1 00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:20,920 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jishinsky, 2 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,760 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:27,920 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST. 4 00:00:28,199 --> 00:00:31,920 Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the 5 00:00:31,920 --> 00:00:37,600 premium version of our website as well. We are joined today by Jeff Paul. 6 00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:43,200 He is the author of the new book Winning America's Second Civil War, 7 00:00:43,600 --> 00:00:48,520 Progressivism's Authoritarian Threat, Where it came from, and how to Defeat it. 8 00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:54,159 He is also a research professor in the Social Philosophy Center at West Virginia University. 9 00:00:54,479 --> 00:00:57,759 Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having 10 00:00:57,799 --> 00:01:00,679 me, of course, and before we started, you mentioned that this book 11 00:01:00,719 --> 00:01:06,599 again it is called Winning America's Second Civil War has been on your list on 12 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:11,040 your agenda for more than a decade, some fifteen years. Can you tell 13 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:14,640 us a little bit about why that is. A lot of people maybe didn't 14 00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:19,359 feel like we were in such a cultural emergency or a period of urgency until 15 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:23,480 maybe twenty twenty, but you say this has been on your mind for a 16 00:01:23,519 --> 00:01:26,200 long time. Can you tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, 17 00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:33,159 when you go to graduate school, indeed, when you're an undergraduate school, 18 00:01:33,239 --> 00:01:37,400 even though this was in my case a very long time ago. I was 19 00:01:37,439 --> 00:01:42,319 an undergraduate in the sixties and a graduate student in the late sixties into the 20 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:49,040 early seventies. The first thing you notice, if you're in the social sciences 21 00:01:49,159 --> 00:01:59,280 or the humanity is the disparity in political outlook between what you find in universities 22 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:07,280 and what you find outside of universities. And it's so dramatic that you wonder 23 00:02:08,199 --> 00:02:12,960 how it came to be that way, or why it is that way. 24 00:02:13,599 --> 00:02:17,240 So I was curious. And then a book came out in the early nineteen 25 00:02:17,360 --> 00:02:25,000 seventies by someone with whom I became a close friend subsequently, and the book 26 00:02:25,120 --> 00:02:31,280 was called The Divided Academy, and it was a massive survey underwritten by one 27 00:02:31,319 --> 00:02:40,000 of the Carnegie Foundations of sixty thousand faculty members. And what it showed was 28 00:02:40,159 --> 00:02:53,120 an extraordinary disparity between public opinion on political matters and the faculty opinion on political 29 00:02:53,159 --> 00:02:57,840 matters, and they were exactly the reverse of one another. And as I 30 00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:01,840 began to read more, sir, as time went on, and there were 31 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:10,280 tons of them being done in the seventies, eighties, nineties, this disparity 32 00:03:10,360 --> 00:03:16,719 became ever greater. You may have heard of the Harvard Crimson now does its 33 00:03:16,879 --> 00:03:25,639 own survey of its faculty, and the one in twenty twenty two reported that 34 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:31,479 its faculty, if they asked them whether they were liberal or very liberal, 35 00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:38,759 or conservative or very conservative, the faculty, whether it was the engineering faculty, 36 00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:45,360 the medical faculty, the physics faculty, or whether it was the political 37 00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:52,159 science faculty, the faculty as a whole, characterized themselves as eighty percent liberal 38 00:03:52,240 --> 00:04:00,319 or very liberal, one percent conservative, and zero percent very conservative. This 39 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:08,719 is very strange when you think about it. What accounts for the disparity between 40 00:04:09,759 --> 00:04:18,879 the political outlook that one finds to be standard in the universities and what it 41 00:04:18,959 --> 00:04:27,120 is outside of the universities. Indeed, the universities look like a secular church 42 00:04:28,319 --> 00:04:32,560 of sort of a political church, a place in which only one point of 43 00:04:32,639 --> 00:04:42,759 view is being presented at most institutions, with a few exceptions. And that 44 00:04:42,959 --> 00:04:47,839 puzzle caused me to want to investigate, since no one could explain to me 45 00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:55,120 why it was this way. Although I had been warned by one of those 46 00:04:55,120 --> 00:05:00,600 who did this survey that all the indirect evidence suggested this way back to the 47 00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:06,240 year nineteen hundred. This disparity has been the same and getting worse since nineteen 48 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:11,480 hundred. This didn't happen in the last ten or twenty years. It didn't 49 00:05:11,519 --> 00:05:16,199 happen in the nineteen sixties with the New Left and SDS. It started way 50 00:05:16,279 --> 00:05:21,000 before that. So I realized I had to read the history of the American 51 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:28,759 tertiary education system higher education. And I did that, And so the book 52 00:05:28,839 --> 00:05:33,959 reports on that history, and I started in about eighteen thirty five and go 53 00:05:34,040 --> 00:05:40,600 to the present. So and I found the exact point at which it flipped. 54 00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:45,480 It didn't flip gradually, and there was specific reason why it flipped. 55 00:05:45,959 --> 00:05:48,839 So let me just say a few words. If I'm going on too long, 56 00:05:48,920 --> 00:05:54,040 please tell me no, not at all. This is also interesting, 57 00:05:54,360 --> 00:06:00,560 okay, So let me tell you what the universities were like. 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So please continue right. The United States 75 00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:34,040 was founded on a singular political philosophy a view that had never been announced in 76 00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:46,959 recorded human history before sixteen ninety and has not been particularly persuasive since, but 77 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:53,839 it led to all of what we see in the United States, its freedoms, 78 00:07:54,279 --> 00:08:01,319 its wealth, everything. The view was that all human beings have a 79 00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:07,959 right of self ownership. They have a property right in themselves which comes from 80 00:08:07,040 --> 00:08:16,120 nature, and that the right of self ownership therefore implies a right to liberty 81 00:08:16,519 --> 00:08:26,040 with respect to oneself, and in addition, a right to the product of 82 00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:33,679 one's labors. One can go about protecting these rights in one of two ways. 83 00:08:35,639 --> 00:08:43,240 One can defend oneself and stay outside of government, or one can coalesce 84 00:08:43,919 --> 00:08:52,519 coalesce with people who hold the same views that human beings have these specific rights 85 00:08:52,639 --> 00:09:00,440 and form a government devoted to their protection and according to the natural right view 86 00:09:01,679 --> 00:09:11,039 as described by the British philosopher John Locke, which became the central doctrine, 87 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:18,519 and that book became the central book for the Founders. According to Locke, 88 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:26,799 the only legitimate grounds for forming a government was to protect these rights, and 89 00:09:26,840 --> 00:09:35,120 a government, therefore, if it is legitimate, is circumscribed in its duties 90 00:09:35,279 --> 00:09:41,200 to the protection of these rights. And these rights are pre legal, being 91 00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:50,320 pre legal. They are superior to any written law, including the Constitution. 92 00:09:50,679 --> 00:09:54,360 One could go back to the Constitution because it's written, and one can look 93 00:09:54,360 --> 00:10:01,879 at the exact, exact wording, and so on. The others. The 94 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:07,960 rights are conceptions. They've been put into the Constitution so that they're there in 95 00:10:07,039 --> 00:10:15,879 written language, but they are pre legal, and one has them whether they 96 00:10:15,879 --> 00:10:22,600 are written anywhere or not. So upon the Founding, of course, the 97 00:10:22,159 --> 00:10:30,600 founders recognized before the Declaration of Independence, and began writing about this before the 98 00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:37,039 Declaration of Independence, that this view was totally inconsistent with slavery, and that 99 00:10:37,159 --> 00:10:46,480 slavery had to be purged. And so with a revolution and them not having 100 00:10:48,639 --> 00:10:56,399 purged it, but it disappearing state by state, they still decided that they 101 00:10:56,519 --> 00:11:01,879 had to have states like South Carolina and Enjoyed to participate in the revolution to 102 00:11:01,919 --> 00:11:09,600 make sure it was successful, and not have Britain allies that were inside the 103 00:11:09,639 --> 00:11:16,679 inside of this continent. Afterwards, there began this controversy which became intense in 104 00:11:16,720 --> 00:11:24,000 eighteen twenty about slavery. It became so intense it could only be resolved by 105 00:11:24,879 --> 00:11:28,799 military means, and that's the first civil law, and so that represented the 106 00:11:28,919 --> 00:11:35,000 triumph of this view that there are natural rights and it is government's duty to 107 00:11:35,080 --> 00:11:43,799 protect them. When they were defending themselves verbally, the Confederates, the defenders 108 00:11:43,840 --> 00:11:52,200 of slavery, rejected these rights explicitly and said the individual has only duties that 109 00:11:52,279 --> 00:11:58,960 are accorded by government, and government should be formed according to race, and 110 00:11:58,039 --> 00:12:05,679 the Teutonic was a superior race, so it should be it should be superior 111 00:12:05,759 --> 00:12:11,600 to the rest and issuing duties and orders and so forth. But that view 112 00:12:11,879 --> 00:12:18,399 had been defeated on the field of battle. Ten years or so after that 113 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:24,039 First Civil War was completed, there began the preface to a second Civil War. 114 00:12:24,879 --> 00:12:28,039 I call what we're going through now the Second Civil War. I'll be 115 00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:35,399 more specific later. The preface to it began in about eighteen seventy five or 116 00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:41,720 eighteen seventy six. Here's what happened. The universities in the United States, 117 00:12:41,879 --> 00:12:48,799 mostly they were they called themselves colleges because they only gave baccalaureate degrees and a 118 00:12:48,840 --> 00:12:56,840 few master's degrees. No doctoral degrees were given, with the exception of Yale 119 00:12:56,080 --> 00:13:00,799 in eighteen sixty one, and it gave three or four teen sixty one. 120 00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:05,000 But they weren't like what we think of as doctoral degrees today. Since the 121 00:13:05,039 --> 00:13:09,799 faculty at Yale was comprised of people with bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, none 122 00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:16,440 of them had doctorates, yet they were awarding doctorates. They were awarding doctorates. 123 00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:20,399 In eighteen sixty one, in order to have genuine doctoral programs, the 124 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:26,679 universities concluded they had to have doctorates on their faculty and place the doctoral programs 125 00:13:26,960 --> 00:13:33,840 in the hands of those with those doctorates. The only country which had had 126 00:13:33,279 --> 00:13:39,120 doctoral programs had them and had had them for two hundred years was Germany, 127 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:48,480 and Germany had research universities, which the leading American colleges aspired to be, 128 00:13:50,679 --> 00:14:00,240 and so they decided that they would hire Americans with German doctoral degrees as the 129 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:09,279 graduate faculty in universities which hadn't had a graduate faculty but wanted them so that 130 00:14:09,320 --> 00:14:16,360 they could give genuine They could award genuine doctoral degrees give genuine doctoral training. 131 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:26,240 So the import of these Germans began in the mid eighteen seventies, particularly with 132 00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:33,919 the founding of Johns. Hopkins University in eighteen seventy six, and continued from 133 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:41,039 there on. Columbia was a major participant in this I would say the two 134 00:14:41,279 --> 00:14:48,919 leading participants were JOHNS. Hopkins in Colombia, then followed by the rest the 135 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:56,399 Ivy League colleges Michigan, Wisconsin, Berkeley, and so on. Now, 136 00:14:56,639 --> 00:15:05,000 this was enormously successful in terms of what the presidents had intended the outcome to 137 00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:09,320 be. That is, in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, in 138 00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:18,720 the natural sciences, in medicine, it meant an enormous leapforward for American tertiary 139 00:15:18,919 --> 00:15:28,080 education. But in the social sciences and the humanities it was ten steps backward 140 00:15:28,480 --> 00:15:35,480 or many more, because the philosophy that was imported from Germany was the exact 141 00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:43,440 antithesis of the founding philosophy. No one had rights, No one has a 142 00:15:43,519 --> 00:15:54,399 right to self ownership. The nation is not essentially comprised of individual human beings. 143 00:15:56,120 --> 00:16:00,240 It is rather itself an organism, and the human beings are only the 144 00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:07,159 cellular components of the organism, who therefore have a duty to maintain, as 145 00:16:07,159 --> 00:16:14,120 it is with all organisms, the existence of the organism. So if you're 146 00:16:14,120 --> 00:16:22,200 in Germany or your duty is to preserve and extend the life of the organism 147 00:16:22,399 --> 00:16:30,200 which is Germany. And so there are no rights. There are only duties. 148 00:16:30,639 --> 00:16:37,799 Well. Who formulates the specific duties. It's the faculty at these institutions 149 00:16:37,360 --> 00:16:45,320 and their allies. Outside the institutions. The principal ally are their students who 150 00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:51,679 enter. What Germany had we have now in the twenty we had in the 151 00:16:51,759 --> 00:16:57,600 twentieth century developed in the twentieth century the bureaucracy, the administrative state, the 152 00:16:57,639 --> 00:17:07,559 fourth branch of government in the United States, which was created and by these 153 00:17:07,759 --> 00:17:15,599 very people, specifically a man named good Now at Columbia and the Woodrow Wilson 154 00:17:15,160 --> 00:17:19,480 at Johns Hopkins initially, which is where he got his doctoral degree. This 155 00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:26,200 idea of a fourth branch which would not be elected, which would have extraordinary 156 00:17:26,279 --> 00:17:30,640 powers, the powers effectively of making law, but they'd call them rules, 157 00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:41,119 And that fourth branch would really be an expression of this philosophy in which the 158 00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:47,400 superior person, not by virtue of being elected, but by virtue of his 159 00:17:47,440 --> 00:17:56,240 superiority, can formulate rules while not being elected, can formulate rules which everyone 160 00:17:56,359 --> 00:18:03,759 has a duty to obey. That given the faculty, the doctoral faculty that 161 00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:12,759 came from Germany had an initial monopoly on graduate education as it was being founded 162 00:18:12,799 --> 00:18:21,079 in the United States. They could train and hire their successors, and so 163 00:18:21,240 --> 00:18:34,480 with each generation this initial Germanic philosophy became amplified. And the central principle of 164 00:18:34,519 --> 00:18:44,279 that is that there is an elite which is superior, which can issue orders 165 00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:49,480 which must be obeyed, there are no rights. And that has grown worse 166 00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:57,920 year by year, decade by decade, from the mid eighteen seventies to the 167 00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:08,039 present, and it has spilled over, of course, since college attendance has 168 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:14,799 been much greater, far greater in the twentieth and twenty first century than it 169 00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:19,119 was in the nineteenth century, many more college degrees, many more people entering 170 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:26,720 college, and so on. It has in a since it has polluted the 171 00:19:26,759 --> 00:19:34,039 rest of the culture, so that by the nineteen twenties journalism was dominated by 172 00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:41,839 people with the same point of view. One of the early and eventually most 173 00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:47,720 esteemed columnists in the United States, Walter Lippman, was one of the first 174 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:56,400 major American journalists who was the product of his system. Journalism by the late 175 00:19:56,519 --> 00:20:07,960 nineteen thirties was nderantly they were members of the Democratic Party. I should also 176 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:17,759 say one more thing. The people initially with German doctorates could not identify themselves 177 00:20:17,839 --> 00:20:23,920 by the term that the Germans used which was in Germany a good term of 178 00:20:25,079 --> 00:20:30,039 characterization, but in America would have been a despicable term. They were called 179 00:20:30,079 --> 00:20:37,200 state socialists and called themselves state socialists. In Germany, a number of state 180 00:20:37,279 --> 00:20:42,200 socialists are cited by the Nazis as being the origin of their own views. 181 00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:48,839 And so they were being trained by these people. And so when you read 182 00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:55,519 both the Germans and the first generation of Americans, you can't tell which is 183 00:20:55,599 --> 00:21:00,559 which if you just see English, because you can't tell who's been translated and 184 00:21:00,640 --> 00:21:12,519 who's an American who doesn't require translation. So that that's what's happened. And 185 00:21:14,680 --> 00:21:19,759 when these Americans came to came back to the United States, they needed another 186 00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:30,160 term to characterize themselves and characterize their views, which differed from those of the 187 00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:34,119 majority of Americans, a majority of academics when they came. When they re 188 00:21:34,279 --> 00:21:41,039 entered the United States, the term they chose to disguise their views was the 189 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:45,400 name of one of Germany's parties, the Progress Party, and they called themselves 190 00:21:45,799 --> 00:21:55,119 Progressive. That's where the name comes from. It comes from this generation that 191 00:21:55,200 --> 00:22:00,720 was trained in Germany. And I should mention, in addition of the German 192 00:22:00,839 --> 00:22:11,599 generation which trained this American generation is the same generation in Germany which trained the 193 00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:22,880 Nazi Professauia. So they shared the same views that became national socialism in Germany, 194 00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:27,559 but they used this term progressive to disguise what they were. After World 195 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:36,200 War One, the term progressive became an embarrassment because of its association with Germany, 196 00:22:37,279 --> 00:22:41,839 and so they began to look for another term. The term they seized 197 00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:47,519 upon was liberal, and they could use the term liberal as they chose because 198 00:22:47,519 --> 00:22:52,839 they had a monopoly on education and that. The term liberal was then absorbed 199 00:22:53,000 --> 00:23:00,680 into the media, into journalism, and then it was used to describe the 200 00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:08,000 first thoroughly experience, the first experiment, let's say, full scale experiment in 201 00:23:08,079 --> 00:23:14,480 progressivism, which was an FDRs New Deal. So that's what I would say 202 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:22,559 about how we got to where we are now, and I mean I can 203 00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:27,079 say more, I guess. The only other thing I would add is that 204 00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:37,359 what had transpired the university went out of sight of its trustees, its donors, 205 00:23:37,599 --> 00:23:44,880 the general public, etc. Up until nineteen fifty. And what happened 206 00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:52,359 in nineteen fifty was a young graduate from Yale wrote a book called Godman at 207 00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:56,680 Yale, and his name was William F. Buckley, the founder of National 208 00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:00,799 Review, and he exposed what was going on at Yale University. He didn't 209 00:24:00,799 --> 00:24:06,440 know why it was that way. He talked about the homogeneity of the views 210 00:24:07,039 --> 00:24:11,759 of economists there, which were the antithesis of the views that he expected to 211 00:24:11,799 --> 00:24:18,960 be presented by the economics department, and he was appalled. His book was 212 00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:26,559 excoriated by the press and by academics who reviewed it, but it was the 213 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:37,240 first glimpse the public got at what the universities that were educating America's children young 214 00:24:37,279 --> 00:24:45,640 adults had become. Now Buckling never investigated how it got this way, but 215 00:24:45,839 --> 00:24:53,440 that it was this way was an enormous revelation to many, and they began 216 00:24:53,599 --> 00:25:03,400 to focus on doing something to reform the America's universities. But they've never been 217 00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:11,200 reformed. This trends just persistent. 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No questions asked that zbiotics dot com slash r 235 00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:38,279 adio radio and use the code radio r a d io at checkout for fifteen 236 00:26:38,319 --> 00:26:44,559 percent off thank you z Biotics for sponsoring this episode and our good times. 237 00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:49,880 That's actually what I wanted to ask you about, because that's just such a 238 00:26:51,039 --> 00:26:56,519 such a fascinating history. In the book, you'll also talk about what can 239 00:26:56,559 --> 00:26:59,960 be done. In fact that it's in the sort of title of the book, 240 00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:06,839 winning Winning America Second Civil War, and you have some specific ways that 241 00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:08,759 you think that war can be won. Could you tell us a little bit 242 00:27:08,799 --> 00:27:15,640 about what should be done to reverse the guide let me say, let me 243 00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:25,079 say two things before I get to the specifics. My view is that building 244 00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:30,559 from the ground up, i e. Reforming the universities, reforming how we 245 00:27:30,599 --> 00:27:37,039 make appointments to the Supreme Court, what criteria we use when we appoint someone 246 00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:48,279 to the Supreme Court. Reforming state universities first by using certain devices and policies, 247 00:27:51,759 --> 00:28:00,680 doing things like eliminating all federal support of universities, whether public or private. 248 00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:10,359 Those kinds of things would hopefully have a long term beneficial effect. However, 249 00:28:11,519 --> 00:28:17,119 I'm very concerned that we don't have a long term I think we've reached 250 00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:22,240 a crisis point in the United States, and so I think it is very 251 00:28:22,279 --> 00:28:30,880 important because I believe that Democratic Party has been thoroughly corrupted by what has transpired 252 00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:37,240 educationally and then the media in the United States. If the Republican Party is 253 00:28:37,279 --> 00:28:45,279 to get a majority in the United States, it can only be through something 254 00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:55,880 that benefits, that has such benefits to the middle class that it can put 255 00:28:55,920 --> 00:29:07,480 together easily elition of the majority of Americans. And therefore I've proposed a complete 256 00:29:07,839 --> 00:29:11,400 revision of the tax code and the tax system that we have in the United 257 00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:27,000 States as grounds for a new policy prescription for the Republican Party, and that 258 00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:38,440 is a universal tax on the sales of everything to replace income payroll taxes both 259 00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:45,079 for the individual and for businesses, the estate tax, the gift tax, 260 00:29:45,599 --> 00:29:49,599 the capital gains tax, and so on, so that individuals would only be 261 00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:59,119 paying about one percent on all purchases that they make, and that would include 262 00:29:59,559 --> 00:30:04,160 the of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. And most of the revenue from 263 00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:12,400 this new system would come from those transactions, the sales revenues that are gathered 264 00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:18,519 from those transactions ninety percent of the revenue. And what we found I had 265 00:30:18,599 --> 00:30:23,960 three columnists and myself working on this for two years. What we found is 266 00:30:25,039 --> 00:30:30,000 going back over a ten year period in the decade for which we had a 267 00:30:30,119 --> 00:30:37,480 lot of data going Before that the data was less reliable, and after we 268 00:30:37,519 --> 00:30:45,039 didn't have data yet. So what we found was that this system, though 269 00:30:45,079 --> 00:30:52,119 it might seem intuitively implausible, would raise more revenue than the current system. 270 00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:56,160 To give an example, from twenty nineteen, which was the very first year 271 00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:03,759 that we investigated, the money raised by the current system was about three and 272 00:31:03,799 --> 00:31:11,839 a half trillion dollars, which fell short of balancing the budget by one point 273 00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:18,559 one trillion dollars. Adopting this new system in replacement would have balanced the budget. 274 00:31:18,759 --> 00:31:23,319 It would have raised about four point six trillion dollars. And we found 275 00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:30,960 that to be the case for all ten years going back to twenty eleven and 276 00:31:30,039 --> 00:31:38,480 through twenty twenty one. So because I believe had this been discovered what I've 277 00:31:38,519 --> 00:31:45,200 discovered in this history that I've done, had it been recognized and discovered, 278 00:31:45,039 --> 00:31:51,880 let's say around nineteen hundred, perhaps there could have been an immediate reform gone. 279 00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,440 I think there could have been, because the trustees would have been outraged, 280 00:31:56,519 --> 00:32:00,759 the donors would have been outraged, and so forth. But trying to 281 00:32:00,799 --> 00:32:07,440 do it now the current conditions is very difficult, and I should specify that 282 00:32:07,519 --> 00:32:15,960 it has been tried by many foundations, many organizations that I've been affiliated with 283 00:32:16,759 --> 00:32:22,240 for seventy years now, But seventy five, I would say, and it 284 00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:28,960 hasn't. It's had some successes, and I talk about them in the book, 285 00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:39,240 but the successes were not sufficient to restore the trajectory of education to its 286 00:32:39,279 --> 00:32:49,200 original character in the social sciences and the humanities. So I think that this 287 00:32:49,799 --> 00:32:58,839 tax proposal, which I began to explore when I realized just how perilous the 288 00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:07,319 current condition, and which we worked on for two years, is probably the 289 00:33:07,359 --> 00:33:13,279 most important of the prescriptions that I give in that final chapter for how to 290 00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:20,200 reverse things. All they want to do is keep you poor and stupid. 291 00:33:20,319 --> 00:33:23,720 The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski every day Chris helps unpack the 292 00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:28,440 connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Some of 293 00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,960 the media are trying to tell you it's bad if your prices go down, 294 00:33:31,039 --> 00:33:36,279 causing a deflation spiral. If prices go down, are people really going to 295 00:33:36,359 --> 00:33:39,279 hold off on buying things? Doesn't everyone need groceries. Whether it's happening in 296 00:33:39,359 --> 00:33:43,599 DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed check 297 00:33:43,599 --> 00:33:46,119 out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, 298 00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:54,319 or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and I'm curious if you are 299 00:33:54,359 --> 00:34:00,960 optimistic there's an appetite to take up proposals like this and innovative specific do you 300 00:34:01,079 --> 00:34:07,800 see you know as you survey the political landscape, ideological landscape, that there's 301 00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:15,440 hope for people, serious people, serious legislators to take up these proposals and 302 00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:22,880 really, you know, turn the Titanic around. The tax proposal is going 303 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:25,400 to take some work. I can't say a lot about it at the moment. 304 00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:36,360 My group of economists is represented by one of the people is beginning to 305 00:34:36,519 --> 00:34:46,840 share the proposal with some highly esteemed economists and we're going to have to see 306 00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:52,039 how that goes, who have access to the media and so forth. We're 307 00:34:52,079 --> 00:34:57,159 just going to have to see how that goes. It's too early for me 308 00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:06,280 to report whether we've had any success with that. So that's in that. 309 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:12,599 That's what I would say about that. I would say immediately, I think 310 00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:17,880 the Democratic Party, it's not it's everybody sort of ascribes whatever's happened over the 311 00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:24,880 last four years to Joe Biden. But you could exchange him with many other 312 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:29,599 Democrats, and you would have had the same policies and the same outcome. 313 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:37,880 I then extremely important for the Republicans and for Donald Trump particularly to win this 314 00:35:37,039 --> 00:35:43,880 next election. I think it's pivotal because I think if you look back the 315 00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:50,639 last four years, in fact, if you look back to about twenty fifteen, 316 00:35:51,239 --> 00:36:00,119 the behavior of the Democratic Party and it's supporters within what's everyone refers to 317 00:36:00,199 --> 00:36:06,440 as the deep state and so forth, has been quite appalling. The use 318 00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:13,559 of law fair which began, of course in twenty fifteen against Donald Trump. 319 00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:19,320 This sort of thing's never been seen before. There have been elements of it. 320 00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:23,559 There have been elements of this, and I think gives some examples from 321 00:36:23,599 --> 00:36:30,719 both the Kennedy administration and the Roosevelt administration, but nothing like this, Nothing 322 00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:37,199 like what we've seen and what we see here as an autocratic party is willing 323 00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:45,320 to do most anything to acquire power. And I think the similarity between what's 324 00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:52,639 going on here and what transpired in Germany under much worse conditions, the conditions 325 00:36:52,639 --> 00:36:53,800 of the depression, are quite similar