My Latest Appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show - Charlie's Legacy (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_898)
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Summary
Dr. Gad Saad is a scholar at the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi, and the author of a new book, The Parasitic Mind. Dr. Saad has been a great friend of the show, and he is also a scholar.
Transcript
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I'm so honored to have our next guest here, Dr. Gad Saad, who is a great friend of the show,
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has been a great friend to Charlie Kirk. He is also a scholar. I want to get this title right
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because he has actually a new wonderful title. Dr. Gad Saad, scholar at the Declaration of
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Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at University of Mississippi. He's also
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the author of a bunch of amazing books, The Parasitic Mind. He's working on a new one. I
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want to talk to him about that. Dr. Saad, welcome to The Charlie Kirk Show, and thank you for making
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the time. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Cheers. Yeah. Well, Dr. Saad, I want to let you
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start where I think it makes sense most, and that is we haven't had you back on the show since
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Charlie was taken from us on September 10th, and I just want to give you a chance to reflect on
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what this last month and plus has meant to you, and just let you reflect on what a loss we've all
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suffered. I mean, I sort of oscillated from sadness to anger. Only maybe, I think it was maybe a month
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prior to the tragic day I had appeared on the show with Charlie, and I've told the story before,
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but it's worth repeating here. You know, I've spoken to many wonderful people, you know, throughout my
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professional career, many of whom have come on my show. I mean, really, really top people. My daughter,
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who's 16 years old, never asked for me to introduce her to anybody. When I was appearing on Charlie's show
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this last time, she came home excitedly and said, could you please just introduce me to Charlie? And so
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that kind of gives you a sense. I'm 61 years old and a fan of Charlie, and my 16-year-old is a fan
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of Charlie. So it is an immeasurable tragedy, but here we are promoting his legacy, so hopefully he
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lives on in all our hearts and minds. And Dr. Saad, maybe that's the next best place to start is,
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you know, you talk about his legacy. I don't typically throw this question out to people, but
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you are a public intellectual. You are a great thinker. You have a way of distilling ideas. What
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is Charlie's legacy in your mind, and what do you hope that it will grow into?
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You know, there are several ways by which I could answer this question. I'll take a stab at one or two
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ways. Number one, you know, in chapter, in the last chapter of the parasitic mind, I ask people to
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activate their inner honey badger. And I use that terminology because the honey badger has been
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officially classified as the most fierce animal in the animal kingdom. Now, I don't mean when I say
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activate your inner honey badger for you to be violently ferocious, but it means, you know, get off
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the couch and do big things, stand tall. And Charlie was not only physically tall at six foot four, but
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he was a tall honey badger in that at 18 years old, when most of us are worried about how we're going
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to get through the next day, as you know, with teenage angst, he starts off something that is
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absolutely impossible that most people in their 80s wouldn't dare start. And so, first of all, the fact
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that he had the chutzpah, right, which is a Yiddish word for sort of existential gall, the fact that he
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had the confidence to say at 18 years old, I'm not going to university, I've got better ways to be able
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to contribute to the cause, is something that we could all cherish and be inspired by. But then the
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fact that he was able to cater to the young people, to get involved, to get excited, so that my daughter
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is not asking me to introduce her to Elon Musk, but is asking me to introduce her to Charlie Kirk,
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that says everything you need to hear about his legacy. He is a unique individual in that he had
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the intellect, he had the political ability to organize, he had the warmth, right, he always has
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a smile, even when he's engaging in difficult debates, he's warm, he's engaging, so he's an
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immeasurable loss, truly, one-in-a-generation type of fellow.
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Yeah, absolutely, a giant of our generation, but his memory and his legacy will live on,
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and we're committed at Turning Point on the show, to growing it, to expanding it as best we can,
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and the outpouring of love and support that we've seen, both at the show, but at the students on
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campuses, has been truly, truly wonderful and heartening to see. Now, Dr. Saad, we are going to
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get into some news of the day with you, because you have a way of making sense of the chaos,
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unlike few can, but I do want to pick up on something we touched on in the previous hour,
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and that is the rise of Islam. It's something you and Charlie talked a lot about, and I just want
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to play one clip from a conversation that you had with Charlie on this show, 290.
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What would you said, the West is a woman to be mounted, that is the Islamic creed?
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Yes, I would repeatedly hear from Arabic-speaking, Muslim-speaking immigrants,
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in this case it was in Canada, always say that the West is a woman to be mounted. And what the
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reflex that that captures is that all of the virtues that we think as laudable in the West,
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compassion, magnanimity, generosity, empathy, are heard as weakness, weakness, weakness,
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and weakness by cultures that don't necessarily share our infinite largesse. And so it's exactly
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what they're saying, West is weak, it's a woman, therefore you mount.
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Yeah, powerful stuff. And we've seen those clips go viral, where you can actually hear
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them in their own words say, the West is a woman to be mounted. I think the clip that I've seen
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was from the UK, a place that Charlie visited relatively recently before, I mean, soon before
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the tragic events of September 10th happened. And so he saw it up close, and you had zeroed in on
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this idea of suicidal empathy, this, this, it's almost a, an opening that both the left and Islam
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were exploiting. Exactly. Maybe I could give you a quick synopsis of the framework of suicidal empathy.
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Many people have wrongly presumed that what I mean by suicidal empathy is that empathy is a bad thing.
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Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. We are a social species, and therefore,
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it makes perfect evolutionary sense that, that empathy would be part of our repertoire of
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possible strategies, right? For you and I to have a meaningful conversation, I need to put myself
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in your mind, and vice versa. That's called theory of mind, which is part of cognitive empathy.
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Autistic children, for example, fail a theory of mind test. This is how we diagnose them as being
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autistic. So empathy, when properly modulated to the right targets in the right situations
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in the right amounts, is a perfectly relevant and appropriate evolutionary response. The problem
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arises, as is the case with many psychiatric disorders, when you have a dysregulation of this
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otherwise beneficial virtue, right? So for example, laughter is great, right? It has medicinal properties,
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but then you could have pseudo-balbar effect, what the Joker in the movie had, where he,
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because of abuse, he starts laughing uncontrollably in wrong situations, or the way Kamala Harris can
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cackle the way that she does. That becomes an inappropriate form of laughter. And so suicidal empathy
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takes this beautiful virtue, and then because it becomes dysregulated, it becomes hyperactive,
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and it targets the wrong targets, leads to the demise of the West. And unless we get rid of this
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reflex really quickly, I can assure you that the West will fall. It might take five years, it might take
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50 years, or it might take 500 years, but it will fall the way many other societies have.
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Yeah, no, that's really well said. I, you know, and I, I think of basically what MAGA is, what
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conservatism has transformed into, in large part, thanks to President Trump, but also to Charlie
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Kirk and others, is that it now has a muscularness to it. It has, it has a backbone, it has a fighting
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chance. Ultimately, that's why the left hates it so much, because it's effective, because it is the,
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it is the anti-vend, it is the counteraction to what the left has been doing in this country
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since, essentially, post-World War II, in the, the invasion, the, the, the move in our institutions,
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the long march through the institutions of progressivism, of liberalism, in a negative
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sense, obviously, in that second sense, in the second word. But yeah, this is the, this is the
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anti-venom of what we've, what we're doing at MAGA, what we're doing in the conservative movement
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and President Trump. That's why the fight is so intense. I want to share with the audience a little
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bit of breaking news right now. President Trump has just concluded his call with Vladimir Putin.
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They've been on a very long call. And it looks like he's saying that they have agreed to send
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high, high ranking delegates led by Marco Rubio to meet. And then they are going to, after that meeting
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with high level advisors, the United States will be meeting or President Trump will be meeting with
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Putin in Budapest. So President Trump hot off the heels of getting peace in the Middle East is now
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going to be meeting with President Putin in the near term. So hopefully we can get that as he calls
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it, inglorious war between Russia and Ukraine brought to an end. He is going to be meeting with
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President Zelensky tomorrow here in Washington, DC. So Jack, that feels like a good time to throw to
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you. Yes. Yeah, you are. You do have a bit of a feel for Eastern Europe as well as war analysis in
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general. Yeah, no, I mean, look, I've traveled to the war a couple weeks after it started in back in
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March of 2022, which is in May of 2022. I've been to Budapest a few times. I was at the Anchorage
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meeting. I accompanied the president's delegation as a new media member there aboard Air Force One
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when he met with Putin just in Alaska, just a few weeks ago in Alaska. So I was in the room with
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himself, Putin, Lavrov, all the rest. And what can I say? It looks like I'm going to Budapest.
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Oh, wow. There you go. Dr. Saad, and we'll keep Jack involved. And I want to make sure we're working
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you in, Jack, here. No, no, please. But Dr. Saad, maybe comment really quickly. We've been told that
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American leadership on the world stage was coming to an end, that Trump was going to ruin America's
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standing in the world. And yet here he is pulling off win after win after win, achieving peace.
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Tie that into what it means for the West, that America's leadership is strong and robust and we're
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leading the way. Look, to go back to our earlier conversation where many Muslims say the West is a
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woman to be mounted. President Trump lives in the real world where he actually understands human
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nature. He may not call himself an evolutionary psychologist, but he is an evolutionary psychologist
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because throughout his long and successful life, he's had to deal with many people, whether it be in
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his real estate life or in his TV life, where his ability to succeed in those forums stems from his
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understanding of human nature. And so having people like Joe Biden and the others, super sweet and
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kind and empathetic diplomats who cross their legs like Justin Trudeau might look nice because you
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could show off your really colorful socks, but that's not what really nasty folks around the world
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respect, right? So I come from the Middle East. In the Middle East, we have the creed,
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right? Might is right. Or as you probably, of course, know the old term, you know, if you wish to have
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peace, prepare for war. There are endless, you know, military dictums that speak to the fact that
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it's nice to have a velvet glove while you're shaking someone's hands, but make sure that behind your back
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you have a really big stick, right? As you also know, speak softly, but carry a big stick, right?
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So all of these maxims exist throughout history because the world doesn't exist in a utopia,
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in a democratic progressive utopia. It exists in the real world where people respect might.
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And Donald Trump exemplifies that. That's why you're seeing win after win.
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Well, Dr. Saad, you know, you're reminding me of something you said on the show with Charlie years
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ago. I remember it very clearly because we were at Berkeley and he was about to do a campus stop at
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Berkeley and a tabling stop there. And we had to do the show. So we set up, you know, in some back
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room, we set up a kind of a mobile studio in some back room at Berkeley. And you guys were talking about
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gender ideology and the transing of youth and this things, but it, but it relates to this conversation
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to the line you used and he stole it. I don't know that he always gave you attribution, but I remember
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hearing it and going, oh, that's a good line. I texted you. He's like, oh, totally. It's great.
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But you said the, the pesky shackles of reality, the pesky shackles of reality, these things like you
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might think you can fly, but you're going to jump off a building and find out really quick that gravity
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still pulls you down. You might think that the rules of nature, nature's God don't apply to you,
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but just test nature's God and find out. So, so I, I love that because you, you, you are a realist.
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Trump is a pragmatist and he knows that the vile monsters on the stage, it's better to work with
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them. It's better to have them fear you and respect you than to be cowed by them. Dr. Sad,
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I'm a little upset at Jack right now because Jack spilled the news that I spilled coffee.
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It's not all that's being spilled around here. Yeah. And then now you're spilling tea,
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coffee, all the things. But, but listen, I love this because, well, I don't love the coffee spill.
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There's like memes being made. I warned him about the Keurig. I said, we got a bum Keurig in here
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and he did not heed my warning. I have my coffee right here. By the way, I have a, I have a bone to
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pick with both of you. I don't like to be on a show where the hosts are both extremely good looking.
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It's pissing me off. No, you know, it's, you know,
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come back when Blake is here then. Blake is a handsome man. We're going to get him married.
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Anyways, here, here's, here's what's funny is we have teams that clip the show and like some of
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them are connected with us and there are staff and others, they're just kind of come in and out.
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One of those ones that just come in and out, uh, was basically told me this morning that Jack
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looks much better than me. And I said, okay, that's fine. That's a weird observation.
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Do you do pushups this morning? I did not do my pushups this morning. I woke up early to get to
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the Fox. That's what he didn't do his pushups this morning. So you know what I love here though,
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Dr. Sad is that you and Jack Posobiec are on a show together. I think, um, you and, you and Jack
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have disagreed on, on minor, honestly, very minor things in the past, but in the, in this post era,
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uh, of this post Charlie era, we all have to come together. And I love that. And, and, you know,
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I, I feel like if you look at the, the metal ceremony, Dr. Sad, you had all these Fox hosts,
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you had, uh, senators and congressmen that don't always see eye to eye coming together to celebrate
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Charlie. And, uh, so I'm just glad this moment is happening. And, uh, Jack, I don't know if you
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want to, well, no, I actually, the, the question that I had and, and, uh, honestly it was, you know,
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really to kind of pick your brain because you, you have such a good theory of mind of the left
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and such a good theory of mind of, of you have this ability to really get into what makes them
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tick. And one of the things that we've all been grappling with here, Dr. Sad is this, this idea
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that there was this kid, Tyler Robinson, a, an ex-Mormon or comes from a Mormon family would
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then find himself on a roof hundreds of miles away from where he lives in a relationship with
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a trans boyfriend. So a biological male who was transitioning to a female, and then somehow
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thinks he's defending his boyfriend by, and again, allegedly, legally speaking, pulling
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a trigger and shooting Charlie Kirk. And I wonder at all, if you could possibly attempt to unpack
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that twisted psychology for us. Yeah. Thank you for that question. Uh, so I thought, I don't
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know if you guys have heard me discuss, uh, the difference between deontological ethics
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and consequentialist ethics. So it might be worth repeating it here, even if some of the
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viewers might be familiar with it. Deontological ethics are absolute statements. So for example,
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if I say it is never okay to lie, that would be a deontological statement. If I were to say
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it's okay to lie to spare someone's feelings, I would be engaging in consequentialism. And of course,
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for many things in life, we are all consequentialists. I always joke, although I'm being serious,
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that if you wish to have a long, happy marriage, if you hear the following question, do I look fat
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in those jeans? Very quickly put on your consequentialist hat. And even if you have to
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slightly lie, you're doing it because you love your spouse and you don't want to hurt her feelings.
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So that's perfectly fine. But when it comes to certain foundational principles that certainly
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define the unique American experience, presumption of innocence in the courtroom, freedom of speech,
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freedom of inquiry, those things cannot be consequentialist principles, right? So if I say,
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I believe in freedom of speech, but not if you marginalize a particular group, then I'm succumbing
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to consequentialism. So to now wrap that up to your question, I think what this, uh, the, the,
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the alleged assassin has done is he's drank from the Kool-Aid of the pool of consequentialism,
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which basically says Charlie Kirk is such a dangerous guy that the deontological principle
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of freedom of speech and exchange of ideas no longer applies to Charlie Kirk. He is saying
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words that are akin to violence. So if I stand on that rooftop and take him out, boy, I should be
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lauded as a hero rather than be put in prison. So that's what makes consequentialism so dangerous.
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And so in, in his mind, it's almost like he, he feels as though he's, he's defending, uh, his,
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his boyfriend, his lover. Um, again, we don't know all the specific details there, but I'm just,
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just going off of what we've seen. And, and, and it's, it's a complete, you know, you talk about this,
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the, um, talk suicidal, toxic empathy. It seems like it's almost that suicidal empathy,
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but in, in the person of one individual here. Well, exactly. That's why 30 seconds. So suicidal
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empathy is targeting the wrong targets, right? We love the Hamas fighters, but we have no empathy
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for the Jews. So there is no empathy for Charlie Kirk and his right to speak freely. There is only
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empathy for the trans community. Right. Or his wife, his children, his friends, and everyone else.
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And so we are back with Dr. Gad Saad, who is a scholar at the university of Mississippi. So you,
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you, you, you are, you know, you just love in the South now, huh? Dr. Saad.
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Oh, I gotta tell you, I am the only thing that I'm lacking to be a full Southerner
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is that I grotesquely lack in height. Now, if you want to feel like your self-esteem is,
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is going to take a hit, if you're six feet tall in the South, you're rather height challenged. And so
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the only complaint I have about Mississippi thus far is that everyone is over six foot four when I am
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merely the height of Lionel Messi. So I'm struggling with those ego issues, but otherwise I am loving the
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South. I am immersed in the South. Love the place.
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Well, I mean, you just got to get that accent too, Dr. Saad. We're going to, we're going to wait for
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that. Y'all, y'all. Have you, have you picked, have you picked an SEC team yet? That's the real,
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that's the real, you know, the college football. You've got to, there you go. All right. I'll miss.
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There it is. See, he's in. So I'm going to play a clip for you, Dr. Saad. I went to this
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News Nation town hall last, I got put in, I got put in a panel with this Midas touch kid.
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I'd never met him before. He seemed very nice. As soon as we got on stage, it was, he was coming.
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He wanted his clip. He wanted his viral clip. Sure enough, he's supposed to run. The left seems to
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love it because I'm not disavowing the New York Republicans. I have no idea about the context of
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them. My position on disavowing the New York young Republicans is that when, listen, the Democrat
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party gets to a point where they want to call Jay Jones to pull out of the race and they disavow him
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by actually disavowing him and saying they denounce the, uh, anybody that would run for the top cop
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in the state of Virginia that would fetishize murdering his political opponents, which obviously
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is an issue very near and dear to me. Anyways, this is, uh, this is a clip, uh, 274. Political violence
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overwhelmingly comes from the right. These mass shootings come from the right. My dear friend was just
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killed by left-wing violence, assassinated in cold blood. There has been how many ice facilities that
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have been targeted? What about George Floyd? What about the, that, that whole summer of looting and
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rioting? Listen, but there is a justification for political violence. It shows up in every poll and
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it's coming from progressives. And of course, there is this poll that I was thinking about in my head.
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Uh, go ahead and throw up image 31. This was from September 12th through the 15th. So just in the
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immediate aftermath of Charlie's murder. And it shows that almost 30% of liberals that are
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self-described liberals between the ages of 18 and 39 justify political violence. You see that blue
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dot over on the left side of your, of the, of the screen. It is an outlier of outliers. Dr. Sad.
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Your thoughts. And by the way, this perfectly, uh, segues into what we discussed earlier with
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deontological versus consequentialist. This is exactly consequentialism. It is per, I'm speaking
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now, if I were one of the progressives, it is perfectly fine to engage in political violence
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when you are facing the existential threat of Orange Himmler, Donald Trump, and so on. Right?
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So again, look, I don't know if you remember in 1960, the Mossad had, uh, identified where Adolf
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Eichmann was hiding and he was in Argentina and they could have easily put a bullet in his head
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to, you know, met out justice, but they wanted to stay true to the deontological principle, which is
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that even someone like Adolf Eichmann deserves his day in court. So they ended up at great personal
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cost or risk and great diplomatic risk, try to get him out of Argentina so that he could have his day
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in court in Israel. Of course, eventually he was found guilty and was hung, but that shows you
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the difference between what the left does. And in this case, what Israel did, which is
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even Eichmann deserves his day in court. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's, that's, uh, it's a fascinating
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insight. Dr. Sad, uh, you know, listen, I think my, my, my belief here is that of course we want to
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get to a point of political unity, unanimity on the issue of political violence, but in order to get
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there, we have to confront a very unfortunate truth in this country. And that is that there is one side
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of the political aisle that has begun to justify. And you put it beautifully. What the rationale or the,
00:24:27.480
the philosophical under under things of why, but they, but that is the truth that we must confront
00:24:32.680
that they have completely abandoned the liberal values of a constitutional republic of open debate,
00:24:37.560
open dialogue, the very values that Charlie himself espoused and championed. And I, we cannot forget
00:24:44.520
that the assassin on these bullets had Bella Chow had, uh, catch fascist, uh, Hey, fascist catch,
00:24:52.120
uh, on, on the bullet casings. This is, this is a, he may not have been a card carrying member of,
00:24:57.080
of Antifa, but he was certainly inspired by them. You had a question for Dr. Sad. Dr. Sad. So,
00:25:03.320
you know, we've identified this it's, it's spreading. You've talked about it as if it's a parasite,
00:25:09.560
which, which continues, but we're also talking about anti-venom. We're also talking about potential
00:25:15.640
cures. Is there a way to reach people who, and again, but perhaps not so that are, um, some that
00:25:24.280
are so far gone that they would pull the trigger themselves. But we also saw in the wake of Charlie's
00:25:28.760
murder thousands upon thousands of people taking to social media, celebrating, clapping,
00:25:35.960
cheering this on. And these were not card carrying members of Antifa. These were people in positions
00:25:41.400
of authority there. You saw you have pilots, you had doctors, nurses, HR departments, uh,
00:25:48.040
all over the place where people seem to share in this belief. Is there any way to kind of break them
00:25:55.320
out of this? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And one that I struggle with often
00:26:00.840
when I'm trying to decide whether to engage someone in terms of whether I could flip them,
00:26:06.680
if I could administer the mind vaccine to them or not. And it's not always obvious that your,
00:26:11.560
your time is not going to be wasted on some people, but I do think, and maybe here I'm being naively
00:26:17.800
optimistic. I do think that with enough showing of the evidence, uh, people can come around,
00:26:25.080
but it takes a lot of dogged efforts. So for example, I had a person who in 2010, I had had a
00:26:32.200
very, very difficult email exchange with, well, it took her 14 years, but then last year she came around
00:26:40.280
and said, Oh boy, I wish I could have listened to you back in 2010. Uh, she was one of those super
00:26:47.160
progressive liberal Jews who was very upset that I was saying some detrimental things about Islam
00:26:54.680
because her friend is a Muslim woman and she's very peaceful and kind and empathetic. And I was,
00:27:00.600
you know, not adding to the ecosystem of love by spreading hateful things about Islam and so on.
00:27:06.120
Well, 14 years later, she said, oops, I guess I was wrong. So I'd like to think that with enough
00:27:12.360
evidence, people can potentially be reached, but here's where I'm going to hit you with the
00:27:17.320
counterpoint that's slightly more pessimistic. I was recently asked on a show by a British
00:27:22.840
psychiatrist. What is the singular thing that has most surprised me about human nature in all
00:27:28.520
the years that I've studied human behavior? And I don't think you're going to be happy to hear this.
00:27:33.080
I said the difficulty to get someone to change their opinions once they are fully anchored.
00:27:39.320
So it takes a Herculean effort, but hopefully we're all up for the challenge.
00:27:45.320
Well, that's exactly why we were devoting so much, and we are devoting so much of our
00:27:49.720
energies, Dr. Saad, to ensuring that these high school chapters get off the ground. I will never
00:27:54.440
forget, we were in Aspen a couple weeks before we were having a retreat for donors of Turning Point
00:28:02.680
USA. And Charlie was working on the presentation the night before he was going to present it to everybody.
00:28:07.240
And his vision was very clear. He wanted a Club America after in every high school in the country.
00:28:14.680
And, you know, getting to students before they get completely ideologically brainwashed
00:28:22.040
at the university, universities where Dr. Saad is not a professor, of course, is critical.
00:28:28.200
Obviously, the university chapters are critical as well. But you do see this. It's very interesting.
00:28:35.240
I'm learning something with this clip, correct? Because this gentleman from Midas Touch,
00:28:42.520
his name's Adam, I guess, he is clipping it for his audience and his audience loves it because I
00:28:47.080
refuse to disavow the New York Republicans, young Republicans.
00:28:51.160
Well, they also talked over you. You didn't have a chance. I didn't get a chance. I basically said,
00:28:55.000
listen, I'm willing to have a conversation about it. But until you tell me that you're willing to
00:28:59.800
disavow the John, what? Jay Jones, gosh, Jay Jones, two J's. Jay Jones, attorney general candidate,
00:29:09.000
Democrat in the state of Virginia. You're thinking of John James in Michigan, who we like.
00:29:11.880
Jay Jones. So until you're willing to actually tell him he needs to drop out of the race,
00:29:16.440
then listen, we're going to be at an impasse here. I'm willing to have a conversation about
00:29:20.360
some of the things that were said. I don't agree with some of the things that were said. I don't
00:29:23.240
understand the context of them. But this is what's funny. We are in this hyper-polarized
00:29:28.040
environment because I have never gotten so many compliments from people about my performance last
00:29:33.160
night saying, based, you know, way to go, way not to, way not to, you know, they were proud of me for
00:29:37.560
not doing the disavow ritual on stage with Chris Cuomo and this Midas Touch kid, because that's what he
00:29:43.320
wanted. He wanted this clip to be able to put it on social media. There was no civil dialogue. There
00:29:47.880
was none of this. And it does raise an interesting point about, you know, social media. I'm being told
00:29:53.320
by authorities a lot of this stuff happens on gamer chats, right? This is a lot of this radicalization
00:29:58.760
fully anchoring into these ideas happening on these, these discord chats and things like this. So what is
00:30:05.640
the solution when it comes to the fact that we are just living in completely different algorithms,
00:30:09.960
where we seem to be getting further apart because of the machines?
00:30:14.440
Yeah, well, I mean, I try to do my part in terms of reaching the young people at the university
00:30:21.080
level. But I think what made, you know, to your original question about Charlie's legacy,
00:30:26.760
the fact that he's able to reach me, I mean, nobody wants to listen to, you know, a 61 year old
00:30:31.960
professor with gray hair, but people want kids want to listen to Charlie, right? Because he seems
00:30:37.000
only slightly older than him. And his brilliance is actually, I mean, it really needs to be
00:30:42.760
highlighted. Let me draw an analogy. When I teach consumer psychology, and I explain to the students
00:30:48.120
that we can't sell chewing gum to 10 year olds, because they don't yet have the cognitive apparatus
00:30:56.200
to fight against the advertising message message that's thrown at them. So that's why all the ideologues
00:31:03.720
try to get to your children early, right? That's why we have, you know, twerking drag queens for
00:31:09.480
during, you know, reading hour when they're five and six years old, because the ideologues understand
00:31:15.800
that we need to get to the children very early before they have developed the cognitive armory to
00:31:24.200
protect themselves against the nonsense. And so I did my part at the university level. God willing,
00:31:30.040
you guys will be doing it at an earlier age bracket. And hopefully we can administer the
00:31:37.480
Well, and that's a great place place to kind of pivot a little bit. I want to talk about this AOC
00:31:43.160
Bernie Sanders town hall, Dr. Sad. You know, well, they were talking about social media. So let's play
00:31:50.840
Why does Republican messaging on social media seem so much more effective than Democratic messaging?
00:32:03.000
I think the Republicans are effective. They have learned a lot about social media. And by the way,
00:32:10.200
it doesn't hurt that they have friends on all of the major social media platforms.
00:32:17.080
Well, that's factually inaccurate. But you know, there is this thought that I've been having,
00:32:23.800
Dr. Sad, is that this reaction that they're resorting to violence. There is this thought
00:32:29.720
that keeps occurring to me, you know, and I said this last night at the town hall, you just need
00:32:33.640
better ideas. I mean, part of the reason that the left is losing the social media battle is because
00:32:40.120
their ideas do not hold up to scrutiny. And once they are allowed to be scrutinized in an equal
00:32:46.600
setting, equal footing, they tend to fall apart. Ours go viral because they're common sense.
00:32:51.320
Yeah. Can I say something about X and Elon, which by the way, the only one, right? We have like
00:32:55.720
X and I guess like a little bit of CBS right now, maybe. I don't know. You know, and Elon didn't
00:33:03.320
come in and start boosting conservatives though. What he did is he came in and he stopped banning
00:33:09.640
conservatives. He stopped censoring conservatives. And he instituted one tier standard for
00:33:16.280
everyone. And then he also instituted community notes and all the rest. And that for some reason
00:33:21.720
to them made them so upset that they all started running over to blue sky. It wasn't in a boost of
00:33:27.240
engagement that Bernie Sanders is saying. It was actually leveling the playing field to an equal
00:33:31.880
standard. And I'll just, yeah, maybe I'll add a point. So it is true, of course, that in the battle
00:33:39.800
of ideas, the conservative ideas, of course, we would all agree are much better than the progressive
00:33:45.000
ones. But I want to introduce a slight cosmetic point that speaks to sort of the virality on social
00:33:51.080
media. In my happiness book, the book after the parasitic mind, I talk about the research, not my
00:33:59.320
own research, but there's unequivocal research that shows that on average, conservative score much
00:34:05.640
higher on happiness than do progressives and liberals. And the research is unequivocal. So
00:34:12.680
that if you look at the reason, by the way, if I can just explain it very quickly, the conservative,
00:34:17.960
I argue, wakes up in the morning, he may not live in a perfect society, but there are things worth
00:34:23.960
conserving. If you are a conservative, by the definition of that term, the progressive wakes up
00:34:30.360
with unbelievable existential angst. I live in a supremacist society, white supremacy, transphobic,
00:34:36.760
Islamophobic, built on slavery. Therefore, I need to eradicate the current society and around the
00:34:42.840
corner, there'll be unicornia. So I'm sullen, I'm dour, I'm angry. Look at Bernie Sanders. I mean,
00:34:49.880
he is more scary looking than, you know, the black mamba. Whereas you look at you guys,
00:34:55.800
you look at all of the beautiful women on Fox, they look happy. They are easy to, on the eyes.
00:35:03.000
And so I think that certainly is an additional element beyond just the quality of ideas that makes
00:35:09.720
people more drawn to some of the leading conservative figures. That's, I think that's a
00:35:16.520
really smart point. I've never actually thought about that, thought about it that way. Doctor said,
00:35:20.120
we live in a state of gratitude and of a sense of, I would say, obligation of duty to conserve the good,
00:35:28.600
the true, and the beautiful, things we're grateful for, things we have joy knowing that they exist.
00:35:34.440
The progressive mind lives in a state of existential dread because they believe the world is not good,
00:35:40.200
true, or beautiful right now, and they want to make it that way. And so they're willing to tear down
00:35:44.200
all the edifices they see as in between them and their utopia that is simply never going to exist on
00:35:49.880
planet earth. And that dichotomy is why you, you liberals tend to wear their dread on their face.
00:35:57.080
Whereas conservatives tend to be happy. We tend to be jovial. And it was funny because
00:36:00.680
I also, I read also kind of like, like, like it's like self-effacing, right? It's like, it's like you,
00:36:05.880
you, you hate yourself. So you look worse. And then it's like, you know what I mean?
00:36:09.720
But it's funny because I, you know, sometimes I would notice on social media in the wake of this
00:36:13.640
tragedy, Dr. Sad, that some people would say, oh, you guys aren't mourning enough. And it's like, okay,
00:36:18.200
first of all, like, that's not true. If you, if you could just see us in private,
00:36:25.720
but secondly, we do not mourn the way the world mourns. I have faith that, that Charlie is
00:36:31.720
staring Jesus in the face and that's our Christian faith. And, and I believe that he is, uh, he was
00:36:37.320
wearing a crown of glory and he's a, he's a martyr for the faith and for the country. I believe that
00:36:41.560
God has a plan. I trust God's plan. I don't understand God's plan. I don't have to like
00:36:47.720
God's plan all the time, at least in my flesh, but I trust it. And there is, there is a sense of,
00:36:53.960
of higher purpose at play that I am willing to, you know, park my emotions in my flesh at the door
00:37:00.040
and trust the Lord. I want to play this other clip, Dr. Sad, because it, it's, again, we're talking
00:37:04.680
about this AOC Bernie town hall, Caroline Levitt's weighing in saying we, we now have the two new
00:37:09.160
leaders of the Democrat party. Tough to argue with that, uh, observation. Uh, but she can't,
00:37:14.280
she really struggles to give Trump credit for his, this peace deal in the Middle East. And I,
00:37:19.320
I want to dive into what that says at a deeper level about our politics in this country. 261.
00:37:25.320
Maybe I'm wrong about the ceasefire in Gaza. Do you believe President Trump deserves credit for that?
00:37:30.280
Well, you know, I find these, there have been several ceasefire announcements and developments
00:37:37.960
that have happened over the past two years. As president Trump was on the plane back to the
00:37:42.440
United States, there's already indications and questions about whether this ceasefire will hold.
00:37:48.360
Do you give him credit? Do you give him credit though, for getting to this point where it did get
00:37:52.920
those 20 hostages back home with their families in this particular development? Yes. But we also know
00:37:59.000
that president Trump, uh, was an obstacle to peace, uh, previously as well.
00:38:06.600
Okay. So he was an obstacle. The whole world celebrated when this happened and everybody said
00:38:15.000
that nobody could do this except for Trump. And yet somehow he is an obstacle. She says, yes,
00:38:19.640
he gets credit, but instantly has to say, oh, but the peace is fragile. Well, of course it's fragile.
00:38:24.760
Dr. Sad, what does this tell us about the state of politics where we can't
00:38:29.000
leave our domestic issues at the shoreline like we used to and sort of present a united front
00:38:35.000
internationally? You know, I thank you for that question because in the way that I'm going to
00:38:40.120
answer it, it shows the power of studying psychology and behavioral science. So here's the answer to
00:38:46.840
your wonderful question. There is a great book by two French cognitive psychologists, uh, by name of
00:38:53.480
Sperber and Mercier. The book is titled The Enigma of Reason, where they argued that our capacity to
00:39:00.840
reason did not evolve in order to achieve some objective truth, but rather it evolved to win arguments. So
00:39:09.800
that even when we are applying our faculty of reasoning, we are doing it in a tribal coalitional
00:39:17.000
manner, right? So it doesn't matter if Andrew convinces me that my position is wrong and therefore I will
00:39:23.320
have the humility to say, thank you for correcting me, Andrew. You're right. And I was wrong. I will
00:39:29.160
double down, triple down forever more because my team can't lose. That's exactly what AOC is showing.
00:39:36.520
She is showing that she's not an honest interlocutor. All that matters is that I don't give credit
00:39:43.720
where credit is due. I can never accept the fact that Trump might have done something
00:39:49.240
that was decent and therefore I'm going to try to avoid giving him the due credit.
00:39:56.840
Jack, anything to add to that? So I suppose, is it possible then that we are able to return to a
00:40:05.480
point in this country where things like being an American are what we see as our tribe. And this
00:40:14.200
is one of the reasons that I think that Trump's defense of the American flag, of fighting against
00:40:20.360
the kneeling during the national anthem during the Super Bowl and NFL games, that if you bring everyone
00:40:28.840
under one umbrella of saying, we're all American citizens, we may have disagreements on our SEC team
00:40:35.480
and our Super Bowl team, or Andrew and I are crosswise because his Dodgers beat my Phillies in the-
00:40:41.800
Three to one. Darn near us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I remember. Thank you.
00:40:45.880
You didn't even make it interesting. We had the one. Okay. It was eight to two the one game.
00:40:49.080
Yeah. Anyway, we'd love too many men on base. But the point is we can still all be American. And I
00:40:57.480
think that it's the messing around with those nuts and bolts of the country that have gotten us to
00:41:04.440
this place. One minute left here, what the doctor said.
00:41:07.240
Yeah. Let me give you an example. I recently had on my show Enes Kander Freedom, the former NBA player,
00:41:13.160
right, who retired to play for Boston Celtics, right? Now, this guy's from Muslim background,
00:41:18.680
but I don't care that he's Muslim, even though I don't have nice things to say about Islam,
00:41:23.000
because he exemplifies the types of immigrants that we want in the United States or in the West.
00:41:28.440
He comes to the United States and says, I want to be, to Jack's point, I want to be united under the
00:41:34.200
common rubric called the United States. I'm Canadian, yet I'm at Ole Miss at a center called the
00:41:40.280
Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom, because I embody and I,
00:41:47.240
I'd like to think I exemplify all of the values of American exceptionalism. So you're exactly spot on,
00:41:53.800
no more hyphenated Americans. If you are American, you believe in our foundational principles,
00:41:59.160
and then welcome in my brother. If you don't, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
00:42:03.480
And that is a perfect place to leave it. Dr. Gadsad, a Southerner who's rooting for Ole Miss,
00:42:12.360
I never thought I'd see the day, but it's glorious. We're all building bridges. We're all building
00:42:17.160
bridges. Post-September 10th, I think it's fitting somehow. Dr. Sad, thank you for so much of your time.