In this episode, we discuss the dangers of the so-called "woke" culture and what it means to be a woke person, and how it affects us all. We also discuss how the culture of fear is a threat to free speech and why we should be worried about it and why it's a good thing that we don't have a free speech culture in the United States. This episode is brought to you by the Center for American Progress, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination in America's schools, health care, and public services. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships and enter the promo code: "sponsors" at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the "sponsor" discount code: at checkout. Thanks to our sponsor, for sponsoring this episode and for supporting the podcast! Thank you so much for your support of the podcast and for your continued support of our efforts to make a difference in the world of podcasting and podcasting. Thank you to our sponsors, and our supporters, and thank you to everyone who has contributed to the podcast, for making it possible to make it a podcast and podcast in the first place! - Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you! . in 2020 and beyond. - Caitlyn, Caitlyn's new book, "Woke." Caitlyn and - . . . Caitlyn is a book, Woke? is out now! , , and . , of course, , Caitlyn s book & , of course (and or ? the book, Thank you Caitlyn :) ... I hope you like it? , right? and , her book, and her book is out in the next episode is out next week, and so much more so we can be more woke, and so on and so that you can be woke. , we can do more woke more woke? - and more, and more woke! and more , etc., and more like that etc., thank you, Caitlin s book is , so
Transcript
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00:00:02.000So, we're seeing the rise of this debate about what is the definition of the word woke.
00:00:29.000Woke comes up a lot now as the new battle cry from the left saying that conservatives can't define woke.
00:00:35.000Well, I'll admit that many conservatives and many.
00:00:54.000What's wrong with it and the culture of fear that it creates.
00:00:58.000OK, so being woke refers whoever's defining it from the left to right to waking up to invisible societal injustices and then taking whatever action is required to address those injustices grounded generally in race, gender or sexual orientation or other injustices that are perceived to have an effect on race, gender or sexual orientation.
00:01:22.000That's how the proponents of wokeness would define it.
00:01:24.000That's how I think the opponents of wokeness ought to understand it.
00:01:27.000But I think the real danger behind this is that it leaves us more divided in the end.
00:01:34.000We see one another as the products of our genetic attributes rather than on the basis of the content of our character and our contributions.
00:01:41.000But the other thing that it does is because it calls on human beings to do whatever is needed, including through culture, not just through government, but through the private sector or through their own private action to do whatever they need to correct for these alleged invisible injustices.
00:01:57.000It also creates a culture of fear in our country.
00:02:00.000And I think a big way you see this culture of fear play out is in corporate America, where if you're an economic actor, but you're called upon to address these invisible societal injustices, what do you use?
00:02:13.000You use the economic toolkit that's available to you.
00:02:18.000It means not just what the civil rights advocates once meant when the civil rights laws were passed that you can't discriminate on the basis of race or sex or sexual orientation.
00:02:29.000But now it means something else altogether.
00:02:31.000It means that if you say something that a member of a protected class, for example, finds offensive, well, then you might be liable for a hostile work environment lawsuit.
00:03:09.000It means we've created the very conditions for viewpoint discrimination While leaving viewpoints themselves unprotected as a category.
00:03:21.000And that's the real danger of the woke culture that we have not yet discussed in full.
00:03:27.000It is a threat to a free speech culture in this country.
00:03:31.000It says that certain ideas cannot be expressed because certain ideas are more protected legally, financially, economically than others.
00:03:38.000And I think that's a danger because free speech itself is a precondition for truth.
00:03:44.000You know what, if we had a culture of free speech in this country, we would have gotten to certain answers more quickly than we otherwise did.
00:04:16.000People suffered, including the very people who we were supposedly protecting from racism or whatever from this one-sided view.
00:04:24.000Well, another example of that actually relates to the school closure debate.
00:04:29.000COVID school closures, COVID-19 related school closures in America.
00:04:34.000I don't think anybody can today with a straight face say that we don't regret what we did in this country.
00:04:41.000In public schools across America, by shutting down kids in K through 12, kids who were at a low risk, very low risk for either getting or even spreading COVID-19.
00:04:51.000And telling them that they couldn't show up in the classroom for over a year.
00:04:58.000We're going to have a generation of, you guessed it, societal inequity as a consequence of the fact that kids in public schools versus kids in select private schools had a year apart in whether or not they were educated in the classroom.
00:05:15.000You weren't allowed to talk about it because of that culture of fear in America.
00:05:19.000And today I'm joined by somebody who unfortunately learned that the hard way.
00:05:25.000From the front lines, somebody who was a successful executive in corporate America, somebody who worked her way up the ladder, the way we're taught to in this country, that if you work hard, and you're dedicated, and you're earnest, and you make contributions, and you make a business grow that you'd be rewarded for it in our system of capitalism, did things the way you're taught to do them in this country.
00:05:49.000But in her capacity as a citizen, Nonetheless, expressed an opinion, an opinion that was unpopular at the time, that these school closures were the wrong policies.
00:05:58.000As time has passed, an opinion that has actually aged really well, one that reminds us that we make mistakes when we censor free speech, but who lost our job for it?
00:06:08.000And she made a significant sacrifice for it, a sacrifice that many other Americans were unwilling to make.
00:06:13.000And her story will teach you why, as to why they were unwilling to make it.
00:06:17.000But what we're going to talk about today with my guest and friend Jennifer Say is not only what her experience was, But what it teaches us about a better way forward in our country.
00:06:29.000So with that, Jennifer, I want to welcome you to the podcast and talk to you openly today about not only your experience, but hopefully what we can learn as a country about it and how we can be better going forward.
00:06:51.000I think most of the people watching this might not.
00:06:54.000And it is the first time we're sitting down in person anyway.
00:06:58.000Tell me a little bit about what your journey was in climbing the corporate hierarchy that you were in, how you achieved success, and then what led it to all really fall apart?
00:08:18.000And this will – I'll come back to it because it definitely factors into the – It actually makes me even view your pursuit of excellence story through a different light.
00:08:28.000You know, if I start with this briefly, I was very outspoken in 2008. I wrote my first book about the culture of abuse and cruelty in gymnastics, and that was not a popular view either.
00:09:47.000And so all the same tactics that were, well, slightly different.
00:09:53.000Not a good gymnast and all these things were used until the story could not be held back anymore because we had the case of Larry Nassar, which you're probably somewhat familiar with.
00:10:03.000the doctor for Team USA Gymnastics who abused over 500 young athletes.
00:10:09.000But, you know, my advocacy for children goes back to that.
00:10:15.000And I know all the ways in which adults will sacrifice children to maintain, you know, a In the sport of gymnastics, it was about money and medals, and they were perfectly willing to sacrifice young children to achieve that.
00:10:29.000And, you know, children need our protection.
00:10:31.000They're least likely to speak up for themselves.
00:12:53.000But in 2020, from the get-go, March, right away, I was outspoken about the harms that would be done to children from prolonged school closures and other restrictions.
00:13:46.000And it was premised on a lie that there was no age stratification of risk, that this wouldn't harm the most vulnerable among us children if we closed the schools.
00:14:43.000That of the 50,000 public school students in San Francisco, 60% of whom are low income, that that was not the case.
00:14:50.000It was not hard to imagine that some of them weren't getting food, that they were home alone, they didn't have Wi-Fi, that they just weren't learning at all.
00:14:58.000And I... Didn't understand why everybody couldn't see that.
00:15:04.000I didn't have much of a following on social media, but I built one because those who were willing to kind of speak out first, you know, were like a beacon.
00:15:13.000Lots of people weren't willing to say it.
00:15:49.000I would reach out and they would explain things to me.
00:15:51.000They would explain studies to me, the few willing to speak out.
00:15:54.000But eventually I was on the local news and I started to lead rallies in San Francisco in the fall of 2020. And I would attend school board meetings.
00:17:26.000There were people externally complaining about me, and they don't like that kind of noise.
00:17:31.000And to your point, I don't know that hostile work environment was used, but that's the intimation, is that I had these views that were Racist, misogynist, because my definition of woke, which I think is very complementary and the same as yours, is it is sort of defining and reorganizing the world through the lens of oppressor versus oppressed.
00:17:55.000You know, and you not really look, not every issue can be defined that way.
00:18:00.000But if you start with that and back into it, and so school closures for saying school should be open, I was a racist because I didn't care if black children died.
00:18:11.000And that was creating a hostile work environment.
00:18:13.000Even though I said it outside of work, it had no bearing on my work, didn't matter.
00:18:17.000That was hostile because my words were literal violence.
00:18:20.000Again, To further the point you were making.
00:18:23.000And if somebody, if your brand president is inflicting violence on the employee community, well, gosh, I guess you do need to get rid of them, you know?
00:19:30.000I mean, I'm the obvious next in line for CEO, provided I don't, you know, screw up.
00:19:35.000And when they would make these phone calls to you, which of the effects did it have make you less likely to want to keep speaking, not change, or actually tell you that it was important for you to actually be doing more of it?
00:19:49.000It told me it was important to do more.
00:19:51.000And you know, I'll tell you this, because the people calling me were sending their own children to in-person private school.
00:20:01.000They were sitting here telling me I could not advocate for the same thing for low-income children in San Francisco that their children had.
00:20:10.000And they were doing this while taking all of these, you know, I'm denouncing my privilege stances because it's after the summer of 2020, right?
00:20:18.000And so every company in America denounced their privilege and said they were going to fight for equality and through anti-racism.
00:20:25.000And yet this policy was the opposite of that.
00:20:28.000And they were availing themselves of their privilege by sending their children.
00:20:32.000They weren't too scared to send their own kids to school.
00:20:34.000And yet they're saying, you can't say this.
00:20:37.000You can't defend these 50,000 public school children in San Francisco and, you know, however many million across the country because people don't like it.
00:20:47.000So it strengthened my resolve and I got more and more comfortable with each call saying, no, thank you.
00:20:58.000Like, I want to just, I mean, there's like double click on because people hear about this idea of woke capitalism, of use of corporate force, cancel culture, but these are just words, right?
00:21:08.000You actually have an experience and you're unshackled to be able to talk about it.
00:21:36.000When I speak in my capacity as the Levi's brand president, when I speak in front of the company about the brand strategies, or I go on X show to talk about the brand direction, then I speak in my capacity as brand president.
00:21:53.000Now I'm speaking as a mom of public school children and a children's advocate.
00:22:36.000But even my politics, I had been outspoken.
00:22:38.000I joined in 99. So you wrote a book while you were at Levi's- Ten years in.
00:22:43.000And that was because it was in a space that was not- Contradicting the cultural orthodoxy of the time was totally fine, but you had a—this is a pretty interesting case—a demonstrated track record at Levi's of separating your voice as a citizen from your voice as a corporate executive.
00:27:48.000You know, and the whole thing just got noisier and noisier.
00:27:51.000And at one point in this journey, I, you know, parents like me who were advocating for open schools, we were shadow banned and blacklisted and not included in any of the stories.
00:28:03.000If you watch CNN or, you know, read the New York Times, it was, you know, the only view represented was open schoolers are racist and they don't care if children and teachers die.
00:28:13.000And so, you know, you had public health represented.
00:28:16.000You had teachers, unions, leaders, but you never had a parent who had a different view.
00:28:19.000So at a certain point in March of 21, I got a call from Laura Ingram's show to come on and express this view.
00:28:27.000And she had been right from the beginning on this.
00:29:40.000I was all of these terrible things and I was asked to prove that I was one of us, not one of them, in an apology tour in the summer of 2021 after the Ingram appearance.
00:30:01.000It meant standing in front of a couple hundred employees virtually and explaining why I held these views so strongly and why I went on Fox.
00:30:13.000And I was sent an email to prepare for it.
00:30:16.000And it literally said, you know, prove that you are one of us, not one of them.
00:31:57.000I gave my background, my history as a gymnast and child advocate in sports, explained, you know, my understanding of, you know, how a child if abused or enduring cruel circumstances won't always speak up for themselves and it's incumbent upon us as adults.
00:33:14.000The other issue they made me talk about was my husband's views, because he was more aggressive on some of the other issues, and so I had to answer for- Be married to one of them.
00:34:17.000Yeah, but I think there's no shame in – I mean, maybe I'm biased because I go on Evening Fox all the time and I'm proud of it and I'm happy about that because you reach people and engage in dialogue, which we need more of in this country.
00:35:11.000Just give people the reality of the experience here.
00:35:14.000Inside the company, it meant a small group of employees were emailing the head of HR and my boss, the CEO, And saying we don't like what she's saying.
00:35:24.000Outside the company, there were a few cohorts.
00:35:27.000So there was this group of gymnastics fans that started calling the ethics hotline at my work to say she's an ethics violation.
00:35:49.000And so then how did it go down after that?
00:35:51.000Well, after that, at this point, that first call, the head of CorpCom is taking a dossier of the things that I say publicly in my tweets to the CEO, like on a weekly basis.
00:36:09.000They asked to do a background check on me in October of 21 saying, oh, you could be CEO, but we need to do a background check on you and your husband.
00:36:17.000I said, this is going to be the thing that you use to get rid of me.
00:37:34.000And I want to be able to talk with folks like you about the illiberalism and the censorship that's taken – it's gone from college campuses to corporate America.
00:37:46.000I think it's incredibly dangerous, and I just wanted to be able to talk about that.
00:37:50.000Yeah, well, thank you for being as brave as you have been.
00:38:13.000It's a concept we've lost in modern American life, the ability to think of yourself as a citizen.
00:38:23.000But I think you have to know what sacrifices you're willing to make as a citizen.
00:38:28.000I think of you as somebody who's serving your country, actually.
00:38:32.000Living out the First Amendment, called the First Amendment for a reason.
00:38:36.000It's not just about protecting you from the government.
00:38:38.000It's about creating a culture in this country where citizens sort out their differences in opinion through free speech and open debate in the public square, not through the use of force, including even economic force or an economic sword of Damocles hanging over your head.
00:38:57.000To use self-interest as a cudgel, economic self-interest as a cudgel to get you to shut up.
00:39:31.000A million dollars is not something that – I know a lot of billionaires wouldn't sniff at a million dollars they'd take for signing a piece of paper either.
00:39:38.000It would make my life much easier financially.
00:40:17.000It is, and I'm not really interested in protracted legal action.
00:40:22.000It's never been my goal was to extract as much money from them as possible.
00:40:27.000I just wanted to leave and have the freedom.
00:40:30.000I agree with you there, and this is a deeply personal choice, and I think...
00:40:34.000Being in litigation is unpleasant and you live life once and so you want to think about how you use that life.
00:40:41.000The only thing I'll say in favor of it beyond the money, which is not what I had in mind when I was saying it, is you got to impose some cost on these guys.
00:40:51.000I mean, these guys are going mostly – I know you impose some PR cost on them.
00:40:56.000But if somebody doesn't make them pay for what they did, we can just expect even worse in the future.
00:42:43.000He could have had an opportunity to say that we're a company that actually stands for the daring, that stands for the American way, which is that anybody who wants gets to express their opinion so long as their neighbor doesn't return.
00:42:55.000That's what it means to wear a pair of Levi's and be daring and to go out into the American frontier.
00:43:18.000You serve in a military, you go through the motions, wear a uniform, serving out a hollowed-out husk of the thing you're supposed to represent.
00:44:07.000You had an opportunity to actually serve your country.
00:44:11.000Yeah, I'm grateful that you put on a uniform and served like tens of thousands of Americans do every year in the military.
00:44:17.000But what is the point of fighting or preparing to fight if you lose the very thing you're fighting for?
00:44:22.000And I'm not asking you to make a sacrifice as a job as a CEO. I'm asking you to wake up to the opportunity that's hiding in front of you as a CEO, that there's a hundred plus million Americans just like Jennifer, okay, who agree with what she has to say, who history has vindicated, actually, what she had to say, who could have rallied behind you and your now pathetic brand to actually get behind making your company more successful.
00:44:48.000People who would have come to work for you with an allegiance that goes beyond what you're going to get out of them just because you write their paycheck and sign their paycheck.
00:44:56.000That is the opportunity you missed as a capitalist.
00:44:59.000But in your capacity as a citizen, You also actually showed this country and the next generation of Americans what not to be, what not to aspire to.
00:45:09.000The fact that you think you live the American dream becoming a CEO of a company is actually a farce that makes a comedy of the American dream when the person who achieves that height only gets there in order to actually have a piece of tape over their mouth, handcuffs over their hands.
00:45:27.000You don't have to have physical handcuffs and be locked up to live a life of enslavement.
00:45:32.000You're enslaved, but you're teaching other Americans that you know what people like Jennifer who are brave enough to speak up get enslaved by people like you too.
00:45:49.000Learn from your own experience to be able to talk about your cowardice in the open.
00:45:54.000And when you do, I will praise you for it.
00:45:57.000I hope you do at some point, because until then, you're a pathetic example of what actually creates the problem in our country.
00:46:05.000And I hope you either stand up or step aside, not just from Levi's, but from any position of leadership in this country, because we don't have room for more leaders like you.
00:46:14.000People like you need to step aside so the real leaders are actually able to step up and deliver our culture.
00:47:25.000It's supposed to crumble under the weight of its own division unless there are certain apolitical spaces that can bind us together across those divisions.
00:47:38.000He called them intermediary or intermediating institutions.
00:47:45.000Capitalism is high on that list, right?
00:47:47.000So people think of capitalism at a conversation with someone else this morning about, you know, Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter.
00:47:53.000And yes, capitalism is the best known system known to mankind to lift people up from poverty.
00:48:02.000But the secret role that capitalism plays in a diverse democracy is that it is also one of these apolitical sanctuaries where we're able to come together.
00:48:13.000Man or woman, black or white, Democrat or Republican, Elizabeth Warren supporter or Joe Biden supporter, the spectrum of what might have been acceptable in San Francisco at the time.
00:48:24.000But we can come together and create things together, build things together, sell things, market things, invent things together in common cause.
00:48:33.000And when that itself becomes politicized, That's really the beginning of the end as we know it, right?
00:48:39.000You wonder why people, you tell, I sometimes say this, you tell people they can't speak, that's when they scream.
00:48:45.000You tell people they can't scream, that is when they tear things down.
00:49:10.000In that attack on the Capitol, I think people like you actually get to have the luxury of pointing the finger at the other without actually looking inside and asking yourself what responsibility you bear for not only what came, but that's a friendly parley compared to what's to come if we don't turn this culture around.
00:49:28.000If you demonize half of the citizenry and you – I mean that's part of the problem is the geographic distribution.
00:49:36.000In San Francisco, left of left of left of center, bluest city and the bluest state, these people that were telling me to stop, they didn't know a single person.
00:49:47.000Besides me that said these things, it was easy to say, oh, she's a Trumper.
00:50:47.000We're the majority, people who have common sense, who can see a lie for what it is, who would like us to get back to some degree of open debate and dissent in this country.
00:50:57.000And if we all stood together, I really think that's most people.
00:51:06.000I think most people agree with what you just said.
00:51:08.000I think most people think their neighbors and their colleagues agree with what you just said but they can't be sure anymore because you're not allowed to talk about it.
00:51:17.000And so once we start talking openly again, what do we realize?
00:51:20.000We realize that we actually share these values in common, which is the whole bet and premise of my campaign for president.
00:51:26.000Is that, you know what, we can actually – I think that could be the subject of a landslide election in 1980 style, 1984 style, let it be 2024 style.
00:51:33.000That could be the single most unifying thing we do for the country.
00:51:36.000And I am optimistic that people are so hungry with this pent-up sense of suppression.
00:51:43.000They're hungry for a revival, but it's not going to happen automatically.
00:51:47.000It's going to happen because people like you, frankly, are willing to make the sacrifices needed to get there.
00:51:53.000You know – Yeah, not to sort of overly put myself on a pedestal, because there's a lot like me, but someone has to go first, and you have to kind of puncture the bubble or the delusion, and then slowly people will join you.
00:52:06.000That's what happened to me in the world of sport, and I held that close.
00:52:10.000But it took 10 years in gymnastics, and I... You know, I couldn't beat the clock in this case.
00:52:16.000I thought people are going to come around on the school closures.
00:52:18.000And, you know, ironically, the day after I resigned publicly, three members of the San Francisco Board of Education were recalled decisively.
00:52:25.000Seventy to seventy five percent of San Francisco showed up and voted to recall these people because they did not open the schools.
00:52:32.000I think shareholders or Levi's need to come back and recall, you know, Chip, our Joker CEO. But they agreed with me if they'd come to the rallies.
00:53:27.000It's not going to happen automatically, but I think if we have leaders who are willing to step up, I think that we're hopefully on the cusp of graduating from this weird adolescence we've gone through as a country.
00:53:38.000I think cusp might be still a little bit of time, but I think people are getting tired of, you know, being forced to pretend a lie is true, not even to be able to question it.
00:53:50.000I mean, you mentioned the lab leak, but like everyone knew if you had any sense that closed schools were going to be harmful for children.
00:53:59.000There's no seeing it any other way, and yet it could not be uttered.
00:55:03.000I mean, I think that part of the reason is that you were already wrapped up in this other fraught debate.
00:55:11.000Part of the reason is that becomes the next frontier.
00:55:12.000It's a lot of what's going on in the trans movement where we can't have empathy for a kid who's going through some difficulty because as soon as they've uttered the magic words, then you're transphobic if you actually have empathy for the real thing that you could have helped them on, but you can't anymore because of your own self-interested fear as an adult.
00:55:36.000And that whole arena around gender ideology is also founded on a lie that there is no biological difference between the genders, between the sexes.
00:55:58.000And so their rights, according to the movement, have to trump.
00:56:03.000I think the way that hierarchy works today is actually it's inverse in terms of who actually wields social power.
00:56:09.000The most power, which is why when you take it to the arena of sport, women's sports, which were protected, created through title, protected through Title IX for a real reason, that doesn't matter anymore.
00:56:30.000But on one hand, you have to abide by the orthodoxy that the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born.
00:56:39.000At the same time, you're asked to believe that your own biological sex can be completely fluid over the course of your own lifetime.
00:56:45.000These two things can't make sense at the same time.
00:56:47.000And with very little variation, you have to be able to espouse both of those convictions at the same time to be still within the modern acceptable window.
00:56:56.000I think it's also, to address your first point, considered anti-trans.
00:57:00.000If you are a straight male that doesn't want to date a That's actually very new, actually.
00:57:27.000That's the contradiction at the heart of it, which is actually what's put pressure on also the fact that you can't be feminine without having...
00:59:14.000In the ether, it wasn't by any one person, right?
00:59:16.000I'm running the company, but from employees, from people on the outside, nebulous stakeholders, the public, peers, fellow CEOs, to come out and make a statement in support of Black Lives Matter, something that I couldn't do in good conscience.
00:59:31.000It's call at the time for decimating the nuclear family structure.
00:59:35.000There's a lot I just couldn't get behind personally.
00:59:38.000But that was the one thing that was acceptable to say.
00:59:41.000As opposed to what I ended up saying was, let's focus on the mission of our company.
00:59:45.000There's a lot of strife in the world and we can make the world better through the medicines that we develop, which I'm proud of.
00:59:51.000It didn't meet the moment and led to a journey where advisors to my company six months later step off prominently and ceremoniously after I write in my personal capacity against the very same situation as you.
01:00:06.000I wrote with a former law professor about the ways that technology companies, when they engage in online censorship, if they're doing so at behest of the government, might be running afoul of the First Amendment.
01:00:16.000I mean, like relatively abstruse legal academic theories at the time.
01:00:20.000And that was a basis for prominent advice for my company stepping aside.
01:00:26.000So in my case, there was no threat from on high.
01:00:29.000I could have just stayed in that position.
01:00:32.000But functionally, there's no doubt it would have had an adverse impact on my company.
01:00:41.000Even though I wasn't actually using my own corporate seat to do it, like Mark Benioff at Salesforce or whatever does, they're in the habit of doing it through their company.
01:00:50.000I'm not doing that, but in my capacity as a citizen, which is different from my capacity as a capitalist, expressing certain viewpoints, made the decision to separate my voice as a CEO from my voice as a citizen by not being a CEO anymore.
01:01:06.000And I have to admit, it was liberating, actually.
01:01:11.000I guess that's easy for me to say because I guess I'm not in a position to have to worry about me or my kids or whatever putting food on the dinner table.
01:01:22.000It's probably part of what gave me a sense of obligation to make sure I did it.
01:01:27.000There's a bittersweetness about it, but it was – the thing that matters most to me at least as a human being is – sounds like to you too is freedom.
01:01:45.000People don't come after me anymore because they can't take anything really from me anymore.
01:01:49.000And I reside somewhere in the middle between probably financially where you are and where sort of a – Work a day employee who doesn't have much savings.
01:03:14.000We talk a lot about the American dream or we used to at least in this country.
01:03:18.000The idea that no matter who you are or where you came from or what your skin color is, that you can achieve anything with your own hard work and commitment and dedication.
01:03:29.000I hope that dream is revived once again and if it is, I've no doubt that you and people like you will achieve everything you ever want to but To me, it's also part of the American dream to say that, you know what, you're also free to speak your mind at every step of the way and that no American should be forced to choose between speaking their mind freely and putting food on the dinner table.
01:03:53.000Between that American dream and the First Amendment, that is the new American dream.
01:03:59.000And I'm optimistic that we can revive it, but it's not going to happen automatically.
01:04:04.000It's going to happen because we make it so.
01:04:07.000Look, I think that most people would rather stand with the group and take cover in the group and feel the safety of the group and, guess what, feel morally virtuous for touting the group's mantras, right?
01:04:20.000Whether it's the summer of 2020 or whether it's COVID, stay home to stay safe or whatever.
01:04:25.000Most people, and I think this is true across geographies, across time, Plenty of experiments have proven this out.
01:04:31.000You know, most people will obey authority and stand with the group, stand for prison experiment, Milgram experiment.
01:05:06.000But, but, but, but, but, but effectively the culture was operating in a way as though that were true anyway.
01:05:11.000Yeah, the free dumb people were the people who cared about speech, who cared about freedom of religion and being able to worship, sending their kids to school.
01:05:19.000And we were being offered safety in exchange for our freedom, and that was not a deal I was willing to make.
01:05:26.000But it's alarming how many people are.
01:06:01.000And, you know, say what you're not allowed to say in the presence of polite company.
01:06:05.000And the thing you'll probably realize is that you weren't actually the only one who believed what you did.
01:06:10.000And, you know, I think if people are willing to take that bet, I think we have a lot of pleasant surprises we might discover on the other side.