Former Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker is on a new and important mission, running the Young America's Foundation, a group that aims to take on the crazy culture on college campuses and try to get a conservative message out to these students to fight back against the anti-Americanism we're seeing.
00:09:35.240We've invoked that time and time again.
00:09:36.940That was his last address in the Oval Office, hard to believe, 32 years ago, January of 1989.
00:09:43.180He was so prophetic because, as I talked about, remember how bad things were in the 70s before he came in?
00:09:49.280And he comes in literally as policies helped turn this country around, not only in terms of restoring a sense of being proud of the Americans,
00:09:57.060but the economy, unprecedented economic growth at the time, all these other good things.
00:10:01.740He could have clearly slapped himself on the back and said, way to go.
00:10:04.800But beyond just celebrating what had been accomplished during those two terms, he sent out this very real warning.
00:10:15.740He, in the past, prior to just that address, had often said that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
00:10:23.440You don't get it passed on to you through the bloodstream.
00:10:25.880And you literally have to stand up and fight for it and defend it and then pass it on to the next generation to do the same thing.
00:10:32.560And so I thought in that address, he also gave us a charge to do more to teach American history and to be involved in shared civic ritual.
00:10:44.000Megan, I don't know about you, but I remember growing up, he alluded to the guy down the block from Korea.
00:10:48.500I actually had a guy that lived down the block who went to our church, who was my assistant scoutmaster when I was in Boy Scouts, who was a World War I and a World War II veteran.
00:11:01.340And he would take all of us kids out every year on Memorial Day, on Veterans Day and Flag Day in this small little town we grew up in.
00:11:09.340And we'd put all the scouts and Cub Scouts would put flags on the tombs of all the veterans, on their tombstones, all throughout this small little cemetery we had.
00:11:20.820And it was things like that that taught you that when you stand for the flag when it comes by in a parade or you sing the national anthem and you put your hand over your heart, that wasn't because you're Republican or Democrat.
00:11:31.880And when Mark Cuban a few months ago was talking about not playing the national anthem, it made me think back to that warning and that charge that Reagan gave and how prophetic he was that if we don't take these things seriously, we don't teach American history and have a greater emphasis on civic ritual, we'll fall trapped to falling away and not remembering anymore what those things were about.
00:11:54.320Those things with the flag weren't just about a flag, they were about shared values that were as clear as the threads in the flag itself bound together, they bound us together as Americans.
00:12:05.880And sadly, I see too much in our culture that wants to pit one group of people versus another, instead of finding ways to have those shared rituals and traditions and bring us together as a country.
00:12:46.900And I think to myself, how did we get here?
00:12:49.760Because this generation, this is supposed to be the 9-11 generation.
00:12:52.600This is supposed to be the generation that saw our country, our ideals attacked.
00:12:56.880We stood up for ourselves and went back and fought against the guys who caused it in Afghanistan.
00:13:01.640The Iraq war, I think, is generally considered to be a massive mistake, but shouldn't have created a bunch of America haters inside of our borders.
00:13:09.440So how did, what happened between then and now?
00:13:13.800One, for this generation, particularly for my kids are 25 and 26, so they're the tail end of the millennial, literally the very end of that.
00:13:21.360A lot of people blame millennials, and there's certainly a lot of things to blame that you can attribute to that.
00:13:26.440But in some ways, kind of like Reagan's warning, I don't blame just them.
00:13:30.180I blame their parents, which includes my generation and those a bit older than me, because as Reagan talked about, we didn't, you know, those parents going into the 90s did re-institutionalize this belief in the American dream and what that means and entails.
00:13:45.160Certainly, it goes back in many ways back decades ago.
00:13:49.940What we see today, not only in our college campuses and our schools, but in our culture, even in the censorship from, in many ways, from big tech, all that didn't start overnight.
00:13:59.900It goes back in many regards, way, way, way back, but you can specifically tie much of this to even Saul Alinsky's work back in the 1960s, where they had this long-term view.
00:14:12.000They weren't just engaged in the battles of the moment.
00:14:14.200They were looking far into the future.
00:14:16.180Remember in the 80s, Bill Bennett warning about this, that if the left had a clear plan to take over education, higher education, communications, Hollywood, all the, you know, the fundamental means of getting information out to people.
00:14:30.980And if they controlled that, his warning was even back then when he was serving for Reagan, was that, you know, they at some day would, would, would dominate.
00:14:43.980He very much was concerned about that spell that I remember talking to him a couple of years ago about that, about, you know, how I, I wished I loved, obviously when our kids were little, we'd read the book of virtues, which I thought was great.
00:14:57.120But I wish that, that warning that he gave as well, specific to those fundamental areas, wish it did not come true.
00:15:04.420But, but he, like others kind of spell it, this is where they're headed.
00:15:07.900Now, the optimist in me that still comes from Reagan.
00:15:11.400You know, I'm a conservative, not only because my parents and my upbringing, but without a doubt, coming of age during Ronald Reagan's presidency.
00:15:19.040But I also like to think of myself as an American optimist.
00:15:22.640And I look at how things are stacked really against a conservative or even a middle to right point of view, so radically towards the left with even the earliest videos that kids see these days to school, to textbooks, to curriculum, to certainly left-wing professors, but increasingly more than them, activists on campuses, to all the push on social media and Hollywood and everything else.
00:15:47.660It's, it's amazing to me that there are any kids left that aren't socialists.
00:15:50.820And so I just think if we, if we talk, if we find a way, it's why cancel culture is so prevalent, because people on the left don't want our ideas to even get a chance.
00:16:01.780They don't even want us to get a hearing.
00:16:03.160What we find in the polling is both fearful, both frustrating, scary, whatever term you want to use for young people.
00:16:13.360But at the same time, there is a glimmer of hope.
00:16:16.160The fearful part, of course, is the socialism.
00:16:19.080You go up and down the list of left-wing ideas.
00:16:22.220Not only do so-called progressives, but even other more reasonable students, you know, buy into a lot of these lies of the left.
00:16:29.980But what's interesting is it all boils down, in many cases, to young people, to fairness.
00:16:35.760And if you peel away, I'll give you a good example.
00:16:38.020People, young people, not surprisingly, say, oh, we should have, the government should, should take care of my student loan debt.
00:16:45.480But if you say to them as a follow-up, do you think that taxpayers who never went to college should have to pay for that?
00:16:52.500Suddenly the number drops dramatically.
00:16:54.780Because they get the sense of fairness.
00:16:56.360But in a vacuum, if it's just about, yeah, I want the government, you know, some random person is going to pay for this.
00:17:02.360So one of the things I think we've failed at is conservatives are really good.
00:17:07.060We're good at telling, speaking, and talking from our head.
00:17:11.320Liberals think and talk from their heart.
00:17:14.360We shouldn't concede the logic of our mind, but we should tell it in ways that are emotional, that talk.
00:17:20.100Why should the left own the issue of fairness?
00:17:22.820I think the things we talk about can be fundamentally fair, but we're so reluctant to get beyond just the logic, the facts, that we sometimes don't add the emotional component that not should substitute for facts, but augment and, I think, reinforce our point of view.
00:17:39.800Do you think, I know that you're, you got your eye on education and try to, you're trying to help students, trying to help teachers, professors fight back against this far left bent that we're seeing grow, fester, get even worse than, it's not just liberalism, it's not progressivism.
00:17:58.100I wish it were that, that'd be so much easier to deal with.
00:18:01.520This crazy, woke ideology is just downright dangerous, and that's, that's what you're fighting against.
00:18:07.220But do you think that battle is winnable on a cultural level, outside of the education?
00:18:13.120I can see how the fight could be launched in the education arena, but how do you take back, as Reagan was saying, television, movies, sports are gone now, corporate America and its messaging.
00:18:25.660Look how many corporations are now signing on to say George is terrible because of its voting law, right?
00:18:29.980Like, how, I, I have been thinking up until now that reasonable people, they just need to create their own lane.
00:18:38.280You can't, we're not going to turn CNN into what it used to be.
00:18:41.780We're not going to be able to wrest control of Hollywood from these virtue signaling producers and try to get some more patriotic films in there.
00:19:08.800No, I, I think we can't concede anything.
00:19:10.920I think part of the problem we've had in the last couple of decades, because again, I go back thinking about even when I was in college, the professors were overwhelmingly liberal,
00:19:21.420I still have professors today, many of whom are retired from teaching, but who, you know, still disagree with me, but they still like to say I was once their student, uh, because we had good discussion.
00:19:51.020Part of that means getting a stronger presence in terms of just simple things like invoking the first amendment, uh, using winning in the court of public opinion for sure.
00:20:00.420But when needed, winning in the court of law, uh, particularly in schools and campuses, but elsewhere that are a voice out.
00:20:07.060But I think for too long, too many conservatives slash Republicans, not that every Republican is a conservative, but too many right of center, particularly in those in office have just conceded the language that, uh, well, they'll modify their language in hopes that somehow that will just pacify, uh, some of the media and some of the left.
00:20:29.780I, you given a good example of this week or the last couple of weeks with Georgia, not only is it hypocritical that major league baseball pulls the all-star game from a state that just passed new legislation that obviously requires photo identification and has, uh, uh, a certain period of time for early voting, but they move it, obviously the Colorado state that has voter identification requirements and less time to vote early.
00:20:55.480I, I, I added to that, you know, the oddity, of course, I knew it well, having signed the voter ID law in Wisconsin, but the DNC, the Democrats held their national convention in Milwaukee last year, abbreviated as it was because of COVID, but they picked Milwaukee knowing full well that a decade ago, I signed a very strict photo ID requirement.
00:21:17.280So one, you can point out the hypocrisy of this, the contradiction, the big lie in all this, but I think more important than that lost in that as well as beyond just their, their double standard.
00:21:29.760It's the fact that photo ID makes sense, just the inherent idea in itself that overwhelmingly Americans believe it.
00:21:36.800Every poll shows it not only amongst Republican or even independent, but even a majority of Democrat identified voters think photo ID makes sense.
00:21:45.680And at least I think Rasmussen's poll showed that 69%, I think another poll was over 70% of black voters think it makes sense.
00:21:53.220So sometimes we get caught up not only in pointing out the hypocrisy of the woke warriors on the radical left, but we've, when we complain about the hypocrisy, we don't do enough to actually explain to people why the original idea, which in this case was about voter integrity, made sense to begin with.
00:22:13.040And we shouldn't concede that or any other issue like it.
00:22:15.580But it's very hard to get the message out when the, that group controls all forms of information, you know, the papers, the magazines, the online sites, the, the television news, all of the messaging, for example, on Georgia has been racist, racist, racist companies pulling Jim Crow 2.0, right from the president on down.
00:22:37.760And yes, the conservative ecosphere has an alternate narrative and we'll point out the facts that you just raised.
00:22:44.680But man, it's very hard to get to anyone who's not consuming conservative media with the truth.
00:22:53.340In fact, that's, again, part of the long game, which applies not just to education, but to everything we're doing in culture and media and communications.
00:23:01.360We've got to look at this as not just the battle of this moment, but really two, two ways that too many of us look at it.
00:23:08.480One, people just throw up their hands and give up or say, I'm just not going to view this anymore.
00:23:13.260And not engaging in society and culture, I don't think is a good option for us because we've still got to compete to get, you know, the few.
00:23:22.960And I think there are more than we think minds that are open to at least hearing more than what they're hearing.
00:23:27.560But we've got to find a way to get into that for the others who just want to try and correct it now, as opposed to saying, no, this is probably going to take more than what's certainly going to take more than a new cycle.
00:23:37.320It probably takes at least through a couple of presidential cycles.
00:23:40.780It's not going to take 100 years, but I'm just confident, just as the left did systematically moving the bar, that we need to have, and that's part of our long game plan, a longer strategy, not just for young people, but for society as a whole, to how we get back to a more conservative, realistic view of the world.
00:24:01.060Which, again, like I said before, in the polling, not that everything's about polling, there is hope even amongst this current youngest generation that when you explain to them ideas over, you know, once you follow up and you say not just, you know, what do you think about this issue or that issue, but then you give them more information, they are willing to digest it.
00:24:24.140And the problem, as you correctly note, is right now, almost all those sources of information come from one view and one view only.
00:24:31.580It's why even in the last year, racism, racial conflict has jumped to the top of the list on almost every poll, particularly amongst younger people, although society in general.
00:24:41.760I think that's part of a larger plan, frankly, that goes back to, again, you think decades ago, Marxists tried to infiltrate the United States and they weren't successful.
00:24:54.340Why? Because our society is not based on class, that you can be born into the most poor family in your community and still rise up and do whatever you want, that the class you're born into doesn't limit your potential in life.
00:25:10.320We're all given and God given freedoms and we take those freedoms and opportunities here in America and apply them.
00:25:17.280And with hard work, determination and maybe a little bit of luck, we can succeed in almost anything.
00:25:24.260Now, I think they're coming back with another swing and trying to impose Marxism based on race and gender and sex.
00:25:31.680It's why you've seen for years BLM, which they're self-admitted.
00:25:35.140But, you know, there's three founders, although I guess one of the images I just saw the other day is one of the founders at least buying a pretty amazing mansion.
00:25:43.100So currently that's taking a page out of Castro or Chavez or others where promised power to the people.
00:25:50.480But in the end, the people live in poverty while the elite few hoard all the power and the riches of that.
00:25:57.600Exactly. She's got four houses, four houses worth worth three point two million dollars.
00:26:02.760So, you know, capitalism, as it turns out, is working out OK for her.
00:26:10.540And now and now you have even people within BLM coming out and saying this is BS and we need an accounting of where the money's gone and of the 90 million dollars they've taken in.
00:26:19.800You know, it looks like three went someplace, you know, to support her lifestyle.
00:26:24.420This this person who thinks that America is terrible and, you know, capitalism sucks.
00:26:29.080Coming up after this break, we're going to talk to Governor Walker about what they discovered out of Ames, Iowa, right in the heartland of America when it comes to BLM's teachings.
00:26:39.220And I mean, straight out of the BLM manifesto, a week of indoctrination of children in Iowa.
00:26:47.400We're not talking about Manhattan, folks, or San Fran in Iowa and what's going to be done about it.
00:26:53.120And not just in Iowa, but elsewhere. Stay tuned.
00:26:59.080It's so hard to break through. And not only does the media not let it happen and Hollywood not let it happen.
00:27:04.580But as you well know, the education system, not only are they not teaching patriotism or even straight civics anymore, you get punished.
00:27:12.820So many students come forward and say, if I if I write a paper that is anything other than like in the progressive voice, I'll get punished.
00:27:38.800And it happened in 2018, where he went to a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions, which is just like that's made up offense.
00:27:53.760And he didn't really appreciate the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter and assistant dean there named Beverly Cowell Adams.
00:28:02.540And sort of stood up and said, can I ask you about your definition?
00:28:09.240You know, I don't do I have to be a victim of a of a marginalized group in order to be a victim of a microaggression?
00:28:27.380After it was over, another professor filed a, quote, professionalism concern card, which is a an accusation of that he violated university policy by being, quote, antagonistic toward the panel.
00:28:43.180Now, you might just laugh this off and say, oh, God, you know, grow a spine.
00:28:48.820The whole academic standards committee met to discuss the concern card.
00:28:52.740They sent him a reminder in writing that he needed to show respect for faculty members and express himself appropriately, which he 100 percent did.
00:29:28.000So to his credit, he filed a lawsuit and he's winning.
00:29:31.960They tried to get it kicked and the judge declined to dismiss it on their motion to dismiss.
00:29:37.940So he's doing what he should do, which is if you can't, you know, fight them in in the school, you take them to court, as they used to say on the people's court.
00:29:46.800And that line is the most promising line we have right now, I think, for fighting back against this lunacy.
00:30:45.760The court battle was getting them to rescind their policy.
00:30:48.760But this is the sort of nonsense they're involved in.
00:30:51.220The only way you can win in many of these cases is to win, to invoke the First Amendment, to invoke the Constitution, to win in the court of law.
00:30:58.780And once you do, then that gives us the larger opportunity to win in the court of public opinion.
00:31:03.940But it is a huge warning, I think, for not just students, but for anyone.
00:31:09.240These the sort of things you were talking about with the med school student are the sort of things we have historically seen in communist run countries that we see today, even in socialist countries.
00:31:20.660And it's, you know, if our children in particular are so sheltered from this, they don't realize what's at stake.
00:31:27.360We just had, back a couple of months ago, our first conference of the year in person, full capacity in Miami, Florida.
00:31:35.980We went to Florida, obviously, because thanks to Ron DeSantos, who, by the way, I think is the best current governor in America.
00:31:44.400But we went to Miami in particular because we brought a number of speakers in who could talk about their family's experience coming from Cuba to the United States.
00:31:54.820Or in one case, it was someone coming from Venezuela to the United States.
00:32:00.180The logic was still there with the head, but they could tell from the heart.
00:32:03.140And I just think that whether it's on campus, whether it's in the media, whether it's in social media, the more we can find people to personally tell those riveting stories, the more we can point out just how unfair situations like this student had.
00:32:18.180It matches the logic, but then it puts in place real emotion, real people.
00:32:22.620And I just got to believe in a fair and a just world.
00:32:25.600There's going to be, particularly amongst young people, enough people that go, that's just not fair.
00:32:30.140But it's what I experienced years ago when we had all the protesters in Wisconsin.
00:32:34.040The big mistake, if I look back, that I made early on in my tenure when all the protesters came out was I was so eager to fix things.
00:32:43.360I didn't talk about it enough because most politicians talk about it, but don't fix it.
00:32:47.740So I guess I wasn't going to err on the side of fixing it.
00:32:50.020But what I realized is once I started telling stories about a teacher who was laid off the year before I was governor, because back then they too cut funding for education because of the budget problems they had.
00:33:04.280The only difference was you're the last hired as the first fired seniority played the role.
00:33:09.800And even though this young teacher was named the outstanding new English teacher the year in the entire state, she was one of the first people laid off.
00:33:16.140When I told that story, people went, well, that's not fair.
00:33:18.460I said, that's what I'm trying to fix.
00:33:20.540So the more we can tell stories that back up our logic, the better off we're going to be.
00:33:25.560Well, and I definitely want to talk to you about Wisconsin and the fight against the unions, because I know you say you fought and won.
00:33:33.540I remember covering you wall to wall back in 2011 when this was happening and you taking on the unions and beating them.
00:33:40.340I mean, at every turn you beat them, which sadly is pretty rare.
00:33:44.780And I think people are kind of ticked off at unions right now, especially the teachers unions in these states where they refuse to let the teachers go back into the classroom.
00:33:52.260So I want to get to that, but I do want to ask you in terms of the campuses, one of the things you guys are now going to try to do at YAF is try to get more sort of chapters, I guess, open on more college campuses so that what?
00:34:07.540So that young students have an open, acceptable alternative to all the dogma that's being spoon fed them, right?
00:34:15.980Because like right now, they don't really see a lot of people don't even see a meaningful alternative to what's being spoon fed them and told them is the only way of being an acceptable, decent, moral human being.
00:34:26.720They can get more people on campus who are acceptable, decent, moral human being saying, hey, we've chosen a different way.
00:34:38.440Yeah, the whole strategy of the left, even beyond just cancel culture, is to marginalize, to minimize.
00:34:44.800It's exactly what they tried to do us years ago.
00:34:46.820I don't know if you'll touch on the details, but with even trying to surround us with protests and that is to make you feel isolated, to make you feel alone, that whatever sense you think you have, you try to convince people that, no, they're alone, they're outcasts, they're outliers.
00:35:28.340It's fighting First Amendment battles, not only for our chapters and our speakers, but for any conservative, rational voice that wants to go on campus.
00:35:36.140I want to partner with ADF and others and say we'll go anywhere, anytime, anyhow, to defend the rights of students to speak up and speakers to speak up on campus.
00:35:46.520I think part of it's going beyond just college into not just high school, but even middle school.
00:35:52.460And even as early as elementary school, helping parents counter so much of this curriculum that's focused on hating America.
00:36:01.260You know, today's time, you know, today's teachers, even if they don't buy into this, the curriculum they get, the stuff that they're handed.
00:36:10.540I even saw this with my son, Matt, who's 26.
00:36:13.120I remember years ago, he had a great AP government teacher.
00:36:19.180You go in her classroom, there were Republican and Democrat signs.
00:36:22.700She'd bring speakers in from every different angle.
00:36:25.400But one day he brought home an assignment and his textbook actually told was about how Ronald Reagan's tax cuts brought about the deficits of the 1980s.
00:36:38.760The tax cuts in the 80s, both in 81 and 86, actually saw increased revenue as the economy grew to the federal government.
00:36:47.880It was the spending of Tip O'Neill and the others in the Congress that brought on the deficits.
00:36:52.640But, you know, here this poor teacher had a textbook that said something different.
00:36:55.800So I went and got a different book off my shelf and gave it to my son.
00:36:59.160But most parents, most teachers don't have the, you know, don't have the resources, don't have the ability or even amongst teachers, many of them feel somehow that they, too, are alienated if they don't go with the liberal dogma.
00:37:14.660So it's part of letting students, educators, parents and others know that they're not alone.
00:37:19.100What did you guys, because you've already now been trying to reach out to parents at the local level, at the elementary school level and say, let us know if you see something problematic.
00:37:29.260And I know something happened in Iowa along those lines.
00:37:32.160Tell us what happened and tell us what you plan on doing about it.
00:37:35.080Is it just a matter of exposing it, like shaming the school out of behaving in this way?
00:37:40.240Or could it lead to litigation that you guys are going to help in?
00:37:54.260Your listeners would, we could talk for, you know, 100 hours on all the ridiculous things that come up with, like the young man we were talking about before, or professors who say if you're pro-life and you speak out on campus, you're going to get kicked out of the class.
00:38:08.400Or segregated housing for resident advisors and dorms and just different graduates.
00:38:37.060It started in preschool and went to 12th grade.
00:38:39.340And for preschoolers and kindergartners, they literally had coloring pages of transgender characters.
00:38:45.860And the kids were told, as part of that, that they could pick whether they wanted to be a boy or a girl or something in between.
00:38:52.300Now, this is just the kind of ridiculousness beyond just that issue itself.
00:38:57.380What in the world are they teaching, you know, kindergartners who should be learning how to play nice with each other and maybe count and do the alphabet?
00:39:05.300That just shows you how warped these situations are, not in San Francisco or New York, but this is in Ames, Iowa.
00:39:14.480So part of our pushback to your question was, yeah, we exposed it.
00:39:17.960We didn't just put it out there publicly.
00:39:21.160We got people on talk radio talking about it.
00:39:23.840We did it with the local media as well as the national.
00:39:26.020We reached out to ministers and clergy.
00:39:27.700I let Kim Reynolds know and Joni Ernst know and Chuck Grassley and others know so that they could put the pressure on to have them pull back from that, to stop it from spreading elsewhere, to pull back in that district.
00:39:40.380And then to talk about it nationally, because we figured if they're doing it in Ames, Iowa, it's coming to your local school district next.
00:39:47.800Because it's not just limited to one place.
00:39:49.360So part of it's exposure and where necessary, you know, it's helping parents counter not just that particular curriculum, but particularly all the stuff that's about hating America, about misleading people, about our founders.
00:40:04.400You know, last week was Thomas Jefferson's birthday.
00:40:07.240That's just a good example where you get people who just totally distort what the founders of this country did and what they believed in.
00:40:15.780I mean, I can say all the time, the last person I know who's perfect hasn't walked on the earth in about 2,000 years.
00:40:21.560So for the rest of us, we've got a long ways to go.
00:40:24.380But they did have amazing ideas that are still relevant today.
00:40:28.240We should be grateful that there were people willing to risk literally their lives, not just their livelihood or their political ventures, but their lives, the freedoms that we have today.
00:40:37.500Not a day of getting bashed on Twitter.
00:40:39.900I think it's easy to suck that up if they could go through what they went through.
00:40:42.740But I like this idea of these lawmakers, this lawmaker network, you know, governors, former lawmakers and senators and so on to sort of get the word out.
00:40:53.000Like if you could get that kind of thing going where it's a network of lawmakers who are willing to fight these battles and draw attention to this nonsense, that that would be very helpful.
00:41:04.380Well, I want to just piggyback on what you said.
00:41:23.940Monday, students will learn about restorative justice, empathy and loving engagement.
00:41:26.900Tuesday, lesson on diversity and globalism, with students urged to read Afro Latinx books and then audit their classroom library to judge diversity and learn how they are impacted or privileged within the black global family.
00:41:41.800Wednesday, lesson on transgender, queer affirming and collective value has absolutely nothing to do with Black Lives Matter unless you look at the Black Lives Matter mission statement,
00:41:50.560which specifically says they want to dismantle the nuclear family and be more queer affirming and they want more of that and transgender families than they do want traditional male, female families.
00:42:03.460And then we get to Thursday where they say we're going to talk about the disruption in the nuclear family and spaces free from ageism, black families free from patriarchal practices, plus black villages.
00:42:15.660And then Friday, you complete it with something centering black women and fems completed with I love myself affirmation chant.
00:42:24.020And of course, the footnote is unless I am white.
00:42:32.120Before it was, like I said, before it was, you know, they wanted to pit one against each other, an economic class based, traditional class view of the world status.
00:42:41.300But they found a more important weapon now.
00:42:43.900It's pinning each other based on race and to a certain degree, sex and gender.
00:42:48.020And as you and I both know, we've experienced this, that, you know, it's a pretty powerful attack.
00:42:52.400If you even question anything they're talking about or sometimes make even some of the most ridiculous references is somehow means for the R word.
00:43:01.620And you can see why students, parents, even teachers, other educators are afraid to question any of these things because who wants to be called a racist or a sexist or a transphobic or homophobic or whatever, you know, neanderthal.
00:43:17.280And it's so disappointing because I can remember some of my best teachers were people that years later I learned were not politically at all aligned with me, but were people who challenged me, who made me think critically, who didn't shove things down my throat, but rather made me think about what I thought about.
00:43:33.660And any of those sorts of teachers, not just conservative teachers and conservative professors, but just ones who don't want to be dogmatic, who just want to teach something objective, are so villainized these days that you can see why this stuff just slides through and rarely a hand goes up to challenge because people don't want to be on the front end of, you know, that sort of attack.
00:43:57.080But we have to. And I found some of the best ways to attack it is not just head on, you know, in terms of speaking out aggressively, but just questioning.
00:44:07.380The other day when the CDC director came out and said, you know, that that racism is now a public health issue, you know, to me, the easy question was how, you know, the response will be, well, you know, there's all this data about underserved populations.
00:44:23.380There is, but that's, but that doesn't explain why is that racism? Is there a doctor somewhere that's purposely not serving people because of the color of their skin? That would be racism.
00:44:34.480Now, there are other factors. And what I worry about is that someone who is formally involved in public policy is when you invoke racism all the time, as an example, then the other things that really are causes that need to be addressed largely get glossed over.
00:44:48.720Because everybody's over here looking at, you know, how, how much they can react to whatever racism is or isn't, as opposed to saying, well, what are the other causes, economic, societal, family structure, you name it.
00:45:01.420Those are all things that play into many of these situations. But people don't want to talk about those because those are harder to deal with than just saying.
00:45:07.400Black Lives Matter is an anti-American organization. It's very clear. You know, lowercase Black Lives Matter is a totally different thing than the movement, than the actual group Black Lives Matter, which is run by this, you know, so-called Marxist center, $3.2 million, four homes.
00:45:22.560And people need to be okay saying that. They actually do want to dismantle the nuclear family. They actually, their rhetoric is extremely racist, extremely racist. And I don't support them. And I think if you look at the polls, a large majority of Republicans do not support Black Lives Matter.
00:45:40.220And I think people need to be more bold about saying, I don't support that group. I don't support that group. It's okay to say that. You don't have to donate your money to them. It's a very fraught mission. It's not about Black Lives.
00:45:51.460It's about an agenda of dismantling systems that we happen to love here in the country, namely capitalism and a nuclear family that has two parents and is loving.
00:45:59.600It doesn't mean you can't have an alternative version that we can also support and love, but one doesn't have to be displaced, right? It's like, that's the last thing we need is to start demonizing nuclear families with a male and a female parent, which is particularly when the science, yeah, particularly when the science overwhelming it.
00:46:17.800In fact, Brookings Institute years ago, I invoked this often when I was governor, Brookings Institute or Brookings Institution, which is by no means nothing close to a conservative think tank, just, yeah, fairly left of center.
00:46:32.740But they put out an interesting report that we often refer to as the success sequence, where they showed the overwhelming data that people who graduate from school, by school I just mean graduating through high school, get a job and then wait until they're married and over 20 to have children.
00:46:51.340The data overwhelmingly shows that in over 98% of the time, those people never live a day going forward in poverty.
00:47:00.060It just shows you there's a clear and concise recipe.
00:47:03.180If you want a blueprint of how to get out of poverty, it's graduate, get a job, and then wait until you're married and over a reasonable age to have children.
00:47:12.760If people did that, and again, people say, oh, that's preaching, that's morals.
00:47:17.520There is a fair amount of morality in there.
00:47:19.220It's things our parents and our pastors and clergy and others have been saying for decades, not just because it's something biblical, but because it actually works.
00:47:28.160And to your point is, for things that make sense, we've got to stop ignoring things like that just because we think we're going to get some pushback.
00:47:36.020It doesn't mean that there, as you alluded to, there aren't legitimate cases where people have been successful, where people have been, for example, single parents have done a phenomenal job.
00:47:44.780I give a hat tip to a lot of single moms who've done remarkable things with their kids.
00:47:49.440But the science, the data overwhelmingly shows us that people are better off if they go through this sequence.
00:47:56.640And that runs flat out contrary to what BLM, the organization, and other left-wing radical groups are saying.
00:48:02.340Yeah, well, and I always say this, but I want to remind people that the spokespeople, like for BLM, for the trans rights activists, they do not speak for the vast majority of the people who happen to fall within the categories they purport to represent.
00:48:43.620They're not out there and they wouldn't support people out there saying, dismantle, dismantle the pre-existing nuclear family, replace it with something else.
00:48:49.980And that, you'll get pushback from the mainstream media that that's even a goal of Black Lives Matter, even though it's in their mission statement.
00:48:59.260They've now since scrubbed their website.
00:49:01.540But as you point out, it was in the papers released in Ames, Iowa.
00:49:05.180Like, it's absolutely part of their mission statement.
00:49:08.680Up next with Scott Walker, we're going to talk about 2024.
00:50:15.960But the conversation we had at the time is still very timely, especially with all that's happening in Minnesota over the past week and beyond and the media coverage of it.
00:50:23.700And so here is just a small clip on spiritual impoverishment.
00:50:28.160I read what you've said about wokeness, you know, this wokeness craze.
00:50:32.880And you said one of the things you think is driving it is there's sort of a lack of purpose going on for some folks now and that people, while they may be materially enriched, maybe, maybe not these days, they're spiritually impoverished.
00:50:46.260How is spiritual impoverishment leading to wokeness?
00:50:49.700Yeah, so I think that there's a great deal of alienation that we're forced to contend with.
00:50:56.140And I don't think there's anyone, I don't think anyone is like at fault, per se.
00:51:01.220Again, I think it's a crisis of modernity.
00:51:04.780Timothy P. Carney wrote about this in his book, Alienated America.
00:51:08.360And this is a challenge that has really affected everyone in the country from the left to the right.
00:51:15.460And what's unfortunately going on, I think, is people in the reactionary right and people in the woke left are suffering from alienation, but are oftentimes implementing policies, implementing solutions that actually perpetuate alienation even more in the name of trying to stop it.
00:51:37.920And this is something that we as human beings have always done.
00:51:40.440This is like the, we tend to think in either or ways of thinking, especially when we think our security or safety is under threat, whether perceived or real.
00:51:52.900And so we're prone to start thinking in those very shortcut, reductive ways.
00:51:56.220But the challenge here, I think, and this speaks to the spiritual issue, is to create solutions that take away that sense of alienation, that bring back that sense of community.
00:52:06.300Again, that bring back that sense of reconciliation and the beloved community, as Dr. King spoke of.
00:52:13.920And this requires that we sort of rewire our brains and rewire our, how we choose to be in relationship with each other, which to me, again, begins with being in a healthy relationship with yourself.
00:52:26.640And this is even more of an issue because of COVID, because we're neurobiologically wired for connection and we're experiencing, you know, long periods of isolation and disconnection.
00:52:40.820And so we have to work overtime to really keep ourselves in check and make sure that we take the steps that we can take to foster connection with one another.
00:52:49.620Chloe has actual solutions and a way of bridging divides in this country without further alienating everybody.
00:52:57.220So go back, check out that full episode, You Won't Be Sorry, and we will keep bringing you more clips from the archives.
00:53:04.000And now back to former Governor Scott Walker.
00:53:14.520The strength of these unions, the way they pressure lawmakers and win,
00:53:18.880especially in blue states like mine, New York, and our our legislators and governors tend to just bow down to them, give them what they want.
00:53:27.140And that's one of the reasons why I just had friend dinner with my close friends last night.
00:53:32.440New York City schools are still not in session full time for us.
00:53:53.060There's a zero percent transmission rate in schools where they will not send the teachers back in to these public schools, no matter how much data they have.
00:54:02.220And so when I saw you making news on the YAF stuff, I was like, I want to talk to him because you're one of the few people.
00:54:09.300Chris Christie is another who has taken on unions in one.
00:54:13.940And just to refresh the audience's memory, because we have a lot of young listeners who probably babes in the cradle back in 2011.
00:54:21.280Hopefully they weren't worrying about it back then.
00:54:24.360But you I remember covering this on a day to day basis.
00:54:28.600And I you you crack down on these unions because you had done it already in several of your sort of state lawmaker positions where you you fixed your budget.
00:55:06.720The easiest way to explain is we took the power out of the hands of the big government special interests, which are the big government union bosses, and put it firmly into the hands of the hardworking taxpayers.
00:55:16.720More specifically, what I mean by that is having been not only a state lawmaker, but a local was called a county executive time.
00:55:24.320And I knew in those years when we faced our own budget challenges because of law state aid and the economy that the only real way to balance the state budget, if you weren't going to raise taxes, which I was not going to, not just because I said I wasn't going to, but because it would have been like a wet blanket on economic recovery.
00:55:43.780I wasn't going to cut billions of dollars from Medicaid because, well, I wanted to reform it.
00:55:47.980I wasn't going to hurt seniors and kids and families.
00:55:50.260And I wasn't going to lay off 15,000 employees, even though I want a smaller government.
00:55:55.680You don't get there through random pingslips.
00:55:57.560So as you look at all the options, I knew the only way to balance that $3.6 billion gap you just mentioned was you had to reduce the amount of money that flew from the state that was sent to the local government.
00:56:09.760But having been a local official, I knew the flip side of that was the only way you could offset that without just devastating cuts and layoffs at the local and school district level was to give us tools that many of us had asked for for decades.
00:56:23.640Under collective bargaining, even simple things, not just paying pension and health care contributions.
00:56:29.360But, for example, most schools before I did this had to buy their health insurance from a company that just happened to be connected to the teachers union.
00:56:38.620Once we got rid of it, they could bid it out.
00:56:41.280Many of those districts saved millions of millions of dollars just by bidding out their health insurance on the market and saving money that could go back into the classroom.
00:56:50.740So what we did was get rid of collective bargaining as they knew it.
00:56:54.560We took the power and put it into the hands of not just the state, but really the local officials, meaning the taxpayers, were in charge.
00:57:03.060They elect someone to a school board, city council, county board.
00:57:06.700They now can make decisions, not just about budgets.
00:57:09.800But the last thing I'll just say on this that tied into long term, the biggest benefit beyond just the money,
00:57:14.960is we got rid of seniority and tenure so that in doing so, schools can now hire based on merit.
01:01:00.140We just take that power away from those union bosses and put it back in the hands of the people we elect to run our local governments.
01:01:06.960And it's been transformational, not only in terms of saving $13 billion since then for the local taxpayers,
01:01:14.920but more importantly, now those people can run things the way they want to.
01:01:18.780And for all the hype about how awful it was going to be to education, Wisconsin still continues to have some of the best ACP scores in the country and some of the highest graduation rates.
01:02:12.520And then they said, number two, Amazon gives us good benefits and high pay comparatively starting at 15 bucks an hour opportunities to advance.
01:02:20.660And we don't we don't think we're going to do any better.
01:02:22.800I think the Democrats don't understand how it happened.
01:02:30.680The union is going to make your life better.
01:02:32.360But it gave me hope that people are starting to see through some of this rhetoric and this.
01:02:38.360I don't know, group think of like the Democratic way is the best way you will join the union.
01:02:43.720You will support BLM or you are a bad person.
01:02:46.420You know, here you've got a bunch of minority employees in the deep south saying no.
01:02:51.660Well, it shows that what I was saying earlier about young people give people the facts.
01:02:55.880If there's a way to even come close to matching the radical rhetoric on the other side, if you give people the facts, I have far more faith in the American public than I think a lot of people do, including a lot on our side of the equation.
01:03:10.260Because I think if you give people the facts, they're going to gravitate that way.
01:03:14.520But we've got to find new and unique ways.
01:03:16.320We can't just run into brick walls with the ways we've been talking about it and not make adjustments to how we communicate.
01:03:22.680I think in this instance, it didn't hurt that, you know, Amazon's obviously got a pretty expansive opportunity to provide their own side of the story.
01:03:34.320Although I did find a little bit ironic.
01:03:36.000I don't know if you did that, that they were all about making sure the ballots were legitimate and making sure that they could verify signatures and things like that.
01:03:46.040But they didn't think that's a big deal in Georgia and elsewhere when it comes to actually voting.
01:03:50.760But that aside, I think the same thing in California when you had this nonsense where they were going to clamp down an Uber and Lyft and other rideshare.
01:03:59.500Those are good examples of where we've got to, particularly with the younger generation, we've got to spell out what's at stake in things that matter to them.
01:04:07.200And, you know, California trying to say that, you know, change the franchise law so that every single person, you know, could unionize an Uber.
01:04:19.220Well, that would that would get rid of things that Uber and Lyft that young people rely on.
01:04:23.420So there are, I think, glimmers of hope at the end of the sun light at the end of the tunnel.
01:04:30.760We just got to find better ways to communicate.
01:04:32.340OK, so I watched you as you took on the unions and won back in 2011.
01:04:37.360I covered you when you were governor of Wisconsin for many years.
01:04:40.980Now you're no longer governor of Wisconsin, but I also covered you when you were running for president.
01:04:45.720And in the end, of course, Trump got the nomination and then won the presidency.
01:04:51.720You could have a long political future ahead of you.
01:04:54.880I mean, we just elected a man who's 77 years old as president.
01:04:58.280So what do you think about 2024 when it comes to your own, you know, hat in that ring and when it comes to the Republican Party in general next time around?
01:05:09.580Well, I joke about this, but there's truth to this.
01:05:11.900I'm a quarter century younger than Joe Biden.
01:05:14.640So I figured he and to a certain extent, even Trump, have kind of kind of changed.
01:05:18.260Yeah, isn't it funny how you express that?
01:05:19.900A quarter century, literally younger than Joe Biden.
01:05:22.760So I don't think I'd wait that long if I ever did run.
01:05:26.220But but in the context, there's plenty of time.
01:05:29.740The reason I'm here and this isn't just being magnanimous, but part of the reason why I'm at Young America's Foundation is I look at a state like mine in Wisconsin,
01:05:36.400realize if we don't do something to make inroads, particularly with the younger generation of voters,
01:05:42.320a person like me, a conservative like me, male or female, doesn't matter who it is,
01:05:46.580is not going to carry a state like Wisconsin for any time into the foreseeable future.
01:05:50.820And if you don't, if you can't carry Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia,
01:05:57.920we're out in the woods, you know, out in the wilderness by ourselves for quite some time when it comes to electoral politics,
01:09:03.440Well, particularly a guy who's run three times.
01:09:05.940I mean, this is, you know, people forget we talk about Reagan.
01:09:09.360And when I was at the Reagan Ranch Center a decade ago, just coming off the big protest
01:09:14.540and the beginning of my recall, came out to speak, there was a brand new exhibit in the center
01:09:19.720that was a video exhibit up on the wall, not too far from where the Jeep was that Reagan took Gorbachev around on.
01:09:28.060But this was probably the most important one for me at the time, being under all this pressure and attacks in the media and elsewhere.
01:09:35.280It was Reagan, and it showed all Sam Donaldson, Tom Brokhoff, Dan Rather,
01:09:41.600even politicians like, ironically, Joe Biden and John Kerry and others attacking him at the time for standing up and doing what he was doing.
01:09:50.100Obviously, years later, public opinion gravitated, rightfully so, to what a great president he was.
01:09:55.980But it reminded me, seeing Joe Biden, that, you know, this is a guy who's been at this forever.
01:10:01.220You know, this is a guy who wanted to run in the 80s and then, again, when Barack Obama was running and now.
01:10:06.260So I don't see him freely giving power up.
01:10:09.660I think he wants to hang on to this as long as he can.
01:10:13.560And, frankly, the performance that Harris has given, I helped Mike Pence prepare for the debates four years ago and again this year.
01:10:21.600And I got to tell you, I was surprisingly shocked as to how poorly Harris was in the debates.
01:10:29.040And since then, I mean, why would you put someone in charge of the border and then never have them even get close to it?
01:10:36.280I just think, you know, it's a horrible, by the way, why would you have open borders but closed schools?
01:10:41.840There's just a lot of crazy things going on in the world today.
01:10:44.160But I think Biden still runs, assuming his health, and I know people joke about this, but I just personally hope nothing happens to his health because I think that's a horrible thing for a country to get through if something bad did happen.
01:11:09.440I mean, you saw, I mean, I joke that, like, if I got to sit down with him, my first question would be now, Mr. President, there's a building.
01:12:20.700Let's not forget, as somebody who helped prepare Mike Pence for that debate, you must have been turned off by the,
01:12:25.940Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, I'm speaking, Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, like once, fine, twice, all right, over and over and over throughout the night.
01:12:34.660And it's obviously a tactic, and you just look small.
01:12:37.380Well, the other thing we knew from watching and having talked to some of our Senate colleagues, this was interesting.
01:12:42.600You'll appreciate this from a legal standpoint of your background.
01:12:45.480Now, we knew from what happened in Kavanaugh, there was a point in the Kavanaugh hearings where obviously she was on, she was on office.
01:12:56.200But where she asked Kavanaugh, Justice Kavanaugh, about someone at a firm where he had been and thought it was like one of these aha moments.
01:13:06.140And he just asked, well, who are you talking about?
01:13:11.260And she clearly had not been briefed beyond that one line of attack and so kind of stumbled.
01:13:17.860And so we knew going into that debate, if she was questioned about something that she wasn't prepared for, she was not really not capable of handling that.
01:13:26.800And everybody thought going in, they remembered the summer before when Biden and her had gone at it over the bus.
01:13:35.080And she delivered that very, very well.
01:14:54.840And I, for one, would like to see your hat back in the mix in 2024.
01:14:58.980I think you were always an honest, ethical guy who told it like it was and stood by your positions, whether they were controversial or not.
01:15:07.820And that's really admirable, especially in today's day and age.