00:05:09.300You know, if you think about someone, number one is life story.
00:05:13.300Justice Thomas grew up in Pinpoint, Georgia, an incredibly poor rural area.
00:05:18.740It's an island just off the coast of Georgia.
00:05:22.180He grew up actually not speaking English, speaking a dialect, either Guller or Gaethje, depending on how you describe it, that was a dialect unique to the area.
00:05:37.200His grandfather raised him as—Justice Thomas's autobiography is entitled My Grandfather's Son, and it's one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.
00:06:05.000and then he got disillusioned he got disillusioned by by the church's unwillingness to stand up to
00:06:11.280racism to stand up uh to to to the incredible racial discrimination we saw in this country
00:06:18.160then went to holy cross for college he went to yale for law school he was a young radical
00:06:24.180clarence thomas was a left-wing black power radical in fact he was part of a riot that
00:06:31.660happened in harvard square when he was a student he could have easily gotten arrested he could have
00:06:36.420easily destroyed his entire career then he got fortunate that didn't happen and then the journey
00:06:42.480he went from being an angry black man and that's how clarence thomas described himself a a left
00:06:49.120leaning radical in college to becoming a conservative that took years that that took
00:06:55.060more than a decade and his journey through going to work for jack danforth who was the the attorney
00:07:01.180General of Missouri. He was a Republican at the time. Clarence Thomas was not a Republican. He
00:07:06.260didn't really want to go work for a Republican. But coming out of Yale Law School as a black man
00:07:12.380in an era of affirmative action, every major law firm he applied to said no. They did not value his
00:07:19.000degree. He went to work for Jack Danforth. He had an incredible experience. He learned to practice
00:07:24.200law in Missouri. He enjoyed it a great deal. He then went after a brief stint at Monsanto,
00:07:32.560the big chemical company. He went to D.C. to work for Jack Danforth, who got elected to the Senate,
00:07:38.360and he was a Capitol Hill staffer. And we talk about in the book, I lay out how he ended up
00:07:48.040being outed, outed in an interview with Juan Williams that he didn't realize he was having.
00:07:54.000He was going and speaking at a conference and suddenly Juan Williams wrote a big expose in the Washington Post about this black conservative and his life changed dramatically.
00:08:04.440And from there, he went on to be the assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan for civil rights.
00:08:10.720And then he became the chairman of the EEOC, which he did nearly eight years.
00:08:15.980He then became a federal appellate judge on the D.C. Circuit, and then he became, in his early 40s, a Supreme Court justice, the second black justice in history.
00:08:28.300And the journey, there is nobody else who has traveled a journey from bleak poverty in Pinpoint, Georgia, to a Supreme Court justice.
00:08:40.300And Clarence Thomas right now, Ben, do you know that Justice Thomas is two years away from being the longest serving Supreme Court justice in the history of the United States?
00:18:43.800I want to play a minute of the speech so you can hear because this was this really sort
00:18:50.000of encapsulates who he is. I was proud of UT for inviting him. I think the student body,
00:18:56.540those in attendance, were enraptured. Give a listen to what Justice Thomas said last week
00:19:02.000in his speech at UT. There isn't a single judge I know who does hard things because they get joy
00:19:10.860out of it. They do hard things because they signed up to do hard things. And they may not agree with
00:19:17.560it and it may be difficult they may think it's not a great law but their job as article 3 judges
00:19:25.400is to enforce the law to interpret it and to apply it to that particular case when i first became a
00:19:32.040judge judge larry silverman who's unfortunately passed away said ask yourself before each case
00:19:40.760What is my role in this case as a judge?
00:19:44.380Notice how that limits you, not as a person, not as a Catholic, not as a policymaker, not as a husband, as a judge.
00:19:55.000And that is early on that required more discipline.
00:19:59.920More discipline. Yeah, that's a great way of putting that from Clarence Thomas there.
00:20:05.580You said earlier, being a kid in the audience at UT, getting to hear this conversation, truly an incredible moment.
00:20:13.040And I will say, when he's talking about being a judge and more discipline, a lot of what I talk about in the book is his approach to being a judge.
00:20:20.260And it's very much, look, his grandfather, he was raised by his grandfather, his grandfather worked him hard.
00:22:55.120All of the government's authority comes from our consent.
00:23:01.080And the structure and limited role of government
00:23:04.340is to assure that it does not exceed the authority
00:23:09.000to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights.
00:23:15.540The Constitution is the means of government.
00:23:18.680It is the Declaration that announces the ends of government.
00:23:24.360The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and our liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy.
00:23:35.920our constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism truly for the first time in modern
00:23:45.260history to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights
00:23:53.620he takes his time and that's one of the things he doesn't wing it he understands he's not putting
00:24:01.260on a show speaks yeah he's these words are deliberate and you can tell that he has just
00:24:06.440an incredible amount of compassion and care for this country and i also think when you get a
00:24:12.660little bit older um you probably are thinking about your legacy and what you're leaving behind
00:24:17.040and he clearly speaks that way to those students going hey i'm not always going to be here being
00:24:21.240a shepherd somebody else is going to have to step forward and do this and it may take a lot of people
00:24:27.440to accomplish what he's done in his lifetime. Well, and I'll tell you again in that UT speech,
00:24:32.060he contrasts the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the Constitution,
00:24:37.300the immutable principles upon which our country was founded. He contrasts them with progressivism,
00:24:43.760and progressivism, I think, has been a poison that has led the United States in a very dangerous
00:24:49.540direction. Listen to Justice Thomas drawing that contrast. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic
00:24:56.560premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government. It holds that our
00:25:04.420rights and our dignities come not from God but from government. It requires of the people a
00:25:11.980subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin
00:25:19.420of our rights. Wow. I mean, wow. What else can you say besides wow? And by the way, you might
00:25:28.020say, well, gosh, is progressivism really at war with the principles of the Declaration of
00:25:33.520Independence? You may remember last year at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Tim Kaine,
00:25:38.720Democrat from Virginia, was questioning a nominee to the State Department, a President
00:25:45.240Trump-nominated the State Department, who had written in his testimony that our rights come
00:25:50.940from God, not government. And Tim Kaine got outraged, and he said, that is a radical statement,
00:25:57.000that is a dangerous statement, that is an extreme statement. That is the kind of thing theocratic
00:26:02.580societies like Iran believe. We don't believe that. God doesn't give us our rights, government does.
00:26:09.240And I walked in right as Tim Kaine was saying this, and I had a whole line of questioning
00:26:14.700that I had planned to go down on the hearing, and I threw it all in the trash, and I spoke shortly
00:26:20.400after Tim Kaine, and I said, you know, Tim Kaine said the idea that our rights come from God is a
00:26:26.840radical and dangerous and extreme idea, and he's right, it is. It also happens to be the founding
00:26:32.600principle upon which our nation was created, and I said, listen, if you don't believe me,
00:26:38.300maybe you're inclined, you're politically left of center, and you may be inclined not to believe me.
00:26:43.260If you don't, maybe you might believe another Virginian who wrote, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator, not by government, not by the DNC, but by God Almighty, with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:27:11.880That was, of course, Thomas Jefferson.
00:27:16.360That's what Justice Thomas is referring.
00:27:18.300And part of what was so disturbing about Tim Kaine so cavalierly dismissing the idea that our rights come from God and instead insisting they come from government is Tim Kaine and the Democrat Party is not some crazy radical.
00:34:05.700I wrote this book because knowing our verdict listeners, I believe if you know who Clarence Thomas is, what he has endured, what he has stood for, and the journey he has traveled, that it will inspire you because it inspires me.
00:34:22.800That's why I wrote the book, and I think it'll be – I think it's a fun book.