Dan Crenshaw： Fortitude in the Era of Grievance
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Summary
Dan Crenshaw is a former Navy SEAL, best-selling author, and Congressman from the great state of Texas. In this episode, we talk about how to deal with anger and frustration in our society, and how to overcome it.
Transcript
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I'm saying learn unemotionally, stay, keep your heart out of it, because it's not developed.
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People have a real misunderstanding of basic civics, who holds power up here, what kind
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They simultaneously want government out of their lives, while you also be a dictator
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And how do we heal the rift between left and right?
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Because the reality is you need to work together in order to have a cohesive country, don't you?
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I do think, I think objectively the left has moved way, way further off the spectrum than the right has.
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The right's gotten angrier, but I'm not so sure how our policies have shifted dramatically.
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You noted before how victimhood and outrage has been elevated in our society, unfortunately on both sides.
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You've got to fight fire with fire, right?
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I'm like, what fire have you ever put out with fucking fire?
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the Road from the USA.
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our terrific guest today is Navy SEAL, best-selling author, and the congressman from the great state of Texas.
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Thank you for letting us take over your office.
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I mentioned that you are a best-selling author.
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And actually, your book, Fortitude, is one of the things we really wanted to talk about.
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You talk about the fact that you lost your mom when you were 10 years old, watched her pass away from cancer.
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You go out on deployment, you get injured, and the fortitude of dealing with all of that.
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And that contrasts so sharply with the culture that we now seem to live in.
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What is it like for you with your life experience watching people freak out and melt down over tiny little things all the time?
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So one of the chapters in that book is called Perspectives from Darkness.
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And the whole point of that book is it's not like a political book.
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I mean, there's a confluence of themes that sort of, you know, create this sort of multifactorial explanation of the mental sense of fortitude.
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And people, I think, are objectively more upset just in general.
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Like, he's angry and fragile and, like, deeply fragile than, you know, years past.
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And maybe that's, like, the natural tendency of civilization.
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like we don't need you to be hard as nails it's kind of the point of civilizing but you have we
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have come to a point where maybe it's it's been overdone a little bit and we complain a little
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too much about things that we shouldn't be complaining about and so it's healthy
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just i mean just you don't even have to look that that far back in time um maybe it's maybe it's
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past generations maybe it's just a few years ago maybe it's just comparing yourself to somebody
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else's situation and think you know what maybe it's comparing yourself to your own situation
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10 years ago and you're like you know what i've been through something harder than this let me
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let me get through this too i don't need to be triggered by this um i i you know somebody else
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dealt with what i'm dealing with now and and they performed way better than i'm than i am now
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right that's like a key lesson in perspective um we hear it all the time in buds you know they'll
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say like look you guys are you guys are looking pretty miserable but you know what there's like
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10 000 people who've done this before you they they did just fine so either like sack up or just
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get the hell out um that should be a fortifying message now to a lot of young people these days
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that's like that's like an attack like you're attacking my sense of well-being attacking my
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self-esteem i was told that i'm perfect the way i am but that's like the worst thing you can do
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to somebody i would tell you you're perfect the way you are if i don't like you because then i
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don't want you to improve i care about you i want you to improve and seek self-improvement so you
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can only do that if you have some kind of perspective and the reason i bring my mom
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into this conversation is because i watched her truly suffer and but i but i'm not sure that i
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was really aware of how bad she was suffering you know at the time because she didn't she hid it
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from us i mean she all we saw was like my best friend and this this like humorous lady um made
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jokes and and still looked after us and like so you know i'm sitting on my own kind of not a
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deathbed that's a little too dramatic but like a a bed that i can't really move out of um blind
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I'm still not that lady in her late 30s dying from cancer.
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It's something you talk about in the book when you went to Afghanistan on deployment
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and you would see people and you had the sense that they see the world differently.
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And for Francis and I, both living in the UK, very comfortable, very prosperous.
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I've seen the way that people live outside the West.
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you know how do how do you give that perspective to young people who grow up in comfort who grew
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up in stability who grew up in in in places that are better than humanity has ever experienced
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how do we create perspective when there isn't the first i was just telling them to try learning
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about it i don't think it's that much more complicated than that and i guess not you
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mentioned i did have the advantage of i grew up abroad too so you know i lived in cairo egypt
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before. Those were my first basic memories as a toddler.
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Deep, deep poverty, obviously, in Cairo region. I went to high school
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in Bogota, Colombia, so I know what bad can look
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like. Not that Colombia's bad. I actually love that place. But as far as inequalities go,
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as far as problems in a country go, a civil war, it's kind of a thing.
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It's a real issue. So you appreciate it more when you have
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here. So how do you get people to understand that? Just tell them.
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Say, hey, look, there are, you need to be knowledgeable about how people before you live,
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And before you guys walked in here, I actually just recorded a podcast with the economist
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and Senator Phil Graham about the myths of inequality.
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So this is like, what you're talking about is really fresh on my mind because we just
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People have really, people are just misinformed about basic truths, about how other people
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are living about what our history is about what the history of the world is uh and and what the
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truth is about economic disparities discrimination versus disparities all of these things are just
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left is deeply misinformed people for their own political opportunism right because it's people
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have to be people have to believe there's a crisis in front of them if they're going to demand rapid
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change right revolution never took place when people were like i don't know i think things are
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fine i do we do we need the revolution i kind of like you know that you're not going to get your
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bernie sanders revolution if everyone thinks everything is fine and frankly obviously we're
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not getting the bernie sanders revolution so to an extent people do understand the truth here
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but i part of being a conservative is making sure we don't get there okay so um telling people
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presenting the facts i don't know that it's more complicated than that dan do you think part of
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The problem as well is that America is such a materialistic culture
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that people go on social media and then they see the people
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living these incredible lives and they get angry and frustrated
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when their lives don't match up to what they see on the screen.
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I don't know if it's America specific, but it's certainly true.
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So, you know, it's almost, again, it's sort of a natural outcome of civilization.
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Because in civilization, really smart people get the opportunity to create really amazing things that make everybody's life better.
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The thing about making everybody's life better and easier is that it is a form of dependency.
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Like, if I'm paying for your rent and paying for your school and paying for it, you are going to be dependent.
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But what we forget about, too, is that some of the technological advances of our time have created that same kind of lethargy.
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But the easier it is for someone to live without it being actually productive, you're going to have more unproductive people, and that will increase inequality.
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Again, that's the essence of being a conservative.
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There's economic foundations, cultural foundations, and political foundations.
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Maintain people's freedom within a set of rights and a set of policies
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that solve problems through a framework of limiting principles.
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To the extent that we move away from that, it's a dangerous territory.
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In your book, you actually put the words in italics,
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Because you're letting emotions get the best of you.
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Just because, you know, that doesn't mean it's not justified, right?
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Like, when I give talks, I tell young students all the time,
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I'm like, look, just, I didn't have to deal with politics
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Like we divide it up into friends groups based on like who listened to country and who listened to like alternative rock.
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Like you guys are dividing yourselves up based on political beliefs.
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You don't have a like a set of experiences that help frame what you're seeing on a day to day basis.
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Keep your heart out of it because it's not developed.
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Because I'm like, look, the way you're reacting to me, whatever you want to tell me, I'm going to tune out.
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And maybe you're mad about something and maybe it is justified, right?
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Maybe there's a true injustice that you're truly upset about.
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I'm just saying, if you want to be productive about it, if you want to solve that problem, you're not going to get there with outrage.
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In the SEAL teams, it's like we're not fearful, just like everyone else is.
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It's not like we're not outraged, just like everyone else is.
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We just have an extreme ability to control our aggression and control our fear.
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So it's really that simple because it means that you've allowed yourself to give in
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we can't change anything just with emotion alone.
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if you're kind of far right and left, like, spectrums.
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for a set of ideas maybe that are unsolvable, right?
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That's very clear to me after being in politics
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so the fact that you would take a couple of swipes at the left makes sense.
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We have a lot of center-right guests on like you.
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And one of the things I'm thinking about increasingly is that, yes,
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But, you know, we're sitting here not very far from the Capitol
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where we saw what happens when the right does the same thing.
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Are you concerned that both sides are now at this?
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so that's why i take so much flack some from some of those audiences um because i call it out i
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mean like when you start acting like this the populist right the populism to me is a left-wing
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sensation okay because what is populism it's me telling you what you want to hear right for
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popularity's sake well look it yes it is popular if i just promise the population three thousand
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dollar checks every month for free of course that's popular does that make it a solid policy
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Of course not. The left is really good at that kind of stuff. I want to buy your vote. I'm going to pay for your school. I'm going to cancel your student debt. I'm going to pay for this. I'm going to pay for that. I'm going to tax the rich to do it. Oh, yeah, that's populist. I mean, it's buying your votes. The right wing populists have given into that nonsense to some extent. That concerns me a great deal.
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But what do you make of their argument, Dan? Because what they would say is, look, the corrupt elite right here in Washington is ruining the country.
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It's rhinos like Dan Crenshaw, you know, Republicans in name only.
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They don't want to change anything. They want to sit there and profit off blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Give me specifics. You can go through your list of sort of talking points that we can all read on Twitter.
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They've been recycled a million times. What does it mean? What the hell do you mean by that?
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You know, let's get down to the actual brass tacks.
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And it becomes this sort of whirlwind of answers once we get to that point.
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People have a real misunderstanding of basic civics, who holds power up here,
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They simultaneously want government out of their lives while you also be a dictator
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It's like, well, this is just how our government works.
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So you have to follow the Constitution and the parameters it sets out.
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I think people say those things, too, because they've been conditioned to hear those things
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and then repeat those things by political campaign after political campaign on the left and the right.
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And yeah, I guess you could define populism that way, too. Just counter elites. Well, but again, like, what the hell does that mean? You know, what is it? Which elites? Why? Let's get specific and then and then address that problem within a set of principles that we all adhere to that I thought we agreed upon. Not just resentment for resentment's sake.
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Well, I suppose what people mean is that there is a big disconnect between what happens in this city and the lives of ordinary people out there.
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The values of the people who are here are very different.
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Their way of looking at the world is different.
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And for a lot of people, I think the reason that they're tempted by populism is they feel unheard.
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They feel like politicians don't respond to their needs and what they want.
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yeah i mean i just what i would tell people then again i want specifics like like you know and
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i know i'm not sure you're in that category so it's hard for you to come out with specifics
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because you're not the one yelling at me about it yeah but i have had these conversations and
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i always try to say like what that's fine but what do you mean like give me give me an example
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of a policy and it'll give me a policy and i'll be like okay well just so you know like that that
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policy pulls 60 with the american people so are we not listening to the american people
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okay just because you know and they're like i am the people i'm like well you're not though
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okay there's there's actually a lot of you and you think this is what the internet does is this
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what the internet does everyone has got their own little silo and my in my own little silo i'm the
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king of the world i represent the people and therefore i represent everybody when actually
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you're about three percent of society i hear it all the time we the people want you to do this
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i'm like well you want me to but if you go and pull your own neighbors you're gonna get a lot
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different opinions, man. So that's just, that's life. And I will say this too, that most of the
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normal people just going to work, like they're actually not paying attention to my political
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posts or they actually do just talk about kitchen table issues. So you've got, social media has done
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this, right? It's elevated very fringe issues in our politics that actually most people don't
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really care about. So you do have to use scientific polling to really get what people care about.
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then it starts to make more sense it's like it starts to be like inflation like basic economics
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the border things that you should expect people to care about it's it's it becomes a little less
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of the kind of lightning rod issues not that light or not broad issues don't matter on day to day
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but there's there's like social media world like you know twitter isn't real life it doesn't
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necessarily translate to how people are feeling and you know i i always do feel better when i
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actually and i do this a lot but i'm just taking questions from at my events like back home now
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now i'm hearing from the people like now i'm actually hearing from the people especially when
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i go to there's two different kinds of events okay there's one where i advertise it so who's
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going to show up to that political people like people are really interested in politics
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um so you have to do other kinds of events like i'll do like a town hall but i'll go to a like
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a specific company and like get to talk to all their workers these are all people would not take
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the time to go to some random political event i don't blame them um but now i get now i get to
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hear what regular people are asking right and it's it's very different from what your political
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entertainment industry wants you to think they're asking about so i'm not sure the disconnect is
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that big i will say the other thing i tell people is whether you like it or not the congress
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represents you a lot better than you think it's wild up here there's a lot of different types of
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people they do represent very very different ideas and demographies and parts of the country
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you know and then it's messy because nobody agrees and you don't like that nothing gets
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done and i'm like well what exactly is it you want to get done what does that mean
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and how do you and tell you what go have dinner with like six of your neighbors
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and and you find a kind of a simple problem and i want you all to agree on a solution
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like really think through it you tell me that all six of you agree yeah now try to get 435 people
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to all agree. You know, when you actually start doing it, it's a little more complicated than
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people realize. Dan, how do you, because the left went nuts, and I'm someone who was on the left
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quite a while ago with the embracing of wokeism, which to me is a conspiracy theory. But now I've
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seen the right go just as nuts about things like Ukraine and QAnon. How do you deal with your own
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side when they are quite frankly losing the plot on the far right? Well, the good news is QAnon's
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kind of bunk, I guess. But, you know, the people who follow QAnon, the way they think hasn't
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changed. It'll happen again. Obviously, I am where I am on Ukraine. It's not super secretive,
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like how I feel about how we should support Ukraine. One of the main problems there is
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it's a partisan reaction it's biden's war so i'm against it like it's honestly that simple yeah
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uh and also like there's some it's not really spoken about but it's like well zelensky it was
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zelensky's fault that trump got impeached you know so there's there's that it really is like
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these simplistic partisan thing there is an isolationist wing to the right always has been
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um kind of goes like up and down like this it's extremely strong at the moment and
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because nobody's speaking to them i try to but you got to listen you got to like actually
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download my podcast to hear what i'm saying about it i can promise you i can convince you um like
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because i'm not making these like nancy pelosi-esque arguments of like we have to fight for democracy
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what the hell does that mean no that's not why we're doing it we're doing this out of
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complete self-interest and what is that i'm with you by the way on this issue but
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educate us please right so there's a few lines of self-interest one is strategic deterrence
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right you do not fundamentally want a world where everyone is invading everyone we lived in that
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world for like thousands of years and how was that world everyone it sucked it was not good it was
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like a lot like your life expectancy was like 28 you had gray hair so it was it was not a good
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world to live in you will not have the same lifestyle you have if you allow that world to
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happen right china's watching the russian invasion they're like when can we invade taiwan how long
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will the americans actually last for their friends and this is just payments by the way this
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isn't even like lives we're dark we're not we're not spending a single american life we're saying
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i want to avoid the following scenario because for those because those who don't want to support
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ukraine you by definition have to support russia winning people like no no i just don't want to
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stay out of it well like no no you're supporting russia winning because that's that's the other
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scenario like if you start kicking his ass right now i have a choice right now no either i stopped
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i do i can stop you and i have the ability to stop you so you know because i'm just stronger
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than you so i can stop you or i can let it happen by definition if i let it happen i'm choosing
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choosing that so what does that mean in the ukraine sense it means that you want an intact
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russian military that's been emboldened and hyper aggressive probably has way more support
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amongst the russian population because russians like one thing they like winning they like winning
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and they they they love strength and now you're on four more nato countries borders how is that
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a better how is that a good thing what the hell is wrong with you and you're telling me that all
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i have to do is write a check to ukrainians and then they'll like stop that from happening
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that's a good deal so strategic returns is a big deal you know a world without chaos is a really
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big deal um and and two large countries warring is is chaos and it turns out if you bother to look
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at history at all european wars tend to spread and it's just europeans um you guys explain it
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and they draw us in so on the other hand it's like and then they kind of diminish ukraine is
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this like economic backwater which is crazy it's like 50 of the world's neon a ton of iron ore
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that we use in our steel like 13 15 of the world's food supply like you haven't felt those effects
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because it is the economy is still working and they're still exporting a bunch of that it's not
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nothing neon by the way is used for semiconductors so this gets to the taiwan the situation like
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everything is connected like you can't build a freaking pencil these days in your country you
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can't it just not not without it costing like way more than it should um you know i've had that
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conversation with like really conservative high school students who have like been kind of captured
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by this like in an emotional way like by this this kind of right-wing bernie sanders ism and i'm like
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dude like the iphone you have you can't make you can't make it here you just can't you'll never
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make it here unless you want to pay ten thousand dollars for it like and even then i'm not so sure
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you can make it here so he's like yes we can i'm like who told you that i got it i don't have time
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i i can't teach you basic economics and the history more importantly the history of trade
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and economics um in 30 seconds but i promise you it's not true so look um i think that's a that's
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a succinctive explanation as i can as i can give you real quick on on ukraine absolutely so but
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Dan, what would you say to those people who go, look, we're in real economic trouble in this
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country. You go into the city centers of places like LA, the homelessness population is exploding.
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There's a fentanyl crisis. This money could be used to help Americans in America, not in some
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far off country. Yeah. It's disappointing when that kind of argument comes from the right,
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which is, it does come from the right all the time. Cause I'm like, are you, well, you can
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join the Democrat party if you want. Cause that is a Democrat argument, like where money just
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solves everything. If we could spend a billion dollars and solve poverty in downtown and in
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Houston in general, like we would have spent it by now. That's not what solves the problem.
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You know, a more compelling argument is the border. Like, why are we worried about their
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border, if not our border? Totally fair. We should. But it's like it's a false choice. You
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don't know if it's not an either or situation. We should do both. You people who know me know
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I've been pretty hardcore. I don't really talk about Ukraine. I talk about fighting the Mexican
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drug cartels. That's what I talk about. So I'm all, you know, it's not really a money problem.
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Our border issue is not a money problem. So can you explain this to us, Dan, because we have a
00:24:56.420
very similar problem in the UK where we have tens of thousands of people coming to the country on
00:25:01.360
small boats, in our case, illegally. They don't get checked. They get put up by the government
00:25:05.440
in a hotel. Why are we in the position where some of the most powerful countries in the history of
00:25:12.620
the world are unable to enforce what every other country in the world does which is a controlled
00:25:17.860
border yeah well because the the left has become just hostage to their own sense of compassion i
00:25:26.080
guess you know um i was people asked about this like why can't democrats see it our way and i'm
00:25:31.820
like there's a couple things there's probably political incentives in america there's probably
0.58
00:25:36.540
some political incentives they think they'll vote for them eventually i it's not a really good
00:25:41.380
strategy so i'm not not sure that's true but anyway but but i think fundamentally they they
00:25:46.240
have different moral reasoning than conservatives and so so they they don't even conservatives think
00:25:52.500
that like loyalty to your group i'm referencing like jonathan height's work here he does it lays
00:25:57.980
this out really well and explains a lot of policy differences between the left and the right it does
00:26:02.280
you know conservatives have pretty even keeled on all sort of the moral frameworks that we might
00:26:06.900
point out like a sense of authority sanctity a sense of in-group loyalty which is important
00:26:12.000
when you're talking about a border and compassion loyalty things like that so the left really only
00:26:18.480
cares about compassion and equity that's their whole thing so everyone should have the same
00:26:22.660
thing which means everyone should have access to all of america's benefits and i just feel for
00:26:27.900
someone like they're always a victim right so this is a victim this is kind of where victimhood
00:26:32.220
culture probably comes from because you know it's you noted before how how victimhood and
00:26:39.360
outrage has been elevated in our society unfortunately on both sides i think the
00:26:42.960
right did it's gonna match the left it's gotta fight fire with fire right i'm like what fire
0.94
00:26:48.360
have you ever put out with fucking fire that's the point i always make is like when the fire
0.94
00:26:53.720
brigade turn up at your house they're not turning up with lighters and fuel that's not what they do
0.99
00:26:57.920
no like could you imagine just just burn it all down just do it faster but don't you worry that's
00:27:03.580
the political attitude in america at the moment in both sides drain the swamp or whatever else
00:27:09.100
yeah just you know abolish abolish capitalism that seems to be the solution for both sides
00:27:14.520
yeah that's what populism is right it's based in emotions based in outrage and it's like blame
00:27:18.600
someone else and and burn it all down right that's that's real dangerous and the left does it
00:27:25.680
because they're utopianists um so like when you can't when you envision utopia and you're not
00:27:30.720
quite there what do you do you get mad and you like want to burn it all down the problem is is
00:27:34.660
like they're literally you know i always i tell people look envision a librarian and she's like
0.94
00:27:39.300
standing on a bunch of books and she's almost at the top shelf that's utopia but she can't really
00:27:44.060
reach it this really frustrates her and so her reaction instead of instead of adding more books
00:27:49.040
to her foundations and those foundations might be like you know christianity or you know a sense of
00:27:55.340
meritocracy like i'm talking about really basic foundations capitalism just burns them all down
00:28:00.340
right and boom they named the french revolution that went really well so um and on the right like
00:28:05.720
it's i don't think the writer utopian is but it's just just mad like people just mad and like you
00:28:12.100
know and our job as leaders is to be like i understand why you're mad so here's the truth
00:28:15.460
about first let me i just like let me give you the truth about what you think is true whether
00:28:20.520
it's washington or this policy whatever it is first let me do that and then let me walk you
00:28:24.940
realistically like how we get to the solution i think you'd be happy with that's what a leader's
00:28:29.120
job is what a lot of leaders do instead is be like what is it you think again huh i agree with you
00:28:34.520
totally like that's populism because i'm like i'm just mirroring your emotions so that i can
00:28:39.340
manipulate you that that's what populism is then but let's come back to the immigration because
00:28:44.220
if it was as simple as the right taking power uh i'd be you know i'm not on the right but i would
00:28:52.040
support the right if that's what i thought in the uk we've had a conservative government well
00:28:57.520
conservative government since 2010 and in this country only until very recently you had a
00:29:03.040
republican president who did not solve this problem so why is it that our countries because
00:29:09.040
i feel like it's almost like it's not just about the individual circumstances it's almost a
00:29:12.680
cultural phenomenon where even the right has actually swallowed a lot of these leftist ideas
00:29:24.120
No, it's just the politics of it got messy probably.
00:29:26.960
So I will say Trump's policies did make it a lot better, right?
00:29:34.040
And it's a simple disincentive to come across the border illegally by saying, look, you
00:29:37.780
can come across, fine, but you can claim asylum, but you're just going to wait in Mexico while
00:29:43.220
And so what that did fundamentally was stop the abuse of the asylum system.
00:29:57.360
So I guess we are too, but Trump wasn't necessarily, he was looking for ways.
00:30:05.120
It took him a long time to kind of get to that point.
00:30:11.860
You know, you got to have serious majorities here to make that policy change.
00:30:16.640
we're going to pass something out of the House here soon.
00:30:19.580
That's going to be a really solid border security.
00:30:30.800
I don't think that there's a single Republican out there
00:30:43.660
The reason I bring up the cultural point, though,
00:30:45.580
is I talk about this in my book, you know, the Barack Obamas, the, I mean, Hillary Clintons,
00:30:52.280
the Bill Clintons, they all sounded to the right of Donald Trump on immigration in their own time.
00:30:58.140
And recently, too. So something has changed in the mindset of the country on these issues.
00:31:03.480
Yeah, that's true. That's fascinating. And I've never figured it out. I mean,
00:31:09.060
i think i think they they're might be as simple as them pandering politically to their latin
00:31:16.900
base that's backfired and then now they have no way out you have to understand too that the that
00:31:22.120
the people say all the time that the politicians in washington don't want to solve the immigration
00:31:27.260
problem because they benefit from it being like a lightning rod issue all the time i actually don't
00:31:31.040
think that's true even for democrats because we all have plenty of lightning rod issues and
00:31:35.260
political footballs that we can throw around and i'd be really happy to just solve this one um
00:31:40.700
it's the it's the outside groups it's the it's the groups that like literally make money off
0.99
00:31:46.420
of this people like oh again it's like going back to the you just line your pockets what the fuck
0.92
00:31:50.080
does that mean like we know we don't like we literally don't um but you know who does make
00:31:54.380
a lot of money um activists that run these organizations who take donations from you
00:31:59.080
and tell you that they're you're fighting for them and all that so on the left those are very
00:32:03.200
very powerful pro-immigrant groups and i think they're really scared of them i think that's a
00:32:08.740
fundamental truth uh we have them on the right too like you know they will try to prevent us from
00:32:12.980
like coming up with a compromise that would because a compromise would you know be something
00:32:17.120
like okay let's figure out what to do with like better legal immigration but like really get the
00:32:22.460
border secured um i would i could foresee a lot of those far right anti-immigrant groups torpedoing
00:32:28.940
that i could see that happening because they don't really want a solution so i don't think it's the
00:32:34.020
politicians up here do you think part of the problem is as well dan is that people don't know
00:32:38.340
how congress works they don't know anything about you how policy is passed so that creates
00:32:45.720
conspiracy theories yeah is that something you find yourself battling all the time yeah yeah
00:32:53.780
for sure it's just all the time like i said before people think you're a dictator
00:33:27.360
like very enjoyable um politics you do it because it's important because you need leaders who are
00:33:35.580
actually willing to kind of tell people the truth um the truth makes people really mad
00:33:40.320
is is there's a lot of emotional attachment to false narratives that are comfortable
00:33:45.020
whether that's how the government works whether that's the the nature of inequality and what's
00:33:50.800
true about it whether that's climate alarmism i don't know like there's there's plenty of
00:33:55.440
comfortable false narratives that people like really enjoy holding on to it makes them really
00:33:59.980
mad especially if you tell your own side like that's that's not right what you just it's not
00:34:04.480
true yeah because then you're like a traitor like no no just say the thing we saw on twitter it's
00:34:09.740
like no i can't say the thing because it's not true so what do you do when you're in a system
00:34:15.720
that actively rewards that kind of behavior how do you navigate that and how do you maintain a
00:34:22.240
sense of integrity. Yeah, well, I guess you just got to hope that integrity and truth wins out in
00:34:29.580
the end. I think it tends to. It's not obvious to me that in the long run, it doesn't. But you're
00:34:37.880
going to have your battles in between. That's for sure. You don't have any other choice. So that's
00:34:43.460
never said it was easy. Things that are easy are usually not very worthwhile.
00:34:52.520
Do you think he's what America needs at this point, Dan?
00:34:57.540
I'm not going to get into the politics of the primary.
00:35:14.120
I find it to be the easiest thing in the world.
00:35:23.540
Trump barely won, like, a point he won, won it by.
00:35:28.280
So it's not hard to beat Democrats, even when they're spending a ton of money on me.
00:35:32.280
Even when Beto's coming in to campaign against me and, like, all this nonsense.
00:35:42.180
Get enough people to know who you are and be somewhat likable, more likable than the other guy
00:35:45.400
that's winning so this is not a hard thing to do i mean democrats are trying to ruin women's sports
1.00
00:35:50.700
they're trying to trying to tax your business out of existence they've literally biden is is making
00:35:55.700
a deal you said you were going to ask me what i think people should know about well here's one
00:35:59.820
thing they should know that biden has made a deal with the oecd with maybe like 180 countries
00:36:05.740
signatories that that if he isn't able to raise corporate taxes here in america then everybody
00:36:11.920
else should raise taxes on our American companies in their country. What the hell, man? I don't
00:36:18.720
care what side of the aisle you're on. That's like treason. It's nuts. It's the global corporate
00:36:25.800
minimum tax, right? So holy crap, this shouldn't be that hard to beat these folks. Like most people
0.98
00:36:32.740
do not want an open border, like a vast, vast majority. Most people think you shouldn't have
00:36:36.820
an abortion past 12 weeks. How are we losing this debate? It's not even most people. It's like 60
00:36:41.900
70 percent of people don't think you should have abortion past 12 weeks like you lose it by by
00:36:46.960
by pushing the extreme yeah that's how you lose the debate yeah and doing it in an angry way yeah
00:36:52.100
like like you gotta be like look i'm a conservative i'm just not angry about it that's like a funny
00:36:57.300
line a lot of people say this is so true and it's like look just just fire and brimstone i know it
00:37:01.860
like and they do it because it riles up their base and they're only interested in talking to
00:37:05.420
their base i'm like look i'm interested in actually fighting for my base and for me to
00:37:10.420
fight for my base, you need to give me the space to actually do it. You need to give me the space
00:37:15.540
to persuade other people slowly to come over, which means I can't go be an asshole like you
0.99
00:37:20.900
want me to be. I think most people get that. I guess the only point I'm making here is it's
0.99
00:37:29.060
easy to be Democrats. We just got to want to do it. And how do we heal the rift between left and
00:37:33.780
right? Because the reality is you need to work together in order to have a cohesive country,
00:37:39.040
don't you that's tough i do think i think objectively the left has moved way way further
00:37:45.860
off the spectrum than the right has the right's gotten angrier but i'm not so sure how our policies
00:37:49.660
have shifted dramatically i mean you can point to some things right like some things that are good
00:37:54.840
like a skepticism of trade with china i think that's a good skepticism to have like there's
0.99
00:37:58.980
nothing in conservative philosophy that says we just have to let chinese do whatever they want
1.00
00:38:02.260
free trade for all like it's actually not a conservative philosophy domestically speaking
00:38:06.180
economically yeah it is but international trade like you've got to negotiate so there's some
00:38:11.540
healthy aspects to the so-called i wouldn't even call that populist it's just smart policy um anyway
00:38:17.760
you can people point to things like that but i'm like we haven't really moved off the deep end
00:38:21.420
that's the whole point of conservatism it kind of stays in a box and like people i'm trying to
00:38:25.480
keep it there the left has moved way far um you know how do you solve that man i don't it does
00:38:33.480
come from the top right there's there's probably room for some more things to happen i will say
00:38:37.560
too like it's not that hard for me to work with democrats i i was just working some democrats on
00:38:42.400
a bill just now on on improving our our health care system right on working on direct primary
00:38:48.820
care which is like a very fundamental conservative philosophy but like some democrats are into it so
00:38:54.720
it's not totally crazy we work together on our national security committees too like i'm on the
00:38:58.980
Intelligence Committee, that's a very bipartisan committee. I've seen us argue in there. It's
00:39:04.920
helpful when there's no cameras. And Armed Services Committee is usually pretty bipartisan
00:39:10.900
as well. So there's most bills that pass, but by far the majority are bipartisan, pass with a lot
00:39:16.760
of support. They're not like changing the world. You know, we're always going to disagree on
00:39:20.460
fundamental things. And that's, by the way, that's the whole point of having a left and right.
00:39:24.800
I do think America does seem to me like the last place where it's like truly 50-50.
00:39:34.060
I mean, I'm sure you can maybe argue with me on that.
00:39:41.560
I think it'll be like that for the next 1,000 years.
00:39:45.700
I think that's naturally wired within the human race
00:39:48.860
to see things in sort of the Thomas Sowell conflict of visions framework, right?
00:40:13.440
Because people, you ask conservatives what it means to them,
00:40:22.440
So it's a conservation of Western values fundamentally,
00:40:25.320
and I would categorize that three ways, cultural, political, and economic.
00:40:29.840
So cultural just means like Judeo-Christian values.
00:40:35.260
You can be an atheist, but you still adhere to the same values
00:40:41.620
just you know whether you like it or not you do and you agree with it so that's one meritocracy
00:40:46.880
right like this is there are cultural issues a personal responsibility like a sense of personal
00:40:51.240
responsibility a sense of fortitude like i should be strong like that's a that's like a real important
00:40:56.140
cultural thing and like we actually do have to say it because like you said earlier people are
00:41:01.200
celebrating weakness victimhood like that's a that'll destroy a civilization from within so
00:41:06.140
you know conservatism has to actually fight for these basic values i could go on and on i guess
00:41:13.520
It's just a market, like a free market society,
00:41:30.800
So like, and political, so small are Republican.
00:41:35.980
You know, we're preserving federalism, states' rights.
00:41:39.160
It's we're preserving the idea that if you have a problem, it's likely that the local people will kind of know how to solve the problem better than somebody in Washington.
00:41:48.160
So, you know, preserving checks and balances are preserving the nature of the court system and its insulation from Congress.
00:41:57.540
Right. Like it's really basic stuff that is actually in sharp disagreement with how the left wants to operate.
00:42:05.920
Like what do they say? They want to pack the courts. They want to remove the filibuster.
0.96
00:42:08.940
They want to remove these really basic political institutions.
00:42:12.040
So when I describe all that, you're like, well, isn't that just normal stuff?
00:42:22.920
Conservatism means having a framework with which to solve the problem.
00:42:25.880
Too many conservatives think it means don't ever solve a problem.
00:42:32.440
It means I approach a problem with a certain framework in mind.
00:42:35.860
And generally, that framework is limiting principles.
00:42:38.280
So I ask questions like, OK, if I want to give you a benefit, like, what do I have to take from him?
00:42:44.860
That's an important question. If I want to give you free health care, but he's a doctor.
00:42:48.180
So, like, do I, like, say you just do I pay him? Do I decide how much he gets paid?
00:42:53.540
How does that work? This is a real these are real questions.
00:42:56.480
Like liberals are just like, no, you just have it.
00:42:59.320
And I'm like, how do you have it? You know, you didn't work for it.
00:43:02.700
How does that work? Maybe we'll try and get to that point.
00:43:05.320
I'm not saying we don't, but you've got to think about his rights as well.
00:43:09.000
If I want to take your guns away, just to make him feel safe,
00:43:14.020
but now you can't protect yourself, but he feels safer.
00:43:19.320
I'm sorry, what principle are you going back to?
00:43:24.580
So only conservatives ask these, and I can keep going, right?
00:43:32.640
we ask those questions and that's like a test for how we solve a problem you know and the
00:43:37.980
conservatives can internally disagree on like well it does infringe on somebody's rights well
00:43:41.460
no it doesn't let's have that discussion but at least we're asking the questions dan in your book
00:43:45.880
moving on a little bit you talk about the values that were instilled in you as a navy seal
00:43:50.620
on a stepping up when you know when there's no one in charge you take charge all of that sort
00:43:57.060
of stuff and they're really beautiful values for people to get and to aspire to what's the
00:44:03.780
contrast like going from that to politics where at least from the outside it seems that the
00:44:08.680
principles are upside down you know if you can screw somebody you do if you can throw someone
00:44:13.300
on the bus you will if you can avoid being at the front and taking the bullets you etc what's
00:44:19.800
the contrast like i don't know you put that really well it's exactly like that because i i have been
00:44:25.840
people ask me what has surprised you and i'm like well i'm not if somebody comes up here and they're
00:44:30.280
super surprised about everything you shouldn't have elected them like it means they don't know
00:44:33.680
what the hell they're doing and there's a lot of people like i can't believe it's like this
0.99
00:44:36.720
why did you run um like jeez uh so you thought it would be a bit of a shit sandwich when you got
0.99
00:44:44.120
the job i just understood basic civics like i'm like yeah i mean you know you don't get to rule
0.91
00:44:47.540
the world when you become a congressman a lot of people are like legitimately frustrated by
00:44:51.280
by by you know how slow the system can be you really don't understand what it's for
00:44:58.080
um what your powers are like what what what people are very uneducated on basic policy so
00:45:04.020
that's that's a problem in the SEAL teams you like you do have to meet certain standards before
00:45:07.560
you deploy that ain't the case in a democracy in electoral politics so that's all i'm saying um
00:45:14.300
but the thing that actually truly surprised me was was the extent people were willing to
00:45:19.300
throw someone under the bus and like betray a friend or me like multiple cases like this
00:45:24.920
for almost nothing in return i mean just for a little just for a quick glimpse uh just for a
00:45:31.800
quick like highlight on twitter like just for almost nothing i'm like wow you stabbed me in
00:45:37.140
the back for not at least do it for something man i have multiple stories like this or i could i
00:45:41.440
could name people but i'm like jeez like it's just like it's almost psychotic like it's so
00:45:47.220
irrational to me i'm like man you would have been better off just saying nothing he's like now you
00:45:52.240
just made an enemy um and so it's it's very irrational maybe that's poor judgment maybe
00:45:57.780
it's just like the the snake pit of um nature of of this game that everybody's playing and
00:46:05.760
everybody's so used to there's no loyalties whatsoever it's like again in the SEAL teams
00:46:09.700
i'm like it i have a platoon member who's you know who's an enemy i don't know this enemy
00:46:17.100
he's always trying to hurt this guy i'm not going to go have drinks with his enemy like i'm just not
00:46:22.420
going to do it but in politics it's like oh no i mean we didn't talk about you like what the hell
00:46:27.000
like it's like okay well noted we're not friends like it's it's it's just that yeah the idea of
00:46:31.900
friendship is almost non-existent it seems like um the sense of loyalty yeah the sense of honor
00:46:37.400
it don't get me wrong it certainly exists with a lot of people um most of the people you probably
00:46:42.880
never heard about never get credit for it but there's a lot of them and like it does need to
00:46:46.380
be noted that there is um but you do have to you do become cynical sometimes because you begin to
00:46:52.760
wonder is that what the people even want you know or do you want the snake oil salesman because
00:46:57.300
sometimes it seems like you do you know and so this is this is why like i find it incumbent on
00:47:02.100
myself to tell truth about the left and the right and um and like who's just selling you a bag of
00:47:08.100
goods and who isn't like am i am i telling you it sounds good because you've been conditioned to
00:47:12.820
hear it or am i telling you the truth you know it's um people gotta people gotta sniff that out
00:47:19.040
well i kind of when i was reading your book and i was thinking about the attitude and you know i
00:47:23.520
heard your conversation with joe rogan as well um did you ever watch game of thrones yeah i sort of
00:47:30.380
had a sense you might be a bit of a ned stark yeah probably you come here turn up idealistic
0.82
00:47:35.980
and then before you know it you're getting your head chopped off i haven't had my head chopped
0.64
00:47:39.360
off yet um but yeah the game of thrones isn't kind to him but isn't his doesn't his son went
0.81
00:47:46.980
out in the end right uh isn't that his son yeah yeah yeah yeah well he's not actually his blood
00:47:53.680
son but yeah yeah all right john snow we're giving all the spoilers away here we're ruining
00:47:58.900
it's a terrible ending by the way but like i guess but but but you know but the reality is is
00:48:04.000
that in game of thrones the the the quote-unquote truth like the right path though extremely
00:48:11.040
difficult and with much sacrifice still won out in the end it has to so it might be different
00:48:17.340
characters at the end but it still wins and so yeah you can't let go of that i mean what do you
00:48:22.380
have if you if you do let go of that you have nothing so it's not worth it it's not worth
00:48:28.560
selling your soul some people sell their souls up here because they can't they probably can't do
00:48:32.000
anything else let's be honest like i can do plenty of other things uh so it's just it's not worth
00:48:37.900
selling up the soul and do you sometimes feel that that's a problem that the characters politics
00:48:44.560
attracts the people who want to be center stage the people who want to be revered that's kind of
00:48:50.180
a side effect do you think that might be the case it depends on the district right you definitely
00:48:54.220
see that in some places you see you see that character get demolished in some districts
00:48:58.180
right and like a much more like normal person gets elected so it really really depends that's
00:49:03.880
why i tell people all the time like look man the congress represents you just fine trust me like
00:49:08.140
you can find your person up here it might not be your representative but it is your person like
00:49:13.100
you've got somebody voting for you like there's a lot of different characters up here um it's you
00:49:19.060
know the average iq up here is 100 what a great note to wrap up a couple more questions and we'll
00:49:26.840
ask you some questions for our locals well no in fact not a couple our final question is always the
00:49:31.060
same we did warn you about it um why is the sas better than the navy seals oh okay i'm leaving
00:49:39.040
i don't want to get choked out by a certain congressman uh we like them very much honestly
00:49:43.720
what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we should be
00:49:48.040
oh well i already gave you one answer you know we probably got to talk more about this ai thing
00:49:54.960
remember when i spoke to you earlier when i said earlier about the how inequality is inevitable
00:49:59.020
even with all the policy you know meddling that you want just because well first of all people
00:50:05.160
naturally produce differently naturally have different skill sets naturally are taller shorter
00:50:08.460
uglier more beautiful whatever there's all that but also that the fact that that and this is really
00:50:13.320
only it feels like a very recent phenomenon last 50 years where massive innovation has allowed a
00:50:18.720
lot of people to remain completely unproductive and live like kings of the future without
00:50:24.680
knowing anything like anything and what is ai going to do it can make it even easier so now
00:50:32.000
you don't even have to know how to write essays like you just hey ai write an essay on this i
00:50:35.860
don't know you don't have to know how to it seems like what are we how is the legal profession going
00:50:41.200
to move forward if if if a legal contract that used to cost millions to write you got to hire
00:50:48.660
a firm to do a corporate merger now be written by ai is that a good thing or bad thing i
00:51:53.860
Well, Congressman, thank you very much for giving us your time.
00:51:56.640
It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you.
00:51:58.420
We're going to ask you a couple of questions for our supporters
00:52:02.360
But for now, thank you guys for watching and listening.
00:52:04.560
We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one.
00:52:07.460
Or also, all of them go ahead, 7 p.m. UK timeout.
00:52:09.500
And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,
00:52:19.080
And she says, what can be done in America about shady media practices in a way that holds our journalists more accountable without impacting the freedom of the press?