We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily 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 your download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. Today we're back with one of our very favorites,
and that would be Liz Wheeler. She is the author of the new book
Hide Your Children, Exposing the Marxists behind the Attack on America's Kids. That's
out for pre order. It is coming out on September twenty six, but
you can preorder it now. Liz is also, of course, the host
of the Liz Wheelers Show. Liz, thanks for joining us once again.
Thanks for having me, Emily. Okay, so, I really feel like
you've been on something of an odyssey to get to like the insanity. You
know, if people were looking around in twenty twenty and asking what the heck
happened? I feel like you have spent a lot of time recently trying to
answer that question and successfully answering that question. Having taken a look at the
book you right this is a decisive moment for the left. This is their
last chance because of our victories. Their time to impose Marxism on our nation
is either now or never. They're pulling out all the stops. Liz,
my first question for you is why call this Marxism. Some people might say
this is just a permutation. It is, you know, crazy Democrats,
but Marxism. They may not think of it that way. Why is it
so important to think of it that way? It is? And I fully
understand the question. It's the question I had myself. I embarked on this
project because I, like many parents in this country. This is true of
both Republicans and Democrats, saw what was happening during COVID in a way that
we had not seen before. And when they saw what was happening I'm talking
about, saw what was happening to our children. A lot of parents just
looked over their children's shoulders on zoom school and saw that their children were being
told if they're white, then they're inherently racist, if they're black, then
they're inherently oppressed. We saw the transgender ideology become prevalent in a way that
just ten years ago it was not. We saw our children being told that
quote unquote, your truth or my truth is more important than the truth.
Just moral relativism repackaged. And my question was, how come all of these
attacks on our children are happening all at the same time. It seems to
me that it's more than a coincidence that it would be such a concerted effort.
So I started out seeking to find an answer to this question. And
it turns out the answer to this question isn't so much a why as it
is a who the people behind these efforts to change our children. And what
I really found was the left. This is not a new attack. It
might be concerted now against our children, but for actually nearly a century,
the left has attempted to re engineer our entire society, and unfortunately they've been
pretty successful at doing it. They've co opted what I would consider to be
four of the five foundational cultural institutions. They've captured the media, they've captured
the education system, they've captured religion, they've captured the law, and they've
tried to capture the family as well. They've merely destroyed the family, man,
woman, marriage, sex. And there's one element, just one element
of the family that's left standing, that's children, which probably explains why the
Left is coming after our children here. So what I do in this book
if I name the names of the people and the organizations behind the capture of
our institutions and behind this attack on our children. And what I found is
not something I necessarily started out looking for. I was. I didn't start
with a preconceived conclusion and look for evidence to substantiate my conclusion. But what
I found is the people behind these assaults on our institutions and on our children
either our self avowed Marxists or are propagating very clearly Marxist ideology. So what
I do in the book the first half of the book, I detail each
of these institutions and how it's targeting our children. Because if we don't recognize,
fully acknowledge the reality of this political enemy that we face, and we
don't put a name on it and say I recognize that as Marxism, then
we won't fight well against it, We won't win, will lose. So
it's very important for all of us to understand. Even if it sounds like
an empty insult that you might just hurl on cable news, it's very important
to understand it's not just an ad hominem. It's not just a word that
we demonize. These are actual Marxists who aspiled Marxist ideology. And then the
second half of the book, I offer a solution, a solution that is
full disclosure, different than what the Republican Party offers, for how we can
reclaim our institutions and how we can protect our children. As a mom,
I obviously feel very strongly about this for the sake of our children's individual souls,
but it's also as a nation. If we allow the Marxists to capture
our children, that we as a nation are done. You start by connecting
or drawing the line between Marx to Gramsky, and then you go Marx to
for Dan, Marx to critical theory. I really want people to buy this
book so they can read about those links, and you outline it very clearly.
But for the sake of this discussion, maybe just to wet people's appetites,
what is the kind of connective tissue between Marx and Gramsky and then Marks
and Fredan and then ultimately critical theory. Yeah. So one of the most
common responses that are questions that I've received so far since announcing this book is
listen. Carl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto was an economic thing, right,
it was the working class was supposed to be oppressed by the ruling class,
or the working class was supposed to revolt against the ruling class and thus usher
in mark with them. How on earth is what we are faithing when our
children are being taught weirdo things? It's poisonous ideology. How is that Marxism?
And it's the valid question and the answer that is that when Karl Marx
wrote the Communist Manifesto, he did mean it to be an economic revolution,
and it didn't really work out as an economic revolution. I mean, we
didn't see this catch fire around the world. It was kind of relegated to
just philosophers and college professors and people who thought that they were the vanguard of
thinkers. But it didn't in practicality. We didn't see this work in a
lot of nations, and so communism or Marxism specifically the brand of communism,
I guess, started to die out just a little bit. It wasn't quite
as popular until an Italian Marxist by the name of Antonio Gromsey was actually one
of the founders of the Italian Communist Party recognized a flaw in Karl Marx's thinking.
He said, well, let's in, the working class is never going
to revolt against the ruling class if the working class relies on the civil institutions,
which just means the cultural institutions of the ruling class. So he said,
Gromsey said, in order to even get us to the point where the
working class will stage this economic revolt against the ruling class, we have to
destroy the civil or cultural institutions on which the working class rely, and he
named, among others, he named the media, he named the education system,
he named religion, he named the law, and he named the family.
What we are seeing, this form of cultural Marxism in our nation is
the cultural Marxism of Antonio Gromsey. Once you read this chapter, you'll probably
get the chills on your arms because you'll you'll think, oh, my goodness,
this is playing out in a textbook fashion exactly what Antonio Gramsey plan,
and you can extrapolate it even further. One of my favorite chapters in this
book is actually the chapter on Paolo free Air. Paulo free Air is a
Brazilian Marxist, but one of the interesting things that's happened in the conservative movement
over the course of the past three or four months is we use this term
woke all the time to describe really cultural Marxism in our institutions. But there's
been a debate because sometimes it can be difficult to define the word woke,
like what is woke? How do you define the word woke? Can you
give a definition of the word woke? And a lot of conservatives will just
say, well, you know when you see it, which isn't untrue,
that is accurate. At the same time, what I do in this book
is I trace the word woke back through its origin, and its origin is
with this Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freer, who basically presented this idea or proposed this
idea that there's no such thing as objective truth. There's not something that's just
true and something that's false. He said that what truth quote unquote truth is
is just the prevailing political narrative. So whoever won the political fight gets to
define what truth is. Because of that, he said, in schools,
teachers shouldn't be allowed to teach truth, They shouldn't be allowed to teach knowledge.
They should only be allowed to teach a world of view. They should
teach children what he called critical consciousness, which is just a euphemism for teaching
children to look at the world through a Marxist lens where everyone's either an oppressor
or oppressed. That critical consciousness is wokeness. It's just a different term,
a euphemism that modern Marxists in America today use to describe Free Ari's critical consciousness.
But there's a direct line between Free Ari and his ideas into the education
system today, and once you see it, you'll see it everywhere. You
can't unsee it. You actually link Mao to d Ei in the book,
where I mean you don't link it, you expose the intentional link from Mao
to d Ei. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah, it's so interesting. So d EI is diversity, equity and inclusion.
We've all seen this. It's in our workplaces, it's in our classrooms.
It's now one of the standards that companies use when they're hiring someone,
hence the term diversity higher. But DEI is not real diversity equity and inclusion,
right, diversity does not. According to the Left, diversity does not
mean diversity of thought, as you and I might understand it. Marxists.
One of their tactics is they redefine words that people to disguise their agenda from
a people. So diversity is not diversity of thought. Diversity is essentially racial
tokenism. Supreme Court chap this Katangi Brown Jackson is a really good example of
the diversity in d EI. She really wasn't hired because she was qualified.
She was hired because she had black and she's a woman. It's insulting,
it's tokenism, but that's what that's what diversity and d EI is to the
left. Similarly, equity and inclusion. Equity is not a quality, and
inclusions not tolerance for other people's lifestyles. It's essentially religious persecution. That's what
inclusion is because Christians, for example, aren't included and equity it is not
equality. It's really just somebody else being the arbiter of outcome, which is
socialism. So d diversity, equity, and inclusion it's not a good thing,
even though we have a generally positive connotation when we hear those words diversity,
equity, an inclusion is a thought reformed tactic that was pioneered in Maoist
China. Maoism, as you know, is just another form of communism,
as is Marxism. They're very similar. It was just administered by different pirants
in different places. But the way that Mao and reengineered his society to turn
people against each other if he made different identities a crime. So if you
were, for example, a farmer, that was supposed to be a good
identity. If you were a dissident, that was a bad identity. And
he called these black identities and red identities, red for the ones that he
wanted to encourage, like communism, black for the bad ones. And he
structured to society so that if you were associated with any of the identities that
he had decided we're bad, you would face discrimination. And conversely, if
you were associated with any of the identities that he thought would achieve his communist
utopia, you were rewarded. It's it's di is the exact same thing.
It's it's an umbrella that has been placed over our society that is attempting to
re engineer it, not based on our understanding of diversity, equity, and
inclusion, but based on Marxist ideology, socialist ideology, communist ideology. Again.
I know I'm going to say this about every chapter because this is how
I felt when I was researching each of these things and writing the book.
But once you see it, you can't unee it. It's right there.
No, I totally agree. And on that class the question of class again,
do you think today's d EI promulgators and supporters are in the same way
that Mao saw himself doing any class warfare. I mean, it's such a
strange question because if you look at the BLM organizers, the official BLM organization
that said they were founded on Marxist principles and then stole basically donations or misappropriate
donations and built mansions or bought mansions with them, how do today's promulgators of
vocalism of d EI see themselves in that kind of class paradigm, if at
all. Well, that's the funny thing about Marxists and socialists and communists is
they're all, in addition to being bad people who have embraced to poisons ideology,
they're also just gigantic hypocrites, which I find to be I mean,
it is kind of funny. It's like Bernie Sanders with his vacation homes,
right, like this guy that thinks that we should spread the wealth around.
That's the thing. They view themselves as separate from the rules. They view
themselves as the elite. This always happens that every nation that has embraced any
form of socialism or communism or Marxism, you always have this uppercrupt of people
that the rules don't apply to because they have exempted themselves. They have exempted
themselves. Black Lives Matter is a perfect example of this. I mean,
the founders of the official Black Lives Matter movement, Alicia Garza and Patrese Coolers,
admit that they are trained Marxists. This is not something that we are
observing. This is not something we are inferring. They with their own words,
said that we are trained Marxists. And it makes sense then that the
Black Lives Matter movement calls for the abolition of the nuclear family. They want
to also not only defund the police, but abolish prisons, which ruins.
It would desecrate our society, It would destroy our culture. To have a
society that no longer had any laws or any enforcement mechanism. The ultimate goal,
you have to remember this, the ultimate goal of cultural Marxism isn't dropped
to twist our culture. It is a mechanism, adds Gromsey, lay out
to destroy the cultural institution in order to topple the governmental institutions. These people
are fundamentally anti capitalists, they're fundamentally anti West, and they're fundamentally anti American.
And that's why we're seeing I mean, that's why we're seeing what we're
seeing right now in our country with these attacks on our children. They want
to end our country. They know we're starting to catch on, which is
why they're ratcheting up their attacks because they realize they have laid the foundation,
They have seeded our institutions planted these poisonous seeds for almost one hundred years.
Now is the time that they either reap what has grown or it's over.
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I can imagine some parents, you know, maybe around where I grew
up outside Milwaukee. Uh, you know, hearing this, listening to a
podcast about this, reading the book and thinking to themselves. You know,
this idea that this is so intentional feels like a conspiracy. To me,
it can't be so, it can't be so concerted and so such a long
game, you know, going back all the way to to Marx, to
Gromsky, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but what do you what
do you say to sort of like the the average parent who doesn't pay too
much attention to politics, let alone these sort of esoteric conversations and just thinks,
what is happening to my kids? You know, I don't love what's
happening to my kids, but I also you know, maybe I am not
fully on board with the question of going back to Marx, etc. How
do you persuade a parent like that that this really is so deep and so
severe, the methods are so severe, the outcomes will be so severe.
How do you persuade someone like that? Well, first of all, I
totally get that. Let me tell a little story on my husband here.
A couple of years ago, when I was first pregnant with my daughter,
she's two and a half now, we were discussing, as all expectant parents,
do you know how we're going to raise her, what we're gonna what
we're gonna do for schooling with her? You know, And I am a
proponent of homeschooling. I was homeschooled K to twelve. He went to a
public school, and he wanted to send her to the local public school.
Potentially that was his position, And this is opening position in this discussion that
we were having. And I was like, yeah, Snowball's chance in hades
if that's going to happen because of and I think those are probably my exact
words. I was like, because of the critic ray theory and the trans
ideology and a moral relatives them. And his response was, well, that
doesn't happen here. This is like a rural area, This is a small
town. We're we're we moved away from California. We don't live in California
anymore. You know, we're not in We're not in New York City.
This is not this is not in Chicago. It's not a hotbed of liberalism
where we live or radical leftism where we live. And I said to him,
I was like, that's that's not the situation anymore. It's not just
liberal states where this these woke ideas are in classrooms. It's everywhere. And
he eventually did his research and discovered that that was in fact correct, that
this stuff is even in the schools in our local neighborhood. And we will
be we will be homeschooling our child for anybody wondering the outcome of that,
and we're both on board with it. But I think it has been a
very eye opening experience in the last couple of years for parents to make that
realization. My husband was not alone in that viewpoint. It's been very difficult
to go about your regular life. You know, you feel safe or a
prosper nation, You were doing well, You're just you know, you're just
doing your routine raising your kid, and then you realize that this is in
your kids classroom, it's in your kids' library, it's in your kids movies
and shows that they're watching, and it is a very jarring thing. I
think it's human beings. Our initial reaction when we encounter something that's shocking or
jarring is we are either in denial or we try to make excuses for it.
We try to relegate it in our mind too. Oh, maybe this
is just an isolated incident. Maybe this isn't something that's that's completely embedded into
our schools. I know that's how I am in general. I always try
to say, well, is this an isolated incident? But in this case
it's not. I try to lay out the information in the book that equips
parents and non parents. This is not just a matter of protecting your own
children. This is protecting our children as a nation, as our future generation.
But I lay out the case pretty clearly why it is. I think
too, to get a little philosophical here, I mean, when I was
writing this book, this was something I had already already grappled with, but
it became even clearer to me as I was researching and writing this book.
This was the This was not a fun book for right let's just say that
it's a very it's a very dark hole. And I tried to make it
as light and palatable as I could, but it's I mean, what's happening
in our nation is not pretty, and so when you're analyzing and researching where
exactly that's coming from, you can't expect the answer to be to be full
of daisies. But the question that I had to ask myself, but I
think a lot of people reading this book will have to grapple with, is
is this just a political fight? Is this just democrats versus Republican Is this
just your same old, same old bickering, or are we facing a battle
between good and evil? Because if you acknowledge the reality that there is,
in fact a spiritual battle between good and evil, which the majority of people
in our country do believe, then it's a lot easier to understand why the
left would spend almost a century, decades and decades and decades playing the long
game to try to capture our institutions in order to capture our children in an
order to stage in Marxist revolution. The United States of America is exactly as
Ronald Reagan said, we are a beacon of light on the hill, not
just for liberty, which is important, not just for freedom, not just
for protection of individual rights, but for the purpose of all of those things.
Right. This is something that I discussed in the last three chapters of
the book, is what is the definition of liberty? If we're talking about
how we want to order our society, we have to grapple with is liberty
a moral end in and of itself or is liberty the means to something greater?
And I would argue the latter that liberty is the means to something greater,
and that's something greater is our capacity to live in virtuous life, our
capacity to worship God and to raise our families according to our faith. That's
the real purpose of liberty in our nation, and that is an existential threat
to those who those who embrace a demonic ideology like communism. Now, and
I think having a comprehensive I think understanding of all of this informs your policy
prescription, which, as you said earlier, is a little bit different from
where Republicans want to go with it. Can you tell us more about where
you kind of depart from a lot of the talk in the Republican Party right
now? Yeah, and part of my book is what I would call it
critique of the Republican Party. But it's a critique gunt done without any animosity
because I used to be part of what I'm critiquing. So let me share
a story that's somewhat embarrassing because it still exists on YouTube, but I'll hope
that your viewers don't look it up and get a traping Again. I think
it was eight years ago. I think it was twenty sixteen at Sea Pack
with the first year that I was invited to speak at Deepack, and I
was supposed to speak like mid afternoon and probably like three or four o'clock,
and the headliner that day was Marco Rubio. Now remember the context here.
This was in the middle of the twenty sixteen Republican primary. There were so
many candidates, like probably the most fun Republican primary we've ever experienced, right,
definitely fun to watch, and a lot of the candidates were speaking at
Sea pat Marco Rubio was supposed to speak at noon, but he was running
late. I don't know if it was a delayed flight or traffic. He
was running about forty minutes late. So the organizing Seat Pack came up to
me since I would spending the day there even before I was scheduled to speak,
and they said, hey, are you prepared? Would you mind stepping
in and filling this spot, like can we move your speech from mid afternoon
to noon? And of course I was like, oh, heck yeah,
Like Marco Rubio had a packed room, there are more than five thousand people,
and all the major news networks were covering this. So I was delighted
by this. I go up, I give my speech open for Marco Rubio,
and then afterward I'm out in the lobby and there's journalists and news reporters
that are interviewing me. And there was one independent journalist who comes up to
me and asks me what my definition, how I would define liberty and what
role I think the government plays in our society. And I was kind of
surprised by this comment. I was like, oh, that's a good philosophical
question, although it was totally different than all the other questions. All the
other questions were like who's your candidate, like Marchael Rubio or Ted Cruise or
or Donald Trump. And I was like, oh, a philosophical question.
Great. So the answer I gave to this guy was essentially just repeating the
Declaration of Independence that liberty, you know, exists to will or our country.
Our government exists to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Very very very classic answer, I think. And his follow up question
was, okay, well, do you believe in the legalization of drugs?
And I was, and I was like drugs and he was talking about meth
and cocaine and fentanyl, and I was like, no, I don't.
And it turned out, by the way, just a little spoiler for the
story, he wasn't a journalist. He was an activist for the legalization of
cannabis, which makes a little bit more sense. But he said, well,
doesn't your position that drug legalization is wrong, or that I was against
the legalization of drugs? He like, doesn't that contradict your definition of liberty?
If your definition of liberty is that government should exist just to protect inherent
individual rights, otherwise should be kind of stay off my lawn, don't get
involved in what we want to do if we're not harming someone else or violating
someone else's right, doesn't your position contradict, doesn't position on drug legalization contradict
your definition of liberty? And I said, no, it didn't. But
this interaction that I had with this journalife has stuck in my head for the
last decade because it actually my definition of liberty that I gave it the time
actually does contradict my position on the legalization of hard drugs like cocaine and meth
and fentanyl. And I've thought about this so much in the last year as
I've been writing this book, because I knew even at the time ten years
ago, when I was brand new to being in this industry, I knew
at the time in my gut that it would be destructive for society if we
legalize meth, right, if we legalize fentanyl like this would be incredibly destructive
to our society. And yet my definition of what liberty should be in our
role of government was wrong. And so it started that conversation started a slow
evolution in my mind. It's something the biggest thing in politics that have ever
changed my mind on is how we define liberty. And it's how I came
to the conclusion that liberty is not intended to be an end in itself.
If it was, then what David French once said that Drag Queen Story Hour
when grown men dress as sexualized versions of women in gy right in front of
little children, because they have the freedom to do that. It would be
a moral thing in and of itself. And I think we all know that
that's a stupid idea, that that's wrong. We all know that that's false.
But if liberty was an end in and of itself, then that would
be true. So that's a huge contradiction that I grappled with, and I
realized that liberty is not absolute freedom, that the definition of liberty is actually
societal order, meaning an ordered society or ordered liberty. That's Edmund Burke's description
of it, is ordered liberty, and that ordered liberty. The definition of
that is the means to something greater, and that something greater is justice and
justice. And this is where this is not just my opinion, by the
way, I want to back up just for a second and say this is
if you look at the framers of our Constitution. The framers of our Constitution
created our founding document along the lines of liberty, not as an end into
itself, but as the means to something greater. That's something greater defined by
James Madison in Federalis number fifty one as justice as justice. So the very
long answer to your question, Emily, is that we have to grapple with
this as a Republican Party because the Republican Party has embraced what I would consider
to be the more libertarian definition of liberty, that government get off my law,
and you don't have any Government shouldn't be involved in being the arbiter of
anything that's right or wrong unless it violates someone else's inherent human And I would
argue that the Republican Party has gotten it so wrong that it has allowed the
left to capture our institutions because we, as the Republican Party, have surrendered
morality in culture and in law, and there's really no such thing as neutrality
in culture and law. Either one side is going to dominate or the other
side is going to dominate. When we withdrew in the name of libertarian absolute
freedom, the other side simply filled the void. So now, if we
as conservatives want to eradicate this kind of poison from our society, we have
to embrace our constitutional heritage, a definition and understanding that liberty is a means
to something greater, a means to justice and justice. Edmund Burke described the
definition of justice as original justice, that's with a capital O and a capital
J, original justice, which is defined by Judaeo Christian morality. If we
do that, we can eradicate s Marxism from our society. But if we
don't, if the Republican Party continues the way that it is now, then
I fear for what our nation will become. Well, it's been interesting actually
over the last week or so, especially since Tucker Carlson interviewed Enter Taate,
to watch how you've covered that particular issue, because it's so important and there
have been so it is so important because there's so many people who do pay
attention to Andrew Taate. And I guess this is my way of asking,
you know, when some solutions start bubbling up on what people see as the
dissident kind of space, not the right necessarily, but you know, people
who are against the establishment, Entertain is seen as an example of that.
This is the guy who says he's bucking the sort of political establishment, the
global political establishment. But if it's obviously, as Soup pointed out, wrong
to kind of flock into the enter take camp and say this is the answer
to the problems that the global political establishment has created. To your point about
what is right versus. On the one hand, we can say we know
what's wrong, but what is right is another question. And I wanted to
ask you about entertain as an example of how easy it is for people on
the right to go wrong when they're trying to meet some of these massive challenges.
Yeah, you define it really well when you say, and it's easy
to see what's wrong. Because what I will give Ander take credit for is
that he has diagnosed the cultural ill that our society, not just American society,
but Western society, suffers from, and that is our society vilifies men.
We demonize men. We tell men that traditional masculinity, which is the
desire to protect and provide and procreate. We've said that this is oppressive,
we've said that it's poison, and we've tried. Our society tries to neuter
men, we try to feminize men. This is a very bad thing for
individual men and for our society as a whole. And men, even if
they are not conservative, even if they are not religious, understand this because
this is just part of our nature as human beings. The nature of man
is to want to have masculine strength to protect a family, and a society
to provide for a wife and children to procreate. This is normal, this
is good. True masculinity is a gift from God. And so when Andertake
diagnoses the problem, he diagnoses it correctly. That there are forces in our
country and around the world that are attacking men. Okay, great, So
what does he prescribe as the antidote. Then what he prescribes is the antidote
is essentially poison. His own life is an example of this. He prescribes
pornography. He runs a pornography business. He prescribes materialism. He says,
truth, strength, and respect come from if you own these these expensive cars
of Bugatti, if you own that, then you'll be respected. The exploitation
of women. He dominates women, obviously, exploits them for pornography, and
then worship of self. That you should try to be the highest on the
food chain. Other people should only look to you, and you should.
You should were idolize yourself. This prescription for young men is particularly poison because
it's the most self destructive behaviors that I can think of. And it's been
funny to me to watch even people that are kind of red pilled, kind
of on the right fall for Andrew Tate because it is an example of Okay,
we all recognize what is wrong, but then what is the prescription?
What are we going to offer? What is right? What is the alternative?
And the alternative is not what Andrew Tait is offering. I mean er
Taate is committing an immense amount of evil, someone said someone sent to me
on Twitter earlier. Because I've been engaging in this in the past couple of
days, this conversation about Andrew Tait after tuber Carlson interviewed him, I thought
it was necessary for us to talk about him because he's not only the most
googled man in the world. This interview with tuber Carlson has been viewed over
ninety million times. It is the most watched interview ever. I'm talking more
views than when Bill Clinton was interviewed after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. More more
views than when Diana Princess Diana was interviewed after the Charles shooting scandal. More
interviews, are more views than any interview in the history of television. This
he's an incredibly influential person. Young men are listening to him. And someone
on Twitter said to me, well, I can't tell you how many young
men I've talked to who have described the positive influence that Andrew Tait has had
in my life. I actually have ambition now. I go to the gym,
and I was like, Okay, going to the gym is good,
physical health is good. But is that better? Is that more right than
the destructive message of pornography, materialism, exploitation of women, and the idols
and idolizing yourself? And I would argue, no, it's not even close.
Going to the gym is nothing compared to the destructive things that Andrew Taate
is preaching. And again it's a good example of what the right has neglected
to do in the last. In the last, I don't know certainly my
lifetime, and I suspect much longer than that, because we don't anymore have
role models that are prominent who are actually offering not just the proper diagnosis,
but the proper prescription for our cultural ills, and that leads us to be
vulnerable to like garbage from Entertained. Well, my last question for you is
on It actually goes back to that quote I read from. I think this
is just from the very beginning of your book. You say, this is
a decisive moment for the left. It's a last chance because of their victories,
their time to impose Marxism on our nation is either now or never.
They are pulling out all the stops, and embedded in that is an interesting
sense of optimism. And in the context I think also of the beginning of
the book, there is a lot of optimists and talk about wins that not
just Republicans, not just conservatives, but sort of common sense people have one
over the last couple of years. And so Liz, I wanted to ask
you about that. You know, where does that optimism come from? Um?
You know a lot of people feel really pessimistic right now, especially looking
at the Culture War. They feel like maybe there's no way out or our
chances are slim. So why why do you feel like in this moment there
is so much momentum against Marxism to the point where it's it's a to borrow
a phrase, a tipping point. Actually it's a it's a of perhaps no
return for the Marxists. I feel optimistic for a couple of reasons. On
a personal level, I know as a practicing Christian that good ultimately triumphs in
the end over evil. I know that doesn't mean in every individual circumstance,
as we live our lives, that good triumphs over evil in isolated circumstances,
but in the end, good will prevail. I also feel optimistic because perhaps
it was COVID, perhaps it was something else. I suspect it was all
of this evil becoming so prominent during COVID, especially to parents we conserve,
it's got a glimpse of what the depths of this evil, and it elicited
a gut reaction in people who might not have considered themselves to be politically active,
who may not have spent a lot of time thinking about the philosophy of
different Marxist ideologies. But it elicted this gut reaction of revulsion towards this evil.
And it reminded me that as human beings, we are all endowed with
the capacity to reason, and this capacity to reason is in alignment with natural
law. I think Republicans and Conservatives have begun to shy away from talking about
God and talking about religion. They've tried to make purely secular arguments for our
policies for a long time now, and I think it's a mistake. I
think that it's incredibly naive for conservatives to think that you can entirely divorce politics
and religion. Not that I'm advocating for a theocracy by any means, but
it's a fallacy to think that we could order society properly without acknowledging the definition
of rights and wrong, moral and immoral, liberty, and justice. And
the true definition of those words is from the Bible. It's it's from the
Christian heritage, it's from the Jewish heritage, it's from God. And it
reminded me people's gut reactions to this evil, even when they had not been
involved in politics, reminded me that this natural law exists in each and every
one of us. So you don't have to be political, you don't have
to like politics to fundamentally understand when something is right and when something is wrong.
Now that sense of right and wrong, I'll call it. Our consciences
can be dulled, it can be indoctrinated. That's one of the reasons why
the left is going after our children, because they want to try to warp
the minds and the souls and the spirit and the conscious conscience of our children.
Before that conscience have had a chance to develop properly in a well ordered
way. But we all have that, and knowing that encourages me because I
I can zoom out and take a step back from these cultural battles, and
I think, listen, when people are presented with the idea that there is
right and there is wrong, and that we as a nation owe it to
our children to create a society where right can thrive and wrong does not,
then people get on board with that. People understand that we see people's eyes
open to the reality of the political enemy that we're facing. They are now
willing to say, oh, our institutions have been captured, So how did
that happen? Who captured them? And why? The fact that they are
now well red billed, for lack of a better word, the fact that
they're now red billed just enough to be able to entertain those questions says to
me that the ground is tilled, the ground is fertile. For I guess
what I would call a counter revolution against this mark societyology. I have a
ton of hope. I would not do what I'm doing, spend my days
fighting this fight if I did not think that we could win. Hmm,
that's a great note to leave it on because I so rarely feel optimistic,
but Liz, you have brought the optimism and I really appreciate it. The
book is called Hide Your Children, Exposing the Marxist behind the Attack on America's
Kids. It's gonna be on in September twenty six, but you can preorder
it now. Definitely pre order your copy. Liz, thank you so much
for joining the show. Thank you, Emily, I appreciate it. Of
course you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily
Joshnski, culture editor here at the Federalist. Will be back soon with more.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. I
heard a fame by the reason, then it faded away.