TRIGGERnometry - Green Beret on Men, War and Masculinity - Nick Freitas

00:00:01.000 We're at a point right now where young men are going to revolt.

00:00:05.340 They're the ones that we use to fight wars.

00:00:07.180 They're the ones that we use to police streets.

00:00:09.260 You don't get to alienate and attempt to emasculate them forever

00:00:11.900 without them standing up and having something to say about that.

00:00:15.120 You're right, they lied to you about these attributes.

00:00:18.140 But you have to develop in the way that they're going to go

00:00:20.240 because the only way that you're going to save this sort of society

00:00:22.960 that you want to live in, the only way that you're going to create it

00:00:25.720 is if you stand up and you actually assume that role.

00:00:27.600 And it sucks that you have to do it under these conditions, but you do.

00:00:32.060 That for those of us that are trying to educate young men

00:00:35.900 in a way that we think will use those traits toward a noble purpose,

00:00:40.420 you're making it really hard for us to do our jobs right now.

00:00:43.500 And again, you're going to be the ones that pay the price, not us.

00:00:48.120 Nick Fredis, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:50.200 It's great to have you on.

00:00:51.200 There's so much we want to talk to you about.

00:00:52.720 But first, we used to ask people what their story is.

00:00:55.480 We stopped doing that because we just want to really get into the interview.

00:00:58.620 But your life story is very interesting.

00:01:00.720 And you've done many different things that most people haven't done.

00:01:03.640 So tell us about how are you, where you are.

00:01:05.720 Sure.

00:01:06.020 Well, thanks for having me on.

00:01:07.120 I'm a big fan.

00:01:08.880 So I graduated high school.

00:01:12.780 And a couple of weeks later, I was on the bus to go to the military.

00:01:16.140 So I went to infantry basic training in what was then Fort Benning, Georgia.

00:01:20.460 Went into airborne school right after that.

00:01:22.520 Got to the 82nd Airborne, and then I married my high school sweethearts.

00:01:26.320 We were 19 and 20.

00:01:29.480 You know, I didn't think I was going to make the military a career.

00:01:32.060 It was a peacetime army at the time.

00:01:33.500 But my wife said, well, why don't we reenlist one more time?

00:01:35.920 Because you can pick wherever you want to go.

00:01:37.180 So we went to Hawaii.

00:01:38.780 Four months after we got there, 9-11 happened.

00:01:41.760 And I remember looking at her going, well, babe, I know what I'm going to be doing for the next several years.

00:01:45.940 So I volunteered for Army Special Forces, which is better known as Green Berets.

00:01:50.520 We specialize in counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, counterinsurge, and things like that.

00:01:54.980 Did a couple of combat tours over in Iraq.

00:01:57.980 Got pretty dissatisfied with the way the war was being conducted and the way things were going.

00:02:03.320 A lot of frustrations there.

00:02:04.920 And I remember talking to a buddy of mine who was a sergeant major.

00:02:07.800 And I said, hey, I'm getting out.

00:02:09.760 And he goes, why?

00:02:10.700 No.

00:02:11.240 No, you stay.

00:02:12.100 Why are you getting out?

00:02:12.700 I said, well, I had to fill out a 42-page con-op to go do a basic operation.

00:02:16.520 We're Green Berets. 0.99

00:02:17.180 That's crap. 0.99

00:02:17.700 He goes, he used more colorful language. 1.00

00:02:20.060 He goes, that's crap, Freitas. 1.00

00:02:21.460 If you see a problem, you gain rank and you fix it. 0.99

00:02:24.540 I said, Jerry, you're a sergeant major.

00:02:25.940 How many of these problems have you been able to fix?

00:02:28.200 And after some more colorful language, he admitted I had a point.

00:02:30.540 I said, the problem is the guy's making policy.

00:02:32.700 It's guys in suits, not guys in uniform.

00:02:34.860 I said, so I'm going to get involved some way to try to affect the way that we look at policy. 0.99

00:02:38.340 So I got involved in politics like a moron, ran for the Virginia House of Delegates, 0.98

00:02:44.080 and I've been serving in the House of Delegates for the last nine years. 0.99

00:02:48.060 My wife and I have three kids.

00:02:49.840 My oldest daughter just got married to a great guy, didn't have to bury any bodies. 0.98

00:02:53.420 I was really happy about that.

00:02:55.480 But in the meantime, we've actually, through politics and everything else,

00:03:00.220 we started doing a lot of work on social media.

00:03:03.080 And it wasn't something that we necessarily set out to go in the direction it has,

00:03:07.480 where we've talked a lot about family, a lot about masculinity, a lot about being a girl dad

00:03:11.080 and raising sons and the whole deal.

00:03:14.500 But over the last several years, it's been amazing, both what has been happening within

00:03:20.200 the culture and the desire for a lot of people, not just men, but women too, to kind of ask

00:03:24.620 this question about, you know, what is the proper role of men in society?

00:03:27.580 And so that's consumed a lot of our time.

00:03:30.540 And that's a fascinating question.

00:03:32.460 And it's not something I often talk about, but when I go on other people's show, they

00:03:36.300 often want to talk about it with just about anyone who's prepared to say anything about

00:03:40.340 it, actually.

00:03:41.420 And we'll talk about that.

00:03:42.560 But the first question is, what makes an 80-year-old kid want to sign up for the military?

00:03:47.020 So I think a lot of things.

00:03:50.020 I was very, so my mom and my dad divorced when I was about three.

00:03:54.240 My dad lived in Southern California, was LAPD.

00:03:56.220 My mom was a nurse.

00:03:57.820 My grandfather was a firefighter and had served in World War II.

00:04:00.680 And so I was always around people that engaged in service and this idea of honor and serving

00:04:05.600 and, you know, men do dangerous things like that.

00:04:09.080 I kind of grew up on that.

00:04:11.920 I would say I got very, very interested in military history when I was younger as well.

00:04:18.160 And so for me, there was always this idea that a man protects, a man provides, and he

00:04:23.220 does that both for his family, but he also serves his country.

00:04:26.220 And it was also, it was also as a young man wanting to test myself and wanting to prove

00:04:32.800 something to myself and learning that that never really ends.

00:04:38.040 But that's what initially got me interested in serving.

00:04:41.400 And then I always joke that my friend and I wanted to go to West Point together and he

00:04:45.620 paid attention in school and I did other things.

00:04:48.080 So he ended up going to West Point and I ended up enlisting.

00:04:50.980 But I'm really glad that's how it happened.

00:04:53.760 But that was the why.

00:04:55.200 It was a combination of really deep-seated patriotism.

00:05:00.540 And I guess if I could sum it up in one other just quick story.

00:05:05.420 My grandfather probably, between his own wood lathe and the materials I bought, probably

00:05:11.160 spent all of $12 on a couple of little shadow boxes that he had in his hallway when I was

00:05:15.960 growing up.

00:05:16.260 But I spent a lot of time at my grandpa's house.

00:05:18.780 And it was a picture of my great-grandfather in his uniform with his badges when he was

00:05:23.480 California Highway Patrol.

00:05:24.900 And then it was a picture of my grandfather in his uniform and his badges as a fire captain.

00:05:29.080 And then my father as a police officer with his badges from the LAPD.

00:05:33.580 And I wanted one day my picture to be up there with my uniform, my accomplishments.

00:05:41.180 And yeah, I'll never forget the day I got it.

00:05:44.280 So, yeah.

00:05:45.120 That's really heartwarming, man.

00:05:46.400 Because I think as a not-American, just looking from the outside, I do think this country was

00:05:51.380 built by people who had that mindset, actually, that service and patriotism.

00:05:57.200 We interviewed Colonel Richard Kemp.

00:05:58.920 We just released a video with him about Israel and Palestine.

00:06:02.220 But the first time we interviewed, he was the commander of British forces in Afghanistan.

00:06:06.500 And when I asked him why people go into the military, he basically didn't say it like this,

00:06:10.320 but it's basically because you want to kill people.

00:06:12.060 It's kind of what he said.

00:06:13.440 But was that something that you thought about, that serving in the military would likely mean

00:06:20.300 that you had to do that?

00:06:21.440 Well, when I went in the military, I went for infantry.

00:06:24.300 And infantry doesn't have a whole lot of, it doesn't have a whole lot of, let's say,

00:06:27.860 relatable skill sets outside of the military.

00:06:31.360 But I wanted to be, I knew that if I was going to be in the military, I wanted to do something

00:06:34.860 that was combat related.

00:06:35.880 And I wanted to do something that a specific mission was closed with and, you know, destroy

00:06:39.860 the enemy.

00:06:40.240 Like, that's not because I had some deep-seated desire to shoot anybody.

00:06:44.020 It was more of, if you're going to go into the military, then I wanted to serve in that

00:06:48.820 capacity.

00:06:49.500 I wanted to serve in the capacity that I thought was, you know, where there was a need, also

00:06:55.340 where you would be tested.

00:06:56.720 And I hate this idea, I hate this idea of something dangerous going on and somebody doing

00:07:02.180 the work and me not doing it.

00:07:04.820 And again, I think that was because of the way I was raised.

00:07:07.760 My father was a police officer, grandfather was a firefighter, mom was a nurse.

00:07:12.740 It was always about being the first in the door, so to speak.

00:07:16.740 And so I wanted to prove that I could do that.

00:07:18.960 I wanted to prove that I could be worthy of the other people that had served in that capacity.

00:07:24.580 And Nick, we've kind of touched on masculinity and we were talking basically about male role

00:07:30.980 models.

00:07:31.580 What does it mean to you to be a man?

00:07:33.380 And so I think it's that whenever you tell someone, be a man, like if you look at somebody

00:07:38.400 like, dude, be a man, everyone kind of intuitively understands what that means.

00:07:43.580 It usually means...

00:07:45.360 Racism, sex.

00:07:46.240 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:07:46.860 You're the patriarchy to oppress women. 1.00

00:07:50.860 No, I think everyone who's willing to give it an honest interpretation understands that

00:07:56.440 it means you have an obligation to forego comfort, to overcome fear in order to keep your word

00:08:02.880 and do your job.

00:08:03.980 People depend on you and they depend on you to do your job, so suck it up and do it.

00:08:08.240 And that's always what it meant to me.

00:08:10.500 And I think that for a lot of people, there's still that underlying impression that that's

00:08:14.580 what it means.

00:08:15.260 But I think culture is doing everything within its power to certainly change that definition.

00:08:20.800 So you're saying that, what do you mean by that?

00:08:22.580 Culture is doing everything in its power to change that definition.

00:08:25.360 I think there's a lot of political motivations behind it.

00:08:28.680 I think when you look at first wave feminism, I think all of us can say, yeah, I completely

00:08:35.220 understand wanting the vote.

00:08:36.480 I completely understand wanting to be equal partners within society with respect to access

00:08:40.800 to occupations, property ownership, and things like that.

00:08:44.160 As you move further along the road, though, and you start to see the connections between

00:08:49.060 later elements within the feminist movement, even some of the early ones as well, but especially

00:08:53.040 the later ones, you definitely see a far closer connection to Marx.

00:08:57.100 You see a far closer connection to critical theory, to postmodernism, all the way up to

00:09:01.800 the point where you've got people like Simone de Beauvoir, where she didn't hide the ball. 1.00

00:09:07.480 She actually said in a debate once that she didn't believe that women should be able to 1.00

00:09:11.080 choose to be stay-at-home wife and mothers because too many of them would choose it and that 0.92

00:09:15.060 would disrupt the revolution.

00:09:16.200 But all of that impact on how do we look at women has had an impact on how we look at 0.99

00:09:21.240 masculinity.

00:09:22.240 And this popular narrative, especially when you look at the oppressor-oppressed dynamic,

00:09:26.360 men have fit very neatly into that box for them.

00:09:30.420 And it's like anything else, there's always some kernel of truth to it.

00:09:36.100 I mean, obviously, men have the capacity to use physical force in order to impose our will.

00:09:42.880 That's not something that most women can do, even though now we're trying to pretend like 1.00

00:09:46.700 it is.

00:09:48.280 We're trying to both be strong, independent, and victims at the same time, and it doesn't

00:09:51.780 quite work out.

00:09:54.060 So I think there's been a concerted effort for a combination of political and probably

00:09:58.800 philosophical and ideological reasons to diminish the role of men within society.

00:10:03.760 And I do think it ultimately ties back to philosophies tied to Marx's critical theory and

00:10:09.940 things of that nature.

00:10:10.600 I think one of the major problems as well, as somebody who saw it firsthand when I was

00:10:14.420 teaching, I was teaching in areas where most of the kids didn't have a dad.

00:10:19.100 It's very difficult to become a man if you don't have a positive male role model.

00:10:23.500 If all you see are women and the men in your life, they're either absent by choice or absent 0.93

00:10:29.520 because they're in jail.

00:10:30.880 Yeah.

00:10:31.300 Yeah.

00:10:31.600 And then one of the problems we have, too, in the United States is absence because the state

00:10:36.240 intervenes in such a way as to disadvantaged fathers when it comes to custody.

00:10:39.500 We, you know, we pay women to leave and take the kids. 1.00

00:10:45.920 Now, there's certainly circumstances where that's absolutely appropriate.

00:10:49.000 You know, if you have a man that's being abusive, well, then, yeah, of course I want that woman 1.00

00:10:52.420 to be able to get away from him.

00:10:53.320 And I want her to be able to have the resources to do so.

00:10:55.400 But to your point, Patrick Moynihan was talking about this problem in the United States with

00:11:04.300 respect to fatherless homes in the 60s, and he was being called a racist then.

00:11:09.620 If you look at how the trends have developed over time, almost every single demographic

00:11:14.880 within the United States is now dealing with a significantly higher percentage of fatherlessness

00:11:19.160 than at any point in the history since we've been keeping numbers in the United States.

00:11:24.420 The one demographic that has managed to stay far lower is generally the Asian community.

00:11:30.760 But yeah, the thing is, is that a boy is going to become, you know, a man, right?

00:11:35.980 Or they're going to become an adult.

00:11:37.260 And they're going to, they're going to look around for cues on what that, what that means.

00:11:43.900 And one of the things I don't think has been properly recognized, especially by some of

00:11:47.560 the people perpetrating this idea of toxic masculinity under very broad terms, is that

00:11:52.280 those, those characteristics that we associate with masculinity, aggressiveness, competitiveness,

00:11:58.000 capacity and capability for violence, those are morally neutral.

00:12:03.140 They're going to manifest themselves in positive ways or negative ways.

00:12:07.260 If you try to squash them, you don't fully do that.

00:12:11.980 What you usually create is, is a man that feels emasculated.

00:12:14.800 And a lot of times that ends up manifesting itself in some of the worst ways possible.

00:12:18.440 Go look at some of the worst serial killers and look at the history of how they were treated

00:12:22.600 when they were young and how that ended up manifesting itself.

00:12:25.660 So I think it's about time that we understand that, look, we we've all recognized, I mean,

00:12:30.160 if we have categories of masculinity and femininity, and the reason why we have those is because

00:12:34.420 we understand that there are certain traits that are generally associated to each.

00:12:37.840 The real question we should be asking ourselves is, what are the positive manifestations and

00:12:41.580 the negative manifestations and how do we foster the positive?

00:12:44.200 And to try to do that without positive male role models in the life of a young man, especially

00:12:49.060 the father's role, is incredibly difficult.

00:12:52.340 It's not impossible, but it's incredibly difficult.

00:12:54.940 And yet we have people, especially wealthier people trying to glamorize this idea of, oh,

00:13:02.680 girl, you can do it all yourself.

00:13:04.240 You don't need a man like, okay, how's that working out? 1.00

00:13:07.700 Because one thing that I used to see a lot.

00:13:10.700 So when I was teaching, you see the boy come from a single parent household and they'd be

00:13:16.280 not fine, but they'd be coping better.

00:13:18.780 The moment they hit puberty, mom wouldn't be able to control them physically because the 0.99

00:13:23.360 boy is bigger, stronger, quicker than mom is.

00:13:27.420 Desperate, desperate for male attention, especially from older boys, older men.

00:13:33.780 If they're not getting it from dad, that's something that is really deep rooted within

00:13:38.000 their psyche.

00:13:38.960 They're going to look for it somewhere else, which is why they normally end up in a gang.

00:13:43.140 Yes.

00:13:43.440 Because all of us are looking for, all of us at a certain age are looking for a combination

00:13:47.420 of community, belonging, and purpose.

00:13:51.360 And that's what having a mother and father is supposed to be there.

00:13:55.560 Because the mother and the father play unique roles both for the boy and for the girl as

00:14:00.180 they're growing up.

00:14:01.100 And having raised two daughters and a son, I can really see that.

00:14:05.560 But if they can't find that, if there was an element missing from that, well, then yeah,

00:14:09.420 a young boy is going to obviously look to who are some of the older boys.

00:14:13.740 That seem strong, seem confident in who they are, even if they're not, right?

00:14:18.120 If they give that appearance.

00:14:20.740 I had a mother once ask me, she said, do you have any advice for a mother raising young

00:14:26.060 boys?

00:14:26.460 I said, yeah, I do.

00:14:27.620 I said, understand something.

00:14:28.520 Because I was predominantly raised by a single mother.

00:14:30.940 I said, the same thing that made your boy feel secure and loved when he was little makes

00:14:34.180 him feel weak and vulnerable when he's older.

00:14:36.000 And he doesn't want to feel that.

00:14:37.180 And that's one of the reasons why having the father in the picture is so important is that

00:14:42.680 he helps the boy start to understand that the world is a challenging and dangerous place.

00:14:47.260 And that he's not to be scared of it.

00:14:48.680 He's to be prepared for it.

00:14:49.880 He's to help mold it into something that is good and to find positive outlets for those

00:14:54.960 traits.

00:14:56.160 But if you don't have that, and now all he's learning is from other boys that also didn't

00:14:59.780 have it, then typically what ends up happening is none of them want to be vulnerable, none

00:15:04.380 of them want to be hurt, none of them want to be taken advantage of.

00:15:08.160 And so the way that they deal with emotions, the way they deal with threats or anything

00:15:13.800 else is to resort to violence because it's kind of the easiest go-to in those circumstances.

00:15:19.540 And it's the one that's respected among other men.

00:15:21.500 It's interesting that your point about knowing the world is challenging and being prepared

00:15:28.840 for it, it sparked a thought in me about a broader thing, which just, it seems to me,

00:15:34.360 I don't know if you agree with this, but all the things you were talking about, do you think

00:15:37.800 there's an element of this where we're just massive victims of our own massive success

00:15:42.060 in that over the last 70 years, our need for, frankly, guys like you to stand on the wall

00:15:48.640 has gone down and down and down. And so we have the luxury of pretending that all of this

00:15:54.700 luxury and prosperity, it just exists without guys like you actually having to pick up a weapon

00:16:00.760 and go and protect it.

00:16:02.000 I was listening to someone speak the other day, and he was talking about the greatest generation.

00:16:08.660 And in the United States, that usually refers to the generation that went through the depression

00:16:12.200 and fought World War II. And he made a comment where he said, they may have been the greatest

00:16:17.120 generation when it came to storming the beaches in Normandy, that they turned into kind of crappy 0.99

00:16:20.480 parents. And he didn't mean this like overtly disrespectfully, he was just, he was explaining 0.83

00:16:26.540 to them, he goes, you know, the common statement that came out of that era was, I wanted to give my

00:16:31.160 kids everything I didn't. He goes, great, but you forgot to give them what you did have.

00:16:35.700 And what you did have was grit and resilience and not an ounce of entitlement. You understand

00:16:42.520 and knew what you had to fight for. And that was everything from a meal when you were going

00:16:46.560 through the Great Depression to your survival and your country's survival in World War II.

00:16:51.700 And when you give the benefits of all of those attributes without teaching why the attributes

00:16:58.380 were necessary to make them possible in the first place, I think we end up with exactly

00:17:02.300 what you're talking about. It's a sense of entitlement. And it is amazing to me the number

00:17:06.480 of people that first of all, think that prosperity and peace is, well, of course, this is just the

00:17:12.800 way society is. I've known little else. But amazingly enough, despite the fact that they're

00:17:18.620 living in times that, by historical standards, are incredibly prosperous and incredibly safe

00:17:23.880 by comparison, they find trauma in everything. And some of that is an ideological push, I think,

00:17:31.980 to elevate trauma as the currency of the realm, especially within that oppressor-oppressed dynamic.

00:17:38.060 But some of it, too, is I think there's something inside of us that knows there's something admirable

00:17:45.780 about overcoming difficult challenges. And when you don't have a lot or you're too lazy to seek

00:17:52.240 them out or too comfortable to seek them out, then you start looking for situations to elevate your

00:17:58.820 status. And that's why we do have a lot of people right now demanding that they be considered stunning

00:18:04.460 and brave for doing things which are neither stunning nor brave. But I do think it's in some

00:18:10.440 place a result of, again, widespread prosperity and safety by historical standards, I think does breed

00:18:18.440 a certain degree of complacency. And, you know, again, we're not supposed to do the decadence anymore,

00:18:24.960 but it's an accurate description.

00:18:27.620 Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. And actually, something I worry about, you've raised your kids,

00:18:31.660 I have a young toddler now. And my probably biggest worry outside of all the fears parents always have

00:18:39.580 about, you know, no one told me this, but when you become a parent, like, the range of emotions

00:18:44.900 just widens so much, doesn't it? Because, like, your greatest fears were nothing before and your

00:18:49.700 greatest joys were nothing, too, you know. But the one thing I often think about, and I've talked about

00:18:55.120 this with other people, is the more successful I am, the harder it is for me to raise him not to be a 0.79

00:19:02.660 douche, basically. Do you know what I mean?

00:19:04.960 Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.

00:19:05.820 So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how to work around that.

00:19:10.200 I think there were, I mean, luckily, when my wife and I first got married, so we started to have kids

00:19:16.000 when we were 23. When we first got married in 19 and 20, I think we were making $1,200 a month.

00:19:21.480 And, like, I very distinctly remember for years going to the grocery store, and especially toward

00:19:28.220 the end of the month where you hand over your card and you were just sitting there praying to God that

00:19:31.620 it's going to go through. Like, I remember that. I remember having the power turned off. And so

00:19:38.600 there was an element when our kids were younger, we were there, they still knew that, hey, look,

00:19:42.680 mommy and daddy ain't rich. But the other thing that we did is we instilled a couple of things in

00:19:47.100 them very young. One was we told them, we don't owe you a college education. You're not owed that.

00:19:53.620 That doesn't mean we want to help you if you had a unique opportunity, but don't you ever think

00:19:57.300 you're entitled to that. That's something you work for. We also did things like, I don't buy you

00:20:01.700 your car. You want a car? Go get a job. You can earn the money for it. And so even though we were at a

00:20:08.960 point where, yeah, we could have go, it wouldn't have been, it would have been fancy, but we could

00:20:13.360 go buy them a car pretty easy. No, you're going to go work the night shift at McDonald's or whatnot,

00:20:19.420 or you're going to go do this. And so all of our kids bought their first car. And as a result,

00:20:25.380 they took excellent care of it. They also learned how to maintain it themselves. That was another

00:20:28.820 thing. I remember my oldest daughter, you know, oh, the brake pads are off. How much is it to get it

00:20:33.220 fixed? $1,100. How much is it to do it yourself? About $300. She learned how to do it herself,

00:20:39.540 pulled up YouTube and did it. And what that created was an extreme sense of confidence in

00:20:43.940 herself that I can figure this stuff out. And it also made them really good at budgeting

00:20:49.360 and prioritizing. That teaching of delayed gratification along with, I think that was

00:20:55.880 important. The other thing that we were pretty adamant with our kids on was dreams are great to

00:21:03.960 have, but they're yours. They're not somebody else's. They're not the world's. They're not

00:21:09.160 society's dreams. They're yours. So keep in mind, you got to feed yourself because nobody owes you

00:21:15.540 anything like that. You got to feed yourself. So if you have a dream, either pick a dream that feeds you

00:21:21.060 or pick a job that allows you to pursue your dream. But there was this constant drumbeat of you

00:21:28.800 are responsible for your life, which is not just an onerous, overwhelming. No, it's actually

00:21:36.100 somewhat miraculous when you think about it through the terms of world history, being able to be

00:21:42.260 responsible for your own life, being able to choose your path. That's important. And the more

00:21:49.560 challenges, the more age-appropriate challenges that they're given, the more they end up seeking

00:21:54.700 them out because they've developed the confidence that they can do it. And they like to be able to

00:21:59.500 say, no, I did that. My youngest daughter loved it when people were like, oh, your parents got you a

00:22:04.440 car. She's like, uh-huh, no. No, I worked for that. They didn't give me a dime for that car. 0.99

00:22:10.400 So I think that's one of the ways that you do it. Another thing too is obviously there are certain

00:22:16.680 things you do want to protect your kids from. The way I tried to break it down, I tried to explain

00:22:21.340 it to somebody like, what did it, how did I distinguish that? I said, I'm trying to prevent

00:22:25.480 them from getting scars, not bruises. So when I think it's something that's going to significantly

00:22:32.160 impact their life or cause genuine trauma, not the fake kind that we say so much, but genuine trauma,

00:22:38.620 I'm going to protect them from that. I'm going to shelter them from that because they're not

00:22:41.360 emotionally, physically, spiritually ready to tackle that particular problem. But they might

00:22:46.340 do other things that it's like, oh yeah, they're going to fall on their ass. I'm like, yeah, let 0.99

00:22:51.040 them. And then when they fall on their ass, we're like, that hurt, right? Yeah. Okay, let's go. 1.00

00:22:57.640 And again, it just, it builds that sense of resilience that they take on later. But if you're

00:23:02.320 trying to teach all of that at 16.

00:23:03.980 No, you can't. Well, my worry is Nick, and this is what I really want to ask you, because

00:23:09.300 I think just speaking to lots of people, and I think a lot of the times people make this

00:23:15.040 stuff political, but I really don't think it is. Like so many people who support us, they're

00:23:20.660 not so much concerned about like, how do I teach my kid to do this? Because they know

00:23:24.380 the stuff you're talking about. This is, it's great stuff, but it's common sense to most people

00:23:28.560 of our generation, really. The thing I'm really concerned about is protecting my children from

00:23:34.540 other people who want to put shit in their heads that doesn't belong there. Now, that's 0.99

00:23:40.300 what I really wonder about in the modern age. How do we deal with that?

00:23:43.340 We pulled our kids out of school. We pulled our kids out and homeschooled. And the stereotypical

00:23:49.160 thing, I don't know how common this is in the UK. It's gotten a lot more common in the United

00:23:52.960 States, especially after COVID. You probably had maybe three to four percent of the population

00:24:00.440 homeschooling. A lot of people assume that that means they're going to be socially awkward

00:24:06.560 or they're not going to interact with people. And I always look back, I'm like, have you seen

00:24:11.360 what they're teaching in the schools right now? Yes, my kids missed out on the opportunity

00:24:15.580 to be communist. Oh, no. I'm so upset. One of the things I think is so important about that is

00:24:23.420 that, and I do think this is tied to a larger ideology, and I don't mean to make it partisan.

00:24:29.240 I just think it's ideological, which is to say that there is a very popular political theory that

00:24:35.360 says that kids should be raised and educated collectively, that this should be done by experts,

00:24:40.140 that how could you, I mean, you want to take, you want to do open heart surgery on your child.

00:24:43.720 Why would you trust yourself with something as complex as educating them on a variety of topics

00:24:48.920 for which you can't possibly have sufficient information? And what it does is it takes the

00:24:53.240 parent out of the role of being an educator, and it teaches the child to no longer see you

00:24:59.320 as an educator. But the thing is, is that in most circumstances, there's bad parents,

00:25:03.780 but in most circumstances, you care about that child, their future, their hopes, wants, needs,

00:25:07.580 desires, dreams, far more than anybody, any government bureaucrat, to include teachers who might even

00:25:13.340 be really, really good teachers. But public education was made for the mass production of

00:25:17.600 education. It was not made for your child in mind. And you do have a very prominent ideological bias

00:25:23.620 going on, especially within the credentialing institutions when it comes to education, that

00:25:28.480 they believe it is their duty to not just teach your kids how to read, write, do arithmetic, or even

00:25:33.840 basic citizenry. They believe it is their job, their moral responsibility, to educate their kids

00:25:40.680 and to prepare them for a certain social construct that you might not agree with. And the thing I

00:25:48.460 tell parents is, if you have certain values that you want to convey to your children, if you have

00:25:54.180 a certain understanding of the world, and you teach them one way at home, and let's say, what do you

00:26:01.180 get? You get the weekends, 30, 40 minutes, you know, dinner, but then you send them off to a place that

00:26:07.000 might not share any of those values. In fact, in some cases might be openly hostile to them.

00:26:11.200 And you tell your kids, because you should, right? That's your teacher, you respect them.

00:26:15.620 And they constantly get the drumbeat of, well, that's the expert. They're the educator. You're

00:26:18.960 not the educator. Well, at best, they're going to get conflicting signals on who they should listen

00:26:25.420 to. And you're at the bottom of the totem pole now. Between the teacher, Taylor Swift, you know,

00:26:30.960 and their friend group, you're at the bottom of the totem pole. You can take that dynamic back.

00:26:36.340 Because the reality is, is when your kids bond with you the way they're meant to, especially very

00:26:42.380 early on in their development, you are their natural educator. And so that is both an incredible

00:26:49.480 privilege, but it's also an incredible responsibility. The good news is, is I don't think it's ever been

00:26:54.040 easier to be able to use resources, many of them free, in order to assist with your child's

00:27:00.640 education. And this doesn't mean you can't go out and use experts. It doesn't mean you can't use

00:27:05.720 those resources or, you know, go to co-ops or tutors or whatever else it might be. But now you

00:27:11.440 have significantly more control with respect to the worldview you would like to pass along to them.

00:27:17.140 And it is amazing to me the arrogance I will see from the educational establishment where it's like,

00:27:21.800 who are you to decide what your child's worldview should be? We're the experts. Like, okay, I've

00:27:26.880 seen what you consider to be expertise, and I'm not that impressed. But the other thing I would say

00:27:32.560 too is that I've run into a lot of parents that, let's say, share my worldview, which their kids go

00:27:40.700 off to college and they get very, very frustrated. They feel like they lose their kids within two

00:27:43.720 years of college. And then I'll ask them, okay, well, how did you, how did you convey those values to

00:27:48.840 them? And it's heartbreaking when I got to look at a parent and be like, okay, you didn't convey

00:27:53.780 values. You taught an authority structure. And the authority structure was, I'm mom, I'm dad, I love

00:28:00.560 you, we gave you life, we feed you, we clothe you. This is what we believe. And what they learned was

00:28:06.440 as long as they regurgitated what mom and dad did under mom and dad's roof, they were rewarded. And

00:28:11.400 insofar as they strayed for it, they were potentially punished. So there was some sort of

00:28:14.260 disincentivization structure. I said, okay, great. But now you're not the one housing or

00:28:19.040 feeding or clothing there. You're not the primary authority figure within their life. It's a

00:28:22.920 professor. And so they took the authority structure that you taught them and you're just not the

00:28:31.080 authority anymore. What you have to do if you want to foster is you have to teach sound critical

00:28:37.340 thinking. Are you teaching your kids to somebody, and you don't got to get into all the technical

00:28:41.860 terms, right? But law of identity, law of excluded middle, law of non-contradiction. Are you teaching

00:28:47.220 about inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning? When they regurgitate something that you know that

00:28:52.600 they heard from you, do you challenge them on it? Why'd you say that? I used to love doing that

00:28:56.600 with my kids. I still do. They'll say something that I know they heard from me. I'd be like,

00:29:00.560 why do you think that? Oh, well, you know. No, no, no. I don't know. Why do you think that?

00:29:05.380 I know why I think it. Why do you think it? And then I'll challenge them. What about this?

00:29:09.120 What about that? And you engage in this sparring relationship, this intellectual sparring with your

00:29:15.640 child in order to develop those critical thinking skills. And then the big thing I always tell

00:29:20.920 parents, too, is that especially if you're, and I hope every parent is doing this, but some don't,

00:29:26.060 if you're teaching your kids that there is such a thing as objective morality, well, get ready for

00:29:30.180 when they find you breaking the objective morality you taught them. And if in the moment that they catch

00:29:35.860 you at it, now, if they're a little rude and punks about it, sure, you know, get them back into the

00:29:39.940 proper respectful mindset. But if the moment they catch you screwing up, your attitude is,

00:29:45.600 you don't tell me what to do. I run this house. Ah, once again, it's not that the truth reigned in

00:29:52.720 your household. It's not that right reigned in your household. Authority did. You were the authority.

00:29:57.720 You had the ability to impose your will. And so that's all it was. But the first time your kid,

00:30:04.200 and it's usually going to be in their teenage years, which, oh, just so dang irritating.

00:30:08.080 As soon as your kid catches you doing it, I've had cases like this. I have one story I love to

00:30:11.960 tell about it. But if you can look at them and be like, you know what? You were right. I'm wrong.

00:30:18.620 I apologize. And I want to thank you for having the courage to respectfully call me out. Man,

00:30:27.120 that sticks with them. That sticks with them. And now when it's a different authority figure that's

00:30:31.700 doing something that they believe is wrong, and they have a conviction that this is right now,

00:30:36.500 not simply because they were told it, but because they were taught why it was correct.

00:30:40.340 They were able to logically think through it. It's no longer mom and dad's belief that they're

00:30:43.760 regurgitating. It's their belief. And they're going to defend that. And all of a sudden, when that

00:30:49.060 professor gets a little bit of pushback and is like, well, this is my classroom, it's like, oh,

00:30:53.320 okay. And that isn't, it doesn't jire them anymore. They're prepared for it.

00:30:57.880 But you got to do that sparring. You got to do that sparring.

00:31:02.100 It's such a good point. And it takes me back to my own time as a teacher. But moving on,

00:31:07.320 Nick. I'm glad you got that in.

00:31:10.420 It did. I just saw so many teachers being like, I'm the teacher. And I'm like, well,

00:31:14.580 you've already lost them now because you're not actually pushing back on what they're saying.

00:31:18.740 But you talk about your experiences in Iraq. And I've got a great empathy and a great admiration

00:31:28.340 for people who serve for their country like you did. And push back on me because maybe I'm wrong

00:31:34.740 with this. But I saw Iraq as a betrayal in many ways. Betrayal for people like you. Betrayal for 0.99

00:31:42.420 people like me who believed in what we were told. And I think if we can see people's distrust

00:31:50.140 of politicians, distrust of America and the way it's behaving overseas, even if its intentions are

00:31:56.260 good, they obviously stem from Vietnam. But for my generation, our generation, it's Iraq that was 0.86

00:32:03.080 a key moment. Yeah. Oh, no, I don't disagree. I remember if you asked me in 2001, 2002, 2003,

00:32:13.120 I was like, yeah, Afghanistan, Iraq, what's next? When do we go over with Iran? Who's next on the...

00:32:18.500 I mean, I was a 21-year-old kid. I was going to go fight. Now it's my war. You attacked us on our

00:32:26.200 home soil. We haven't had that happen in a while. I was out for blood. But the more I got into it,

00:32:35.240 especially in my second tour in 2008, we had a very good tour. It was a very successful tour.

00:32:42.360 By the same token, I'm starting to get very, very skeptical of what brought us over here in

00:32:47.660 the first place and why are we doing it this way. What got you skeptical?

00:32:52.100 Part of it was the idea that... So it wasn't even kind of like the lack of WMDs,

00:33:00.140 which for a lot of people, I think that was the thing. We all expected, oh, there's the

00:33:03.760 warehouses, we told you. I was able to justify that in my own head. Oh, well, he was operating

00:33:08.880 in such a way that made us think that he had it, but he's still a bad guy and so all this is justified.

00:33:12.840 It was more about looking back. And I'll never forget, I was writing the SITREP for my ODA,

00:33:19.900 my special force is 18. And my captain comes in, he goes, hey, Nick, you need to put more in the

00:33:25.060 SITREP before we send it up to Special Operations Task Force North. I said, we're packing our...

00:33:31.360 That's all we did that week. It was literally like our last two weeks in country, we were packing up

00:33:35.020 and transitioning with 10th group that was coming in to take our place. And he goes, just put more

00:33:40.100 in there. I'm like, government bureaucracy, right? So I wrote in and I said, okay, I got a question for

00:33:44.880 all you mucky mucks up there at Special Operations Task Force North. Why are we the only country from a 1.00

00:33:49.500 constitutional republic with a generally free market system that goes overseas, overthrows

00:33:54.400 dictatorships, and then sets up parliamentary democracies with centrally planned economies?

00:33:58.900 I put that in the SITREP. Now, our process was I would put stuff in the SITREP, he would read it,

00:34:04.740 take out the little snarky stuff I sent, and then send it up. He forgot. So we got a call down

00:34:11.460 and the operations officer for our task force is, put Freitas on the phone.

00:34:15.960 What the F is this? I'm like, oh, hey, sir, I'm sorry. I kind of put that into Raz the Captain,

00:34:22.880 and I don't think he read it before he sent it up. But now that I have you, could you answer the

00:34:27.520 question? So it was this idea that here we were attempting to nation build. Here we were attempting

00:34:36.160 to essentially impose an approach to government, and really a larger approach to just, you know,

00:34:44.160 culture. But this society never said that they particularly wanted. It wasn't organic for them.

00:34:49.900 It's not like they really decided this. We were the one calling the shots. Do you want your money?

00:34:54.860 Well, then you're going to have a parliament. Do you want this? Then you're going to do this.

00:34:58.460 And it was the same thing in Afghanistan. And then I started looking more. I'm like, you know,

00:35:02.980 constitutionally, aren't we supposed to, isn't Congress supposed to cast a vote on this?

00:35:06.760 Not just a budget amendment, a vote. And so it was a combination of, some of it was the reasoning,

00:35:15.060 the initial reasoning versus what happened. Some of it was understanding a little bit more about

00:35:18.980 how the world worked outside of, you know, my kind of Western mindset or American mindset.

00:35:26.940 It was the way the war was conducted, where, are we in this to win? Like, I remember them sending me

00:35:33.600 home two months early for my first combat deployment because I had to go to the advanced

00:35:37.060 non-commissioned officers course. Like, why would you take me out of a combat? If this is so damn

00:35:42.220 important, why are you taking me out of combat zone to go to a school?

00:35:45.440 They would rotate our, like, the commanders for our, this is special forces. We're not even

00:35:50.940 talking like a line infantry unit. In special forces, they would take your team leader, your

00:35:55.040 commander, and rotate them in with another one in the middle of your combat tour. Why? Well,

00:35:59.760 it's the rotation. He needs his OER block. That's the offshore efficiency. He needs his OER block for

00:36:05.160 combat as well. But this is stupid. We're not even serious out here. Oh, you can't go outside the 1.00

00:36:11.900 wire unless you fill out this 42-page PowerPoint presentation explaining what you're doing.

00:36:17.260 Are we serious about winning this? And so I became skeptical of the way the military was running

00:36:22.740 things. I really became skeptical of the way politicians were running things. I became very,

00:36:26.620 very skeptical of the military industrial complex, even though I recognize that we need an industry to

00:36:30.840 create weapons systems. I don't, you know, we need that. And I became really, really skeptical of

00:36:36.400 our complete unwillingness to follow our own constitutional process for deciding when we

00:36:43.140 go to war or not. And it was another thing that I realized, like, oh, Congress likes to be on board

00:36:49.840 when it's the patriotic thing to do. And then they like to blame the president when the war eventually

00:36:54.180 goes south. So nobody wants to take responsibility. And yet we're over here getting shot at because you

00:37:00.300 told us it was worth it. I'll never forget, I slipped up one day when I was telling my son a story

00:37:09.180 and my wife looked at me and said, what? And I was like, yeah, because my son's going into the military.

00:37:17.000 I said, when you plan your operation, you have a certain threshold of how many people you can lose

00:37:22.500 and it's still worth it. Now, for me, I just, well, yeah, of course that makes sense because there's a

00:37:27.800 certain threshold of people that when you lose, you can no longer effectively carry out your plan

00:37:32.220 to go get the bad guy. What my wife is hearing is like, so if three of you would have died,

00:37:39.560 but you would have got that guy, that would have been worth it? It's like, well, that's the job.

00:37:47.520 And it has to be that way, by the way. It has to be that way. Mission has to, there were commanders

00:37:53.800 that would have said, my mission is to bring everyone home alive. Well, you're a dumbass. 1.00

00:37:57.600 If that's your mission, don't leave. Don't go to war. Guaranteed, you'll bring everyone home alive. 1.00

00:38:03.800 No, we sign up for this and we're an all-volunteer force. We sign up for this to go do dangerous things

00:38:08.360 with the understanding that some of us might not come home. We will do everything we possibly can

00:38:12.520 to accomplish the mission and bring everyone home. But when we have a mission, that's the mission.

00:38:17.280 But then you start to, you start to look at it like, what was it actually? I know what my mission

00:38:22.260 was on that objective. This is why I look back with so much animosity with respect to how the

00:38:29.280 United States came about its decision-making process to go to war and the way we conducted

00:38:34.740 it. Because to this day, I can justify the early operations in Afghanistan. Not a lot of the follow-on,

00:38:40.120 but early on. But you're looking at this going, I'm mad about that. I'm not mad about my service.

00:38:48.100 I know what me and my friends did. I know what we tried to do in a difficult situation. I know the

00:38:53.980 people we helped. I know some of the guys that aren't walking around anymore, and I sleep like a

00:38:58.480 baby because they were horrible, evil men. But we destabilized the region. And then a lot of people

00:39:09.980 died that probably wouldn't have. And ultimately, we lost a lot of good people. And them and their

00:39:19.180 families have every right to be proud of their service, but we also have every right to be pissed

00:39:22.460 about what the overall justification for the mission was.

00:39:25.420 So what do you think was the real reason why we went to war in Iraq? Because obviously they said WMDs, 0.77

00:39:30.540 blah, blah, blah.

00:39:31.020 Yeah. I don't think it's the simple explanation a lot of people give that it's just the military

00:39:40.640 industrial complex, or it's just Bush wanted to finish it up, or Bush wanted to be a wartime

00:39:45.000 president, or they're all greedy because they had stock in Halliburton, right? I think the truth is

00:39:52.020 actually much worse. And this goes back to kind of the C.S. Lewis quote where, I'm going to botch it up,

00:40:00.560 but he said that it would be better to live under robber barons than moral busybodies because the

00:40:05.040 robber baron might have their greed or lust for power satiated, but the moral busybody will torment 0.99

00:40:09.480 you without end because they do so with the approval of their own conscience. And I think some of these

00:40:13.980 guys just have this vision for how they're going to be the one, they're going to do great things,

00:40:19.040 they're going to reorder society, they're going to bring democracy to a place that has never had it,

00:40:23.500 they're going to, whatever. And I think I chalk it more up to moral arrogance than I do greed or

00:40:33.640 lust for power on a lot of this. Because there's a lot of easier ways to get money and power.

00:40:42.500 You've got to really truly believe that you're on some sort of incredibly noble mission to do some

00:40:46.880 of the horrible things that people have done throughout history, especially in positions of

00:40:50.460 high political leadership. And what effect did that war have on the surrounding regions,

00:40:57.040 the Middle East, not just America, but on that entire region?

00:41:02.780 So I think one of the, again, one of the things that Americans have gotten wrong ever since Wilson

00:41:08.680 is this idea that our new manifest destiny, now that the Western portion of the continent has been

00:41:15.300 conquered, is to make the world safe for democracy. No, it isn't. It's like anything else. Various

00:41:25.120 cultures, various religious traditions lend themselves to particular styles of government.

00:41:29.800 And I definitely think that the dictatorship in North Korea is absolutely horrible, right? I think

00:41:36.080 there's other regimes. I think the communist regime in China is absolutely horrible. Does that mean it is 0.86

00:41:40.460 therefore the United States' mission to go in, overthrow it, and replace it with something that we think

00:41:44.960 would be more advantageous or beneficial or equitable? No, I don't think so. I think that

00:41:50.360 completely takes out any sort of understanding for how cultures develop and the sort of organic

00:41:56.420 solutions that they come. I mean, I think Daniel Bell came up with the quote that culture is society's

00:42:03.960 attempt to come up with a coherent set of answers to the existential questions we face throughout our

00:42:08.600 lives. Different cultures come up with different answers. Now, I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think

00:42:14.460 every culture has come up with the best answers to these questions. I do prefer the answers that

00:42:19.660 the West, in most cases, have come up to it. But I also understand that that has to be an organic

00:42:24.760 realization. It's very difficult to impose that from the top down. Yeah, you can't bomb it into

00:42:30.180 people. Yeah, right? And now people will like to point to Germany or Japan as examples of how it can

00:42:37.380 work. And I think it would be incorrect to say that there's no way that you can impose it. I think

00:42:44.840 it's foolish to assume that that's the natural or best way for it to come about, especially in a way

00:42:50.220 that people can actually embrace it as their own. Well, if you think about what we had to do to both

00:42:54.960 Germany and Japan to achieve those objectives. Oh, devastating. You know, my view, having read a lot

00:43:02.420 about it, is that it was absolutely the right thing to do. But it was an awful thing to have had

00:43:08.800 to do. It's not something that you would choose to do unless you were in a position like the West was

00:43:15.360 in at the time. It wasn't quite true for America, but certainly for all of Europe and the Soviet Union,

00:43:20.300 it was a war of survival. Yes. And in that situation, you have to fight to capitulation

00:43:25.480 of the other side and then make sure that they're not going to threaten you again with the same thing.

00:43:29.880 And you have to make sure you don't repeat the mistakes of World War I and have that ended, right?

00:43:34.080 And I dare say that Japan and Germany also would not have turned out the way they did as a result of 0.96

00:43:40.960 the occupation or elements within the Marshall Plan, which I'm actually something of a critic of,

00:43:45.620 if you didn't have the looming threat of the Soviet Union or Maoist China. I think those provided 0.97

00:43:53.540 sufficient threats for people to be willing to say, okay, that's the bigger threat, not the internal

00:43:58.100 divisions that we're facing right now. And I don't think a similar thing existed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:44:04.520 I think the end result is the greatest threat in that area is Iran. And because Iraq is majority Shia, 1.00

00:44:14.960 and has long-term relationships with the Iranian government, I don't... Now that I'm a little

00:44:21.860 bit more, I guess, a little bit wiser, I can look at that now and say, we were going into a country

00:44:26.940 that was predominantly Shia, that had close relationships with Iran, that hated the Hussein

00:44:31.580 regime. At the same time that pretty much every other Arab country that we actually have fostered

00:44:37.440 fairly decent relationships, whether that be Qatar, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia, or UAE, are terrified

00:44:44.860 of Iran wanting to be kind of the hegemonic leader for that region. And so now we just gave Iran another 0.62

00:44:52.420 base of operations, not to mention the fact that we've facilitated further destabilization in Syria,

00:44:58.440 not to mention Lebanon. And so that's the sort of real politic that I think sometimes our idealism

00:45:04.560 gets in the way of a scene. Well, the question I want to ask you about that, Nick, is it's really

00:45:09.440 interesting because Francis talked about how there were people who believed the Republic. I didn't

00:45:14.200 believe the stuff about Iraq. I was on the streets protesting about it because it was... I mean, maybe 1.00

00:45:18.820 it was naive to think I really knew what was going on, but it was obvious to me that the whole case 0.99

00:45:23.220 for that war was bullshit. Yeah. It was pretty clear. And therefore, I'm not traumatized in the way that I 0.99

00:45:30.220 think some people are who pushed that war very aggressively, who now have said, America must never

00:45:36.140 intervene in anything. America mustn't do anything. And I was... But, you know, you laugh, and I also

00:45:41.380 laugh, to be honest, because I think that's a very naive worldview. I agree. You agree. So I'm curious about

00:45:47.000 what your thoughts are in relation to some of the conflicts that America is currently involved in, not

00:45:52.060 directly, but at least backing, you know, obviously, Ukraine and the one in the Middle East.

00:45:55.700 I think we... I think if we're going to take a... So it's funny. There are some people that say

00:46:01.700 they're America first when really what they are is everybody last. And it's... I think that's two 0.58

00:46:05.880 different things. America first, for me, is a foreign policy which understands that we have

00:46:10.700 interests. It's the whole idea of the nations don't have friends, they have interests. I think

00:46:15.740 there is an element in there where you can't have long-lasting alliances. The UK is a perfect example

00:46:19.820 of this. You can't have long-lasting alliances for which there are both interests and mutually shared

00:46:25.560 values and friendship which are beneficial and which ultimately facilitate things like better

00:46:30.560 trade and better overall relations and stability. But we have to actually put everything into that

00:46:36.440 column and say, okay, where does this weigh in the larger scheme of things? And I'm not someone...

00:46:41.500 I am not a... I don't believe in real politic to the degree that I am just a moral relativist as soon

00:46:46.840 as I get outside my borders. I don't believe in that. Slavery is evil. I don't care who's doing it.

00:46:51.780 It's evil, right? Genocide is evil no matter who's doing it. I think what the American population

00:46:59.020 is sick of is feeling like our own domestic problems take a backseat to everybody else's

00:47:05.660 essentially domestic problems. And I understand that. And I'm right there with that and I sympathize

00:47:10.580 with that. I don't think that means that we just completely pull ourselves out of every single

00:47:15.160 world engagement. When it comes to Ukraine, I've been really skeptical with respect to the amount

00:47:21.140 of money that we've sent over. I am very glad that we haven't sent over troops. I was getting very

00:47:25.580 nervous that that was going to be the case and I did not think that was appropriate.

00:47:29.080 I also tend to think, like from the very beginning of this, I was like, look, I think Putin's a bad

00:47:32.980 guy and I want Ukraine to win. That doesn't mean I think we're responsible for Ukraine winning the

00:47:37.380 war. I also think the United States and NATO has to look very, very hard at some of the positions

00:47:42.740 that we took initially that potentially exacerbated this. The other thing that I would say is the

00:47:50.560 United States needs to learn, and Trump understood this. I was not a huge fan of Trump in 2016 when he

00:47:57.400 got elected. I remembered the Trump that believed a whole bunch of things I didn't like and then had

00:48:02.340 a family life I didn't quite think was in line with what I believed. But one of the biggest areas

00:48:09.020 where he absolutely proved himself to me was the understanding that not every military engagement

00:48:14.280 is a nation-building exercise. There is such a thing as a punitive expedition. Syria was a good 1.00

00:48:19.460 example of this. The way that he went after the leader of the IRGC after the bombing of the embassy

00:48:26.320 in Baghdad. I loved that. It was like, oh, so we're not going to bomb civilians. We're not going to invade

00:48:32.920 a country and try to set up a parliamentary democracy in a place that doesn't want it. 0.56

00:48:35.820 And we're not even going to blow up a legitimate military target, which would inevitably kill a

00:48:43.380 bunch of 19-year-old conscripts or a contractor that was there that day. No, no. He went after

00:48:48.680 the guy that orchestrated this, who was a known terrorist, and he killed him. 0.72

00:48:52.620 Soleimani.

00:48:53.480 Yeah. Excellent. Because nothing sends a message to a guy like that that you shouldn't do that

00:48:59.560 than killing him or his buddies. He doesn't care how many 19-year-old 0.95

00:49:05.700 conscripts. He goes, Hamas doesn't care how many kids they lose. In fact, they'd like to lose more

00:49:10.000 because that's the strategy they utilize in order to manipulate the West.

00:49:14.680 So I'm a big fan of how do we conduct operations as efficiently as possible, both for the moral

00:49:19.940 reasons of avoiding collateral damage and civilian casualties, but also for the larger practical

00:49:25.440 reason that we have some enemies in some cultures that they don't care how many they lose if they

00:49:30.300 know that they can use it to manipulate our Western media and academia. So I think that

00:49:35.160 what I want to see U.S. foreign policy going toward is one where our goal is to expand trade

00:49:39.980 with as many people as we possibly can. I think the joke was there's never been two countries

00:49:44.160 with a McDonald's that have gone to war with one another.

00:49:46.780 That's changed now.

00:49:47.880 Yeah.

00:49:48.240 I was taught that in college.

00:49:49.700 Yeah.

00:49:50.180 It's changed now.

00:49:51.080 Well, it was funny. I remember being in Iraq and on some of the bigger bases, they had like

00:49:55.000 a pizza hunt and a Cinnabon. And I was like, you want to know what real military force projection

00:49:58.900 is? It's not that we'll park an armored division in your lobby or aircraft battle group in your

00:50:05.460 harbor. It's that we'll bring fast food with us when we do it.

00:50:08.440 We'll make you fat. 1.00

00:50:09.160 Yeah, exactly. We'll bring in the carbs, baby. 1.00

00:50:13.940 But I think we need to properly identify when it makes sense for us to do. I think we need to

00:50:20.160 come up with better rules of engagement for how we intervene. I think to the extent that we're

00:50:24.280 going to get involved in major military operations, we need to follow the constitutional process and

00:50:29.000 Congress needs to be expected to vote on going to a declaration of war, not just funding whatever

00:50:34.300 military adventures the executive branch has chosen to partake in. And then I think that we also need

00:50:42.920 to look for allies. I think we also need to look for allies that are willing to fight their own wars,

00:50:48.020 but are asking for support.

00:50:50.400 But isn't that exactly what Ukraine is?

00:50:52.320 Ukraine is closer to that. Yeah. Ukraine is closer to that. They've just been asking for 0.96

00:50:56.220 support. My problem with that is that we've never had, like in the United States, like in our,

00:51:01.640 like if we look at NATO, long lasting alliance. If we look at the UK, long lasting alliance. If we

00:51:07.360 look at Israel, that's a pretty long lasting partnership and mutually beneficial one in many

00:51:14.040 areas. We've never had that with Ukraine. The other problem that I had, and this was something

00:51:19.520 that Trump also brought up, the requirement to be a member of NATO, I think is 3% of your GDP and

00:51:24.580 defense spending. Was Germany doing that?

00:51:27.800 No, I mean, he was absolutely 100% right. And he got laughed out of the room for talking about it.

00:51:33.000 He did. And it was also one of those things where it's like, okay, look, Germany has a bigger GDP than

00:51:38.680 Russia. France has a bigger GDP than Russia. I believe the UK has a bigger GDP than Russia. And so I'm looking at all this going,

00:51:45.260 you have superior military technology. You have the capability. The United States is still going to,

00:51:50.420 you know, we're not going to allow Russia to just arbitrarily launch nukes, but the UK has nukes.

00:51:55.240 France has nukes. Why was NATO incapable of actually providing Ukraine all the military support?

00:52:01.060 I couldn't agree. I mean, you make such good points because this is really the issue. I think

00:52:05.420 no one talks about it in Europe, but Europeans as countries, not as people, but as countries have

00:52:10.980 become incredibly arrogant in the, we've been living under the American defense umbrella for

00:52:16.900 this entire time. And so, and at the same time, sort of turning our nose up at America and like

00:52:22.680 we, Europe should be able to defend itself. And the thing we've done with Ukraine, I think 0.63

00:52:27.700 the Ukraine's really got the worst of both worlds because on the one hand, we encourage them to make 1.00

00:52:32.140 a stand. On the other hand, we didn't actually help them to the level that they needed to, to make

00:52:37.220 that stand effectively, which, you know, the American people or the European people have a

00:52:41.900 right not to want to send lots of their money over to Ukraine, but then we should have told

00:52:45.640 them that at the beginning, instead of sort of getting the pom-poms out and cheerleading.

00:52:50.000 I think on a, on a cultural level within the United States, I remember as more and more USAID

00:52:56.100 was being requested and, and I was really concerned that we were going to send more special operations

00:53:01.240 and then all it takes is for a couple of Americans to get shot or an American plane to go down.

00:53:05.380 And, and when we're all in baby, that's just kind of our history.

00:53:10.060 My other frustration with it is that I always felt as if Europe was constantly telling us

00:53:16.600 to mind our own business or European countries in general, we're always telling us to mind

00:53:21.960 our own business, talking about the arrogant hegemonic, you know, military forces, the United

00:53:26.320 States. And why can't you guys be more diplomatic and civilized? And, and yet when the Russians 0.73

00:53:34.100 were crossing over the border, all of a sudden it was like, Hey America, how are you guys doing?

00:53:39.240 Those Abrams are looking pretty cool right now. I'm, I'm, I'm so tired of that.

00:53:43.880 Yeah. You're making really, really good points, man. And I say this as someone who's very supportive

00:53:48.420 of Ukraine's standards. I think that, you know, defending their country is very important. And I

00:53:53.000 hope ultimately they get what they were fighting for, which is long-term security so that this can't

00:53:58.960 happen again. But I guess you feel Israel is a different issue because of the longstanding

00:54:04.720 alliance. I think it's, it's a combination of longstanding alliance. I think it's also a

00:54:08.880 combination of strategic positioning within the world. Now there's some people that will say,

00:54:13.040 well, yeah, our problem with that part of the world is that we've been too close to Israel. 0.98

00:54:16.520 If we just abandoned that alliance, we'd be in a much better position. I don't think that's the case.

00:54:21.420 I also think that we can't just look at the Middle East from the, the standpoint of,

00:54:25.660 of oil or, or energy. Obviously that's a huge component of it, but a lot of people will say,

00:54:30.640 yeah, but it's not a huge component of the United States. Now again, yeah, you're right. We don't

00:54:34.580 get a, we don't get anywhere near as significant a portion of our oil from the Middle East as Europe

00:54:40.500 does or as Asia does, but it's still a worldly, it's still a commodity traded on, on world markets.

00:54:47.360 And so it does have an impact on overall prices. The other thing we need to take into account is

00:54:53.320 that it's got what, probably the third, third most strategic waterway in the world. I'm, I mean,

00:54:59.400 I probably own the Suez Canal. I mean, obviously Israel doesn't have a Suez Canal, but it's, it's,

00:55:03.700 it's very strategically located within proximity to that. I would, the only two I would potentially

00:55:09.860 put above it, it would be the Panama Canal and the Malacca Straits. And so I think, I think it makes

00:55:15.380 sense for cultural reasons. And I think it makes sense for strategic reasons. And again, a lot of the

00:55:21.200 funding that we do get at Israel, and this was similar with Ukraine as well, to your point

00:55:24.260 earlier, it, we're not just dropping off pallets of cash in most of these circumstances. Um, a lot

00:55:29.180 of what's being dropped off is we have a, the military industrial complex, right? But from a

00:55:35.200 practical standpoint, we have to have arms development. Um, it makes sense for us for a variety

00:55:43.060 of strategic reasons that we sell the arms to our allies, uh, rather than having to get it from

00:55:48.700 people that are not us. Um, and so, uh, you know, I, I understand it from that standpoint as well. I,

00:55:55.160 I also think Israel has always been very good about not, not requiring or, um, requesting U.S. troops,

00:56:02.340 uh, to fight the war. So again, I think two things can be true at once. I think the United States can

00:56:07.840 say, look, it is no longer our obligation to quote, make the world safe for democracy. We will,

00:56:12.460 we do have alliances which are important and strategic to our interests. Um, our, our first

00:56:18.240 instinct should not be that we have to fight the war for you. Um, I also look at Israel as an ally

00:56:24.720 where I, I, I can look at Israel's situation and say, yes, they do need support and they're somewhat

00:56:31.180 isolated with respect to where they can get it from. I don't think Ukraine is. Um, I really do feel 1.00

00:56:36.540 like Ukraine should be a primary European responsibility. Um, but again, it's not like

00:56:42.520 I'm against any sort of assistance, but I've been really skeptical with respect to how some of it's

00:56:47.760 gone. Now I will say this, somebody asked me the day, like, what do you think is Zelensky? I said,

00:56:51.120 I think he's probably one of the best wartime politicians I've ever seen. And you would have

00:56:57.340 thought I kicked somebody's puppy. Like he's corrupt and he's this and he's that. And do you know what he, 0.99

00:57:01.400 I mean, I wish Joe Biden cared about the United States as much as Zelensky cares about Ukraine.

00:57:09.400 Zelensky's job is not to be concerned about us taxpayers. Zelensky's job is to fight a war

00:57:14.400 and he's been incredibly effective in getting the resources necessary for that. Not to mention the

00:57:20.120 fact that it would have been really easy for him to unass his country and have every excuse to do so.

00:57:24.360 And I actually think he's done a really good job. Now, do I think there's probably corruption going

00:57:29.540 on in certain areas? Yes. Do I think there's been a misappropriation of resources and funds at some

00:57:33.540 point? I'm sure there has been, but, but ultimately he's kept his country in the war. And more than

00:57:39.860 that, he's effectively fought back. And so again, from a real politics standpoint, regardless of what

00:57:45.480 I think about the internal workings of Ukrainian politics, the guy has done a great job by his

00:57:50.540 country. The reason people get annoyed about that. And I think Nick, my observation is that

00:57:55.020 a lot of people don't want to say, I don't want to give money to foreign countries because it sounds

00:58:01.080 kind of nasty or whatever. So they then say, they then have to prove that Ukraine is the wrong 0.85

00:58:06.240 country to give money to. And therefore Zelensky is evil and whatever, instead of just saying what

00:58:11.040 they actually think. And, you know, I don't agree with their position, but it is a valid position to

00:58:15.120 say our country should focus on its own problems at a time when it has a lot of them. You know,

00:58:19.660 there's a reasonable position. Well, and that, that is the other side of it right now. I think

00:58:23.800 within the U S is that so many of our, so many of our problems have, have reached kind of a critical

00:58:29.740 stage. Um, the worst thing the United States could do is have a sovereign debt crisis because we are

00:58:36.620 the world's reserve currency and that would have disastrous effects. Um, and so I do think it's time

00:58:42.780 that we have to start to deal with some of those internal problems. But to your point, if we completely,

00:58:46.880 um, I, I don't like to use the word retreat because I've seen a lot of neocons use it as an excuse to

00:58:52.860 get us involved in everything. How about we just be a little bit more strategic and a little bit

00:58:57.880 more introspective on what our involvement should be to what extent and what our goals are, what our

00:59:02.700 purpose is. And then let's foster what our aid looks like based off of what our purpose is.

00:59:07.660 Is your purpose to just keep Ukraine in the war? Is your purpose to help them win? Is the purpose to

00:59:10.820 recapture Crimea? What's the purpose? And I realized that there are certain things, and actually this is

00:59:16.120 another thing that I think Trump has been pretty good about, is not always showing his hand on what

00:59:19.840 he's going to do on everything in a campaign run. Um, so I, I think that would be a far more

00:59:26.860 reasonable position for the United States to take, which would honor this, um, I think this very,

00:59:33.980 uh, important and understandable position to say, we need to reprioritize our own stuff right now,

00:59:40.500 um, while at the same time recognizing that we still play a major role within the world. And I don't

00:59:45.000 think the world gets better with her, you know, with an isolationist style absence.

00:59:49.940 Let me just ask one more question for us about Israel. You've served, you've probably seen some

00:59:54.800 urban combat, I'm guessing. People like us who've never been in that situation, I hear,

01:00:01.520 you know, I have my own views on it and having sort of read and listened and whatever, but ultimately

01:00:06.700 I've never been there. People talk about what's happening in Gaza and they say, you know, it's genocide,

01:00:11.880 it's this, it's that. And then other people say, well, look at the civilian to combat and death

01:00:16.540 ratio. Actually, this is the like most humane operation in history. Like what do you make of

01:00:20.920 all of that? I think the people that are calling it genocide, um, are either being intentionally

01:00:25.480 dishonest or don't know what the word genocide means. Um, I think that's very intentional on their 0.52

01:00:30.540 behalf. Um, when it comes to civilian casualties, there's a lot of people that like to do what I call

01:00:37.080 Excel spreadsheet fighting. And what they do is they look at the Excel spreadsheet with Israeli 0.99

01:00:42.220 military capability and Hamas military capability and say, why do they need to do all of this? 0.60

01:00:48.460 Like, look at how much more powerful they are. The reason why asymmetric warfare exists is when you

01:00:54.540 have a weaker force that is attempting to utilize the strengths of the stronger force against them.

01:00:59.380 So they're putting themselves in the best advantage possible. So we, I did a video on this. We have a

01:01:05.740 program called the Y Minutes and we talked about what is Hamas's strategy. And one of the questions

01:01:11.180 that I asked when I looked at this from a strategic standpoint is, okay, so Hamas knew when they went

01:01:16.520 into Israel that they weren't going to overthrow Israel. Um, when they took hostages, they knew

01:01:22.840 that the IDF was coming for them. Um, and yet they did both, right? So they knew they couldn't

01:01:30.540 defeat the IDF militarily and they knew getting hostages would force the IDF to come.

01:01:35.740 after them in a big way. Um, so why'd they do that? And how did they know that Western academia

01:01:43.920 and media would almost instantly be on their side? And the reason why is because a lot of

01:01:49.660 these organizations have invested very, very heavily within America academia. Um, I don't

01:01:54.160 know the numbers for, for European academia, but I'm, I'm assuming it's probably significant.

01:01:57.760 Um, at, at the same token, they understood that the way that you manipulate Western media

01:02:04.600 and Western sensibility is civilian casualties. Because even though we can look at our own

01:02:10.620 histories, whether it's the firebombing of Dresden or dropping, you know, atomic weapons

01:02:14.440 on, on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we've, we've certainly been able to get over our, our problem

01:02:19.060 with civilian casualties, but we also pride ourselves on attempting to avoid them to the extent possible

01:02:23.320 and reasonable. Urban warfare makes it incredibly difficult to do that because the, the fight now

01:02:32.260 is not my smart weapon against your AK 47. The weapon is now my guys and, and the strategic

01:02:39.540 advantage is they have aerial oversight and they have body armor, right? And night vision maybe,

01:02:47.020 right? But you can, they can buy night vision for, you know, five grand on the black market. So it's

01:02:50.380 not like Hamas can't have access to that. And so now if you're in a position where you benefit

01:02:58.440 strategically from civilian casualties, you have the perfect environment to maximize that

01:03:02.500 in a way that no other military can mitigate other than giving up. Because if I have to,

01:03:08.560 I like, I've, I've been in that environment where you are kicking in multiple doors to try to get to

01:03:13.040 your bad guy and every other room there's women and children. And we go through an incredible level

01:03:18.420 of training in order to make sure that you hit the right target. But that's a, that's a complex

01:03:24.000 environment, especially when that one time women, kids moving on. And then the 12 year old picks up 1.00

01:03:29.380 an AK 47 and starts shooting. Is that a civilian casualty or is that a military age male? Well, in that 0.69

01:03:36.980 moment, that's a military age male. You're shooting at me. That's not how it's going to be reported by

01:03:41.740 Hamas to CNN who will dutifully report X number of children killed on the objective. So what is

01:03:49.520 considered reasonable mitigation of civilian casualties? Well, it isn't warning everybody

01:03:58.740 ahead of time that I'm going to go into your neighborhood. It certainly isn't calling them

01:04:03.340 on their cell phones ahead of time and saying, Hey, we're about to attack this area. It isn't doing

01:04:09.600 drones where you, you bring stuff down going, please leave the area. We're about to attack this

01:04:13.880 house. And yet the IDF is doing those things. I'm sorry, but there is no, there is no measurement

01:04:22.120 that we can utilize with respect to how militaries engage in combat operations with a legitimate and

01:04:29.020 honest attempt to mitigate civilian casualties and not come to the conclusion that at the very

01:04:34.300 least of the Israeli ground forces have tried to do, have gone above and beyond whatever those

01:04:38.060 standards might be. And so at this point, what an honest media would be asking is, why do you insist

01:04:46.900 on keeping women and children in combat zones? You're not, Hamas is not confused about where Israel's 0.73

01:04:53.540 going to go. Why won't they move them out of the areas? Why do they keep them in those areas? Why do

01:04:59.260 they insist that they stay? And another video we did a while back was we asked the question on why don't

01:05:04.280 more Arab countries accept Palestinian refugees? The answer is they used to. And then Palestinian 1.00

01:05:09.400 refugees sided with Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait. They tried to overthrow the Jordanian

01:05:15.160 government. They did help destabilize Lebanon. They've caused problems within Egypt. And so it's not

01:05:22.340 that I don't, it's not that I am trying to minimize civilian casualties when they take place.

01:05:28.180 But I think it's absurd to rationally look at what is going on on the ground right there and then come

01:05:35.800 to the conclusion that Israel is just saying, if Israel wanted to genocide Gaza, they could. And it 0.78

01:05:42.240 wouldn't have taken them this long. They didn't. Now let's ask the reverse question. If Hamas would 0.94

01:05:50.640 have had the strength on October 7th to do everything it wanted to do, would Israel still be here? 0.91

01:05:54.360 We know what they do. I visited the music festival. I visited some of the kubuts. 0.98

01:06:02.340 I'm not confused about what they would do with similar power. And so that's the part where I get,

01:06:08.860 I get frustrated by this because again, I understand Americans that are saying it's Israel's war, not

01:06:13.860 ours. I get that. I get it when they say it's Ukraine's war, not ours. And I do believe that again, 1.00

01:06:19.960 we should think strategically about what our involvement is going to look like. But I also think

01:06:23.100 that we shouldn't engage in this kind of moral relativism where it's just, well, it's just not

01:06:27.460 our problem. Okay. Not primarily. But Hamas actively seeking, targeting, and killing women

01:06:36.840 and children because they believe it's perfectly morally justified, taking hostages. I'm looking at

01:06:43.500 some of the people on the right too that are talking about this, especially some of the tough guys on

01:06:48.560 the right. And I'm like, if it was your kid in Israel right now, you would not be calling ahead 0.99

01:06:55.680 to see, hey, just wanted to let you know we're going to be coming in. You'd be kicking doors and

01:06:59.560 beating the living piss out of people. So spare me your moral outrage when Israel wants to do the 1.00

01:07:05.440 same thing. I once did the numbers. I was like, okay, if Mexico crossed into Texas, killed 40,000

01:07:12.740 people and kidnapped another 1,500 to 2,000. And then the EU called for the United States to engage

01:07:22.580 in discretion and a ceasefire. I can tell you how quick we tell them to go F themselves before we

01:07:28.360 went down there and proceeded to demonstrate to everybody in the world that that was a really bad

01:07:33.760 idea. So I don't want, look, I don't want Palestinians to die. I don't want Israelis to die. 1.00

01:07:45.040 But if one side gets to continually engage in terrorist operations and start wars with

01:07:50.320 with the rest of the world, just immediately calling for a ceasefire, the moment you hit back,

01:07:55.460 that's absurd. And what you've actually done with the West has taught Hamas is that the more 0.65

01:08:00.900 civilian casualties you get, the more funding you get, and the more support you'll get.

01:08:04.700 We've incentivized them killing their own civilians by not demanding that they not do that.

01:08:15.660 Nick, you speak very powerfully about this and about the horrors of war. And one of the things that

01:08:20.740 I noticed when I'm in the United States is on the one hand, how highly you talk about your veterans.

01:08:26.540 On the other hand, I see the homelessness crisis. I was looking at stats. 40,000 veterans are homeless.

01:08:33.360 Roughly around 20 veterans every day commit suicide. These are terrible statistics.

01:08:41.680 Is America doing enough to help its veterans?

01:08:46.120 That's an interesting question. I was just talking to a friend of mine, Daniel Gade, who actually ran

01:08:50.760 some of our veteran services here in Virginia. He'd worked in the White House. He'd actually lost his

01:08:55.200 leg in Iraq as a company commander, as a tanker. And ended up staying in the service and retiring

01:09:02.300 as a lieutenant colonel, I believe. We had a long conversation about that. And we have what is

01:09:07.740 probably a fairly unpopular opinion with respect to the way that we are, quote, helping veterans.

01:09:13.280 Because there's a lot of people that the immediate answer is like, well, of course,

01:09:16.960 we need more funding for veterans affairs. Of course, we need to eradicate these things that are going on.

01:09:21.660 And in the process, what we're doing is we're turning veterans into victims.

01:09:25.760 Now, do I believe that a veteran that serves and is wounded in the line of duty or is injured in the

01:09:31.560 line of duty, maybe they didn't serve overseas, maybe they had a bad jump and they broke their back,

01:09:37.660 they are entitled to every single piece of advanced medical care that we can give them.

01:09:43.400 That's a part of the contract that you sign with your country when you engage in service.

01:09:46.980 What we have right now is an incredibly inefficient system that is encouraging people to game the

01:09:55.760 system. They are encouraging people to seek out a hundred percent disability, even if a hundred

01:10:02.260 percent disability does not legitimately exist. And we've got people that are now treating this as

01:10:07.000 like, well, it's free money. No, it isn't. First of all. Second of all, I get very upset when I see

01:10:13.460 somebody, somebody that will say never served overseas and they're getting higher disability

01:10:21.240 for sleep apnea and my knee hurts. And I have a ringing in my ear than a guy that lost a leg

01:10:26.100 overseas. There is a corrupting nature to benefits when they're not properly distributed and when

01:10:35.240 they're not properly given. And so I am very skeptical of what I see as a concerted effort by some to turn

01:10:42.220 veterans into victims. We should be taking care of our veterans. But again, the proper way to do that

01:10:48.400 is to once again, help them find a place, a meaning and a purpose once they leave military service, not

01:10:54.760 just a handout. Here, take this. There was this famous line from a movie, I think it was 310 to Yuma, where

01:11:00.320 the guy in it said, he goes, I realized that they gave me money, not so I could walk away, but so they could.

01:11:05.520 I heard a comedian once say that somebody said, do you support the troops? And he goes, well, he goes,

01:11:12.440 our government certainly learned that it's easier to worship the troops than it is to take care of

01:11:15.740 them. I don't want an elaborate welfare system for the troops. I want a system that honors their

01:11:22.520 service. I want a culture that respects them for the sacrifices that they made. And I want an economic

01:11:28.440 system that values the skills and the benefits and the attributes that they bring. And insofar as we

01:11:35.460 can help facilitate that so they can find meaning and purpose in the next thing that they do within

01:11:40.160 life, that's the way that we should be doing it. But instead, I feel like we've created a,

01:11:46.720 like every bureaucracy, we have created a bureaucracy which has its own agenda apart from the reason why it

01:11:51.500 was created. But if we see, and I take on board everything that you're saying, and the worst thing that

01:11:57.140 you can do is incentivize people to not strive, to not get better, to not work, because then you're

01:12:02.300 teaching them to be victims and to be helpless. But what do you do with, you know, people who come 0.74

01:12:09.040 out with severe PTSD, who are unable to function, who end up on the streets, like 40,000 of these

01:12:15.360 veterans, what do we do with them? So I think it's important to distinguish that there are some

01:12:19.260 people that served in the military, that got out and are dealing with substance abuse issues and

01:12:24.040 whatnot. Because if you look at homeless in the United States, again, I don't say this to be

01:12:27.860 incentive. I know that there is always going to be a subset of the population that, due to

01:12:32.660 circumstances beyond their control, find themselves in bad circumstances. Having dealt a little bit

01:12:38.560 with this issue, though, there's a lot of other people that find themselves in this situation because

01:12:41.800 this is what they choose through consistent actions and behavior. And I have really good friends

01:12:47.200 that have actually been involved in this as a ministry. And they would tell you that, okay, you go into a

01:12:51.280 homeless encampment, which you're going to find, is that you're going to find a lot of people, many of

01:12:55.180 them are on the sex offender list. You're going to find others that are dealing with massive substance

01:13:02.340 abuse and mental health issues. And then when it comes to, you know, perhaps finding more stable or

01:13:07.260 steady work, they feel like they can make more panhandling in a 48-hour period than they could

01:13:12.140 at a standard job. So those are all a variety of perverse incentives. And the question is, is where is

01:13:18.980 society's responsibility versus individual responsibility? And unfortunately, I think

01:13:23.500 when we create an environment where we see society as being ultimately responsible, as opposed to the

01:13:28.480 individual, we get the worst of both worlds. So to the extent that we can, we'll isolate it to

01:13:37.580 veterans. In Virginia, we have programs to ensure that any veteran that is homeless has access to free

01:13:46.440 rent, you know, processes and services where they can get what they need. So they're there, they exist.

01:13:53.960 We can always do a better job of making sure that people are aware of it. But then we also have to

01:13:57.900 understand there's also a subset. They don't, they don't want to engage with it. The other thing that

01:14:03.040 I would say is I think we have had a huge problem with respect to the way that we treat PTSD.

01:14:08.940 There's just like this constant focus on your trauma, focus on your trauma, focus on your trauma.

01:14:12.780 Is that really healthy? Is that really the best approach? I was watching a documentary around

01:14:19.300 World War I the other day. And I think, I think, was it on the Somme? I think it was the Somme,

01:14:30.460 where the British took 54,000 casualties in a day.

01:14:35.460 Okay. I look at the 29th Infantry Division, which stormed Omaha Beach in World War II. I look at a lot

01:14:45.060 of other conditions. Look, I think, yes, we need to do a better job of identifying how we help people

01:14:52.000 dealing with the trauma they've experienced. But I don't think we're doing a good job. And I don't

01:14:55.620 think throwing more money at it is the solution to it. I think it's about getting people back into

01:15:00.680 having meaning and purpose. You send someone back, you give them a paycheck, and then you send them

01:15:05.080 to a counseling session that is designed for them to open up and just talk about their feelings with

01:15:09.840 someone that they don't feel like they can relate to. Lo and behold, that doesn't work.

01:15:14.460 I have far more hope for things that Randy Couture is doing in Vegas right now. Randy Couture was

01:15:19.840 former Army veteran, UFC champion. Every Friday, he has an event where he has veterans, police officers,

01:15:27.860 first responders, sometimes athletes that sustains injury and whatnot. They come. What do they do?

01:15:31.620 They come to the gym. They roll. They fight. They contend with one another. And then they talk with

01:15:35.360 other men that they respect and admire. And a lot of it is about finding purpose and new challenges.

01:15:42.600 So I think it's a far better remedy than just constantly telling people to focus on their trauma.

01:15:48.040 I also think that there's been a problem, too, that hit us because the majority of people are coming 1.00

01:15:55.620 home from Iraq and Afghanistan that we're dealing with significant trauma as a result of combat were

01:15:59.880 men. But we're sending them into the counseling situations that seemed like it was more geared

01:16:04.040 for women. So what do... I mean, all counseling is... Yeah. What do women generally seek? They

01:16:09.340 generally seek support, the idea that they're not alone, that it's going to be okay, that they're

01:16:15.600 going to... What do men look for? Men look for, like, what's my purpose? What's my meaning? What's my

01:16:21.680 mission? And I just think we need to get back to that. But again, I wonder sometimes if there

01:16:28.100 isn't an ideological drive, and I don't mean to make that the boogeyman of everything, but

01:16:33.340 ideological drive to take a subsection of the population, which should be some of our strongest, 0.99

01:16:40.360 most experienced, most capable people, and turn them into dependent victims.

01:16:45.400 Nick, it's been an absolute pleasure. Before we move over to Substack and get our supporters to ask you

01:16:50.880 questions, our final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about as a

01:16:55.240 society that we really should be? Before Nick answers the final question, at the end of the

01:17:00.340 interview, make sure you click the link in the description, head on over to our Substack to see

01:17:04.900 this. How woke is the military now? Is a delay in starting a family stopping the psychological

01:17:10.340 development of adults? And this is something the right has to figure out as well. We're really good

01:17:14.740 at identifying all the things that we're very frustrated about. We better start providing a vision of

01:17:18.600 what we actually want to achieve. Gosh, I think, I can't say that we're not talking about it.

01:17:25.740 Because people like Douglas Murray, who you guys know very well, I think have talked very well about

01:17:29.400 some of the problems going on with the West. And a good friend of ours, Rudyard Lynch from What If

01:17:34.020 Alt-Hist has talked about this as well. But I will say that within the United States, and I think

01:17:39.900 this extends to other places within the West as well, we cannot continue to see the drift that we're

01:17:47.200 seeing where young women, 29 and younger, are pulling as the most liberal and progressive

01:17:51.900 they've ever been, and young men are pulling as the most conservative as they've ever been.

01:17:56.160 At the same time that we're dealing with the societal push for what can only be described as

01:18:01.540 almost kind of this nihilistic, hedonistic view. There's that little four cycle, right? Strong men

01:18:08.080 create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times. I think it's a little bit

01:18:13.720 simplistic, but not by much. We're at a point right now where young men are going to revolt.

01:18:22.000 They are going to push back against the system. And regardless of what postmodernist philosophers

01:18:28.640 think about equity within society, young men are the ones that possess the capability to impose

01:18:34.600 their will. They're the ones that we use to fight wars. They're the ones that we use to police streets.

01:18:39.740 You don't get to alienate and attempt to emasculate them forever without them standing up and having

01:18:44.220 something to say about that. The question is going to be, who are they going to look at

01:18:49.420 as their leaders in that process? Are they going to look at someone? Because I'll tell you what,

01:18:55.420 it's not going to be wokeism. It is not going to be wokeism. You're going to get a version of

01:19:03.220 masculinity, which takes all of those masculine traits, looks at all the people that they think have

01:19:08.960 attempted to emasculate them and says, unleash it on them. F those people. 0.98

01:19:16.120 You can have another group of men, older men that are telling these young men, 1.00

01:19:19.840 yeah, that sucks. It shouldn't have happened, but we need you to be strong and we need you to be

01:19:23.160 noble. You're right. They lied to you about these attributes, but you have to develop in the way that

01:19:29.480 they're going to go because the only way that you're going to save this sort of society that you want to

01:19:34.040 live in, the only way that you're going to create it is if you stand up and you actually assume that role

01:19:37.280 and it sucks that you have to do it under these conditions, but you do. So let's do it.

01:19:44.800 I honestly don't know which path they're going to choose. Right now, if I had to guess, it's not this

01:19:50.960 one. And that is going to be very, very dangerous. Not for me, but it's going to be very, very dangerous

01:19:58.480 for a lot of people that perpetuated this. And so they're going to have to wake up to the fact

01:20:01.560 that for those of us that are trying to educate young men in a way that we think will

01:20:07.720 use those traits toward a noble purpose, you're making it really hard for us to do our jobs right

01:20:16.480 now. And again, you're going to be the ones that pay the price, not us. So.

01:20:21.480 Well said. All right. Head on over to Substack to hear Nick answer your questions.

01:20:29.800 Some people are talking about, you know, Red America splitting off from Blue America and all of this.

01:20:35.480 What do you make of all of this talk and the situation more broadly?

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TRIGGERnometry - December 11, 2024

Green Beret on Men, War and Masculinity - Nick Freitas

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