We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and also to the
premium version of our website as well. I'm joined today by Christopher Bedford,
executive editor at the Common Sense Society. Chris is actually joining us. This
is a dispatch from a common Sense conference in South Carolina. Sunny South Carolina,
Chris, thanks for beaming in from your conference. Happy to be here.
I was always at. I mean, I love conferences, and actually
I love this conference. It's been We had a fantastic opening speaker, we
had a fantastic mornings. But I do also suffer from that bad student kind
of thing. I can't sit still long enough. So happy to take a
quick break to talk with you. Yeah, you seemed very eager, and
now it all makes sense. You're just trying to get out of some sort
of like breakout session. No, fortunately, I mean this is we're down
here talking about kind of well we can get into that a little bit more
on the podcast, but it's been a biggery. I get pretty black pilled,
as you and any one heard listens might have picked up on. But
the speaker so far have been pretty uplifted. It's a rare thing and it's
a nice break from Washington, DCA. I'll tell you that. Yeah,
it sounds like it. Well, that's a reminder, actually, if you
have questions for Chris and me, send them in because before the summer's over,
we're going to do another Q and A so radio at the Federalist dot
com. If you have any questions you want me to force Chris to answer,
you want Christa force me to answer, they'll reed to send them into
the email address. Chris, you wrote a column this week for The Telegraph
about the women's soccer team, the US women's soccer team and the national anthem,
which I should add I talked about that on Megan Kelly's show not too
long ago and had some like really glib line about how I didn't actually even
realize the Women's World Cup was going on and just got so like an unusual
number of tweets from people being like educate yourself. Of course, the little
Women's World Cup going on How could you be so ignorant? I mean,
how these people you have to educate yourself to watch a sporting match. I
mean, if people don't care about it, they don't care about it.
It's it's shocking one. The Women's World Cup suffers from an extreme lack of
international interest. I mean, they get a get to make a fraction of
the salaries of male players while getting a significantly higher percentage of the profits on
the proceeds from their league. And the reason that they still make so much
less than their male counterparts is because even at a significantly higher percentage point,
I just don't make money because people just don't care. I mean, and
for a league where people don't care to go to one of the most remote
places on the planet to have your World Cup, New Zealand, like you
can film Lord of the Rings there, you don't have to even build a
set. Really is is this incredible? They they do this and then the
government of New Zealand ends up having to hand out tickets to get people to
actually show up to fill these stadiums, giving them away for free. So
it's kind of some parts operating that lost any single game last time I checked
them. The Women's World Cup. We'll sold out, But I guess you
have to educate yourself for not having known about that. It's it's kind of
it's it's shocking how self righteous some of these people are. Oh, I
thought you're gonna say my ignorance is shocking, and you know what, on
some days it really is. But when it comes to the Women's World Cup,
I feel absolutely no remorse for having zero idea and joking about the fact
that zero idea what was happening, because it's the same teak from people who
insist that men and women are physical equals. Right here, there's all the
all the time with the WNBA. You know why, why do people it's
only misogyny and sexism that we can attribute to the reason these sports are not
as commercially successful. That's sort of the reason that people get really sensitive about
women's sports because they just find their self esteem in making these baseless chargers of
sexism and misogyny to people who don't want to watch extremely slow moving sports when
they could watch you know the version, I don't even I don't like watching
soccer, whether it's men or women, like, it doesn't matter to me.
It's just kind of boring. I I'm not naturally a soccer fan and
pertsping in stark contrast with my wife and my father in law, who are
who traveled the world previously, like their special vacation every four years. Just
go to a World Cup game and to be able to see a few matches
and absolutely love it. But I look at the headlines were coming in New
Zealand, like America ties Netherlands and riveting one to one match, and I
think that doesn't sound ripening. Now, I did actually tune in of the
ignorant, and I should say, because you're about to say that you tuned
into soccer, I should say sometimes it actually I do enjoy why, Like,
I don't think it's trash. I don't think the sport is trash.
I think I played soccer for a very long time. I enjoy it,
and I don't think it compares to like professional or college basketball or football college
football, professional football. So I'll leave it at that. Sarah did make
a good strount case for the game when she asked me to tune into the
last game of the Men's World Cup, which was just an incredibly exciting game
that went down to the last minute. So I don't open and I've always
enjoyed the Celtic matches that I've gone to when visiting family in Glasgow, so
I'm open to it, and especially if this is going to be a part
of my future, I'm open to it. But what I was right about
the Telegraph, what I'm less open to, and I'm what you Megan Kelly
has been a forceful critic on is the complete and total disrespect that the American
team has shown for the national anthem, which by the way, stands in
stark contrast to every other team that they are playing. And it's funny.
It's it's a side effect of the great privilege that the American players have that
there's no way that we are the least just, or the most awful or
the most terrible country to live in of all the countries that they're playing against.
But for some reason, the other countries players are all singing the national
anthem and ours are not. And I know that Megan Kelly and a bunch
of other critics have really focused on how embarrassing this is and how petulant it
seems childish, and how when you get the privilege to represent your country in
the national stage, it is your duty to go forward inter country. Well,
but what actually true? But what I find the most dangerous about that
is I think that these are people playing with ideas that they don't really understand.
And actually it's very dangerous what they're doing, not just disrespectful and annoying
and irritating, even though it is all those things, because they're the United
States, you know, may have started very much along English lines, English
ire Scottish lines, with that stock of people, but very quickly absorbed people
from other countries. Very early in our founding, there were other traditions,
other religions, other languages being introduced into the United States, cultures, backgrounds,
ideas, and unlike the nations of Europe, which are largely defined only
about four hundred years ago, along national origins with founding myths that were shrouded
in history. It's it's impressive how many nations traced there leanings back to Charlemagne.
I gas, he can't be everywhere once, but it seems to be.
We have like a really concrete founding, and we have a civic religion
which after the Civil War may have gotten a little out of hand. You
can look at the Capital Rotunda and see the Apotheosis of Washington, etc.
But we have a civic religion that unites us, that uses some symbols,
uses a concrete founding, uses an idea. And I think even that's gotten
a little out of hand in modern times too, that America is significantly more
of worse than an idea. But the idea, and that's the religion,
are extremely important to binding us together as people, binding Catholic to Protestant,
black to white, rich to poor people. Those are descended from the Mayflower
versus those whose parents immigrated or maybe immigrated themselves to this country. What makes
us all American is sort of that those things that unite us. And there's
this repetitive mantra that's just very, very stupid and hollow, but it sounds
nice that diversity is our strength. You see it all over the place,
completely false. Diversity is diversity is, on its own, separate from other
things, a great and incredible weakness. Of course, it can be used
to make us, make you a lot stronger when you have something else that
binds you, something that unites you. Your differences don't bring you together.
The things that make you the same do. So the example of one second,
or I have to say, I was reading a post on one of
those from one of those nonprofits that attempts to collect I think it might have
actually been the SPLC itself that attempts to come up with examples of hate speech,
and on one person's the entry of the post about one person who's apparently
a spreader of hate speech and actually very well, maybe one of the quotes
that they listed as like just clear evidence of actual racism was diversity is a
weakness, like exactly what you said. So this isn't to say Chris Bedford
deserves to be added to the SBLC hate map. It is to say,
this is saying something like that is so anathema, It is so so like
subversive in this current culture. Like if you said that to a zoomer,
I think they would be totally clueless and probably would identify you with like the
alt right or something. Maybe I guess I definitely Republicans are afraid to talk
about these sorts of things. But let's take a look at like any efficient
fighting for us it's ever existed in human history. Just take a look at
the U. S. Marine Corps, where a bus load actually not too
far from where we are right now, in Paris, Island, where I
am right now, drops off a bus load of kids from all different walks
of life. Puerto Rican kids from the Bronx, Black kids from La Baptists
from South Carolina, and Irish kids from Boston, with different levels of education,
some of them speaking different languages. They have different backgrounds, they have
different skills, they have different things perhaps will inform them and maybe help their
unit. But what's the first thing their instructor does is they shave all of
their heads to look exactly the same. They put them in a bunk room
exactly the same as each other. They put them in the exact same clothes,
and they run them to the exact same drills they make. They forge
them the sameness into a unit that's capable, because otherwise they're useless, completely
useless. A more funny example would be the Burger Kinge Kids Club, which
is like just a picture of nineteen nineties classic stereotypical like diversity. They've got
the kid in the wheelchair, They've got the black their kid, they got
the redheaded kid, they've got the tall girl. All these different people are
very different group. What draws them together? What makes them the Burger King
Kids Club is that they're a bunch of children who love adventure and cheeseburgers.
And because of that, they accomplished a bunch of different adventures and they get
along together and they bring different perspectives. And that's all. That's all well
and good. But when you harp on the things that make us different as
opposed to the things that make us the same, the things that make us
all Americans, the thing that make us all ad Action Club, the thing
that makes us all Marines, then you divide us and you pull us apart,
and you make us weak. And United States is an extremely diverse place,
and having those different voices makes us very strong in a lot of different
ways. But that only makes us strong when we are united. In the
United States. It's in our name. And when you teart those symbols and
some of them are easy. Now, some of them seem like, oh,
it's just generalistic. No, it's the American flag is a symbol which
all unites us. The attacks in the American flag and the substitution have kind
of even changed the faces of neighborhoods, like there's one neighbor, there's one
splock a few blocks from a house where every house on it has an American
flag, where one house just moved in a few months ago in the middle
of them and took down the American flog and put up a Rainbow flog.
And it's just like a as you know, like right after Putin invaded Ukraine,
there were blocks on Capitol Hill here in DC where almost every house,
if not every clouse hung a Ukraine flag. And I have to imagine if
you lived on one of those blocks, you felt immense pressure to hang a
Ukraine flag. Otherwise you're going to be associated with something You're not a good
enough person. Yeah, ostracized, yes, exactly, but that's the same
You don't if you don't put the Ukrainian flag above your door before your family
goes to sleep, and the angel of death will take the firstborn when he
passes over. You must you must mark your door with the blood or the
or you'll be taken. This is a symbol of your innocence. The Washedout
on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection
between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Commercial real estate
is in a category five hurricane. With the FED continuing to un six,
that's fully raised interest rates to curb inflation. Real estate loans in two years
are going to top two trillion dollars. Could over five hundred banks go bankrupt.
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you
financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. I have
to set your Burger King Kids Club reference too. Is funny because a couple
of weeks back, I was teasing you for your one cultural reference point being
fern Gully, but I'm wrong. It's there are two of them. It's
fern Gully and the Burger King Kids Club, which any time of you dive
into pop culture you're going to be using as your point of reference fern Gully
or the Burger King Kids Club, which probably allows people to pinpoint your age
exactly. This is a man who lived through the eighties. These are the
things that scarred me as a child. Captain Planet absolutely scarred me as a
child as well. But so like everything has been increasingly politicized in American life,
it's taken over a lot of the private spheres. Take it seeped into
our family lives and our dinner tables, which has always kind of there's always
been discussion and such a disagreements between people in America, sometimes very strong disagreements,
but it's it's after after the election of Barack Obama, it seeped into
sports, where it must have been extremely toxic, just said to be an
ESPN or a bunch of people who probably had probably a bunch of Bush voters,
a bunch of Clinton voters and in past years and Gore voters had gone
along fine. But suddenly it was a cultural thing, so it became part
of sports, and the sports viewing had largely been somewhat insulated from it,
and that is no more so when these women refused to sing the national anthem
or to honor it. They're tearing at the national anthem that draws us together.
Something that's been a healing thing, something that's been a strengthening thing.
Something that they said on the steps of the Capitol after the nine to eleven
attacks, something that there's really emotional videos from Boston and from New York City
after the terrorism attacks that they suffered of the crowds at hockey games or at
baseball game singing the national anthem, I lad, this is an important thing
to uniting us, not just some tradition that we can cast away so easily.
And it is so important like the flag, because there's so so many
of the things that the Unite US had to worken down, so many of
the civic groups where we could meet from people from different walks of life,
but really broken down into America, we've retreated a lot to internet escapism and
the groups that we can find there. And when you take some of the
few things that we have left and attack them, it's not just the publicity
stuck, which it is probably what a lot of the participants really think of
it as like this is a publicity thing to draw attention to the plight of
LGBTQ or so there's all the attension to the plight of black Americans. But
really it's it's hurting everyone in this country by by making by making the anthem
or making the flag a political symbol, we remove one of this like the
remaining straining stitcher that are really holding the fabric of our society together in a
way that's anyway mutually endearing. Yeah, it's just so bizarre to do that.
As the United States of America, it's bizarre to not have the sense
of pride. I mean, I understand, I don't know. I guess
I've always been sympathetic to the idea that you have to you know, protest
in order to improve even now, right, Like, obviously we can pretty
much all agree on you know, maybe not the policy outcomes or whatever,
but I think we can pretty much all agree that the Civil rights movement,
the action that the civil disobedience that was taken during the Civil rights movement,
I think we can all agree on that now in twenty twenty three, a
women's soccer team. I mean, we're talking some of the most privileged people
in the world, condensing their experiences down to their identities in ways by the
way, that it's totally self defeating as an argument, because all they've gotten
is positive mainstream media coverage, so called mainstream media coverage since they started this
protest. All they're doing is being vaunted by the corporate press and held up
by the elites as role models. Essentially, they're getting publicity for it,
and yeah, they're getting criticized, you know, sharply by some people who
are still sane. But it just remarkable to me, and I have to
think some of it is some of this has to be downstream of the way
that technology shrinks the globe. Right, Like if you're constantly looking at and
you know other cultures are looking at you, you're looking at other people's cultures,
and you're the United States, which is, you know, the subject
of constant criticism by other countries around the world. It's like you're you're ashamed
because your your country is such a frequent, you know, target, and
you're not proud. You lose that pride because it's harder to own it when
you're in when you're on a global stage. Obviously, that doesn't speak well
of these women. They should be proud to be Americans and they should be
courageous enough to represent the United States on the global stage. It's not to
say the United States is perfect, but it is to say a lot of
freedoms that people are enjoying around the world, let alone in our country,
and that people have enjoyed in our country for decades now, We've we've led
the way. There's so much to be proud of, and allowing the bad
to outweigh the good. Uh, it's just maddening. But it's also I
just find it so sad. I mean they must be sad. Yeah,
I think it well, you know, uh, we talked about him on
last year podcasts, but they're down here where. Doctor Josh Fred Mitchell is
a Common Sense Society Senior Fellow, our first as as a professor at Georgetown,
and he was speaking last night during dinner about tok Fille's kind of prediction
about America. He's a total scholar that there would come a time in this
new democracy where every man would feel himself greater than a king, but would
also be less than a man. And he sees it in his own students,
a lot a lot of people who it's like a very bipolar thing.
The highs and the lows. I think probably cost my social media great.
It's a great extent of feeling like you are the change. You are the
person who will change this. You refuse to sig the national anthem, you
stand up, you're basically marching across the bridge at Selma. You're with Martin
the King on the balcony, but at night you're falling asleep. A lot
of these students extremely depressive, feeling like you're absolutely hopeless, you're isolated,
there's nothing that you can do to change this system. You can't have children
because of global warming, don't you don't own any property. Sixty percent of
your fifty percent of your peers say that they have some kind of mental illness
or some kind of pharmaceutical. But then you get that high of being out
in the street and chanting or we are the Kings, we are the future.
We don't owe it to anyone, We don't owe anything to our attrition
for our past. We're generation zero, we are the moral ones. We
know how to tear down the past. And then it reverts back to that
sense of this hopelessness, in total despair, and it's I think social media
plays a large part of that. I don't think in a normal environment,
at least by the standards of the last four hundred years of modern history,
that most of these soccer players afforded this privilege to be acting this way.
It's because of its combination of a domineering celebrity player Megan matt rapperdo I think,
and the shame that she probably brings on a lot of people compare later
point is that like America is not gay enough, which is just shocking to
me living in Alexandra and uh and but that and in social media and they
you get a sense of martyrdom and a sense of a cost that they are
a part of. That's greater than than I don't know, playing the beautiful
game on the world stage, even if Mla Desnski didn't know what we're going
on. Yeah, well you know that's the thing. It's it's like,
it's this constant. It's much more satisfying to find your um. I think
gratification in victimhood. If you have nothing else, um, if you're sort
of alienated from the aspects of life that do traditionally give you purpose and meaning,
um, then it's obvious that people are going to gravitate towards identity politics
in victim Hutton. I think that's been very clear. But I also think
it's happening in ways that are much more normal than we realize. You know,
it's not just those extreme cases of all right, four channers finding purpose
and meaning in ship posting on four Chan all day. It's a really shane
just that it's so yeah, it's so much more mundane. It's people taking
the incentives of social media and then you know, grafting them onto human interaction
in real life in ways that are just deeply, deeply unhealthy. And one
thing I wanted to ask you, Chris, actually is there's this I don't
know if you've read it yet, but there's this extremely long article in Tablet
that was published today. It is a David Samuel's interview with David Garrow.
David Garrow is a Martin Luther King biographer and actually an Obama biographer who Samuel's
argues published a biography of Obama in twenty seventeen that didn't quite get the pickup
that it should have. It has some like really sensational I think, or
evidence of some really sensational mistruths or maybe outnight lives or fictionalizations in Dreams for
My Father Obama sort of self told or Obama's autobiography. And one of the
things Garrow says that's so poignant is he can't get over what it is about
Barack Obama that was so fixated on undercutting the concept of American exceptionalism. He's
like, this is the one thing I cannot wrap my head around when it
comes to Barack Obama, and I really think that set the tone. At
one point, they're talking in this article about how Obama talks about his sort
of stone or dorm room politics, where they were all getting high and talking
about France final and colonialism and imperialism and blah blah blah, and yeah,
that's the only explanation I have that, like Obama has just at the end
of the day never sort of come past that very you know, when you're
like a libertarian freshman kid or a super socialist freshman college student and you have
these like major realizations about the United States or revelations you feel like about the
United States, about the twentieth century, about or in peace, and you
just never quite pushed past that. And it's it's sort of a simplistic or
maybe crude understanding of the world. And I'm not saying that it's Obama's understanding
of the world so much as I'm saying it's useful right that this is a
this is like a useful contour from his perspective of geopolitics, And it did
seem to set the tone for the country. I really think he taught the
country to increasingly be embarrassed by itself yeah, I think he did, And
yeah, you're right, he just come across like that. It reminds me
of one of your former co hosts on your morning show with the Hill,
who one point was just reciting to like a college freshman, passengers from Killing
Hope. It's growing in lum book that I read when I was in high
school of blew my mind. Or it's like, oh, did you just
hear about Howard's in Oh you heard your first Nome Chomsky tape and now you're
revolutionary? Have you put this? Have you put this these interesting alternative histories?
Have you filtered them through common If you filter them through reality, filter
them through the primary documents, they bring some interesting perspective because like all countries,
we have a founding myth and in some makes sense, but a lot
of them are deeply, deeply flawed and wrong, and you have to you
have to draw something from it that not let it, not let the poison,
and a lot of them is that. Be aware of them, but
don't let it overwhelm the anecdote. I mean, so what we're doing down
here, I'm sorry, Well, I was just gonna say to your point,
I think you were I think you were actually just gonna talk about this,
like to some extense, we need myths, and like the myths should
be This is like a shared, uh, sort of national consensus on the
symbol um, you know, on the flag being fundamentally a good thing that
doesn't need to be burned or torn up, the national anthem being something that
you are eager even when the country is at its lowest, that you are
eager to sing in the sort of fred Rick Douglas What to the Slave is
the fourth of July and his broader outlook on the founders and Lincoln himself.
One of the best speeches is the dedication that Frederick Auglas gave to the Abraham
Lincoln statue at Lincoln Park here in Washington, DC. And I know we've
talked about it on the podcast before about the flaws of Lincoln, but also
why it felt it was important for Frederick Douglas to celebrate Lincoln in that moment.
We used to all agree on those things, and I think for for
good reason. And when you start puncturing holes in the myth, that's all
well and good if you say, well, the myth maybe has some problems
here and there, And to Ryan's credit, he's still my co host over
at Counterpoints. I think I didn't No, it's funny it's Ryan Gream because
that that clip went viral, because I actually think the left had this totally
oversimplistic idea of what Ryan was saying and what I was saying, and because
they agree with that oversimplified um, sort of chomsky Ish take it. You
know, it's it's just a sort of easy fodder. But it's okay to
it's okay to say, you know, the myth is a myth. And
now it's just sort of because our brains have just been rerouted into the sort
of social media, the social media incentive highway, we can't have these these
serious conversations anymore. And when you're poking holes in the American myth, that's
fine if you still see the forest for the trees. And I think that's
exactly where we went wrong with Barack Obamas, that he did not want to
see the forest for the trees. I mean, we all have myths.
That's how we make sense of our world and where we came from. It's
all histories or some level of myth making, and they're all histories necessarily exclude
certain viewpoints because they must rely on one of them. I mean to me,
it was I think you guys were talking about World War Two. It's
amazing that you were accused of of parroting a myth by someone who think said
that the Soviet Union liberated Europe from from terror and mass murder. Tell that
to someone in Poland, maybe they'd have a different myth from you Ryan about
their liberators. But I should set up a debate with you two. That
would be fun, just about the end of World War two. Yeah,
it would be lovely. You know. One of the things that it's not
a myth is that the United States is about four hundred years since the first
settlers arrived in North America, and one of the things that we were,
like, one of the things that we've taken from them is the incredible traditions
that they brought with them from Europe. But also how they honed those traditions
and where they picked and where they chose, and how how those forefathers built
up until they got to a system by the time of the American Revolution,
or piece together a sort of constitutional republic based on Monuscu's separation of powers in
form by Adam Smith's Wealth of nations look brought, they looked to Rome,
they looked to ancient Greece, they looked to the Church. They pulled all
these different ideas from all these different places. But and it's a genius system.
Vote one of the things that and that's part of of course, the
Methodist I think, is also part of the reality. One thing that's not
part of the methods. It was only able to succeed, and they were
only able to get this far. We were only able to have those discussions
and put from these things and do these trial and error because we were a
society that talked face to face. We were a society that had a lot
of very strong and important civic institutions. We had churches where people from different
classes met in different sometimes different backgrounds, not all the time. We had
town halls, we had I mean, Toko was amazed at the philanthropy and
the charity terrible tradition that exists in America, which by the way, still
doesn't exist in Europe. So it's a very can be a very difficult thing
to try and raise money for a nonprofit in New York doesn't really enter into
a lot of people's thinking. If the government takes care that the state takes
care of that um that society and that culture of back and forth that we
really had and face to face interactions or things that really just those sensific institutions
cannot be replaced by internet and this constitutional order that we have and this free
market system that we have, well excellent systems responsible for a lot of freedom
and a lot of prosperity, are not going to save us without the things
that built them, which are those kind of those interactions between humans, those
civic institutions, that understanding and embracing of tradition that looking back to our forefathers,
that these are the these are the things that allow that to happen.
The America. What makes America exceptional is not just this experiment in government,
which other that that certainly that it was exceptional and still is that where it
all came from and all the different shared experiences from from Jerusalem to London to
Rome that Kana came together in what we build. And that's one of the
things that we're actually down here and stuff Canina really talking about, is it's
going to come up to really civic engagement and education and things like that.
If we're going to try and turn this around, and we can't simply rely
on the excellent system that's been handed down to us to continue to function as
us. My friend DD Bower said this morning he's worked in a farm in
his entire life and he's never seen a tractor and fixed itself. That I'm
far removed from from the farm life. And I say, I've never seen
a truck itself. So that's fantastic as well. And this isn't just I
don't think this is just a sort of abstract discussion. Because there was a
poll that came out I think it was just last week. It maybe even
been the week of for a plummeting American pride among a young demographic. I
think it might have been like eighteen to twenty seven or eighteen to thirty four
or something like that. Young adults are their pride in the United States has
declined precipitously over like just the last decade, and just a big steep drop.
You can see it on the chart that I think Axios made from the
pole. And so this is a very immediate problem. It's it's not abstract,
it's how do you run a country if you have that level of just
antipatriotism. I don't think these are people who are just sort of like ambivalent
about the question of America, but have actually, you know, been introduced
to sixteen nineteen curriculum in their public school. Again, I think when you're
sort of have some distance from what it was like to be a kid,
or if you're in you know, the homeschooling situation, you have all you
happen to have a lot of control over what your kids see. These you
know, from the moment their eyes open in the morning, so when they
shut at night, Um, it's hard to I think put yourself in the
shoes. Sometimes I wonder what it's like to just be a normal kid with
parents who are not politically engaged, you know, maybe trust to their public
school system because they went to the same schools. You know, understand that
teachers are a little bit to the left and have maybe heard some crazy things
happening, but you don't really have other options and generally have still a good
taste in their mouth about public schooling and the same thing. You know,
all their kids friends have have phones, have smartphones with social media on it
and Instagram and tik talk and snapchats, so it's not worth the fight to
sort of control it. But if you look on those apps, I mean,
they are they are poison. Even if you have the parental controls on
what they're able to just sort of imbue young the worldview. They're able to
just imbue over time of not liking this country, reasons to again not see
the forest for the trees. You know, they're just presenting tree after tree
after tree of know terrible things about the United States, but they're never giving
the full picture. And I mean, I just don't know what happens in
the next ten years. People were so surprised when in some cases bubbles were
punctured in twenty twenty, and as somebody who was what like, I don't
know how old it wasn't twenty twenty, but not that far removed from from
high school and college. It was probably like I was twenty seven. It
wasn't surprising me at all. I don't think it was surprising you, Chris,
because you lived deep in the heart of a blue city. But it
was bad then. I just can't imagine how bad it is in a couple
of years time, when this current generation is in control of the workforce and
more at a level that is higher and higher when their parents, when they're
you know, in the PTA meetings, I don't know, and they think
that they think that culture is disposable, but they don't have anything to replace
it with. They think that four hundred years can just throw top wisdom,
reliant on things for even further let's further back, can just be thrown aside,
you know. And you see this with You've seen this in other revolutions.
The French had their Year zero where they're just going to start over and
they're the new generation of the moral generation. They're going to take it over.
The Kimir Rouge had this moo zedn push this sort of thing with the
new Man that they are the ones to not inherit the earth, but to
seize it and to take it and to remake it in their own and that
everyone that came before them lacks their moral compass, and this certitude is really
dangerous, this lack of reflection is really dangerous. And you're right, it's
the same way that our traditions have previously been passed down so easily that they
started to seem like they're simply common sense. As jkh Esterton kind of spoke
about there's another also, a way to poison used. The takeover of education
over the last sixty years has really led to a poisoning. And you have
these people, yea Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic leader who was at one point
everyone wanted to be president, coming out there saying America is never that great.
You've got the Huffington Post coming out there and saying America's never that great.
You've got Eric Holder, a black Attorney general under a black president,
saying America is never actually that great. And then you've got teachers who was
held in contempt of Congress and survived, somehow managed to keep his job and
is now making tons of money in another position of power, like managing elections
all over the country. Yeah, America has been pretty great to him,
it seems like. But but America also relies on those people who actually are
selfless, those people who are disinterested, those people who who as opposed as
opposed as self interested, those people like George Washington, those types who could
take the sword and take the content to army, who don't have to surrender
the presidency, who can wear it as a crown who decided to step away.
And that's not something that's really, I mean looking at looking at Joe
Biden right now, who obviously thought he was not going to He didn't think
he was gonna be president. Hillary Clinton was the heir apparent. She was
going to win, she was going to govern for eight years. He was
leaving office, and he told his son Hunter, like, all right,
having to make some money, he let's do this. And then totally would
have been fine had he never actually come back four years later and become president,
no one would have cared about it, and whatever it really would have
noticed, it wouldn't have been front page news. To the miss calculated there.
That's the exact opposite of the kind of person that we need in power
right now. Kind of take these things. But even then, the president
is not going to save us. We have to get to get back to
the education and the engagement. And you know, there's been a lot of
different classical curriculums that are being worked out there. Conversation, society works in
a bunch, Hillsdale's doing a bunch. There's been an explosion of classical schools
and explosion of I mean, thirty years ago, I think was we're actually
at attended at this conference, maybe who was arrested in South Carolina for homeschooling,
and now it's all over the country and there are great curriculums and great
things there. The one great thing that we have going for us I don't
see when I travel Europe a lot of Europe is when you go outside of
a lot of the capital cities, you don't see the same spark that you
see in the United States. To leave the main cities and unit states just
to really be refreshed, To drive cross country is to be invigorated, To
get away from the awfulness of DC and just drive through South Dakota or Minnesota,
or Arkansas or Kentucky or anywhere else Colorado is to see people who really
do care and still have that spark so well that there's a cancer that's definitely
spreading there still has the still that fire left in the American people. An
exceptional people that I think have been turning on this sometimes. But it's not
an authentime, like the pendulum is just going to stand back on its own,
but can be fixed with education, that can be that we can tend
this down to our children. You know, one of those speakers said earlier
this week, for all of us pain, the transgender social contagion, for
example. Is it kind of a gift that keeps on giving If you're a
parent who's paying attention to the in the slightest amount to what's going on with
your children and their peer groups. So what you're reading about, you have
to be very actively engaged in the way the parents didn't really think they have
to be ten years ago, or five years ago or even four years ago.
And what your children is learning, their child is learning in school,
and what their teachers are saying and what their textbooks are. Dude, you
literally just did a Georgian of you. But she said what the children is
learning in school? I meant to say, your child is learning in school,
little child, children is learning. No, that's a great point.
And actually I was going to say a fact that I felt weirdly optimistic this
week because I saw the Barbie Movie of all things, and the entire I
know, the entire joke of the Barbie movie, almost every single joke is
predicating on predicated on the idea that men and women are different. I wrote
a whole piece about this over at the funerals. WoT to check it out,
But the entire movie, I thought it was really funny. Some people
may disagree with that, but I thought, at least maybe this is a
low bar, but at least this is a movie that is being it's It's
second week was bigger than Oppenheimer's first week, and Oppenheimer had a big first
week. It had a better than expected first week. And so when you
have people on the second week going out to see Barbie in droves historic second
week showing for a movie, it means people like it and people don't like
woke nonsense. That's why it's commercially never successful, never ever successful for the
most part. And I think that's at some level, there's something in us
that understands, appreciates, respects nature, and it's just when it has some
sort of like political pretense that people feel the need to virtue signal and sort
of play the game. But we all know, we all know that men
women and men and women are different. We all know it's funny that the
Ten's Mojo Dojo cosa House is going to be different than the Barbie Dreamhouse and
it's going to need to be disinfected when you turn it back to a Barbie
dream House, because you know, men can be gross, which is something
we all know. I want to see it. I want to see the
new Barbie movie. It's just when you've got a kid or kids going out
to see a movie that's not for children, becomes a babysitter involved in yes
of activity. It's like not just like anyone to go see a filmm so
like trying to find a day to see Oppenheimer and Barbie. It's like,
I don't know, maybe I'll take off a day from work. It's been
all day in the movie theater. You just keep watching that soccer Chris.
I look forward to it, you know, there's some point to that.
Like with the Wed last night, that was my last reference I'm like talking
with. I asked Joshua Mitchell question last night because he's got a really interest
theory. Talked about last week about well because them as a religion, and
that's something that we've written about a lot of the Federalist I've talked about,
but those there's something that seems to be missing from that, which is that
it's a religion that has no martyrs. It's got a lot of sacrificial victims.
They are eager to sacrifice more victims, but it has no martyrs.
People don't really die for that cause they draw back their lineage to actual civil
rights activists and people who really did fight for something noble, but it's not
really their lineage. That's totally fraudulent. People run, people use, people
use it to escape paid like oh, this building is green, this um,
this card shop is pro gay or a safe space, like all these
different things, but no one actually really suffers, is willing to suffer for
it. Bud Light has been suffering for it a great deal. But don't
you don't you think they wish they could take that back and never have stepped
foot into it for a second, And he pointed out, well, that's
because it's an incomplete religion, not unlike, but not unlike a lot of
other incomplete religions that aren't actually fully flushed out, that don't have God,
that don't have that actual way to for forgiveness and atonement, that don't have
Christ sacrifice them across at its center. For example, I can still be
very very dangerous Marxism as an example of an incomplete religion. He gave Nazism
distinct from fascism as like an incomplete religion, something that's can seeks to satisfy
and explain the world and offer a cure, none of which is actually satisfying.
It's not really a cure. And but that was I thought that was
an interesting aspect to it, that it's still very dangerous, but it's not
it doesn't work, it's not fully fleshed out. And that's why things like
Barbie I wouldn't. I wouldn't say, oh, the battle is won,
time and time to hang up the hang up the boots. But it's the
American people don't want it. They want things, they want to have a
good time at the theater. Well, it's not just the American people.
I think as it relates to the American people, it's a matter of whether
we can prevent all of our institutions from being sort of permanently bulldozed before the
sort of human part of us kicks in and has this instinct to preserve what
I think has allowed a system, the best system that is allowed for human
flourishing. I think we talked about this last week, but there was a
line and what was the reading? Where was it's about the Oh, it's
it's from Russell Kirk saying that the conservative doesn't believe that you can ever make
government perfect that you can make the world perfect, you can make it more
tolerable. And when we realize how good of a system we have, you
know, hopefully our institutions aren't destroyed at that point. But ultimately, hedonism
and nihilism are not healthy or satisfying. They do not fulfill your soul.
They don't fill your soul in the long run, and they won't and it's
just a matter of will we recognize that before it's too late. And I
think that's the big question going forward. Yeah, it is. And the
way you can contribute to that is get up there, be a part of
your community. If you have the time and the ability, run for the
school board. One of the guys I was talking to down here is I
think he's a firefighter and his wife just got sick of what was going on
in their cities as she ran in the school board and she wont there's nothing's
amazing, Laron complaint on a podcast about it. She could actually go out
there and vote and confront these people, and it's, um, it's good
to see some of the activism that's and then the people who are getting involved
in politics, and it's a I usually am pretty block built. I'm feeling
I'm feeling better this week. There you go. Well, you have no
business being on the women's national soccer team because they would not want to hear
this. Now, they wouldn't want to hear it. But I don't think
I don't Maybe I could qualify. Did you see that video, the one
viral of the US women's national team listening to a boys high school team the
high school team. Yes, yes, it's good. Qualify. I don't
know that you could even play high school boy soccer. Absolutely not. I
even I was a good football player, but even in rugby, the drawback
is a rugby, there's part where you have to handle the ball that was
never quite by a strong point. I can't just hit people, that's right,
That's right. I did well pay my attitude. Yeah, well basically,
Chris. I hope you enjoyed the rest of your time down there in
South Carolina. Thank you so much for filling us in a little bit on
the fascinating conversations you've been happened down there. Thanks been great and thanks for
having me. Of course, you have been listening to another edition of The
Federalist for radio hour. I'm Emil and Joshinski, culture editor. Here at
The Federalist, we will be back soon. To the lovers of freedom and anxious today