The Megyn Kelly Show - Jason Riley on Critical Race Theory, Policing in America, and Thomas Sowell's Honest Intellectualism

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.180 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, one of my favorite,

00:00:17.020 favorite people to read, Jason Reilly. This guy's super brilliant and he's super honest and he

00:00:24.660 doesn't care if you don't like it. My kind of person. He's a columnist for The Wall Street

00:00:29.340 Journal. He's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He's author of the new book, Maverick, a biography

00:00:34.980 of Thomas Sowell, the brilliant Thomas Sowell. And he happens to have authored one of my favorite

00:00:39.760 books when it comes to race and police and culture, a book called Please Stop Helping Us,

00:00:46.040 How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. And that is just a massive truth bomb that he

00:00:51.120 promoted on, among other places, The Kelly File a few years ago that I read and have reread since

00:00:56.480 many times. And I think you're going to love that as well. So we're going to get into all of that

00:00:59.900 with Jason. And we're going to kick it off with a good discussion on this surge in murders in not

00:01:07.460 just our major cities, but in our suburbs now too. And whether the plan to defund police is likely to

00:01:12.860 help that. So Jason, in one minute, first this. Jason, how are you?

00:01:24.080 I'm good. How are you, Megan? I'm good. I am thrilled to have you. I'm such a fan, as you know.

00:01:30.080 You're brilliant and really excited to talk to you. Well, thank you. And in a future episode,

00:01:35.760 it needs to be you and Naomi. Okay. Sounds good to me. Can we start with the crime rate? Because

00:01:42.000 I've seen that you've been writing about it. And, you know, as a fellow New Yorker, I worry about it

00:01:47.120 here, but it's not just our city. According to latest stats, there's been a 30% increase in homicides.

00:01:53.300 It's the greatest of all crimes because they're like, some people defend this by saying, oh,

00:01:57.660 no, no, you're like other crimes are down. Oh, but murders are way up. 30% increase in homicides

00:02:02.660 across 34 U.S. cities year over year. Murders up 37% across 57 localities. So it's not just the big

00:02:11.900 cities. And here in New York City, you pointed out in a column recently, the shootings and the

00:02:18.240 homicides have risen by 97% and 44% respectively in the last year. Felony assaults up by 25%.

00:02:27.380 I could go on. This is here in New York. Seven of the eight Democratic mayoral candidates are

00:02:32.340 pledging to cut the police budget or prosecute fewer suspects. Great. And it's not just, you know,

00:02:36.840 it's Philly's a mess. Baltimore's a mess. All these major cities seeing homicides up across the board.

00:02:42.240 Why is it happening? And do you think this actually will cause people to reconsider this

00:02:47.060 nonsense about cutting cop funds? Well, to answer the second question first, yes,

00:02:51.380 I do. I think that was always something favored by sort of the wokest of the woke. I don't think

00:03:01.280 it ever really resonated with everyday people. And I think the crime stats you just cited will quash

00:03:07.900 that effort largely. Why is it up? I mean, why wouldn't it be up if you look at what we've been

00:03:15.100 doing in recent years in terms of, you know, these bail reform policies, not just here in New York,

00:03:22.720 but throughout the country that take away discretion from judges in terms of holding suspects or releasing

00:03:29.140 them on bail. We've taken away that discretion. During COVID, we were releasing people early from

00:03:35.800 from prisons to avoid crowding. And, and then of course you have this defund the police rhetoric,

00:03:42.960 which I think results in, in, in, in police, not just a defunding the police rhetoric, but really

00:03:50.480 anti-law enforcement generally has, has been on the rise, particularly in the wake of, of George Floyd.

00:03:59.500 You've seen these protests, you've seen targets put on the back of police. They are being scapegoated for

00:04:04.720 all kinds of social ills. I think that causes them to pull back, um, to, to, uh, to, to engage

00:04:12.140 less with the general public to get out of their cars less. Um, and, and, and the result is that the

00:04:19.440 criminals have the run of the place. And, and so I'd be shocked if crime wasn't going up given what

00:04:26.580 what's been going on lately. This is a real issue because even if you live in the suburbs, um, according

00:04:32.160 to the, the people who are studying this, and this is a quote, murder rose historically, even in the

00:04:38.880 suburbs and rural areas this past year, that's not what you want. You don't want historical rise in

00:04:44.040 the murder rates, um, suburbs, local cities, large cities, you know, across the board. And in one of

00:04:50.880 your columns, you talked about what, what's going on in Baltimore, where this is from, um, something you

00:04:56.580 recently wrote. They began defunding police a decade ago. Since then, nearly 3000 of Baltimore's

00:05:02.740 residents have been murdered. No matter you, you write in March, the city's top prosecutor announced

00:05:09.140 that the era of tough on crime prosecutions are tough on crime prosecutors is over and that her

00:05:15.180 office would no longer pursue so-called minor offenses. This year, Baltimore's homicide rate,

00:05:21.200 which is already 10 times the national average has risen by almost 20%. So in the face of all these

00:05:31.640 numbers, you've still got these more liberal cities or at least run by, you know, more left-leaning

00:05:36.700 politicians right now, doubling down on these crazy promises. Right. And, and, and it's not just

00:05:44.280 anecdotal evidence, Megan, there have been empirical studies done about what happens, uh, after a high

00:05:53.080 profile incident involving police and black suspects, uh, the media swoops in, um, uh, uh, the, the, uh,

00:06:02.020 you know, Washington, the justice department, uh, launches investigations. Um, there's, there have

00:06:08.060 been studies done on, on what happens in the wake of all this, uh, what happened in Baltimore after

00:06:14.260 Freddie Gray, what happened in Chicago after Laquan McDonald, what happened in Ferguson after Michael

00:06:19.520 Brown, the same pattern, um, police pull back. Um, they, they, uh, they are less aggressive. Policing

00:06:29.800 takes place and crime spikes, particularly violent crime. It happens time and time again. And of course,

00:06:37.520 the folks who pay the highest price are these minority communities who are most in need of effective

00:06:43.400 policing. Um, so it's not just anecdotal. It's, um, it's, it can be shown empirically, uh, an economist

00:06:50.740 named Roland Fryer at Harvard has done, uh, studies on this and he's not the only one who, who, who's done

00:06:56.820 studies on this. Um, the, what, what troubles me is, is that all of this seems to be based on a false

00:07:07.120 narrative, this focus on policing. Um, uh, the, the, the reality is that the problem, uh, are, is violence

00:07:17.420 that does not involve police. Um, the, the violence involving police is quite rare. And, and, and I wish

00:07:26.580 the media would do a better job of putting these incidents in perspective. And what's happened is that

00:07:32.120 because each of these incidents gets, uh, more attention than it used to, thanks to social media,

00:07:40.200 um, thanks to all the camera phones out there, people are under the impression that it's happening

00:07:45.620 more often, but those two things aren't necessarily the same. And the data, the empirical data shows

00:07:53.300 that it's happening less often. So, so just to put this in perspective, uh, New York city is, is a,

00:07:59.920 uh, police department has been keeping detailed records on, on shootings going all the way back

00:08:05.160 to the early 1970s on police shootings. So in 1971, um, police shot more than 300 people in New York

00:08:16.040 city, uh, and killed 93. You fast forward to 1991, police shootings are down to 100 and 27 people are

00:08:25.780 killed. You get to 2019 police shootings are down to 34 with 10 people killed. So you're talking about

00:08:34.100 roughly 85, 90% reduction in police shootings and police shooting fatalities over roughly 50 year

00:08:43.120 period. Um, that's, that's, that's what the data shows, but the rhetoric out there is that

00:08:51.520 we have an epidemic of cops targeting people, particularly young black men. It is that

00:08:56.800 completely divorced from reality. And, and that is what, uh, troubles me the most. We had these

00:09:02.620 protests last summer based on this belief that what happened to George Floyd is typical happens all the

00:09:11.540 time. I walk out of the door every day, worrying about something like that happening to me. No, it's

00:09:16.780 not typical. It's rare. And it's increasingly rarer. And, and, and so, uh, that that's what I find,

00:09:23.280 uh, so troubling about this discussion. You know, you want to go after, uh, bad cops. Yes. Let's go

00:09:29.260 after bad cops. All cops are not perfect. Uh, some of them shouldn't be cops. Maybe it should be tougher

00:09:34.300 to fire some of them. Maybe we can do something about the immunity, but the idea that the, that the,

00:09:39.180 the major problem in these cities, uh, is policing is, is ridiculous. In Chicago in 2019, there were

00:09:48.680 492 homicides, 492, three involved police, Megan, three out of 492. I mean, that's not a policing

00:09:59.840 problem, but that's what we spend all our time talking about policing. Well, and you've, you've

00:10:05.100 pointed out that the biggest beneficiaries of the trend in reducing the numbers who are killed by

00:10:12.340 murder and, you know, just overall are, are blacks, uh, who, who in your book, you wrote comprise 60%

00:10:19.780 of the murder victims in the big apple in 2012. So black people are benefit the most when we managed

00:10:24.960 to reduce the murder rates. How do we do that? We need more police on the streets, but we're pushing

00:10:29.980 this false narrative about police being the bad guys. So we get them off of the streets or just sitting

00:10:34.640 in their cars, doing nothing, which leads to a spike in the murder rate, which disproportionately

00:10:38.500 affects black people. And somehow this makes in particular white liberals feel good about

00:10:43.400 themselves. Yes. And, and that, that is, uh, another problem here is that you have a liberal

00:10:49.700 elite out there, a black and white liberal elite, um, that claims to be representing the, the interest

00:10:56.880 of these low income individuals who are most affected by violent crime, uh, but are not, uh,

00:11:03.820 a poll after poll shows that the people who live in these communities, everyday black and

00:11:09.400 brown people who live in these communities want more policing. They are very interested

00:11:14.300 in crime control and it is by no means a new phenomenon. I could cite you polling data going

00:11:19.400 back 30 and 40 years about, uh, low income black, uh, residents, uh, of these communities,

00:11:26.240 calling for more cops, calling for longer sentences, um, and, and on and on and on. So when, when,

00:11:34.200 when you go and turn on your television and, and, and listen to, uh, these talking heads call

00:11:40.200 for defunding the police or, or say that the policing in these communities is a bigger problem

00:11:44.800 than the criminals in these communities, they are not speaking for the residents of these

00:11:48.800 communities. They are not. And I think it's, it's, it's a shame that the media continues to

00:11:53.180 turn to them to, uh, to, to speak on behalf of the residents of these communities because they're,

00:11:58.100 they are, um, they're not speaking for them. You know, we've had a lot of discussions on this show

00:12:02.540 over the past nine months about cops and systemic racism and all the charges. And this is what you

00:12:08.480 hear, um, that police are more likely to see a weapon where none exists. When they look at a black

00:12:15.180 person, that police are definitely more likely to rough up a black suspect that, um, bail disproportionately

00:12:22.600 leads to, uh, poor and often black defendants sitting away, wasting away in jail pre-trial

00:12:31.660 than it affects, um, others, you know, in particular whites who may have more, uh, economic resources

00:12:37.220 that blacks get sentenced more harshly than whites do that, that the criminal justice system as a whole

00:12:42.440 has systemic racism baked into it in such a way that the entire system may need to be revamped.

00:12:47.080 And that, you know, police officers have such an inherent bias now, um, whether it's based on crime

00:12:54.380 stats or not, that they're treating black people in an unfair manner, right? So people looking at the

00:13:01.000 problems of the system, aren't really looking at the bottom line murder rates. They're looking at all

00:13:04.680 these other little things that add up to what they call systemic racism. And they say a need for

00:13:09.560 overhaul, I would just challenge them on their data and their logic. Um, if racism explains what's,

00:13:17.200 what's happening today, you know, why were there lower, uh, black, uh, crime rates, lower black

00:13:24.300 arrest rates, lower black incarceration rates back in the 1940s and fifties and sixties, when obviously

00:13:31.240 there was a lot more racism and a lot more racism in our criminal justice system. Um, it just doesn't

00:13:38.080 make logical sense. Um, in 1960, uh, black men were murdered at a rate of 45 per 100,000 by 1990,

00:13:47.740 that had claimed that had climbed up to 140 per 100,000. I mean, was there less racism in 1960 than

00:13:55.800 in 1990? Obviously not. Something else is going on here. Uh, so I would, I would, uh, and some of this

00:14:03.440 is just outright, uh, false. I mean, the, the claim that blacks commit the same, uh, crime and get longer

00:14:09.620 sentences simply is not supported, uh, by the facts. Um, if, if, if you and I commit the same crime,

00:14:16.760 Megan, but I've committed it four times before, that's going to play into the sentencing. Um, and,

00:14:24.000 and, and a lot of these, uh, claims that, that blacks, uh, receive different sentencing,

00:14:28.260 uh, don't take that into account. So you, you really do have to look at the methodology

00:14:33.240 of, of these studies, uh, being released. Um, and criminologists that have looked into this,

00:14:39.280 um, point out that, you know, black crime rates were declining, declining in the 1940s and 50s.

00:14:49.480 Uh, the black homicide rate for black men, uh, fell by 18% in the 1940s and then by another 22%

00:14:57.460 in the 1950s, all the while remaining relatively stable for whites. And this was particularly

00:15:03.620 noteworthy because this is a time when blacks are moving from rural areas into urban areas and

00:15:09.980 urban areas are usually much more violent traditionally. Yet the black homicide rate was

00:15:14.920 falling. Uh, and this, this trend would begin to divert, uh, reverse itself starting in the late

00:15:20.220 sixties and start to climb in the seventies and eighties and on into the early nineties. Uh,

00:15:25.240 so it's climbing at a time when racism in society in general is lessening. So this whole idea of,

00:15:31.660 of, of, of citing racism as this all purpose explanation for what's going on in terms of

00:15:37.160 the black crime rate just does, does not hold up to, uh, to any serious scrutiny.

00:15:42.260 So why, why was the black crime rate climbing over those decades?

00:15:46.120 I think it has to do with, um, what's happened since the 1960s in terms of, uh, the black family,

00:15:52.160 uh, uh, back in the 1940s and fifties, you had much more stable black families. Uh, you know,

00:15:59.260 most, most black kids, even into the early sixties, uh, were, were raised in a home with a mother and

00:16:05.120 a father. Um, today, uh, most black kids are not raised in a home with a mother and a father.

00:16:10.460 And in some of these urban, urban, uh, communities, uh, that, that have all this crime you were talking

00:16:15.360 about your Baltimore's and so forth, it's up to 80 or 90%. And, and, and the, the, the, the,

00:16:21.140 the social science on, on the, the negative, uh, correlation between an absent father in the home

00:16:27.820 and use of drugs, uh, dropout, uh, school dropouts, teen pregnancies, uh, involvement with the criminal

00:16:35.300 justice system and on and on. All these bad outcomes are associated with, uh, absent, absent fathers.

00:16:40.820 And, and I think that's what you see going on in Chicago, these young black men running around

00:16:45.300 shooting each other, uh, because they have no, no, no sense of, of what it means to be a man

00:16:50.780 and they're acting out. And, and that's, uh, an absence of, of, of, of black fathers in the home

00:16:56.240 and in these communities, raising these kids. So that, that I think is what, um, largely explains,

00:17:01.460 uh, uh, what's been going on in recent decades.

00:17:04.300 Two questions on that. Does the absence of a married father in the home mean the father's

00:17:12.220 not around, right? Because I've heard some people say just the fact that there isn't a

00:17:15.580 married couple there in the home doesn't mean the dad's not around in defense of, you know,

00:17:19.660 sort of the, the black community, I guess, and these, these stats, which some people take issue

00:17:23.620 with. And secondly, can we get into why it happened? You know, that with the great society

00:17:28.640 programs that you, the, the title of your book, which I love so much, please stop helping us.

00:17:32.940 Right. It's like, stop helping us how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. And I know

00:17:36.560 you take aim at some of those programs beginning in the 1960s that were meant to help the black

00:17:40.780 community, but you, you do not believe did. So can you just start with, are the black fathers

00:17:45.780 around, even though they're not married? No, no, they're not. They're not around. Um,

00:17:50.080 that that's the problem. They're having kids and they're not taking care of their children.

00:17:53.020 I think marriage adds stability to, uh, to the upbringing of a child, obviously,

00:17:58.940 but even if they were cohabitating with the mothers cohabitating with the father and they're

00:18:03.560 not married, um, that's still better. And in fact, that's what you often see, or you see more

00:18:09.360 often in, um, uh, among Hispanics and particularly among Hispanic immigrants. Um, the out of wedlock

00:18:16.180 birth rate, uh, among these two groups, isn't that there's a lot of similarity there. It's pretty

00:18:21.720 close. Um, but what you see, uh, among Hispanics is that, uh, the father is there raising the child.

00:18:30.540 Uh, marriage typically comes later. Uh, so they're doing it in a different order, but you still have

00:18:36.020 the child being raised by his mother and father, even if they aren't married for part of that

00:18:40.600 upbringing in the black community. That is not what you, that is not what you see. Um, and then,

00:18:45.720 so that is, that is the difference. Um, so yes, marriage would be ideal, but even cohabitating

00:18:51.100 parents, uh, would be better than what you're seeing in a lot of these communities, which

00:18:54.560 are, which are a single head of female head of households, raising, raising children. And,

00:19:00.320 and, um, you know, marriage, uh, I've, I've often said, um, people who want to cite racism

00:19:09.940 as an explanation for all of this stuff in America, the black poverty rate is about, uh, a third,

00:19:17.280 uh, higher for, uh, uh, than it is among whites, but among black married couples, Megan, uh, the

00:19:26.960 poverty rate is in the single digits and has been, uh, for more than 30 years. So, you

00:19:33.740 know, is, is black poverty a function of racism or a function of family formation? I mean, if

00:19:42.900 you're a racist, why, why do you care if the black person is married or not? I'm only going

00:19:49.260 to keep the single ones down. Yeah. I mean, so, so this breakdown of the, um, of the black

00:19:55.780 nuclear family, this disintegration of the black nuclear family that we've seen is causing all

00:20:00.540 kinds of other problems, uh, not just violent crime. It's going to affect, uh, the education

00:20:05.900 of, of that child. Um, uh, whether the child, uh, it grows up with the resources the child needs

00:20:11.900 in terms of income, household income and so forth. Um, a lot, a lot goes wrong when the,

00:20:17.980 when the, when the family starts to break down, um, uh, and, and, and violent crime is just one

00:20:22.600 manifestation of, of that. And so the government, the government set this off how, right? Things are

00:20:28.260 going, I mean, it's not exactly swimmingly, but it's not like the people are dying for a return to

00:20:32.420 the 1940s and fifties when it comes to, um, race relations in this country. But when it comes to

00:20:38.220 government policies meant to improve the back, the black experience, you, you're, you posit that we

00:20:43.860 really, we started something very dangerous and it's only gotten worse back in the sixties.

00:20:48.280 Yes. I, I think, uh, we, we expanded the welfare state in an effort to help, um, uh, and the war on

00:20:58.020 poverty. Um, we redistributed wealth. Uh, we, we, we paid, uh, uh, women, uh, uh, that had children

00:21:08.720 out of wedlock and said, we will continue to pay you so long as we don't see the father snooping

00:21:14.520 around, uh, that, that put in place perverse incentives. Um, uh, and, and so, uh, that's sort

00:21:23.760 of emblematic of what a lot of these great society programs did. They put in place perverse incentives

00:21:29.260 in the name of helping, uh, blacks that ended up hurting, uh, blacks and, and what, what, and it hurt

00:21:35.940 because what it did was it, it, it interfered with the sort of, um, self-development that has to take

00:21:43.360 place within a group, within a culture. Uh, and there's no, there's no end run around that. Um,

00:21:49.100 you, you can't replace a father with a government check. Um, uh, a group has to develop a work ethic

00:21:56.000 if it's going to lift itself out of poverty and keep itself out of poverty. Uh, and, and to the

00:22:02.160 extent that you, you, you pay people not to work or, or the benefits you give them, uh, amount to more

00:22:07.300 than they can make, uh, in, in, in the, uh, in the economy by getting a job, uh, you're, you're,

00:22:13.320 you're interfering with, with the development of that, of that work ethic. And that is what a lot of

00:22:17.440 these government programs, again, well-intentioned ultimately ended up doing. And so for, for some

00:22:23.280 groups, um, you go through some hard times, you temporarily go on welfare, get back on your feet

00:22:29.560 and you'd move off. But for, for blacks, welfare became sort of a lure and a trap. And you saw

00:22:35.620 generation after generation after generation of welfare dependent families. Um, uh, and, and, and that

00:22:43.020 is, that is what we're, we're, we're living with. Um, we're living with today.

00:22:47.200 So we've had welfare reform, right? We had that under Bill Clinton. How have things changed?

00:22:52.060 I think welfare reform, uh, did what it was intended to do. We saw, um, uh, poverty rates

00:22:57.720 fall, uh, even for, for single moms. Um, and, and that was a good thing. Um, a lot of it, we

00:23:04.420 sort of started, uh, picking away at these reforms, uh, later on, particularly during the great

00:23:09.800 recession under Obama with the extension of, of not only, uh, uh, jobless benefits, but,

00:23:16.100 um, uh, other, uh, cash or, or in-kind benefits that were given out food stamps and so forth.

00:23:23.200 Uh, the thinking back then under Obama was this will just be temporary. Um, but it was,

00:23:28.460 it was not temporary. States kept them in place much longer than they needed to. Once again,

00:23:32.700 putting in place those perverse incentives. Uh, we're, we're kind of seeing a little bit of

00:23:37.600 it today with the COVID relief where, where, um, you have employers who, who can't find workers

00:23:43.400 because those workers are being, um, are receiving supplemental jobless benefits, uh, to stay home.

00:23:49.600 And, and, and they're receiving more to stay home than the job pays and the, and the, and the employers

00:23:55.180 can't compete with the amount of money they're receiving, uh, and benefits. So that's why virtually

00:24:00.240 all the red States now are rejecting the money. Yeah. And, and, and even, and even the Biden

00:24:05.060 administration, I think is coming around to acknowledging it, which is why they announced

00:24:08.500 that these, uh, extra benefits are going to end in the fall. Um, but yeah, incentives,

00:24:13.340 incentives matter. Um, and that's, you know, that's always been the case.

00:24:17.520 Up next, if Jason Riley were to become president in 2024, what would he do to change our country's

00:24:24.620 situation, to help black Americans in a way that might actually work as opposed to these

00:24:28.760 great society programs and so on? We'll ask him in 60 seconds.

00:24:35.060 So if you become president, you know, in 2024, which is my dream, um, what, what do you do to

00:24:41.980 change, you know, how does government at this point help the black family flourish? And, and I

00:24:47.260 mean, genuinely help as opposed to the fake help that got us into this trouble.

00:24:51.720 Well, it's to, to me, and this goes back to the title of the book you mentioned, it's not about what

00:24:56.680 the government needs to start doing so much as what I think the government needs to stop doing.

00:25:01.140 And it needs to stop doing things that we know, uh, don't work. Lifting the minimum wage is going

00:25:07.080 to keep, uh, it's going to price certain groups of people, uh, out of the labor force because they

00:25:12.680 become too expensive to hire. Um, uh, occupational licensing, uh, which says, you know, you have to

00:25:19.680 jump through this hoop and this hoop and this hoop to, um, to, to start a taxi service or to start a

00:25:25.960 hair braiding, uh, uh, uh, shop. Um, uh, these, these are, these aren't helpful. These, this, this,

00:25:32.420 this, this, this is, uh, holding back would be entrepreneurs who can't afford to get these

00:25:36.920 licensing, uh, or, or, or don't know how to go about acquiring the right credentials in order to, uh,

00:25:42.900 to jump through these hoops. Um, and, and, and then I, I really focus, I would really focus on

00:25:48.240 education. You know, stop keeping these kids trapped in, in, in schools that are failing. Um,

00:25:54.980 we, we have education models out there that we know work particularly for low-income minorities,

00:26:00.080 namely charter schools, um, voucher programs, tax credits, and so forth. Um, give, give these families

00:26:07.060 access, uh, to these school reforms. Uh, stop, stop assigning them schools based on their zip code.

00:26:13.280 Um, uh, I, I think, uh, education is going to be the key for a lot of these families. And, and,

00:26:21.240 and unfortunately, um, education is so political that you have the adults who run the system putting

00:26:29.300 their own interest ahead of the actual kids. And, and, you know, this sort of, and I'm hopeful that

00:26:35.120 the COVID experience will cause people to rethink just how much power, uh, our teachers unions have

00:26:42.560 over public education. We learned that they control education and by extension, uh, can control our

00:26:48.880 lives if our kids can't, can't go to school because the teachers refuse to go to work. And I, and I'm

00:26:53.960 hoping that people might rethink this, this power dynamic in public education. Um, it's crazy when

00:27:00.220 you look at what they're doing, right? Like they, they wouldn't open up the schools. The teachers unions

00:27:03.720 would not listen to the science or the data. They cared only about themselves and not about the

00:27:07.760 children at all. And, and meanwhile, this was disproportionately hurting black and brown children who,

00:27:12.560 you know, oftentimes we're in areas that couldn't afford private tutors, you know, and so on and

00:27:16.740 so forth. So they're stuck there falling behind the learning curve while Randy Weingarten is lecturing

00:27:21.320 us on systemic racism. It's like, well, why don't you do something that might actually help these

00:27:25.800 kids? Like get your teachers back in the classroom to teach them, but they, they wouldn't. And on top of

00:27:32.660 that, they oppose charter schools. They oppose, oppose vouchers. They want these kids to be

00:27:36.960 hostage to the zip code in which they live, no matter how crappy the schools are. And then they

00:27:42.460 go to the Biden administration and just say, we need more money. It's because these schools are

00:27:46.440 underfunded. If you just cared about minority children, you would provide more money to the

00:27:50.780 school systems and places like Chicago and Baltimore and so on to get better teachers and

00:27:54.720 better facilities. And then they would do better. The Biden administration might be, uh,

00:28:00.100 the most hostile to school reform of any administration we've ever had. Um, even, uh,

00:28:06.900 the Obama administration was quite sympathetic to charter schools. Uh, Biden is under pressure,

00:28:12.240 um, uh, to, to put a moratorium on the creation of, of new charter schools. Uh, I don't know whether,

00:28:19.660 uh, he's going to give into that pressure, but he's under a lot of heat to, to, to do that. This,

00:28:25.020 this could be, uh, quite bad. We could take a huge step in the wrong direction in terms of,

00:28:30.100 uh, educational alternatives under Biden because of the ascendance of these progressives and their

00:28:35.160 influence in the democratic party. Um, and, and, and, as you said, the, the kids who need this the

00:28:40.920 most are, are the low income minority students. And of course, those, those are the ones, according

00:28:45.560 to the polls who are most in favor of it. So this is once again, another example of elites, um, claiming

00:28:52.080 to represent the interest of these low income minorities when in fact, um, they're simply representing

00:28:56.820 their own interest. Even today, you have groups like the NAACP now opposed to charter schools,

00:29:02.560 even though most blacks overwhelmingly support charter schools. And the reason the NAACP is

00:29:08.640 opposed, well, they take money from the teachers unions. The unions, uh, are, are, are fund groups

00:29:13.960 like the NAACP and, uh, the NAACP is therefore reluctant to cross the teachers unions, even if it

00:29:20.060 means selling out, selling out low income blacks. Let me ask you the basic dumb questions just so you

00:29:24.780 can walk us through it. Why, why don't the teachers unions want charter schools?

00:29:29.860 Because they're not unionized. This whole debate would go away. If the charter school said you

00:29:34.800 could, you can organize our workforce. This is all about the teachers unions wanting a monopoly on,

00:29:41.240 on education, um, for their members. Uh, and, and, and so that's, that's what this is about.

00:29:46.940 Most, most, most charter schools are not unionized and that is why the teachers unions oppose them.

00:29:52.320 It's really that another dumb question. Cause I know you, you're an expert on this. How does

00:29:55.980 a charter school start? Like what happens in a, in a city like New York where you have public

00:29:59.620 schooling, which in too many pockets, it's just terrible. How does, what, how, how does a charter

00:30:04.100 school get born and start attracting people? Well, it varies. It varies by state. Then there are,

00:30:11.040 um, uh, each state has set up a process by, uh, by which, uh, some org, some, somebody can,

00:30:18.140 can authorize a charter school. Sometimes it's a university system. Sometimes it's a board of

00:30:23.040 education at the state level or the local level, but there are these organizing entities that are,

00:30:29.140 I'm sorry, these authorization entities, and you apply to them and you say, uh, I want to start a

00:30:34.280 charter school. Um, in many States, there's a, there's a cap on the number that can be started.

00:30:39.260 So you have to get in your application, you start your school, and then there's a time limit on it.

00:30:44.040 You, you, um, it's not an open-ended authorization. You have a certain period of time and then you have,

00:30:49.940 it has to be renewed. And, and that's how you, you're held accountable. If, if you're failing the

00:30:54.980 kids, if your kids are not doing well on tests, if their attendance is poor, if they're, you know,

00:30:59.940 if there are problems with the charter school, your charter, uh, won't be renewed. And, and that's,

00:31:04.720 and that's the difference between, uh, uh, the charter system and the traditional public school

00:31:09.700 system, which can just continue to fail generation after generation after generation of students.

00:31:15.360 And that school will never close. And the unions will do nothing about closing it because even if

00:31:19.600 a school is failing children, it's still providing good paying jobs for adults. So that school is

00:31:24.740 going to stay open. So what about my observation here in New York at the charter schools tend to have

00:31:30.260 a lot of very high performing minority students in them and they're a godsend. And you have families

00:31:35.640 who are very, very engaged parents who are very into their kids' education, who, you know, they're

00:31:40.380 very grateful that their kids are in these charter schools, but is it, does it tend to be a more

00:31:45.060 minority population in the charter schools in them? Is that just a New York city thing?

00:31:51.360 No, it's not. It's not. Um, uh, that, that, that, that is, uh, the case in, in many charter schools

00:31:58.100 around the country, um, uh, that, uh, minorities, uh, tend to, to attend them. And, and, and many of

00:32:04.800 these schools set up in, in minority communities to provide those communities, uh, with an

00:32:09.980 alternative to, uh, to their traditional public school, which in, in many cases is, is, is doing

00:32:15.100 a poor job. And then of course the, the, the charter school gets attacked for being segregated,

00:32:20.460 racially segregated. It sets up a school in a black community, black people come and then the

00:32:27.140 accusation is, Oh, Oh, this is a, this is segregated schooling. So, um, so they can't win, but, um,

00:32:33.660 but yes, they, they do. And, and, and it gives the lie, uh, you know, to, to the, to the claim

00:32:39.300 that, um, uh, well, two things it addresses when you look at the racial makeup of these schools,

00:32:44.400 it's becomes clear that black kids don't need to be sitting next to white kids to learn.

00:32:49.360 And, and, and, and, uh, uh, uh, these schools are overwhelmingly minority. And then, and in many

00:32:55.020 cases, the ones in New York city particularly are, are outperforming the liliest white suburbs on,

00:33:00.420 on standardized tests. And, um, uh, and, and yet we, we, we, we spend all of our time, uh, discussing,

00:33:07.100 uh, whether, uh, schools are, are, are racially balanced enough and, and, and, and, and, you know,

00:33:14.300 aesthetically that might be what you want to see, but whether it is a priority for learning,

00:33:20.100 I think that that is, is determined in a demonstrably false, uh, based on what charter,

00:33:26.340 charter schools are doing.

00:33:27.160 One of the things that's interesting about it to me is in your book, you talk about,

00:33:31.060 um, this is chapter two, culture matters. And you talk about, um, how in, in some schools,

00:33:37.420 there's, there's a negative association with talking white or acting white, which can be

00:33:44.800 associated with good grades and proper English and so on. And you take a look at the, uh, this

00:33:49.880 study out of Shaker Heights, Ohio in the late nineties by John Ogbu, professor of anthropology at

00:33:55.080 university of California, Berkeley talked about the black white achievement gap and took a hard

00:33:58.840 look at how in this nice suburb, there was still a stigma against getting good grades amongst a lot

00:34:05.560 of the black students, because that was associated with white behavior. So to me, it, you look at

00:34:11.880 these black charter schools or predominantly minority charter schools where that's not an issue.

00:34:16.860 These are black students who are gunners, you know, they, they want great grades and their parents

00:34:20.600 want great grades and they're being well supported. And you point out, you know, in that, in that part

00:34:24.560 of your book, that parental involvement is huge to black or white parental involvement and staying

00:34:29.320 on your kids. That'll help a lot. So you've got that in these charters, you would think any sane

00:34:33.940 person. And I know, I mean, I don't, who knows whether Biden's truly ideologically driven at this

00:34:39.760 point. I, I, I hesitate to say, but you'd think somebody like Biden would say, why on earth would I

00:34:43.880 want to stifle that?

00:34:44.600 Right. But Biden is a politician, just like, you know, Obama was a politician. Barack Obama spent

00:34:50.420 eight years in office trying to shut down the DC voucher program. And you go, why it's popular among

00:34:55.380 blacks. It's getting good results. Graduation rates are much higher at the DC in the DC voucher

00:35:00.960 program schools than, than in DC schools in general. Why would you explain what that did? What did the DC

00:35:06.520 voucher program do?

00:35:07.640 Oh, the, the, the, it's a federal program that was set up under George W. Bush. And it's just a,

00:35:12.100 it, it gives a, provides vouchers for low income kids in, in, in, in Washington DC to attend private

00:35:18.820 schools. And, and, and the unions of course hate it again, because many of these private schools are

00:35:24.360 not unionized. And, and, and so they, they wanted to shut down the program and, and, and they give a

00:35:31.780 lot of money to Barack Obama and he was carrying water for them. So he too called for shutting down

00:35:36.640 the program. So politicians, you know, are, are putting, uh, we, we can't assume that, that the

00:35:43.660 interest of, of the politician aligns with the interest of kids. Uh, the, the, the politician

00:35:48.660 is looking out for his own interest. And, and, and, and if you're a democratic politician, um, you,

00:35:54.300 you can't ignore the teachers unions. They, they are, uh, an integral part of getting you elected

00:35:59.880 and reelected and, and supporting, uh, your causes while in office. You just can't ignore them.

00:36:05.280 They're too powerful. And that's what happened with a Biden and Obama.

00:36:09.460 It's not like the public schools are going to go out of business though. You know, so what are they

00:36:12.380 like there? I see they're a little worried about some competition. These are, these are tend to be

00:36:16.920 great schools with, which people want to go to. And, but like what they'll say is, oh, it's not fair

00:36:22.700 to the students who are left behind, you know, that, that they, the loss of resources, the loss of

00:36:27.440 tax dollars, the loss of, uh, other students who, you know, might be uplifting and might challenge them.

00:36:32.520 I don't like that. They have a lock on the market. If you're a public school teacher,

00:36:36.480 the public school's not going away. Well, they do say that they, they, they accuse the

00:36:40.960 charter schools of what they call creaming, taking the best students. Um, the, the problem

00:36:45.220 with that argument, Megan, is that, um, charter schools use a lottery to, um, to admit students

00:36:51.200 you're, you're, you're admitted by chance. And, and of course, far more people, just like with any

00:36:56.840 lottery, far more people, um, uh, uh, apply to the lottery than are admitted. So, um, so most of

00:37:05.260 these, uh, motivated kids in the traditional public schools that want to go to charters don't

00:37:11.740 get in. So the traditional public schools have the vast majority of motivated kids in our public

00:37:17.440 school system because they can't all go to the charter schools. So the question becomes, what do

00:37:22.100 the traditional public schools do with all these motivated kids? And they're failing them. It's

00:37:26.740 the schools, it's the schools, it's not the kids. And this idea that, Oh, the charters get the results

00:37:31.700 because they're creaming the best kids. No, most of those best kids are still in traditional public

00:37:36.460 schools because there aren't enough charter schools. So the wait list for charter schools

00:37:40.400 in New York city is something like 50,000 kids long nationwide. It's around a half million.

00:37:46.460 So there aren't enough, uh, charter schools to take all these highly motivated kids that the,

00:37:52.140 that, uh, the traditional public schools claim that they're losing to, uh, to charters.

00:37:56.480 You know, in the same way that we talked about with the police, they defund the police to the

00:38:01.580 detriment of the black community. And it's not what black people want. And it certainly doesn't help

00:38:04.980 them because they tend to be the murder victims. Um, when these murder rates go up at a disproportionate

00:38:10.000 level in the, in the same way that, that that dynamic exists. Um, and, and, and, you know,

00:38:16.220 you've got this, this problem with the schools, like hurting black kids in the name of helping

00:38:20.060 black kids when it comes to, Oh, no, no charters. And the school, we have to be deferential to the

00:38:24.440 teachers unions. That's what's happening now in my view with critical race theory, right? Like we're

00:38:29.160 going to, we're going to racialize everything in an effort to promote diversity and equity and

00:38:35.960 inclusion, but really every day they're driving wedges between students of different races in

00:38:41.220 schools that I, that did not exist. There's no question that the kids were getting along.

00:38:46.320 They weren't looking at race. And these teachers, these so-called well-meaning teachers have decided,

00:38:50.820 let me, let me help you. Let me help you be more inclusive and promote more equity by pointing out

00:38:56.740 which one of you is the oppressor, which one of you is the oppressed, which one of you has no

00:39:00.380 natural advantages, you know, has, has mountains that you cannot overcome without the help of

00:39:04.820 mighty whitey, right? Like, and it's, that's why it's so damaging, right? It's like, again,

00:39:10.120 the quote help, which is nothing but nothing. This is another, an example of, of elites pushing

00:39:17.100 something on behalf of, of the black masses, so to speak, to use a dated term, a critical race theory

00:39:24.500 really amounts to a sort of fancy argument for racial preferences. That's, that's all it,

00:39:28.760 all it really is. It started in, in, in, in, in the legal community, academic legal community

00:39:35.340 back in the, in the seventies. It was, it was, it was black academics making an argument for

00:39:41.620 racial preferences for themselves, for themselves. This is, this is about self-interest of black

00:39:47.200 elites. That, that's what this has always been about. And, and, you know, to the extent that it

00:39:53.060 stayed on college campuses, uh, not too many people were worried about it, but now, as you say, it's,

00:39:59.080 it's seeped off. Now it's, it's, it's, it's crept off campus. It's on a, you know, it's in our

00:40:04.000 diversity training at work. It's, it's, and now it's in our elementary schools, uh, via the 1619

00:40:11.040 project. And I find it as disturbing, if not more so than, than, than you, um, this, this, this idea

00:40:18.900 that, um, that, that, that you can put slavery at the center of America's founding, um, it's, it's,

00:40:28.620 it's just so, so nonsensical. I mean, slavery might be the least remarkable thing about American

00:40:36.960 history. Slavery existed for thousands of years before any Europeans, uh, came to the Americas. Uh,

00:40:44.680 it's existed all over the world, down through history and just about every society that we know

00:40:50.140 of. It's, it still exists today in places like Sudan and, and parts of Nigeria, Nigeria. Uh,

00:40:56.700 again, slavery might be the, the, the least remarkable thing about American history.

00:41:01.680 What's remarkable about American history is emancipation, not slavery. And then this idea that,

00:41:08.820 that, that, that these folks, uh, these critical race theorists would try and put slavery

00:41:14.540 at, at, at the center of, of, of America's founding and, and somehow depict America as

00:41:19.980 uniquely evil because of its slave past. It's just nonsense. And that is what we're, we're teaching

00:41:26.420 our kids. And suggest we've made little to no progress. Oh yeah. Well, you have to, you, you have

00:41:31.720 to pretend that, that, um, uh, everything, uh, all, all of these disparities that we see today

00:41:40.020 are a direct result of slavery and, and, and Jim Crow. And, and, and you have to ignore everything

00:41:48.040 that has gone on, uh, since the end of Jim Crow. Um, you have to ignore the progress that blacks were

00:41:54.680 making during Jim Crow. I mentioned, uh, the, the crime, uh, uh, decline among blacks during that period,

00:42:03.660 but black, uh, blacks were entering the skilled professions in the 1940s and fifties. Uh, they

00:42:10.200 were coming, becoming doctors and lawyers and, and, and, and, and, and, and scientists and, and

00:42:14.660 architects and accountants and teachers at unprecedented rates during the 1940s and fifties. They were

00:42:20.620 increasing their years of schooling, uh, both in absolute terms and, and relative to whites. Uh,

00:42:26.040 their incomes, uh, were, were, were, were climbing faster than white incomes in the 1940s and fifties.

00:42:32.080 You have to ignore all of that history. Um, if you're a critical race theorist, because, uh, all

00:42:38.660 the disparities we see today are a direct result of, of, of slavery and Jim Crow. And, and if you point

00:42:44.940 out that, that, that blacks were making faster progress during Jim Crow than they were in the

00:42:51.840 post sixties period, uh, it sort of upends, uh, all of your claims about this direct link between, uh,

00:42:59.260 uh, slavery and, and, and, and, and, and black underperformance today. So, um, so yeah, it takes

00:43:05.240 quite a leap of faith and logic, um, to push this, this theory, but it's, it's, uh, it's nonsense.

00:43:11.680 And, and, and, and, and I, and I was okay with the nonsense as long as it was at, and, you know,

00:43:16.140 at some seminar at, at Oberlin, but now that it's going to be in our K through 12 system,

00:43:21.500 public school system, um, I hope people wake up to this and push back at it pretty hard.

00:43:26.720 Um, your wife who is equally brilliant, uh, she's, she writes for a variety of places. She's an AEI,

00:43:33.220 uh, fellow American enterprise Institute, and she writes for newsweek among other places,

00:43:37.920 Naomi Schaefer Riley. And she wrote a piece last September talking about how your kids,

00:43:42.960 you're, she's white, you're blacks, there's mixed race kids. You guys are, um, you have them at

00:43:46.880 Rye country day school, which is very good school. They had like two years ago, I think they had eight

00:43:50.980 students go to Harvard. I mean, this is a very, very good elite school, private school up in Westchester.

00:43:56.720 And she was writing about how you're, I think you have a son and a daughter.

00:44:00.920 Yes.

00:44:01.880 Okay. And do you have three kids?

00:44:03.420 We have three. I have two daughters and a son.

00:44:06.300 Okay. How she, she was saying, okay, suddenly we get presented with diversity, equity, inclusion

00:44:11.740 everywhere. And she said that our kids were immediately offered the chance to join a variety

00:44:15.620 of clubs, including a diversity club, a students of color club, girls of color club, in which older

00:44:21.060 girls will mentor the younger ones. Parents received numerous emails about these clubs. And our kids

00:44:25.040 were invited on a number of occasions to join, including by their teachers. They did not,

00:44:28.980 she said. And she said, aside from politics, we found ourselves underwhelmed by some of the

00:44:33.440 academic rigor of this particular school, notwithstanding its reputation. The students

00:44:37.520 were reading few books, writing assignments that were rare. My daughter spent some portion of math

00:44:41.560 class each week on meditation exercises. And when we asked at my daughter's request, whether she

00:44:46.760 couldn't be challenged more in English or receive some extra work in math that would allow her to move

00:44:51.900 into a higher group the following year. Uh, she says we were met with blank stares. The teachers

00:44:56.860 and administrators express concerns such assignments might cause too much stress, damage her self-esteem

00:45:01.500 or upset her life balance. Our meeting with the math teacher ended with her encouraging our daughter

00:45:07.480 to attend her regular gatherings for girls of color to face. I mean, like I'm slapping my forehead,

00:45:13.840 Jason. Everything, everything has to go back to skin color. Yeah. The, these, um, the, these schools,

00:45:21.700 they're, they're, they're, they're social justice boot camps, Megan. They're not primarily interested in,

00:45:28.120 in, in, in reading and math. And which, which is odd for, uh, you know, most eighth graders in America

00:45:37.480 can't read or do math at grade level. Don't you think we should be focused on, on correcting that

00:45:45.940 before we turn them into social justice warriors at the age of 10? I mean, I just, I just, as, as a,

00:45:52.840 in terms of priorities, uh, I, I'd be willing to cut a deal with this, with the social justice folks

00:45:59.480 and say, when, you know, 70% of, of, of grade school kids can read and do math at grade level,

00:46:07.660 we can have a discussion about, uh, uh, enhancing the curriculum in, in, in ways that you think

00:46:13.720 might be productive, but, but just get, get, get us to 70%. Right. It seems reasonable.

00:46:21.020 Friends of friends moved their kids from these New York city private schools down to Florida during

00:46:25.280 the pandemic and put them in public school. And they were horrified at how, how behind they were.

00:46:29.480 Because they're spending 40% of their time on diversity, equity, and inclusion in math class,

00:46:34.320 as opposed to adding, subtracting, and multiplying fraction, fractions, they got down to a more red

00:46:39.340 state and found out they were not cutting it because those kids, those kids are not focused

00:46:43.720 on all of this divisive nonsense. And all of this diversity inclusion stuff, it's, it's, it's just

00:46:49.160 fancy language for teaching these kids to blame all of their problems on other people. And, and I don't

00:46:55.740 know, uh, that, that, that has a good history of turning people into productive citizens. Um, uh,

00:47:02.940 that is not what we want to instill in our children. Uh, even, even the language we use today about,

00:47:09.180 we don't talk about self-betterment and, and, and, and, and, and, and pulling yourself up and, and,

00:47:14.900 and those types of things we talk, uh, you know, privilege, uh, advantaged, disadvantaged. It's almost a

00:47:21.940 passive language that we use that, that, uh, uh, people have no agency. They're just, uh, uh, what happens

00:47:29.960 to them as inevitable due to systemic this or societal this it's, it's, it's, I, I, I find the,

00:47:36.560 even the language being used, um, uh, disturbing. Um, but, but that's what, what, what these kids are

00:47:43.160 being taught. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're not being taught how to

00:47:46.660 think. They're being taught what to think. Uh, they're being taught that, that, that anyone who

00:47:52.360 disagrees with them, uh, shouldn't, shouldn't be challenged, but should be silenced. Um, and, and that is,

00:47:59.360 that, that is not what education should be about. And, and, and, and that's been a problem on our

00:48:04.160 college campuses for a long time and it's disturbing to see it trickling down into our K through 12

00:48:09.660 system. Yeah. I mean, at least when they waited till college, they might have the chance of

00:48:13.960 developing how to think prior to getting there. Now it's, it's all indoctrination and, and not a week

00:48:19.880 goes by now, thankfully, um, that you don't see another parent or teacher find the courage to come out

00:48:24.960 against this insanity in a public forum this week. It was Dana Stangle plow from Dwight Englewood

00:48:31.880 school in Englewood, New Jersey. Very nice suburb just across the George Washington bridge from New

00:48:36.380 York city. And she, um, she came out, this was released by the foundation against intolerance

00:48:41.860 and racism fair. Um, they, they published her video and here's just a clip of what this teacher

00:48:46.660 said after leaving. Today, I am resigning from a job that I love. My name is Dana Stangle plow.

00:48:52.760 I became an English teacher at Dwight Englewood school seven years ago, because as a parent,

00:48:57.900 I loved how the school both nurtured and challenged my own children. But over the past few years,

00:49:03.440 the school has embraced an ideology that is damaging to our students intellectual and emotional

00:49:08.360 growth and ideology that requires students to see themselves, not as individuals, but as

00:49:13.340 representatives of either an oppressor or oppressed group. This theoretical framework pervades every

00:49:18.940 division of Dwight Englewood as the singular way of seeing the world. As a result, students now arrive

00:49:25.100 in my classroom accepting ideology simply as fact. I've seen up close how this hinders their ability

00:49:31.220 to read, write, and think. They've become obsessed with power hierarchies. I teach students who recoil

00:49:37.740 from a poem because it was written by a man. I teach students who approach texts in search of the

00:49:43.160 oppressor, who see iniquities in texts that have nothing to do with power. This ideology limits

00:49:48.800 students' ability to observe and engage with the full fabric of human experience in our literature.

00:49:54.920 In my professional opinion as an educator, the school is failing to encourage healthy habits of mind

00:50:00.200 essential for growth, such as intellectual curiosity, humility, honesty, reason, and the capacity to

00:50:06.800 consider multiple perspectives and weigh competing ideas.

00:50:10.180 I've heard from students who want to ask a question, but stop out of fear. I've heard from

00:50:15.900 students who don't participate in discussions for fear of being ostracized. One student didn't want

00:50:21.440 to develop her personal essay about an experience she had in another country because she was worried

00:50:26.540 that it might mean she was, without even realizing it, racist. In her fear, she actually stopped herself

00:50:32.880 from thinking, the very definition of self-censorship.

00:50:35.840 Hmm. I mean, we've heard this. They recoil from texts because written by a man, right? You can't teach

00:50:42.540 history. You can't celebrate Beethoven. You certainly can't celebrate the founding fathers

00:50:47.320 because they're the wrong gender and the wrong skin color and didn't behave perfectly according to 2021

00:50:53.240 standards. But it's so much deeper and more problematic than that.

00:50:56.560 It is. And I think we need to reach a point where voices like that aren't just trickling out every

00:51:04.180 other day or so. We need tens of thousands of voices like that. There really needs to be a massive

00:51:10.380 pushback. And I've been waiting for the dam to break. And I'm kind of surprised that it hasn't

00:51:18.540 already. What she was saying, countless people are thinking, but afraid to say. I mean, it's sort of

00:51:27.080 like the 1619 project stuff. You had a few historians come out, you know, James McPherson,

00:51:33.100 Sean Willence, Gordon Wood, a few others. But this should have been every credible historian in America

00:51:40.660 should have denounced this project. And they're afraid they've been cowed. Nicole Hannah Jones,

00:51:46.060 there have been countless books written about America's founding, Megan. None of them by Nicole

00:51:53.780 Hannah Jones. And yet she is going to lead a project to rewrite American history. And the most

00:52:04.680 prominent historians in America are just going to sit silently by because they are afraid of her Twitter

00:52:11.980 feed. This is this is ridiculous. And so I think we need, you know, 10,000 more voices like this

00:52:19.600 woman out there. And I'm waiting for people to to to come forward. And because I know that she speaks

00:52:26.980 for a lot of people who are afraid to speak up themselves. That's right. But, you know, part of

00:52:31.580 the messaging of CRT is that in particular, white people, even though it's not all white people who

00:52:36.540 object to this, need to be quiet, just be quiet. As the comedian Ryan Long said, when he came on on

00:52:43.400 our show, the messaging is, you sit there and be quiet, but it's not my job to educate you.

00:52:48.840 So it's like, yeah, OK, it's and that's part of the other rewriting of history going on with with

00:52:55.880 the 1619 project stuff, ignoring the role that whites played in the civil rights movement, in the

00:53:02.300 anti-slavery movement. I'm, for one, I'm quite happy that they didn't shut up back then

00:53:08.780 because their voices were quite helpful in in changing the course and direction of this country.

00:53:17.300 Up next, Jason has now literally written the book on Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest thinkers

00:53:22.320 of our time. I mean, certainly in modern day America in the last hundred years. So why isn't he

00:53:27.340 a household name? There are some sad but real reasons for it. And we'll talk about it.

00:53:32.300 But before we get to that, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK Show called

00:53:36.640 Thanks, But No Thanks. In this case, we are saying thanks, but no thanks to anti-racist dinner parties.

00:53:45.140 How'd you like to pay $5,000 to learn just how racist you really are? If you would, then race

00:53:50.680 to dinner might be the thing for you. There is an incredible recent piece in The Cut that details

00:53:56.960 this organization run by two activists, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. See, they gather together

00:54:03.920 eight white women at one of the women's houses for a dinner party. Oh, sounds nice. Dinner party. That's

00:54:08.680 fun. Well, at this dinner party, the hosts, Jackson and Rao, will facilitate a discussion about race

00:54:14.300 over dinner. You know that's not going to go well. So what exactly does it entail? Well,

00:54:19.140 they will press their guests on the most racist thing they have done recently. If the guests cannot

00:54:25.480 come up with something, they will be told that, quote, not knowing is classic white behavior. At a

00:54:31.740 recent dinner party in January, Jackson and Rao say they were asked, do you see any difference between

00:54:36.280 us and the people that stormed the Capitol? To which the hosts of this dinner party replied,

00:54:41.900 no. For this self-flagellation, the dinner party will cost you $5,000. That is double from where they

00:54:49.760 started just a couple of years ago. They also have gotten a book deal out of this for a book titled

00:54:54.280 White Women. Everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better. It includes

00:55:01.460 giving them a bunch of money. Rich white women paying thousands of dollars to be told just how

00:55:05.840 racist these two gals think they are. Thanks, but no thanks.

00:55:11.900 I think people are ashamed. They're being sort of reminded of their white guilt.

00:55:20.940 And so they feel like saying anything just confirms, as Robin DiAngelo would suggest,

00:55:25.280 their white fragility, their racial bias, their inherent bias, right? Even if I don't know it's

00:55:30.900 there, it's there. Trust me, it's there. And it's somehow positioning yourself as being not an ally

00:55:37.140 to black people, which is the last thing you want, right? Like your instincts are to be supportive

00:55:41.720 and helpful and open-minded to problems. And now the messaging is, it's almost unsolvable.

00:55:47.620 Any pushback at all makes you part of the problem. Even on crazy stuff. Like, you know, it's not okay

00:55:54.180 to say the country was founded to preserve slavery. That is ahistorical. We know that. But even pushing

00:56:00.920 back against Nicole Hannah-Jones makes you sound like a racist. When she got her position at UNC,

00:56:05.960 the story was, but she was denied tenure. It's like, no, she got a five-year paid position,

00:56:10.760 notwithstanding the fact that she spews a factual, non-factual nonsense. That's a huge victory for

00:56:16.760 her. The story's not that she didn't get tenure. It's that who's hiring her to teach history since

00:56:20.840 she doesn't seem to understand it. I just wrote a book about an economist named Thomas Sowell.

00:56:27.060 And one of the reasons I wanted to write the book and felt that he deserved more attention

00:56:32.280 is because he is something that is increasingly rare these days, which is an honest intellectual,

00:56:39.960 someone who is not cowed by the social media hordes and the Nicole Hannah-Jones types and hasn't been

00:56:46.480 over his, you know, 50 plus year career as a public intellectual. He is someone who has

00:56:52.700 followed the facts where they lead, uh, told the truth, uh, even when it was politically incorrect,

00:56:59.120 even when it was unpopular. And, and that's what there is a dearth of today. You should not

00:57:04.500 distinguish yourself as an intellectual simply by being straightforward and honest. And yet that's

00:57:10.620 how he's done it because there are so many others out there who, who are more interested in being

00:57:16.640 popular, more interested in being politically correct. And Sowell has put truth above popularity.

00:57:22.400 And, and, and, and, and this is a perfect example of, of why we need more, more intellectuals out

00:57:27.820 there like him to push back at this nonsense. He's amazingly brilliant. It's amazing to me that

00:57:34.140 he's still on this earth, that we still have him, you know, access to Thomas Sowell is still possible

00:57:38.860 and I would love to have it at some point. Um, but yeah, you've just written the book Maverick,

00:57:43.300 a biography of Thomas Sowell accompanied by an hour long documentary, which I recommend to everybody.

00:57:47.900 And it's narrated by you and you've got different interviews with different people talking about his

00:57:51.680 influence and how he became who he became. He is the example in bootstrap, you know, non-victimhood.

00:58:00.820 Um, I'm going to let facts, reason, and logic dictate my decisions. And you, you talk in the book and

00:58:07.680 in the documentary about how he, this guy had zero advantages he had in his upbringing. He, he,

00:58:13.180 but yet he wound up at the university of Chicago. He started off as a Marxist.

00:58:17.440 He actually remained a Marxist after studying under Milton Friedman at University of Chicago. But

00:58:23.480 once he got immersed in the federal government, the department of labor and opened his mind to

00:58:28.560 fact and logic and what data was telling him, he was cured of his Marxism and really has spent the

00:58:34.980 rest of his days trying to just be factual with people, even if it didn't curry him any favor,

00:58:42.640 which it didn't with these so-called elites. Yes. That's a, that's an excellent summary of,

00:58:48.320 uh, of, of Sol's career. He, um, you know, he, he's someone who, who was born with a lot of

00:58:54.560 disadvantages, uh, during the great depression and the Jim Crow South, he was orphaned as a child,

00:59:00.680 uh, raised by a distant relative who, who moved the family to Harlem when he was nine years old.

00:59:05.920 And that's where he was raised, but he dropped out of, of high school. He had a pretty tumultuous home

00:59:10.640 life. He never graduated from high school, um, uh, left home at the age of 17, uh, joined the Marines,

00:59:16.940 uh, then sort of started to turn his life around. And, uh, thanks to the GI bill, he was able to afford

00:59:23.080 to go to college and, and, um, but he got quite a late start. You know, he didn't even graduate with

00:59:28.260 an undergraduate degree until he was 28 years old. He didn't write his first book until he was 40. And

00:59:33.800 you think about how productive he's been. Uh, it's remarkable how late a start he got, but he's always

00:59:38.560 said, you know, uh, I had to take advantage of the opportunities that were there and that's what

00:59:43.280 I tried to do. And that is what he's encouraged other people to do, to take advantage of the

00:59:47.800 opportunities. And of course there are far more opportunities, uh, for, for blacks, for minorities,

00:59:53.020 uh, today than, than when Tom Soule was, was growing up. And, and the idea that, that kids today are being

01:00:00.920 taught to, to, uh, blame their problems on other people, uh, instead of taking advantage of the

01:00:06.200 opportunities they have is, is just shameful. Well, and he, one of the things he takes aims aim

01:00:11.240 at is the minimum wage saying, Oh yeah, sure. Okay. Minimum wage. We're going to lift people up.

01:00:15.440 We're going to pay them a quote living wage. And then, Oh wait, they may lose their jobs completely.

01:00:20.740 The jobs may go away altogether. You don't hear that from people like Biden who are pushing that now

01:00:25.820 and on affirmative action. Same thing. Yeah. Um, this is the, the minimum wage issue is,

01:00:33.760 is what, uh, began to turn soul away from his socialism and his Marxism when he was working

01:00:39.340 in government for the department of labor, uh, in the early 1960s. Uh, he was studying the minimum

01:00:45.720 wages effects in, uh, in Puerto Rico and, um, and noticed the, the harm, the employment, uh,

01:00:54.260 it was damage. It was, it was doing to employment. So yes, if you have a job and the minimum wages

01:00:59.860 goes up, uh, you'll get a raise, uh, provided you keep that job, uh, and keep the same number

01:01:05.480 of hours you were working before. Uh, but how many other people don't get hired because the minimum

01:01:11.020 wage now makes them too expensive to hire? How many people lose their job because the minimum wages

01:01:16.860 made them, uh, too expensive to employ. So, so there are trade-offs as, as, as, as Tom's argument.

01:01:22.680 And what, what he took away from that experience is that government policies, um, don't always have

01:01:28.380 the intended effect and, and that those policies can continue, uh, indefinitely, even if they're

01:01:34.220 doing great harm because the government has its own agenda. Um, and, and, and so began to reevaluate

01:01:40.120 the benevolence of government in general, not just on minimum wage, but on a whole host of issues.

01:01:45.300 And you're right about affirmative action. He's, um, uh, studied this empirically and in depth for

01:01:50.720 decades and not only here in the U S but around the world, he studied the issue. And, um, and, you know,

01:01:56.940 we, we, we, we have, uh, uh, uh, now about four days, uh, four decades of, of, of experience with

01:02:04.000 affirmative action. And, and we have some natural experiments that went on out there, like at the

01:02:09.380 university of California, back in the mid nineties, they ended, uh, race-based admissions, uh, in the

01:02:15.920 university of California system. And after that ended, um, black graduation rates went up,

01:02:22.580 adjusted soul had predicted they would, and not only, uh, uh, uh, up,

01:02:26.940 overall, but up in the more difficult disciplines of math and science. Okay. And now there it is

01:02:33.140 that because he argued students who get into these elite schools, thanks to affirmative action

01:02:38.820 often wind up quote mismatched. We have a soundbite about him talking out about MIT.

01:02:44.840 The average black student at MIT is in the bottom 10% of MIT students in math, but he is in the top

01:02:52.100 90% of all American students in math. Something like one fourth of all the black students going

01:02:57.200 to MIT do not graduate. You're talking about a pool of people whom you are artificially turning

01:03:02.740 into failures by mismatching them with the school. He, he, he predicted this. He said that, um,

01:03:09.340 this program that had, had been put in place to increase the ranks of the black middle class

01:03:14.620 had in practice, uh, resulted in fewer black professionals than we would have had in the

01:03:20.260 absence of the policy. So, um, uh, uh, you know, he, he, he called this a long, a long time ago

01:03:26.380 and, um, and he's been right, uh, about affirmative action, about any number of issues that he studied.

01:03:32.260 And, and, and so I wanted to, to write the book to sort of give, give soul his due. I think it's

01:03:37.520 shameful that, that people like Ta-Nehisi Coates or Ibram Kendi, um, are better known than, than Thomas

01:03:44.460 Soule, even though he's, he's written circles around folks like that, Cornell West, Henry Louis

01:03:49.980 Gates and so forth, maybe circles around all of them put together. Um, but you know, he's, he's not as

01:03:57.560 well known as they are and he should be. And it's one of the reasons I wanted to do the, the, the

01:04:02.320 documentary and, um, uh, and the book and, and, and Sol's, Sol's writings are not only, you know, more

01:04:09.140 broad based, um, in, in terms of the, the, the topics he's covered over the decades, the rigor and depth

01:04:16.260 of his thinking on so many issues, uh, far surpasses, uh, those other individuals I just named. And, and so

01:04:23.860 I think he is a, uh, a voice that, that, that needs to be part of, of, of the conversation when we're

01:04:30.000 talking about inequality and, and social justice and, and all the rest, because he is, he has been

01:04:36.020 thinking and writing about these issues, uh, for a long time. So why is that? Because I'll tell you,

01:04:41.580 I had an argument with somebody, a white guy, um, about Thomas Soule. And I was saying, why isn't he

01:04:46.360 taught in every university in America? This is one of the most profound, brilliant thinkers we have alive

01:04:50.980 today. And his response was because his ideas are outdated that, you know, he's, he's old school.

01:04:57.820 The guy's pushing a hundred and he's 94, whatever he is. And, you know, the Ibram X. Kendi's of the

01:05:02.640 world are more relevant, more modern, and sort of have a better finger on the pulse of where we are

01:05:08.540 in 2021. You should have asked him which particular ideas of Tom's are, are supposedly outdated. I'd be

01:05:15.500 curious to know what, what he had in mind, but the, the, the reason that Soule isn't better known,

01:05:20.340 I believe is, is because, um, well, to use today's parlance, he was canceled. He was canceled a long

01:05:27.240 time ago when he began writing about these, uh, racial controversies in your audience. You know,

01:05:32.900 Tom, Tom is, is a, is an economist by training and economic history is his real discipline. Uh, Tom,

01:05:39.140 uh, studied, you know, people like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and David Ricardo and the

01:05:43.280 sort of classical liberal economist. And, and that was his main discipline when he started out as an

01:05:48.500 academic in the 1960s. And that is what he taught, uh, history of economic thought and the history of

01:05:53.680 ideas. Tom only started writing about racial controversies, uh, in the 1970s. And that's

01:05:59.720 when he got in trouble with, with black elites, uh, and the civil rights movement leadership that,

01:06:05.360 uh, pushed back at what he was saying and effectively went to the media and said, this is not someone who

01:06:10.820 should be taken seriously. He does not speak for, for black people. And, um, and they canceled him.

01:06:16.420 These elites, uh, white and black are the ones that largely control the media. They control academia.

01:06:22.060 They decide who wins the intellectual prizes and awards and so forth. And soul has refused to play

01:06:27.760 footsie with them. And I think it's cost them in terms of prestige and notoriety. Um, but again,

01:06:33.380 he has not, uh, been interested in, in, um, in, in, in playing those games. He's been far more

01:06:38.460 interested. And again, just, just doing the research, following the data where it, where it leads and

01:06:43.360 reporting the findings, even when they're unpopular. It's reminding me of something. I think you wrote

01:06:47.860 this in one of, in your book, um, about you, you were taking issue with president Obama,

01:06:52.940 then president Obama, praising Jay Z and little Wayne and little Wayne was imprisoned on, on gun

01:07:00.060 and drug charges while Obama was praising him. Why not take a moment to praise Thomas soul? Why not

01:07:06.280 hold up somebody like that, uh, for people to emulate or whose ideas they should consider as opposed to

01:07:11.600 somebody who's sitting in prison on gun charges at the moment you decided to highlight him.

01:07:15.060 What, why did George Floyd get a state funeral? I mean, this, this idea that the black thug is the

01:07:24.000 authentic black is a problem we've had for decades, Megan. And it's put out there by blacks and whites

01:07:31.280 alike. And, and so, yes, you know, rappers who have made, uh, millions of dollars, uh, talking about

01:07:38.020 degrading women and degrading other black people, uh, uh, homophobic, uh, uh, sexist, uh, racist,

01:07:45.920 uh, anti-Semitic remarks are celebrated, celebrated, uh, glorifying violence, uh, sex, uh, celebrated.

01:07:56.360 Yeah. The president brags about them having their music on his phone. I mean, that's, that's where

01:08:06.360 it's really screwed up. It's, it's, it's really, really screwed up. And, and not only that our

01:08:12.740 kids see this kids see this, what kind of example is Obama setting there? That's why, I mean, you know,

01:08:20.240 there are, there are plenty of black people, musicians that he could be praising, uh, you

01:08:26.840 know, that, that don't go there. Uh, and he, yet he chooses to glorify thuggery.

01:08:36.960 Big finish next. Don't go away.

01:08:43.820 Obama's been all over the board on race issues. Sometimes he tries to act like the great healer

01:08:47.680 and then he has this pernicious tendency to stoke the flames in his sort of measured delivery,

01:08:55.320 you know, so it's like, doesn't sound so incendiary like a Trump, but he does stoke the flames and he

01:09:00.660 was sort of dumping all over people's concerns about critical race theory in an interview he just

01:09:05.360 gave. I think we've got that. Listen, you would think with all the public policy debates that are

01:09:09.900 taking place right now that, you know, the Republican party would be engaged in a significant

01:09:16.980 debate about, uh, how are we going to deal with the economy and what are we going to do about climate

01:09:21.160 change? And what are we going to do about lo and behold, the, the single most, uh, important issue

01:09:28.140 to them apparently right now is critical race theory. Who knew that that was the threat to our Republic?

01:09:34.400 What do you make of that?

01:09:35.540 Well, I myself have wondered why the Republican party has decided, um, to place more emphasis on

01:09:45.880 the culture war than on, uh, economics. Um, and I don't know if this is a post Trump, uh,

01:09:56.100 reprioritization of, of, of what the party is interested in, but, um, the Dr. Seuss stuff,

01:10:03.600 the, uh, yes, the critical race theory stuff. I think that's, that's a serious issue and, and,

01:10:09.620 and you can walk and chew gum at the same time, but yeah, where, where are the attacks on the

01:10:14.520 spending? I mean, Biden is talking about Megan, world war two level spending. We're not at war.

01:10:23.760 We're let alone a world war. That's a good point though. Your, your, your point is that the man's got

01:10:30.320 a point. I think Obama does have a point if, if that's what he was getting at. I mean, if he's,

01:10:35.400 if he's grouping in critical race theory as part of the culture war and the Republicans want to focus

01:10:40.080 on, on these cultural issues, uh, and he's calling him out and saying, you know, uh, why aren't you

01:10:45.520 focused on the economy? Um, yes, I do think, I do think he has a point. Um, and, and again,

01:10:50.900 you can do both, but here it's a matter of emphasis. Um, and, and I, and I, I wonder, uh,

01:10:57.880 if, if this is going to be the course that the party takes, uh, between now and the midterms and

01:11:02.900 then going on to, um, to the next presidential election. I think the Republicans feel they've

01:11:07.780 sacrificed their ability to really object to the spending, given that they sat in their hands when

01:11:11.740 Trump was doing it, when he was the drunken sailor. I, I agree. Um, and of course, some of us

01:11:17.140 said so at the time, but we won't go there. But, but yeah, you're right. They, they might,

01:11:24.180 they may feel they just don't have the credibility, uh, to do it or, or they feel that the, that

01:11:32.280 many of these new voters that Trump brought into the Republican party care more about the culture

01:11:38.400 stuff than the economic stuff. That could be the other, the other calculation. Well, and, and no one

01:11:43.480 right now wants to look like they're on the side of the so-called elites, right? So it's like,

01:11:47.640 and we've been sort of told by the media and the left that spending, spending, spending,

01:11:52.040 that's what helps people who are more working class. And if you object, that's your elitism

01:11:56.160 speaking, right? Your life must be pretty good if you have an objection to any of this. And I think

01:12:00.020 that's been effective in silencing objections to spending.

01:12:04.180 And, and you have, uh, you have this, um, a group of, of conservatives who are pushing, uh, a bigger

01:12:15.840 role, uh, for the government, uh, in this area that, you know, calling for, uh, family leave, uh, you

01:12:23.060 know, baby bonds, um, uh, universal basic income. Uh, you, you now have conservative groups, uh, pushing

01:12:32.140 this using the tax code, uh, in, in a way that, uh, traditionally conservatives have thought the tax code

01:12:38.780 should not be used. Um, and so, uh, you know, it could be a legitimate, uh, change in thinking,

01:12:47.020 uh, for right of center, uh, uh, uh, folks who, who play in the space that, that they've decided,

01:12:54.980 um, going forward, this is the Republican party is going to start, um, accommodating this sort of

01:13:01.800 thinking. My argument would be that if, if, if, if you're a voter who is interested in, in, in, uh,

01:13:08.160 increasing the child tax credit, uh, the, the Democrats are always going to raise it higher

01:13:13.400 than the Republicans are. So you might as well go, go vote for the, for the Democrats. In other

01:13:18.360 words, if, if, if, if Republicans want to play in the sandbox, they're not, they're not going to outdo

01:13:23.200 the Democrats at what the Democrats have been doing for a very long time. So, um, you know, I, I,

01:13:30.440 I don't, I don't know where this leads the, the Republican party, if, if they think they can,

01:13:34.900 they can, um, they can, they can play this game with, with Democrats, but there, but there are,

01:13:39.740 uh, serious Republicans, um, and, and serious conservatives that are, that are moving in this

01:13:45.920 direction. Yeah. I don't, I mean, I, I think they think it's modernizing the Republican party,

01:13:50.360 you know, to sort of shed the George W. Bush. Well, he was a spender too, but sort of this older

01:13:55.260 stifling feeling around the GOP. And Trump was so popular with his spending, you know, he looked more

01:14:01.420 like a populist and not like a conservative when it came to that, that people think this is the way

01:14:05.700 forward. But, you know, you've got three kids, I've got three kids. I worry, I still worry, you

01:14:10.360 know, I, I had, my mom was born in 1941 and came up at a time when you didn't spend more than you

01:14:17.460 earned. And being in debt was considered a very bad thing. And I still have a hangover from that

01:14:22.300 myself, you know, and I don't believe these new economic philosophies. You would know better than I,

01:14:26.440 but that we can, we can get away with this and never have to pay the piper. Yeah. Yeah. I think,

01:14:31.640 I think you're right. I don't, I don't, I don't think we can, we can get away with it, but

01:14:35.800 what, what you can get, you know, you can get away with things politically that you can't get away

01:14:41.840 with economically. And the politicians don't much care about that. They're worried more about,

01:14:47.200 about, about reelection. To me, the lesson to take away from, from the, from the Trump presidency

01:14:53.980 is, uh, the economic growth that we had growing. The economy has to be continue to be the goal.

01:15:01.500 It has to be the centerpiece. I think of Republican economic policy growth and, and, and Trump showed

01:15:07.520 all the good that can come of that. You had, you know, he brought in these, uh, these minority voters,

01:15:14.460 uh, uh, that, that no one was expecting him, uh, to be able to do because of his rhetoric on these

01:15:20.860 issues. Yet he, he increased his, his, his, his, his, the votes among Hispanics, uh, among black men

01:15:26.700 in particular, um, among Asians. Uh, he got more, uh, votes from Asians than any Republican nominee since

01:15:33.900 George W. Bush in 2000. This is the same guy that was running around saying China virus.

01:15:39.220 And it, it, it didn't matter because these folks were responding to the Trump economy pre COVID.

01:15:45.900 And, and, and, and that needs to be the focus. And to the extent that, that, that tax hikes and

01:15:50.980 regulations and complicated tax codes and so forth hurt growth, I think they're going to hurt the

01:15:57.420 Republican cause. So, um, I, I, I think the, the, the lesson from, from Trump is grow the economy

01:16:04.120 and, and the votes will come and, and, and, and that, that should be the takeaway, not, not adopt the

01:16:10.800 economic policies of the left. I don't, I don't think that's the, uh, or, or some variation of

01:16:16.260 them. I don't, I don't think that's the way forward. And Biden's pushing to undo all those

01:16:20.500 things, all those growth pushers right now, right? All the regulations that their line is still that

01:16:24.920 the Republicans don't want dirty water and dirty air. Uh, the regulation should come back from

01:16:29.880 everything on culture issues and economic issues that the taxes should go up. You know, all the things

01:16:34.280 that sort of got the economy fired up and rolling are being, are being rolled back now at a time when

01:16:39.900 we intentionally stifled our economy and, you know, letting it, letting it unleash more in the,

01:16:46.120 in the wake of the COVID restrictions seems to make the most sense, but that's not where we're going.

01:16:50.880 Biden seems to be adopting, uh, the progressive position that opposition to Donald Trump equals

01:17:00.480 support for the entire progressive agenda and, and, uh, on climate, on taxes, on regulations,

01:17:09.640 on, uh, Iran, on foreign policy. If people didn't like Trump, it means they will support,

01:17:17.440 uh, attacks on fossil fuels. And, and, and I, I, I, I think, uh, there, that that's, that's a pretty

01:17:25.100 risky position. I don't think that's what voters were saying in the 2020 election. And one reason

01:17:31.960 I don't think they were saying that is because they, they gave us a 50, 50 Senate and they

01:17:36.260 increased the number of Republicans in the house. So they, they do not expect Joe Biden to go buck

01:17:42.100 wild with the progressive agenda that they would have given him large majorities in Congress if

01:17:46.620 that's what they wanted him to do. But he's acting like he's FDR and was elected in a landslide

01:17:52.400 and has huge majorities in the house and Senate. That's the kind of agenda he's putting out there.

01:17:56.100 He thinks he has that kind of mandate. And I think that, um, the Democrats are in real danger

01:18:01.520 of overreach here if they continue down this road. What's the one thing that the audience should

01:18:07.420 watch when it comes to the Biden economy and the, the, the measures he's pushing. I mean,

01:18:12.180 he's doesn't look like he's going to get his spending bills through the infrastructure thing is

01:18:16.980 struggling right now. The domestic agenda seems like it's a non-starter. He just,

01:18:21.200 he threw out these huge proposals. It turns out he can't get everything through on reconciliation.

01:18:25.080 He's going to have to get at least his own party and some Republicans. So he's struggling. Um, he's,

01:18:31.580 he's sort of went from on a roll to treading water, but what's the one thing people should really watch

01:18:37.540 to that concerns you that he's pushing? I think if they change the filibuster rule,

01:18:41.800 it will open the floodgates to the entire progressive agenda. And that's what I'm, I'm watching. I'm still

01:18:47.280 watching Manchin and Sinema and these, um, more moderate Democrats that are holding the line

01:18:52.340 now, but, um, the pressure on them will not only continue. I think, I think it'll build and I don't

01:18:58.840 know how long they'll, they'll be able to hold off. Uh, but if they, uh, ditch the filibuster

01:19:04.480 and, and just have a simple majority, push everything through with a vote from Kamala Harris,

01:19:09.380 breaking the tie that to me is what to keep an eye out for. Yeah. Then we become a parliament.

01:19:16.340 Then we look like great Britain, uh, where you just, you have majority rule and they get to push

01:19:19.700 through their agenda. Yeah. And it just totally undermines the way the Senate has, has worked

01:19:23.760 for decades. Jason, I have so much more. I, I like, I want to go through every chapter of

01:19:28.760 all of your books. So can we do this again? Sure. Sure. But thank you for, for having me on. I enjoyed it.

01:19:34.860 Well, I have a feeling our next show on Wednesdays, it's going to be the most downloaded show ever.

01:19:42.780 And that is because it is about UFOs. I'm not going to lie. At first I was like, eh, I don't know.

01:19:48.380 Well, suffice it to say, we just taped it and it's hot fire. It's a hot, hot show. We all loved it. I

01:19:55.580 think it might be all our, all of our favorite or at least top three. Don't miss it. Is something out

01:19:59.820 there and who, if anyone is behind it, uh, go ahead and subscribe to the show now. So you don't

01:20:04.760 miss it. Download five stars and a nice review. If you feel so inclined, we'll talk to you on

01:20:10.200 Wednesday. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:20:18.480 The Megan Kelly show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 14, 2021

Jason Riley on Critical Race Theory, Policing in America, and Thomas Sowell's Honest Intellectualism ｜ Ep. 115

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