The Megyn Kelly Show - Critical Race Theory, And How To Effectively Fight Back, with Kmele Foster and Rich Lowry ｜ Ep. 128

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.920 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, critical race theory

00:00:16.940 and the bans on teaching it state to state that have been popping up across our country.

00:00:22.300 We've got Rich Lowry and Camille Foster with the debate of debates on this. These are two

00:00:27.860 great guys who went at it, you know, punch for punch, and it was really illuminating. I think

00:00:34.840 we fleshed out all the arguments. I'll leave it to you to decide who got the better of the other man,

00:00:40.120 but it was enjoyable, it was feisty, and it was smart, and I loved it. And this is the big debate

00:00:45.400 right now, right? Like many, many states have banned the teaching of, in short form, critical race

00:00:50.460 theory, but it's, you know, some of this nonsense of trying to teach kids that they're defined by

00:00:53.900 the color of their skin or by their, their sex, et cetera. And states are finally trying to fight

00:00:59.620 back against this. It's growing and growing. The teachers union has been open about the fact that

00:01:04.360 they're on board and pushing it. And they tried to lie about that, get into that. So it's a good

00:01:09.020 idea because it's kind of divided the conservative movement and, or the non-woke movement is what I

00:01:13.040 should say. So Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review and also hosts, he's one of the hosts of

00:01:19.160 the editors over on the National Review. It's their podcast, which I highly recommend. I love it.

00:01:24.380 Really smart talk. And Camille Foster is one of the hosts of the Fifth Column podcast. You guys

00:01:29.780 know him. He's been on the show along with his brethren, co-hosts of that show. And they actually

00:01:34.880 had Chris Rufo on for a debate on this very issue. There's some backstory with Chris Rufo that we'll get

00:01:39.120 to in one second. But, you know, Camille, he wrote an op-ed about this sort of opposing these bands,

00:01:44.780 and he was joined in it by Thomas Chatterton Williams and some other authors in the New York

00:01:50.480 Times that he's been supported in it by, Camille is black. He was supported by some other black,

00:01:56.440 well-known names and faces like Glenn Lowry in his position. So these guys are ones who've pushed

00:02:02.060 back on, you know, wokeness and all this making everything about color, but they think these bands

00:02:06.920 go too far and they've got well-thought-out reasons for why. So you'll hear the debate, get to the guys in

00:02:12.520 one second. First this. Organizing this outline for this debate has been super fun and super

00:02:23.260 complicated. This is one of those moments where I'm like, yeah, I love to read for a living. That's

00:02:27.440 really what I do is read and learn for a living. And I've been neck deep in all these articles.

00:02:32.240 And what I've concluded before we even start is that I think all three of us agree on 90% of

00:02:36.080 what we're about to discuss. It's really just what is the solution that we're arguing over? You know,

00:02:42.260 what the problem, because I know I've talked to both you guys before. I think we agree this is a

00:02:46.740 problem, what they're teaching our kids right now. And within the conservative movement, or even just

00:02:51.420 not even conservative, but just sort of anti-woke America is debating what's the best way of putting

00:02:57.560 an end to this nonsense, or at least fighting back against this nonsense. So let's just start by

00:03:01.820 defining the problem. Okay. In quotes, the problem. Critical race theory is a term. Chris Rufo has been

00:03:08.000 putting it out there as just sort of a catchall. But I do think it's important to note, it's beyond

00:03:12.460 just this one sort of theory about race. You know, the academics would say, look, this is just a

00:03:19.760 postgraduate level legal theory. It doesn't appear in K through 12 classrooms. It's basically just an

00:03:26.000 acknowledgement that discrimination is not just about attitudes, but it's about institutions and

00:03:33.960 how they create racist systems over time. Okay, so they make it sound very white bread. It's not

00:03:40.040 there's it's so many things. And I've lived it. And I've talked to my audience about how it's

00:03:43.820 manifested in our lives. You know, I've got my my six year old and my nine year old over the past

00:03:48.680 couple years being taught that white skin is problematic, just by its nature, that the schools 0.93

00:03:54.500 were talking about how in every classroom where white children learn, there's a future killer cop. 0.63

00:03:59.620 That's not part of critical race theory. But it's the messaging that's in schools today. So anyway,

00:04:05.120 all this deeply problematic and the short form is CRT. So that's the problem. And now we're seeing

00:04:11.220 efforts in several states to fight back. We've got over 20 states that have passed or proposed laws

00:04:16.420 preventing the teaching of CRT and other racially based ideologies. Nine states have have now actually

00:04:22.960 passed restrictions, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, Texas, Florida, New Hampshire, Arkansas and Arizona,

00:04:27.940 and again, many other states considering it. And the pushback from you, Camille and David French

00:04:32.320 and Thomas Chatterton Williams and others has been, yes, it's a problem. Don't love this kind

00:04:36.800 of teaching. However, what about free speech? And do we really want the government dictating what can

00:04:42.720 and cannot be said in class and thought in class? And haven't, you know, people who have been

00:04:47.540 promotion, promoting free speech all along been saying, the last thing we want is for government,

00:04:52.460 like people like Joe Biden to be telling us what must be said or thought in schools. And is this an

00:04:58.800 abandonment of that principle? Have I have I summed it up or I'll let you sum up your your pushback?

00:05:04.920 Yeah, well, I want to be very careful here because, you know, I co-authored a piece that appeared in the

00:05:10.680 New York Times with Jason Stanley, David French and Thomas Chatterton Williams. And obviously, I can

00:05:16.920 represent our combined view to the extent I'm drawing directly from that editorial. But beyond that,

00:05:21.220 I'm speaking for myself primarily. And I think in the piece, what we tried to convey here is a

00:05:27.740 general sensibility that and now I'm kind of extracting from not so much the piece, but my

00:05:33.720 speaking for myself in a sense, but that every school board drama need not become a statewide

00:05:39.820 legislative scandal. It is it is not obvious. I mean, most of us have kids. I think we all have

00:05:46.020 kids, actually. My daughter is not yet in sort of big, big kids school. She's in preschool. But

00:05:51.180 I went to school myself and I can remember circumstances where there were things happening

00:05:54.900 in the classroom that my mother had questions about. And there are mechanisms for adjudicating

00:05:59.120 that sort of problem for dealing with those kinds of issues. Even now, as we find ourselves kind of

00:06:05.380 on the other side of this, quote unquote, or perhaps in the midst of the throes of this racial

00:06:09.720 reckoning, a lot has changed in the country. A lot of the ways that we're talking about different

00:06:13.980 issues have changed. And a lot of that has seeped into various aspects of our lives and certainly

00:06:18.900 active and alive in classrooms and in school board meetings. And we've seen a lot of the

00:06:24.140 worst examples of that get national news coverage. And a lot of the subtler examples of it aren't

00:06:28.760 necessarily getting there. The question becomes, are there ways to address this beyond haphazardly

00:06:34.900 rushing to try and pass legislation in various states to ban something, something that really,

00:06:42.680 when we talk about CRT, as you just laid out, Megan, I mean, this is an amalgam of different

00:06:46.700 things. And as a result, the way that folks go about trying to pass these bans, and I think it's

00:06:52.620 something that Rich would acknowledge as well, is by drafting these pieces of legislation that try

00:06:57.920 very, very hard to get at kind of precise, specific concepts that can't be discussed or must be

00:07:03.980 discussed in a particular way or must be discussed along with something else. And I think the net effect of

00:07:09.300 that, our concern, drawing directly from the editorial here, is that we are actually creating

00:07:14.940 a circumstance where it is going to be very, very difficult for teachers to understand how to teach

00:07:20.880 important topics and really make it a circumstance where they have to wonder if they can teach it at

00:07:26.280 all. There are elements of James Baldwin's work, of Martin Luther King's speeches and writings,

00:07:31.860 that one has to wonder if they can be included. Scathing critiques of the American project,

00:07:37.760 of its defects and deficiencies, the way that it's failed. Talk that is contemporary to those men in

00:07:44.020 their lives of what it was like to be white or black in America, or what the specific obligations

00:07:49.780 of persons of different race were. Again, from their lives and perspectives, even introducing

00:07:54.620 historical documents, like reading a speech from a Confederate leader, sort of talking about

00:08:03.180 their perspective and experiences, under many of these statutes, those things would be banned. At a

00:08:08.860 minimum, one would have to wonder if they didn't face the possibility of some sort of legislative,

00:08:14.140 not legislative, but some sort of prosecution, and in some cases, substantial fines. And that can't

00:08:21.840 really be the way that we imagine we can take care of this situation. I, as you said, man, I am deeply

00:08:28.640 concerned about the presence of race essentialism in all aspects of our society right now, and the

00:08:34.860 degree to which we're not having productive conversations about race. I don't, however, think

00:08:39.940 that an approach to trying to ban something in a rather crude, again, this sort of haphazard way,

00:08:49.360 this rush to do something, is necessarily going to get us an outcome that actually leads to less of

00:08:54.480 this happening. What I already see happening is the possibility that we can see, you know, people

00:09:00.840 who are essentially trying to run afoul of these laws on purpose, people who are being brought up,

00:09:06.640 potentially having lawsuits filed against them under questionable circumstances, and eventually

00:09:11.760 you're going to see, you know, pink slips, and perhaps even, I mean, what, like arrests that result

00:09:16.640 in, I mean, protests that result in arrests. I mean, are those the kind of outcomes that people imagine

00:09:22.580 are going to actually help us get through this to a much saner place where we can be more reasonable

00:09:29.060 when we're thinking about public education in this country? I just don't think that makes a lot of

00:09:33.500 sense. So there's so much to dissect, and I do want to get to your statement that, you know,

00:09:39.420 certain Confederate general speeches couldn't be taught, right? These are basically racist speeches

00:09:44.880 saying, let me tell you why we need the situation to be as it is, and Black people aren't as smart as 1.00

00:09:49.720 white people, and they're not as good as white people. So according to the way some of these 0.99

00:09:53.580 laws are worded, you couldn't even read that. And that's true. The laws, a couple of them are

00:10:01.740 written in a problematic way. I think just from having read National Review and Rich,

00:10:07.760 he's going to agree with that, that these are not all perfectly worded and could use some revising.

00:10:13.360 But before we get into the specifics of the laws themselves, a couple of them and how they

00:10:17.560 need revising. Let me kick it to you, Rich, on the concept of this, this way to fight back,

00:10:24.880 right? As opposed to, because what David French has said and what your op-ed in the New York Times

00:10:30.460 said, Camille, was, you know, a meaningful way of getting back at this is by filing lawsuits. 1.00

00:10:36.760 And I'm all for that, by the way. I've been saying this is part of the solution for sure. Just,

00:10:40.880 you know, it's currently not lawful to discriminate on the basis of race. And so if you're dragged into

00:10:46.340 some training session as a teacher and told that you're less than because you're white,

00:10:51.000 your school's violating the law. So I'm all for the lawsuits. But what the conservative movement

00:10:56.900 and the non-woke people have said is it's not good enough. We need these laws because we need

00:11:01.680 immediacy. It's not a free speech issue at all. This is about the citizenry telling the government

00:11:07.340 what it can teach their kids and that this is a useful tool in the arsenal that should be unleashed

00:11:13.940 ASAP for the well-being of our children. So let's start with that, Rich, on whether you agree

00:11:20.060 that this is a, this is, without putting aside the wording of the laws, whether this is a good

00:11:25.120 way of fighting back. Yeah. First of all, I appreciate the conversation. And Camille, congratulations

00:11:29.420 on the op-ed. There are not many op-eds that people are discussing two or three, three weeks later,

00:11:34.240 whatever it is. All of us columnists are very jealous. So congratulations on that. I think this

00:11:39.740 is a worthy effort. On the lawsuits, it just puts incredible pressure on individual teachers or

00:11:47.020 parents to undertake what could be a years-long effort to try to push back against this stuff

00:11:53.400 through the courts. And if we're admitting that actually that is in play, as the authors of this

00:11:59.660 op-ed do, we're admitting that this is, this is poisonous and toxic. And why should we tolerate

00:12:07.560 that in our public schools? And public schools are public institutions. Teachers are state actors.

00:12:15.560 They're, they're teaching state curricula in state-owned buildings that parents, if they don't,

00:12:23.740 aren't pursuing some other alternative, have to send their kids to.

00:12:27.140 So they, they are profoundly small d democratic institutions and forbidding these poisonous concepts

00:12:35.620 from being foisted on children is an appropriate democratic, small d democratic action. So I don't

00:12:43.840 see in theory, any problem with this at all. In fact, I, I welcome it again, Megan, as, as you've

00:12:51.020 stipulated that the wording in some of these cases is problematic and could have been crisper and more

00:12:57.780 clear, but I, I just reject the idea that that is out there, that this is going to stop, you know,

00:13:04.280 the teaching of slavery or, or civil rights. If you look at Tennessee, which the authors of the op-ed

00:13:10.980 spend some time on that statute, what they forbid is the promoting of, of the concept that individuals

00:13:19.700 should feel ashamed or, or discomfort because of their race. So that's different than saying,

00:13:26.680 Oh, here's, here's the Atlantic passage, which was this horrifying, nauseating, uh, human rights 1.00

00:13:32.380 abuse. And you might feel uncomfortable learning about it because it's a terrible topic. That's not

00:13:37.600 it. It's, it's going, a teacher going out of his or her way to say, you should feel guilty because

00:13:43.520 you are white, uh, or you're black or whatever it is that is forbidden. And it just seems to me, 0.99

00:13:50.140 uh, with public schools, you know, which we don't need adventurous instruction in public schools.

00:13:57.320 That's something for colleges and universities, when you're dealing with adults, when you have

00:14:02.040 instructors who are engaging in academic research, where academic freedom is, is a core value. This,

00:14:08.580 this is different. This is supposed to be between, you know, the 40 yard lines. This is kind of

00:14:12.600 consensus values and instructions in, in our society. So, uh, the, the, these efforts strike

00:14:20.400 me as worthwhile. And I wonder about the, the way that you just characterized that though,

00:14:24.280 rich, because especially when you say, you know, this shouldn't be taught in schools. Well, what is

00:14:29.400 this? I mean, we are, we are talking about a sprawling catalog of practices and, and issues that,

00:14:38.000 that people have serious concerns about. And when we talk about K through 12 education,

00:14:42.140 we're talking about, you know, children as young as four and five, um, and children as old as 17 and

00:14:48.200 18. And in a high school class, there are certain things that young people ought to be exposed to.

00:14:53.740 It seems the way that this is talked about, even, even what you just said there about the Tennessee

00:14:58.300 law, if your interpretation of this is correct, it might be the case that, that kids in a civics

00:15:03.200 class couldn't watch a presidential debate because the, someone in one of those debates might talk

00:15:09.100 about say white privilege, white supremacy, structural racism, or some of these other

00:15:12.640 concepts and might make an assertion to the fact to, to the possibility that we might make an assertion

00:15:18.220 along the lines of white people have unique particular privilege. It is a reality that people 0.52

00:15:25.280 are talking about this now that many Americans feel a particular way about these issues now and

00:15:31.140 finding constructive ways for students to be able to engage with these questions and issues in a

00:15:38.300 classroom setting with one another is, it seems to me that it's, it's urgently important that our,

00:15:44.380 that our institutions are kind of up to that task and that, and, and one of the things that I want to

00:15:49.100 point here, highlight here is that the editorial doesn't only suggest that we can go pursue lawsuits.

00:15:54.380 It also says explicitly that a better approach to trying to ban things, this kind of negative approach

00:16:01.300 to curriculum, you can't do this, you can't do that, is to build better curriculum that is more

00:16:07.680 thoughtful and is more constructive and affirmatively gives us a sense for how to navigate these complex

00:16:13.380 issues together and, and not imagine ourselves as just kind of pushing approved knowledge into young

00:16:20.240 brains, but equipping, equipping young people with the talent and the skills necessary to grapple with

00:16:25.360 hard issues. Let me ask you, so that's, that's, that sounds nice, but what we're up against is a

00:16:29.800 teachers union. I mean, both of the largest teachers unions in the country are determined to teach this

00:16:34.940 despite their gaslighting of us now, right? Saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're not. I mean, they,

00:16:39.960 they lifted the dress up this month when the National Education Association, that's the largest teachers

00:16:44.940 union. They had an annual conference this month. This is a great story. And they, because the,

00:16:50.160 official word sort of out of the left, right? The media, the pundits, uh, democratic lawmakers has

00:16:56.120 been, we're not teaching CRT in K through 12. That's not happening. And then the National Education

00:17:03.620 Association at their annual conference is like, we have a six figure campaign we're unleashing to,

00:17:10.060 to fund a team of staffers for members who want to learn more and fight back against those who are

00:17:15.380 fighting our CRT rhetoric, right? Basically saying it's very reasonable. They said it's reasonable to

00:17:22.620 teach, uh, critical race theory. And we're going to fight back against those who are pushing against

00:17:26.800 us. They forgot, they forgot about the official talking point. And then the Heritage Foundation

00:17:31.060 reported on it and they promptly, the NEA removed all the items on their website that mentioned CRT,

00:17:36.720 like, whoops, we didn't say that. You didn't see that, but it was too late. And the second largest

00:17:40.680 teachers union, American Federation of Teachers, that's Weingarten's unit union. They've said,

00:17:45.100 too, they're investing, I think it's $5 million into future legal fees to defend teachers who

00:17:49.280 insist on teaching CRT, even though Weingarten is also insisting that CRT is not being taught.

00:17:55.620 Okay. It's being taught. And even the polling, NBC had a report on this recently, it was over 50%

00:17:59.500 of teachers either want to teach it or admit privately that they are teaching it. So it's,

00:18:05.280 I would love to just build better curricula, but we're up against a group of people who really

00:18:10.060 wants to shove this down our kids' throats.

00:18:11.800 Yeah. And I think the, you raise an important point. The reality, as I mentioned earlier,

00:18:17.120 it is, it would be wrong not to acknowledge one, that there have already been sort of activist

00:18:22.800 excesses in various schools across the country. It is hard to quantify this problem. I can't say

00:18:27.900 how many schools this is happening in or where the worst things are happening. And I think that's

00:18:32.520 really important that we, nobody can really quantify this just yet. So it isn't, it's, it's important to

00:18:37.260 kind of keep our concern constrained in that way, but at least to be aware of this reality.

00:18:42.080 And you're right to point out what the teachers unions have done. Ibram Kendi was speaking at one

00:18:46.660 of these events and they pledged to buy copies of his books stamped and to pollute schools with it all

00:18:52.660 over the country. That bothers me. I have serious problems with that. At the same time, one wonders

00:18:58.460 about the appropriate approach to this. And one has to also wonder about the degree to which

00:19:02.940 the way that concern has been generated about these issues and the way that it's being focused

00:19:08.760 at the moment, if that isn't contributing to just kind of a spreading of a brush fire,

00:19:14.240 as opposed to really constructive approaches to trying to address, trying to address this problem.

00:19:18.760 I think what's not talked about often enough is the practical limitations of a strategy of trying

00:19:23.320 to pass statewide bans on various things. Like how many states can we actually get these things

00:19:29.140 passed in? What percentage of states won't have this protection at all?

00:19:32.680 I imagine if you don't have a red legislature and a red governor's office, like that's not

00:19:40.220 happening. And it's also the case that the most awful excesses seem to be concentrated in

00:19:45.160 particular places. Like I've seen a lot of stories out of New York. I've seen a lot of

00:19:49.340 stories out of California. I haven't seen quite so many out of Tennessee. In fact, what I've

00:19:52.680 seen out of Tennessee recently is a teacher who got fired, who seemed to be kind of hankering

00:19:57.800 for the opportunity to get fired over these things. And it turns into a national news story.

00:20:02.660 And it seems to me that that isn't necessarily what we want. I'm thinking, I think a lot about

00:20:06.680 the missed opportunity here. I imagine these angry, um, these angry parents going to these meetings,

00:20:13.500 these, these, uh, these school board meetings and demanding something better. Like, I don't know,

00:20:17.980 school choice, for example, like it is not as though the statewide ban initiative, this haphazard

00:20:26.040 project isn't one that will cost a tremendous amount of resources and energy. And it's not as

00:20:31.060 though there aren't meaningful risks associated with it. And it's not as though it's guaranteed

00:20:34.760 to work. If these bands are sufficiently, if they're sufficiently narrow so that they don't

00:20:41.500 run afoul of the constitution and so that they don't run afoul of making it difficult to teach

00:20:47.020 complicated materials, they're probably not going to be able to stop most of the things that people

00:20:52.320 are concerned about. The reality is that this is a cultural issue, that there is a broad societal

00:20:57.880 issue here. And we have to be meaningfully engaged in our local school boards, going to meetings,

00:21:04.200 meetings, meeting with teachers. There are no shortcuts here. And anyone who is telling you

00:21:09.880 what there are is wrong. So I've been, I've been working with a bunch of groups on this. Um,

00:21:15.180 uh, fair is one of them. And also parents defending education, which is a nonpartisan group,

00:21:20.340 just trying to represent parents who are struggling with all this. And I know that one of the things

00:21:27.220 that parents defending education really wants is for concerned parents to run for school boards.

00:21:31.440 Yep. You got to get on school boards. You can't just sit

00:21:34.100 at home and lament. You got to get in the positions of power. So Rich, why isn't that the

00:21:39.480 answer? Like grassroots efforts, taking advantage of this enormous energy we've seen among parents

00:21:44.540 who are outraged about this to get them on school boards and change the, change the curriculum that

00:21:49.080 way, as opposed to at the state level. Oh, it's, it has to be a huge part of the solution. So I disagree

00:21:56.720 with Camille about these laws. Um, most of them, you know, I think they're legitimate concerns about

00:22:04.100 some of the wording, but let's say we, and I, and I take his point, you know, this is only happening in

00:22:09.660 red States with red legislatures and Republican governors. Let's say we, we do this in 15 States

00:22:16.200 that one that leaves a huge part of the country, right? 35 States where you haven't done it to,

00:22:21.820 if all we do, even if we pass these kinds of laws in 50 States, just keeping teachers from making

00:22:30.240 kids feel guilty from over their race, that's not a huge victory, right? That's a really minor and

00:22:36.120 defensive victory when you think about it. So absolutely the school board fights are essential

00:22:42.200 and developing curricula or, uh, that, that teaches truthful versions of American history or protecting

00:22:51.680 curricula that already do that is absolutely the ultimate name of the game. And the beauty of our,

00:22:59.100 our system and having a highly localized system of education is you can be a parent in, you know,

00:23:07.140 a small town somewhere or, uh, you know, a suburban County, and you can go get 200 signatures on your

00:23:14.440 petition to get on the ballot or whatever it takes. And then you win 800 votes in the school board race

00:23:20.060 and you are hugely influential and, and how you're the education of your children, your neighbor's

00:23:25.880 children is going to be carried out. That's a beautiful thing. And parents who are concerned

00:23:29.900 about this should absolutely take advantage of that. And that's something that can happen,

00:23:34.260 not just in red States. It can happen in States all around the country. Cause you know, you look

00:23:38.860 like a, look at a County by County, a political map and you know, there's swaths that the country,

00:23:45.020 if you break it down that way is mostly red because there's so many, uh, red localities. And so

00:23:51.140 that's the, that's, that should be the name of the game more than these state laws. I defend these

00:23:57.000 state laws. I think what they're trying to do is righteous, but again, it's really kind of a

00:24:03.360 defensive and prophylactic action compared to taking over these school boards and preventing

00:24:10.380 the education blob from imposing this stuff on our schools. And I also take Camille's point that

00:24:17.500 mostly, you know, you look, look at where this happening, it's happening a lot of places, but

00:24:21.680 you know, it's Cupertino, it's Portland, as you point out, it's a lot of New York, but it's coming

00:24:27.660 everywhere unless you stop it. And this is the history of these sorts of things. Not that we want

00:24:32.040 to get into trans, but you know, we would have, a lot of us would have said, Oh, look,

00:24:36.060 10 years ago, Berkeley says biological males should be able to go into female bathrooms. 0.72

00:24:39.920 Isn't that insane? You know, that would never happen here, but it's spread everywhere. So I think

00:24:44.960 while this debate can be one and before it's too late, it's important to undertake these state

00:24:51.640 measures and the places where you can pass them and, uh, fight school board race by school board

00:24:56.900 race all around the country. Cause if you get control of the school boards, you can, you can go as

00:25:01.620 broad as you want. I mean, one of the things about these laws is they don't stop the indoctrination

00:25:06.520 on trans issues. You know, they, all this stuff about letting your kid leave in the middle of the

00:25:11.580 day to go get cross gender hormones without telling the parents and not looping the parents in. If

00:25:15.340 your kid decides one day to go from being a girl to being a boy, they don't tell the parents. Like

00:25:20.440 it's crazy how at our school, our all boys school that we left, they were literally asking the boys

00:25:26.200 every week, whether they still felt like boys. That is what my son and his friends told me.

00:25:31.860 It was insane. Like gender is just something that's completely fluid. It could change day to

00:25:36.640 day and just checking back in at an all boys school with these boys to see whether that changed for

00:25:41.660 them. Like, could you just stop it? Stop it. If, if my kid's got an issue, I want her to be 0.98

00:25:46.680 supported. You don't need to keep suggesting it, right? It's like, is anyone feeling suicidal?

00:25:51.860 Anyone today, anyone feeling it a little like some of these things are suggestible. We've seen

00:25:56.000 evidence on that with the trans craze through Abigail Schreier and Lisa Lipman who did the

00:26:00.260 study and so on, especially with respect to girls. Anyway, my point is none of these laws address any

00:26:05.100 of that, but you get control of the school boards and you can, you can. So that, I think we all agree

00:26:10.000 that that would be a nice way of fighting back, getting more local control. Moms for Liberty down in 1.00

00:26:14.480 Florida, this group I spoke to, they're, they're all about that and that's awesome. But like it or not,

00:26:19.780 for good or for worse, there is a push with the states, you know, more and more to do this. I

00:26:24.500 should point out states on the other side have done it too. Several states have mandated the inclusion

00:26:29.360 of this CRT education into their education systems like California, but several others as well,

00:26:36.860 all blue states. And now red states are doing it the other way. And I do think it's, it's worth noting

00:26:42.100 they have discretion. The states do have discretion to set the curriculum in their schools. They can

00:26:48.400 banish texts. They can restrict teacher's speech. It's different from colleges. You know, the, the K

00:26:54.620 through 12 kids are a captive audience. There's a great piece on National Review of Rich by Stanley

00:26:58.900 Kurtz, um, saying there's a good reason that we, we can do more to silence or control K through 12 1.00

00:27:06.580 teachers than we can college professors. They're a captive audience. They're minors. They're vulnerable

00:27:12.060 to the authority of these teachers. They, you know, they're held in much higher esteem than college

00:27:16.780 professors are. And Stanley said, this is abuse. What's happening to them. I've said that too.

00:27:21.700 I do think this is child abuse. So to you, Camille, what of the argument that this is,

00:27:27.780 this is an emergency. Like we, we wouldn't let schools all over the country say the KKK wasn't

00:27:35.560 all wrong. They had a lot of good points. Hitler, he made some good points. Like we would never allow 0.99

00:27:40.120 that. And, and I think people view this kind of messaging, you know, I mean, there's just one,

00:27:46.000 this is actually out of Oklahoma red state. A teacher told his students to be white is to be

00:27:49.940 racist. Period. You know, that we covered this school, the, uh, public schools in Buffalo teaching

00:27:56.260 five-year-olds about racist police, making them watch videos of dead children, allegedly sort of

00:28:01.420 coming back from the grave to talk about racist cops and so on. So you can see that the feeling by

00:28:07.260 folks who oppose this, this is an equal emergency to stop. Well, well, again, my, my perspective on

00:28:13.760 this emergency, however, is, you know, does a sledgehammer actually fix those problems? And it

00:28:18.100 seems to me that it, that it does not in fact, fix those problems that, that it is almost certainly

00:28:22.860 the case that in these, in this, with this local system that we have a solution that does make a lot

00:28:29.620 of sense is for parents to get involved in a circumstance like that, to go to their school board,

00:28:33.720 to make the issue known to, to local officials and to create a bit of a scandal at that institution

00:28:41.360 and achieve the change that they want. That's what makes sense here. A statewide ban, again,

00:28:48.820 it seems to me is going to cause no shortage of problems. And while I know Rich has some

00:28:53.920 disagreement about this, the reality is that the way many of these pieces of legislation are written

00:28:59.460 today, they're going to have a number of far reaching consequences that can't really be

00:29:05.220 anticipated and could further politicize issues. I have good reason to believe that the degree to which

00:29:12.100 folks are actually kind of overreaching here and creating a bit of a panic is probably inspiring

00:29:18.500 more controversy and will, and will inspire more concern and will make the states that are more

00:29:25.080 interested in these policies, perhaps even go a bit further and kind of cementing their perspective

00:29:30.200 here. And to the extent folks who are interested in bans go too far in their attempts to try and

00:29:36.300 restrain some of these things is entirely possible that they could turn public opinion against them

00:29:40.760 very quickly and sort of cement some of these things in the institutions and create a great deal

00:29:46.800 of sympathy for someone. The, what you, the last thing that you want, if you're someone who's

00:29:51.060 concerned about, you know, creeping racial essentialism in public schools is kind of a

00:29:55.620 sympathetic victim who is, you know, fired for something that seems rather frivolous to people

00:30:01.680 looking at it from the outside, that, that makes people very suspicious about these restrictions.

00:30:08.500 And I don't want to create the perception of, you know, Ibram Kendi's book being secret knowledge.

00:30:14.500 If, if, you know, 16 year olds have access to this book, what if they bring them from home?

00:30:19.240 You know, are you, are you going to take those things away from them? Are they, are they forbidden

00:30:22.720 in the library? I mean, I think it's really important to just bear in mind the kind of

00:30:28.760 limitations of what these schools can actually do. It's not the worst thing in the universe.

00:30:34.000 If there is something in the library, say, um, at the school that is, is perhaps somewhat

00:30:40.520 questionable from all of our shared perspective, but that a kid might have access to, like, there are

00:30:46.420 going to be questions. These conversations are going to happen. It is impossible. It is impossible

00:30:51.220 that students won't have conversations about black lives matter in their, in their college,

00:30:56.260 um, you know, government and politics and their high school government and politics courses.

00:31:00.340 I mean, my wife and her second year in high school participated in a debate club and debated

00:31:05.700 affirmative action back and forth. These things will happen. And I don't think it is a,

00:31:10.820 it is an even re realistic possibility that we can put the genie back in the bottle

00:31:16.020 and sort of put a, put a shield around ourselves and not have these conversations. The question

00:31:21.520 becomes how to do these kinds of things productively, not to try to ban them out of existence.

00:31:27.160 What about that, Rich? Cause there's, I think, um, Camille's now it's sort of getting to the text

00:31:31.460 of the law, the text of some of the laws and why it's problematic. Like they're in Oklahoma and Texas,

00:31:36.920 they prohibit K through 12 public school teachers from making part of a course, any one of these

00:31:43.740 banned concepts. You can't make it even a part of the great can't, cannot be a part of the course,

00:31:48.440 um, to, to sort of discuss concepts that create division or resentment between races and social

00:31:57.020 classes and so on. And that's, that's different. That's different from like I mentioned, um,

00:32:03.600 Stanley, he, he wrote a draft of these laws and even he has said, it should have said,

00:32:09.320 you can't inculcate, you can't promote the idea that one race is better or worse than another.

00:32:15.340 I think, I mean, that's already the law. They're just not following it. Um, but they didn't go with

00:32:21.940 inculcate. They went with something much more generic and inclusive and, and, you know, broad,

00:32:27.480 like you just can't even discuss it basically. Yeah. Having talked to people in Texas, the,

00:32:32.360 the intention is again, as we were talking about Tennessee is promoting these concepts. So it's

00:32:39.840 one thing to say, you know, John C Calhoun thought that slavery was a benign institution that was good

00:32:46.300 for whites and for blacks. You know, that that's a historical fact. It's another to say slavery was a

00:32:52.380 good institution. I'm here standing in front of the classroom, telling you that slavery was a good 1.00

00:32:56.860 institution that's, that's promoting, but to Stanley's point, uh, make it clear. I mean, this is

00:33:03.780 laws, uh, laws should, should be precise and clearly worded. So everyone knows what they're

00:33:09.360 dealing with in inculcate would, uh, I believe I'm curious what, uh, Camille thinks I believe would,

00:33:16.600 would take care of the problem and make it clear what we're getting at just to, uh, a couple of points

00:33:22.040 that, um, Camille made. We're not talking about, you know, banning books from school libraries.

00:33:27.280 We're not talking about banning, you know, the topics that, that can be debated. We're, we're

00:33:33.000 talking about stopping, uh, teachers and administrators from foisting these poisonous concepts

00:33:39.180 on children. And is there a panic about this? Yes. Should there be a panic about this? Yes,

00:33:44.960 absolutely. And I just can't, I think you made this point, uh, earlier, Megan, I just can't believe

00:33:50.140 that if there was one school district in America where, uh, teacher training materials or what's

00:33:56.380 being taught to fifth graders was the KKK was right, that there wouldn't instantly, you know, 0.96

00:34:02.040 all the 50 States wouldn't pass a law. So you can't do that. And it would always be universal

00:34:06.460 sense. So I don't get the, why, why it's not, uh, uh, similar here. And then finally, just in fomenting

00:34:12.960 controversy, this controversy, if you're, uh, a reasonable right thinking parent, this controversy

00:34:19.700 is coming to you, you might not be interested in this controversy, but it's coming to you.

00:34:23.440 So you gotta, you gotta be, uh, ready to, to fight it, uh, tooth, tooth and nail. And I mean,

00:34:30.620 the teachers unions, just those resolutions passed by the NEA. I mean, they could have been drafted by

00:34:36.020 Chris Ruffo to prove this point, right? That's exactly what they did. These are, these are the

00:34:41.360 people we're entrusting our children with. We send them there six, eight, whatever hours a day,

00:34:46.480 trusting that, uh, that their minds won't be twisted and that they'll actually be, uh, taught,

00:34:52.680 uh, straight history. And we can't trust them. And that that's the bottom line. We cannot

00:34:56.920 trust them. And, and, and this, this is why we need, uh, the, the exercise of the small D

00:35:03.860 democratic authority of the people in these various places to stop it from happening.

00:35:09.400 Can I speak to two things that you just mentioned there? Thank you, Megan. First, I mean,

00:35:15.140 I think it's important to note that, that these, these bills, and I think it has been said already,

00:35:19.280 but it's important to say, again, these pieces of legislation are all over the place in terms of

00:35:23.800 quality and the things that are actually being banned. There was a proposed Kentucky legislation,

00:35:29.300 um, that included language that would have restricted, um, classroom instruction or discussion,

00:35:36.340 formal or informal, um, or the distribution of any printed or digital materials, um, with the same

00:35:43.420 sort of restrictions around, um, you know, the, these, these particular issues about race and how

00:35:50.100 they're being discussed and what's being discussed and what's being promoted. But again, we're talking

00:35:53.800 about informal discussions in class being restricted by a bill. Like that becomes a huge problem. So my

00:36:02.000 thing is, should we panic? No panic is never good. That's not a good strategy. When you have a serious

00:36:07.720 problem, you don't panic, you develop a strategy, you develop a thoughtful plan and you imagine what,

00:36:13.560 what a good outcome looks like here. And quite frankly, I just don't hear enough of those

00:36:17.400 conversations. And to, to, to put this into a, into a framework that I think will be familiar since

00:36:22.340 the Klan has been mentioned a few times. And I know one of Chris's favorite things to do is to ask,

00:36:26.420 you know, what if the Ku Klux Klan was doing this? Well, I think it's important to differentiate

00:36:29.900 between that, that thought experience and the reality that we're facing. Because if in fact,

00:36:34.860 the Ku Klux Klan was in a position to get something developed and instituted in our public schools,

00:36:43.260 anywhere in America, we would have a very severe problem and it would not be the sort of problem

00:36:47.520 that anyone could have. Yeah, but their messaging is, is repeated by CRT. I mean, it's, you know,

00:36:51.180 the old, who's saying it, right? Uh, is it, is this something Robin DiAngelo said or something

00:36:55.700 David Duke said? And you can't always tell the difference. Well, this, that is actually true. Um,

00:37:01.520 although that's a, I think I would love to take that in a different direction, but, but I think

00:37:06.540 what I'm saying is that to the extent that's the case, our problem is far more severe than the

00:37:12.440 curriculums in schools. Like there is a, there is a social issue. There is a cultural issue that

00:37:18.300 actually has to be addressed. And the notion that you can address that cultural social issue with

00:37:23.480 these bands is just, I mean, I find it, I find it laughable. Like you can't actually prevent

00:37:29.720 teachers from finding sophisticated way to get their own perspective into the classroom and it

00:37:35.460 will always happen. This is, this is the reality. So the thinking here is not that you can make that

00:37:41.580 you can, you can sort of use my perspective anyways, is that you can't use the law to make

00:37:46.540 these places, these kind of pure cathedrals where there is no sort of political influence at all,

00:37:52.460 where there is no kind of ideological valence to these, to these classrooms. Like some of that is

00:37:58.200 always going to be there. The question becomes like, how do we strike a healthy, constructive,

00:38:03.900 meaningful balance in these classrooms? How do we make certain that kids are getting well-rounded

00:38:07.980 at educations? Well, our school system has had a lot of problems for a very long time.

00:38:13.080 And post COVID, it would be great if we spent some time thinking constructively about how to fix those

00:38:17.460 problems. We've got problems with literacy, with math, all over the country, kids who are not

00:38:23.220 learning in these schools already. And I think it's, I think it's shameful that folks are interested in

00:38:30.520 having this kind of ideological conflict. And I'm not blaming the parents who are responding to

00:38:35.000 activists who have done this to them, who have brought this fight to them. But I am saying that

00:38:41.120 the appropriate response seems to me is to say, hey, slow down. We know that we can sort of develop

00:38:47.060 programs for these schools that work. This, these are the solutions that make sense. And it would be

00:38:52.460 great if a lot of this activist energy, if a lot of the money that was being raised around these

00:38:56.180 issues was being used to one, yes, fund lawsuits where necessary, where egregious things are

00:39:02.640 happening. You can, in fact, get some sort of action and remedy that doesn't take years. You can,

00:39:09.400 you can get an injunction that will bring immediate relief to families. And you can start to meaningfully

00:39:15.760 develop curriculum. And I know FAIR is doing some of that work, but it would be great to have more

00:39:19.700 people doing that work as well. And a lot of this energy that's going into legislation being

00:39:24.540 directed in that way. And of course, school choice is a really important goal as well.

00:39:30.180 Up next, what about all those states who are mandating the teaching of this kind of stuff,

00:39:34.540 this critical race theory nonsense, divisive awfulness? Why can they do it? But other states

00:39:40.320 who oppose it can't ban it. We'll get into that in one minute.

00:39:43.560 I love lawsuits. As a former lawyer, I love using the law to shut this down because most of the stuff

00:39:52.160 is illegal. It's already illegal. It's just they're ignoring it and getting away with it. So

00:39:55.800 yes to lawsuits. But I also understand the point that they take a long time. They're expensive.

00:40:00.680 You not every case will get picked up by parents defending education or by FAIR or by one of these

00:40:05.620 groups that's trying to help, you know, so it's frustrating. And as a parent who was undergoing this

00:40:10.140 with all three of my kids in their schools, you don't want to say, OK, I'm going to file a lawsuit.

00:40:14.320 I'm going to wait. And meanwhile, your kid's being shamed every day for his race or his gender. It's

00:40:18.320 like, no, screw you. We're out of here. We're out of here. You're not getting one more day of this 1.00

00:40:23.620 abuse of my child. Not one. Right. So that's what makes you go say, pass a law, do what you have to

00:40:29.240 do so I can shove it down this teacher's throat when she tries to teach my kid that he's a racist 1.00

00:40:34.640 because of pigmentation over which he has no control. Right. So I understand the emotion 0.94

00:40:38.220 behind it. But can I just make one point? I don't you know how you guys do at the end of

00:40:43.140 the editors, Rich, you know, you're you're the piece that you recommend everybody read.

00:40:46.680 I didn't hear you guys. It's a brilliant piece.

00:40:48.760 I love it. I actually do a lot of my reading based on the recommendations you do at the end

00:40:53.340 of that. But I want it. I want to make it on the I want my recommendation to make it.

00:40:59.260 And it's the piece called What Happened to You by Andrew Sullivan. It's dated July 9.

00:41:04.080 It's a great stack. And it's it's the subheading is the radicalization of the American elite

00:41:09.020 against liberalism. And I have to point this out because you correctly point out, Camille,

00:41:13.800 and you've been railing about this, too. There's something bigger wrong with the country right

00:41:17.980 now. It's schools are a problem. No question. And especially because of the things Stanley

00:41:22.720 Kurtz raised. You know, they're minors. They're vulnerable. They're a captive audience.

00:41:26.300 But the problem is so much bigger than that. And he he writes in this piece, he kind of

00:41:31.660 diagnoses it. And he quotes Wesley Yang a lot. And I my eyes were opened. I read this

00:41:37.800 and I was like, oh, my God, this is exactly right. Here's just a sample. He writes, we

00:41:42.560 are going through the greatest radicalization of the elites since the 1960s. This isn't coming

00:41:47.040 from the ground up. It's being imposed ruthlessly from above, marshaled with a fusillade of constant

00:41:53.140 MSM propaganda. And its victims are often the poor and the black and the brown. It nearly lost

00:41:58.880 the Democrats the last election. And he goes on to basically say every what's happened here

00:42:04.200 is the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It's

00:42:08.320 sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. Quoting here, in essence, it is

00:42:15.060 an ongoing moral panic against the specter of white supremacy, which is now bizarrely regarded

00:42:20.060 as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy

00:42:24.320 in human history. And he quotes Wesley Yang's coinage of the phrase, the successor ideology.

00:42:30.500 That's what's taking over liberalism in this country, you know, sort of this where people

00:42:36.600 used to be, where people used to stand up for due process and free speech. And now all those

00:42:42.220 things are considered planks of an oppressive system, right? You can't be for due process anymore.

00:42:48.800 You're a racist. You can't, you can't be for free speech or objectivity because that's racist 0.59

00:42:54.440 and sexist and so on. Anyway, you got to read the whole piece. But to your larger point, Camille,

00:42:59.360 we do need to spend some time on that and how you fight that. Because people who are on the left

00:43:05.340 are on our side and fighting that. And Andrew Sullivan's one of them.

00:43:09.060 Yeah, I think you could potentially lose some of those people if you are engaged in a legislative

00:43:15.480 battle nationwide that produces, in some instances, really bad laws that run afoul,

00:43:22.460 not necessarily of the First Amendment, but run afoul of our general principles of having a cultural

00:43:28.420 sort of appreciation for the importance of respecting diversity of thought and creating

00:43:33.880 Yeah, but what about the schools that are requiring that this be taught?

00:43:36.620 What about, Camille, how about like California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois? They mandate CRT.

00:43:41.140 In California, if I'm not mistaken, it's not, it's not a statewide mandate. They've developed

00:43:45.340 a curriculum and schools can decide whether or not they want to utilize it. But I think you do raise a

00:43:50.380 good point there. And the question is, like, what can be done in those states? Well, in those states,

00:43:54.080 one, you can't pass a ban. So the things that are left to those people, and I think it's important

00:43:58.420 to equip them with their, let them know what their options are. Go to your school board meeting,

00:44:02.720 be involved in the classroom, engage with your, engage with teachers there. And if there is a

00:44:07.740 serious violation of your civil liberties, get a lawyer, reach out to one of these fine organizations

00:44:12.600 that are helping people to file these civil rights lawsuits. And yes, it does take some time for these

00:44:18.200 federal cases to run their course, but you can secure an injunction. And that can happen in as

00:44:23.120 little as a month. And once you do, that can bring some immediate relief. And even the specter of

00:44:29.280 injunctions. And quite frankly, I think I'd love to see these things flying like all over the place,

00:44:33.300 just get a bunch of them filed. You will, you will scare a lot of these school boards straight.

00:44:38.900 You will scare a lot of these school systems straight. And that is what needs to happen here.

00:44:43.460 I think it's important to enter into the record. One of my co-conspirators on this piece,

00:44:49.300 David French, who was formerly at FIRE, and FIRE currently, Greg Lukianoff is the head over there.

00:44:56.380 They've had profound success. And they fight for free speech rights on college campuses.

00:45:00.340 Yes, on college campuses in particular. And they've had profound success using legislation

00:45:04.860 to get these universities to get rid of their speech codes. Like incredible success.

00:45:11.020 You mean using lawsuits?

00:45:12.480 Yes, using lawsuits. I'm sorry, using lawsuits to induce universities to effectively stop using

00:45:21.240 these speech codes to pull back on them and have seen marked improvements in the quality of the sort

00:45:27.460 of survey results that they've been doing year over year. And it's the sort of thing that can be

00:45:33.040 achieved here if folks are sort of constructively and thoughtfully approaching these issues.

00:45:38.800 I worry about this being sort of analogized to the Tea Party movement. I don't know that the Tea Party

00:45:44.780 movement was terribly successful. If I remember correctly, the principal issue that the Tea Party

00:45:49.160 was concerned about was the debt. How did that work out? You had a panic. You had a furor.

00:45:54.700 You got people excited. They were energized. They showed up at some meetings. They didn't really

00:45:59.000 accomplish much. And it would be a damn shame if we didn't really accomplish much now, because I

00:46:04.120 actually think it matters. I think it matters that our schools already weren't doing a very good job.

00:46:08.560 And I think it matters now that in some schools, yes, we are seeing kind of a push for kind of

00:46:14.660 ideological indoctrination. And at a moment when the country is so weirdly fractious and so many

00:46:21.380 things are politicized in unhealthy ways, it would be a real shame if we missed the opportunity

00:46:26.540 to find constructive ways to navigate around these problems.

00:46:30.040 So let me respond to, Camille, what you're saying, just the answer just prior to this one about this

00:46:36.220 vast cultural tide. And we can't kind of use laws to fight back against it. Again, K-12 education,

00:46:44.660 public K-12 education is a state institution. And yes, having state rules about how you teach kids

00:46:56.280 doesn't stop this vast cultural tide, but it can establish a bulwark against that cultural tide in

00:47:03.540 a very important area. And when you advocate people running for school boards and influencing what their

00:47:10.780 schools do that way, school boards, and this is public action. So you're really, you're just making

00:47:16.320 a distinction between certain levels of state authority. You're not actually defending a kind

00:47:24.100 of a libertarian principle. And I just object to, maybe I misunderstood what you were saying earlier,

00:47:29.740 but K-12 teachers, they shouldn't just be these free-floating people who show up in the classroom,

00:47:34.260 they've read the New York Times Magazine, but they're going to that day say the United States

00:47:39.360 is a racist society from beginning to end. And they, in the classroom, they do not have free

00:47:46.400 speech rights. You can't control what they say once they're out of the classroom. So they should teach

00:47:52.620 what the people through their representatives, whether it's a state level or local school boards,

00:48:02.740 what they are told to teach. That is their role.

00:48:07.880 But these are prohibitions on what people can-

00:48:09.340 They're going to be influenced as, you know, the NEA resolutions suggest by this hideous doctrine

00:48:15.180 that's very fashionable and influential now, that has to be stopped. And these, these kinds of state

00:48:22.040 laws, they, they're, they don't take care of the issue. It's more important to, to get the curricula

00:48:28.500 right. But it's also worthy to say, Nope, you're not teaching our kids that they're inherently

00:48:33.260 racist. You're not teaching them. They should feel guilty because of their race. You're not doing

00:48:38.240 that. And then we'll go on the school boards and we'll, we'll tell you more about what you should

00:48:41.400 specifically teach them. Yeah. Again, I think we're still talking about restrictions on specific

00:48:46.320 concepts. And in some cases we imagine that we're talking about restrictions on specific,

00:48:51.520 statements effectively that you can't tell a person that they should feel shame in practice though,

00:48:58.300 because we're talking about restricting material in addition to restricting sort of statements that

00:49:04.560 can be made. And because the reality in practice again, is that you're usually going to have a

00:49:10.080 circumstance where a child is coming to their parents and saying, Hey, I felt bad. Like what the

00:49:14.340 teacher said in class, like made me feel bad. And I, on account of my race, there is a tremendous

00:49:19.520 amount of subjectivity in all of these circumstances. And I don't know that create the,

00:49:25.220 it's important to imagine not only the possibility that you might be able to, to sort of remedy this

00:49:30.420 problem in this way, but the reality that you're going to introduce into these classrooms, uh, uh, a kind

00:49:37.240 of chilled climate, the possibility of the kind of punishment and censure for things that maybe we don't

00:49:45.760 want there to be punishment and censure over. And we're, we're denying ourselves the opportunity

00:49:50.500 to do this in a more productive way. I think there is a material difference between passing

00:49:56.940 these, these restrictions statewide on particular concepts and ideas and around feelings and

00:50:05.040 sentiments, as opposed to having school boards that are working on people getting elected to school

00:50:11.580 boards, if necessary, working on developing curriculums that make sense and working on

00:50:16.580 enforcing the, the same sort of standards against, uh, discrimination and rights violations that we

00:50:24.040 have on the books already that we have, that we can respect at the federal level and making certain

00:50:29.700 that those things are happening in our, in our schools. Like you actually have the laws going another

00:50:34.120 way. Well, I'm saying you have this already, you have this already, and you have these bodies that

00:50:39.060 are, that are there. You can, you can use those things in order to achieve this goal. And again,

00:50:43.620 I do think at some level, like it has to come back to durable solutions. And I do think that school

00:50:50.500 choice is a much more durable solution than any of these other things. And I think it is a profound

00:50:55.560 error to waste all of the energetic interest and, and activism that's happening and to not be pushing

00:51:02.840 for that in a more serious way. A couple of things. One, you've said we, parents should use lawsuits

00:51:09.980 in part to chill, to make all these people scared. They're going to get sued. So are you, are you,

00:51:17.020 are you for or against them? I'm saying the, the existing civil rights, existing civil rights

00:51:21.220 lawsuits. There's, there's, we've got decades. Well, yes, we've got decades to scare them.

00:51:25.980 Make everyone. Well, I'm saying, scare them straight. The activists who are going too far

00:51:32.240 when there is a legitimate violation. Yes. File a lawsuit, get these people to stop doing it.

00:51:38.400 But I don't want to have frivolous lawsuits being filed at the state level all the time

00:51:43.140 because someone says something that made me feel uncomfortable. There's going to be a fuzzy line.

00:51:49.000 I think we can make it fuzzier. And once you're saying we should sue over this. And, and I believe

00:51:55.280 earlier you did say you, you wanted, wanted people to get brushback pitches and, and be worried about

00:52:00.100 this. So I don't see what the principal distinction between making people afraid of getting sued and

00:52:06.480 writing a ban on, on this sort of instruction into state law. And then also as a practical matter,

00:52:13.100 these provisions, they, they relate to other state laws. So in Florida, for instance, I won't blame

00:52:22.340 you for this one, Camille. This was another New York Times piece, but there's a big New York Times

00:52:26.060 magazine piece by this guy, Timothy Snyder. This was amazing. Timothy Snyder. I read your rebuttal to

00:52:30.620 this online, Rich, and it was, I'm shocked by how horrible his piece was. Go ahead. Sorry to

00:52:35.700 interrupt. Oh, thank you. But anyway, he quotes this provision that was passed by the, the state

00:52:42.420 school board saying you, you can't inculcate, you know, kind of 1619 project that, that U S is

00:52:50.800 inherently racist. And so, oh my God, see, they banned teaching slavery, but the immediate prior

00:52:55.640 sentence in that rule was make sure that you are faithfully and accurately teaching in the history

00:53:01.700 of slavery, the history of Jim Crow. And the sentence after that in the rule says, make sure you're

00:53:06.800 teaching, you know, the bill of rights and all the amendments to the constitution, obviously,

00:53:11.840 including, you know, the, the, uh, uh, amendment, uh, eliminating, abolishing slavery, et cetera.

00:53:18.120 And then this rule doesn't stand alone. It, it's, it is a way, um, to, to let teachers know how to

00:53:23.840 interpret the, the state statute that sets out the standards for what students are supposed to learn

00:53:29.500 in Florida. And of course that includes African-American history and includes slavery,

00:53:33.280 includes Jim Crow, includes Martin Luther King. So the, these places, even with the problematic law,

00:53:39.720 uh, rules, they don't exist in isolation. They'll be interpreted, uh, in, in the context of existing

00:53:47.300 state standards that everywhere include teaching slavery. And it's just not the, I I'll bet, you know,

00:53:52.880 I'll bet you a dinner Camille at, uh, Gavin Newsom's failed favorite restaurant, French Laundry.

00:53:57.520 There's not one school district that's going to stop teaching slavery. No, I think, I think that's 0.85

00:54:03.560 about it. Yeah. Well, sorry. Last thing to go to the administration and say, okay, so what,

00:54:08.560 what can I, and can't I teach? And if the administration's doing its job, says don't tell

00:54:13.400 kids to feel guilty because of their race, do let them read, you know, Frederick Douglass,

00:54:19.140 Douglass, you know, what is the, what is July 4th to a slave? Yeah. What, what to the slave is the

00:54:23.420 4th of July. Yeah. Absolutely. Which is just beautiful. And people haven't read it. They should.

00:54:27.520 Um, listen, I, I would, I will say again, I think there, these laws are a variable quality. Some of

00:54:33.980 them are less egregious than others. Some of them are, are perfectly fine and are perhaps a bit

00:54:39.800 redundant in the sense that they're totally consistent with like the tradition of civil rights,

00:54:45.360 um, litigation that, that we have in this country. And, and that is, that is one category of issue.

00:54:53.500 I think the other category of issue though, is again, the limitations of, uh, a campaign to

00:54:59.240 achieve these bands broadly, perhaps nationwide and the energy that's being directed towards that

00:55:05.520 and the energy that's not being directed towards other issues. The sentiment that's being, I think,

00:55:11.760 pushed in many instances that these bands can in fact, quote unquote, save us, um, or save millions

00:55:17.640 of kids. When in fact, as you acknowledged rich, um, the reality is that people have to get involved

00:55:24.580 and stay involved, um, and remain involved. And, and I think a third thing to keep in mind,

00:55:29.520 just to kind of put this all into perspective, like there's a sense in which we can, we can allow

00:55:35.800 ourselves to become over-concerned, um, about some of these issues. Like the reality is that even,

00:55:42.780 even if, you know, there is a classroom where like Ibram Kendi's book is on offer or something like

00:55:48.840 that, like, it's not as though every single, um, public, public school program that is ever

00:55:56.020 introduced, like has this profound, like social consequence. And there's a sense in which I think

00:56:02.120 I do want people to be concerned about this. I do want them to be involved in their classrooms.

00:56:07.160 I do want them to be engaged with their teachers and asking serious questions about the way we're

00:56:11.800 approaching these issues. But I also worry about hysteria. I worry about imagining that the worst

00:56:17.120 possible thing is happening in every circumstance, because I do think that that could create, um,

00:56:22.700 sort of a cycle of panic and could induce people to behave in bad ways. I am in a panic because

00:56:30.180 it's horrifying what they're teaching these kids. It's not, it's not generic. It's not like,

00:56:35.020 okay, 10th graders read Kendi and then we'll discuss in the school. That's fine.

00:56:38.580 You know, you can, you can hit it, you can support it. You can do what you want in most

00:56:42.760 classroom settings. Although everyone knows the teacher is going to be on Kendi's side

00:56:45.980 just because they tend to lean left. Um, it's about the littles for me, the littles being told

00:56:51.420 that they need to be ashamed, right? These kindergartners, it's absurd being, being shamed for the color

00:56:56.800 of their skin. And it's happening in, in places like Iowa, you know, we had on, and in Wisconsin,

00:57:01.920 uh, we had on former Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker talking about a case out of Iowa that was

00:57:05.900 deeply disturbing. So it's spreading. It's already spread. We've already been derelict and letting it

00:57:10.080 get ahold of too many classrooms and too many school districts. And now there is a bit of a panic on

00:57:14.820 stopping it and doing what we need to get these teachers off of their pedestals, teaching the

00:57:20.440 wrong message, teaching messages that have been illegal for quite some time. And you need only switch

00:57:25.900 the races in the discussion to know that on a, on a guttural level. Um, but I will say this is one 0.94

00:57:32.120 for you, Rich on the language of the laws. There's another problem. It's not just the ones that instead

00:57:37.680 of saying inculcate, you can't inculcate these views with the students, but just, you can't even

00:57:41.720 include these concepts. That's not, that's not okay. You got, you got to revise those laws in like

00:57:47.180 Oklahoma and Texas, but some of these laws say, and I'll, and I'll quote, this is sort of an,

00:57:51.940 this is a standard clause for these laws. Um, it would be unlawful for teachers to include in the

00:57:57.640 classroom material that promotes division between or resentment of our race, sex, religion,

00:58:03.640 creed, nonviolent, political affiliation, social class or class of people. Okay. So they're trying

00:58:07.040 to say, don't teach the black kids to resent the white kids or vice versa. But my mind went to, 0.53

00:58:13.740 what about let's go back eight years when we had all those, uh, ISIS offshoots attacking various

00:58:21.100 pockets of the United States. And we did a lot of talking about radical Islam and what they stand

00:58:26.380 for and what they were doing. Right. Could, could we discuss what that religion or creed believes

00:58:32.220 under this law? Cause you could definitely make the argument that it promotes resentment of a

00:58:37.580 religion or a creed. And I could see a lawsuit based on that. And these very States saying what

00:58:43.400 again, I mean, it goes to what the meaning of promote is. I, I would think we wouldn't want any

00:58:48.760 teacher in America saying Muslim kids should feel badly because of ISIS. But it's material

00:58:54.040 that promotes resentment. So you're, you're presenting them material. Is a teacher promoting

00:59:00.600 it or is a teacher saying radical, but it still says material that promotes it. I think there's

00:59:05.780 a distinction there that, that, that you're making that isn't in the law. Is it the teacher

00:59:11.260 promoting it? Look, I think that the wording of some of these things is problematic. I'll readily

00:59:16.600 concede that. I just don't think there's good reason not to have well-crafted laws in this

00:59:23.320 regard. And I just don't think there's, it's not a choice between having these state laws

00:59:28.520 and having action in the school boards. You know, Texas passed this law at the same time

00:59:33.900 the parents of South Lake rose up against this effort in their schools to impose kind of a radical

00:59:41.140 anti-racist regime. You can, you can chew gum, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. So it's

00:59:48.100 not, it's not a choice. And the Texas law is, is messy in all sorts of ways, partly because of the

00:59:54.620 procedure of, of what happened. They kind of ran out of time and it wasn't what they wanted the final

00:59:59.420 version to be. And it will be cleaned up in the special session. And to Camille's point about panic,

01:00:04.780 I do think parents should be panicked. You should be panicked, but legislature shouldn't be writing

01:00:09.960 in a fit of hysteria. They should be carefully considering things like Stanley Kurtz's model

01:00:16.000 law, which was not written in a panic. This is something he's been pressing on and focused on

01:00:21.060 for years and, and making it airtight. Coming up, we're going to get into whether the Department

01:00:28.120 of Education is a meaningful resource to people who don't want this stuff being taught in their

01:00:32.980 schools. Here's a hint. Good luck. Before we get to that and what they're doing, we're going to

01:00:39.240 bring you a feature we have here on the show called Asked and Answered, where we try to address some of

01:00:43.180 our listener mail. And for the question, we have our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, who goes

01:00:48.380 through all the mail, both on our social media and on our secret account where you can email us,

01:00:54.460 Steve, which is? That's right. Yeah. Questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. We've been getting more and more of

01:01:00.740 ease every day, which is, which is great to see. I'm also getting a lot on social media, always

01:01:05.040 make it some noise on those social media accounts. But this one came to us from that email address.

01:01:10.340 Molly wants to know, do you still get nervous before interviews? And she wants to say, thanks again for

01:01:15.280 being such a strong woman with a strong voice, literally and figuratively.

01:01:19.560 Thank you, Molly. I don't really anymore. I have, you know, as recently as being in the prime time of

01:01:26.100 Fox, I remember I've, I've referenced this interview before with Dick Cheney, where he came on, it was very

01:01:30.840 contentious. He had tried to blame the Iraq war on Barack Obama. So, so weird for Dick Cheney to be

01:01:37.060 doing that. And I knew it was going to be contentious and Dick Cheney is kind of scary. So yeah, I was a

01:01:44.140 little nervous before that. And I know if you go back and look at it, you'll hear my, I was running out of

01:01:47.840 breath on a couple of the questions. And I remember talking to my therapist about it later. I'm like, I think

01:01:52.400 there might be something wrong with me. I was running out of breath in some of these questions.

01:01:55.180 And he's like, he asked me who you're talking to, what's going on. He's like, you were nervous.

01:02:00.340 Like, Oh, Oh, you know what? That makes perfect sense. Um, because it's not, I'm not that used to

01:02:07.640 getting nervous. So I was unfamiliar to me, but now I, now I see. And then, um, before that, you know,

01:02:13.620 now famous, infamous, depending on your point of view, debate with Trump and the woman question,

01:02:17.880 I was, I guess, a little nervous, like beef in the weeks, like in the days before the debate,

01:02:24.180 cause he was already really circling around me and calling attention to me behind the scenes. And,

01:02:28.760 you know, I was on his radar and in a negative way, but as you may have heard that day,

01:02:34.600 for whatever reason, I had a terrible stomach issue and that was not nerves. That was,

01:02:40.900 that was either a stomach bug or something more nefarious. Go ahead and read my book, settle for more.

01:02:46.120 And, um, I spent the whole afternoon throwing up in my hotel room and I did not know whether I was

01:02:52.880 going to make that debate at all. And, uh, Abby was with me in the hotel. Like she looked terrified,

01:02:58.860 terrified. I wasn't going to make it. Uh, but she got, she got some sort of a medication from my

01:03:04.440 doctor. And he said, if you can keep it down for 30 minutes, you won't throw up anymore. And I did,

01:03:09.240 I managed to keep it down for 30 minutes. And I went out there that night. And I, the last thing I was

01:03:12.640 thinking about was my nerves. I was, all I could think about was do not vomit on national television.

01:03:17.800 We had the whole plan. I was going to throw up in the bucket. The cameras are going to cut away.

01:03:21.300 They were going to cut the mics. The bucket was right with me. I had a blanket on my legs. We had

01:03:25.040 the plan for me to vomit in front of 20 million people. And so when you got that going, you know,

01:03:30.500 it's sort of like when you have to go get a shot and they pinch you on your other arm.

01:03:34.260 It's kind of what was happening there, uh, on the podcast, not at all. Cause it's,

01:03:37.960 I don't know. It's all within my control. It's, you can have longer fleshed out discussions. So

01:03:42.620 if something goes wrong, I don't know, it's just nicer because there's room for exploration,

01:03:48.220 nuance, emotional highs and lows. So I just find it less nerve wracking and more fulfilling on many

01:03:56.120 levels. I don't know. Nothing else coming to mind. Vladimir Putin, maybe a little,

01:04:00.120 not really though. I kind of, that was exciting. So anyway, long and the short of it is I'm in a good

01:04:04.240 business because, uh, nerves don't really hit me too much. I would say all my years of practicing

01:04:07.860 law very much helped. So, you know, like anything, if you're afraid of public speaking, do more public

01:04:12.420 speaking and it gets better. And, uh, you know, being on my feet, making arguments in front of

01:04:16.840 courts of law, being pummeled by nine times out of 10 male judges on my logic, my reasoning, 0.99

01:04:22.640 basically being treated like an idiot by opposing counsel. That's all good for you. It's not pleasant 0.99

01:04:26.980 in the moment, but it's good for you longterm. Uh, so anyway, thank you for the question, Molly.

01:04:32.000 I appreciate the shout out and the kind compliment. And, uh, to all those of you out there who would

01:04:37.020 like to do something challenging that may cause you some nerves, just whatever it is, do it and

01:04:42.180 then do it again and then do more of it and then do more of it still. And you two will cross over to

01:04:47.040 the other side where Dick Cheney no longer scares you. Am I there? I don't know. Maybe we'll have him

01:04:51.800 on someday and figure it out. Now back to our guests in one second.

01:04:58.040 One of the things that's jumped out at me and just researching all the various back and forth on this

01:05:07.660 is the feds have stuck their nose in here in a way that makes the state's reaction more defensible.

01:05:16.840 You know, the department of education is now trying to push through a rule that will funnel grants to

01:05:21.180 schools that teach critical race theory, that, that offer grants to us history classes that teach

01:05:27.740 CRT, the 1619 project, Ibram X. Kendi, et cetera, several million dollars. And so I can see the

01:05:33.320 argument that number one, the feds are, the feds are already sticking their nose into this. So each

01:05:38.360 state, you know, it being a federalist system is trying to fight back saying, Oh no, no, no, no,

01:05:42.680 you will not do that. And secondly, that normally you might, you might be able to complain to the

01:05:48.080 department of education. If this were happening, if the KKK, you know, messaging, you know,

01:05:52.040 Hitler was not all wrong with that kind of, you could go to the department of education and say, 0.99

01:05:55.540 yo, help us out. This is not okay. But they're planning on imposing CRT in American schools.

01:06:02.300 The department of education is the one that's funneling these grants out. So you can't complain

01:06:08.140 to them. You have no help other than some private lawyer who may or may not take your case.

01:06:13.320 Yeah. Yeah. I think you make a really good, important point that the sort of cultural

01:06:18.520 valence of the current administration is certainly more in favor of a more kind of

01:06:26.100 fundamentalist like approach to teaching about systemic racism and making certain that these

01:06:32.680 things are kind of inculcated throughout the curriculum, or at least that there are incentives

01:06:36.740 for folks to embrace this at the state level. And that's something that's worth drawing attention

01:06:40.480 to and something that's worth pushing back against. And there's a context in which that

01:06:45.700 ought to happen. But again, I just don't think these bans actually address that in any sort of

01:06:50.840 meaningful way. They certainly don't prevent it in most instances. So it still returns to this

01:06:57.700 question of exactly what do the curriculums, what do good curriculums look like? What does a good

01:07:03.000 approach to teaching about these complicated issues look like? What is a good approach to teaching

01:07:08.380 about systemic racism that isn't overly politicized actually look like? And I don't think we're having

01:07:15.480 a lot of those constructive conversations right now. We are imagining that the appropriate remedy

01:07:20.600 is to stop things. Don't you feel like we're getting close to that? Now, I don't argue that we

01:07:25.360 were doing it perfectly in the United States, right? Like the whole Tulsa thing. I think there was a point

01:07:29.360 that a lot of this stuff hasn't been taught or highlighted, and I get that. So you can always do better.

01:07:35.660 But I feel like we were doing this. It's not like any classroom in America, at least most,

01:07:41.920 were skipping over the civil rights movement, MLK, Jim Crow. We were teaching all that. And

01:07:48.800 the way the messaging is right now, going back to the Andrew Sullivan piece, is as if you've missed

01:07:56.280 the whole story. It's that the country itself is racist. Every institution is racist. And unless you're

01:08:01.720 teaching, they don't want teaching about Jim Crow. They want teaching the 1619 Project. This country 0.73

01:08:06.840 was founded to promote slavery, a proposition that's been roundly criticized and derided as

01:08:13.280 completely not factual by Nicole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times. They want a different way of

01:08:18.800 teaching that is not fact-based and is really just based in a far-left opinion and view of America that

01:08:24.060 is not supported, I would argue, and certainly not shared by most Americans. So the frustration is

01:08:31.340 the system was working okay, not perfectly, but okay. And they've changed it to a way that's really

01:08:37.420 racist. And that's what people are trying to fight back against, right? It's not like they've screwed

01:08:42.300 it up. They haven't improved it.

01:08:44.460 I think it's a question of the degree to which those changes have actually happened and the degree to

01:08:49.500 which, I mean, the reality is that the 1619 Project exists. It is one Pulitzer Prize that

01:08:56.900 people like Ta-Nehisi Coates have been writing for a number of years about these issues and are,

01:09:02.380 you know, revered, celebrated authors, journalists, wordsmiths. And their work is almost certainly

01:09:09.940 going to be analyzed by young people in class. Again, the question becomes the framework in which

01:09:15.100 1619 Project, you're saying it's there. It's there. It is absolutely there. And again, I think

01:09:20.740 that, and this is really a profound misunderstanding by many people, including, I think, Chris Rufo,

01:09:26.740 who read the New York Times editorial that we pulled together and was, I guess, profoundly offended

01:09:34.660 by it and took a great deal of it personally, despite the fact that it never mentioned him at all.

01:09:40.940 But the reality is that I think we were trying to do a number of different things in that piece,

01:09:44.880 as you do when you have a bunch of different people contributing. It's like kind of trying

01:09:48.680 to posit an affirmative vision for what our schools can be. I mean, that first paragraph or second

01:09:54.440 paragraph ends with a sentence that says that, you know, that the bad version of a public education

01:10:00.000 system in our society is one where, you know, you're practicing indoctrination. And that was those

01:10:05.480 words. I know when I saw them and we were including them, like they have particular meaning to me.

01:10:11.240 It certainly doesn't allow for, you know, a critical race theory indoctrination program

01:10:16.820 that, you know, the same editorial pushes back against the notion that the parents don't have

01:10:22.360 reason for concern, that they don't have reason to wonder whether or not the sort of stewardship of

01:10:28.040 their children's education is sort of in good, trustworthy hands. I think there are reasons to be

01:10:34.740 concerned. The question becomes like, what do we do from a policy standpoint to try and improve

01:10:38.740 things? And I think you're absolutely right. There's a sense in which, you know, I have many, many

01:10:43.320 challenges with our public education system. There are many things that I would like to see happen. I

01:10:47.680 think we do need profound reforms. But I also think you're right in the sense that I don't know that

01:10:52.560 there was a profound deficiency when it comes to sort of the curriculum and the approach to sort of

01:10:58.580 slavery and discrimination and the values that we want to get students to understand, at least

01:11:05.740 from my own experience, but in 2021, like they're going to need to be conversations and there are

01:11:11.720 necessarily necessarily going to be conversations about issues that are live balls today. There is no

01:11:17.740 universe where schools are going to be able to avoid discussions about the kind of issues that Black 0.91

01:11:24.620 Lives Matter had raised about, again, systemic racism, racial justice, or broadly, and quite frankly,

01:11:31.680 white supremacy and the new way that it's utilized. Like these things are going to come up. And I

01:11:38.260 think putting one's head in the sand and imagining that you can essentially just kind of make all of

01:11:44.740 the conversations safe via fiat is just, I think it's a mistake. This is going to be a hard problem

01:11:52.360 to fix. I just go back to the concept of kind of the 40-yard lines for public education. And Matt

01:11:57.660 Iglesias, former writer at Vox, now has a very popular sub stack. Progressive, but a heterodox

01:12:03.380 one. A week or two ago, I wrote this piece. I didn't agree with a lot of it. It criticized me

01:12:08.180 personally. But it made the point, you know, Nicole Hannah-Jones in 1619, that's not what should

01:12:15.620 be taught in the public schools. The public schools are like the basic consensus in between the 40-yard

01:12:20.740 lines. 1619 Project is over on the 20 or the 30, wherever, wants to be the 50, but it's not the 50

01:12:27.080 now. It's not even close to the 50-yard line. So why would you, we need kids, I mean, they barely

01:12:31.600 know about 1776. And we're actually going to go back and say, no, it's 1619. It's insane. And we

01:12:38.880 need to defend in large parts of the country just what's already being taught. Why does it need to be

01:12:44.740 distorted by these fashionable concepts that in important respects aren't even factual or good

01:12:52.520 history? That should be excluded from the K-12 education. By all means, you know, let's debate

01:12:59.840 it when they get to college and they're going to be indoctrinating colleges. What happens now,

01:13:05.440 unfortunately, and the point about how successful, you know, my friend David French's lawsuits have

01:13:10.620 been. Yeah, I mean, he's won many, many lawsuits, but talk to a college kid. Ask them whether they're

01:13:14.820 scared of speaking their minds in college campuses now. They are. They almost all are.

01:13:19.660 That has a lot more to do with the culture than the speech codes. Just rely on lawsuits to protect

01:13:25.420 us from the stuff invading K-12. I just don't think it's realistic. Can I just make clear,

01:13:30.340 in the future, please, please avoid sports references. You know me better than that,

01:13:34.580 Richard. That was beyond the pale. I'm going to make it up with baseball metaphors,

01:13:40.040 but I'll see some as well. Take it away, Camille. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a clarifying

01:13:44.840 question. 1619 Project. Some of these laws have specifically prohibited it from being

01:13:50.520 used in classrooms. Is that something you would support? Is that, you think, a good model?

01:13:56.840 I'm with Stanley. I think it's, you'd want to say you can't inculcate it. I don't see why it has to

01:14:02.640 be in history classes. I think it shouldn't be in history classes. I can see how it'd be in some

01:14:06.800 contemporary issues course, but if a high school student can get an excellent education with

01:14:16.700 learning everything she or he needs to know to have a good foundation in American history and

01:14:23.900 civics without reading Nicole Hannah-Jones. That, I think, is a fact. Yeah. Especially because the New

01:14:31.400 York Times has been quietly erasing all of her assertions on the country actually being founded

01:14:36.100 on slavery since they got hit by all those historical scholars. So if they won't even

01:14:41.360 stand by it, why would we be teaching it? I have a question for you, Camille, about your op-ed in

01:14:45.680 the Times. You guys, I guess I should say, write, the laws differ in some respects but generally agree

01:14:53.960 on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish because of

01:14:59.600 one's race or ancestry, and you go on from there. But that's not exactly what the laws say,

01:15:04.260 and it's an important distinction. The laws do not agree on blocking teaching that would lead the

01:15:09.980 students to feel discomfort or guilt or anguish. The laws don't want you to, they say you cannot teach

01:15:19.600 that an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, etc., solely because of your race or sex.

01:15:27.780 That is an important distinction. And do you think you should have been more careful on that one?

01:15:32.900 Well, I think that the language that we used probably could have been more careful in saying

01:15:37.940 that the implication of the law could be that you have a difficult time sort of talking about

01:15:45.520 various issues because once a student feels that they are perhaps, you know, made to feel upset or

01:15:53.480 guilty because of the way a concept is introduced, like there are sort of significant questions there.

01:15:59.480 I think the language that we utilized was supposed to lean into the fact that these are kind of,

01:16:05.820 there is a degree of subjectivity. And I think a lot has been made about the use of the word

01:16:11.340 could in the editorial, where the law itself probably uses the word should in a couple of instances,

01:16:19.160 as you just alluded to. But I think in practice, we're not talking about just the one line.

01:16:24.420 If it were just a matter of what the teacher is saying to the student and should, then I suppose you might

01:16:30.180 have a better argument. But in this particular case, we're actually talking about materials

01:16:33.560 that are being introduced and utilized in class. And it just becomes a lot more arbitrary whether or not

01:16:41.660 what's happening here is clearly a matter of someone being directed to feel a particular way,

01:16:47.520 or if the general kind of premise of a particular storyline or article kind of suggests that someone

01:16:56.580 ought to feel a particular kind of way. It's interesting that it's come to a point where conservatives are

01:17:04.140 now pushing for legislation to police speech, to police conduct in classrooms, in order to kind of preserve

01:17:13.940 feelings, because so much of the concern that had been kind of animating folks on the left for a very long time

01:17:20.660 has been concern about feelings, the notion of kind of words being inherently dangerous, of ideas being inherently

01:17:28.940 dangerous, of words being quote unquote violence. And I think that that kind of universalizing of this kind of

01:17:35.940 safetyist culture is something that probably ought to concern us and might be a very strong indication

01:17:42.820 that perhaps the approach to trying to address this problem is going in the wrong direction. I for one think

01:17:52.920 it is a bad idea that we're placing kind of subjective feelings kind of at the heart of our approach to

01:18:01.920 trying to have constructive, well-informed curriculum in classrooms and as the sort of standard for

01:18:10.680 whether or not we're doing the right thing in classrooms. Okay, I'm gonna let Rich take it, but I just

01:18:15.840 to clarify, so this is just one bill, by example, Tennessee. So the laws do not say it's a problem if anyone

01:18:23.620 winds up feeling discomfort, guilty, anguished, or distressed. They do not say you may not teach anything

01:18:31.600 that makes somebody feel that way. That is definitely not what they do. But some critics,

01:18:36.460 I mean, you guys, I read what you wrote. There's some other critics like Snyder and others in the

01:18:41.540 New York Times Magazine who really hit that and basically say this is all about a feelings law,

01:18:46.980 and that's not true. What the laws basically say is you can't teach the one race or sex is inherently

01:18:52.540 superior to another, that you can't teach that an individual by virtue of their race or sex is

01:18:57.300 inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive. You can't teach that an individual

01:19:01.780 should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of their race or sex. You can't

01:19:06.040 treat that their moral character is determined by their race or sex. You can't teach that an 0.98

01:19:10.600 individual by virtue of their race or sex bears responsibility for actions committed in the past

01:19:15.020 by others of the same race or sex and so on. The only thing I say about feelings specifically is

01:19:19.400 what I just read. An individual, you can't teach that an individual should feel discomfort, guilt,

01:19:25.100 anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because the individual's race or sex. So

01:19:29.580 I give it to you on that, Rich, and ask, does Camille have a point that he thinks, in essence, even if

01:19:36.440 the wording is not what he's saying, these other provisions basically come down to one's feeling in

01:19:43.780 sitting in class. Do they feel distressed? Do they feel like somebody's teaching one race is inherently

01:19:49.400 superior to another and therefore upset and more likely to file a complaint?

01:19:54.780 Yeah. Sorry. I feel, again, a little repetitive now. I think it's clearly aimed at teachers promoting

01:19:59.320 the idea that students should feel these ways. But I would have written the Tennessee law differently.

01:20:06.820 I think the Texas law should be revised. I think it will be. But this seems to me categorically

01:20:11.900 different than a speech code on campus that says speech is violence and certain things can't be said

01:20:19.820 and you have to run into a room to play with stuffed animals if you... That's not what we're talking

01:20:28.080 about. And two, there's this loose idea that conservatives are being contradictory here

01:20:35.760 because we've opposed speech codes on campuses, but here we're supporting these laws. Again, K-12

01:20:41.880 education is a different thing. These teachers are only supposed to be teaching what the state

01:20:49.060 broadly tells them to teach. So it's an entirely different area than college education, which should

01:21:01.820 be more free-flowing and academic freedom as well established as a practice and in the law.

01:21:08.740 Yeah. I have to say, so the piece you took issue with, Rich, by this guy Snyder, and people really

01:21:13.260 should read it in your rebuttal because it's fun. You went off on Twitter, but the guy's name is

01:21:17.580 Timothy Snyder. He's a professor at Yale. He's a totalitarianism scholar. And the piece was in New

01:21:25.700 York Times Magazine, not New York Magazine, but New York Times Magazine. And I was laughing out loud at some

01:21:30.680 of these points because he was saying, look, the aim of these laws is to protect people's feelings

01:21:36.780 over facts. And my first reaction was, the left loves to do that. Aren't they the ones who have

01:21:43.700 been lecturing us on, well, my lived experience is what it is, right? Like Meghan Markle's lived

01:21:49.520 experience is that her kid's not getting a title because he happens to be part black, even though

01:21:55.620 none of the facts supports that. But we're supposed to accept it because it's her lived experience.

01:22:01.920 The hypocrisy. And the other thing they say, he says in this is, look, history, he's saying history

01:22:07.160 needs to be taught. Well, it will be taught. But he's saying history is not therapy and discomfort

01:22:12.480 is part of growing up. Tell that to the statue topplers, to the folks who don't want the founding 1.00

01:22:19.080 fathers mentioned in the class because it's too, quote, triggering to those who want Hamilton

01:22:24.200 canceled, right? They want Winston Churchill banned. They want the Teddy Roosevelt statue removed from

01:22:29.800 the Museum of Natural History. Tell them history is not therapy and discomfort is a part of growing

01:22:33.840 up. I mean, to me, it's a bit rich. But strong feelings should be evoked by the teaching of American

01:22:40.360 history. You should be excited about by it. You should be inspired about by it. You occasionally

01:22:44.300 should be embarrassed by it. You occasionally should be disgusted by it. And again, I don't

01:22:49.220 think anyone is saying that you shouldn't teach these things that would evoke all those feelings

01:22:56.020 where the purpose of law is just to say teachers shouldn't go out of their way to say people should

01:23:02.800 feel guilty because of their race or one race is superior than the other. And I don't know why that's 0.96

01:23:08.000 not common sense. And Timothy Snyder, I think this this piece is a journalistic malpractice in the

01:23:15.780 extreme and that he hasn't even bothered or the New York Times to to look back and see whether what

01:23:21.640 he said was accurate or there hasn't been a clarification or correction, I think really speaks

01:23:26.000 poorly of the New York Times. He is a serious historian, I will say. I mean, he's written really

01:23:30.600 well-regarded, appropriately well-regarded books. But this is just propaganda.

01:23:35.840 Talk about a moral panic saying that, you know, Florida is no longer going to teach slavery or Jim 0.92

01:23:41.340 Crow is the definition. He says it's banned. He says Jim Crow seems to be banned in Florida schools,

01:23:46.580 which is 100 percent not true. He misrepresents the text of the Oklahoma law as well. And so there

01:23:52.560 are factual errors in here that are just obvious in addition to these weird statements that left me

01:23:59.260 with my jaw hanging like like he's talking about people like you, Rich, and Stanley and Chris Ruffo,

01:24:05.520 who are in support of these laws saying authoritarianism is infantilizing. We should

01:24:10.420 not we should not have to feel any negative emotions. Difficult subjects should be kept from

01:24:15.140 us. Oh, my God. That is what the whole woke movement is about. Right. You can't have any

01:24:21.240 negative negativity. You have to steer clear of anything difficult. I just told this story the

01:24:25.160 other day. But my daughter's school, they opened up a discussion about the Derek Chauvin verdict.

01:24:32.140 OK, she's she's 10. This is in her fourth grade school. Now we're in summer, but it's a couple

01:24:37.180 months ago. Derek Chauvin verdict. They give him a Newzilla article. They say, OK, let's talk about

01:24:42.040 the verdict. And the teacher stands up and says there is a massive problem in America of police

01:24:47.380 officers killing unarmed black men. Now, you guys know that's not true. That's that is a total

01:24:52.280 exaggeration. And one of the girls in the class said, well, wasn't George Floyd resisting arrest?

01:25:00.340 Now, she's read this in the article they handed out. And the teacher says they always blame the

01:25:04.800 victim. And my daughter says, well, wasn't he on a lot of drugs? And the teacher says,

01:25:11.220 this conversation is making me uncomfortable and I am shutting it down right now.

01:25:16.920 Well, Megan, Megan, that's such a that's such an interesting story. I mean, but but this,

01:25:22.820 I think, kind of brings that brings me back to the point that I was raising earlier.

01:25:26.800 Like the what's being sold, what's being what's being promoted by Rich, by by Chris is that well,

01:25:35.760 Chris Ruffo is that these bands are going to address many of these problems. That conversation,

01:25:42.000 you know, well, certainly the proposed legislation I mentioned earlier, where discussions about certain

01:25:47.340 things, even casual discussions are perhaps prohibited. That might have something to do.

01:25:51.920 That might limit it. But a properly worded piece of legislation here, one that, again, respects the

01:25:58.500 the the classroom and the ability of folks to have exchanges like none of them are going to present

01:26:05.420 that conversation from happening. No, no. And the only way. Yeah. The only way to deal with the kind of

01:26:12.360 cultural issues that are happening here is to get meaningfully engaged and to develop better

01:26:18.540 approaches to discussing these issues and to really just address the cultural defect. But it's not either

01:26:24.960 or, but it is often difficult to do multiple things at once. And at the moment, we are just pushing out a

01:26:31.420 bunch of kind of haphazardly designed bills in many instances. The Texas piece of legislation, as you

01:26:36.660 mentioned, has to be scrubbed. I think was the word that you used a moment ago, or perhaps recalibrated is a

01:26:41.860 better word. The Tennessee legislation you've acknowledged needs to be redrafted. There are various other

01:26:47.120 ones that have some some material defects and proposals that are making their ways through state

01:26:51.660 houses that have some serious defects. And all at the same time, these things don't actually fix the

01:26:58.500 problem and aren't actually actionable in most of the states in the union. And it does seem important

01:27:04.260 to acknowledge the limitation of this strategy.

01:27:06.460 Yeah, as it's unrealistic to say, there's one piece of legislation should fix everything.

01:27:12.620 I agree.

01:27:14.340 It's a piece of legislation. These are legislations that the profilactic measures against kind of the

01:27:19.660 most extreme expressions of this. But the idea that, you know, the Texas legislature shouldn't do this

01:27:26.540 because it distracts us from fighting back against this more broadly. No, that Texas legislature writes

01:27:32.160 laws governing what's in the public schools. And then I, meanwhile, I can write about what Texas

01:27:38.820 is doing. I can attack Ibram Kendi's philosophy. The local parents in South Lake can do their thing.

01:27:46.800 It's a big country with a lot of different points of influence. And the idea that all of America is

01:27:55.500 consumed with what a state legislature is doing. So nothing else can happen, which I know I'm

01:28:02.140 caricaturing a little bit, but, but in the idea that you're promoting this, this is either or you can't

01:28:08.480 can't do one. It can't do the other. I think it's all additive. I think it's good to have state guardrails.

01:28:13.660 Let's write them carefully. Absolutely. Have the school board fights, write the solid curricula.

01:28:19.600 Those of us who have platforms, let's push back against this broad cultural campaign that's behind this

01:28:26.960 stuff. All that, all that is, is a good and necessary in my view.

01:28:31.680 But Rich, what about, what about Camille's point that this could backfire? He, as a tactical measure,

01:28:39.220 he has objections saying, you know, the public is sort of on the same page as I think the three of us are,

01:28:44.700 which is that they don't like this, this CRT being taught in schools. In fact, just pulling a couple numbers for

01:28:50.240 you. There was a heritage poll. 79% of voters say children should be taught about the American dream instead of the idea

01:28:55.200 that their destiny is tied to their skin color. 61% reject the idea that America is fundamentally

01:28:59.500 racist. A YouGov poll, 64% of Americans know about critical race theory. 58% view it unfavorably,

01:29:06.600 including 72% of independents who do not want it in schools. So the tide is on the side of, you know,

01:29:12.340 I think the three of us who don't like this, not necessarily in favor of bans, but his point is

01:29:17.340 going after teachers individually, stories making the news, somebody lost their job because they,

01:29:21.820 you know, misstepped that could turn in a, in an unhelpful way.

01:29:27.580 Well, I agree. We're basically, we're winning this fight at the moment, which is one reason why

01:29:34.840 the advocates of CRT are kind of backpedaling and say, Oh no, it's not CRT. What are you talking

01:29:40.200 about? That's only in law schools, but yeah, there's a potential of poorly drafted laws backfiring. 0.88

01:29:47.220 So let's write them appropriately. But I think it's, it's kind of wrongheaded to say, Oh, we have

01:29:53.080 really, really a strong public backing on this. So let's not do anything. Uh, let's, let's take that

01:29:59.840 and make it concrete across all these various spectrums I've talked about. Let's have appropriately

01:30:06.160 written state bans. Let's have a school board fights. Let's write better, uh, curricula. We can't 0.94

01:30:11.000 be frozen in place for fear of some misstep is, is going to make people in favor of critical race

01:30:18.180 theory and sort of the same principle applies. Okay. So if we're just going to rely on lawsuits,

01:30:23.040 guess what? There are going to be frivolous lawsuits. There just are, and there's going to

01:30:27.680 be a victim of a frivolous lawsuit. So should we not file lawsuits either? Um, if, if we take this

01:30:33.580 logical conclusion, it's just a prescription for letting this wash over us because there, because

01:30:39.340 someone might go too far in some realm and, uh, the country flips into all of a sudden favor of

01:30:45.160 this stuff. Of all the arguments against me, that's the one I dislike the most. The assertion

01:30:49.580 that I am suggesting that you shouldn't take me an hour and a half. Well, I hear it. I hear it all

01:30:56.900 the time. I am, I am not asserting in any way, shape or form that people should not do anything.

01:31:02.040 I am actually suggesting that this is a hard problem and it will not be addressed and remedied

01:31:06.540 easily. And that these bands in many instances will not materially impact the problem in the way

01:31:13.840 people imagine. It will not make the sort of disconcerting conversations that, that Megan just

01:31:19.620 referred to. Those won't go away. That is going to continue to happen. Right? So the question becomes

01:31:25.000 like, how do you actually resolve this in a way that makes everyone feel more comfortable inside of

01:31:31.400 our schools that makes it sort of satisfies this broader universe of concern? Can you do it by

01:31:37.100 banning concepts? Can you do it by, by, by outlawing or prohibiting the use or exploration of the 1619

01:31:44.300 project in your, in your school system? And the answer to that question is emphatically no. And

01:31:49.560 working on curriculum, leveraging the decades worth of civil rights, um, tradition, law and legal

01:31:57.260 tradition that we have in this country in where there are egregious things happening. And quite

01:32:02.020 frankly, yes, the journalists doing the, the important work. And I've, I've credited Chris for

01:32:06.560 this as well. Like when you see horrible things happening, like making certain that people can

01:32:12.120 find out about this. And oftentimes ridicule is a better weapon than, than regulation.

01:32:16.960 But my point though, um, I, I didn't mean to suggest, I know I, I, when I got my rhetorical flight of

01:32:23.120 fancy there, I might've, I didn't want to do it, but I got, I was on a run. Okay.

01:32:29.480 Sometimes you're feeling it.

01:32:31.100 Yeah. I think my point though is, okay, you want to do lawsuits. Not all these lawsuits are going to

01:32:35.520 be worthy. Some of them are going to be frivolous. Some parents, their child is going to come home and

01:32:39.560 give them a misleading account of what happened in school and they're going to sue. So you should

01:32:44.160 oppose that as well because it's just less, it's less likely. It's less likely with the civil rights law

01:32:49.120 because these laws are mature. They have been around for a while. We have a history of adjudicating

01:32:54.600 these cases and, and these, these new fangled pieces of legislation, which as you've acknowledged

01:33:00.120 are often poorly written, the possibility for them to be interpreted in ways that are going to have

01:33:04.660 an unwelcome impact on the way classrooms operate is very real. And the possibility of getting that

01:33:11.300 negative news story that Megan referred to earlier, it's not just a matter of it being likely to

01:33:16.300 happen. It's already happened. You're going to see more of them. And the question is how many pink

01:33:20.860 slips are you willing to write in service of trying to do this? And at what point do you think that has

01:33:24.560 a backlash? And I, my suspicion is it won't take much. It won't take much. It'd be nice. Go ahead,

01:33:30.680 Rich. Right. I was just going to say that the lawsuits had the potential for, uh, abuse as well.

01:33:36.280 Uh, libel laws fairly well established defamation law. My magazine was still sued for, you know,

01:33:42.080 through a meritless lawsuit. So there is, uh, there's no precisely clean way, uh, to deal with

01:33:51.500 this. And I think we should use every, every tool we can let's be as, as careful as we can about how

01:33:57.500 we, we use them. But, but this is, it's a massive threat. And I just go back to, you know, we've,

01:34:01.920 we've kind of batted around the concept of, of panic and this is something that's common. It's,

01:34:07.620 and it's already arrived at the shores of some schools and it must be stopped for the good of

01:34:13.280 our kids, for the good of our society, for the good of our national unity. It has to be stopped.

01:34:18.140 So I I'm more concerned about that threat than I am about a poorly drafted legislation that I think

01:34:24.120 should, should be fixed in Texas. I have every confidence it, it will be fixed, but this,

01:34:29.800 this is something that we just can't, uh, that can't, can't be tolerated. Shouldn't be tolerated.

01:34:35.260 Well, we, we didn't have enough time to really get into, cause it's a whole other

01:34:38.900 issue. The, the notion of school choice, but as Camille points out, this does underscore the need

01:34:45.480 for it. And this has been something that's just been impossible when we have Democrats in power.

01:34:50.120 And even frankly, when we've had Republicans in power, we haven't made that much progress on it.

01:34:54.580 Um, but I think that if there's one benefit of COVID, it may be the weakening of the teachers unions

01:34:58.980 in the eyes of the American people. They're there, you know, the, the jig is up. We know they're

01:35:04.360 for themselves and not for our kids. And so hopefully, hopefully school choice will make

01:35:09.580 some inroads if not under president Biden, then under, uh, whoever comes after him.

01:35:16.380 Thanks for staying with us this far, the end of the episode and who's coming up on our next show

01:35:21.040 is right after this quick break.

01:35:26.260 Can I just ask, I don't like to make the show about the show,

01:35:30.220 but since it was pretty well publicized that Chris Ruffo was originally going to debate you

01:35:35.300 on this, um, Camille, even though I absolutely adore Rich Lowry and would have him on every day

01:35:39.840 if he would do it. Um, he bailed. He didn't want to debate you and was pretty open about that,

01:35:46.780 even though he had come on your show, the fifth column, which I recommend to everybody.

01:35:50.720 Um, and then he bailed and you kind of gave him some jazz on Twitter and he,

01:35:56.000 he came back and said, okay, I'll do it. This is all, I have not spoken to Chris Ruffo. I know

01:36:01.240 what I know from Twitter. Um, he said he would do it and then bailed again. And I wonder why you

01:36:09.340 think he didn't want to come on and debate you, uh, in this forum. Um, well, I mean, there's,

01:36:14.100 there's probably some, some personal issues there. It's, it's actually, I think that the fallout,

01:36:18.220 like kind of from this editorial being written, um, has been really, really unfortunate. Um,

01:36:23.240 you know, Chris and I have known each other for some time. Uh, we're not like great friends,

01:36:27.760 um, but we at least had been more than cordial. Uh, you know, last week we talked a couple of times

01:36:32.900 after the publication of the article, we had very friendly conversations and he kind of went dark

01:36:37.220 on me. Uh, and then I discovered this, this screed that he wrote about me and the rest of the folks

01:36:44.240 who are associated with this piece in which he made a number of assertions, um, that we really don't

01:36:49.060 make in the piece, but we suggested that these laws were, you know, totalitarian. That isn't what

01:36:53.800 we said, um, that we were sort of scaremongering about these laws, bringing about the end of

01:36:58.020 democracy. That isn't what we said. Um, we defended, I think a culture of pluralism as like the guiding

01:37:05.140 principle for whether or not we want to pursue reform through these bands versus getting people

01:37:12.380 involved in classrooms and in their school boards in a different sort of way. And I think it's really

01:37:16.680 unfortunate that he's taken so much of it personally. I suspect that part of the challenge

01:37:20.320 for Chris is he has a great toolkit for confronting people who have diametrically opposed politics to

01:37:27.540 his, who won't acknowledge exactly who won't acknowledge that, that these, that they, that

01:37:34.040 there are meaningful abuses taking place, that there is a cultural shift that's happened that is having

01:37:40.080 repercussions and ramifications in classrooms and schools. Like I'm willing to acknowledge all those

01:37:45.720 things. What I challenge is the wisdom of this national strategy. What I challenge is in some

01:37:51.980 cases, some of the overheated rhetoric that I see Chris using in different contexts. And quite frankly,

01:37:58.700 I mean, we just have differences in style. I'm more than the, the, the MLK to his Malcolm X by any means

01:38:03.800 necessary. Um, I don't, I don't use, you know, sword emojis and, and kind of talk about this in terms of,

01:38:09.560 you know, a holy war or a crusade. Um, I think igniting a wildfire is easy, you know, building a

01:38:15.320 cathedral, doing something durable, something that lasts, um, is hard and getting a bunch of people

01:38:20.820 agitated is, is important and valuable. And you can direct that energy in constructive ways, but

01:38:27.080 again, passing rafts of laws that aren't necessarily well-constructed that will have unintended

01:38:34.180 consequences. And that are, I think, amplifying both the level of concern on all sides and

01:38:40.720 intensifying a culture war and perhaps inspiring a panic. I think that is, that is meaningfully 0.81

01:38:46.620 different than having a really constructive project here that is building kind of meaningful

01:38:52.500 coalitions across party lines so that you can get things done in a bunch of different places. And I,

01:38:59.040 I, I, I will continue to say that I think working on durable solutions, like Trump's like hysteria,

01:39:05.900 the hysteria can be good for some people and not so good for others.

01:39:09.160 I could just say that this is how out of touch I am. I was unaware of all this until I checked, uh,

01:39:13.640 Mel's timeline to make sure I wasn't missing any, any killer arguments he was going to use against

01:39:17.400 me. This is why I keep on getting canceled and rescheduled on podcast. If I could just say

01:39:23.980 you're no, you're no man's second choice, rich. Well, I will say I listened to the fifth column

01:39:30.800 podcast with, with you guys and Chris, and it was, I felt a little uncomfortable because he's a 0.75

01:39:35.600 little irascible and it was a little just, I don't know, something about it made me a little

01:39:39.380 uncomfortable. I could sense that there was a tension there, which is not exactly what I want

01:39:43.120 to bring to my audience. Anyway, I think this is a very gentlemanly debate. Can I say though about

01:39:48.020 Chris, it, it, Camille, you said, uh, igniting a brush fire is easy. No, it's not. This is a huge

01:39:55.260 contribution he's made to this debate. I say that's, that's fair. That's fair. He's, he's

01:39:59.980 talented. He, Chris is talented. He's charismatic. Sure. I just don't think he's always careful.

01:40:06.000 He set off this movement and I think it should be, it should be used in constructive ways. I think

01:40:10.860 he obviously, he believes it should be used in constructive ways, but this is, you know,

01:40:15.340 this is kind of a rare accomplishment for any journalist. I, most of us, you know,

01:40:20.700 let me weigh in on this. Yeah. Chris Ruffo, with all due respect, he's been on the show and I,

01:40:27.960 I admire him and I'm, I'm with him on most of what he's pushing. Um, but Chris Ruffo is the one who

01:40:34.440 called attention to what was happening at the federal agency level with critical race theory. And he

01:40:39.080 is the one who's, who sort of pushed that term to encapsulate all the stuff that's been happening.

01:40:44.020 But there have been a lot of people rich and I've been working with a lot of them. So I know that

01:40:48.360 they've been grassroots efforts to call attention to what's happening in these schools. You know,

01:40:52.580 there've been parents coast to coast taking massive risks. There've been people organizing big groups

01:40:56.440 like the ones I mentioned earlier. And, and I like Chris, but I do think it's slightly irritating when

01:41:01.320 he talks about himself as like the sole person responsible for this entire movement on Twitter,

01:41:05.680 because he's not, he's, he's played a really important role, but you know, the self-promotion is

01:41:11.480 an off putting thing about him. And I think he'd do better to be more, I don't know, inclusive of the

01:41:18.060 people who have, you know, who don't get accolades for joining this fight, um, and sort of give them

01:41:24.840 credit as opposed to continuing to promote himself. And as a personal matter, I think it's,

01:41:29.620 it's exceedingly unfair and disingenuous to suggest that myself, Thomas Chatterton Williams,

01:41:36.040 David French people who have talked about, um, these, these same issues and raised severe concerns

01:41:41.460 about them, that a disagreement about the stress, the strategy and approach to trying to address that

01:41:46.780 problem makes us quote unquote enablers. Um, the piece, the editorial that we wrote was, you know,

01:41:52.900 reposted and promoted and endorsed by the likes of Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter, I believe Andrew

01:41:58.940 Sullivan also, um, quote, tweeted it and directed some attention to it and gave it some praise.

01:42:04.580 Are, is he suggesting that they are all enablers as well? There's something really disreputable

01:42:09.940 about that. And there's something really disreputable about leveling charges and allegations

01:42:13.660 like that, but what broadcasting them to the universe and then not showing up to, to essentially

01:42:19.820 have a conversation with the person who you've made those allegations about. And I suspect that

01:42:24.420 part of his concern was that, um, one of my coauthors, Jason Stanley posted something that I think

01:42:30.400 is beyond the pale, something along the lines of suggesting that Chris was like a white nationalist

01:42:34.280 and I told him that I thought that that was, I told him, I thought that was completely

01:42:37.540 unacceptable. Um, he did take it down. He didn't apologize, but I'm not responsible for

01:42:43.000 what Jason Stanley does. He didn't want to debate you. And then I think you guilted him

01:42:48.360 back into it. Something agreed to do it again. And then he bailed again after the, uh, Stanley

01:42:54.320 tweet, which was beyond the pale. And you know, that was out of line Stanley's tweet. So again,

01:42:58.780 I support what the guy's doing. I just think that if you're going to get that in somebody's

01:43:02.760 face on what they've written, right? Like he did with you, then come on and defend it.

01:43:06.840 Come don't, you know, rich doesn't very admirable job on it, but he, he should have been here

01:43:11.000 defending his taxi launch. Megan. Cause I, you just asked me to come on. I say yes, no matter

01:43:16.500 what. And what did I say when you asked me on national review? Oh, hell yes. When can I show

01:43:26.740 this is true. But I just say about Chris, I don't denies credit for other, other people

01:43:31.800 who fought that, but I do think you've had a whole huge role crystallizing it and, and catalyzing

01:43:36.400 it. Yeah, he has for sure. All right, guys. Well, thank you for all of that. And, uh, I guess

01:43:41.680 we're, we're going to leave it for the audience to decide, which is just exactly the way I like

01:43:44.940 the show to be that we report, they decide, but I think we've had a thorough fleshing out

01:43:49.100 of the issues and I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both.

01:43:56.540 Do not miss Friday show. Dr. Ben Carson is coming on. Yay. I love him. He launched his

01:44:03.700 campaign on the Kelly file. Uh, with us, we did this long backstory piece on him. It was

01:44:07.900 fascinating. He's fascinating. He takes such a beating, doesn't he? By the press, but he's

01:44:12.660 brilliant and fearless and really damn smart. So don't forget to tune into the show for this

01:44:20.080 Friday and go ahead and subscribe now. So you don't miss it and download. And while you're

01:44:23.840 there, go ahead and give me a five-star rating and a review. I'd love to know where you stand

01:44:28.500 on these critical race theory bands. Are they a good idea? Uh, or are they a sacrifice principle?

01:44:34.600 Are they the wrong choice, uh, in coming up with the right weapons to fight against this nonsense?

01:44:41.240 Uh, let me know your thoughts and go to Apple reviews or wherever you can go to our social

01:44:45.120 media, but love hearing from you and don't miss Friday. Ben Carson. Boom. Thanks for listening

01:44:51.240 to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear. The Megan Kelly show is a devil may

01:44:58.680 care media production in collaboration with red seat ventures.

01:45:11.240 wonderful.

01:45:12.720 So.

01:45:16.340 hello.

01:45:20.960 that's what I see.

01:45:21.020 of theans.

01:45:23.320 That's what I see me.

01:45:26.660 I hear it.

01:45:28.140 I hear it.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 14, 2021

Critical Race Theory, And How To Effectively Fight Back, with Kmele Foster and Rich Lowry ｜ Ep. 128

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