Why Critical Race Theory Is Doomed, Writing & Law | Kurt Schlichter | One American Podcast #10
Chase Geiser is joined by Kurt Schlichter.
Kurt Schlichter is a successful trial lawyer based in the Los Angeles area representing companies and individuals in matters ranging from routine business cases to confidential Hollywood and entertainment industry disputes and transactions. A member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, which recognizes attorneys who have won trial verdicts in excess of $1 million, his litigation strategy and legal analysis articles have run in such legal publications such as the Los Angeles Daily Journal and California Lawyer.
Kurt is a 1994 graduate of Loyola Law School, where he was a law review editor. He majored in Communications and Political Science as an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, where he also edited the student paper California Review while writing a regular column in the student humor paper the Koala.
After college, Kurt enlisted in the United States Army and received his commission as a second lieutenant through the Army Officer Candidate School. While stationed in West Germany, Kurt was deployed to Operation Desert Storm when he served in the conflict as a platoon leader. After leaving active duty, he joined the California Army National Guard and served in a variety of command and staff positions for over two decades.
Colonel Schlichter wears the silver “jump wings” of a qualified paratrooper and commanded the elite 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry Regiment. A veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom (Kosovo), as well as the Los Angeles riots, the Northridge earthquake and the 2007 San Diego fires mobilizations, he is a graduate of the Army’s Combined Arms Staff Service School and the Command and General Staff College. He earned a master of Strategic Studies degree from the United States Army War College.
His freelance writing been published in major papers like the New York Post, the Washington Examiner, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Times, the Army Times, and the San Francisco Examiner. Kurt also wrote for Breitbart.com’s Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Peace sites and is a weekly columnist for Townhall.com.
As a stand-up comic for several years, he has gathered a large and devoted following in the world of social media for his amusing and often biting conservative commentary. He is an active user of Twitter (@KurtSchlichter) with over 37,000 followers, which led to his four #1 selling Amazon “Political Humor” ebooks “I Am a Conservative,” “I Am a Liberal,” “Fetch My Latte,” and “Fifty Shades of Liberal.”
Kurt is often on the air as a news source, an on-screen commentator, and as a guest on nationally syndicated radio programs discussing political, military and legal issues, including Fox News, the Hugh Hewitt Show, the Dennis Miller Show, Geraldo, the Greg Garrison Show, the WMAL Morning Show with Larry O’Connor, the Larry Elder Show, and KABC’s John Phillips Show, among others.
Kurt is married to Irina and has two children. He lives in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.
EPISODE LINKS:
Kurt's Twitter: https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
Kurt's Website: http://kurtschlichter.com/
Kurt's Books: https://www.amazon.com/Kurt-Schlichte...
PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
A date which will live in infamy.
I still have a dream.
Good night and good luck.
Good night and good luck.
So I read a little bit about you.
Uh to be honest with you.
I didn't know uh much about you before this weekend.
Um, excuseable.
Yeah, it sounds like you've had uh um uh quite an eclectic uh life experience um from communications and political science as an undergrad to the military to writing novels to stand-up comedy to trial law.
Um it's it's wild all the all the different uh uh things you've been involved with.
Yeah, I get around.
Yeah, I'm intellectually promiscuous.
Yeah, yeah.
So um when you were a kid, did you know that you were going to be interested in in these various things that you wound up doing?
I had a I kind of had a uh a notion of what I'd be doing along the way.
Yeah, so I think it's uh uh I mean I think uh it uh I I'm not surprised where I ended up, I guess I could say.
So did you write a lot when you were a teenager?
Uh I wrote a lot in college.
Uh-huh.
I always kind of I always kind of wanted to be a writer, and so I just did it.
Yeah.
So uh do you remember the uh the first novel that you wrote?
I don't know that it was the one that was published, but you know the first time you're not through a project.
I think I wrote some uh crime novel in college.
It's probably moldering somewhere.
You know, what who it was Heinlein, maybe, or or Bradbury said you have to write a million words to clear out all the crap.
Yeah.
So after that, you know, maybe you have a shot.
I think uh Jerry Seinfeld might have a similar um approach.
Um he he did an awesome episode with Tim Ferris a long time ago, uh, where he sort of talked about his writing process, and it's like, listen, I sit down every day and I don't have to write, but I can't do anything else.
And it's like you just you get to a point where you're you forcing yourself to do the activity and and not really thinking about what you're doing.
I never I never have that.
I uh I never force myself to write.
I uh if I'm gonna write, it's because I want to.
And uh, you know, I'm a good time manager, I always plan my life out in blocks, and you know, I have a block set away today to write the column for Thursday.
And uh, you know, I have to stick it in between appearances and other work.
Uh, but I I never just for I never have to force myself to write.
If I'm sitting down to writing, I'm gonna write.
And if I'm you know, and it's that's just how it works.
I'm also not afraid of writing.
I am a lawyer.
I I write thousands of words every day.
And uh, so you know, a blank page doesn't worry me, just like uh a crowd doesn't worry me.
I I find it bizarre that there are people out there who are afraid to speak in public, for instance.
To me, I always just assumed everybody absolutely wanted to hear what I had to say.
I mean, it's it never occurred to me that they didn't.
Why wouldn't I?
Right.
Um but uh the same with writing.
I when I uh actually talking about this weekend, I just you know, I always knew I wanted to write books, so I just did and uh you know, sold it.
I did uh I've done three traditional, five non-traditional, uh the last of which was Crisis, and that got to 29 on all of Amazon.
Now I have another one coming.
Thank you.
I'll have another one coming out next month.
Uh interesting about writing.
Well, I'll get to that in a sec, but uh, I just I just decided I wanted to do it.
I mean, the first novel, you know, that I published, I just decided I I want to do it, so I did it.
And uh it's very interesting.
The uh the writing world has changed because I don't have to ask anybody's permission to do it.
Uh I I do traditional books and they they they happen differently.
There's a longer process, there's a more formal editorial process, the timing's different, the way you get paid is different.
Um I do like the control that uh the self-publishing tools give you because it's essentially transparent.
I was talking to somebody today who's you know, writing uh you know, publishing a novel this month and a good one.
Uh and uh he's like, oh man, I got a format like it takes me like two hours.
That's the easiest part.
It it's so easy to get out there.
The barriers are so low to selling your work that it really becomes a situation where you're standing on your own, as opposed to uh, you know, in the past, but well, the the publishing industry is is terrible.
Uh much of it is devoted to people going to lunch with each other.
It is inefficient, it is archaic.
Uh, they have no idea what's going on.
They don't know what's going to sell.
I don't, I mean, they they have no better idea than you or I about what what a good idea is going to be.
And it's really kind of bizarre.
And now they have like much less power because the the people who are doing really well, many of them started doing non-traditional, like the guy who wrote The Martian.
Now he writes regular books, but you know, if he got pissed off, he'd go, well, screw you, I'll just go on Amazon and publish it.
And I'll and I'll keep 70% of the money as opposed to like 25.
And I've heard, and I don't know if this has been your experience.
Um, but I I've I have friends who are authors, and I I've heard that even if you get a publishing deal, you know, the advance may be nice, but if you don't sell your own book, they're not going to sell it for you.
Oh, they don't they don't.
Uh my my latest one, Regnery has uh is a little different.
It's been very helpful.
But look, they don't have time to sell books, they gotta go to lunch.
And frankly, a lot of them don't know how to sell books.
You know, I'll have people going, hey Kurt, I got you on, you know, uh, you know, this religious station.
And it's like, look, I uh I'm religious, I like religious people, but that's not really the venue for you know, one of Kurt Schlichter's right wing nonfiction books.
Uh I did my own, you know, I did a lot of my own publicity.
I I've got a pretty good Roll of Dex.
I can call people up and get on their shows.
Half my friends seem to be radio guys now.
But you know, the the traditional ways of doing things, which you got to get on Fox.
I didn't get on Fox for Crisis.
I still got to 29.
Um, you've built up a robust following of your own as well.
Yes.
Yeah.
I've got 320,000 people who follow me on Twitter and more on locals and some on Facebook.
And they know me.
And I put out there, hey, I'm I've written a book.
You know, uh a lot of them are gonna go buy it.
Uh it doesn't hurt that the books are pretty fun.
They've gotten very good, they got very good reviews.
People people have enjoyed them, which is is very nice.
I I like hearing that people enjoyed them.
I have fun writing them.
I don't consider it a chore.
Do you know what happened?
Do you know what's gonna happen?
Um in the entire book when you sit down to write it.
I mean, you figured all that out.
So you just let it roll.
I really do.
I have a theme, you know, an idea.
And I always have kind of a cold open for all my novels, like a James Bond movie.
Yeah.
The first 10 minutes mean don't relate at all to the rest of the book.
And I uh uh or movie and uh I kind of do that, but no, I I have a general idea, but it comes out, you know, it it always takes form, and there's always a point where it clicks.
The one I'm writing now, I'm at 65,000 words.
Uh I I need to get to about a hundred.
That's that just sounds like about the right number for it.
And I've got general ideas of the two sections I haven't written.
You know, I wrote, you know, basically the first half, then I wrote a big big action set piece, and then I wrote the last chapter.
I like writing the last chapter, uh, kind of, you know, about a third of the way it process because then I know where I'm going to get, so I can put all the pieces in place to get there.
And um, you know, then I then I'll go back and polish it up, you know.
Oh, hey, I have to figure out, you know, how this guy, you know, got himself a Buick.
Okay.
Here's where he steals a Buick.
Uh I I really hate continuity errors and plot holes.
And it they bother me.
So I I will read through it.
I I I go through uh I'll go through to make sure I've got everything right.
It's it's also kind of weird reading your own stuff because I I put my book down for like a week or two, and I decide, well, instead of writing more, I'm gonna I'm gonna read what I've written and kind of get in the vibe.
And I'm reading the stuff and it's like I didn't read it.
I'm like surprised by what happens.
I'm like, oh, I I didn't remember.
I wrote that scene.
That's a cool scene.
And it's uh it it's kind of a fun process.
And then of course you're polishing it, you know, you change words here or there, uh try and make them a more evocative.
Uh I've got I've developed kind of an interesting, well, it's interesting to me, a unique style, particularly in my columns.
Um and it kind of comes in the books too.
Uh I don't think anybody writes like me.
I don't think there are a lot of people who used to be stand-ups and also have a uh a degree from the war college.
So I kind of have this bizarre unusual voice, but it's a unique one.
No, nobody sounds like me.
I I think there I've I've I've actually seen people who dislike me try and write like me.
And it's just it's just not real.
It's just not who they are, so they shouldn't do it.
Right.
You know, you should you should do what you do.
Create your own.
So how has your experience as an attorney um formed the the stories that you write in any way?
Because no, no, not not so much.
No, I mean I might as well sell shoes.
Uh huh.
You know, it's not uh look.
My my mom was a judge and a lawyer.
I was growing up, so I I there is no romance to being a lawyer.
I'm dead distinctly unimpressed by it.
It's just a job.
I mean, yeah, there's some skills, and sometimes it's fun.
And sometimes you, you know, I'm working on a project right now where I'm out thinking the other side before he even knows I'm gonna attack.
Uh I I prefer to win my cases before they even know I'm fighting.
I think that's kind of a military side thing.
But you know, I mean being a lawyer does give you experience, you know, forming arguments, uh picking holes in other arguments.
I don't think it's necessary.
I mean, I don't think it's not useful.
Uh some people are impressed by it.
It's kind of, you know, I I think I get away with being a lot more obnoxious than I would otherwise if I couldn't say, yeah, I was a colonel and a lawyer.
Right.
Like, but but you see, you have like achievements I can understand.
And then on Twitter, you basically insulted my mother.
Right.
I'm like, yeah, it's called a conundrum.
So tell me about your first job.
Uh Carl's Jr. sweeping out toilets for three ten an hour in Foster City, California.
Wow.
That was it.
You ever think about going back?
All the time.
I I think everybody should have a uh uh a I'm not gonna call it a shitty job, though I thought it was shitty at the time.
Uh I think everybody should have a tough job that uh doesn't give you false ego.
You know, working on something where you're dealing with human beings, which is always a challenge, and where you know it's just not pleasant.
I there's so many people who I I you know, I came to law school after being in the Gulf War.
So I was like, I had been a platoon leader in a war, and I get there, and most of these kids were right out of college.
Did you just mop up in terms of just the the psychological demand of law school?
Were you just overly prepared compared to everyone in your class?
Uh I was uh well, I mean, I partied my ass off.
Yeah, but no, I I never went into class unprepared, it never occurred to me.
I was an officer.
You my mission is to be prepared.
I was going to be prepared.
Now that didn't mean I didn't party, like I said, I partied.
Uh and it was never hard.
But I was always prepared.
I if the teacher called on me, I'd read the cases.
And I, at least to the extent I could, I understood them.
Other people weren't like that.
Other people had never had a job.
Uh, I went to Loyola, which is a lot, uh, it's mostly the rich kids who couldn't get into U USC or UCLA.
Uh, so I was around a lot of a lot of folks with money and stuff, which I was not.
And um, you know, they never worked at a Carl's Junior, it never worked at all.
And uh, you know, I had jobs since I was 16, and of course I'd been in the army for three and a half years, four years, uh, just before it.
So I was a little different than all of them.
And I think I I think I scared the shit out of a lot of them.
Uh surprised him too.
I yeah, there was a writing contest to get on the law review.
You didn't just get on by grades.
And uh, you know, everybody tried to get on a law review.
I made it, and people were like, How the army guy make it?
And I'm like, God, they just thought you were dumb because you're in the military.
Yeah, and I'm like, you know, uh I met some dumb people in the army, but that was not the that was not the standard, you know.
And uh I I actually went back into the army in the guard, at least during law school.
I guess I missed it.
Uh ended up in the Los Angeles riots.
Um with uh 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry for three weeks, and uh, but yeah, I so I came out kind of a like a different world from a lot of these guys, and they didn't know what to make of me, and I wasn't particularly interested in them or impressed with with that.
I mean, there were people who you know were smart or had you know, my my I met my law partner uh first day of law school.
Wow, and uh, you know, good guy, and uh uh yeah, I just I don't know.
I I I just always felt I was a little I mean I was a little different.
I was a little older, I had some real world experience, and I was kind of focused on what I wanted to do.
So I um um grew up and went to a very small public school in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, and um my dad didn't make any money until like three or four years before I went to college.
So I sort of grew up like on a budget, but then right when it was important that I had money, I could like go anywhere I wanted to college kind of things.
That's nice.
It was nice, and I would I noticed something really interesting.
I went to uh Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, which is small private school, Christian school, and I um when I went there, ever all of them had virtual virtually all of them either been homeschooled or gone to a private school.
And I noticed um that, and this is just as this is just anecdotal stereotype.
Okay, so I noticed that um the private school kids had like no sense of hustle and like you know, sort of like resourcefulness, right?
Because resources were never had never been an issue, and um I'm torn like as a new dad, um, thinking about what I want to do with my daughter in terms of private versus public school, because obviously, you know, you you you were likely to get a better education at private school, but isn't there value in going to public school because it sucks?
Look, there's a great value to doing things that suck.
I you know, I uh I I work out three days a week with a guy named Kurt, uh, who big muscle guy and he's very very fit.
And I'm trying to, I'm trying to keep in shape, you know.
I don't want to be one of those old guys who's decrepit and everything.
And uh I can't lift what I used to lift.
I'm not in as good a shape, I'm probably heavier than I should be.
Uh, but he said something very nice to me.
He said, you know, you know, you got mental toughness, you don't bitch.
I tell you to do 10, you do 10, even if it's hard, and you don't complain about it.
And I'm like, I I don't come from a world where complaining works, right?
That I mean, the military's the military's not like that.
Law isn't like that, or at least not the kind I do.
Excuses don't get you very far.
You just gotta do it.
And there are a lot of people who've never said there are a lot of parents out there who uh refuse to say no to their kids.
For some reason, they want their kids to like them, and they think that by not being their parent, they will like them.
And it's like It never works.
Their kids always despise them because that's what kids do.
So I'm you know, my feelings always been kind of like I don't care what you think, you know, here here's how it's gotta be.
Get it done.
I just don't care.
And uh there's there's a lot of value to that, you know.
You've just got uh and and a lot of people have never known that.
A lot of people have never had a lot of people have never done anything hard.
You've seen it with the COVID epidemic, right?
You've got there are a lot of people out there, okay, who who for this is going to be the most exciting thing that's happened to them in their life.
One of the something that's disrupted the paradigm that's been completely different than everything else, which is ironic, of course, because it was exciting in that you had to stay home and watch Netflix, which is typically very boring.
But but it's like when you're part of something big, like a war or the riots, you feel differently.
There's a level of excitement there.
Now, I'm not saying it's fun in in the typical sense, and I'm not saying it's a that I wish it to happen.
I feel kind of like a fireman.
I don't want your house to burn down, but if it does, I want to put it out.
But it's very exciting thing, and and a lot of people have never felt that.
And then this, you know, you go into a supermarket for a first time, there's shit not on the on the shelves.
Right.
And that's different.
I think that's why so many people watch, you know, garbage like the walking dead because they wondered if all this went away, what would I do?
And here it kind of did, but you're totally safe, right?
It's like I, you know, you're risking being the point oh oh one percent of normal healthy people who die from this thing.
So there's a technically a risk, but it's not really risky.
But for a lot of people, this is a highlight of their life.
This is a highlight, they will tell their kids about this.
Well, I think I'll barely remember it.
I think there's um uh some sort of like what I like to refer to as generational envy in that, and I I experience it too.
Um when I go when if I watch, for example, um uh um Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, the TV series on HBO.
I there's a part of me, and it's probably out of some sort of immaturity, but there's a part of me that's like, man, I wish that I would have been able to have fought in like you know, good this so clearly good versus evil thing.
And I think the civil rights movement, right?
It was yeah, I think people wish that they could have fought in the civil rights movement, so they're sort of recreating one, you know.
Yeah, I mean, look, having been in a war is a great having been in a war is a great thing.
Being in a war maybe not so great.
Uh, but a lot of guys, you know, grow up on a farm, suddenly they're in frickin' France fighting the Nazis in a battle that you know they're making movies about, and then they go back to life and they work at a carpet factory, and it is the highlight of their life.
Now that that seems to me to be a worthy, you know, transcendent moment in your life.
Yeah, I mean, if you're like, oh yeah, I was in Omaha Beach, okay.
Pretty good high point.
A lot of people were going to exceed that, but you know, you're doing pretty well.
Um but yeah, I mean, people want to be part of big things, part part of history.
I mean, I you know, I look, I I ran a heavily armed car wash and desert storm.
Okay.
So I wasn't like saving Private Ryan.
I was more like decontaminating his half track.
Um, but uh I was in places where I heard radio calls from generals to colonels that I later read about in books, and you know, that's kind of a that's kind of cool, you know.
I I would, you know, when they made the decision not to attack, you know, this particular armor division, I was there.
Yeah, and it was that's kind of a cool thing.
I don't know if it's a highlight of my life, but it was I would not I would not miss that experience for the world.
I wouldn't miss my experience in basic training, my experience in Oscar Canada school, even though that sucked in probably the worst 14 weeks of my life.
But you know, I think those are uh I I think shitty experiences are important too.
Well, I think um there could be a component of it too where people are really yearning for something to live or die for, um, that's noble and heroic.
And I think that somehow in America we're moving away from people finding out for themselves what's going to fulfill them versus just sort of doing what's expected of them and expecting that to fulfill them, right?
So like you always knew you were gonna write.
And 99% of people will say, oh, you don't want to be a writer.
They don't make any money, but you didn't give a shit.
You were just doing what you were interested in.
Yeah, I never I never asked anybody.
I I knew I was good and I would I've always assumed I'd succeed at whatever I put my mind to.
Right.
Right.
I mean it's not like ego.
It's just I you know if I work hard enough I'm gonna do it.
Right.
I would like well and you can you can you can tell yourself that you're good enough without telling yourself that you're better than everybody else.
I think people missed it.
I don't compare myself to anybody else.
Right.
I'm not in a competition.
I'm uh although uh well I look I am competitive but I don't see myself in a competition.
I'm not well I'm gonna write a book to show so and so it's like I'm gonna write a book and oh if it sells better hey cool I win and if it doesn't well I got another book in me.
We'll see then where do you think uh America is headed over the next 10 years.
Uh I think it'll work get worse before it gets better.
I think there's going to be a backlash to this critical race theory idiocy.
My friends who are very deep into polling and politics, you know, the mechanics of politics, the actual science as opposed to the art, tell me that critical race theory is polling right there with herpes in popularity.
Well, everybody has it.
Exactly.
And it doesn't seem like you can get rid of it.
Even liberal moms are getting sick of this.
You know, their kids come home and go, hi, mom.
We're all racist.
Did you know that?
and it's like okay and even a liberal woman's gonna go no that's most of them no that's that's a lie that's simply not true why am I why is the school I'm paying for whether privately or publicly uh why making you lie and they don't like it.
Now I mean there are some people who really like it they are never the ones who are expected to pay the costs of it.
You know um it it's it's always somebody else who's privileged you know who's you know poor and objectively less privileged in every way who's really the privileged one is when when you see a billionaire hand over all his billions uh to a bunch of uh people based on where their great great grandfather came from let me know because it ain't ever gonna happen but if it did I'd be very interested in hearing about it.
Um yeah it's uh you know uh again it's everything the thing about America is it was built by hard men who did tough things and they created a place so safe and secure and prosperous that we can tolerate frivolous nitwits.
You know, there was this I saw on Twitter today, National Geographic, how far it's fallen, had a picture of this, you know, human walrus.
I mean, she she obviously had not missed a meal, shaved half her head, you know, pierced.
I mean, she looks exactly like what you'd expect to waddle out of a gender studies program at Gumbo State.
And she says, you know, I'm ashamed of I'm ashamed of my aunt, my the race of my ancestors.
And it's like, holy shit, how.
How wonderful a society do we have when someone feels not only safe enough, but secure enough to, you know, economically and socially to spew that kind of idiocy with the expectation not only that people aren't going.
to point at punch her uh or point and laugh at her but some will celebrate her look I was in Kosovo okay I know a little about balkanizations because I lived in the Balkans and my job was to keep group A from committing genocide on group B, which they would do in a heartbeat.
So when people start you know when people people start separating by race uh you know I I've been at the bottom of the slippery slope and it looks like a it looks like ruins okay it looks like smoldering burnt villages and I've been there and you know I mean, it it how ridiculous.
What a ridiculous person.
All of society should laugh at this woman and hurt her feelings.
So maybe she'll learn.
But it's so, and the thing is, she's absolutely she's not only safe in certain quarters, she's going to be celebrated.
And for what?
Saying exactly what everybody uh all her friends want to hear.
Woo.
You know, dodge that bullet.
Well, it's crazy to me is how um how hated I think MLK would be by the left today, because his whole I have a dream speech is literally judge on the content of character, not the color of skin.
And so this idea that you're immutable quality of your race makes you inherently racist or is suffering some sort of white fragility or or whatever is just totally antithetical to the whole civil rights movement, in my opinion.
Well, well, of course it is, but remember, it's all about power, it's about short-term power for people who are unaccomplished and can't do it in any other way.
I mean, look at uh what's his name?
Uh uh Abdul Kendi, what's Ibrahim Kendi, Ibram Kendi, whatever the hell his name is.
Okay, he's a fucking clown.
All right, he's a joke.
He is a human punchline.
His ideas are stupid, they're expressed poorly.
He's ridiculous.
How else is he going to become successful?
I mean, really.
I mean, I mean, what what what are his options?
That he's found dumb people who are willing to pay him for his idiotic harangues, is you know, the greatest thing that could have happened to him.
I understand why people are milking it.
It's immoral, I'd never do anything like that.
Um, but I have self-respect.
I also have uh competence, so it's not like I have to, you know, grift the robes uh of uh Manhattan and Santa Monica uh to make a living.
Right, you know, but he does.
These are unaccomplished people.
There are no one associated with critical race theory has any kind of accomplishment other than in rare cases election to political office to the extent that's an accomplishment.
That's it.
I mean, you you look you look at these people.
What what have they ever done?
Well, they've explored deeply uh the transsexual influences on 15th century Bolivian poetry.
Okay, done it count as an achievement, non-achievement, not even interesting.
God, somebody somebody wise guy once said, you know, feminism exists, so ugly girls have something to do while the pretty ones are dating.
It depends on what you mean when you say feminism.
I mean, well, you know, you mean women should be able to vote?
I mean radical.
I mean radical feminism.
Right.
Today's feminism is basically just all men are dogs.
Well, normal women now are like, I'm not a feminist because that has a meaning.
Right.
And it's not just, hey, women should be treated, you know, generally the same as men, uh, with you know, some exceptions, uh, because of biology.
For instance, I don't think women should be drafted, right?
Um, I don't think men should ever be called mothers, you know.
It's are you still there?
I'm still here.
I don't know.
Oh, I'm I'm still here if you can say yeah, just keep talking.
Yeah, but uh I uh I I think for a lot of people, these uh, you know, ideas like basic fairness, like uh uh Martin Luther King expounded on, are accepted by most normal, all normal people.
Okay, there are not a lot of people out there who uh at least at least on the uh the towards minority side are or anything like a white supremacist.
I think most people, I mean I I don't when's the last time you met somebody going, you know, you know what, other races are worse than my race.
It's just like you'd be like, I could you know, I I have maybe maybe one or two people in my life that felt that genuinely felt that way.
Yeah, and it's just you know, it's just uh it's just not part of our experience.
It's very passe.
Well, it's just tacky and socially un at the at the top at the threshold level, it's tacky.
It's un-American, it's unchristian, whatever.
Uh it's just not done.
And you know, I mean, I I hang around with a lot of hardcore conservators, they're supposed to be deeply racist.
And the thing that if you want to delight conservatives, uh, show them someone who's a minority who agrees with them about about freedom and about family and about values.
Uh, you know, uh I mean they they they absolutely adore it.
Uh then you get on the other side where you get essentially rich white liberals who are uh you know playing at guilt uh for something they didn't do for people who weren't wronged, and you know, stupid college students and the politicians who love so it's just the the the general fairness where you shouldn't be treated differently, you shouldn't be treated badly because of your immutable characteristics, right?
Is is well established, but that's of course not what CRT is about.
CRT is about leveraging uh bullshit, uh racist and real racist notions, uh, in order to get short-term power, of course.
In the long term, that's a bad idea.
The you know, one thing I I I have thought for a long time is one of America's greatest achievements is its majority race never really thought of itself as a race, and that gets critiqued.
Oh, you know, everybody assumes whiteness.
Well, no, they they didn't, they just sort of assumed something, and most of those people, because they're most Americans were white.
I've been in a place where everyone thinks first, here's my ethnicity, right?
America was not like that, at least for the vast majority of people, and I think a vast majority of people in most races.
Uh why would anyone be insane enough to try and make that a reality?
Why would they try and change that?
This is a great gift in America in the last hundred years.
Right.
And they just want to throw it away because you know, hey, I think I can get, you know, hey, I'm Professor Kendi, and I can get a slight edge, and then things don't remain static.
The last uh gosh.
So the last thing you want is some sort of horrible, horrible uh true balkanization.
Uh it's awful.
I I've seen it.
So I want to be uh conscientious of your time.
I know you only had about 30 minutes this afternoon.
Uh so on sort of a final note, um what do you think the way out is for America to get out of this this bullshit?
I think there's going to be a I think there's a growing response against it because it's wrong.
And people sense that when you know, you go to a normal person and you go, hey, that person over there, you know, his grandfather came from Norway, so we should treat him worse.
And normal people are like, no, that doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, then you're bad too.
And they're like, no, I'm I'm not bad.
Americans are very polite, you know.
And there was a time that if you went up to somebody go, okay, I really think you're racist.
A person go, oh shit.
Oh man, I better take a personal inventory.
Am I doing because no one would ever say that unless they really thought I'd better you know, I'd better check myself and make sure I'm not doing something wrong.
And now it's like, fuck you.
Because it's because it's become, you know, you you can only cry wolf so many times before people stop taking you seriously.
And that's that's not the situation we want.
I I would like a uh a country where people took it seriously.
I would like a country where people, you know, but but then again, that also means it's a company country where you wouldn't really have to take it seriously because you'd be so such a fringe minor thing that statistically it's just not gonna come up.
But now you've got a bunch of people making it come up everywhere and all the time, and I think that's a bad idea.
Well, um, thank you so much for agreeing to hop on for a few minutes this afternoon.
I appreciate it.
And thank you.
Uh, thank you for your service in the military as well.
Oh, I was a colonel, I didn't do shit.
I appreciate it nonetheless.
And um uh one more time before we get off.
Uh, can you let us know about um uh your new book coming out next next month?
It's called and it's um the sixth and the Kelly Turnable action novels.
It's out there on Amazon.
Uh if you want to check out uh People's Republic, it's always fun to see.
That's a that's a fun one.
And then you can read the others if you like them.
Follow me on Twitter, go to my locals community where all things all things curt, and uh read my town hall stuff every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then on Fridays, I uh I do a little five or six minute uh stream of consciousness video, which is always amazing.
Awesome.
Well, again, I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
I've really enjoyed this time, and um uh have a great rest of your week.
Thanks a lot, adios.
Take care.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
