Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - What Happened to Meritocracy? With Douglas Murray | The TRUTH Podcast #9

00:00:02.000 We're on the road for this edition of the podcast, but I just finished a speech this morning and then a fireside discussion.

00:00:29.000 There wasn't really a fire there, but we call it a fireside discussion with Douglas Murray.

00:00:34.000 And the topic of the morning was merit.

00:00:38.000 An idea we've feels like forgotten in America.

00:00:42.000 As I often say, we need to put the merit back into America.

00:00:45.000 But what does merit actually mean?

00:00:48.000 What does it mean to be meritocratic?

00:00:50.000 It's almost like the right or the right is challenged by the left often these days to define woke.

00:00:58.000 I rise to that challenge as best I can.

00:01:00.000 I define wokeness as a worldview that calls upon us to wake up to the invisible societal injustices created by the invisible power structures rooted in genetic identity, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and to act upon it to correct that.

00:01:16.000 It's a neutral definition.

00:01:17.000 Left or right, that's what the woke left calls upon us to do.

00:01:20.000 We should see it before we criticize it.

00:01:22.000 So be it.

00:01:23.000 The challenge that I give to my friends on the left is define merit, actually, because they've turned merit into effectively the same word on the left.

00:01:33.000 Functionally, in the concept that wokeness has become on the right, it's an assault on merit.

00:01:39.000 But what is it?

00:01:41.000 What does it mean to have a system that administers excellence in a given domain?

00:01:46.000 It's a pretty deep, philosophically rich discussion that my guest today, Douglas, who I spoke with on stage earlier today, began, I think, a deep conversation on it.

00:01:57.000 And, you know, in some ways, there is no beginning or end to this conversation, Douglas.

00:02:00.000 And so, you know, we're in Washington, D.C. today.

00:02:02.000 Normally, we do this in Columbus, but I wanted to take advantage of this to have you here.

00:02:06.000 Let's just pick up where we left off and start right in the middle.

00:02:09.000 The definition you gave on stage, right?

00:02:13.000 It was...

00:02:14.000 It's pretty good.

00:02:15.000 I thought it was a very useful starting point.

00:02:17.000 It made me think, you know, since, you know, we're doing this on the podcast again, we'll pick up where we left off, but can we just start with that definition of merit that you gave and we'll take it from there?

00:02:27.000 Yeah, I said the opposite of a straw man, a steel man.

00:02:31.000 If you steel man the question of merit, what we might agree on across political and other divides in America, I suggest maybe we could agree that most of us, the vast majority, let's say 98%, there's always a percentage who don't want something,

00:02:47.000 but most people in this society, most people in most Western democracies would agree to the following proposition, that nobody should be held back from achieving something in their life that they can achieve by dint of some characteristic over which they have no say.

00:03:02.000 So if you have the competency to do something and the desire to do it, you shouldn't be held back.

00:03:08.000 I think most people agree with that.

00:03:11.000 People on the left agree with that.

00:03:12.000 People on the right agree with that.

00:03:14.000 There's a difference of opinion on how you arrive at that situation.

00:03:19.000 We've got closer to it in the last couple of generations.

00:03:21.000 I mean, unbelievably closer.

00:03:23.000 When you think about the societal actual progress we've had in these regards in recent decades, it's extraordinary.

00:03:32.000 However, there is a disagreement today, clearly, where the left, broadly speaking, believes that you must get this sort of equality by getting equity.

00:03:43.000 You've got to get the equality of the outcome.

00:03:45.000 Now, the right has its own answer, and the right's answer has criticisms that can be made of it.

00:03:51.000 That is basically the gradualist approach.

00:03:54.000 Set up the conditions and, you know, like...

00:03:57.000 At the moment, there might not be enough representation of certain people in certain places, but if you give it time, you'll get there.

00:04:05.000 The critique of that is that it's sort of complacent.

00:04:08.000 Okay, well, how many years do you think we have?

00:04:11.000 And so on.

00:04:12.000 But I would suggest that the left's view has its own problems, which is simply that equity, equality of outcome, is not possible in this life.

00:04:22.000 I don't think it's desirable either, by the way.

00:04:26.000 I'm very fond of a quote of the late Irving Kristol who once said, I don't like equality in sports.

00:04:32.000 I don't like it in economics.

00:04:33.000 I just don't like it in this world.

00:04:37.000 I would say equity where he said equality there.

00:04:41.000 I'm not for it.

00:04:42.000 I'm not for equity in baseball, cricket.

00:04:47.000 I don't think...

00:04:49.000 Any of us can have everything the same just because we want it to be so.

00:04:54.000 But this is something that is tearing underneath our societies at the moment because many people have been persuaded that, as it were, no one will be free until every company board precisely replicates the makeup of the society.

00:05:13.000 And as I mentioned when we were talking earlier today, it's very striking that this is only the case with high-status jobs.

00:05:23.000 It's Hollywood.

00:05:24.000 It's boards.

00:05:26.000 Most people in America...

00:05:28.000 are not lucky enough to sit on company boards.

00:05:31.000 Most people do not have high status jobs.

00:05:36.000 And there's something very telling about the fact that we sort of have this obsessive discussion about, you know, Harvard admissions, like absolutely the elite of the elite institutions.

00:05:45.000 And that's right in many ways.

00:05:47.000 But we don't think the same thing should be applied in lower status jobs.

00:05:52.000 You You know, nobody's actually concerned about whether or not we have absolutely representative workers in the postal service or in garbage pickup or coal mining or road laying or anything.

00:06:09.000 Nobody says we need more women to apply to be laying roads and highways across America. 1.00

00:06:16.000 So there's something off about the whole discussion.

00:06:18.000 But as I say, the question in a way is this thing of how would you as a society, how would we unleash talent in an optimal way?

00:06:30.000 I think that's a much more useful place to have the discussion than why does everything not absolutely replicate the makeup of society.

00:06:43.000 I'd like the discussion to be shifted from that to how can we just make sure that all the talent we have in society is as widely utilized as possible.

00:06:55.000 As I'm hearing you talk about it, maybe we didn't get to this and we didn't go in this direction this morning.

00:07:01.000 But on the philosophy of this, you could… Imagine that our goal in fostering meritocracy, which I sort of define as the system that administers excellence in any sphere of life, okay?

00:07:13.000 That's meritocracy.

00:07:15.000 I like the way you define it.

00:07:16.000 It's a little bit more applicable, but you could come at it in different ways.

00:07:21.000 The case for it could be, one, that it increases the size of the pie for all, roughly speaking, an economic justification.

00:07:30.000 And I think that that's one account for why we want to protect meritocracy in America.

00:07:35.000 The other though, maybe more interesting direction to go is the case that this is actually the just system.

00:07:43.000 Regardless of whether or not it results in a bigger pie for everyone to eat from.

00:07:47.000 Even if the size of the pie is the same, it's just the right way to split the pie.

00:07:52.000 Right.

00:07:53.000 Because any other system would be necessarily unjust, that equity is inherently unjust if it is requiring us to take actions that Past determinations on people that's constrained them from achieving their truest potential, that there's something fundamentally just about letting a free bird roam free and fly wherever it may.

00:08:16.000 Which of those moves you more?

00:08:19.000 Well, the first thing is that it's unwise economically and morally to, for instance, demoralize anyone in the population by saying you can't achieve something because of who you are.

00:08:33.000 I mean, one of the most striking things about how any economy thrives is women being allowed into the workplace. 1.00

00:08:42.000 Why?

00:08:43.000 Well, you know, 50% of the population, you're going to get an awful lot of benefits from that.

00:08:49.000 And societies that don't allow women to work historically and in the current day suffer as a result.

00:08:56.000 But there's also just this question, yes, of what I regard as demoralization.

00:09:02.000 We have had periods in the past in America, as in all countries, we've had periods where certain groups have been demoralized from the idea of, for instance, going to higher education.

00:09:14.000 My own parents' generation, it was still thought by many people to be a waste to send a daughter to university.

00:09:21.000 You know, that somehow, well, she's just going to marry and have children and, you know, what's the point?

00:09:28.000 That's quite recent.

00:09:29.000 You know, it's living memory.

00:09:32.000 So if we could regard the fact that that was the case with education and with certain jobs with women, It was certainly the case in certain walks of life with ethnic minorities, who were expected more, where I'm from perhaps, than in America, were expected to stay in certain professions, you know.

00:09:51.000 It was certainly the case of sexual minorities, you know, until the 1990s or so, you know, if you're openly gay, you're expected to either go onto Broadway or be an interior designer, you know.

00:10:03.000 And you're how old now?

00:10:06.000 I'm 43. Very rude to ask.

00:10:08.000 That's okay.

00:10:08.000 We're in America here.

00:10:11.000 It's not long ago.

00:10:12.000 It's personal for you as well.

00:10:13.000 Yeah, of course.

00:10:14.000 I think it's an important part of your background that I think builds empathy with your audience.

00:10:18.000 Well, when I was growing up and I was gay, I mean, there was no out gay politician.

00:10:23.000 Right.

00:10:24.000 And you weren't allowed to be gay in the military.

00:10:26.000 So there were certain things that you just didn't or thought you wouldn't be able to do in your life.

00:10:32.000 Yep.

00:10:32.000 So these things, which are hopefully in the past, were demoralizing to minority groups, and in the case of women, to half the population.

00:10:44.000 But there's something now happening, which is, I think, even worse than that, which is the attempt to demoralize majority populations.

00:10:57.000 And that we enter very strange terrain in our own time.

00:11:01.000 I mean, for instance, why is there such an emphasis in our culture on toxic masculinity?

00:11:09.000 On the bad things about men.

00:11:12.000 Why is there so much discussion about that?

00:11:15.000 It demoralizes men hugely, as it would demoralize women if we talked endlessly about toxic femininity. 0.71

00:11:22.000 So the attacks on masculinity, being a man and much more, is very demoralizing to men, who make up half the population.

00:11:32.000 And then you have this new thing, in that it's happened in our own lifetimes and in recent memory, Where you also tell the majority population who are white, or you've got special problems of your own.

00:11:45.000 And you should, for instance, hold back.

00:11:47.000 You should not speak up.

00:11:50.000 You should- Step aside.

00:11:51.000 Step aside.

00:11:53.000 Stay in your lane.

00:11:54.000 All of these sorts of things.

00:11:56.000 Now, if you said to a racial, sexual, or any other minority, stay in your lane, I mean, I think we would wince at that.

00:12:05.000 Of course.

00:12:07.000 But we're saying it to a majority population.

00:12:10.000 Like, who made these lanes exactly?

00:12:12.000 And who are you to tell us which lane, where we should be?

00:12:16.000 In other words, in the name of sort of fighting past unfairness, which is a word I'm kind of keener on, unfairness.

00:12:25.000 I think equality, inequality, equity, all these things are sort of a bit abstract compared to just fairness.

00:12:31.000 Mm-hmm.

00:12:32.000 But if you were to try to make up for past unfairness, you don't do it by exercising unfairness in the present day against people who look like the people who you think were the unfair people in the past.

00:12:46.000 So one of the things I'm worried about in America today is we have this endless absorbing discussion about representation, about equity, and all of these sorts of things.

00:12:54.000 And my question at the end is, are you sure that in the process of doing this, You're actually going to make our society better, more successful, more thriving.

00:13:06.000 I don't think the evidence is there yet.

00:13:09.000 In fact, I think quite the opposite.

00:13:11.000 I think that this expectation that playing these games would inevitably improve matters hasn't been demonstrated even in one company.

00:13:23.000 So why try to roll it out across the whole of society, every government department, and so on?

00:13:31.000 I mean, isn't it strange to be carrying out a nationwide experiment when you haven't even done one successful control test?

00:13:41.000 So I think the case for – the easy case for us to make, and of course, you and I I agree on this, but nonetheless, the easy case for us to make is that not only does it not make society overall better off,

00:13:59.000 but even if you apply a sort of John Rawlsian difference principle or whatever, roughly speaking, that we should organize a society's affairs based on what helps those who are worst off.

00:14:12.000 Mm-hmm.

00:14:13.000 It would fail on even that standard today.

00:14:16.000 You come up to the topic that's – one of the topics that's near and dear to my heart to address and dismantle is race-based affirmative action in America, an experiment that began as part of that great society in the mid-1960s.

00:14:30.000 Black Americans are palpably worse off economically and on other metrics, family formation, two-parent households that children are born into, drastically worse off today than they were in the 1960s directly as a consequence of sort of becoming addicted to this form of and being sort of duped and shackled, dare I say, by these modalities that were designed to help them.

00:14:54.000 So it fails that even more stringent test But because we agree with each other, I feel some sense of obligation to air what someone who disagreed with us might say if they were here.

00:15:05.000 Okay, so that's not the right way to correct for that historical injustice.

00:15:13.000 What is?

00:15:15.000 And that was what you also posed as the question that we're asked of the right, but I think if we're getting to the meat of the matter, let's get real here about what our actual preferences are.

00:15:26.000 Suppose we live in a world where we never can actually correct for that injustice.

00:15:31.000 What if the answer to that question – part of the reason the right hasn't come up, the conservative movement or whatever, have come up with an answer to that question is that there is no such thing as an answer to that question.

00:15:43.000 There are many injustices depending on how long you look or through what prism.

00:15:47.000 And that the question of correcting for injustice itself on a false premise, I think it's not – It's not intellectual laziness or dullness or coldness that causes many conservatives to lack an answer to that question.

00:16:03.000 It may be the fact that that is an unanswerable question itself and somehow in some philosophical sense, forward is the only way to go.

00:16:12.000 And there is no beyond a reasonable look-back period, a period behind which you ought to look.

00:16:18.000 What's your reaction to that?

00:16:19.000 Well, first of all, I mean, the idea of making up for historic injustice is a very ropey bit of moral terrain.

00:16:29.000 I wrote about this a couple of books ago in The Madness of Crowds.

00:16:33.000 Madness of Crowds is already a couple books ago?

00:16:35.000 Yeah.

00:16:36.000 What came in between?

00:16:37.000 What came after?

00:16:38.000 The war in the West.

00:16:39.000 War in the West was after. 0.78

00:16:40.000 Oh, okay, okay.

00:16:41.000 But the man of the crowds, I addressed this question of historic restitution, because at this stage, for instance, in a country like America, we're not in the position where somebody who has done a wrong Can ask forgiveness even, let alone make up for things to a person who was wronged.

00:17:05.000 We're in a situation of somebody who looks like a person who did a wrong historically, making restitution to somebody who looks like a person to whom a wrong was done. 0.87

00:17:16.000 Who's not, I like the way friends, because they're not even the descendant of.

00:17:18.000 They're not even necessarily the descendant of.

00:17:21.000 You may have seen, it was quite amusing to me the other day, the former Black Panther, Angela Davis, discovering on television, genealogy show, discovering that she was descended from one of the...

00:17:35.000 People who came over on the Mayflower.

00:17:37.000 She was absolutely horrified.

00:17:39.000 I mean, you couldn't have upset her more if you'd tried.

00:17:44.000 Because here is a woman who has made... 1.00

00:17:48.000 Her hustle of demanding reparations and much more turns out she's, I don't know, maybe she should take money out of her left pocket and put it in her right pocket. 1.00

00:17:58.000 I don't know.

00:17:58.000 She's got to give and take in this situation.

00:18:02.000 It just highlights the absurdity of what we've actually been caught up in talking about.

00:18:07.000 And remember, it's not abstract.

00:18:09.000 You know, San Francisco is discussing this in real terms at the moment.

00:18:13.000 Oh, really?

00:18:15.000 Actual distribution of money to people who look like people to whom a wrong was done.

00:18:21.000 I have quite a lot of views on that.

00:18:24.000 But anyway, the point is that that whole terrain of who gets the right to apologize and who gets the right to accept the apology is in moral philosophy pretty much agreed you cannot do it on anyone else's behalf.

00:18:37.000 You can't ask for the forgiveness.

00:18:39.000 you can't give the forgiveness.

00:18:40.000 And there's a great book by Simon Wiesenthal on that, which I recommend to anyone interested, called The Sunflower.

00:18:47.000 But so that's the sort of the problem with that.

00:18:52.000 In a way, of course, it's the wrong question to be asking because you don't want to blithely pass by historic injustice, but nor do you want to get caught up on it, particularly if, as I say, it's effectively unsolvable.

00:19:07.000 Mm-hmm.

00:19:08.000 And I say unsolvable because everybody could play the game.

00:19:12.000 And it is a kind of game at this stage.

00:19:14.000 I mean, you know, I was saying recently somewhere that if you want to get into the slavery thing, you've got to address the fact that one million white Europeans were taken from Britain and Southern Europe by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in Africa.

00:19:29.000 Is that true?

00:19:30.000 Yeah.

00:19:31.000 I didn't know that.

00:19:32.000 What are you going to do about it?

00:19:34.000 These people might have been my ancestors who were stolen.

00:19:38.000 Can I get any money from...

00:19:40.000 That's a high number, actually.

00:19:41.000 It's a lot.

00:19:42.000 One million?

00:19:42.000 Yeah.

00:19:43.000 How many slaves came from Africa to the U.S.? I think the transatlantic slave trade is thought to be up to 11 million, maybe 12. And a much larger number, perhaps 18 million, were taken east from Africa in the Arab slave trade, which ran much longer.

00:20:01.000 And the interesting thing about that is… The Arab slave trade had more traffic. 0.89

00:20:05.000 Yes.

00:20:05.000 From Africa.

00:20:06.000 From Africa, sold by Africans to Arabs. 0.89

00:20:09.000 Interesting.

00:20:10.000 And you know why we don't hear anything about it?

00:20:13.000 I haven't heard anything about it.

00:20:14.000 Because it was actually genocidal.

00:20:15.000 They castrated all of the men.

00:20:19.000 Yes.

00:20:20.000 So there are no descendants.

00:20:21.000 What was their objective in doing that?

00:20:22.000 To get the men, use them as labor, and make sure they didn't have children. 0.96

00:20:27.000 Oh, because they didn't want to.

00:20:28.000 They didn't want them to have children. 0.95

00:20:29.000 And they thought they were inferior anyway.

00:20:31.000 In fact, it's one of the reasons why in the Middle East today, the word in Arabic for black is the same as the word for slave, abid or abid in the plural. 0.53

00:20:41.000 Oh, it is.

00:20:42.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:43.000 I know that word.

00:20:44.000 I didn't know that it was the word for slave.

00:20:45.000 It means slave.

00:20:46.000 So in current modern day Saudi Arabia, they will still refer to a black person using the word that means slave.

00:20:53.000 It's like using the N-word here in the United States as a regular moniker. 0.78

00:20:58.000 It's insane.

00:21:00.000 But my point is that whenever you go back in history, there's this presumption today that for certain types of people of certain skin colors, history was great.

00:21:12.000 And actually, history was pretty awful for everybody.

00:21:17.000 You know, in the country I'm from the UK, if you worked in the mill towns in the north of England, your average life expectancy in the 19th century was 37%.

00:21:27.000 So it wasn't a great life.

00:21:28.000 It wasn't great for slaves either.

00:21:30.000 It wasn't great for anyone.

00:21:31.000 And there are degrees of not greatness, for sure.

00:21:34.000 But do you want to spend your time raking that over, reopening wounds, and crying about your hurt?

00:21:44.000 Or do you want to try to solve something in the current day?

00:21:48.000 I would, and it's not because I want to cover anything over or anything like that, I just would rather that we focus on this question of how can we try to make it work better today?

00:21:57.000 And this is a bit of a long-winded answer, but let me just very quickly answer the second part of that, which is this issue of the situation not improving in the way we hoped it might have done in American recent decades for certain minority groups.

00:22:10.000 Heather MacDonald has a very interesting observation on this.

00:22:13.000 She says that she thinks that much of the Current angst on the left in America comes from a recognition that The situation for American blacks since the 1960s has not improved to the extent they expected it to.

00:22:29.000 Well, it's actually gotten much worse.

00:22:31.000 And so there's a whole hell of questions underneath that.

00:22:39.000 And again, I mean, it's not obvious to me that in order to try to make up for that, you should be prejudiced against Asian students, for instance.

00:22:49.000 Well, I make the strong case.

00:22:50.000 It's much worse because of the very policies that undergird.

00:22:54.000 Penalizing Asian students today.

00:22:55.000 I think that's not been good for anybody including even the – including the black community. 0.92

00:22:59.000 But yeah, I think – but the question I think we have to – I think you and I are both, you know, quote unquote admitting.

00:23:06.000 I think it's worth airing, right?

00:23:08.000 I'm all about suppressing – you know, smoking out suppressed premises on the left.

00:23:13.000 Let's smoke out our own is that – It's not just that we think that, well, the right way to correct for historical inequity is not certainly by replicating the patterns of discrimination or demoralization, as you put it.

00:23:28.000 I think demoralization is a better word because discrimination is too narrow to describe what's actually happening.

00:23:34.000 So that's a better word you've, I think, found.

00:23:38.000 It's closer to the target.

00:23:42.000 But it is that the project itself can't be done.

00:23:46.000 And it's almost a stoic view or something like this applied societally that The path is through.

00:23:57.000 And we kind of go forward together because that's just what we can do, right?

00:24:02.000 There's not much else we can do, but we can move forward.

00:24:05.000 And I think that that will be a deeply unsatisfying answer to, you know, it's not all of the left, but those on the left who subscribe to this restorative equity agenda.

00:24:19.000 But I wonder, just as a matter of persuasion or galvanization, national unity on the project of moving forward, I suppose it's the seat I sit in right now, whether that isn't just the right way to do it, to go through the reckoning, to not offer this false carrot of a promise that we sort of falsely promise that there's to not offer this false carrot of a promise that we sort of falsely promise that there's some other way we can go about addressing that historical inequity, but more just the open admission of the fact that we recognize Yeah.

00:24:48.000 So that we, in ways, don't make the same mistakes in the present.

00:24:52.000 Absolutely.

00:24:53.000 But that we're just not – we're not even attempting to actually take on that historical project and to sort of be honest about it.

00:25:00.000 That'll make people mad in the short run, but might actually galvanize some sense of Of honesty, of how we agree we're moving forward.

00:25:07.000 Well, it's definitely not a healthy thing for any group or individual in society to feel that at some point they'll get a great payday for doing nothing.

00:25:16.000 I mean, that seems to me to be very sort of laziness-inducing, among other things.

00:25:26.000 I mean, there are so many other things we could and I think should be addressing instead.

00:25:30.000 I mean, you know, in our own lifetimes, we've seen the whole way in which people accrue capital has madly changed.

00:25:43.000 When I was young, if you had savings in the bank, you know, you could sort of sit on them and you would earn money from them.

00:25:49.000 Yep.

00:25:51.000 Today?

00:25:51.000 That sounds mad.

00:25:54.000 I joked to a friend some time ago that being Scottish, I said my investment strategy was if I had any cash to put it in a pillow.

00:26:01.000 And then when the markets all went down recently, this friend said, actually, your idea wasn't such a bad one.

00:26:07.000 It was a good idea not to put it in stocks.

00:26:12.000 But think of the way in which...

00:26:16.000 Accruing capital, for instance.

00:26:18.000 I mean, I've said to you before, but it's not inevitable that you create a generation of capitalists if you have a generation who cannot accrue capital.

00:26:27.000 What do you do with the inability of young people to get onto the housing ladder in many democracies at the moment?

00:26:37.000 These are real-world issues which will have the biggest effects on people's lives.

00:26:42.000 Because if you can't accrue capital and you can't get a house, you're not going to start a family.

00:26:47.000 All sorts of other things are in the air.

00:26:52.000 Why don't we spend as much time talking about that as we do on the other things?

00:26:55.000 I would argue because we've effectively been distracted by this unwinnable game.

00:27:01.000 You know, Marie Antoinette was famously alleged to have said, let them eat cake of the crowd.

00:27:08.000 I think many of our politicians in the current age of left and right have effectively said, let them eat identity politics.

00:27:17.000 Because it's something that will keep them preoccupied.

00:27:21.000 We know it can't be won.

00:27:23.000 We know it's unsolvable.

00:27:26.000 Let's give them a totally unsolvable game to play so that they don't notice all of these other things that are going on. 0.99

00:27:34.000 I mean, think of the airtime that has been taken up in recent years by arguments which frankly show our society as becoming stupider and stupider. 0.98

00:27:46.000 If you'd have said 20 years ago to me, What do you think, Douglas, we're going to be discussing in America in 2023? 0.99

00:27:55.000 If I had said, well, one of them is we're not going to know what a woman is. 1.00

00:28:01.000 And another will be that we don't know when America was founded.

00:28:05.000 You'd say, I thought that...

00:28:07.000 Did you have other problems to solve?

00:28:11.000 Didn't you have the internet that was meant to be a great opportunity to solve problems and swap learning?

00:28:16.000 And we've actually unlearned the first things we knew as a species.

00:28:22.000 Boys and girls.

00:28:24.000 What sex?

00:28:25.000 What's your new baby?

00:28:26.000 No way to tell.

00:28:30.000 That's a new madness.

00:28:32.000 The person who disagrees with us...

00:28:35.000 I really enjoy – I quite enjoy the way you describe these things and you sort of back into them.

00:28:41.000 I like it.

00:28:43.000 The response would be, you know, it's a tired refrain, but let's air it, which is that, well, yes, exactly.

00:28:52.000 You conservatives are just making this stuff up, right?

00:28:55.000 It's a distraction from solving the real problems.

00:28:58.000 And why are you guys so obsessed with gender identity, with race, with wokeism?

00:29:04.000 Why is that something that every Republican politician – I mean, you hear this stuff, right?

00:29:07.000 Yeah, yeah, of course.

00:29:08.000 And so I think, you know, respond to that.

00:29:11.000 Well, it comes from people who start a culture war and then object when you...

00:29:15.000 Engage in it.

00:29:16.000 Engage in it.

00:29:16.000 Yeah.

00:29:17.000 I mean, one of my favorite awakening moments was my friend Joe Rogan some years ago realized the gender thing was a problem because there was a trans... 1.00

00:29:28.000 He does MMA fighting.

00:29:30.000 There was a trans MMA fighter who was just beating the hell out of women and winning.

00:29:36.000 Yeah.

00:29:37.000 Oh my god.

00:29:38.000 That's a particularly, that's more crass than the swimming.

00:29:41.000 The swimming is quite an easy one.

00:29:41.000 Right.

00:29:43.000 Was this a hypothetical?

00:29:44.000 No, this happened.

00:29:45.000 Oh, really?

00:29:46.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:29:46.000 Oh my god.

00:29:48.000 Like, is that okay with you?

00:29:50.000 Yeah.

00:29:51.000 What have you got?

00:29:52.000 What's the problem you have with this big guy beating the hell out of women? 0.98

00:29:55.000 Bigot.

00:29:57.000 I mean, you know, it is...

00:29:59.000 I don't know why I'm laughing because it's not funny.

00:30:01.000 It's crazy.

00:30:02.000 But it's nutty, yeah.

00:30:03.000 And, you know, and so people, you know, again, I mean, even on the less harmful ones comparatively, you know, some young woman spends her life training to be a swimmer and then a big dude with shoulders jumps into the pool and says he feels kind of feminine whenever he gets into a pool.

00:30:19.000 Yeah.

00:30:20.000 I don't know.

00:30:21.000 I mean, I didn't start that.

00:30:22.000 I didn't make that up.

00:30:26.000 It's just...

00:30:27.000 And I'm not...

00:30:27.000 No, but I think the basic request is...

00:30:30.000 The basic request is...

00:30:31.000 Is ignore it.

00:30:32.000 Just let it happen.

00:30:33.000 Allow the female athletes to be knocked off the field. 1.00

00:30:36.000 Allow the end of women's sports. 1.00

00:30:38.000 And if you're even interested in it, we'll kind of cast aspersions on you and suggest that there's something bigoted going on.

00:30:44.000 So no, I mean, people who start culture wars, in order to completely destroy our collective mind, which is what they're doing, as I say, 20 years ago, it was not hard to say what a woman is. 0.98

00:30:56.000 Today, you can't even get a nominee for the Supreme Court to say what a woman is. 1.00

00:31:00.000 Everyone has their thing to say about somebody being non-binary or transgender.

00:31:04.000 What's a transgender person?

00:31:06.000 Oh, that's easy to answer.

00:31:06.000 What's a woman?

00:31:07.000 Impossible, impossible conundrum.

00:31:11.000 So these are primarily not actually things that the right started.

00:31:16.000 But of course, people are going to respond to them.

00:31:19.000 But again, what if this is all coming about in part because there are much bigger and deeper problems in our society that we don't have an answer to?

00:31:29.000 And I include myself on some of those.

00:31:32.000 I mean, we have runaway inflation.

00:31:38.000 I've got some view of how you solve it.

00:31:42.000 But For all of us, it's kind of easier to get distracted by the other stuff, because underneath us are these big problems.

00:31:51.000 You know, I have an economist friend who said to me years ago that the only job of politicians is to make sure the economy doesn't go wrong.

00:32:01.000 And I remember saying to him, well, you would say that because you're an economist, you know.

00:32:08.000 In the years since, I thought, actually, that's- It's a big job.

00:32:12.000 It's a big job, for sure.

00:32:14.000 Because if the economy goes wrong, everything else can go wrong, you know?

00:32:19.000 I mean, you've written about this as well.

00:32:20.000 Think of all the things that have gone mad since 2008. So much of it is to do with the fact that we never really reckoned with that.

00:32:29.000 We didn't really know what to do with it.

00:32:31.000 That was the essence of Woke Inc, actually.

00:32:35.000 And I think that that's why I partially find your deflection account appealing, right?

00:32:42.000 As a way to, you know, woke smoke or whatever it is, right?

00:32:45.000 It's a deflection tactic.

00:32:46.000 And it can definitely help both sides, as it were.

00:32:50.000 I'm totally open to that, that conservatives can be as guilty of that as the left.

00:32:55.000 Mm-hmm.

00:32:56.000 Mm-hmm.

00:32:59.000 I want to go back to this intuition, though, that you're supposed to stand by and watch.

00:33:05.000 Because I think that's the base expectation.

00:33:07.000 You just sort of put your finger of what's going on in the ether.

00:33:10.000 It's that – forget – we got the deflection theory, but let's just go to the essence of what's going on anyway, even if that's a big part of the cynical force behind it.

00:33:23.000 I think the base expectations – so I sort of feel this sometimes when I'll get friends who agree with me.

00:33:28.000 I think I post on Twitter or whatever the other day, if it's about race or somebody else, especially someone like Ibram Kendi making a particular comment.

00:33:36.000 If I'm quoting him, I get some criticism for that.

00:33:42.000 Not because somebody...

00:33:43.000 And quoting him in a critical way.

00:33:45.000 Not because...

00:33:46.000 From a particular strain of friends at least.

00:33:50.000 Not because they agree with him and have an objection to the content of my critique.

00:33:50.000 Okay.

00:33:55.000 But it's sort of like...

00:33:58.000 Why are you bothering with this when you yourself, speaking to me, could be engaged with the more important problems themselves?

00:34:08.000 And I'm not criticizing the people who are offering this criticism.

00:34:09.000 I'm actually airing it in a fair way, which is to say that, kind of to pick up where you left off, why should a guy like me, and maybe your answer will be, maybe I shouldn't be, but why should a guy like me even be paying heed to To engaging in that debate when I could just be focusing on solving inflation and addressing economic growth, which, by the way, I am in a sphere of my agenda.

00:34:33.000 But there's a part of me that says it's wrong to just...

00:34:37.000 Ignore this without engaging on the merits of the debate about meritocracy itself.

00:34:42.000 And yes, I could be just focused on an economic agenda to deliver GDP growth and embrace nuclear energy and, you know, let's put people back to work in a way that fights, you know, the unemployment crisis that creates inflation actually in the supply chain issues.

00:34:56.000 Maybe we could just focus only on that and just turn our eyes away.

00:34:59.000 But I feel like that wouldn't fully be what being a leader in our time actually means, though there are some Republicans who I don't criticize them are drawn to take that approach.

00:35:09.000 Why should we engage?

00:35:11.000 Why shouldn't we just take that approach of solving the problems that you say need to be solved without, well, pretty much pretending this debate doesn't exist?

00:35:16.000 Well, because if somebody sets up a whole pile of booby traps in your path, you do have to remove them, get around them.

00:35:27.000 If somebody minds the path in front of you, You can't just say, well, I'm still going to get to the end of this minefield.

00:35:34.000 You've got to take out the mines.

00:35:37.000 You've got to demine the terrain.

00:35:40.000 And our era has produced quite a lot of people who have done nothing constructive, but have put a whole pile of mines in front of us.

00:35:49.000 Of the kind that mean that certain of your friends will say...

00:35:53.000 I can't believe you're interested in this mine, and why don't you find a way around it?

00:35:58.000 I'd love to.

00:35:59.000 That's what they say, find your way around it.

00:36:00.000 Yeah, I'd love to.

00:36:01.000 It's just that, you know, it's in my path.

00:36:05.000 And I'm afraid that, you know, all of us have to make our own decisions on the way in which we use our energies.

00:36:15.000 My own belief is that you just have to clear some of this stuff out of the way for other people or for yourself.

00:36:23.000 But the end of the path has to be remembered as well and kept in sight.

00:36:27.000 And the end of the path has to be, and something I brought up toward the end of our discussion this morning, but the end of the path to my mind is to pose the following question.

00:36:37.000 If all of these minds were taken away, and you didn't have to concentrate on all of the booby traps set down by Kendi and others, if they were all taken away, what would you be doing with your life?

00:36:51.000 How would you be using your time best?

00:36:55.000 What would be the dream you would be pursuing?

00:36:58.000 Now those are the good questions.

00:37:01.000 Yes.

00:37:02.000 And those are the questions which we need to keep in mind and we definitely need to address more.

00:37:11.000 But we have to somehow find a way of doing it that says, that frees people of this terrible set of traps we've put in their way.

00:37:19.000 As I say, there have been times in the past, most of the past, in most places, and in many places in the current day, where the situation you're born in would be the single defining factor in your life.

00:37:31.000 Yes.

00:37:32.000 You know?

00:37:34.000 And you just, there was no way out.

00:37:38.000 You know, I often think that there's a great line in the fifth season of The Wire when one of the boys says to the boxing coach, you know, how do you get, he says, there's a whole world out there.

00:37:50.000 And the boy says to the coach, how do you get there?

00:37:53.000 And the coach says, I don't know.

00:37:55.000 And it's a heartbreaking scene.

00:37:57.000 It's a heartbreaking scene.

00:37:59.000 But you want people not to be limited by whatever it is they've been born into if they have the aptitude to pursue whatever the thing is that they're good at.

00:38:14.000 You know, people often say you should pursue your dreams.

00:38:19.000 But another way of doing it is you should pursue what you've discovered you're good at.

00:38:23.000 And you should work really hard at that.

00:38:25.000 Now, that's good life advice for people.

00:38:28.000 But say to them, there's no point because the whole system's rigged and you won't get anywhere.

00:38:36.000 Well, that's the view of a very bitter cynic or somebody living in a society which is genuinely unpleasant to live in.

00:38:45.000 And we don't live in such a society.

00:38:48.000 I mean, God knows there are enough critiques we can make of America as it is.

00:38:51.000 But it remains the best society on earth that I know of that allows people to get on that bus and get out of town.

00:39:00.000 Mm-hmm.

00:39:02.000 I mean, I spend a lot of my life traveling all over the world and I can't think of a society where that opportunity is more.

00:39:10.000 That's not to say, as I said, it's there for everyone in America or that we couldn't do better.

00:39:14.000 Or a time in history where that was more true either.

00:39:17.000 Or a time in history.

00:39:18.000 I mean, take another one from that which always strikes me.

00:39:22.000 Wherever you go in the world now, If you meet a really smart young person, it doesn't matter which country they're in, they can be at the forefront of the discoveries of their time.

00:39:35.000 I mean, it's an amazing thing.

00:39:36.000 I mean, I've seen it myself.

00:39:38.000 You speak to someone and you realize, oh my gosh, that's exactly what we're talking about in New York.

00:39:43.000 That's exactly what we're talking about in London.

00:39:45.000 And I'm here in this far-flung place.

00:39:47.000 But yeah, you've got the opportunity to do that.

00:39:50.000 This is amazing.

00:39:51.000 We could solve so many problems if we put our collective talents and minds together.

00:39:58.000 To solving specific problems.

00:40:00.000 And we have a lot of problems to solve.

00:40:02.000 You know, that account you just gave It does put some pressure on your earlier diagnosis that – and maybe there's not one diagnosis, right?

00:40:13.000 There's no such thing as a single source for a complex cultural phenomenon.

00:40:18.000 But it suggests to me that there's more than just the deflection game going on.

00:40:24.000 Because on this version of it, it's a different paradox where – It is precisely at a moment in human history, certainly in American history, when we have made so much progress, when we have solved the problems that allowed us to change life expectancy from 37 to 73, that we discover these booby traps, as you call them.

00:40:51.000 And it suggests to me that it's not so much in this view of the world, That we're deflecting against all of these great problems that we face.

00:41:02.000 I mean, inflation in America, as bad as it is, let's be honest, is different than the bubonic plague or whatever, right?

00:41:06.000 We've been through World War II. We've been through wars.

00:41:10.000 It's that actually it makes me think about the root cause and this is closer to where some of my descriptions have been but it's closer to the root cause being not in spite of the fact that we achieved close to the pinnacle of what we had but precisely because we almost achieved the pinnacle of what we could have ever wanted that makes us want to apologize for that in some way that it's some more native instinct in our In our psyche that makes us have the

00:41:40.000 need almost to have something to apologize for.

00:41:45.000 Might that be closer to the flame than even the deflection?

00:41:49.000 Well, that's...

00:41:50.000 I mean, it's possible.

00:41:52.000 Some people think that historically speaking, the point we're at is...

00:41:56.000 Is particular because we're at that point where instead of focusing on making, creating wealth, we're talking about distributing it.

00:42:06.000 And that is a very big shift in a society's priorities.

00:42:12.000 I mean, there are all sorts of, we've talked about some of the opportunities of the world, and there's also the flip side of that.

00:42:18.000 There's also the cruelties of the world.

00:42:21.000 For instance, and this is one that in politics is very difficult to address, but nevertheless, it's there, is that some people fail and some people don't want to bother.

00:42:33.000 And some people just have terrible suboptimal situations and some people fall into just terrible situations and make bad choice after bad choice.

00:42:42.000 And that happens.

00:42:44.000 And whilst being compassionate towards those people, You can't pretend that the well-being of all of society has to be predicated on that not happening.

00:42:54.000 That's going to happen.

00:42:56.000 And as I say, you have to have compassion as a society.

00:43:00.000 But some people, for instance, are going to be lazy.

00:43:06.000 Okay.

00:43:09.000 I'm sorry for them.

00:43:10.000 They'll not get as much as they could have done if they were a bit more thrusting and ambitious, maybe.

00:43:16.000 But maybe they didn't want all that much.

00:43:20.000 Who knows?

00:43:21.000 As long as they know that that's the result of their choices.

00:43:26.000 Part of the whole problem we've had in recent decades, perhaps since the war, has been that there's always this option that you can say, well, you know yourself, you didn't really work that hard and you weren't really that motivated, but you can always blame someone else.

00:43:40.000 So there's a lot of...

00:43:44.000 You know, there's a lot of awkwardness about the whole issue of success because it's likely, I mean, you know about the Pareto distribution and all that, it's likely that a certain number of people in society are going to be more driving and thrusting and more of the success of the world will accrue to them.

00:44:04.000 My question would be how could you make sure that the people who want to achieve stuff get to achieve it?

00:44:12.000 And what should those things be?

00:44:15.000 What should we prioritize?

00:44:16.000 What should we admire?

00:44:18.000 Years ago, I had a very moving conversation with a sociologist friend who I said, what's the biggest change that's happened in your lifetime?

00:44:27.000 He's now in his 80s.

00:44:28.000 What's the biggest thing that's happened in your lifetime that's changed in relation to jobs in America?

00:44:34.000 And he said, it's this, that he said, when I was growing up, a man who provided, who did a job, whatever the job was, it could be refuse collecting, it could be street sweeping, it could be whatever.

00:44:50.000 But a man who did a job and provided for his dependents was a man of great worth and value and was admired.

00:45:01.000 And that's not the case today. 0.99

00:45:04.000 In fact, many people would think that guy was a schmuck. 0.99

00:45:10.000 That's changed. 0.98

00:45:12.000 And if it's changed, it means it can change back as well.

00:45:16.000 And one way to change that back, I'm pretty passionate about this one, is we should rely on people actually achieving things before we admire them.

00:45:27.000 I mean, we have a very strange popular culture in America where You know, there are people who are massively rich, who are massively admired, who have done massively nothing.

00:45:42.000 Oh yeah.

00:45:43.000 And that's going to have an effect.

00:45:46.000 I mean, I said to you earlier, isn't it interesting in our own lifetimes, again, that America has turned from a society that admired heroism to one that admires victimhood?

00:45:56.000 I mean, again, you've written about this, but that's a massive shift.

00:46:02.000 Think of the moral change that occurs in a society between And small, sometimes large acts of valor for which you do not expect to be congratulated versus doing nothing and auditioning for pity.

00:46:24.000 And being celebrated.

00:46:25.000 And being celebrated.

00:46:26.000 Yeah.

00:46:27.000 That's a big shift.

00:46:28.000 And I think that part of our way out – I mean, I'm interested in solutions to this cultural quagmire we're in.

00:46:34.000 It feels to me less like a terrain with a bunch of booby traps and mines, but just a quagmire is really – visually the way I see it is – anyway, our way through this quagmire is – Mm-hmm.

00:46:52.000 a little bit.

00:46:53.000 So I actually think this is, it's sort of coming at this from a completely different angle here.

00:46:58.000 But if we're allowed to, if we create a society where people can achieve as much as they're going to achieve and accept that some people aren't going to achieve as much, recognize that achievement ought not be the sole form of respect.

00:47:13.000 Yes.

00:47:13.000 It could be the axis for admiration.

00:47:15.000 Yeah, well...

00:47:16.000 But if we restore some sense of civic equality, let's say that, okay, you know, you're born with one set of talents.

00:47:22.000 Someone else was born with a different set of talents.

00:47:24.000 You both...

00:47:25.000 Live in a society where you can both use your talents to the maximum extent, but the reality is money or other currencies or fame or whatever do get certain people more that everyone would wish to have if they could have it, but certain people are only going to get so far that that becomes okay against the backdrop of a society where we know with a rock-solid foundation that you're still co-equal citizens in some way that matters.

00:47:47.000 Well, that's been something which actually has been...

00:47:51.000 Ever since the founding of America, this has been a very live question because effectively what you see in the Declaration of Independence and the extraordinary men who wrote it is an attempt to incarnate a religious idea in a non-religious framework.

00:48:17.000 Civic religion.

00:48:20.000 So, the biblical thing is, of course, equality in the eyes of God.

00:48:26.000 Yes.

00:48:27.000 That's incredibly important as a virtue of Western civilization.

00:48:31.000 Yes.

00:48:32.000 Equality in the eyes of God.

00:48:33.000 That doesn't mean we're equal in our accomplishments, in our talents, in our looks, in our singing voices.

00:48:41.000 But it means that in the most fundamental way, we are absolutely equal.

00:48:48.000 And it's an extraordinary gift, really, of the biblical tradition.

00:48:54.000 But the founders and others, the sort of enlightenment project in a way, was how can we do this without the religious pretext?

00:49:05.000 And in America, it came up with all men being created equal.

00:49:11.000 By their creator, yeah.

00:49:13.000 I mean, you effectively rely on the creator, but then you incarnated in founding documents.

00:49:21.000 If we agree on that, a lot of the pressure comes off other things.

00:49:27.000 It does.

00:49:28.000 We don't need to be the same in everything else.

00:49:33.000 It's almost a fetishization of the everything else, fetishization of green pieces of paper, actually.

00:49:37.000 Right.

00:49:38.000 Because the real action is with the equality in the eyes of God, which we can translate into civic equality as citizens.

00:49:46.000 Right.

00:49:46.000 If that's the stuff that matters, then why are you worshiping...

00:49:50.000 The number of green piece of paper or whatever other metric, units of fame, number of followers, it doesn't matter.

00:49:56.000 It doesn't matter.

00:49:58.000 It's not fully artificial, but it's almost superficial in importance.

00:50:01.000 It's superficial.

00:50:02.000 But I think that one of the things which people have not realized has gone on underneath our feet in more recent times has been the loss of that foundational or the fear that that foundational virtue is being lost.

00:50:18.000 That somehow inequality affects that sanctity of the individual.

00:50:23.000 It's hard to do it without religious language, but something like that.

00:50:27.000 You don't have to be allergic to the religious language, that's okay.

00:50:29.000 No, I know, but- You're trying to be true to the founding framers project, which is why they didn't abandon it totally.

00:50:35.000 They didn't abandon it totally.

00:50:38.000 Endowed by their creator shows up in that same Declaration of Independence, right?

00:50:43.000 But it was in the backdrop.

00:50:44.000 It was in the backdrop.

00:50:45.000 It was in front and center.

00:50:46.000 It was in the backdrop.

00:50:47.000 But the central insight, of course, was simply something which...

00:50:52.000 Again, as you know, that's not a common belief everywhere in the world.

00:50:59.000 There are so many wonderful things about traveling in India, but one of the things that is disturbing to many Western people is people not being equal in the eyes of God.

00:51:13.000 Actually, some people being...

00:51:15.000 Less than, and by accident of birth.

00:51:18.000 And it's sort of quite often horrifying to the West, simply because we assumed it was in the water everywhere.

00:51:24.000 And it wasn't.

00:51:25.000 It's a specific set of inheritances.

00:51:28.000 But I think there's a nervousness about this that's going on.

00:51:32.000 And it's because, it's undoubtedly because, and again, I mean, I make it as an observation, either decrying it nor praising it, but it's a result of coming apart from part of our roots.

00:51:44.000 Or not even being humble enough to admit that these are our roots.

00:51:50.000 Yeah.

00:51:51.000 You know?

00:51:52.000 That's what Ratzinger and Marcelo Pera wrote about 20 years ago in a book called Without Roots.

00:51:58.000 That the secular modern mind didn't even want to admit where these foundational principles had come from.

00:52:06.000 But equality, you have to start from there.

00:52:10.000 You have to start from there.

00:52:12.000 But in one sense, of course, we're all equal.

00:52:16.000 And in another sense, we should not expect to be the same.

00:52:21.000 Yeah.

00:52:21.000 Makes you think that...

00:52:24.000 Here's an idea.

00:52:25.000 Here's just as a thought experiment for you.

00:52:27.000 It's one I've played with – you've seen my books and I play with them a little bit.

00:52:32.000 It's certainly not a part of the presidential platform.

00:52:35.000 Not yet.

00:52:36.000 I don't think it will be either.

00:52:39.000 Do you think that if there was real teeth, if we gave real teeth to that civic equality here, not monetary equality, not the equity agenda through the materialist redistribution or through the allocation of rewards on the axis of genetically inherited characteristics, none of that stuff, none of that stuff, but actually say required military service of every American?

00:53:05.000 Billionaire or not, black or white, descendant of slave or descendant of aristocrat or unknown, which is actually what most – the category most people are in despite the fact they won't admit it.

00:53:14.000 Whether you look like the descendant of a slave or look like the descendant of an aristocrat, it doesn't matter.

00:53:19.000 That your kids, if they want to have full citizenship – maybe we won't put them in jail if they don't, but if they want to say vote, voting is not a – It's not a fundamental...

00:53:32.000 There's no constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

00:53:35.000 It doesn't show up in the constitution.

00:53:36.000 For the longest time, actually, we imperfectly in this country said you had to be a landowner to do it, but to say something else.

00:53:42.000 Not a landowner, not that stuff.

00:53:43.000 That's for the Department of Achievement, right?

00:53:46.000 But in the Department of Citizenship, that we're replicating this equal in the eyes of God, we're equal in the eyes of the country.

00:53:55.000 That if you're going to be part of the class who determines who runs the country...

00:54:02.000 That you have to have, say, served the country in some way, military or otherwise.

00:54:06.000 I've always been a fan of that idea.

00:54:11.000 I don't know if it has to be military service, but yeah, I've always thought that, I mean, well, we actually have, by the way, a very good test case of how you can do this well, which is Israel.

00:54:25.000 Yes.

00:54:26.000 In the 1970s, even, the big discussion in Israel was the divide between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in Israel, whether or not they would always be apart.

00:54:39.000 That's right.

00:54:40.000 This brought them together.

00:54:41.000 You don't hear that discussion these days in Israel.

00:54:45.000 One of the reasons is military service.

00:54:48.000 And in fact, when people sometimes make Aliyah move to Israel, it's very hard to integrate into the country, really, unless you have been in the army, like everyone else.

00:55:03.000 Because that's where the bond of the nation is actually formed.

00:55:08.000 That's where you learn Some of the selflessness, some of the heroism, the virtues, and the recognition that first of all, this all relies on you.

00:55:22.000 And secondly, that you are responsible for the other men, the other women in your battalion.

00:55:30.000 But you can't muck up.

00:55:33.000 Because if anyone mucks up, everyone's in trouble.

00:55:37.000 A whole set of sort of – and then there's just a simple camaraderie and, oh, which unit were you in and all this sort of thing.

00:55:43.000 It melds the nation together.

00:55:47.000 I've always thought that in – certainly in my own country of birth, Great Britain, I always thought some form of service after school – Didn't matter whether you were pushing around hospital trolleys or, you know, training for the military.

00:56:04.000 You should do something because a society needs to have people in it who know that it all relies on them and that it is not the other guy who's going to pick it up for you.

00:56:16.000 And even further, Douglas, I love that's the real meat of it, but even further, a nice side benefit is it satisfies that native impulse that's about Equity, right?

00:56:28.000 It's not about equity of result, but equality, the sense that we have discharged our duty of giving real substance, real stuff to the otherwise ethereal idea, especially in a non-religious society, then when God is even gone in the – I can't say equal in the eyes of God, made in the image of God, where it then becomes this abstract secular notion that you think exists in some founding documents somewhere – It's too ethereal.

00:56:56.000 It's not real enough versus giving that real teeth.

00:56:58.000 I got to think that, you know, for a certain percentage of people in this country, you're always going to be lost.

00:57:03.000 But for most of us even, us even including those on the left that otherwise, you know, bend the knee to wokeism or whatever, but mostly because they're unsure, that this sort of goes a good part of the distance to say that the civic equality – Is foundational and then the rest is the details in the scheme of things.

00:57:25.000 And then you can unapologetically sort of unshackle yourself from the psychological insecurities that stop you from Pursuing merit unabashedly.

00:57:33.000 Well, so much comes down to that foundational thing of respect.

00:57:38.000 One of the reasons why what I just described and what you just described certainly is appealing to me is because young people, and young men in particular, very often the insecurities are about respect.

00:57:50.000 Yeah.

00:57:51.000 I have a friend who works with gang members in London, and she always says, very striking that these are people willing to stab other people or be stabbed themselves over ridiculous infringements of tiny bits of terrain that don't belong to them.

00:58:06.000 And all of the infringements are always about respect.

00:58:09.000 He didn't respect me.

00:58:12.000 And none of it recognizes the fact that you haven't earned any respect.

00:58:17.000 You've done nothing to earn any respect.

00:58:19.000 Well, that's why they're so fragile.

00:58:22.000 That's why they're willing to do terrible things, because they have no self-respect.

00:58:27.000 The very thing that they demand is the thing they don't feel.

00:58:32.000 So inculcating a sense of self-respect In a society is also incredibly important if you're going to be dynamic.

00:58:41.000 And I think there's a deep relationship in both directions between actually having a foundational respect for the other and respecting yourself.

00:58:48.000 Your self-respect, you can actually do that more easily.

00:58:51.000 Earned, deserved self-respect.

00:58:53.000 Yeah, of course.

00:58:54.000 You can't just make it up.

00:58:55.000 Yeah.

00:58:55.000 To accomplish something.

00:58:56.000 But I mean, it's an important distinction that the sort of you've got to respect me versus I'm somebody who has earned respect.

00:59:07.000 That's why I go back to that thing.

00:59:08.000 Because I served my country or whatever.

00:59:10.000 Exactly.

00:59:11.000 And by the way, I mean, that's one that worries me very much in America now is how few places there actually are in our society which are recognized as places where you earn respect.

00:59:23.000 I mean, think of the field of politics itself.

00:59:27.000 No longer.

00:59:29.000 It's, you know, I mean, the sort of they're all in it for themselves, you know, that's sort of a very commonplace among the public to think that of politicians.

00:59:41.000 The actual military still has the respect that it deserves.

00:59:45.000 Top rank, not so much.

00:59:48.000 That's changed in recent years, and it's the right as well as the left that that's changed for.

00:59:54.000 Things like the intelligence agencies don't have the respect they had.

00:59:57.000 The police certainly don't have the respect that they once had.

01:00:01.000 So where is the respect earned?

01:00:05.000 And one of the answers is in shallow and frivolous places.

01:00:10.000 And we should be able to call that out and say, you know, you can do this if you want, but there might be better ways to spend your life.

01:00:20.000 I mean...

01:00:22.000 There's a joke that Norm Macdonald made in one of his last appearances.

01:00:28.000 He said, I can't remember if it was, I think the fifth guy who went to the moon, or the fifth guy who walked on the moon.

01:00:36.000 He looked it up on some list online, and he says, like, I never even heard of this guy.

01:00:40.000 He says, this guy went to the whole moon and back.

01:00:43.000 He walked around the moon.

01:00:44.000 Nobody knows who he is. 1.00

01:00:46.000 And there's this girl who's got a fat ass, and everyone knows her name. 1.00

01:00:50.000 She's a billionaire. 1.00

01:00:51.000 Ha ha ha!

01:00:52.000 That must be really annoying to the moon guy.

01:00:54.000 Yeah, that's true.

01:00:56.000 I went all the way up there.

01:00:57.000 I risked my life.

01:00:59.000 Kind of captures the moment we're in.

01:01:02.000 But I think this idea of we started with merit, we ended with respect.

01:01:08.000 Hmm.

01:01:10.000 I mean, next time we sit down, we'll start with respect.

01:01:12.000 And see if it takes us back to merit.

01:01:14.000 It's a great subject.

01:01:15.000 And as I say, you can learn almost everything about a society, about looking at who they actually respect.

01:01:23.000 And there is some hope still in America.

01:01:26.000 It's always worth having an optimistic note.

01:01:27.000 There is some hope in America, because But most Americans I sense still do actually respect somebody who's worked hard and made a success of their life.

01:01:39.000 I think that's still alive.

01:01:40.000 Yeah.

01:01:41.000 I think that's still alive.

01:01:42.000 It's not the case in Europe.

01:01:43.000 It's not?

01:01:43.000 No, no, no.

01:01:43.000 But we will set the example, not use them as an example, but we'll end on that hopeful note.

01:01:49.000 It'll give us something to work with.

01:01:51.000 I appreciate it, Douglas.

01:01:52.000 It was good, dude.

01:01:52.000 This is the longest time we've actually spent together, not just the ships at bay here, so this was good.

01:01:57.000 Great pleasure.

01:01:58.000 I look forward to it.

01:01:59.000 I love that.

01:02:00.000 Thank you.

01:02:01.000 I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - April 10, 2023

What Happened to Meritocracy? With Douglas Murray | The TRUTH Podcast #9

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