July 3, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
48:48
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
| MAGA Media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
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War Room, here's your host, Stephen K. Babb. | |
| Thanks for watching. | ||
| Mounting guns, 44. | ||
| From New York she came. | ||
| For to cruise in the channel of old England's fame. | ||
| With a noble commander, Paul Jones was his name. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country We had not sailed far before two sails we spied, a stout forty-four and a twenty likewise, and forty bold ship in all lane with store, As the convoy stood in for the old Yorkshire shore. | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever! | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| Our brave Captain Jones, to his men he did say, Let every man fight a good battle today. | ||
| We'll take that bold convoy in the height of her pride, or the recharge shall founder and sink in the tide. | ||
| Hurrah! Hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever, hurrah! | ||
| The battle rolled on until Bold Pearson cried, Have you struck your colors, then come alongside? | ||
| But so far from thinking the battle was won, John Paul Jones replied, I have not yet begun, hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever, hurrah! | ||
| We fought them for glasses, for glasses so hot Till fifty bold sailors lay dead on the spot And fifty-five others lay stretched in their gore While the thundering cans most fiercely did roar Hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever hurrah! | ||
| The alliance bore down and the richard did rake, which caused the bold hearts of our seamen to ache. | ||
| But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long, and the brave British colors came finally down. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever! | ||
| Hurrah! It's Monday, July... | ||
| The 3rd, the 3rd of July of the year of our Lord, 2023. | ||
| I want to welcome you to our War Room Independence Day special today and tomorrow. | ||
| I'm going to have a special guest to talk about special topics, both current and really the foundation of our revolutionary generation and how we got here today as a free country or still... | ||
| I guess a semi-free country. | ||
| That's Diane Taraz, her Songs of the Revolution, Songs of the American Revolution. | ||
| You can go check it out. Go online. | ||
| Absolutely incredible. We'll play her music throughout today and also tomorrow. | ||
| Of course, that's John Paul Jones, I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight, the motto of the United States Navy, of which I was a proud member, and really the motto of the war room. | ||
| And so we're going to get into it today. | ||
| I'm really honored to To be joined by a couple of fighters. | ||
| Jeff Clark needs no introduction. | ||
| He's been with us for a while and absolutely tip of the spirit. | ||
| Dr. Trent Talbot is going to join us in a minute from Brave Books. | ||
| We had that great interview with Kirk Cameron last week about Brave Books and about what they're doing on 5 August. | ||
| And we're going to get into that with Dr. | ||
| Talbot in a moment. Jeff, you were on the war the other day, and the reason I thought it would be appropriate to have you here is that What a lot of people don't realize, and I try to emphasize, we'll do it also tomorrow, when the framers signed the declaration. | ||
| That is not, and a lot of people, just like they've taught kids about World War II, it's Pearl Harbor, Normandy, and the Holocaust. | ||
| You know, the war didn't end at Normandy, the landing on 6 June. | ||
| The Revolutionary Board was not won by the signing of the Declaration. | ||
| That was kind of the kickoff. | ||
| That was us taking the high moral ground. | ||
| And in fact, it took us, what, eight years of fighting, intense fighting, to actually win our freedom. | ||
| And at the time they signed it, on the 2nd of July of... | ||
| The 2nd of July of 1776, on 2 July, the first advance guard of the transport ships for the British Expeditionary Force had actually come into New York Harbor unaccosted. | ||
| And they actually, I think, anchored off of Staten Island, went to Staten Island eventually by the time of mid-August. | ||
| 45 days after the signing of the declaration, the largest expeditionary force in British military history with I think they had seven ships of the line, which are equivalent to battleships or aircraft carriers today. | ||
| I think 20 some frigates in hundreds of troops transports to to launch this massive expeditionary force that really came ashore and went to Long Island. | ||
| And from that time, from basically the 22nd of August, Up until Christmas night, it was one continual defeat after the other. | ||
| We lost everywhere. | ||
| Now, we had many great rearguard actions, but it was brutal for six months. | ||
| And I want people to understand that just signing the declaration did not get us our freedom. | ||
| That was the throwdown that said, hey, it's freedom. | ||
| We've crossed the Rubicon. It's freedom or bust. | ||
| Talk to me, Jeff, what you mentioned the other day about – and Franklin had addressed this, that we were kind of a different species, a different race, that the Americans were coarser, not as refined in their etiquette maybe as our – You know, our mother country of England and also the rest of Europe, but that this consciousness has been building for a hundred years beforehand. | ||
| Walk me through that. What actually, what was the thinking in this consciousness that led to the revolutionary generation? | ||
| Sure, Steve. Well, first, let me actually, if I could, say something about the song you used to open your show. | ||
| Because, you know, as a young man, as an adolescent, I had a war game that I was very fond of called Wooden Ships and Iron Men. | ||
| And it plays, you know, very famous 18th century naval battles. | ||
| And the first one, so you can learn how to, you know, work with one ship at a time, was, you know, the fight that the song memorialized about... | ||
| You know, the saying of, you know, I've not yet begun to fight. | ||
| And so, you know, that's kind of burned in my memory. | ||
| And, you know, the war games actually were very useful for lots of reasons, including inculcating patriotism. | ||
| And I think it's probably with all the video games that kids play these days, these instant dopamine hits, they don't get to do these kind of longer form things that do teach you more about the country. | ||
| Returning to your question of... | ||
| But hang on, hang on. | ||
| I want to hang with that for a second, because people forget that that battle, which is the first big victory of the United States Navy, took place. | ||
| And John Paul Jones, like many of the revolutionary generation, was a piece of work, right? | ||
| He was a quasi-pirate at one time. | ||
| But the Bonhomme Richard... | ||
| You know, it was basically his mask was shot off. | ||
| The power of that is that the British sea captain, who's a pretty experienced, thought, you've got to strike your colors, man. | ||
| You're finished. And John Paul Jones, with that kind of grit of America, said, I have not yet begun to fight. | ||
| Of course, they had a couple of very well-placed shots later that took care of his opponent. | ||
| But didn't that show you kind of this... | ||
| Grit and determination. | ||
| That's really the backbone of the country. | ||
| That just not, you know, kind of this cussedness that we're not prepared to bow. | ||
| We're not prepared to surrender. | ||
| We're not prepared to just accept things as it looks inevitable, but they're always going to fight back. | ||
| Absolutely. And look, even in some of the counterculture things we had in the 1960s, we still had in that an element of American rebelliousness. | ||
| So it was never kind of a pure Marxist movement. | ||
| There were people who joined because they liked the girls who went to Woodstock and because they had a basic spirit of everything always needs to be You need to make sure that our freedoms are actually being observed. | ||
| And when there's a massive war state that is pushing even things like the Vietnam War, it's healthy in America, and we have this spirit of questioning everything. | ||
| Part of the whole set of evils of political correctness is that it's not about that. | ||
| It's about a very foreign to the American way of thinking, a kind of groupthink, a monothink. | ||
| And I think that's the most dangerous thing of all. | ||
| And as Breitbart had said, things are downstream of the culture. | ||
| The politics is important. | ||
| But if people are no longer kind of the free spirits who believe in American liberty and know something about our founding, That translates into the kinds of evils we're seeing in both, you know, on the woke side with all of the cultural Marxism and on the weaponization of government side because people don't know their rights. | ||
| And, you know, they just assume that what they're taught in the primary and secondary schools, you know, of this kind of monothink and kind of skipping across the real tops of the waves is American history. | ||
| And it's not. It's a lot deeper than that. | ||
| So talk to me about this, what you call the formation of the American conscience. | ||
| Sure. So Bernard Balin, this Harvard historian, you know, he was very famous for talking about how the American mind, the American consciousness had formed, you know, many decades before 1776. | ||
| And people really thought of themselves as separately American, right? | ||
| That, you know, we have a certain cousinship, kinship to the English that sputted us. | ||
| But we, by that point in time, had really Through the colonial experience, become our own people. | ||
| And so, yes, we demanded, and there's the long list of grievances at the start of the Declaration of Independence of, you know, he's sent the armies to eat us out of house and home, etc. | ||
| You know, they were demanding the rights of Englishmen because they had all been raised in, you know, reading Blackstone and the like, you know, folks like Jefferson and, you know, their legal tutors. | ||
| You know, like with or wife, however it's pronounced, Marshall, with or wife. | ||
| And so they understood those rights, but they still thought of themselves uniquely as American. | ||
| And so what I was pointing out last week on the show was that there were still people who were, for one reason or another, either because they benefited From being connected to the British Empire or because they were lazy, you know, who essentially charted a path of not being loyal to, you know, the soil of America and to the culture that had become separate and to their, you know, more direct kin. | ||
| In the American colonies, but that they threw their lots in as being Tories. | ||
| And today, my analogy for that is, there are too many people who are forgetting the historical liberties of the Americans as a distinct A nation and a distinct people, which is welcoming and will embrace people and build them in through the melting pot. | ||
| But which, you know, they're forgetting those rights and they're becoming part of this kind of citizen of the world mindset or even dumber than the citizen of the world, just the products of political correctness in the schools. | ||
| And they're becoming more liable to, you know, just being turned into, you know, The sheep by all of the entertainment we're awash in. | ||
| And they are becoming something different. | ||
| And for those people who are succumbing to that, I think they're losing their American character and what makes us unique as Americans. | ||
| So you're saying, where Balin makes this point about this formation of the American consciousness before the revolution, you're saying that there are forces that are particularly among young people and others that are forming this almost away from the American tradition, away from what Rabbi Sparrow would call the American Judeo-Christian ethos. | ||
| Is that your argument about modernity? | ||
| Yes. And look, Steve, you've been a part of pushing back on this with, you know, Andrew Breitbart, who recognized that it's not just about, you know, winning arguments about balanced budgets or tax cuts, right? | ||
| You know, a kind of technocrat level of being conservative. | ||
| It's really about these big cultural issues and what we share and what runs through our blood. | ||
| The big muscles. Okay, Jeff Clark is going to hang with us. | ||
| We've got Dr. | ||
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Trent Talbot. We're going to take a short commercial break. | |
| It's 3 July in the year of our Lord, 2023, and we're down for a fight here in the war room. | ||
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Back at... But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long And the brave British colors came finally down Hurrah! | |
| Our country Okay, welcome back. This is our Fourth of July special. | ||
| We always do it on the 3rd and the 4th. | ||
| Jeff Clark is here today to be our wingman and walk through a bunch of topics we're going to get into, including about having to fight for your freedom. | ||
| It's not handed to you. | ||
| I want to bring in Dr. Trent Talbot. | ||
| You know, one of the things we're going to get into tomorrow is about the revolutionary generation and this formation of the American consciousness. | ||
| I've got Larry Swikern on, who wrote The Patriot's History of the United States, and he and I talk all the time. | ||
| you know from his research it shows that the divinity schools, you know a great university today that may be of declined away from that but places like Harvard and Yale and Brown and places like that were actually divinity schools and that Informed so much of the of the of the thinking of the revolutionary generation We've gotten far away from that one things. I was most intrigued that brave books is doing and by the way, it's a great name Dr. Trent Talbot, but one of the things I was most | ||
| intrigued about is Is this throwdown, this fight you guys want to have on 5 August? | ||
| Now, I realize it's not a fight. | ||
| You want to get into as many libraries as possible, want to have as many people sponsor it. | ||
| But you've got a lot of headwinds on this. | ||
| Tell us about what Brave Books is doing and walk us through how the War Room Posse can participate. | ||
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Yeah, so we joined with Kirk Cameron to go on this Brave Books Story Hour tour across the country that we've been doing for the past year. | |
| The past year or so. And after each one, you'll have thousands of people show up. | ||
| And people will ask, hey, what can we do? | ||
| What can we do? And we thought about that. | ||
| And eventually what we came up with is a plan to sort of pass the torch to the people. | ||
| And we came up with a plan to do what we call a library takeover on August the 5th. | ||
| And it's sort of a take on the see you at the poll event. | ||
| We're calling it see you at the library. | ||
| And so we announced this a few weeks ago, and people were starting to get excited about it. | ||
| And the taxpayer-funded America Library Association, they get $230 million a year from the government. | ||
| They caught wind of this and put on a national conference where all the library directors across the country were attending. | ||
| And basically, they said, hey, Kirk Cameron, Brave Books, they're doing this library takeover. | ||
| We can't let that happen. | ||
| And wouldn't it be convenient if you went ahead and on August 5th booked your library so that there weren't any availabilities? | ||
| And so our people were starting to let us know that they were having trouble getting into the libraries. | ||
| And we looked into it. | ||
| We found that that's what was going on. | ||
| The ALA is encouraging this. | ||
| And yeah, it was already getting traction once word got out that the ALA is trying to sabotage this library. | ||
| She really poured gasoline on it and picked a fight with us. | ||
| We're only two years old. | ||
| We're sort of a baby of a company, but we definitely aren't scared of a fight. | ||
| If they want to treat Christian conservatives like we're second-class citizens and need to be silenced and need to be shunned from the public square, then we're going to fight. | ||
| Dr. Talbot, tell me, what is so radical about your books? | ||
| Why is the American Library Association and the establishment, why do they fear brave books? | ||
| Why do they fear your authors, Jack Posobiec, John Solomon, Kash Patel, Kirk Cameron? | ||
| What is it about the content that they think is inappropriate and they don't want it around children? | ||
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I mean... All of our topics were just completely mainstream 10-20 years ago. | |
| We're teaching that boys are boys and girls are girls. | ||
| We're teaching that communism is bad. | ||
| Freedom of speech is important. | ||
| Hard work is good. Family is good. | ||
| Our stories teach values that any Christian conservative parent would I would agree with, but we're so far from radical. | ||
| It's just crazy. I think that really what they're scared of is that we're doing it in a very unique way and our stories are really good and I think they're a little threatened and And yeah, we're always faced with different ways that the beast is trying to throw obstacles in a way. | ||
| But all it does is make us stronger. | ||
| And yeah, we're... | ||
| Anyway, we're not scared of a fight. | ||
| And if they want to try to get all the libraries to silence us, then we'll find a way to overcome. | ||
| So you basically have content for children that is... | ||
| That underpins the tenets of the Judeo-Christian West, and particularly the American ethos of that. | ||
| And talk to me, when you say Library Technical, on 5 August of this year, of 2023, you wanted parents or groups to have a story hour in the various local libraries that are near their homes? | ||
| Is that what you guys wanted? | ||
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Right. You know, the institution of the library has... | |
| In some ways, been taken over by the left. | ||
| And when people think of libraries these days, they think of the Drag Queen Story Hours. | ||
| And we don't want to just forfeit this public institution and these public spaces to the left. | ||
| And one way that we want to fight for our libraries is on one day, August 5th this year, to People across the country to go and host their own wholesome story hours. | ||
| So it could be a book. It could be a brave book. | ||
| It could be, you know, your favorite book. | ||
| When you were a kid, maybe Dr. | ||
| Seuss, whatever it is. But just a wholesome book and read it for any local kids in the community that want something to do on a Saturday. | ||
| And that's it. Anybody can do it. | ||
| You don't need to be famous. You don't need to be an author. | ||
| You just need to be willing to sign up for space at your local library and get the word out. | ||
| If you need any resources on how best... | ||
| How to register, how to promote your event, you can go to bravebooks.com. | ||
| We've got a lot of free resources for people to help coach them on how to do that. | ||
| Now, what is the American Library Association? | ||
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Just tell us, what is that group? | |
| Well, they... | ||
| They're not part of the government, but they are taxpayer-funded. | ||
| They get over $200 million a year. | ||
| The Institute of Museums and Library Sciences, they fund them. | ||
| And basically, they give direction to libraries across the country. | ||
| They give guidance and help coach our... | ||
| Our libraries, and they're coaching them right now to basically thwart what we're trying to do on 5 August. | ||
| So why, but just understand, with American Library Association, I take it one of the things is to make sure the kids come to libraries, feel more comfortable in libraries, use libraries, use books. | ||
| Why... And they're taxpayer-funded, and this is what we kept saying about McCarthy's debacle on this bill, was we're trying to cut out the woke and weaponized, and this is both woke and weaponized. | ||
| Why would they have a problem with parents around the country coming in and having a story hour that either talked about a brave book that underpinned the Judeo-Christian ethos, or one of their favorite books that they could talk about? | ||
| Why would the American Library Association have a problem with that? | ||
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Well, they shouldn't. It goes against their ethos. | |
| Their ethos is to bring awareness to local libraries, to bring in new people to their libraries, and they say that they want to promote diversity, but... | ||
| They only want the diversity that they believe in, I guess. | ||
| And so, I mean, they absolutely shouldn't. | ||
| It's really shocking. And to me, I think that they need to be held accountable. | ||
| And we've got a plan. | ||
| Right now, we just want to get the word out on what's happening. | ||
| Probably next week, we'll go into phase two of this thing where we do our part to hold them accountable. | ||
| Okay, so here's what I want. | ||
| I want everybody, first off, where do they go to Brave Books and find out all these titles you've got from these authors that basically are there to, because this is about formation. | ||
| This is about formation of character. | ||
| this about formation of spirit in those years when they're young up until their teen years are vitally important. Your character and everything is formed then that doesn't really change over life. People know that. So that's why this time of formation is so important. Where do they go to Brave Books to inform themselves about all the different titles you have and then where do they go to see if people in this audience would be so inclined to sponsor or to get involved in this 5 August, to actually put on a story | ||
| hour in one of their local libraries. So where do they go? | ||
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Bravebooks.com. That's where you go. | |
| Our core product is our Freedom of Book Club. | ||
| If you subscribe, you get a new book every single month. | ||
| Each book teaches a new traditional Judeo-Christian value. | ||
| And then same place, Bravebooks.com, you can learn about the See You at the Library Day on 5 August, and you've got a lot of free resources on how best to do that. | ||
| So yeah, let's take this over. | ||
| Our goal is to be in every single state on 5 August, and I think we're on track to do that. | ||
| Oh, we've got to be in all 50 states, but we've got to be in multiples of the 50 states. | ||
| Look, the parental rights movement grew out of this. | ||
| So, look, you're doing fantastic. | ||
| I've got to tell you, the types of quality of people, the Kash Patels, the Jack Posobics, the Kirk Camerons, the John Solomons, you've just got some incredible people involved in this. | ||
| People don't understand, it takes a lot of time to create and write these books and then to illustrate it. | ||
| So it's a big-time commitment from people. | ||
| Important. People at the tip of the spear of this movement understand that this is, because this is everything. | ||
| If we don't, the children are being hunted right now. | ||
| Let me just be blunt. The children are being hunted. | ||
| This is like the Red Guard and what Mao did to break the families of La Beijing. | ||
| One more time, Dr. | ||
| Talbot, how did they get to you, social media, all of it? | ||
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Yeah, best place is bravebooks.com. | |
| But yeah, if you want to follow me on Twitter, it's Trent Talbot. | ||
| Trent Talbot. I think we're going to have, I think there's going to be a big issue as we get closer to 5 August, and we commit that the war room will be riding shotgun with you. | ||
| So thank you very much for coming on here. | ||
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Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. | |
| Let's do it. That's the fight that John Paul Jones was talking about. | ||
| We have not yet begun to fight. | ||
| Remember, it's a 30-front war, but you've got to hunker down every day if you love your country and you want to fight for your country and you believe in this country. | ||
| Like I said, we wouldn't have it any other way. | ||
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Okay, a fighter is Jeff Clark. | |
| The team over there with Russ Vogt, the Center for American Renewal. | ||
| Just incredible. Jeff Clark's going to join us on the other side as we get more into 3 July, the year of our Lord, 2023. | ||
| The meaning and purpose of the American Revolution. | ||
| All next, in the war room. | ||
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The alliance bore down and the richard did rake, which caused the bold hearts of our seamen to ache. | |
| But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long, and the brave British colours came finally down. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever! Hurrah! | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| An American frigate, the Richard by name, mounting guns forty-four. | ||
| Welcome back to the War Room. | ||
| We've got a lot to go through today. | ||
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I've got Jeff Clark who's going to be here for a while to help us through it. | |
| So Brother Clark, by the way, it's the Center for Renewing America. | ||
| Center for Renewing America. | ||
| Make sure you go check it out. They are doing amazing work and they punch way above their weight. | ||
| They're at the tip of the spear of so many things including the budget and the legal fights and all of it. | ||
| Also, they're helping Heritage and others with this whole program to make sure that we're ready to hit the beach running, hit the deck plates running when we take back the executive branch of the government in November 2024, be ready for the 20 January 2025 turnover when we take power again. | ||
| Clark, let me let me ask you, I've got other things to go back to the revolution, but I just got to ask you this question. | ||
| If If you sat the revolutionary generation down and how they had been formed, and because I keep saying we'll talk all today and tomorrow about it, and I said a little bit last week that these individuals are all part of the system. | ||
| There was something in their formation. | ||
| They could have been very wealthy and very connected with the landed aristocracy in Britain and the crown and, of course, the monopoly power that British East India Company and others. | ||
| Because they were already lawyers. | ||
| They were already real estate, big real estate mavens. | ||
| They were in commerce, maybe a little bit under the crown, away from the crown as Hancock and Sam Adams and others. | ||
| But they were men of the system. | ||
| And so there was something in their character that said, no, we have to do this. | ||
| We have to be free. We have to do something different. | ||
| We have to break away from the biggest empire on Earth, which just is not done in human history. | ||
| If you had that revolutionary generation, Jeff, and we took them to a library and we showed them Drag Queen Story Hour... | ||
| How would you explain that to them? | ||
| I mean, this past weekend, a couple weekends ago on these pride marches in New York and other places, exposing themselves to these children and all this kind of depravity that was going on in these marches. | ||
| Tell me, how would you describe that? | ||
| Could they even comprehend it, sir? | ||
| Steve, I don't think that most of them could. | ||
| One of the famous concepts, terms from the revolutionary period was the Black Robe Regiment. | ||
| The founders who were preaching from the pulpits and preaching about the ideas that essentially then got baked into the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| If you go to any leftist College, major university, like I did, Harvard, right? | ||
| You learn about these things, you know, as if it's all kind of an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment and its, you know, its lock. | ||
| And there's definitely important strands there. | ||
| But that wasn't the only influence. | ||
| You know, basic Christianity, as preached from the pulpits, was a very important ingredient in the revolution. | ||
| And I think, you know, those founding fathers would definitely have been just, their jaws would drop, right? | ||
| We've gotten to the point where it's open libertinism, right? | ||
| We're seeing these pride marches where people are openly naked. | ||
| And, you know, it's not just a temporary period where they're openly naked, but there are people who are bringing their children to see this stuff. | ||
| And, you know, they're being applauded and they applaud themselves on social media as if, you know, there's something wrong with most people who recoil at the thought that children are being exposed to these things. | ||
| And even if I think about a founder like Ben Franklin, right, who, you know, he definitely put his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on the line. | ||
| You know, he's a newspaper publisher, inventor. | ||
| He was world famous, especially in Europe, right? | ||
| And, you know, repeatedly, I think, was a member of the Hellfire Club, right? | ||
| I think he would have thought of those kinds of activities that he was quite popular with the ladies, right? | ||
| In Europe on when he was serving as an ambassador, etc. | ||
| That's a private life thing, right? | ||
| Publicly, we need to make sure that we raise the next generation right. | ||
| And I'm talking about him as kind of an outlier. | ||
| Think of him almost as a kind of like Elon Musk of his day, right? | ||
| He's very wealthy because of all the things he's done. | ||
| He's world famous. And he's sort of seen as a science and techno person. | ||
| But he was still willing to lay it all on the line and subject himself to being hanged if he were ever caught by the British during the war. | ||
| And I think on these cultural issues, maybe in his private life, he was something of an outlier. | ||
| The mainstay Americans who really built the country and fought the war and provided its intellectual underpinnings, they were all very Christian men, and certainly the soldiers were, and they were the ones who lived and died on the battlefields up and down the East Coast. | ||
| Talk to me. Let's discuss Harvard, because Schweikert's going to be on here tomorrow for The Patriots' History. | ||
| And one of the things I've always admired about The Patriots' History of the U.S., and of course it's a blockbuster, it's in its 40th printing, which you just don't get. | ||
| It's kind of the answer to Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, I think. | ||
| He makes a big deal, particularly about Harvard, that so much of the founders... | ||
| had such a deep relationship or grounding in the Judeo-Christian West because so many of these colleges, these great colleges, started off as divinity schools. | ||
| Talk to me, even from the time you were there, about the transition of Harvard from being the backbone of the revolution because of being a theology school and inculcating these values and this ethos to when you're there today when it is really the font of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which diversity is our strength. | ||
| This nonsense. Walk me through that. | ||
| Sure. So, you know, it certainly was founded as a religious institution, right? | ||
| And it grew out of the Puritans who came to America, right? | ||
| And, you know, it was the 350th anniversary of Harvard when I was a sophomore, so I remember it well. | ||
| And, you know, there were some celebrations even in, you know, that time period where, you know, there's a recognition of the religious origins. | ||
| Of Harvard. | ||
| And same thing for Yale is also, you know, comes out of a religious tradition. | ||
| And, you know, same thing with Princeton. | ||
| There are a lot of, you know, preachers at Princeton who were very important to the founding generation. | ||
| By the time I was there, I see it as a transitional period. | ||
| And there's a book that I would recommend to your viewer, Steve, called The Return of the Strong Gods by Rusty Reno. | ||
| And he describes, you know, it was amazing because it really lined up a lot of pieces for me, including he has several chapters that discuss the Harvard core curriculum, which was a very big deal when I was there. | ||
| And in a nutshell, his thesis is that after World War I and World War II and all the bloodshed and the Holocaust, There were an intellectual class, you know, folks like Karl Popper and, you know, von Hayek, you know, they wanted an open society because they thought that was the only antidote to, you know, Hitlerianism, fascism, communism, etc. | ||
| And I think, you know, some of them like Hayek were more opposed to the to the communistic side. | ||
| But Popper becomes, you know, a mentor to George Soros, who then takes this concept Creates, you know, the self-named Open Society Foundation, and it's morphed into libertinism, right? | ||
| It's morphed into, you know, anything goes, and you can't say no to anything, and it influenced the Harvard curriculum. | ||
| The Harvard curriculum under the core curriculum tried to maintain something of kind of the great books approach by building it into, you know, Western Civ-type classes and making those requirements, but it could never really resist The siren call of postmodernism and the siren call of what is cultural Marxism now and what we now call woke because they were committed to this open society idea. | ||
| And so if you don't have an idea, a religiously based idea, I especially would argue, Of what is right and wrong. | ||
| And then, you know, some new intellectual fad comes along and it says, let's, you know, let's start doing this. | ||
| You know, like, they even start raising questions, right? | ||
| You know, like people like Foucault and others about like, you know, what's really wrong with pedophilia, right? | ||
| Isn't it just a minor attracted person? | ||
| Like all those things. How do you resist that if you don't have a core set of religious beliefs or at least a core set of Of classical moral beliefs. | ||
| And I think that this open society tradition, which infected Harvard and infected all of the universities, is what's led to a degradation of the culture. | ||
| And how did that, in a revolutionary generation, when you talk about the building of this American consciousness, what was that? | ||
| What are the two or three things that are the most powerful and really the mindset of the revolutionary generation that you see manifested? | ||
| Like you just said, hey, all these fights we have with debt or this other stuff are manifestations of the spiritual war. | ||
| The manifestations of the declaration and really the crossing of the Rubicon and the bravery of that. | ||
| What was that consciousness that was formed before the revolution from places like Harvard and Princeton, these essentially theological schools and seminaries? | ||
| Sure. So, you know, I think that the religious foundation, you know, Protestantism and the Protestant work ethic, right, before they are actually, you know, the Protestant work ethic term had been coined in the 19th century. | ||
| I think that's a part of it. | ||
| I think that, you know, even if you think about the history of the Puritans, right, they tried something that was somewhat like a communist system, but they realized that it wasn't workable. | ||
| And so then they became very dogged about everyone must work. | ||
| And so there was a very strong work ethic like that. | ||
| I think it was a common language. | ||
| I think it was a common set of legal traditions. | ||
| You know, everyone in England, they have an unwritten constitution, right? | ||
| And so the one unifying thing that all of the founding lawyers knew backwards and forwards was Blackstone. | ||
| And the other thing was they were very steeped in history. | ||
| They knew the classics. They knew the history of the Roman Republic and other republics and of democracies in Greece. | ||
| They knew all of those analogues. | ||
| And I remember debating with one of my college classmates how important it is actually to have a common language. | ||
| That, you know, one of the things that led to a lot of bloodshed in Europe is the fact that people were divided by tongues. | ||
| So, you know, it was like a group of people who came to America. | ||
| Some of them were outcasts, right? | ||
| It was a penal colony, just like Australia. | ||
| Sometimes people would get sent over as indentured servants. | ||
| But, you know, that's part of, I think, the American grit. | ||
| So all of those things and our unique geography, right, and then working with Even the Indian tribes, right? | ||
| This is a problem that they didn't have in England. | ||
| And it led ultimately to the founders to do something, so I can give a reading assignment maybe to your viewers, Steve, or those listening in podcast form, of go read the constitution because the founders thought it was critical that we have a written constitution, not an unwritten constitution like England. | ||
| And why did they think that was critical? | ||
| They thought that was critical because whatever courts do over time, whatever encrustations and carbuncles grow on the body politic, go read the original document and people could then read the text and compare, do we have what the text says or do we have something that's very different than the text says? | ||
| And that's a kind of internal corrective on getting off course. | ||
| And I think that is a vital insight for America that we have A written constitution. | ||
| And that was something unique that we produced, right? | ||
| It was not something that came out of England because they do have an unwritten constitution. | ||
| Jeff, hang with us. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We're in return. Jeff Clark is my wingman today as we talk about the revolutionary generation, the revolution and its impact on modern American life. | ||
| Also what the founders would think about us today. | ||
| Short commercial break. Back in a moment. | ||
|
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Sailors lay dead on the spot and 55 others lay stretched in their gore while the thundering cans most fiercely did roar hurrah our country forever hurrah The alliance bore down and the richard did rake, which caused the bold hearts of our seamen to ache. | |
| But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long, and the brave British colours came finally down. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever! Hurrah! | ||
| Hello, I'm Steve Stern, CEO of FlagShirt.com, a third generation, veteran-owned small business. | ||
| third generation, better known small business. | ||
| I believe that the American way of life is for all of us. | ||
| I'm asking you today to visit Flagshirt.com. | ||
| Help keep the American dream alive. | ||
| Be a flag waver. | ||
| Carry a nation's heritage. | ||
| Use coupon code ACTION10 for 10% off site-wide and buy a flag shirt today. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
|
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An American frigate, the Richard by name. | |
| Mounting guns,.44. | ||
| From New York she came. | ||
| Put a cruise in the channel of old England's fame. | ||
| With a noble commander, Paul Jones was his name. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever, hurrah! | ||
| We had not sailed far before two sails we spied. | ||
| A stout.44 and a.44. | ||
| Jeff Clark, you talked about as a kid playing the wooden ships and iron men games and being inspired by these great naval heroes as I was. | ||
| Nelson and John Paul Jones are two of my biggest heroes growing up. | ||
| Lord Nelson. You've been attacked in every different aspect, probably more than any leader in this outside of Trump. | ||
| And I say that as somebody who's been attacked, but Clark, obviously Eastman, they've given him a struggle session. | ||
| I want to, and you're Harvard grad and you went to where I went to, you went to Georgetown Law and went over to the, with the Walsh School of Foreign Service there in graduate school. | ||
| And so you kind of came out of an establishment institution. | ||
| Now you're having your face ripped off every day. | ||
| They're there to make your life miserable for what you did. | ||
| Talk to us about what you actually accomplished and what you stood up for Why are you being so torn apart? | ||
| And what's your background? | ||
| How are you getting through this? | ||
| Because most people would crater. | ||
| Most people would say, no, I don't want to do it anymore. | ||
| I'll do whatever they want to do. | ||
| Kind of like Supreme Court Justice Roberts said the other day in this horrific decision. | ||
| He just raised the white flag and said, please don't. | ||
| Please don't come to my house. | ||
| Please don't torment me anymore. | ||
| I'll be a good little boy. Walk us through your story. | ||
| Sure. Well, all right, so I'll start with my story. | ||
| I was born in Philadelphia, in the city proper. | ||
| I always get, you know, from the kind of elite circles you're talking about, the question of, like, you mean, what suburb are you from? | ||
| No, I'm not from the suburb, but from actually in the city, northeastern part of the city. | ||
| My dad was a Democrat Catholic and he never graduated from high school. | ||
| He was a truck driver, a teamster. | ||
| And my mom was a Republican Protestant. | ||
| And so we used to argue about politics and religion around the dinner table with my two brothers and sister all the time. | ||
| So that's the, you know, I came out of that, right? | ||
| I went to Harvard And studied economics. | ||
| And then I double majored in Russian and Soviet history. | ||
| After college, I thought about, you know, do I want to become a Ph.D. economist? | ||
| Do I want to become a Ph.D. historian? | ||
| Do I want to become a Sovietologist? | ||
| Or do I want to go to law school or business school? | ||
| And so I, you know, right after I graduated, not too long after that, the Soviet Union fell. | ||
| So I crossed Sovietology off the list. | ||
| And, you know, eventually went to Delaware, actually. | ||
| And here's something, Steve, you're missing. | ||
| I got a master's degree while I worked for the state of Delaware doing tax policy analysis at what is now called the Biden School of Public Policy. | ||
| So it was not called that at the time. | ||
| But then I went on to law school. | ||
| I actually entered the joint JD-MBA program. | ||
| But after first year law school, I fell in love with the law so much that I called up the business school and said, you know, I'm not going to report for second year, which is a business school year. | ||
| I just went straight through. | ||
| You know, clerk for a famous federal judge who's had a lot of folks on who wants to be a millionaire because of the erudition of the people he picks. | ||
| I went to the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, served for five years there, and then I went into the Bush administration as a very young, you know, lawyer. | ||
| 33-year-old Deputy Assistant Attorney General, which is not common, went back to Kirkland as a partner and then worked for, what, another... | ||
| I went back to Kirkland in 2005 as a partner, and it wasn't until 2018, so 13 years or so at Kirkland as a partner, and then I entered the Trump administration. | ||
| And I think in terms of my background, beyond that kind of political ferment and lots of debates and religious ferment around the table, I would say that, look, I'm Irish, German, and Lithuanian. | ||
| And my dad would take me to see my great uncle, who was all Lithuanian, and he would regale me with stories about the evils of communism. | ||
| And so I think that's my basic background in a nutshell, Steve, and I think it It informs why I've kind of been hit from a lot of different sides, but I'm not going to give up. | ||
| But hang on. | ||
| You're almost like the revolutionary generation. | ||
| Like I said, these were men who were part of the system, but there was something in their character that said we have to have a clean break And we have to do it this way. | ||
| We have to stand up for what we believe. | ||
| Your life is kind of a storybook American tale of success. | ||
| Kirkland-Nell is one of the most prominent and powerful law firms in the country. | ||
| And correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's known as a big Democratic law firm. | ||
| I know they've had some very prominent Republicans come out of there, but I think they represent, like, the Chicago... | ||
| I think they're very involved with Obama and these guys. | ||
| So you were a partner in one of the top most powerful law firms in the country. | ||
| Your Rubicon was accepting a position in the Trump administration. | ||
| We only got a minute and I want to continue this in the next hour. | ||
| But your Rubicon was actually going to serve your country again, but this time in the Trump administration. | ||
| All bets were off after that, right? | ||
| That's right. And look, I mean, I was so establishment, Steve, there are seven litigating divisions at the Justice Department. | ||
| And so I ran and got Senate confirmed for one. | ||
| Bill Barr is the one who gave me the second one to run simultaneously, right? | ||
| So it was only when I touched the 2020 presidential election that I somehow became some kind of radical who must be destroyed. | ||
| Pariah. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We've got a lot to go through in the next hour. | ||
|
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It's our July 4th special. | |
| We do it today. Monday, the 3th of July, and then Tuesday, 4th of July. | ||
| Tomorrow, we're going to have Dr. Carol Swain and Larry Schweikert, Larry, the co-author of The Patriot's History of the United States, and of course, Dr. | ||
| Swain, formerly of Princeton. | ||
| She was a tenured professor at Princeton and now at Vanderbilt University. | ||
| Wow. Short commercial break. | ||
| 90 seconds. Be back for the second hour next. | ||
|
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...and the richard did rake, which caused the bold hearts of our seamen to ache. | |
| But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long, and the brave British colors came finally down. |
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