1 00:00:18,359 --> 00:00:22,440 We're back with another edition of The Federalist for Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashinsky, 2 00:00:22,480 --> 00:00:25,120 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the 3 00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:28,559 show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on ex at fdr 4 00:00:28,719 --> 00:00:32,359 LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course 5 00:00:32,399 --> 00:00:36,280 to the premium version of the Federalist dot com as well. Today we are 6 00:00:36,359 --> 00:00:40,039 joined by Jay Richards. He is the director of the Device Center for Life, 7 00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:43,960 Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation. He's also a Senior Fellow 8 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:48,039 over at the Discovery Institute and is the co author of the new book Fight 9 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:53,079 the Good Fight, How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture 10 00:00:53,079 --> 00:00:56,759 War. He wrote that book with James Robinson. Jay, thanks for joining 11 00:00:56,759 --> 00:01:00,159 the show. Brings me with you. Yes, so, could you tell 12 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:04,000 us a little bit about the background story of this book. What made you 13 00:01:04,319 --> 00:01:08,400 want to write Fight the Good Fight. It's a sort of practical book, 14 00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:14,439 was it, Jay, Yeah, practically exactly right. Well, James Robson 15 00:01:14,439 --> 00:01:17,480 and I said, just a little background on this. I'm basically a Catholic 16 00:01:17,519 --> 00:01:21,680 academic that was taught at teaching a Catholic you for many years been at Heritage 17 00:01:21,719 --> 00:01:25,400 about three years and my friend James Robson, this is a guy that did 18 00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:29,920 evangelistic crusades at Billy Graham in the nineteen seventies and for the last twenty years 19 00:01:29,959 --> 00:01:36,000 has had a show on Christian TV with his beautiful wife Betty, and we 20 00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:41,120 just connected weirdly in coincidentally about thirteen years ago and ended up writing a book 21 00:01:41,159 --> 00:01:47,159 together called Indivisible, making the case for why economic and social conservatism ought to 22 00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:52,519 go together. Anybody's old enough to remember the debate when Barack Obama won the 23 00:01:52,519 --> 00:01:56,319 presidency in two thousand and eight. The sort of story on the right afterwards 24 00:01:56,719 --> 00:01:57,879 was that, well, we got to just get rid of all this social 25 00:01:57,920 --> 00:02:01,480 conservative stuff talking about that. So we just thought that's a bad idea. 26 00:02:01,959 --> 00:02:06,959 And so that's why I wrote this book together in twenty twelve, and it 27 00:02:07,079 --> 00:02:09,000 ended up getting a lot of attention because that was kind of a hot topic 28 00:02:09,159 --> 00:02:15,400 at the time, and James wanted to say so I would just reissue Indivisible 29 00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:16,599 with some updates, and then I looked at it. I thought, it's 30 00:02:16,599 --> 00:02:20,680 a different universe. It's on twenty twelve anymore. We got to do a 31 00:02:20,680 --> 00:02:23,479 completely different book, and so that's actually what started this, but we wanted 32 00:02:23,520 --> 00:02:29,479 it to be really practical so that it covers lots of issues that they say 33 00:02:30,319 --> 00:02:32,960 in conservatives going to need to be conversant in from trade and the environment in 34 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:38,719 China to marriage and family and life. But it's also it reflects a discovery 35 00:02:38,719 --> 00:02:45,000 that I've made, honestly just since getting involved in the gender ideology fight at 36 00:02:45,039 --> 00:02:47,719 the Heritage Foundation. I mean, I've been involved in these kind of culture 37 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:53,240 and politics debates for a long time, and on almost all the issues that 38 00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:58,280 I've been involved with before, or the people that I was working with are 39 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:00,000 sort of like me, you know, I Joe that if you're involved in 40 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:05,599 the pro life movement or you're involved in the debate over marriage, it looks 41 00:03:05,719 --> 00:03:10,439 kind of like the Heritage Foundation internship pool, right. The gender ideology fight 42 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:14,759 is just nothing like that. Yeah, there's lots of social conservatives, but 43 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:19,800 there's also just lots of parents of no particular political or religious persuasion that have 44 00:03:19,879 --> 00:03:23,560 been activated in the last two or three years. There are lesbian groups that 45 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:28,719 are involved because they're mad because there's boys in girls sports and in women's bathrooms. 46 00:03:28,919 --> 00:03:34,039 They're atheist, evolutionary biologists who believe that biology is real and don't buy 47 00:03:34,039 --> 00:03:38,400 this kind of gender ideology. Whoy. This is a completely different constituency of 48 00:03:38,439 --> 00:03:42,719 people that I've for found myself in, and what I've discovered is that actually 49 00:03:42,759 --> 00:03:46,800 we have a lot in common, even though until recently a lot of the 50 00:03:46,840 --> 00:03:49,800 people that are involved in this fight would have thought of themselves as very much 51 00:03:49,800 --> 00:03:53,400 on the left and not culture warriors and definitely not cultural conservatives. And so 52 00:03:53,439 --> 00:03:58,960 that's this idea of an alliance of faith and reason that we're in a different 53 00:03:59,039 --> 00:04:02,599 moment in which sort of mainstream culture, the commanding heights of culture are. 54 00:04:03,039 --> 00:04:09,039 They're not just hostile to the concerns of conservatives, they're hostile to public reason 55 00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:14,639 itself. They're fundamentally irrational, and in a crisis moment like that, there's 56 00:04:14,680 --> 00:04:17,800 an opportunity for people that might never have thought of themselves as allies to come 57 00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:23,279 together. Okay, So there's a lot of interesting points to kind of get 58 00:04:23,319 --> 00:04:27,560 through there, Jay, because I wanted to ask, Actually, it's fascinating 59 00:04:27,600 --> 00:04:31,959 you were talking about maybe reissuing that Obama era book, because one of the 60 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:40,759 things that's happened in the years since people started reconsidering the emergent conservative consensus after 61 00:04:40,759 --> 00:04:44,240 Obama was elected. A lot of people think the twenty twelve Republican Autopsy and 62 00:04:44,639 --> 00:04:47,519 everything that it prescribed. But one of the things that's happened is is fusionism 63 00:04:47,639 --> 00:04:53,160 itself. And there's a nerdy conversation within the conservative movement. But this idea 64 00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:58,560 that you're tying fiscal conservatism, national defense, and social conservatism together, and 65 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:01,800 that is the sort of essential fabric of the conservative movement that has come under 66 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:09,160 fire, particularly because of the tension between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism. Can 67 00:05:09,199 --> 00:05:11,959 you speak a little bit to how you deal with that in the book and 68 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:15,839 as you've been thinking about these issues in some ways, Emily, I think 69 00:05:15,959 --> 00:05:19,360 of what I'm just calling this alliance of faith and reason as what follows, 70 00:05:20,079 --> 00:05:26,920 you know, let's say the kind of conservative consensus or coalition that formed after 71 00:05:26,959 --> 00:05:31,319 World War Two and worked really, really well to win the Cold War. 72 00:05:31,399 --> 00:05:35,079 It did a really good job of that, and I still think any serious 73 00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:41,199 conservatism happen to integrate economic wisdom. We don't just get to jettison the law 74 00:05:41,199 --> 00:05:44,399 of supply and demand or something like that because it doesn't poll well. It's 75 00:05:45,319 --> 00:05:48,920 the same time, there's a particular type of radical libertarianism that just sees the 76 00:05:48,959 --> 00:05:53,800 only political good is everybody getting to do what they want to do, which 77 00:05:53,879 --> 00:05:58,199 actually is a really bad political philosophy. And so you've got to find some 78 00:05:58,279 --> 00:06:00,800 way of kind of integrating these things. And my own view is, of 79 00:06:00,839 --> 00:06:03,199 course, I mean, at the moment, the right is just the source 80 00:06:03,240 --> 00:06:09,199 of a great deal of ferment. This book that James Jobson I wrote together 81 00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:13,759 is a book written by two Christians that think the Christian faith has something very 82 00:06:13,759 --> 00:06:16,519 specific to say about our life together and about politics at the same time. 83 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:20,800 We don't think, as speaking as a Catholic, I don't think integralism is 84 00:06:20,839 --> 00:06:24,439 a great idea. I don't think that we're going to get a Catholic confessional 85 00:06:24,519 --> 00:06:29,639 state anytime soon. Evangelicals, we're not talking about Christian nationalism, and I'm 86 00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:32,199 not quite sure what anybody means by that, but we just thought, okay, 87 00:06:32,199 --> 00:06:38,319 look, I actually everything the Founder's thought about this stuff is more or 88 00:06:38,399 --> 00:06:42,439 less and are you right? The free exercise of religion involves being able to 89 00:06:42,480 --> 00:06:46,639 freely exercise your religion not just in worship in church, but also to let 90 00:06:46,680 --> 00:06:49,920 it affect your politics. That doesn't mean you're going to establish the nice and 91 00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:54,639 creed and force everybody to adhere to it. And so I just think there's 92 00:06:54,879 --> 00:06:59,879 actually a whole lot that can be resuscitated and retained of the American experiment, 93 00:07:00,040 --> 00:07:02,639 and it's not dead yet. That's sort of my worry among my fellow Christians 94 00:07:02,639 --> 00:07:05,759 that are sort of you know, new on the right is that they sort 95 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:10,399 of think, Okay, well, the American airman's loss, let's sort of 96 00:07:10,399 --> 00:07:12,360 see what the next thing is. Now, what the next thing is a 97 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:15,800 different kind of conservative coalition? And that's still actually just now being built. 98 00:07:16,399 --> 00:07:20,600 So interesting. And one of the reasons that's interesting is that again emergent conservative 99 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:27,160 consensus after President Obama, former President Obama was elected and Rodney lost the nomination, 100 00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:30,480 you know, sort of like conservatives made peace with what your Mazzoni has 101 00:07:30,519 --> 00:07:35,600 since described as the privatization of virtue. And I'm so curious based on this 102 00:07:35,639 --> 00:07:41,639 book, Jay, some of the ways you think conservatives can persuade the people 103 00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:44,879 that you've come into contact with, and the gender ideology, the anti gender 104 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:48,759 ideology movement, Yeah, and some of these new coalitions that you've described, 105 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:54,199 how can Americans become comfortable again? And even looking back to the Founders, 106 00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:59,480 who have some great quotes on this, on you know, an unprivatizing virtue, 107 00:07:59,519 --> 00:08:03,040 making virtual you a sort of public a public experience. Again. Well, 108 00:08:03,040 --> 00:08:05,639 and so this is it's funny because if you look at the Founders, 109 00:08:05,639 --> 00:08:09,399 the Founders believed, you, though they're generally, you know, kind of 110 00:08:09,519 --> 00:08:15,680 various forms of orthodox and heterodox Protestant, for the most part, they still 111 00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:20,160 believed in natural reason and the natural law. So they believed that certain moral 112 00:08:20,279 --> 00:08:24,680 truths, like the truth that you shouldn't torture people for the fun of it, 113 00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:26,600 or you shouldn't torment children for the fun of it, right, that 114 00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:31,399 that's knowable by reason without revelation. The modernity, though, you know, 115 00:08:31,639 --> 00:08:35,840 in the twentieth century, sort of constricts reason and says, well, moral 116 00:08:35,879 --> 00:08:39,679 truths are just purely the result of revelation. That's crazy. Even if you're 117 00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:41,759 an atheist, you know that murder is wrong. You surely know that better 118 00:08:41,799 --> 00:08:46,039 than you know any claim from science or history. And so for religious folks, 119 00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:50,840 we got to get used to knowing how do you make public moral arguments 120 00:08:50,879 --> 00:08:56,879 explicitly moral arguments, without making arguments that are based on sectarianism or special revelation. 121 00:08:56,200 --> 00:09:01,679 Because that tends to be what we Christians often do. We said we 122 00:09:01,679 --> 00:09:03,399 if I'm going to make a moral case in the public square, that means 123 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:07,200 I'm going to make a biblical case if you're an evangelical, or I'm going 124 00:09:07,200 --> 00:09:09,759 to appeal to the Church fathers if you're Catholic. No, there are moral 125 00:09:09,799 --> 00:09:16,879 truths accessible by reason that can be the basis for our policy claims. I 126 00:09:16,879 --> 00:09:20,919 mean, the truth matter is any public policy you advocate, you think it 127 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:26,000 ought to be implemented, and if you say ah, that is that is 128 00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:28,840 the force of a kind of moral conviction. And so I just think that's 129 00:09:30,240 --> 00:09:35,000 what's sort of unfortunate is that the very people Americans that ought best to be 130 00:09:35,039 --> 00:09:39,039 able to do this have either not known how to do it or have been 131 00:09:39,159 --> 00:09:41,480 sort of afraid to do it. But we're at a moment when I mean, 132 00:09:41,519 --> 00:09:46,840 look, what is one of the most basic deliverances of natural reason that 133 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:50,759 is absolutely universal at every time and place in history and every religion and every 134 00:09:50,799 --> 00:09:54,559 culture, is that there are males and females that they're out there, right. 135 00:09:54,639 --> 00:09:58,840 This isn't something you impose they're just boys and there's girls. Everyone knows 136 00:09:58,879 --> 00:10:05,240 the correctly right and now yes, and yet that's apparently this is an outrageous 137 00:10:05,240 --> 00:10:07,600 claim that might get us pulled from YouTube. I mean, that's how far 138 00:10:07,679 --> 00:10:11,639 gone we are. And in a situation like that, this is different notice 139 00:10:11,679 --> 00:10:15,080 from saying, okay, well, if you really study embryology, you will 140 00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:18,559 discover that human life begins at fertilization. That's true, but also very few 141 00:10:18,559 --> 00:10:24,840 people have access to fertilization right. Very few people have access to a direct 142 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:28,840 inspection of embryology. Everybody has access to male and female. Now the commanding 143 00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:33,960 heights of culture deny that we are in a different political and cultural situation than 144 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:37,480 we have ever been in before. That's scary, but I think it's also 145 00:10:37,840 --> 00:10:41,320 sort of opportunity because we're getting to see, oh, you know, there 146 00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:46,480 are these intellect, actual trains of thought that are about to drive our civilization 147 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:52,440 off a ravine. And now almost everybody has to see it, so that 148 00:10:52,559 --> 00:10:56,720 parents that were engated in communities in Florida that weren't worried about all this culture 149 00:10:56,759 --> 00:11:03,000 work stuff suddenly realize if I don't take charge of my child's education, they're 150 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:07,799 going to be removing body parts before they're eighteen. And I was talking to 151 00:11:07,799 --> 00:11:11,799 another guest on the show recently about what we've seen come out of Europe. 152 00:11:11,840 --> 00:11:15,879 And you're obviously very very familiar with what happened with Tavistock in the UK and 153 00:11:15,919 --> 00:11:20,279 what happened at the what's happened at some of the Scandinavian gender clinics where you 154 00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:24,320 have sort of these concentrated samples. You know, everyone goes through the socialized 155 00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:28,360 healthcare system in these countries, which actually gives us an interesting window, and 156 00:11:28,399 --> 00:11:31,759 we've seen a reversal in their cultures in these in those countries, and I 157 00:11:31,799 --> 00:11:35,679 would argue, you know, we're starting to see at least something of a 158 00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:41,000 reversal here if you're looking at polling all of that. So the first part 159 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:43,600 of that question, Jay would be do you agree with that? And be 160 00:11:43,799 --> 00:11:46,320 what can you know people fighting the good fight here in the States maybe even 161 00:11:46,399 --> 00:11:48,919 learn from that. Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, if there's 162 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:52,639 one benefit to having a centralized healthcare system is that you have all the data 163 00:11:52,639 --> 00:11:56,759 housed somewhere. So in the case of Tavistock in the UK, I mean, 164 00:11:56,759 --> 00:12:00,639 this was the one pediatric gender clinic in the country and they noticed that 165 00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:03,919 from two thousand and nine to twenty nineteen, there was a forty four hundred 166 00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:09,159 percent increase in the number of kids that were being referred to their clinic with 167 00:12:09,279 --> 00:12:13,639 gender dysphoria. That's expensive if you start giving them cross sex hormones and puberty 168 00:12:13,639 --> 00:12:16,879 blockers and you know, to say nothing of surgery. So they had a 169 00:12:16,960 --> 00:12:22,320 kind of economic motivation to actually look, Okay, what's the evidence that this 170 00:12:22,399 --> 00:12:26,759 actually helps kids? So we do this the same thing in Sweden, now, 171 00:12:26,879 --> 00:12:31,320 Norway and Denmark and Finland, all countries, and no one thinks these 172 00:12:31,320 --> 00:12:35,279 are sort of right wing religious countries, but they did have access to the 173 00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:39,440 empirical data and they were open to it. Now, I don't have a 174 00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:45,799 good explanation for why woke craziness seems to be seems to have gone to seed 175 00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:48,320 more in the United States than a lot of these left wing countries. I 176 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:52,320 just don't have a good account of that. But there's no doubt about the 177 00:12:52,360 --> 00:12:56,440 fact that these kind of what we call woke ideology. It just seems to 178 00:12:56,480 --> 00:13:01,679 be its most extreme in the United States. I think the pediatric gender clinics 179 00:13:01,279 --> 00:13:09,000 before states close all of these, I think they'll probably quit operating literally and 180 00:13:09,039 --> 00:13:13,200 figuratively on kids because of civil suits. I think they're going to get just 181 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:20,799 sued into oblivion by lawyers that are representing the de transitioners. And so that's 182 00:13:20,840 --> 00:13:22,399 how I think it's going to end, and it'll end in five years. 183 00:13:22,759 --> 00:13:30,000 With the pediatric medicine, we still have to fight this toxic ideology and the 184 00:13:30,039 --> 00:13:33,279 culture and in schools which tells kids that they could be born in the wrong 185 00:13:33,320 --> 00:13:35,120 body and if they're uncomfortable with their body, they should change it. That's 186 00:13:35,159 --> 00:13:39,399 a completely insane and toxic idea that's going to be a fight of a generation. 187 00:13:39,799 --> 00:13:45,360 I actually think the gender medicine fight. The virtues of our system is 188 00:13:45,399 --> 00:13:48,840 that it's fairly easy to sue doctors, and so for good or for real, 189 00:13:48,879 --> 00:13:52,879 I think that's the way that part is going to end. So many 190 00:13:52,879 --> 00:13:56,120 people have talked to in this space, and you're such a leader in the 191 00:13:56,159 --> 00:14:00,559 space, and thank God for the Heritage Foundation and all of your work being 192 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:03,320 a leader in this space. It's been absolutely critical. But one of the 193 00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:09,320 things I hear so oftener that I want to I'm just curious about is why 194 00:14:09,440 --> 00:14:13,480 did we sort of miss this on the right. I don't think we did 195 00:14:13,559 --> 00:14:16,960 miss it. I think on the right, actually people were sort of ringing 196 00:14:16,039 --> 00:14:20,320 the alarm bells forever, saying this is going to happen, This is going 197 00:14:20,360 --> 00:14:22,639 to happen. Although even as I talked to so many people who are doing 198 00:14:22,639 --> 00:14:26,080 great work in the space, they say, you know, ten years ago, 199 00:14:26,559 --> 00:14:28,840 I never thought that it would have gone this far, this fast. 200 00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:31,360 So Jay, my question is sort of about that, you know, looking 201 00:14:31,399 --> 00:14:35,960 ahead at how this can be fought. I feel like kind of dissecting what 202 00:14:35,039 --> 00:14:39,360 already happened is really intructive to figuring out how to fight it in the future. 203 00:14:39,759 --> 00:14:41,440 It really is, and I think it's actually a perfect storm. So 204 00:14:41,559 --> 00:14:46,080 part of this was just a coalitional pivot on the left. If you think 205 00:14:46,080 --> 00:14:50,039 about the human rights campaign over here, a couple of miles from from Hair 206 00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:54,200 in twenty fifteen, o Bergofel happened. They had spent years trying to get 207 00:14:54,799 --> 00:14:58,559 marriage laws and states that said marriages between a man and a woman overturned. 208 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:01,720 The Supreme Court did forum in twenty fifteen, and so you might say, 209 00:15:01,720 --> 00:15:05,480 okay, well that you guys are sort of done here, right, go 210 00:15:05,480 --> 00:15:09,320 ahead and do something else. They didn't do that. They already had a 211 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:15,600 plan in place to pivot to so called trans issue and their donors more or 212 00:15:15,639 --> 00:15:18,240 less did the same thing as well, and there are some little I mean, 213 00:15:18,279 --> 00:15:20,960 it sounds like a bad James Bond screenplay, but there are a few 214 00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:26,000 trans billionaires that have helped fund this, so that that's part of the story 215 00:15:26,039 --> 00:15:30,480 of what happened sort of in the left wing coalition is a pivot to this 216 00:15:30,559 --> 00:15:33,759 issue very quickly. But I honestly, I don't think it could have happened 217 00:15:33,799 --> 00:15:39,360 nearly as quickly as it has if it weren't for the technological capacity for ideas 218 00:15:39,399 --> 00:15:45,440 to spread at the speed of light. And I'm talking about social media networks, 219 00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:50,240 I'm talking about broadband connectivity and smartphones. I mean, the worst ideas 220 00:15:50,279 --> 00:15:56,000 in the world. Until two thousand and seven, it can only spread at 221 00:15:56,039 --> 00:15:58,000 a certain speed. But after two thousand and seven, that's the year that 222 00:15:58,000 --> 00:16:03,039 the iPhone was first introduced. Within a few years, it was possible for 223 00:16:03,120 --> 00:16:08,559 an idea to spread basically across the planet simultaneously. And so that's why when 224 00:16:08,559 --> 00:16:12,240 we study the kids that get sucked into this gender cult, what we discover 225 00:16:12,360 --> 00:16:18,360 is they very often are turned on to it initially by some social media influencer 226 00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:21,159 that they are following, and then if they happened to me in a school 227 00:16:21,159 --> 00:16:26,840 that's also giving them the conceptual categories in the curriculum. They're just absolute sitting 228 00:16:26,919 --> 00:16:29,799 ducks. So it's almost tempting to say, Wow, this thing had to 229 00:16:29,799 --> 00:16:33,120 be orchestrated from above. There was a little of that, but I honestly 230 00:16:33,159 --> 00:16:37,080 think it was just as kind of spontaneous. It's like the first time we 231 00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:41,279 had the technology logical capacity for bad ideas to spread. That's I think this 232 00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:45,000 is just when all this happened. I think we saw the same thing with 233 00:16:45,039 --> 00:16:48,559 the lockdowns during COVID. It wouldn't have been possible to lock everyone down on 234 00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:53,759 the planet prior to twenty twenty because that's the first pandemic we had in which 235 00:16:53,759 --> 00:16:57,720 we had access to kind of information as a disease vector, which is what 236 00:16:57,799 --> 00:17:03,320 we have now. Yeah, that's really interesting. Again back to the conversation 237 00:17:03,399 --> 00:17:07,440 about fusionism and how some of these corporations, and again Heritage has been really 238 00:17:07,440 --> 00:17:11,400 good in the space, how some of these tech platforms or massive corporations and 239 00:17:11,640 --> 00:17:14,039 actually, you know, another thing that you guys have been great about is 240 00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:18,119 big pharmas and in this space, Jake, can you talk about that, 241 00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:26,759 But also in that context of conservatives, limited government conservatives should be thinking about 242 00:17:26,400 --> 00:17:32,559 the I guess, the economic rights of some of these big corporations absolutely. 243 00:17:32,599 --> 00:17:36,240 I mean, here's long story short. You know, I've got a book 244 00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:38,079 that came out originally in two thousand and nine called Money Greeting God, which 245 00:17:38,119 --> 00:17:42,519 was really just an attempt to respond to religious Americans that were still believing clueless 246 00:17:42,559 --> 00:17:47,920 things about socialism. And they have the same dumb thoughts that people had the 247 00:17:48,039 --> 00:17:52,880 nineteen eighties before the Soviet Union collapsed. That was a concern right, Soviet 248 00:17:52,880 --> 00:17:57,000 communism and nationalization of industry, that was a concern up until the collapse of 249 00:17:57,039 --> 00:18:00,839 the Soviet Union. That is not the main thing I'm worried about now. 250 00:18:02,200 --> 00:18:06,400 Barack Obama did not want to collectivize the farms. What we actually have, 251 00:18:06,519 --> 00:18:10,039 the danger we have is a weird kind of blob in which you have a 252 00:18:10,119 --> 00:18:17,720 fusion, a fusionism of the corporate realm, the administrative, a regulatory state, 253 00:18:18,079 --> 00:18:21,519 and a nonprofit sector, which is often forgotten, so that instead of 254 00:18:21,559 --> 00:18:25,519 thinking of these as sort of independent social spheres, which you've got a nonprofit 255 00:18:25,599 --> 00:18:27,480 sector, you've got the corporate for profit sector, and you've got government. 256 00:18:29,119 --> 00:18:33,880 You get a fusion of these things, a weird kind of collusive blob. 257 00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:37,559 So that really what we're dealing with, our kind of chief adversary is a 258 00:18:37,640 --> 00:18:42,519 type of corporatism. And it's complicated because it's tough, because how do you 259 00:18:42,839 --> 00:18:48,079 separate this when you have a system in which the regulators of corporations go on 260 00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:52,599 to be the lobbyists for the very corporations that they were regulating, or they 261 00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:56,160 go on to be on the board of the corporation. I mean, this 262 00:18:56,279 --> 00:19:00,279 is what happens in this town. And it's a much more difficult problem to 263 00:19:00,359 --> 00:19:04,119 solve. But the first order of business is to understand that's what we're dealing 264 00:19:04,119 --> 00:19:07,519 with. We're dealing with kind of a corporatist blob, and it has a 265 00:19:07,519 --> 00:19:11,680 particular characteristic in the US. And then that's why you're dealing with in China 266 00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:18,319 too. China is not the Soviet Union under Stalinism or in stalin it's a 267 00:19:18,440 --> 00:19:22,880 kind of fascism in which the state is much larger and is and controls the 268 00:19:22,920 --> 00:19:26,920 corporations. In the US, it's not always clear to me who's on top 269 00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,720 and who's on bottom. Is it the corporation, is it in the case 270 00:19:29,759 --> 00:19:33,519 of pharma. Is it the big pharma companies or is it the regulators in 271 00:19:33,559 --> 00:19:37,480 the case of pharma. Do you have another component that haven't even mentioned, 272 00:19:37,519 --> 00:19:41,559 which is the media. The media are completely bought and sold by the pharma 273 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:45,759 companies because they're able to advertise this stuff, and so they're terrified to actually 274 00:19:45,799 --> 00:19:49,519 expose it. That's just more complicated saying, look, all those spheres you 275 00:19:49,559 --> 00:19:53,759 thought were separate, the elites in those spheres, they're all working together. 276 00:19:55,400 --> 00:20:00,359 That's more complicated than the kind of cleanness of Soviet Communism, which was kind 277 00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:07,240 of easy to point out and identify. And what can Americans do? What 278 00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:11,359 are some of the most powerful things Americans can do to fight the good fight? 279 00:20:11,559 --> 00:20:15,640 Jane. Maybe in people's individual lives, maybe in their corporate lives. 280 00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,160 I don't mean that sort of literal corporate, but in the sense that they're 281 00:20:18,279 --> 00:20:22,319 part of groups, whether it's a church group, civic group, whatever it 282 00:20:22,400 --> 00:20:26,079 is. What are some of the most powerful things people can do? I 283 00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:30,079 mean, the first thing is to realize that we can win this, because 284 00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:33,920 what I financially is that almost everyone on the run. It sort of feels 285 00:20:33,960 --> 00:20:36,279 like, Okay, there's just nothing that can be done. The reality is 286 00:20:36,279 --> 00:20:38,680 if you look on the issues now that the Biden administration has sort of committed 287 00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:44,519 itself complete insanity, and immigration, which we haven't talked about it just a 288 00:20:44,559 --> 00:20:48,880 completely open border on our southern border, and then just the madness of gender 289 00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:53,680 ideology we've got. Depending on the poll, between seventy and eighty and ninety 290 00:20:53,759 --> 00:20:59,640 percent of the public is with us on these things. And that's across political 291 00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:03,359 dem graphics. And so the reality is this is only this. This stuff 292 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:10,200 can only persist if the vast majority of Americans with common sense don't learn to 293 00:21:10,240 --> 00:21:15,240 work together. And unfortunately, what we would rather do is snipe at each 294 00:21:15,279 --> 00:21:17,680 other. I mean you've seen it. You're on X right, I mean, 295 00:21:17,839 --> 00:21:22,480 Catholics and Evangelicals will snipe at each other. Right, Why are we 296 00:21:22,519 --> 00:21:26,279 spending our time on this? You know, we've got a bigger fish to 297 00:21:26,319 --> 00:21:30,359 fry, And so, honestly, one we can win this. The other 298 00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:36,880 side is completely insane. What they believe is contrary to reality, and we 299 00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:40,480 can fight back and we can win. Individuals that know what they're doing, 300 00:21:40,559 --> 00:21:45,200 like Chris Rufo, you know, actually freak people out on the other side. 301 00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:48,200 And so I think half the battle is just realizing we can win if 302 00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:53,400 we learn to work together on these things. And what does that mean for 303 00:21:53,599 --> 00:21:56,680 you know, Republican candidates and obviously I mean this, and you know it 304 00:21:56,680 --> 00:22:00,599 could mean the same thing for Democratic candidates. You know, what does this 305 00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:07,079 look like translated into the kind of everyday politics, into campaigns? You know, 306 00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:11,559 there have been some interesting campaigns run with the gender issue, for example, 307 00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:15,759 with critical race theory starting to get a factor into them. How should 308 00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:19,240 people and again actually that even applies to people on the center and on the 309 00:22:19,319 --> 00:22:22,960 left who have had to push back on some of this stuff, how should 310 00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:30,279 that translate politically? Well, it should translate into somewhat different coalitions coming together. 311 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:33,519 Now. I'm look, I am a convinced conservative, and so I 312 00:22:33,559 --> 00:22:40,559 think liberals are wrong on things. But I also welcome any leftist or liberal 313 00:22:40,559 --> 00:22:44,640 who shows moral courage and maybe even puts their career at risk in order to 314 00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:48,160 defend you know, defend women's bathrooms. They're on the right, they're on 315 00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:52,559 the right side on that issue. And what I have found is that there's 316 00:22:52,599 --> 00:22:56,440 a kind of epistemic crisis that happens. I mean, imagine you're on the 317 00:22:56,519 --> 00:23:00,559 left in California and all of your friends, your whole social you know circle 318 00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:07,480 that you trust in your whole adult life, suddenly seems to believe that it's 319 00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:11,839 actually a good idea to give kids sterilizing drugs and hormones to help them. 320 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:15,279 And you realize that's crazy and evil. But all of your friends don't see 321 00:23:15,279 --> 00:23:19,720 this. That precipitates a crisis. It's not just that, Oh well, 322 00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:25,240 I have this one policy disagreement. I can tell you what happens because I 323 00:23:25,279 --> 00:23:26,599 know lots of these people. I say, my word, I could have 324 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:30,000 thought that too, but I don't. I wonder what else my friends are 325 00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:33,440 wrong about, because if they're wrong about this, maybe they're wrong about other 326 00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:37,839 things. Oh wait, maybe I'm wrong about some stuff. Oh no, 327 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,960 where did these ideas come from? I wonder if I need to rethink. 328 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,920 God, this is how this goes. And so you can get lots of 329 00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:47,440 people now this is not true. Even four years ago, they refer to 330 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:49,960 themselves as refugees. They'll say, well, I was always, yeah, 331 00:23:51,079 --> 00:23:56,039 a big leftist, but I've been abandoned by my Democratic friends, and I'm 332 00:23:56,039 --> 00:24:00,319 trying to figure out what to do. They're in Flox and they're in lux 333 00:24:00,319 --> 00:24:03,799 in a way that's different from Okay, I disagree with this particular environmental policy. 334 00:24:03,799 --> 00:24:10,160 When you're talking about human nature and pre detecting children, that's the kind 335 00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,960 of stuff that changes people's political affiliations. It can even change their worldview. 336 00:24:14,039 --> 00:24:17,640 And so that's I mean, that's the kind of key message to this book 337 00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:22,079 is that that's what's happening. And so we need a game plan and a 338 00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,519 playbook for what kinds of arguments we need to make. And that's it's what 339 00:24:26,559 --> 00:24:29,359 we try to do in the book, in you know, very short chapters. 340 00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,160 Okay, here's a way to frame this argument. I even have a 341 00:24:32,319 --> 00:24:36,160 we haven't have chapter on marriage. Look, I think natural marriage is true 342 00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:41,759 marriage. But you're making those arguments with someone that you're already with on the 343 00:24:41,799 --> 00:24:44,759 gender ideology fight. They're going to hear you in a different way than if 344 00:24:44,799 --> 00:24:48,400 you had been making the same argument in twenty ten when they just thought you 345 00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:53,839 were evil and hate good people. Yeah, that's fascinating. How do you 346 00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:57,160 think of the without being too interniceen here, but how do you think of 347 00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:02,000 the You mentioned the RUFO approach that I mean, he's been profiled in the 348 00:25:02,039 --> 00:25:07,240 New Yorker. He really has become the sort of face of the conservative I 349 00:25:07,279 --> 00:25:11,079 don't want to say backlash, I should say a position. But it's also 350 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,160 not even just conservative. I mean he's really been able to reach people, 351 00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:18,359 you know, Californians for example, or absolutely in school districts, you know, 352 00:25:18,519 --> 00:25:22,920 center school districts, even blue school districts. You know, you've had 353 00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:26,519 so much experience in the conservative movement, and Chris really, you know, 354 00:25:26,599 --> 00:25:30,000 says he's he's shaken up the approach. He feels like the approach was stayed. 355 00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,359 Can you talk a little bit about that, Jay, Well, it 356 00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:37,559 was stayed, But what is I mean Chris has thought this stuff was winnable, 357 00:25:37,839 --> 00:25:40,000 right, I mean he's just thought, Okay, this is kind of 358 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:41,920 silly. And I mean anyone that's in Washington knows that there's a kind of 359 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:48,480 yeah, there's there's a type of country club conservatism which doesn't really want to 360 00:25:48,559 --> 00:25:51,200 win, right. It wants a place at the table, it wants to 361 00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:56,160 be the you know, it's happy to be the controlled opposition. Chris knew 362 00:25:56,160 --> 00:26:00,599 that that was wrong. He also, I think he recognized early on that 363 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,680 we're in a different moment, and we really are in a different moment. 364 00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:06,920 I'm just not just Chris I mean, he himself, you know, moved 365 00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:10,759 from the left to the right slowly. But people like Brett Weinstein, the 366 00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:15,519 biologist that was at Evergreen State right. That is just some amazing insights that 367 00:26:15,559 --> 00:26:21,400 Tucker Carlson interviews. I think that the kind of simplistic way in which we 368 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,200 were dividing up the country left and right, these things don't quite hold anymore. 369 00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:30,839 When I think about Brett Weinstein, who was very much on the far 370 00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:36,680 left in a sense, teaching it a far left kind of experimental school, 371 00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:42,960 and then the woke ideologues wanted to impose upon him a racialist ideology that he 372 00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:51,240 disagreed with. What's happening is that those people have been alienated by their compatriots 373 00:26:51,279 --> 00:26:53,359 on the left. And I think for conservatives the question is, okay, 374 00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:56,079 how do we bring them in. It's not a matter of okay, let's 375 00:26:56,079 --> 00:27:00,160 compromise all the stuff we disagree with. How do we create a coalition that 376 00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:07,359 can and should include them, but that allows us to still maintain our integrity 377 00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:11,720 and continue with our conservative political views, which is I think what we have 378 00:27:11,799 --> 00:27:14,480 to do. This isn't a matter of let's find, you know, kind 379 00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:19,240 of sort of neutral middle ground that's neither here nor there. It's a different 380 00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,920 kind of coalition in which you've got a bunch of people that are fighting for 381 00:27:23,079 --> 00:27:29,160 reality, social reality, biological reality, and then people who've given up on 382 00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:34,240 it. That's kind of a different framework than just thinking some people want the 383 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:37,519 government to be big and some people want the government to be small. Yeah, 384 00:27:37,599 --> 00:27:41,119 that is a great point. The book once again is called Fight the 385 00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:45,920 Good Fight, How an Alliance of faith and reason can Win the Culture War. 386 00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:49,279 That book was out February thirteen, so you can get your copy now. 387 00:27:49,319 --> 00:27:52,960 We've been talking to Jay Richards and Jay, we appreciate your time and 388 00:27:53,039 --> 00:27:56,240 all of your work so very much, my pleasure, so good to be 389 00:27:56,319 --> 00:28:00,519 with you. You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist for a radio 390 00:28:00,559 --> 00:28:03,440 hour. I Emily Kashinsky, Culture, I Regulate the Federals. We'll be 391 00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:19,759 back soon with more. Until then, he lovers of freedom and anxious for the Fray