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Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist

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Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist,

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and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge. As always,

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you can email the show at radio at the Federalist

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dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST, make

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sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of

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course to the premium version of our website as well.

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Our guest today is Timothy Giglin, Vice President Government and

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External Relations focus on the Family. He joins us to

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talk about his new book, Stumbling Toward Utopia, how the

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nineteen sixties turned into a national nightmare, and how we

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can revive the American dream. Tim thank you so much

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for joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

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Speaker 2: It's a real joy. Matt, thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: Well, this is quite a book gets into a really

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weighty subject and I think when you take a look

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back at what was happening in this country a half

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century or better ago, and really you have the antecedents

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for that, and I know you delve into that as well,

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but it really does inform where we are at today.

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In other words, the more things change, the more they

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stay the same. In fact, if we want to take

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that a step farther, the worse in so many different

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instances they get Let's begin here. How did you get

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to such a weighty topic? Why was this something that

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you thought? Because you are the author of many books,

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You've been around the block a time or two with

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these sorts of things and these weighty issues. But why

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is this? Why did this become so pressing to you?

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Speaker 2: You know, I worked for ten years in the US Senate,

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and I worked for almost eight years in the White House,

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and now sixteen years as one of the vice presidents

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that focus on the family Matt, all of them here

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in Washington, and across all of those years, not quite

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four decades, but going on it, I've done a lot

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of speaking, meeting, presenting, writing, debating panels, et cetera. And

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if someone said to me, what is you know, the

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most recurring question that people ask people who you interact with,

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not just you know, your fellow conservatives, but progressives as well.

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Are people who are otherwise, you know, non ideological? What

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is the you know, what's the golden thread? And I said,

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that's easy because with pinpoint predictability, left wing audience, right

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wing audience, non ideological. When you get to the proverbial

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Q and A or discussion or conversation, someone will say

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something like, how in the world do we get into

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this mess? And what they are referring to is not

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only the spiritual crisis, which is profound in America, or

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the cultural topsy turvinus, but they're referring to what they

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view as a kind of historic polarization, polarity, a kind

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of decadence that seems to filter through all of our

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great institutions. And people are really concerned, Matt, as you

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well know, by the way, if people are parents or grandparents,

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they will always say they are particularly concerned because not

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only do they not don't know what to do, but

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they're very concerned about the country they're leaving their children

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or grandchildren. And so, having heard this maybe a thousand

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million times, I got on an air and I was

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flying back from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I asked the steward for

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a stack of what must be the world's tiniest airline napkins,

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and I began to scratch out the answer to this question,

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which became the book Stumbling Toward utopia. The answer of

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how we got into this mess is the moral and

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social revolution of the nineteen sixties and seventies. It was

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radicalism in overdrive and it now permeates everyone of our

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American institutions.

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Speaker 1: That's interesting coming back from Tulsa, and I love that

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this all begins. The genesis of this is on small

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airplane napkins, along with the probably the small cookie or

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the peanuts that they gave as well on that plane.

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But Tulsa is the stomping grounds of my older brother,

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an attorney and a very concerned conservative about the state

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of America, who grew up in the seventies as I

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did as a smaller child, and we saw already what

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was happening in the seventies from what was happening in

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the sixties. And I remember my parents at the time saying,

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how did we get here? Why are we in the

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mess that we're in? And so it happens with each

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successive generation, and I too asked that question that parents

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and grandparents are asking for my children. And you know,

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my family feels the same way. What kind of world?

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What kind of republic are we leaving our children and grandchildren?

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Speaker 2: You know, I am really glad you phrased it that way,

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because it becomes very personal, doesn't it. And what I

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found in my research is the first part of Stumbling

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towards Utopia. I found that we all didn't as a

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nation wake up. And it was nineteen sixty eight, sixty nine.

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You know, rock and roll, sex, drugs, rock and roll,

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as they say. I write at length about all of

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them in the book. I particularly focus on Woodstock, the

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Age of Aquarius, etc. But what I found that in

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my research is that there was a relatively small group

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of extremely influential and powerful Americans at the turn of

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the twentieth century in politics, in public policy, in entertainment,

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et cetera, et cetera. And I delineate who they are

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and what they were so upset about. Woodrow Wilson are

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president nineteen twelve, had been the president of Princeton University.

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He is the poster boy for American progressivism. He disliked

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the Constitution, he disliked the Declaration of Independence. He thought

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that the nation ought to be run by experts. How's

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that for a lead flight of progressivism for you?

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Speaker 1: How's that for foreshadowing? Because that is exactly where we

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are today. The experts are, and of course we went

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through this battle. And it's a good point because it

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reaches back to much farther back than the sixties. There

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were a lot of things I think that planted the

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seeds of where the sixties would go, but none more

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than that kind of philosophy from the so called experts,

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that arrogance of expertise.

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Speaker 2: If you will, you know, Roger Baldwin is precisely the

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man you're describing. He is the founder of the ACLU.

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He was a communist and he was extremely angry at

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the American concept of justice. He was a disliker to

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a very high degree of anything that was religious or

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faith based, and he wanted to up in the American

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legal system. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, a

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coterie of this kind of thinking, who was a racialist.

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She was a eugenicist. She really had a profound dislike

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for American Catholics. She held people who were not of

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the white Anglo Saxon Protestant aristocracy and leadership class really

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in fairly low regard. She particularly disliked, you know, legal

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immigrants and what they were doing to the United States

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of American John Dewey. You know, if you're upset about

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American education, higher education, high school, and et cetera, John

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Dewey is to blame. He's one of them. He was

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a profound social engineer. He felt that American education should

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not be you know, determined or defined by standards of reading, writing, arithmetic, science.

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It was about creating the new citizen, the transformation of

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the country through the schools. And you know, it's not

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very long between the turn of the twentieth century and

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the arrival of nineteen sixty six, sixty seven, sixty eight,

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sixty nine. By that moment, it's a Charnel house in America.

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It's a real profound revolution, no.

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Speaker 1: Doubt about it. And you know, I don't want to

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skip ahead too much because I think we have a

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lot to talk about in that fertile ground of decay.

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I think it led to the decaying of this republic

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for many reasons. But I think about the examples you mentioned,

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and the Thomas Woodrow Wilsons of the world, espousers of

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things like eugenics, extremely racist individuals. They all had something

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in common though they were all connected at some level

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to the Democratic Party in this country, certainly to the

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liberal movement that all said. At one point, the ACLU, however,

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used to be an organization obviously disconnected from anything bearing

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any resemblance to faith, religion, any of that foundational those

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foundational things that are at the core of this public

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But they used to at least be on the side

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or position themselves on the side of liberty issues. What

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happened to the ACLU now becoming an absolute token of

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the liberal movement in America, I mean, not the classical

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liberal movement in America, the far left and the Democratic

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Party in this country.

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Speaker 2: I love that question, because what you are seeing across

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all of these really bad ideas is the emergence of

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something that had never defined our constitutional republic and which

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comes to be the light motif of the revolution of

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the sixties and seventies. And Matt Frankly, I would call

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it a kind of corrosive moral relativism. It's a kind

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of kneehe that is championed by the way, not just

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in highbrow culture, you know, at the elite institutions and universities,

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the federal government, the Supreme Court. I mean I write

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at length in Stumbling towards Utopia about the way that

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the people were speaking about directly impacted the elites to

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begin this transformation. But it filters down very quickly, doesn't

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it to the creation of the sexual revolution. Here is

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the emergence in the twentieth century, and I write about

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Alfred Kinsey masters In Johnson, who are really in opposition

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to the natural nuclear family, the concept of America. Whether

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you were a Democrat or Republican, a liberal or conservative,

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you know, it was about marriage, family, parenting, human life,

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religious liberty, conscience rights, parental rights. You know, these were

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uncontested dranks of our constitutional republic. And then you have

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the emergence of someone like Hugh Hefner. I write about

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the creating Playboy, you know, building on and giving credence

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to the work of Kinsey and masters in Johnson and

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selling the fortification of America and the abuse of women.

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You know, through all of this kind of moral relativistic thinking.

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It's a very very fast slide, you know, from the

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kind of terrible ideas we're talking about to the dope,

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smack and acid that results, you know, in things like

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woodstock and so much else.

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Speaker 1: What I don't understand is how much damage that time

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period caused the seeds the fruits of the seeds that

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it planted, of course at that time, and yet we

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still have a problem. I think of it in the

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similar context of all of these pro Palestinian groups, you know,

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shouting for the actual genocide of Israel in Jews. It's

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as if we are destined not to learn anything from history,

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you know.

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Speaker 2: I write in Stumbling Toward Utopia at length on something

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that is now totally forgotten but which should be central

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to our national debate. It's the port Huron Statement. And

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as you know from reading the book, Matt, the port

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Heuron Statement was a proactive blueprint for overtaking the universities,

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creating something called the new Left, and using universities and

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elite institutions to transform America. I write at length about

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Saul Alynsky his book Rules for Radicals. It was the

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small b bible of American progressivism. By the way, whether

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you're a conservative or a progressive, all of us, at

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one time or the other, maybe even as recently as yesterday,

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have had conversations with progressives or those on the left

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who will say something like, isn't it a shame that

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we are so polarized? Isn't it a shame that these polarities,

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this disharmony, seems to define the country. But as I

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demonstrate in Stumbling Towards Utopia, beginning with Saul Olenski, but

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many others who learned from him and similar thinkers, they

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wanted polarization. They championed it. They made it a central

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part of rules for radicals. It's rule thirteen. They knew

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that by creating disharmony, chasms, and disunity, that they would

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ultimately transform the United States of America. And here we

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are in twenty twenty four, and we are beyond the

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dreams of these early progressives and what they have imposed

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upon our really remarkable country.

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Speaker 1: And again, what did we see, of course in sixty

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sixty seven was started earlier, but really exploded, of course

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during the Vietnam War. You talk a great deal about

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that using and how many times have we heard in

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modern America, never let a crisis, a good crisis, go

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to waste. That's not something that you know, the strategist

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for Barack Obama came up with. These are time tested

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lessons from the left that truly began in our institutions

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of higher education back in the early to mid nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 2: I could not agree more. And that is so well said.

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It's why in the book I deal at length with

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President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the creator and champion of the

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Great Society. My friend, I went back and read all

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of the early Johnson speeches, remarks, et cetera, on all

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of the rhetoric of the Great Society. It's breathtaking, his

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infamous speech at the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor.

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Government is going to solve the poverty problem. The federal

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is going to solve the city problems. The federal government

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is going to solve problems in families, in schools. It

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goes on and on, and then we have geysers of

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federal cash. And yet by nineteen sixty five, I mean,

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this is early in the New Deal. In the Great Society,

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you have young demographers like Pat moynihan saying, wait a minute,

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we've got twenty five percent of all Black Americans who

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are now born out of wedlock. By the way, Matt

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he called that a crisis in nineteen sixty five. That

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number is now seventy three percent. It's fifty three percent

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among Hispanic Americans and thirty three percent among native born whites.

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The majority of babies born to women who are ages

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thirty years of age and under are now born out

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of weblock. This is a direct result in an area

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of the lowest marriage and fertility rates in recorded American history.

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This is a direct result of the moral and social

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reference revolution that you and I are speaking.

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Speaker 1: About, and it is devastating. It was devastating when moynihan

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talked about it in nineteen sixty five. It is that

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much more devastating today.

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Speaker 3: Who is the Department of Home Win Security supposed to help?

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The Watch Dout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.

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Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and

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the economy and how it affects your wallet. Majorcas is

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saying FEMA's running out of money, but this past year

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we spent twenty four billion in Ukraine, eleven billion in Israel,

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and billions more to smaller nations who are their real priorities.

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Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,

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it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watch

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dot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Our guest on this edition of The Federalist Radio Hour

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is Timothy Giglin, Vice President Government and External Relations, Focus

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on the Family, joining us to talk about his new book,

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Fascinating Look Back and really a look into why we

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are here stumbling toward utopia, how the nineteen sixties turned

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into a national nightmare, and how we can receive revive

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the American dream. I want to go back to Lennon

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Baines Johnson because I think it is a central focus

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of your book what was happening during the Johnson era.

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And he was someone who was a if you will,

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prayed at the altar of FBR, prayed at the altar

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of Woodrow Wilson. The great status, the great government can

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solve anything and everything. He is the biggest reason, I believe,

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you know, and others have picked up his torch. It

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is the biggest reason LBJ and the great society why

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we have the government that we have today. Why so

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many people, mistakenly, as you have noted and you note

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in your book, believe that government is the end all

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answer to all things, from cradle to grave.

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Speaker 2: You have so well said. I could not agree more.

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And you know, I think one of the shocking things

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to say, is that the direct impact of the sexual revolution,

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which is often ascribed, you know, to carping on the

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part of you know, traditional or conservative Americans, is really

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such a national nightmare a result of all of the

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ideas we're talking about, and it's become so acute that

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of a sudden, and I find this extremely encouraging, that

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of a sudden, very important thinkers on the center and

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center left have of a sudden become people using empirical

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research and data, speaking like many of the social and

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moral and traditional conservatives of the last seventy years. In fact,

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if you cover up the name and read the research

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and the books that are coming out to document what

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has happened in the social and cultural realm as a

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result of the things that we're talking about, you would

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be shocked to learn that they are some of the

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most prominent liberal statisticians, academics, and sociologists in the United States.

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I mean, I think it's now incontrovertible. I cite one

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statistic that I think the listeners Matt will find jaw dropping.

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In nineteen sixty among all young Americans, this is only

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nineteen sixty, seventy three percent of young Americans were living

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in a married intact home. That number by nineteen eighty

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had dropped to fifty one percent. Think about and question yes.

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By twenty fifteen that number was forty three percent. Now

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we're in twenty twenty four. I think we have to

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reconcile this and we have to ask ourselves is restoration possible?

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And I believe that it is. I believe it very strongly.

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Speaker 1: Interesting that you say that, because I do, and your

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book focus is on it, and I want to take

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some time to explore it. But the loss of faith

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in this country, and I say that, I don't mean

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that it was somehow mistakenly lost. I don't mean that,

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you know, we just somehow got away from it. And

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this is, as you mentioned before, you know, the push

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from the institutions of higher education, our institutions in general,

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to drive faith to its needs. How much of that

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void that was really darting to be driven in the

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nineteen sixties, the counterculture revolution, How much of that are

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we reaping today?

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Speaker 2: This is a major part of stumbling towards utopia. I

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went back and I looked at the old Protestant mainline,

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and for those of the rising generation, they may not

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realize that overwhelmingly in the United States until the nineteen nineties,

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it was by and large the Protestant denominations that were

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the central kind of Christian institutions in our country, broadly speaking, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans,

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et cetera, et cetera. And yet it was the progressives

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who purposely targeted the seminaries and the churches, and the

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goal was to remove broadly speaking Christian orthodoxy from the

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seminaries and from the churches and to install a new

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progressive theology. And the result has been a near total

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collapse of what we used to call the Protestant mainline.

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And what I do is I delineate in Stumbling towards Utopia,

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what the national membership numbers were across the early nineteen

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sixties and what they are today. And there is not

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a single, not even one major Protestant denomination on the

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old mainline that anybody would say is relatively healthy for membership.

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It's been a complete and total hollowing out. And I

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think that the impact for millions of people who looked

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to churches for faith, guidance, for community, for nourishment, for continuity.

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I think have one by one been rather stunned and

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shocked by what's happened to what used to be a

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very steady and important faith community and component in their lives.

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Speaker 1: You speak of the optimism that you have, and I

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want to touch upon the last year, twenty twenty three

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was the year, of course, of determining who our next

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candidates would be for president. I spent a lot of

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time in the state of Iowa, where all of those

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presidential contenders on the Republican side of course, basically lived

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for the better part of a year trying to earn

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the confidence in the votes of caucus goers in Iowa,

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and I covered all of them. I covered a gentleman

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by the name of a Vike Ramaswami. Quite a bit

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you'vet and one of the core messages that he had

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in his campaign that I thought caught a lot of

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attention from the average Iowa and I think ultimately from

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folks across the country is there is a yearning, a

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longing for something bigger than ourselves. Because what the sixties

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counterculture taught us informed us and where we are today

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so much is such a self driven, self motivated society,

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and that can sustain one only so long, and so

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Ramaswami kept talking about this void people are trying to

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fill with all kinds of things, everything as he mentioned

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from you know, from the identity politics cult as he

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calls it, the climate change cult, drugs, sex, pornography, all

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of those things. And yet at the end of the day,

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the lives are so empty. Is there a turning away

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from that, a turning toward what made this country so great?

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Speaker 2: In my estimation, well, I think you observed something very important,

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and I think that you have synthesized and translated it

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in a really powerful way. I could not agree more.

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My great friend at Princeton University, Robbie George, wrote a

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I think very important book called Conscience and Its Enemies,

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and I remember reading this really extraordinary book, and the

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narrative is that you have to ultimately confront the dogmas

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of liberal secutarism if you're really going to ultimately confront

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the major problems that are facing Americans and those in

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the West. I could not agree more. The question is

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how do we confront, address, and then turn back this

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tsunami of liberal secutarism. And I believe very strongly that

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there is no magic formula. I think that the only

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way forward for the United States, if we are to

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address this spiritual crisis, is not from a top down

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program like the Great Society. In other words, I do

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not think, Matt, that we're going to ultimately restore or

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generate our country by the ideas here in Washington, DC,

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or Wall Street or Silicon Valley, you know, or Hollywood

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or Broadway or whatever. The imposition is of culture and policy.

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And as I say in Stumbling Towards Utopia, I am

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an inveterate optimist and I believe strongly that restoration, renewal,

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and regeneration is possible. And I think in my role

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that focus on the family, I'm already seeing it. I

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think that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want

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boys and girls sports. They do not want men in

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women's sports. Most of us were shocked and horrified to

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see a woman boxed in the face at the Olympics.

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That was a very clarifying moment. We have the first

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major trans case at the United States Supreme Court that

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will be argued late this fall early winter. So I

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think there are seedlings that have been planted, and they're

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good ones, and I think they're germinating already, and I

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think that they confirm that there are millions of Americans

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of goodwill who want something better and different. And I

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believe very strongly that the rising generation of young people

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has lived through a lot of brokenness and unevenness. They're

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impatient for all the right things, Matt, and I think

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they want something better, and I think they're going to

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help contribute to the kind of restoration that we want

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as a country.

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Speaker 1: I think we see that with moms for liberty, parents

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getting involved in parental rights, those all of those sorts

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of things. And I agree with you absolutely. I think

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it is a grassroots movement that is going to save

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the Republic in so many different ways. I don't doubt

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that for a moment. I do, though, do not want

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to dismiss the challenges. How do you take on you

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have another book on the subject as a matter of

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fact that we can note here. How do you take

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on generations of indoctrination going on in our public taxpayer

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fund school systems that are teaching the values of turmoil,

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of spiritual, social, sexual, economic turmoil of the nineteen sixties counterculture.

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Speaker 2: Today, I think we're doing it. I think we're seeing

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historic levels of school choice in the United States. I

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think we're seeing historic levels of charter schools in the

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United States. I think we are seeing historically high levels

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of home schooling. Of a sudden, we are seeing faith

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based schools who actually came through COVID quite well. They

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opened much earlier, and their students are doing much better.

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I think that we are seeing a host of things

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in the education space. I think people who have never

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thought about running for a school board, much less ever

431
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attending a school board meeting, are of a sudden running

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and winning in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Who would have

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thought that a successful governor, you know, whose campaign was

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00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:06,359
down in the numbers, you know, would have so successfully

435
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won and governed on the issue of parental rights and

436
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parental involvement in the schools. I think that that was

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a wonderful, defining moment for the United States.

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Speaker 1: Indeed, and speaking of politics, we can't have this conversation

439
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where we are in this time frame, this timeline without

440
00:30:27,839 --> 00:30:33,519
talking about the big political questions of our day, and

441
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that is centrally focused on the presidential election and who

442
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is going to control government in Washington, d C. In particular,

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I have heard from a lot of people over the

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last several months in our conversations on this podcast about

445
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the existential nature of this election of this republic, do

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00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:03,000
you believe that this is an existential election between Donald

447
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Trump and Kamala Harris.

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Speaker 2: I believe definitively that people of goodwill could definitely see

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it through that prism. We are on an unexpected journey.

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And who would have thought, in light of our wonderful

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00:31:17,319 --> 00:31:21,920
conversation today Matt and Uh, you know the profound failures

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of American progressivism, that we would have a Berkeley Liberal, Uh,

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you know who is running to be president of the

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United States of America. Who would have thought, uh, that

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that the man who has been dubbed a blue collar

456
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:41,640
billionaire right would would would be running against this kind

457
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of Berkeley era liberal. I think it is uh. In

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any ways, I think that this season in public policy

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and in culture, uh is a defining, remarkable moment in

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American history. It is not just another presidential election. It's

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not even a time where we are understanding the historic

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00:32:02,559 --> 00:32:05,359
alignments of each of the parties. I think we're living

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through a major realignment. And I think that as we

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get the empirical data in the days immediately after the

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pending election, not just in the presidential election, but in

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the House, the Senate, the governor's races, the Baalid initiatives.

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I think we have to be prepared to be very

468
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surprised by the realignment in culture first and then in politics.

469
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I think it's going to be very substantial.

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Speaker 1: Couldn't agree with you more. And we will find out

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in the coming days exactly where that line is in America.

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I'm just praying, like I'm sure you are, that we

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don't find that line violently, and again we shall see.

474
00:32:48,799 --> 00:32:52,839
It's a fascinating book, a fascinating time, certainly in America,

475
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:59,599
a time that has been really front of mind for

476
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,000
such a long time because of its influences and what

477
00:33:03,079 --> 00:33:06,599
it has done the nineteen sixties. I want to thank

478
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:11,839
our guest today on a fascinating book, Timothy Gigline, Vice

479
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:16,440
President Government and External Relations, Well Focus on the Family,

480
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:20,559
joining us to talk about his new book, Stumbling Toward Utopia,

481
00:33:20,599 --> 00:33:24,960
how the nineteen sixties turned into a national nightmare and

482
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:29,519
how we can revive the American dream. Very interesting, sir,

483
00:33:29,599 --> 00:33:31,279
Thank you so much for joining us in the Federalist

484
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:31,799
Radio hopp.

485
00:33:32,519 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 2: Thank you, Matt. It has been a real pleasure.

486
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:38,799
Speaker 1: You have been listening to another edition of the Federalist

487
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:42,680
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at the Federalist.

488
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:46,440
We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers

489
00:33:46,480 --> 00:34:01,839
of freedom and anxious for the fray. A four lasso

490
00:34:02,319 --> 00:34:02,359
ar