The Megyn Kelly Show - The BLM Grift, Overcoming Adversity, and the Importance of Faith, with Dr. Carol Swain ｜ Ep. 281

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.220 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining us today, Dr. Carol

00:00:17.620 Swain, author, former professor, and distinguished senior fellow for the Constitutional Studies at

00:00:23.960 Texas Public Policy Foundation. Her story is absolutely incredible. It's completely inspiring.

00:00:31.020 From growing up in severe poverty and dropping out of high school, she went on to earn her GED,

00:00:37.220 a bachelor's in criminal justice, a master's in legal studies from Yale Law School,

00:00:41.380 and a PhD in political science from University of North Carolina. She spent many years as a very

00:00:47.340 successful and beloved professor before leaving the university system altogether once the annoying

00:00:53.040 woke students started to turn on her. Her recent books focus on education and how curriculum like

00:01:00.540 critical race theory is burning down American ideals. And she's got a lot of common sense advice

00:01:06.960 for her fellow Americans and parents. Welcome back, Carol. So great to have you.

00:01:12.160 Thank you so much.

00:01:13.560 So it's been fun because I was telling my family last night that I first got introduced to you

00:01:19.580 on Glenn Lowry's show, you know, his TV blogging heads. And I listened to the two of you talking

00:01:25.680 about academia and what it's become. And as I referenced up at the top, the annoying students,

00:01:30.980 the woke students who want everyone to talk just the way they talk and see the world just the way

00:01:35.140 they see it. But you have earned the right to a different opinion. And our audience is going to

00:01:41.400 understand why in about 90 minutes. Okay, so let's start not quite at the beginning. But I mean,

00:01:46.620 I've heard you tell your story before, but you did grow up in severe poverty in a shack. One of 12.

00:01:53.660 And where was that? Was it Southern Virginia?

00:01:56.180 Southwestern Virginia, about 10 miles from Booker T. Washington's birthplace.

00:02:02.260 And what was it like back then? So 1954, if my math is correct. So what was life like for those

00:02:08.360 first 10 years? I was born in 54. And, you know, like, what was it like I was living in the country,

00:02:18.760 I was living in poverty. But I think that when you're around other people that are poor,

00:02:24.320 you don't think about it. And by the time I was 10 years old, I was very much aware of the civil

00:02:30.780 rights movement, and the changes that were taking place in the country. And there was an air of optimism.

00:02:37.420 And so I can tell you that the poverty part, you know, it was difficult in the sense that we did not

00:02:44.180 have indoor plumbing. Most of the people, I guess, around us, and we were living in the community that

00:02:55.320 most of the people were white that were around us. But when we went to school, we went to a predominantly

00:03:01.300 black school. And I have said many times that my family was the poorest of the poor, because we were

00:03:10.060 poorer than most of the other black children in that black school. And it was reflected in our clothes, 0.90

00:03:18.260 we didn't have a car, we had to walk along a dirt road. It seemed like a mile or so. But recently,

00:03:26.580 I went back, and probably it was a half a mile, but we had to walk down a dirt road, cross a highway,

00:03:34.720 two-lane highway, stand on the side of the road, waiting for a school bus that often broke down,

00:03:40.720 especially in the wintertime. And so we didn't have a watch. And so you didn't know if the school bus

00:03:45.700 had, if you'd missed the school bus, or if it was still coming, if it was broken down. And if it was

00:03:52.360 broken down, we missed school. And there was one winter where me and my siblings missed 80 of 180

00:04:01.240 school days, because there were lots of snow, we didn't have snowshoes.

00:04:06.660 Hmm. What, I understand your mom dropped out of high school when she was 10th grade, and your dad,

00:04:14.920 when he was third grade, only had a third grade education. So how did they put food on the table?

00:04:20.320 I can tell you that my mother, in some ways, she was almost like a feminist in that she divorced 1.00

00:04:27.420 early on, she got a divorce. And so I had a stepfather. And that stepfather was alcoholic,

00:04:36.660 abusive, as well as my mother, I grew up with, was an alcoholic at the time. And my stepfather

00:04:45.700 worked for a white family. And our home was located in a field, that shack, owned by his employer.

00:04:56.760 And so, you know, he would bring, he'd get paid on a Friday. Usually there would be a fight. There was

00:05:07.480 always a struggle, you know, to eat and for food. And there was a country store owned by the man that

00:05:14.580 owned the land that we lived on. And we would go there and get some things on credit. And I can

00:05:22.220 remember going there, you know, trying to get something my mother told me to get and having

00:05:26.760 the store manager say that, sorry, can't do it. Your stepfather didn't pay his bill.

00:05:33.420 So it was difficult. I can say that I had grandparents that did care about us. And so a lot

00:05:42.260 of times my grandfather and my grandmother would come and they would give us food.

00:05:47.040 And my understanding is that your grandmother gave you, in addition to food, something that would

00:05:54.140 prove really important to your future. And that was books.

00:05:57.640 Yes. I mean, those books saved my life. And I think about the woman that my grandmother worked

00:06:04.060 for. Her name was Ada Corns. And, um, and she was white and she had this brick house. And back then 0.71

00:06:11.120 a lot of, uh, the white Sarandas had brick homes and they were one-story homes, but they were very

00:06:16.940 nice. And my grandmother cleaned her house and every now and then, uh, Ada would decide she was 0.99

00:06:24.300 going to change her furniture and my grandmother would get whatever she discarded. And this was,

00:06:30.400 you know, very nice furniture. So she gave her a library and we had, uh, encyclopedias as well

00:06:37.220 as, um, all the classic books. And so, uh, my grandmother, you know, she allowed, uh, my,

00:06:45.160 she allowed the children, you know, they were old enough to read, to have access to those,

00:06:49.280 to those books. And she wasn't worried about whether as children we'd turn the books up or

00:06:54.780 she allowed us access. And I think it made all the difference in the world, but I think Ada

00:07:01.020 Corns knew exactly what she was doing when she gave my mother that my grandmother, that 0.99

00:07:06.120 library. Wow. I mean, at this point, if anybody had given us a snapshot of, you know, very young

00:07:12.500 Carol at just given the circumstances, people wouldn't have been saying, Oh, she, this is

00:07:17.040 going to be a PhD college professor at some of the most revered institutions in America.

00:07:21.640 But it began really with some love and some books. It doesn't take all that much more to

00:07:27.280 spark a love of learning or an interest in it, or just a little flame, but it would have to be

00:07:31.840 nurtured over the years. And we'll get to that and how it happened, how you started to actually think

00:07:35.820 of yourself as something more before we leave the, the sort of those first 10 years. Can you just

00:07:42.440 walk us like, what was the sleeping arrangement with 12 kids and your mom and your stepdad? And I

00:07:47.380 realize if there's 12, they can't all have been around at one time, but how did like, how did life

00:07:53.520 work inside of that two room house? Well, I have to say that the two rooms were expanded by my stepfather

00:08:03.060 into four rooms. And once he added the two rooms on the back of the house, there was a room for the

00:08:10.200 children and there was a bedroom for my mother and stepfather. Before that we slept on the kitchen

00:08:17.320 floor. Well, once we had a bedroom for the children, there was a girl's bed and a boy's bed.

00:08:23.520 All the girls slept in one bed, all the boys slept in another bed. And probably there were not more

00:08:29.020 than nine of us living in the house at that time, because some of the children were born after we

00:08:34.280 left the country. And I can tell you that I left home in my early teens, pretty much.

00:08:43.080 By the time I was 13 or 14, my older sister and I left my mother's house. You know, I could say we ran

00:08:52.100 away from home because we didn't have permission and we went to live with our father that we didn't

00:08:57.220 really know. And that created its own adventures and risks. At one point, our father got ill. And so

00:09:06.260 it was teenagers running the house. And I had an older sister, you know, that loved, she liked, you know,

00:09:12.580 she liked boys and dating. And I was always quiet and I was not into that stuff. And so there were

00:09:20.000 some dangerous situations that came about because of her boyfriends.

00:09:25.720 Right. I'm sure. You know, before you got to that point, I was thinking about J.D. Vance,

00:09:30.060 who had a similar situation, you know, where his mom had sort of, well, more serial men in her life.

00:09:38.180 And it was very damaging for him. And they were they tended to be abusive and alcoholic and

00:09:42.500 abject poverty. And he did have a grandmother, his mama, who loved him and, you know, believed in

00:09:49.100 him. But no money. Absolutely not. Not two nickels to rub together. And, you know, both of you, of

00:09:54.480 course, he's running for U.S. Senate right now. So it's just that these American stories are so

00:09:58.220 inspirational, especially in today's day and age when you're told America's awful and you have no

00:10:02.960 chance and the system's against you, especially if you're a woman, especially if you're a black woman 1.00

00:10:06.280 and so on. But this is 54 to 64, your first 10 years at a very tumultuous time in the country,

00:10:12.800 especially going in 64 to 70, when we were fighting some major racial battles in the country

00:10:20.640 and the Civil Rights Act was passed and the Voting Rights Act and all that. So what was your experience

00:10:25.020 growing up in the South as a young, poor black girl with race in America?

00:10:30.740 I don't think we focused on it that much. We had a television. I had access to television

00:10:39.100 and watched the news a lot. I was interested in politics and in the news. And I believe there

00:10:47.020 was an air of optimism because we, I felt like we were winning the battle because, you know,

00:10:56.160 the media portrayed the civil rights movement in a way that was positive for black people

00:11:02.740 that would be watching it on the news. And I remember the Kennedy assassination, you know,

00:11:09.380 being in school and coming home and I was watching TV, you know, when Jack Ruby shot Oswell.

00:11:15.860 I remember that. And I also remember being very interested in Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy and just

00:11:27.100 watching and remembering and being affected by the assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, after Robert

00:11:34.280 Kennedy was assassinated, I lost interest in politics for many years. I had stayed up late that night

00:11:41.740 watching him win that primary. I went to bed. And when I awakened the next morning, you know, he had

00:11:47.840 been shot and killed and that impacted me greatly about America. And so I don't think that, you know,

00:11:58.900 my mother, my stepfather and the people I was around, my grandparents, no one talked about white

00:12:07.800 people, hating white people. I was always curious, though, about why my grandfather always said,

00:12:14.320 yes, sir, no, sir, to white, young white men, or almost like teens. I just didn't understand that.

00:12:22.960 And I don't think I ever asked him why I understand it now. But then I didn't.

00:12:29.380 And he what year was he born?

00:12:33.360 1900, I believe.

00:12:35.240 Wow. Yeah.

00:12:35.920 And he was a very fair skin. I mean, he could pass for Caucasian. My mother is fair skin. She's not as 0.98

00:12:43.380 you know, she she couldn't pass for Caucasian. But my family, you know, there were people in it that

00:12:51.760 had lots of Caucasian blood.

00:12:55.640 So you you mentioned 13 or 14, you and your sister, try to go out on your own. And by age 16,

00:13:02.240 you got married, which I imagine was another form of escape.

00:13:06.200 It was definitely a form of escape. But I don't know if you remember a Florida boy some years ago

00:13:13.760 may have been in the 80s. He got lots of attention, because he filed to place himself in a foster home

00:13:21.140 to sort of emancipate himself from his parents.

00:13:24.560 I can tell you that I did the same thing when I was about 13, that I went to the juvenile court on my

00:13:34.980 own and filed a petition to be placed into a foster home. And it created all sorts of turmoil in my

00:13:42.580 family. Because even though I told the truth about the circumstances that made me want to be in a

00:13:48.980 foster home, my, my family, they got very upset, you know, my aunts and uncles and all these people,

00:13:58.340 because they felt that the social workers would come and take all of my mother's children away. 1.00

00:14:04.220 And I was tested by psychologists, and, and went through a process. But on the day that I was supposed

00:14:13.300 to testify, all I did was cry. I didn't say anything about what was taking place. And so the judge,

00:14:19.460 judge ruled that I could live with my grandmother. That was still was not a solution. Because by then,

00:14:25.540 my grandmother's house had burnt down, the library was gone. And she was living in a trailer. And when

00:14:32.500 that didn't work out, you know, I'm still looking for escape. And I ended up deciding that getting

00:14:39.320 married, uh, would be a way out. And so that was part of, uh, that decision. But there's something

00:14:47.640 else, you know, that I share sometimes when I give what I would call, you know, as a Christian, I'd call

00:14:53.060 my testimony or my story is that around that time, age 13 or 14, I got, um, introduced to Jehovah's

00:15:01.920 witnesses and they were, uh, you know, knocking on doors and they were preaching at that time that the

00:15:08.740 world was going to come to an end in 1975. And I was, you know, just thinking for one thing,

00:15:16.600 I guess I believe them. I did believe them. Um, and I was at that point, um, I knew I was different.

00:15:25.640 I always knew that I was different. And, and I always felt, you know, like I was this person

00:15:30.160 that was a participant observer of, of my family and everyone around me. Well, when they came,

00:15:36.420 you know, in the country with their message, I started studying with them. My mother told me,

00:15:42.440 you know, that I was making a mistake. She also told me that when I got married, she had to sign,

00:15:48.040 she said twice that I was making a mistake. And at any rate, um, I joined them for a while

00:15:55.360 and it had a lot to do with their message. The world would end in 1975. My belief in it and

00:16:02.740 thinking that I wanted to experience, uh, having children and I wanted to experience life. Uh,

00:16:09.620 all of that were factors in my decision, uh, to get married at 16. And I was not pregnant when I got

00:16:16.640 married. I was just looking for a way out. The man I married, I wasn't in love with. He had a job,

00:16:22.740 he had a car and that was all that was necessary. Wow. That story reminds me of, uh, my brother's

00:16:29.720 son, my brother, my brother's wife and their two sons were home one day. This is down in Atlanta

00:16:34.960 and a Jehovah's witness, uh, person came to the door and knocked on the front door and they answered

00:16:40.060 and gave him a little, you know, pitch on what it would be like and why they should become Jehovah's

00:16:45.380 witnesses and made it sound really good. And their, their little guy who was, I don't know,

00:16:49.020 he was probably six or seven at the time, uh, said it sounds great. You know, they promised all sorts

00:16:54.220 of fun things that they were going to do together. And he was like, let's do it. And, uh, my brother

00:16:59.220 looked at him and said, you understand if you, if we become Jehovah's witnesses, you don't get to

00:17:03.620 celebrate Christmas anymore or your birthday. He said, forget it. Nevermind. The door slammed shut.

00:17:11.220 They don't disclose that up front, Carol. Well, you know, I knew all that, but I wasn't getting

00:17:16.640 anything for Christmas anyway. My heart's desire. The thing that I wanted most for Christmas was a,

00:17:24.080 paint by number set one Christmas. I didn't get that and an easy bake oven. And, uh, some of my

00:17:30.820 friends have heard me tell this story so many times that this year they gave me the paint by

00:17:36.080 number set. Oh, Oh, I mean the easy bake oven was revolutionary back then. I grew up, I was born in

00:17:42.540 70 and that was by far my favorite toy. It was like, you actually could bake little terrible tasting

00:17:49.080 cupcakes in it. So you're dead on. It was fun. One of these days, maybe you'll get that. You get

00:17:54.580 that next year for Christmas. All right. So, but wait, can I just go back? Cause were you living with

00:17:59.300 your sister? Just the two of you alone at some point prior to you getting married then? Was there

00:18:03.360 a stint of just the two of you? I, uh, yes it was. And, and my, um, so I can tell you a little bit

00:18:10.940 about my sister's boyfriends. Uh, she had one boyfriend that his favorite thing to do was to

00:18:16.320 get us in the car and try to, uh, race a train, you know, try to beat, wait till the train was

00:18:22.200 coming and try to beat the train across the, uh, get across the tracks. And there were several times

00:18:29.060 where he had to spin the car around rather than to apply into the side of the train. So, you know,

00:18:35.260 I'm sitting in the back seat of the car. Then she had a boyfriend that liked to play with guns.

00:18:40.920 And, uh, and I, I remember vividly the names of these guys. Well, the, this one particular one

00:18:47.140 would put a bullet in the gun, you know, spin it around and he would point it at us and pull the

00:18:53.720 trigger and it would go click, click, click. Then it would stick it out the door and it would go off. 0.58

00:18:59.900 Uh, and so he was playing Russian roulette and I was so afraid of the boyfriends and we were living

00:19:07.680 in the city at that time, the two of us. Uh, and eventually my sister did get shot by one of those

00:19:13.940 boy, one of her boyfriends, uh, and me, I was always quiet. And there was a time, uh, you know,

00:19:21.260 in the, uh, uh, late sixties, I guess that would have been late sixties. Cause I got married in 71.

00:19:27.620 All of this stuff would have happened before then. Uh, we, um, we were trying to make our own drugs

00:19:35.220 and there were not drugs around where we were, at least we didn't know how to get them. And so we

00:19:41.540 were, uh, crushing aspirins and stuff like that and putting it, rolling that up. And when, when drugs

00:19:48.720 did become available, I had no interest whatsoever. So I never smoked a joint. And the closest I came was

00:19:56.120 when we rolled up those, um, aspirins and tried to smoke that. Hmm. Wow. I mean, yeah. Desperate

00:20:02.620 times, I guess. But when I'm hearing you, I'm thinking about all of these, any one of these could

00:20:07.600 be considered a major childhood trauma, um, divorce or alcoholism or fighting, um, any sort of physical

00:20:16.820 abuse or, you know, corporal punishment, um, the Russian roulette story, the, your sister being

00:20:22.820 shot, seeking to be put in foster care, you know, growing up in abject poverty and so on. Any one of

00:20:29.520 those could be considered a major childhood trauma that would be predicted to come back to cause,

00:20:35.820 you know, major issues later in life without some massive intervention. And I'm looking at you now,

00:20:42.040 and I know your resume and I've listened to you a million times. You're brilliant. And I,

00:20:45.120 you just such a deep thinker on so many issues. So like I'm left wondering, I don't, I never heard

00:20:50.400 of you talk about the intense therapy you went through. I know you found God, but what, what made

00:20:57.580 the difference between, cause even people who get educated don't necessarily just let go of that

00:21:04.000 kind of trauma. Right. So how are you so well? Well, I mean, we could talk about my faith,

00:21:11.300 but I can tell you that it's been a long journey and late teens, early twenties. I, you know, at some

00:21:18.420 point I started going to the, met to the medicine cabinet. And I think this started when I was much

00:21:25.060 younger and I would just grab a handful of pills. And during the time I was with my sister and we

00:21:30.980 were living alone in Roanoke, Virginia, I would, um, take bottles of pills like aspirins and I would,

00:21:37.720 um, you know, vomit up, you know, black, uh, fluid, uh, which I'm sure was blood. I didn't know at the

00:21:46.000 time. And, and I didn't, most of the time I didn't go to the hospital. I should be dead. And I mean,

00:21:52.980 I went through a period where I struggled. I was weird. I love dark shadows. I mean that you probably

00:22:00.740 don't know that there was a show with Barnumas Collins called dark shadows. No, it's ringing a

00:22:06.800 bell. Well, it had vampires and it was spooky and stuff like that. And, and, um, but I did what doctors

00:22:16.360 call suicide gestures, you know, which is really a cry for help. And I was in counseling a lot. I cannot

00:22:23.980 say the counselors helped me because when I would tell them, you know, my story or what I was

00:22:29.820 thinking, I guess they would always agree with me or they would be so they would feel like if they

00:22:36.440 were in that circumstance, they would feel the same way, but I didn't want someone agreeing with

00:22:40.840 me. I wanted them to sort of tell me how messed up I was or something, but they were like, holy crap, 0.95

00:22:46.200 Carol, this is bad. This is really bad. You're like, wait, what? Get yourself together. 0.98

00:22:50.580 Most of them didn't do that, but I can tell you that I did have a male counselor, you know,

00:22:57.080 and I was sitting there on the couch crying and he comes, puts his arms around me, kisses me in the

00:23:01.380 mouth. Uh, and then tells me that I could never come back there again, you know, and like, well,

00:23:08.320 I mean, he just, he did the right thing, I guess, because he said I couldn't come back there again,

00:23:12.420 but that was, uh, what he did. And at some point I decided that counselors did not have, um, the solution.

00:23:19.940 Uh, and throughout all of this, um, I've always felt like there was something I was supposed to

00:23:27.900 do. My mother said as a child, I was so different from my other children because I was so serious

00:23:33.540 and that things came out of my mouth that she didn't think came out of would come out of a

00:23:37.980 child's mouth. And that I was always interested in running the household. And I can remember

00:23:43.020 screaming at her that she was an alcoholic. She needed to get help and, uh, and, and giving her 0.99

00:23:49.740 my opinion on her parenting skills. I can remember that, but, um, she loved that. Right. And, but

00:23:58.380 mostly, you know, I felt like I was a participant observer and that I was watching people that were

00:24:04.640 not like me. And so I did not fit in and I can say, I guess, honestly, that, uh, I've never really

00:24:11.980 fit in, uh, to the environments where I've been. And, um, but it's fine now because, you know, age 68,

00:24:20.640 I mean, I learned, uh, to accept myself, but my Christian conversion experience was the turning point.

00:24:28.500 Up until that time, I had suffered with a lifelong shyness. Uh, I had the opportunity to be on Good

00:24:35.060 Morning America back in the, uh, nineties and I was afraid to do it. I was afraid. And it was only, um,

00:24:44.240 after I had my conversion experience that I started getting over my shyness and I started doing media

00:24:50.260 and I felt like God impressed on me that he had given me a message bigger than me. And I had a very

00:24:57.800 dramatic Christian conversion experience, uh, uh, in a, it started in a medical hospital where my life

00:25:05.080 played in front of me and I thought I was dying. And, um, and that set in motion the process that

00:25:12.000 eventually changed me. And I went through a period when mostly I was agnostic while I was in academia,

00:25:18.220 but I was spiritual, uh, believing that there was something bigger than me God in my life,

00:25:23.920 but I believe one God, many paths. So I would not have said Jesus Christ. My journey took me through

00:25:29.720 new age, Eastern religions, uh, and just full circle to Christianity. Uh, but because I had been

00:25:37.380 familiar with Christianity and Jehovah's witnesses, and I did not feel like organized religion had any

00:25:43.360 solutions. So I did not go the traditional route to get to where I am. Especially once the world

00:25:48.800 continued after 1975, you were over the Jehovah's witness thing. Wait a minute. I left them before 0.99

00:25:55.600 1975. I was over with them before 75. And so, uh, the part of my story about 1975 is that my world

00:26:04.700 ended. Jehovah's witnesses said that the world would come to an end, I believe it was October 14, 1975,

00:26:11.280 where early 19, by 1975, I'd had enough of them. Uh, and I'm, and I actually, uh, it was a disfellowship

00:26:22.080 from them, meaning that they're not supposed to speak to me and they turned me over to Satan for

00:26:28.280 damnation of the flesh. That was, um, I felt, it felt wonderful because it meant that they couldn't

00:26:33.980 speak to me anymore. Um, at the time. Um, but in 75, I got my high school equivalency. I took a job

00:26:42.540 outside the home working in a garment factory. I had a daughter die of a crib death and I filed for

00:26:48.620 divorce that summer. And so Jehovah's witnesses were actually right. Uh, my world ended in 1975, 1.00

00:26:56.200 1976, I start college and all of these opportunities open up for me. And, uh, that, uh, you know, that is

00:27:05.700 the significant part of my story. People came into my life. They encouraged me. They steered me. Uh,

00:27:12.900 many of those people, in fact, most of those people were white. And, um, and so when I look at race,

00:27:20.200 I do look at it differently than a lot of other people. And during the time I was at the community

00:27:25.460 college, uh, earning my first degree, uh, and when I was working those minimum wage jobs, I didn't just

00:27:31.980 work in a garment factory. I've been a sales clerk. I've sold things, uh, from door to door and, um,

00:27:39.420 I've worked in nursing homes for the elderly, you know, and I've done all these jobs and I was working

00:27:47.200 along poor white people. Uh, and they were just like me, you know, we all needed a 25 cents an hour

00:27:54.740 raised. They love that children. They wanted that children, you know, to have a better life just

00:27:59.640 like I did. And, um, for whatever reason, I don't think that I have been wired to see race the way

00:28:06.740 other people do. I know about the struggles of the poor. And so I've always felt like, uh, we focus too

00:28:12.480 much on race when we really need to be focusing on, um, I would say, you know, social classes,

00:28:19.740 social economics, uh, at the end of the day, you know, people are people and I've just never felt

00:28:28.020 the way, uh, a lot of the radicals have felt about race. Even though I can say that in high school,

00:28:34.800 I had my militancy, uh, never reached high school, but during junior high, I had my militancy days in

00:28:42.800 that I wore Afro and, um, I love James Brown and I can remember drawing, I have our talent,

00:28:51.920 a picture of George Wallace nailing it on a tree where everyone would see it. When the bus came,

00:28:57.660 it was a wanted dead or alive poster. So I did that.

00:29:02.740 Well, I mean, there's so much in there to dissect, but it's listening to you talk. It's a miracle.

00:29:07.380 You lasted in academia as long as you did, Carol. I mean, it's like these views, as you know, are,

00:29:12.560 are reboting there. And you've written and talked about that quite a bit as well. After the break,

00:29:17.860 I'd love to get back into really how though, like how, after you got your GED, how do you go from,

00:29:22.940 okay, I got a GED to a PhD to professor at Princeton to professor at Vanderbilt. How did,

00:29:28.580 how did that, I mean, it's, it's related to her work ethic and God and the journal journey that she

00:29:35.060 was on, even though he came in knocking a few times and Carol, she didn't necessarily hear him

00:29:39.360 very clearly in the beginning. She got there eventually. Uh, we'll take a pause here while

00:29:43.120 we squeeze in a break and pick it up with Dr. Carol Swain right after this.

00:29:54.600 So Carol, you decided to get your GED. You did that. And then as I understand it,

00:29:59.420 you had an encounter with a medical doctor who paid you a compliment and you started to think

00:30:04.880 about what your future might, might look like differently. Yes. Uh, it was after one of my

00:30:10.600 suicide gestures, uh, this doctor, he spoke to me and then he spoke to my husband at the time. And, um,

00:30:21.440 and after that, um, uh, conversation, uh, you know, he, uh, he just told me, you know,

00:30:30.980 that I was intelligent, I was attractive. I can do more with my life. And I had forgotten

00:30:36.640 that I was intelligent because even during those years, when we were missing lots of school,

00:30:41.820 my older sister and I could miss, you know, a week of school, two weeks of school and still go in and

00:30:48.140 make an A or a B. And I guess that's a credit to my mother. Cause I know that my mother could have

00:30:53.400 gone to college under a different set of circumstances. She had polio and that was a factor in her dropping

00:31:00.360 out of school. She couldn't climb the steps of the high school. And, um, and so he reminded me,

00:31:08.840 you know, that there was a time when I was smart and also the high school class that I would have

00:31:14.580 graduated with people were graduating that, you know, in my mind, I knew these people and I knew

00:31:21.740 that they were not as smart as I was. And I learned about the high school equivalency test at a time when

00:31:27.900 I was too young to take it because in the state of Virginia, you had to be 20 to take it. And I wasn't

00:31:33.040 20 when I learned about it, but I did, uh, take the test and I was told that I had one of the highest

00:31:39.340 scores they had seen, uh, except in math, I barely passed math. I, I scored in the 34th percentile. Uh, and I

00:31:48.940 think that 32 was the failing percentile and that had a lot to do with, there's no way that you can

00:31:57.280 do well and understand algebra and, and higher mathematics. If you're not in school and understanding

00:32:05.000 the processes. And I did drop out after completing the eighth grade, I started the ninth grade. Uh, and

00:32:12.140 that was when I totally left school. And I remember that the last report card that I received in school

00:32:19.420 was all F's. And that was because there was so much, uh, uh, turmoil at that time. I was living

00:32:26.340 with my sister in Roanoke that, uh, there was no way to focus a study. It was, it was all about survival.

00:32:34.600 Yeah. I go, I can, I can understand that just from the stories that you're, you've been telling about

00:32:39.220 that time. So you wind up taking the GED, you score well. And then I love the story of you,

00:32:46.720 you went first to community college and I heard you, I think it was on James Dobson's podcast,

00:32:51.540 talking about how you were the one, this is the one thing I tell people, Carol, when they say like,

00:32:56.560 how should I get ahead? Or what should I do to, you know, if I want your job, what should I do?

00:32:59.960 And I always say, say yes to everything, especially when you're young, like be the one volunteer to work

00:33:05.500 overnight, work on Christmas, work on the weekends, be the one who says yes to every empty the

00:33:09.660 garbages. If that's it, if that's what they want you to do, be above nothing. That's never. And you

00:33:14.340 know what? I'm still that person. I'm, I'm still the one who's like, I'll do it. I'll do it all. I

00:33:18.620 can, I can do it. I can turn things around. And it, like, it's amazing. Cause not everybody's that

00:33:24.200 way. So if you can just make yourself that way or commit to being a hard worker, success will follow.

00:33:29.300 And that was so evident in your community college experience. Tell us what you did while you were there.

00:33:34.340 You know, sometimes I don't tell this part of the story because I don't believe,

00:33:39.400 I don't think people will believe it, but I was a work-study student working 10 hours a week

00:33:45.000 in the community college library. Often the regular employees would call out. And so there'd be a

00:33:52.300 crisis about who's going to work the evenings. And I would always volunteer to work the evenings.

00:33:58.240 And so the library director created a full-time job nights and weekends. They hired me for that.

00:34:07.080 And, uh, I had a position where when I decided to get a four-year degree, I could go to school full-time

00:34:14.760 during the day, work nights and weekends, bring my children to work when I needed to and set them at

00:34:20.980 a table. You know, I didn't know God at the time, but he certainly set up the perfect job situation

00:34:27.340 for me for five years. I worked for the state of Virginia, you know, getting paid what was the

00:34:33.300 salary at that time. And I was going to school and because people didn't use the library nights

00:34:39.280 and weekends, I studied and I graduated magna cum laude from Ronald college.

00:34:44.720 Wow. And prior to that, I skipped over, I feel like these are God's messengers,

00:34:49.540 but I skipped over the orderly who did he or she put a book on your bed. I want, I, can you just

00:34:57.000 cover that? Cause I feel like that's one of the messengers to two different stories. When I was

00:35:01.020 working in a nursing home, um, an African orderly from Sierra Leone told me that he went to college

00:35:07.560 with a lot of people who were not as smart as I was. I want to go to college. And so that's how,

00:35:13.660 uh, he planted the seed that led me to check, uh, into the community college and, and start my

00:35:20.840 college education. So the medical doctor and the African orderly had words that changed my life. 0.99

00:35:28.300 Now the story about the, uh, hospital experience that was during the time when I had, uh, I would say

00:35:37.860 Paul on the road to Damascus trip experience. Um, I was in the hospital for a medical reason.

00:35:45.040 I was taking, uh, medications and some people would say that it was a medication,

00:35:49.760 but my life played in front of me and I thought I was dying. And, um, and I was, you know, I was just

00:35:57.660 totally, I would say messed up and, and, and lost. I didn't actually, actually know that, but I know

00:36:04.260 that my life played in front of me. It was as if there was a narrator showing me different points

00:36:09.520 in my life, asking me to choose. And I knew about, uh, you know, I knew about Jesus. I knew about,

00:36:16.120 uh, Christianity, but I believed in reincarnation at the time. Uh, after I tell this story, uh, any

00:36:23.320 credibility I have left in the world is gone. But anyway, I'm excited. I believed in reincarnation

00:36:31.260 because I couldn't explain my life. How is it that of the 12, I was the one that got out.

00:36:36.280 It didn't make any sense to me. My life was always better than their lives. I was buying a new house

00:36:40.900 when I, uh, was 17. Um, and it just, uh, and that happened because I happened to be listening to the

00:36:48.360 radio. They were advertising FHA 235 homes. All you needed was $300 down. And so I watched a brick house

00:36:56.340 being built from the ground up, you know, that I lived in. And so to my family, you know, my experience

00:37:03.400 was so, um, it was just, it was just so different. And, uh, but I had, and I had a lot of guilt about

00:37:11.080 that. It didn't make sense, uh, you know, why my life was so much better than everyone else's.

00:37:16.060 But in that hospital, um, I chose Christ, even though I didn't know, you know, anything about

00:37:24.540 Christianity. Uh, but at first I was thinking, you know, that, that when the narrator said you'll

00:37:31.180 not be born again, that I had reached the top of this, you know, karmic, uh, circle. And that was

00:37:37.840 why I wasn't going to be born again as a Christian. Now I know that it means that you had this one 0.98

00:37:42.680 life, you got to get it right. This one life, there was a black Pentecostal chaplain at the

00:37:48.400 Princeton hospital. That is not a community where you should get a black Pentecostal chaplain. 1.00

00:37:54.060 You know, maybe you get Lutheran, you get Catholic, uh, Episcopalian, you don't get black Pentecostal, 0.99

00:38:00.400 but there was one there. Uh, and my father had been a Pentecostal. I had not been any of that stuff.

00:38:06.340 Um, and he talked with me and there was a, um, cleaning lady who threw a book about Jesus into

00:38:14.500 the hospital bed and said, this is all you need. And, uh, and those people, um, arranged for me to

00:38:21.760 get baptized. I got baptized in a cold metal tub in a inner city hospital, uh, inner city church in

00:38:30.980 Trenton. Uh, but I didn't understand really what I was doing. And, uh, and I came out of that

00:38:37.500 experience going to church for about three months, but leaving it behind and blending new age and

00:38:47.200 Eastern religions, because I never felt like the Christian religion had answers. It didn't have 1.00

00:38:52.040 any power. And so for a while I had, um, uh, the, the Swain religion, which was a blend of a whole lot

00:38:59.640 of stuff. And it took me probably another two and a half, two and a half to three years to really

00:39:05.480 understand the Christian gospel, what it meant to follow Jesus Christ. And when I made that decision,

00:39:12.480 I got rebaptized. Uh, so that is part of that part of my story, uh, how I got from the community

00:39:21.020 college to the four year college, four year college. Um, I hadn't planned to get, uh, a bachelor's

00:39:28.400 degree. I applied for jobs in business, had chosen business because I had been told that art was not

00:39:34.760 practical and I wanted to be practical. Um, and when I applied for jobs in the business realm, I was told

00:39:42.760 I needed a bachelor's degree. I went through the college catalog. I looked for the field that had

00:39:46.660 the least amount of math. It was criminal justice. And, uh, that interested me and political science.

00:39:53.300 I was interested in it because it was about power relationships and it was not that I wanted it.

00:39:59.700 I wanted to study people who had power and I was happy to go to a predominantly white school because 0.99

00:40:06.840 I've been black all of my life. I've been around black people. I wanted to know how the rest of the

00:40:11.620 world thought and felt. Hmm. Well, none of that is in any way credibility threatening. Uh, I think

00:40:18.760 to the contrary, uh, but when you look back and you sort of see these little messengers coming,

00:40:23.440 whether it's the, the African orderly or the doctor or the woman who put the book on the bed,

00:40:28.400 it does seem to me like God was knocking and eventually you opened the door. And I know that

00:40:34.860 you found that spiritually enriching and it changed your life and it changed the way, you know, you enjoy

00:40:39.160 life. But I also couldn't help but wonder if you think it was the beginning of troubles for you

00:40:45.240 in the academic setting, because it's not a particularly spiritual realm. And I'm not so

00:40:52.180 sure they were, you know, based on what I've heard you talk to a lot of folks, um, that they were totally

00:40:57.000 in favor of this new version of you. I can tell you that the Princeton years were, were hard, but not

00:41:04.860 because I was a Christian or anything like that. I was struggling with all the trauma, I guess, from my

00:41:11.320 childhood. And I started getting attacked by other blacks early on. I mean, part of it had to do with 0.81

00:41:17.860 the fact that they had black political scientists, black organizations. I was the student. I was the

00:41:23.520 black person that didn't join the black student union when I was getting my four-year degree, because 0.53

00:41:28.480 I was too busy. I was trying to distinguish myself. I mean, I had a plan that I was going to graduate 0.67

00:41:33.600 with honors. And I had children. And so I was focused. Uh, and so, um, and, and in graduate school, I just

00:41:41.180 was not involved in the black stuff. Uh, when I became a political scientist, I did not go through the 0.89

00:41:48.100 ranks of black political scientists. All of a sudden they discovered that there was this black woman at

00:41:53.320 Princeton that was getting all this attention. And, uh, you know, my first book, it won national prizes and all this

00:41:59.860 stuff. There was a lot of jealousy. And I was attacked and I was told that I was a conservative.

00:42:05.400 And back then I did not want to hear that I was conservative and I definitely wasn't a Republican. 0.60

00:42:10.080 Um, and I was told that, you know, that I had sold out black people and that if they, they could be at

00:42:20.460 Princeton too, but they weren't willing to sell out their race. And, and I just didn't know. And I would 0.98

00:42:26.400 look at my, uh, my, uh, resume, I would look at my CV and, and I would just wonder, you know, like,

00:42:34.740 how did this happen? Uh, because everything they were saying and their worldview was so different from

00:42:41.100 my worldview, but Princeton years, they were, they were a struggle. And I started the spiritual journey

00:42:49.000 right after I got tenure. And it was almost like when I was on that quest for tenure, I had told them when

00:42:55.840 I was hired that I was going to do it in three years and seven years normally. And the person

00:43:01.360 who chaired my search committee, he was John Diulio, you know, who President Bush appointed to be the

00:43:08.240 head of the first faith-based initiative. And now he's a professor at Penn, as far as I know. Uh, he had

00:43:15.760 gotten tenure in one year and he came from a working class background. Father was a cop, Italian. Uh, and so

00:43:22.800 he, you know, didn't really fit either. And so I thought if, if John could do it in one year,

00:43:29.040 I certainly can do it in three years. And so when I was hired, I told them I was going to do that. And

00:43:34.020 people said, Oh yeah, fine. And, uh, and I actually, you know, went up early and got early tenure

00:43:40.360 and that created, um, problems and it created problems because, um, you know, I had outside offers

00:43:49.600 and I played hard ball. Uh, I, I was asked, you know, what would I do if they told me to wait a

00:43:57.840 year? And I said, I'll take one of my offers. And my chairman at the time asked me, well, if you take

00:44:04.000 one of your offers, can we ever get you back? And I said, no, I spend the rest of my life proving what a

00:44:11.120 mistake Princeton made. And so they gave me tenure, but, um, that those were the circumstances. And so then

00:44:18.160 after I got tenure and I think a lot of it had to do with, I just wanted to prove that someone from

00:44:23.520 my background, you know, could go to Princeton and they could get tenure and they could get it early.

00:44:29.440 The depression came back, you know, and then that really accelerated the spiritual journey, uh,

00:44:37.520 that culminated, you know, with the conversion experience towards the end of my career.

00:44:43.680 Right. When you're chasing ghosts and you think if you can, if you can catch the ghost,

00:44:47.440 it's going to make you feel happy. It's the thing you need to feel fulfilled. Then you catch the ghost

00:44:51.800 and it does what a ghost will do, which is goes right through you and out the other way in a totally

00:44:55.760 unfulfilling way. And then you're left to say, now what? That didn't work at all right now.

00:45:02.000 That's right. Now opportunity, I guess, to find out what's really bothering me.

00:45:07.560 You perfectly captured it. It was chasing the ghost. And I, I won the highest prize a political

00:45:14.360 scientist can win, won three national prizes, earning more money than I ever imagined in my life.

00:45:19.880 And I was miserable. It was, it was terrible. I was so unfulfilled and, uh, I never thought

00:45:26.040 of suicide again. I, even though some people thought I might, but no, I was never attempted to

00:45:33.400 do the suicide gestures again, but I was terribly, terribly unfulfilled.

00:45:39.800 But life would have so much more in store for Carol Swain, uh, who would go on to accomplish so 0.99

00:45:45.400 much, including, uh, interestingly, well, I think you were the co-chair person of President Trump's

00:45:50.440 1776 commission, just to name one that our audience is probably familiar with. Uh, we'll get to that piece

00:45:55.960 of her story, the latest on Carol's thoughts on CRT in our schools, the arrest of this black lives 1.00

00:46:02.520 matter, uh, leader, uh, that just hit the news today for fraud in Boston. Uh, so many things

00:46:09.080 to go over. So stand by, uh, with more with the one and only Dr. Carol Swain. And remember folks,

00:46:14.760 you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon east

00:46:21.240 and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:46:26.600 If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download an apple, Spotify, Pandora stitcher,

00:46:31.720 or wherever you get your podcasts. I re I was looking at the reviews on the Apple, uh, podcast

00:46:36.520 show this morning. Love, love, love hearing from you all love your thoughts and your feedback.

00:46:41.560 Please go there and leave a comment. Promise. I will read it. And while you're there,

00:46:45.400 you'll find our full archives, more than 275 shows, including the first time Carol was on,

00:46:50.680 which was episode two 19 more with her in one sec. 1.00

00:46:54.200 So Carol, when, when do you feel like things, cause you wound up eventually at Vanderbilt

00:47:04.040 and things were going very well there. As you say, you were award winning. I think you were there for

00:47:07.720 some 17 years. So when did things start to go south and why? And I mean, nothing went wrong with

00:47:14.040 your teaching. It's just the student reaction to you. Well, I would like to say that the students that

00:47:20.120 reacted to me were not Vanderbilt students that had taken my classes that I was one of five university

00:47:28.040 professors who were tenured across the country that were attacked around the same time. But I was

00:47:34.360 probably, you know, one of the ones that got canceled first, even before we understood what

00:47:41.480 cancellation meant. And so I left academia in 2017. It started changing dramatically after Obama was

00:47:55.000 elected. But as far as my value to the world, in terms of other universities that were interested in

00:48:03.800 hiring me or opportunities, all of that changed after I became publicly identified as

00:48:11.400 a Christian. And I would argue that my Christianity and my conservatism has been

00:48:21.960 far more detrimental to my career. I mean, I've been, it's changed my life. It's changed my life because

00:48:33.960 you know, I have a huge platform now, much larger than I would have ever had in the classroom.

00:48:39.080 Uh, but I thought I would be in academia until I retired.

00:48:45.720 Yeah. And, and yet viewpoints like yours are not allowed. And I don't, I don't know specifically

00:48:51.880 what it was, but this is what I'm reading the Vanderbilt students. Some, some students started a petition,

00:48:57.640 by the way, that's the exact same thing is going on, uh, to Yale Law School's Amy Chua, who gets targeted 1.00

00:49:03.640 by jealous faculty members and woke students who have never taken her class. Meanwhile,

00:49:08.520 the line to get into her class is around the building. The students who actually sit and take

00:49:14.200 her class absolutely love her, that her detractors are all people who are like, why'd she support

00:49:18.280 Justice Kavanaugh? Screw her. Um, so this is what, uh, this is November, 2015 Vanderbilt University 0.70

00:49:24.040 students started a petition asking university administrators to stop Swain's teaching and

00:49:28.920 require her. I love this to attend diversity training sessions. Perhaps you could under better

00:49:34.040 understand the plight of the American black, uh, person. If you went to diversity training sessions,

00:49:39.560 Carol, that's one. And then they wanted, they said that you, you were becoming synonymous with

00:49:45.320 bigotry, intolerance, and unprofessionalism. What were they talking about? What were they upset about?

00:49:51.720 Well, it started, uh, January 15th, 2015, you know, it's, you know, seared in my mind. And, uh,

00:50:00.600 after the Charley helped do attack in Paris, which was January 7th, 7th, 2015, I wrote an opinion piece,

00:50:09.640 uh, that was published in the Tennessean where I criticized Islam. And, uh, I did not, uh, say radical Islam.

00:50:19.400 Um, I talked about how, unless we, um, that we needed to monitor what was taking place in our country.

00:50:28.120 And I was concerned about the people that were being brought in that were not, uh, being encouraged

00:50:34.840 to become Americans and to respect that constitution and our way of life. Uh, I made the statement that

00:50:40.680 Islam was not like other religions that, uh, that pretty much unchecked. It posed a danger to us and our 1.00

00:50:46.840 way of life. Uh, the, um, response was swift. Uh, the day after my opinion piece was published,

00:50:55.320 I knew that my life was over as I knew it. I knew that it was over at that point because

00:51:01.640 I had published many things that were controversial. Like I have questioned race-based affirmative action.

00:51:08.120 My first book that won the national prizes, um, I, uh, uh, questioned the, uh, drawing of

00:51:13.800 majority of black districts and said that it was a bad idea. It elected more Republicans. 0.89

00:51:18.200 I have always been associated with provocative ideas, but there was something very different

00:51:24.040 about what was taking place. And, um, uh, the first, my first hint was a student

00:51:31.400 emailed me and told me that I might not want to come to campus that day that a protest is being

00:51:37.480 organized. And then another student forwarded me, forwarded me an email from the dean of students.

00:51:44.040 And, uh, the, the, uh, student protest was to, uh, was against my bigotry and my hatred. And it was so,

00:51:53.800 uh, interesting or ironic, I guess, because I had been the faculty member

00:52:01.320 that had led a battle against the university in between 2011 and 2013, uh, for the Christian groups,

00:52:09.640 for the Christian, uh, student organizations. I was the faculty advisor for three of those groups.

00:52:15.720 The university adopted a policy that student organizations could not require their leaders,

00:52:20.840 uh, to, uh, to adhere to faith state, any type of belief statements or codes of conduct.

00:52:28.920 And for Christian organizations, you had to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and savior to be a leader.

00:52:33.960 That's kind of a thing.

00:52:35.160 Yeah. And you also had to, uh, adhere to, uh, biblical standards. And so that meant that if you were a

00:52:42.440 Christian leader, you were not, uh, you expected not to engage in, uh, fornication, you know, sex between 0.88

00:52:50.440 two, uh, unmarried persons, adultery and, uh, homosexuality, those were things that they had 0.99

00:52:57.320 scriptures in their, um, constitutions and charters, uh, prohibiting that kind of behavior.

00:53:03.800 Well, about 15 Christian groups at Vanderbilt University lost their student recognition.

00:53:09.880 We fought it. I mean, we fought it on Fox news. We had 34 members of Congress,

00:53:14.600 write a letter, a demand in that the Christian groups get their rights restored. So I had led

00:53:19.480 the battle. I had written op-ed, uh, pieces along with students. We had a army and then they graduated.

00:53:26.440 Mm-hmm. And the next generation comes in and they're getting woke and woke and more woke as

00:53:32.200 the generations go through. And I know, I know this is a frustration of yours. I've heard you

00:53:37.400 talk about it, but it's not just that they're obsessed with identity, you know, this new generation

00:53:42.200 and the so-called wokesters. It's that they're obsessed with bashing America, with hating the 0.86

00:53:47.160 country. And they are, but that's, that's not what you stand for. It started changing with

00:53:54.280 during the Obama administration. Uh, that's when I saw the university, you know, just go full blown,

00:54:01.800 uh, safe spaces, uh, microaggressions, trigger warnings. And then finally, you know, they wanted

00:54:08.600 us to identify our personal pronouns and ask people about their personal pronouns. All that happened

00:54:13.400 before I left academia, but going back to, uh, 2015, it started in January. And, uh, and it was like,

00:54:25.080 they had this rally to denounce my bigotry and hatred. And like, I was the person that had been

00:54:30.600 the face of fighting for religious liberty for Christian groups. Uh, and you know, they framed it

00:54:36.840 as I hated Muslim students and I'd had Muslim students work for me, never had a problem with 1.00

00:54:42.600 Muslim students, never had a problem with LGBT students. I had so many students that came out, 0.78

00:54:48.360 you know, uh, in my classes and we talked about issues and they loved my book on, um,

00:54:55.880 my book, the new white nationalism in America, because I have a chapter on religion and I talk

00:55:00.520 about homosexuality. And, uh, and one of the things that I say about it is, you know, like, uh, 1.00

00:55:08.040 the Bible, um, you know, that, that sexual sins, the way the Bible characterizes them,

00:55:16.920 they characterizes them as sexual sins. And like, uh, I have a problem with people that focus on one

00:55:24.000 to the exclusion of others, you know? And so there should not be, uh, the standard where some are,

00:55:30.300 uh, okay. And some aren't coming from people within the Christian denomination, but I had great

00:55:36.160 relationships with people in the gay community, but all of a sudden the gays and the Muslims, uh, 0.96

00:55:43.300 and then the other students who were their, um, um, uh, comrades, uh, they said, you know, that I was,

00:55:51.780 uh, this threat, uh, to the campus. And it was so funny because, you know, all my students that

00:55:57.120 have taken classes, I would say they all loved me and I loved them, but I was the professor that had

00:56:02.200 the open door policy. They had my cell phone number. They had my home number. I had students come

00:56:08.200 to me with all kinds of issues. If they were thinking about suicide, if they were pregnant, 0.99

00:56:12.700 uh, uh, whatever was going on in their lives, they felt comfortable sharing with me the things that

00:56:19.580 were taking place in their lives. And, um, and I wanted to be that professor who always had time

00:56:25.980 for students who had the open door policy. And in my classrooms, it was like a free speech zone. I had

00:56:32.060 it on, uh, you know, on the syllabus, on the syllabi that they had entered a free speech zone. I gave

00:56:38.720 myself permission to speak. I gave them permission to speak. And, um, and I had a waiting list for my

00:56:45.080 courses too. And, um, and so it was not a student problem, but it was one that was created because

00:56:51.780 they had targeted conservative professors who had tenure and they were determined that they

00:56:57.080 were going to get something on us. Yeah. I mean, rather than saying, I understand this is what her

00:57:02.460 religion says, and she's a faithful adherent to it. And she wants people who are joining a religious

00:57:09.360 group, a Christian religious group to be able to live up to the ideals set by the church.

00:57:14.600 You don't have to join the group and you don't have to share the ideals. Um, and you're not teaching

00:57:19.380 those ideals in class from, you know, behind the lectern, you're teaching political science. Like

00:57:24.480 that it's there, they object to your private personal beliefs and your attempts to make space

00:57:31.120 for students at the university who want to join a group based on their religious beliefs that line

00:57:36.080 up with yours too. That's what happened, but that's not allowed. You're not allowed to have certain

00:57:41.460 beliefs, nevermind openly express them certainly in today's America and in 2015, but don't you think

00:57:47.440 it's only gotten worse since 15? It has gotten worse, but I can tell you that the university never

00:57:54.340 pressured me to leave. Uh, the university did send out regular press releases informing people that

00:58:01.540 professor Carol Swain didn't represent Vanderbilt, that Vanderbilt stood for free speech, uh, diversity

00:58:08.340 and inclusion or something like that. I don't remember the exact wording, but it started with free

00:58:13.360 speech, but professor Swain has a right to her own opinion. That was always part of the statement. 0.93

00:58:19.040 Uh, at some point I can't, I guess I got tired of reading the statement and, um, the, uh, decision to

00:58:27.420 leave academia had a lot to do with the reaction after I criticized black lives matter in 2016, I had 0.99

00:58:35.720 returned to teaching and I was on CNN, uh, debating a Reva Martin and I had gone to the, to the black lives

00:58:43.920 matter website. And at that time it was like, they weren't concealing their Marxism. There was very

00:58:49.680 little about blacks, but there was a lot about the other things they stand for. And I was shocked.

00:58:56.280 And so on the show, I said that they represented a destructive force in our society, that they were

00:59:03.920 Marxists. And I encourage people to go to that website and that, uh, set up an even, even greater

00:59:11.220 firestorm because on the campus I'd had problems, you know, with, uh, with some, uh, groups, you know,

00:59:18.860 that, but not the blacks, they had not, uh, been involved. And so once I criticized, um, black lives 1.00

00:59:26.160 matter, I united the, uh, affinity groups on campus. The, of course, because you're not entitled to your

00:59:34.300 opinion, notwithstanding your history, notwithstanding the fact that you are a black woman who's made it in

00:59:38.340 this world in America, you're not allowed to challenge that, that orthodoxy on BLM. And now,

00:59:44.780 you know, and you're a hundred percent right. Their website, they, they tried to scrub it in

00:59:48.160 the wake of George Floyd too late though, because we have the screen grabs talking about disrupting

00:59:53.380 the nuclear family. They don't like the family with just the mom and the dad. They think that's

00:59:57.840 somehow wrong. Um, very Marxist up and down the board. Now state by state, they're being investigated

01:00:03.980 for fraud. Their tax exempt status is getting pulled. There's a bunch of grifters running it

01:00:08.280 left and right, including now we know in Boston where this BLM leader, her name is Monica Cannon 0.88

01:00:14.560 Grant, um, is now charged with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud along with her husband. They're

01:00:20.700 saying that she, um, used, she received over a million dollars that she received over a million

01:00:27.560 dollars in donations and it was supposed to be spent on people in need, but she took much of it

01:00:33.060 for herself. And so did the husband and she paid her rent with it. And she went to restaurants with

01:00:37.760 it and she went on shopping sprees and to nail salons and was paying herself almost $3,000 a week 0.94

01:00:44.160 in quote salary, but lied about that to the feds and said she wasn't taking any salary. And so more and 1.00

01:00:49.820 more, we see stories like this, Carol. And that's why it's like, okay, the concept of black lives 1.00

01:00:55.680 mattering is something that is not controversial and virtually everyone would agree with the

01:01:00.760 organization. BLM has proven to be deeply problematic criminally, morally, and otherwise.

01:01:08.600 I agree. And most people are not holding them, them accountable. And so you, you can go after this

01:01:15.060 low level person in Boston. I want to know about the $60 million that they raised. Where is that money?

01:01:22.680 How has it been spent? Will any of the top leaders be investigated and held accountable for money that

01:01:31.620 may have been misappropriated? And then I want the corporations that spent their shareholders' profits

01:01:38.460 to, you know, to make donations, virtue signaling to organizations like Black Lives Matter to stand up

01:01:48.380 and confess that they made a mistake, that they threw their money, you know, towards a cause that was a

01:01:56.220 losing cause that was divisive that could absolutely never bring about any type of reconciliation in the

01:02:04.260 country because it's rooted in Marxism, just like critical race theory and diversity, equity, and

01:02:10.640 inclusion. At one time, diversity, equity, and inclusion, you know, was a part of affirmative action.

01:02:16.200 It had some constraints on it because it had to follow the civil rights laws and the constitution.

01:02:22.460 And now CRT and diversity, equity, and inclusion, they're totally separated from

01:02:31.220 the nation's history of embrace of anti-discrimination. And we know that anti-discrimination

01:02:40.560 and accommodations and protecting individuals. That's the law of the land, not what's taking

01:02:48.280 place today in this country.

01:02:50.380 What do you, what do you, you are actually somebody who has a master's in law from Yale.

01:02:54.680 You're somebody who, you know, has been in the academic profession for most of her life.

01:02:59.400 So when people say critical race theory is an obscure law school concept that's not being

01:03:06.820 taught in K through 12, and this is a Republican boogeyman that has been made up to scare white

01:03:12.300 parents into complaining and to, and to pushing back on the school to not allow just actual American

01:03:18.580 history to be taught. That's, that's what we're told by the left. What do you say?

01:03:23.160 Well, they also saying that, Oh, CRT, that's a course that's taught in law schools. Yes. CRT is a

01:03:32.100 course that's taught at many colleges and universities, but CRT has also infiltrated just

01:03:41.740 about every sector of our society. And what has happened is that people who were steeped in critical

01:03:48.040 race theory and Marxism, they have written children's books and these children's books

01:03:54.520 foster the idea that America is racist to the core. It's racism in its DNA. All white people are 0.87

01:04:02.660 oppressors. All white people are guilty of racism. All minorities are victims. And it's not just the 1.00

01:04:10.880 critical race theory that is most certainly being taught in schools, even down to kindergarten.

01:04:18.040 In books, even black lives matter has a educational curriculum with many different books on topics

01:04:25.620 like restorative justice, gender affirming, where they tell five years, five year olds that they can

01:04:31.180 choose their own sex, uh, uh, queer affirming and, um, and all about, you know, race and victimization. 0.91

01:04:39.280 It is in the, um, schools in the teaching materials, as well as in the books and videos and cartoons that

01:04:49.960 they have put together. You know, you have such a different view of all of this than, you know,

01:04:57.380 sort of these young activists that we hear today on college campuses. And I got me to thinking when I

01:05:03.240 was reading up on your writings and just some of your thoughts, what's really behind today's push?

01:05:10.400 What's really behind that the young people today leaning into these systemic racism claims and so

01:05:14.800 on. And this was from that. You wrote this, I think it was an op-ed that you submitted on Fox news

01:05:19.060 and you write, um, okay, here it is. Mostly. I think I was blessed in one critical way.

01:05:26.840 I was born in America, a true land of opportunity for anyone of any color or background in this

01:05:33.420 country, where you start your life does not determine where you end up. When I hear young

01:05:38.420 blacks or anyone for that matter, talk about systemic racism. I don't know whether to laugh 0.50

01:05:43.000 or cry. I want to laugh because it's such nonsense. I want to cry because I know it's pushing 0.78

01:05:48.680 untold numbers of young blacks into a dead end of self-pity and despair. Instead of seizing the 0.99

01:05:55.100 amazing opportunities America offers them, they seize an excuse to explain why they're not succeeding.

01:06:02.520 And Carol, it got me thinking, is it, you know, the young you who had these opportunities and people

01:06:08.160 looking out for her and helping her like move up, get better educated, make more money, get your own

01:06:13.160 house. You know, the country's struggling a bit with that. The young generation today, we have a great job

01:06:18.160 market, but there is sort of a general sense of malaise, I think, among young people for a lot

01:06:22.360 of reasons. Some struggle to make a living wage. Some some just feel totally disconnected from one

01:06:27.840 another thanks to technology and the way we live now. And I do wonder if just the way we're living

01:06:33.040 and the general malaise that these kids are feeling and, you know, in any other time frame in American

01:06:38.100 history might have felt it if circumstances were this way, totally distracted, not seeing each other.

01:06:42.520 Forget the covid pandemic. I'm talking about technology pre that.

01:06:45.280 They found a new thing to blame it on. You know what I mean? Like now and just addressing the real

01:06:51.740 stuff that's bumming everybody out. They're latching on to identity issues that are but a mirage.

01:06:58.900 And that statement that you read is part of a PragerU video that was the transcript.

01:07:04.860 And I think that if I had been a young person hearing the messages that we are disseminating so widely

01:07:14.740 today, I don't know if that would have been a Carol Swain success story because I grew up believing

01:07:20.800 in the American dream. I believe that I lived in the greatest country in the world. I believed in equal

01:07:27.520 opportunity. I knew that I was smart and all I wanted was a chance to prove myself.

01:07:32.320 And there are so many Blacks that have been successful even before the affirmative action,

01:07:37.840 even before affirmative action and the civil rights movement.

01:07:42.840 You know, Blacks coming out of slavery that became millionaires. 0.98

01:07:47.280 And so there are so many Black success stories.

01:07:51.780 And I'm just one of many. And I don't think that I'm not sure that can happen today unless children have the

01:08:01.040 right parents, because the attitudes they develop and, you know, and what they see and what they're told by

01:08:07.300 authority figures, that's going to impact them greatly.

01:08:10.480 And I believe my reading Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery as a child and growing up in the state

01:08:17.720 where he was born, I think that that impacted my life. You know, you know, he could come from slavery.

01:08:24.280 Certainly, you know, I can come from this poverty. We're sending our children the wrong messages.

01:08:29.740 And we're not just harming Black children. We're harming white children. We're harming everybody. 0.99

01:08:35.000 Right. I mean, if there's anyone who has cause to look back at her circumstances growing up and say,

01:08:42.860 I really didn't have it so great. The country didn't exactly cut me the greatest breaks.

01:08:48.140 You know, the Carol pre age 18 or 19. It's you. But you've gone a totally different way. You've

01:08:55.560 eschewed victimhood for all of your adult life, so far as I can see, and and have a deep love for

01:09:02.900 America. So I don't get it. You say that you have to have the right parents. Was it your parents

01:09:07.880 who instilled that in you when you were young? Was it just the opportunity? You know, you I've

01:09:12.360 heard you say before, it was a lot of white male conservatives who reached out and helped you help

01:09:17.660 you. What what do you think led to that love of country in you? I think it was school because,

01:09:23.960 you know, I was proud to be a Virginian because Virginia was the home of presidents.

01:09:28.640 We had five presidents from Virginia. And so when I was taught history, it has some stuff

01:09:35.120 about slavery in it. But mostly what we were taught was positive about our country. And

01:09:42.760 and I think the patriotism, you know, we did the Pledge of Allegiance, allegiance every day.

01:09:48.760 And so I think that what children are taught in school matters enormously. Well, you know, we were taught.

01:09:56.120 You know, that we were American citizens and that that was important. And I'm struggling

01:10:02.760 today, Megan, I'm really struggling because the America that I see today, I don't recognize this

01:10:10.680 country. And I'm so afraid that I will become anti-American because if this is America, what I

01:10:18.980 see taking place today when it comes to our civil rights and our civil liberties and the propaganda

01:10:25.680 that I would associate, you know, with third world countries and, you know, all of these things,

01:10:32.320 I don't recognize this country. Someone like me. I've always, you know, cherished the Constitution

01:10:40.600 and free speech and, you know, the freedom of religion, the freedom of assembly and all of these

01:10:46.960 things are being stripped away. And I always thought, you know, we can count on the Supreme Court.

01:10:51.280 Well, we can't count on the Supreme Court because our justices have been educated in that system.

01:10:57.920 I don't care if they come from the Ivy League and they call themselves conservative.

01:11:02.180 They're not trustworthy. And I would much rather have a Supreme Court that had justices that were

01:11:10.520 selected from a wider range of schools, hoping that they would be educated, some of them to appreciate

01:11:16.140 the Constitution. Yeah, that's the Biden. Joe Biden had an opportunity this past time around

01:11:21.840 to nominate somebody who wasn't from the Yale, you know, Princeton, Harvard corridor, and he didn't do

01:11:28.980 it. And we're getting, you know, a left wing ideologue, which comes really as no surprise to to any of us.

01:11:35.280 Well, he's she's replacing somebody who was left wing for sure. I don't know if I'd call Breyer an ideologue.

01:11:41.980 But in any event, yeah, the courts, I have been happy that they've been at least one last vestige

01:11:49.220 where they're not totally wokeified. There still is the rule of law. But if you look at what's

01:11:54.000 happening in law schools today, they're changing all of that. They're insisting on a DEI agenda

01:11:59.520 and commitment to it. And all those law students soon will be lawyers and then judges and then

01:12:05.220 Supreme Court justices. And there's only one way to push back, and that's to fight. Carol's got thoughts 0.93

01:12:10.360 on how she's actually written them down. And you're going to want to hear them. That's where

01:12:14.520 I will pick it up with her after this quick break.

01:12:22.060 Carol, I know you wrote a book a couple years ago called Abduction. Such a good title for what

01:12:26.760 you were writing about. It's Abduction, How Liberalism Steals Our Children's Hearts and Minds,

01:12:32.440 2016. And part of what you write about in there is this sort of new morality and how, you know,

01:12:39.600 sex ed begins in kindergarten and music is constantly promoting, you know, over the top

01:12:46.540 drug and alcohol use, rape culture, all this. Like, I really think that stuff contributes to this

01:12:52.400 overarching sense of malaise that I think young people today, yes, they feel depressed that they

01:12:58.000 might not be able to get ahead as easily as the American dream promises, black or white. 1.00

01:13:03.400 It's not that easy to get the house and the two-car garage and the 2.5 kids.

01:13:09.540 But we're discouraging marriage. We're discouraging love of country. We're putting

01:13:13.780 half-nude people on television for every sporting event. You can't watch the Super Bowl with, you know,

01:13:18.320 your six, seven or eight-year-old without covering his eyes repeatedly. You know, you look around and

01:13:22.720 the people that we revere are people who artificially inflate their boobs and their butts and put them on 0.95

01:13:28.080 display 24-7 as opposed to, like, CIA agents who help get bin Laden. You know, we don't, it's just, 0.95

01:13:34.100 it makes you feel down. And you write about how our academic and other institutions are doing this

01:13:41.100 on purpose.

01:13:42.960 Yeah, you know, Megan, in 2016, when I wrote that book with Steve Fiesel, we were trying to alert parents

01:13:51.900 to what was taking place in our public and also some of our private schools. Now they see it for

01:13:59.080 themselves. But I do think that's what is taking place in those schools is behind the rise in suicide

01:14:07.080 rates among children. And if you think about it, first graders now being exposed to ideas about

01:14:15.720 sexuality and being told that they can change their sex, that they may not really be a little girl or

01:14:24.260 little boy, these are things that no matter how hard it may have been in my life, I never had to

01:14:29.140 question, you know, whether I was female. And I think that we sounded an alarm back then, but now parents

01:14:40.440 post-pandemic, you know, they see all of this stuff. And that was the civil lining that came out

01:14:47.040 of COVID.

01:14:48.920 Yes, that's true. Parents are starting to wake up, but they're afraid, Carol, you know this.

01:14:53.740 We talk about it a lot on our show. Very hard for parents to go into a school and say,

01:14:59.400 why are you teaching my children that they are less than because of their white skin? Why are you

01:15:06.300 teaching my child that he's less than because of his black skin? Because you're weak and disempowered 1.00

01:15:11.180 is just as racist towards the black children as you're systemically racist and privileged when you 0.98

01:15:18.320 say it to a white student who's, you know, because of his or her immutable characteristics. 0.95

01:15:23.300 And I can tell you, too, that again, so abduction, how liberalism steals our children's hearts and

01:15:29.880 minds. That was published in 2016. What happened, you know, with President Obama's safe school czar,

01:15:40.260 I think his name was Kevin Jennings initially, and then Arnie Duncan. I mean, they were the ones that

01:15:48.300 really sexualized our children by getting that curriculum with, you know, the LGBT stuff into 1.00

01:15:57.060 kindergarten, into those lower levels. And that's when I saw the dramatic change in academia.

01:16:05.980 And for the activists, the progressive activists, they have gone into education, just like they

01:16:11.840 infiltrated, you know, many different institutions, including, you know, the media and colleges and

01:16:18.560 universities. They did it with an agenda. And I would say that even Christian colleges and universities

01:16:26.040 and places like that, that there are very few, quote, safe places, because they've all been

01:16:31.400 infiltrated by people who have an agenda. And unfortunately, many of them are teaching in our

01:16:37.340 schools, and they're getting on TikTok, and various outlets, boasting about what they're doing to our

01:16:43.240 children. I have to say, I don't let my kids use social media. But I don't let them do TikTok at all.

01:16:51.060 And my daughter's begging me to let her get TikTok, because all of her friends are on TikTok.

01:16:54.720 And it's fun. And all she wants to do is the little dance videos. And I'm like, I don't care.

01:16:58.580 Single tear, move on. And you know what? Life has gone on. And she's just fine. You know,

01:17:03.300 it's like parents need to be reminded. You can say no, you can be the mean parent. And they're fine.

01:17:08.000 You know, she's seen it. Her friends have it. Fine. Great. Why don't you enjoy your five minutes of

01:17:13.120 looking at over your friend's shoulder? That's all you're getting.

01:17:15.440 I'm so proud of you to be able to do that, because we need more parents that are, you know,

01:17:21.480 standing up to their teenagers. Because, you know, you are entrusted with your child's, you know,

01:17:28.160 life and well-being. And it is your job. They're your children. It's not the government's job to

01:17:35.020 raise children. And so if more parents would do that at home, but also band with other parents

01:17:42.440 and push back, they would feel less fear. Yeah. Because it's not one person. I don't care about

01:17:50.700 upsetting her. I care about damaging her. You know, that's what TikTok does. TikTok is a damaging

01:17:57.580 app. And so is all of social media. But for the parents, and we're dealing with this,

01:18:02.740 you know, right now with a lot of our friends' schools. We left our schools in New York City because

01:18:06.460 they were so over the top on the CRT and the trans stuff, Carol. But, you know, it creeps up 1.00

01:18:11.460 everywhere. And I have a lot of friends who are dealing with it in schools where they just don't

01:18:14.980 know how to stop it. You know, the CRT agenda. What should they do? I mean, I know it's outlined

01:18:20.520 in your book, your most recent book. Grassroots, you know, voting, school boards. Like, what's the

01:18:28.900 answer? I have, you know, this book, Black Eye for America, How Critical Race Theory is Burning

01:18:35.940 Down the House. It has two chapters on how to fight back, strategies on fighting back. And there

01:18:42.800 are 10 proposals for resisting CRT. First, you know, learn what it is. Because if you don't know

01:18:49.680 what it is and you talk with the average progressive, they're going to tell you that

01:18:54.580 it's something that happens in colleges and universities. It's not happening in your school

01:18:59.460 when it is. And so find out what it is, how it manifests itself so that you can respond.

01:19:06.180 And so CRT is a course that's taught at many colleges, universities, elite high schools. But

01:19:11.920 it's also a worldview that's racist. It's very destructive. And it has been disseminated down

01:19:19.640 through K through 12 education in the form of books and videos and various teaching materials that

01:19:26.800 are pushing an agenda. So know what it is. And then I think one of the strongest things that we

01:19:32.100 can do is challenge the legality and constitutionality of CRT. Because its form in many

01:19:40.160 workplaces, as well as in the educational realm, it often runs counter to our civil rights laws that 0.99

01:19:47.180 protect white people as well as other racial and ethnic groups. And the equal protection clause. I mean,

01:19:54.800 the law of the land is the law of the land. And I think white people need to learn how to document 0.99

01:20:00.440 like racial and ethnic minorities. You know, we are sort of primed to look for discrimination.

01:20:07.000 Sometimes even when it's not there, we look for it and we find it because we think it's there.

01:20:12.240 But when discrimination is coming, taking place, you need to document who said it, where, if you can get a

01:20:20.240 video, but white people need to start thinking as minorities, because in many parts of the country,

01:20:25.720 you are a minority. And by 2047, whites will be a minority in this country. And Generation Z 0.93

01:20:34.400 is already a white minority group. And so begin to document you are protected by the laws of the land. 0.77

01:20:42.760 So organizing the grassroots coalitions, building coalitions across racial, ethnic and partisan

01:20:52.560 lines. And what happened in Virginia with that election, you saw Democrats and Republicans and

01:21:00.720 independents coming together because they love their children. Most people don't want CRT or any of

01:21:07.980 those Marxist critical theories taught to their children. Doesn't matter which political party.

01:21:13.020 And so if it's taking place in your school, it's affecting a lot of other parents. And so I think

01:21:18.120 that parents need to just band together and exercise their rights. And many people are running for the

01:21:26.080 school board and they are also running for local election. I mean, that's one of the biggest things

01:21:31.760 that people can do. There are multiple strategies that can be used. I talk about those. And educating

01:21:37.840 church leaders. The church in America is in dire straits. And in many churches, they've been infiltrated by

01:21:46.600 social justice warriors. And they have pastors that are more interested in social justice than biblical

01:21:52.240 justice. And I think that has to do with them not actually knowing the difference. And I think that you can

01:21:59.820 educate them. There are lots of materials to educate your pastor. And we link to some of those sources.

01:22:05.580 And that's good. I like what you said. I just want to remind people when you get the critical race

01:22:11.800 theory is an obscure theory taught in law school. That's a very good, succinct, easy to remember

01:22:18.140 response. It's also a worldview that's made its way into textbooks, children's books and teachings.

01:22:25.500 And it needs to stop. It definitely does, because it's harming all of our children, not just

01:22:31.500 white children who are bullied and shamed. And if it's not right to do to a racial and ethnic minority, 0.83

01:22:39.680 then it's also not right to do to a white child. And we reached a consensus in the 1960s about how

01:22:46.960 people ought to be treated, that they ought not to be discriminated against because of the color of

01:22:52.100 their skin or their national origin. It applies to everyone. And so if we would follow the golden

01:23:00.140 rule to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, we would make a lot of progress when it

01:23:05.680 comes to race relations and this moment that we are in in American history. There are other proposals

01:23:12.920 here, but mostly some of the things the political left does, we should do the same thing. We can

01:23:20.800 bring pressure to bear on corporations. Many people are stockholders. We can stand up to big tech.

01:23:29.140 We're doing some of that. And we also need to monitor our state and local governments because

01:23:34.980 our tax dollars should not be used to discriminate against one group of citizens, any group of citizens.

01:23:42.480 And so if it's being used to support CRT and DEI, that's discrimination. And so my book,

01:23:51.020 Black Eye for America, it has those two chapters on how to fight back. It also has a glossary because

01:23:57.380 they keep changing the terms. And CRT doesn't always call itself CRT. Sometimes it calls itself

01:24:05.400 culturally competent learning. It calls itself social justice. It calls itself equity. And

01:24:14.220 sometimes it's masquerading as civil rights. So you have to know what it is. And we have resources.

01:24:22.880 It's at our old school, it called itself Courageous Conversations with Glenn Singleton's group,

01:24:28.160 where he, you know, you'd be encouraged to go to his little weekend seminar and the white people

01:24:32.900 weren't allowed to say anything. They were supposed to just listen to grievance, say absolutely nothing.

01:24:37.360 And then at the end of like the three days, they were allowed to say, you know, their thoughts and

01:24:41.920 God forbid their thoughts were anything other than I'm sorry, because they'd get shamed. I mean,

01:24:46.740 the white parents would come out of there traumatized. And these are white liberals who are, 0.81

01:24:51.120 you know, very inclined to say yes to white privilege and all that stuff, just beaten down 0.82

01:24:57.500 and alarmed. And I remember looking at them thinking, they're creating racists. That's what

01:25:01.940 they're doing in there. This is a racism creation seminar. But they're teaching self-hatred to white

01:25:09.440 children. And with the social, social, emotional learning, you know, that a lot of schools have

01:25:15.280 adopted where you get graded on your empathy and your compassion and all of this, your emotions,

01:25:22.940 you get graded on that. If you don't have the proper reaction and demeanor in response to the

01:25:31.720 propaganda, you can be punished by your teacher who is in a position to grade you based on whether or not

01:25:38.940 you're responding appropriately. That is insane. I mean, I was just saying when you're talking about

01:25:43.420 that I realized we're talking about in response to difference and cultural differences and racial

01:25:47.640 different, blah, blah, blah. But like, when you think about, think about Joe Biden and Donald Trump,

01:25:51.680 who would you say has more empathy off the top of your head? Well, I think even if you love Trump,

01:25:56.440 you might say, okay, he's not, maybe he's not the most empathetic person on earth. Joe Biden,

01:26:01.260 he had, you know, the son and this, the, the wife who died and the whole, like, very sad. He's an

01:26:06.040 empathetic. Who would you? So he, he would probably beat Trump on that little test. He'd probably get

01:26:10.900 higher marks than Trump on that little test. Who would you want in charge right now with Ukraine,

01:26:15.320 right? Who is more likely to avoid world war three, Trump or Joe Biden? I think I've seen the polls.

01:26:20.820 It's not my, it's not my belief. The American people believe that Trump would not have gotten

01:26:25.460 us into this mess, that Vladimir Putin wouldn't have done this under president Trump. Empathy is

01:26:30.040 not the be all and end all. It depends. You're going into a therapist, maybe president of the United

01:26:34.460 States, future leaders, maybe not. Why are we prizing it universally amongst all children when

01:26:39.460 people are different? Some people are more empathetic than others, and that's fine.

01:26:43.920 I can tell you that one area for a Donald Trump wins his hands down is empathy for working class

01:26:51.760 people and poor people. And it's true. In my experiences with him, he's always been supportive,

01:26:58.680 encouraging. And this whole idea that the left would call him a racist. I don't think the man has a

01:27:04.460 racist bone in his body and not called Joe Biden, who has a history of racism, he gets a free pass.

01:27:12.340 And that angers me that the political left, if you are white liberal, you can say anything you want

01:27:17.760 to say to a person like me, it's never racist. I mean, that's the double standard. Whereas if you're

01:27:25.180 conservative, you're constantly going to be dismissed and called a white supremacist because

01:27:32.200 they're redefined white supremacy so that all white people are considered white supremacists rather

01:27:38.080 than those who think that they are superior to racial and ethnic minorities. And when you see the

01:27:44.000 hate crime hoaxes like Smollett, you see so many of these hate crime hoaxes because there's not enough

01:27:51.600 real hate crime out there in the world that has diminished. So people have to invent it.

01:27:56.640 And it's almost like there's a there's a presumption of white supremacy against all

01:28:01.060 white people. And you can maybe able to get yourself out of it. You can get out of a white 1.00

01:28:05.560 supremacy jail free card if you prove that you're a woke progressive who's willing to pledge total

01:28:12.460 fealty to the woke movement. But anything short of that, you're stuck in white supremacy prison.

01:28:17.460 You still can get in white supremacy prison because I know some whites that have checked all the

01:28:23.040 boxes. They've done everything right. But when it was expedient, they also got dismissed as racist

01:28:30.080 because if you are white, you could never defend yourself against the accusation that you are racist

01:28:35.480 because they would say it's in your DNA. It's permanent. And so you have to constantly meet whatever

01:28:44.000 change in standard they put out there. Yeah, it's a never ending process. So, Carol,

01:28:49.920 I only have a couple of minutes left and I wanted to ask you this question. It was you talked about

01:28:54.560 it, I think, in the Prager University video about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the founders

01:29:00.080 and so on. But you can take it wherever you want to take it. But my question to you is why, as somebody

01:29:06.460 who co-chaired the 1776 Commission, what do you love about America?

01:29:10.600 I used to love the fact that it was a land of opportunity and that a person, you know, could

01:29:17.340 start at the bottom. And, you know, it was just I love the fact that we were compassionate.

01:29:23.740 We cared about people in other nations. And I love the fact that there was opportunity.

01:29:29.740 Again, you could start at the bottom. And I felt like that there were no limits.

01:29:33.860 And America has been good to me and my children. And I see so many other people that have been able

01:29:43.460 to take advantage of the best of America. But I fear that that's not going to be open for

01:29:48.660 people today because their minds have been poisoned. And when I'm talking about the detrimental

01:29:56.380 things that are taking place today, it's not just harming racial and ethnic minorities.

01:30:01.420 It's harming everyone's child. And I believe that the America that I grew up in, the America I love

01:30:08.680 no longer exists. I don't know if we can turn things around. But right now, I don't recognize this

01:30:16.760 country. I feel like we've been ruled by China. 0.98

01:30:20.920 I do want to say to the audience, Carol said before, as somebody who comes of academia, don't feel like

01:30:25.940 you have to send your kid to college in order for them to get the head. I know you're big on

01:30:29.520 entrepreneurship, trade schools. And if you decide to send your kid to college, do your homework on

01:30:35.360 where you're sending them. Even sending them to a Christian college doesn't guarantee they're not 1.00

01:30:40.000 going to be faced with a bunch of left wing indoctrination. So keep your eyes open and make

01:30:44.840 the effort. It's not easy. It requires homework, staying on top of what your kids are taught K through

01:30:48.560 12, staying on top of the college options. But it's your kid and it's our country and it's worth it.

01:30:55.120 Carol, thank you so much for telling your story. I want to tell everybody that her latest book again

01:30:59.860 is called Black Eye for America, how critical race theory is burning down the house. Thank you so

01:31:04.220 much for being here. Thank you. I want to tell you that tomorrow on the show, back by popular demand,

01:31:10.580 Dr. Laura, that episode did so well. Everybody loved her. She's coming back. Can't wait.

01:31:14.900 And then I want to tell you that we have a special double episode Monday and Tuesday of next week.

01:31:19.040 I'm not going to tell you who it is yet. I'll tell you tomorrow. It's a big name.

01:31:22.520 You're going to want to hear it. Subscribe in the meantime so you don't miss it. See you tomorrow.

01:31:28.060 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 16, 2022

The BLM Grift, Overcoming Adversity, and the Importance of Faith, with Dr. Carol Swain ｜ Ep. 281

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