thinks

01:20:26.460 that two-year-olds should rule the

01:20:27.700 world well except maybe two-year-olds

01:20:29.640 well i think you know again you get

01:20:33.000 back to some of the current fads which

01:20:36.000 would suggest to you that two and

01:20:37.300 three-year-olds can actually make real

01:20:39.280 decisions which i think is an example

01:20:42.640 of what i meant about being insane

01:20:43.980 and any anybody who thinks that a

01:20:47.300 three-year-old or a five-year-old is

01:20:49.300 is prepared to make adult decisions is

01:20:52.200 just literally living in a world that i

01:20:53.780 have no relationship to and i can't

01:20:56.420 understand but i think there's also you

01:21:00.220 know it's it part of the challenge is

01:21:03.600 that historically almost every society i

01:21:06.960 know of that's successful has rites of

01:21:09.600 passage which takes you through

01:21:11.840 adolescence into adulthood sometimes at a

01:21:14.560 pretty early age sometimes at 12 or 13

01:21:17.560 but it but it's but it's made very clear

01:21:20.380 to you that you have been a child and the

01:21:23.420 children are allowed to do a whole range

01:21:25.000 of things but that we don't take what

01:21:26.940 they did as children seriously that there

01:21:29.960 is not it's not like you're a small

01:21:31.880 adult you're a child and then you go

01:21:34.500 through a right whether you are in almost

01:21:37.500 every culture i'm aware of this if it's a

01:21:40.240 healthy culture it has some provision for

01:21:43.380 you to emerge as an adult and to and and to

01:21:46.780 now be self-aware that you know that the

01:21:50.440 things you once did as a child are no

01:21:52.420 longer appropriate one of the problems

01:21:54.600 of the current system is that we treat the

01:21:57.060 children as though they're adults there's

01:21:58.560 no right of passage and so they end up as

01:22:01.240 35 year old members of congress who are in

01:22:04.260 fact just big they're just large

01:22:06.000 adolescents they don't have any kind of

01:22:08.620 sense of maturity or responsibility or any

01:22:12.020 sense of the hierarchy of development

01:22:14.940 and they and they live in a world of now i

01:22:17.980 mean it's a it's a in a funny kind of way

01:22:20.800 it's it's a it's a remarkably existential

01:22:23.740 moment where everything is now so what are

01:22:27.480 you what are you hoping for on the

01:22:29.400 leadership front on the republican side

01:22:31.500 over the next couple of years or what do

01:22:33.320 you think is going to happen are there are

01:22:35.440 there going to be contenders in relationship

01:22:37.440 to trump or is he the presumptive nominee and

01:22:40.360 should he be what what would you hope for as

01:22:44.080 we move towards 2024 well i think i i think that

01:22:48.300 he is the probable nominee but not the presumptive

01:22:52.540 nominee i think that governor de santis if he

01:22:56.620 wants to can challenge him whether whether de santis

01:22:59.940 could beat him i don't know but i think certainly governor de santis

01:23:03.540 has the capacity uh and and is doing an astonishing job as

01:23:09.480 governor of our third largest state um i think that there are other

01:23:13.340 candidates who would like to be in that mix uh and and i i always

01:23:17.600 try to remind people if you went back to this exact

01:23:20.640 point in 2014 um two weeks before the the off year election

01:23:28.540 nobody would even have said trump's name

01:23:31.440 i mean so so you know and i think people would have had a sense that

01:23:36.180 jeb bush was probably the front runner so to you know so so to try to look

01:23:42.140 forward and and i don't know uh at this point in 2018

01:23:46.560 that people would have picked joe biden uh i mean so so in my mind

01:23:52.180 uh an amazing number of things can happen

01:23:55.580 between now and the time we actually pick a nominee

01:23:58.840 uh i mean i mean certainly glenn youngkin

01:24:01.360 uh the new governor of virginia has

01:24:04.220 uh shown himself to be a future star of the party

01:24:08.120 i think there are other people around who

01:24:10.580 are serious potential contenders uh we're going we're about to see governor

01:24:16.240 brian kemp of georgia win a surprisingly big victory

01:24:19.700 um i also think that there's a whole new generation coming up

01:24:23.880 of people who are running around the country and there are a whole bunch of

01:24:27.940 senators you know when one of the ground rules of the u.s senate is that

01:24:30.740 every senator uh combs the hair of a future president every morning

01:24:34.780 and looks in the mirror and thinks why and thinks why not

01:24:38.120 so you could easily have six or seven or eight candidates from the senate

01:24:41.700 at least starting down the road

01:24:43.800 um the uh so so i would say that trump is

01:24:48.880 formidable uh and and probably would be nominated

01:24:53.320 but he's not certain i think on the democratic side

01:24:56.620 uh if this election goes as badly as i suspect it will

01:25:00.420 and if biden continues to decay and if kamala continues to be as utterly

01:25:06.660 totally incompetent as she is uh i think you'll clearly see a whole new

01:25:11.120 field of democrats and and part of the question will be if

01:25:14.220 they get beaten badly this year you know what lesson do they think they

01:25:17.600 learn i think uh the governor of california is probably

01:25:20.860 likely to run uh having learned nothing and will try to convince the rest of us

01:25:26.280 that uh california in which uh san francisco has become a disaster

01:25:31.160 uh and uh los angeles has the largest population of homeless in the country

01:25:36.720 but that somehow california is a model for the future

01:25:39.580 even as it loses businesses and and people

01:25:42.560 who are leaving the state because they can't stand it anymore

01:25:45.600 so but but he's got some he has so many resources

01:25:48.980 that he almost has to run

01:25:50.800 so what what what do you think that

01:25:53.900 would be most appropriate for conservatives

01:25:57.360 on the visionary side let's say to be offering to

01:26:01.540 young people as we move forward with the new house and the new senate

01:26:06.780 freedom you talked about work freedom freedom i think i think well

01:26:12.020 because see freedom leads to responsibility and work

01:26:16.220 i just did a seminar with a bunch of people including dennis prager

01:26:22.300 on the first half of exodus in miami we're going to release that november 26th

01:26:27.880 they and you you mentioned freedom and that's what that's what made it spring

01:26:31.700 to mind so when god tells moses to address the pharaoh

01:26:36.480 he tells him uh to let my people go

01:26:41.140 and that's a famous line a let my people go but that's not the line actually

01:26:46.440 interestingly enough and it's repeated i believe it's repeated nine times

01:26:51.720 might be ten times just to make sure that the listener gets it

01:26:56.380 the line is let my people go so that they may serve me in the wilderness

01:27:02.300 and what's fascinating about that is that the

01:27:06.200 vision of freedom that's put forward which is the spirit let's say that's

01:27:11.600 calling to the israelites to emerge from their

01:27:15.560 slavery and to the tyrannical pharaoh to release his

01:27:19.260 tyrannical grip on them isn't the freedom of whim

01:27:24.680 it's the freedom to pursue the proper goals

01:27:28.300 to pursue the highest goals and so it's it's the freedom that comes with the

01:27:34.380 voluntary adoption of responsibility and not the freedom that leads to

01:27:38.440 a nihilistic hedonism right but but there's a difference

01:27:42.580 between liberty and libertine and i think you know i think that the the

01:27:48.240 challenge is and and this is i think what very

01:27:51.720 difficult to have a serious public conversation

01:27:54.680 about it although dennis prager does as good a job as anybody

01:27:57.600 ultimately the health of the west requires a profound revival

01:28:04.480 i mean ultimately god has to be at the center of our freedom

01:28:09.860 uh when we say in our declaration of independence that you are endowed by

01:28:14.860 your creator with certain unalienable rights

01:28:18.300 if you don't think there's a creator then the whole rest of it makes no sense

01:28:23.000 on the other hand if you believe that your rights come from god

01:28:27.100 and your right includes the right to pursue happiness

01:28:30.520 which in the sense of the 18th century enlightenment actually meant virtue and

01:28:35.860 wisdom happiness did not mean hedonism

01:28:38.360 um then the pursuit i always try to make two points

01:28:43.360 people the pursuit of happiness first of all is an active phrase

01:28:47.060 which gets us back to the work ethic it doesn't say you're gonna you know it

01:28:51.280 doesn't say we'll have happiness stamps or we need a federal department of

01:28:54.880 happiness it says you have been endowed by

01:28:57.900 god with the right to pursue happiness and second

01:29:02.580 by that grant god has also imposed upon you the obligation

01:29:07.520 that you should pursue happiness again happiness in the sense of wisdom and

01:29:12.480 virtue uh and all of that only makes sense

01:29:16.380 if you understand that you are subordinate

01:29:19.340 to a supreme being it's it's a little bit like uh alcoholics anonymous i had a good friend

01:29:25.440 who had been very high up in the reagan administration and who was an alcoholic

01:29:30.180 and ultimately went to alcoholics anonymous found it to be enormously helpful and uh

01:29:38.100 ultimately you get to a key step you have you have to start by recognizing you have a problem

01:29:44.020 and recognizing that you can't solve the problem yourself but then you get to the key step you have

01:29:50.080 to recognize that there is a supreme being a higher power and so he found himself talking one day to a

01:29:58.300 federal official and he was explaining the impact of alcoholics anonymous and this federal official said

01:30:05.160 you know if we could skip that one step we could fund it and he said i don't think you understand

01:30:11.820 that's the step that makes the rest of it work and i think in that sense all of us are caught

01:30:18.240 in an alcoholics anonymous moment all of us are weakened by the fact that we don't live in a culture

01:30:26.680 which makes it normal and obvious that your freedom is a freedom within within uh god's belief and god's

01:30:35.220 control it's not a freedom against god or a freedom in an atheistic world because those are in fact

01:30:42.000 impossible we might conceptualize freedom the way we conceptualize playing a sophisticated game

01:30:50.060 every game is ordered according to the principles of the game the rules of the game let's say

01:30:56.640 and the rules aren't exactly walls and they're not they're not thou shalt not in some sense they're

01:31:02.820 enabling principles and i don't see that there is any freedom without the rules of a game i think

01:31:09.560 there's just chaos and chaos that's libertine freedom let's say that's the chaos of whim there's

01:31:15.480 nothing about that that's salutary there's nothing about that that allows you to maintain anything

01:31:20.800 approximating sanity it has to be ordered freedom and maybe that's something that visionary

01:31:26.040 conservatives can offer to young people is the what would you call it the attraction of ordered

01:31:31.620 freedom and maybe we'll see some more of that happen in the upcoming years that would be a lovely

01:31:37.320 thing if uh if the proper vision can be established and so i'd like to thank you very much sir for spending

01:31:44.620 the time talking to you it's it's quite an honor you know you've you've been a name i've known for

01:31:49.080 a very long time i must say that when i was young you were definitely not my most favorite person

01:31:55.060 i was under the sway of socialist ideas when i was a kid really yeah yeah yeah and so uh that during

01:32:01.280 the reagan years let's say but um um it's and it's quite it's quite a uh circumstance to be sitting

01:32:08.880 here talking to you today and i appreciated it very much as i mentioned earlier that uh i really like

01:32:14.520 your work i admire it we have a number of people in our team at gingrich 360 who were huge fans who

01:32:19.860 were thrilled that we were going to have this conversation and also i did want to mention for

01:32:24.800 our viewers that at gingrich 360 we do have an internship uh for people who are bright and who

01:32:31.000 are willing to work hard and so i appreciate your your i really like what you're doing and i really

01:32:36.960 think it's important and a significant contribution thank you thank you very much if people out there

01:32:42.200 young people who are listening are looking for a signal opportunity then this internship program

01:32:46.560 looks like that to me where are you located now we are in arlington virginia and in naples florida

01:32:53.100 so we have opportunities in both places okay and are you personally in in the in the arlington area i'm in

01:32:59.040 both places i'm actually talking to you today from arlington i see i see well i would love to meet

01:33:04.120 you the next time i come down to washington that would be it would be good to meet in person and

01:33:07.860 good well i agree i think i think you are a remarkable contributor to our time well thank

01:33:14.800 you sir um i want to go behind the scenes with dr gingrich for half an hour and so any of you who

01:33:20.500 are inclined to um join up with the dailywire plus platform will get access to that and i'd like to

01:33:27.540 thank you again dr gingrich for taking the time and uh we'll get this up real soon and and hopefully

01:33:33.800 we'll be in further touch hello everyone i would encourage you to continue listening to my

01:33:40.780 conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com hey everyone real quick before you skip i want to

01:33:49.600 talk to you about something serious and important dr jordan peterson has created a new series that could

01:33:55.000 be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety we know how isolating and overwhelming these

01:34:00.700 conditions can be and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling

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01:34:11.160 might be feeling this way in his new series he provides a roadmap towards healing showing that while

01:34:16.240 the journey isn't easy it's absolutely possible to find your way forward if you're suffering please

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 31, 2022

301. Politics： Tradition and Vision ｜ Newt Gingrich

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