Will Chamberlain | Afghanistan, Human Events, Big Tech & Cancel Culture | OAP #46
Chase Geiser is joined by Will Chamberlain.
Will Chamberlain is a lawyer and the publisher of Human Events. Will worked as an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Class Action Fairness in Washington, DC. Before that, he practiced complex commercial litigation at Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in Los Angeles, CA. Will graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, and is an active member of the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.
You can find Will on Twitter and Periscope under the handle @willchamberlain.
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/RealChaseGeiser
Will's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/WillChamberlain
I noticed that you just launched last week and you did episode six today, huh?
Yeah, well, we're trying to do we, meaning I. I'm trying to do one podcast every day, Monday through Friday.
This came out of sort of a broader idea of what we're trying to do at Human Events.
There's a broader idea we want to put together a podcast network and as a way to monetize what we're doing.
And so, you know, I like impressed with the Daily Wire and one of the things they have is the Ben Shapiro show.
And my view of that was always, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to do something like what Ben Shapiro was doing because it most resembled what I did on my podcast.
I know there's a lot of, you know, just besmarson, but there's a lot of like interview podcasts out there like yours and others.
And I didn't think there were that many that were just one guy talking about the news very quickly.
And they're difficult to do because obviously I just have to like come up with everything and figure out what I'm going to say for an hour.
And I'm relying a little bit on the chat to feed me things.
But I wanted to bring what I had done with Periscope and kind of bring it into podcast format.
And that's the basic idea.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So I looked up your background a little bit.
Obviously, I'm a follower of Human Events.
Tell me a little bit about sort of how you got into politics.
I know you studied law and how you came to be the owner-publisher of Human Events, which I believe was founded in 44.
Yeah, yeah, 47, 48.
I'm not exactly sure.
I don't know.
I just run Wikipedia.
So who knows?
For live right now.
Are we live or are we?
Yeah, we're live.
Remember, retweet this, obviously, and show this out.
Sure.
So that seems like a good thing to do.
Yeah, so the history of human events and what I, how I got it and how I got into politics.
So I was a lawyer.
I went to Georgetown, graduated in 2015.
I practiced in big law for like six months.
Hated it.
There's a lot to talk about there if we want to get into it.
What kind of law?
I'm sorry, what's that?
Big Law.
So that's a commercial litigation at a big law firm in Los Angeles.
Big Law is sort of the broad umbrella term to refer to all the big corporate law firms in this country that, you know, handle those, handle like with lots of, you know, often they'll have hundreds of lawyers on the end working for the firm, which is a lot given the fact that most cases only require two or three.
So anyway, I did that for a while.
I quit.
I didn't like the work.
I ended up coming out to DC and worked for my old boss doing a very kind of niche form of class action litigation where we would object to unfair class action settlements.
But I, you know, kind of was trying to get into Trump World at my time.
It was like 2017 and was sort of waiting for the right opportunity.
Thought about getting into journalism, but I wasn't, I didn't find it that appealing to just take a job at like the Daily Caller or Brett Buck or something.
I just did not kind of, I just didn't want to do that to start off.
And so eventually found Raheem Kassam, you know, built up a start build, meeting a lot of people, including conservative influencers, met Raheem Kassam.
He floated the idea of buying human events.
I was in a position to do that.
So I just bought it and kind of be with the idea of with him working as editor-in-chief.
We stopped working together about three months later in like August 2019.
And since then, well, for the most part, for about a year and a half, I ran the whole thing as editor-in-chief when we kind of slimmed down and focused mainly on opinion pieces.
And then we brought on recently kind of Jeff Webb came on as a partner.
He's like the former CEO of RC Brands, the big cheerleading monopoly.
Cheerleading, I shouldn't say Monopoly, Cheerleading Glide.
And now he's running a new site.
So that's kind of the history of human events in the short term.
I got into politics because I moved back to DC and wanted to be involved after Trump got elected.
Yeah.
So have you read, did you read Breitbart's book from, I think, 2012 or something like that?
I have not.
I have not read Breitbart's book.
It's pretty interesting.
And I don't know what your thoughts are on Breitbart.
So if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine.
I just think it's fascinating sort of how he was able to see, or at least brand himself in his own book, as able to see how media was going to change with the internet and how important it was going to be from a political standpoint in sort of a new and fairly unpredictable way.
What are your thoughts on like what's it like running human events in 2021?
I mean, it's crazy that there's so many different sources where people can get information.
Opinion seems to be where it's at, as opposed to actual just sort of kind of cold reporting that you might have seen, you know, with Ed Moreau or something years ago.
And so what's it like to run human events?
So it's interesting.
There's a lot of, it's very challenging to make a sort of classic news website profitable in the old sense, right?
There's, there's a lot of, you know, you're competing.
It's a very competitive market and banner ads themselves are not like the most profitable thing in the world.
So you're kind of finding, I think the art of it is trying to find like oblique ways to monetize what you're doing.
So through memberships or through podcasts like the Daily Wire does.
There's a lot of different ways to do it.
I think the challenge is, I mean, I still believe very firmly in the news opinion divide.
I really like the idea.
For example, I like reading the Wall Street Journal a lot.
And one of the reasons is I think they're really strict about that.
Whenever I read a Wall Street Journal news article, I don't feel like they're trying to get one over on me ever, right?
I don't feel that way in every New York Times.
feel that way when i read washington post like it's just obvious they have an agenda those those papers have an agenda they're trying to force you to think a certain way or just really push you hard and wall street journal is just like we're just going to hear we're just reporting it's all we're doing we're just reporting we may have some bias we don't know what it is but we're just we're just trying to get it right and that's uh that's really refreshing and so i really want that you know kind of that's the vision i have for like what we want to do with our new side and then and then but then opinion being very aggressive and
like innovative pushing the envelope where we really try and make make points in a really pristine way and the thing about our opinion side is you know we're not just trying to put down a million articles a day because we're we think we we think that these sites have to kind of coexist alongside social media right we're trying to work we're not trying to fight social media and take people away from twitter or facebook so they just have them on our website we're trying to like work with the fact that most people are consuming their media on us on a set like twitter or
facebook they're going to click in read an article click back and so given that we're not trying to go super hard in terms of we have to have all the content in the world but rather we're trying to put out a few really good pieces every day or like even just one really good piece a day and then have people kind of you know think about human events that way and eventually use that to sort of funnel people into watching podcasts which we ultimately think is the way you can actually make money in this business so do you think um uh do you think that by going the opinion route is this
is the advantage there that you you don't have to shelter a bias i mean you can just sort of be explicit about it is that right is that the comfort there it allows you to i mean make arguments and you know we still we still hold ourselves to very aggressive like fact-checking standards on opinion for sure but you know if you i don't want to do i don't like opinionated news you know like i mean i guess breit i mean breitbart actually does a pretty good job of avoiding too much of it i think they're better than the new york times for example but i always i i like i like
doing opinion work because i think that you know my expert i'm not a journalist by training i am a lawyer i make arguments and so i think where what i like to do is make arguments in general evaluate arguments help edit other people's arguments that's that's what i like doing and that's not journalism right that's that's opinion based writing so that's kind of where my my i guess my expertise is um i like seeing the level of argument elevated on our side i think uh it helps to really um push people to like
write better and and think harder um and and that's that's that's what i like doing with it and i think like being i mean it just it does give us the freedom to actually push agendas that we do have like i think you know my foremost agenda politically would be i think platform access should be a civil right i think everybody should just have the right to use facebook twitter etc etc and And I'm able to push that with explicit opinion pieces on my own site that make that.
What's the legal argument for that?
Because obviously, the counterargument here is that these private organizations have the right to have or have not whatever they want on their applied.
You're tampering with their freedom of speech as a private institution.
What's the sort of the counter argument that you have?
Because I have the same sentiment emotionally, but I haven't arrived intellectually at justification for the position that I sort of have.
So the sort of general objection that private companies can do what they want.
So that objection, I don't find persuasive at all, given that there are enormous restrictions already on every private company about what they can do under current law.
I mean, ranging from non-discrimination rules.
You can't just kick out black people.
Like you're a private company, but you can't just tell black people they're not allowed to do business, right?
And nobody thinks that's wrong.
Everybody agrees that that's okay, basically.
There's only a few remaining holdouts who are really vehemently defending the right of racists to exclude anyone they want from their establishment for any reason.
And similar, I mean, we can go back even further than that.
You can go back to the 1885 railroad acts that basically prohibited discrimination between different types of railroad traffic because the railroad, at that time, you had real railroad monopolies, right?
There were only a few railroads at the point.
And so if you wanted to get goods or people across the country, you had to go to certain people.
And so there were, you know, those people started acting in a really discriminatory way.
And there's a massive bipartisan rejection of that.
And that's what led to a lot of the original non-discrimination rules.
So that's the first argument.
Like, one, it's just they're a private company, they can do what they want, but we have hundreds, we have over 100 years of history in this country of regulating private companies that use monopoly power to discriminate against their consumers in a way we find inappropriate.
Now, then the second question is: is a better, you know, in the service of a more legally formidable one, because the question is, does constraining the ability of private companies to deplatform users, does that infringe their First Amendment rights?
And I think the answer to that is that there's not actually a speech right infringed when you're, if you have just a general right to use the platform, there's actually, and there's good Supreme Court precedent supporting that.
A case called Prune Yard Shopping Center v.
Robbins.
You know, California had a law that said that people had the right to petition on private property or arrange signature gathering, that kind of thing.
Some shopping mall said, whoa, whoa, I don't want to be associated with these petition gatherers.
That's my First Amendment rights are being violated.
You got to get rid of that.
And the Supreme Court said, no, you're not the speaker, right?
Nobody thinks that you, the shopping mall, are speaking when there's somebody showing up at your property and trying to collect signatures for a petition.
You're not the speaker.
You have the ability to disassociate yourself from the speech, make clear that this is not you, that this is somebody else on your property, and say what you want to say.
You have all those rights still intact.
So you're not the speaker.
And so your First Amendment rights are violated.
I think Facebook and Twitter are very much in a similar position.
They're not like a newspaper where they have a scarce amount of space and there's a sort of editorial judgment that's at stake when you tell a newspaper what they have or have not to print.
Their Facebook and Twitter, they're 300 million users.
They're not making any sort of claim.
No one thinks they're making any sort of claim that they endorse any one particular speaker.
So if Facebook and Twitter want to say that they disagree with something and make their own corporate stance clear, fine.
They want to clearly disassociate themselves from certain speech on their platform, fine.
But I think it is perfectly legitimate for the government to say, we think that Americans should have a right to use your platform.
Yeah, I'm with you on that.
And what do you think?
Because obviously I'm not a lawyer.
So everything that I think about the law is just really like from an intuitive place.
It's not from a knowledgeable place.
So forgive me.
But what do you think about the?
It seems to me that the line between gut is continuing to gray or blur rather.
And that as we, you know, you see these major corporations, particularly with big tech, and they're publicly traded institutions.
A lot of them have government grants, government contracts, federally funded.
Politicians and government agencies spend a tremendous amount of money on these platforms.
So is there a reasonable argument to suggest that these aren't exactly either private or government sort of platforms?
There's something in between, and that maybe that in-betweenness justifies an argument for protecting first, you know, the Bill of Rights.
I think as a sort of, you know, ethical matter, yes, as a legal matter, no, would be the way to answer that question.
Right.
As a legal matter, the fact that there's like these interrelationships itself doesn't mean that they're just obviously state actors.
In specific instances, you can say, well, the government is essentially pressuring Twitter to censor these particular people.
And those, in that instance, it would be state action, and then you would have you might have a First Amendment claim.
But the sort of general, you know, I mean, that won't be enough just to say that, well, for all purposes, Twitter is a state actor or for all purposes, Facebook is a state actor.
Now, as an ethical matter, I think that that answers a lot of the sort of libertarian critique of my argument that it's not just a clear dichotomy between private behavior that should be default, unregulated, allowed to happen versus state action, which when it's censorious, is terrible.
There's this sort of middle ground where there's this large public interest in the behavior of these private platforms because they have managed to monopolize a large chunk of the public square and they've become extraordinarily important to having meaningful, making your free speech meaningful.
I mean, if you don't have access to, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram in 2021, you know, can you be a journalist?
Can you be an influencer?
Like, are there, there's so many different types of things you just can no longer really do for a living, even or really have an impact doing it all.
And moreover, it definitely, whenever you see somebody get banned, you notice how they feel deeply censored.
Like they feel like that basic right they have as an American to participate in public discourse is constrained and limited, and in some cases, you know, gone.
And so that's just, I think that that as an ethical matter, that's why I talk about free speech is more than just the First Amendment.
It's a culture, it's a set of norms and understandings.
And part of that, I think, has to be in 21.
Like you don't really have free speech if you can't just lose your sound.
I'm not sure what happened.
It cut out.
Let me see if I can figure that out.
You're back.
I'm back.
Okay.
You're back.
Good.
So, so do you think that we're going to arrive at a place where the sort of trajectory that we're on in terms of increased censorship online by these big tech institutions?
Do you think that we're going to arrive at a place where it's reversed and we're going to see people like Alex Jones back on these platforms?
Is it going to be litigated to the point where it's corrected?
Not in the immediate future.
I think we have there's a battle we have to win here.
We need to get to a point where either we have a state law protecting the right to access these platforms that survives judicial scrutiny, right?
We had a Florida law that was passed.
Thank you.
We're on DeSantis ultimately, but it was enjoined.
It was stopped from taking effect by the federal courts in Florida.
And so it's on appeal, but I don't think it'll prevail.
I think we're probably going to lose that one, sadly.
There's a big, it has some few, it was some very glaring issues.
The most obvious of which, for example, would be the Florida law was going to prohibit Twitter from appending its own missives to your tweets, right?
They said, you know, those little things they did for COVID and the election where they're like, you know, check the real COVID information here or the election, et cetera, et cetera.
So that's what's called a prior restraint when the government is prohibiting someone from speaking.
And that's like so squarely in the First Amendment violation area that you're never going to get that passed.
And so there has to be that law has to be rewritten in a way that doesn't constrain Twitter's ability to actually speak, but instead just says individuals have a right to speak on your platform.
If that happens, we can get a state law.
Or we get a federal law passed that does the same thing.
But we need to get one of those laws passed and then get to hold up.
And if we can do that, then Alex Jones can just avail himself of that law.
And I think that's when we can get all these people back on the major platforms and really change, you know, and have succeeded.
And I think that would be a wonderful thing for this country.
Not because I have any particular love for Alex Jones, but rather I think it's just a wonderful idea to actually have meaningful free speech in America again.
So why do you think it is that this censorship has started to gain momentum?
Do you think that it's nefarious political actions, or do you think that it's just sort of like an overwhelming consensus among staff and employees that work at these companies in terms of what they find offensive because they're so politically aligned sort of internally?
Do you think that it's just an issue of too much consensus within these companies?
And so they sort of just take these leaps and censor speech that maybe half the country doesn't find offensive or actually thinks is truthful.
Or do you think that it's actually sort of fear of every time Elizabeth Warren tweets about antitrust laws, they feel like they need to hammer down on offensive speech?
Yeah, I think, well, it's a combination of external and internal pressure, right?
So you have, I don't think actually Mark Zuckerberg really wants to be censoring speech, nor do I think Jack Dorsey does.
I agree with you.
I don't think that's really in there.
You know, I've listened to both of them talk for a while.
I just don't think that's their inclination.
People forget the boards run these companies.
Right.
But I've, you know, it's not just the boards.
It's the fact that they're constantly dealing with internal employee revolts because they're staffed in the guilds of liberals and the modern liberal or leftist or whatever have you does not have the same respect for free speech that they once did.
There are a variety of reasons for that.
Developments in academia that have questioned the value of unfettered free speech suggested that it enables and is, in fact, in many cases, just violent.
And also the combination of that plus Trump winning using social media, which was just, you know, kind of essentially jolted the brains of, I think, so many liberals and leftists who thought such a thing could never happen.
And so there just became this obsessive focus internally at these companies to like prevent that from happening and just this hawkish eye for any conservative misinformation or harm that they were doing with their discourse.
And you can see how laser focused they were on that because the Taliban was apparently using WhatsApp to like communicate and coordinate their entire retaking of Afghanistan.
And while they're doing that, and there are Twitter Taliban spokespeople on Twitter, you know, like preaching for the regime, Donald Trump is still banned from the platform.
I mean, you know, and that's not even like they had the Iranian Ayatollah.
So there's just this myopia among modern American progressives where they think they're these broad, like globally conscious citizens, but really they're just overwhelmingly focused on defeating who they see as their enemy, which is just mainstream American conservatives at this point.
So how does this, how does, how does this pan out?
Like, let's just say things keep going as they are for the next 10 years.
What is what does social media look like in 10 years?
What does speech look like in 10 years if things keep going the way they're going?
If they keep going the way they're going, I mean, more and more and more just becomes off limits.
Like I already, I think everybody in some, to some degree, self-censors, you know, because we know.
I do.
Yeah, you should see my draft.
Right.
Like your draft tweets.
Like, and I think everybody's right to self-censor.
I am not a believer in martyrdom.
You know, I don't think that's anything to be proud of of martyring yourself.
So just, you know, to like say the thing that needs to, you know, will get you banned, then getting banned, and then you're not able to speak anymore.
Like, you know, because I mean, maybe in a different world where it was so censorious that you couldn't say anything at all, that would be the right moral move.
But right now it's not because there's so much we can say, one, and then two, we can push and advocate for these rules to be changed so that we can go back to being able to have total free speech, which is what we should, what we should want.
But I really don't like it when, you know, important, I really didn't like it when important conservatives were talking about martyring themselves and being indifferent to the fate of their social media accounts and then not self-censoring so that they could stay on the platforms.
Like it's important.
Well, martyrdom seems to only make sense as a last as a last resort, right?
Like if there are other resorts, you shouldn't do it because then you run yourself ineffective.
But it makes sense for a last, like a last stitch effort.
If you're out of gas and it makes sense to crash the plane, right?
But if you still have some gas left, do something.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, like just try and land the plane.
Like I don't, I'm not a believer in that sort of like defeatism, blackbuild stuff.
That's something you'll almost never see from me in my Twitter is just this sort of like, oh, everything's hopeless and horrible and we're never going to get anywhere.
I'm a big believer that there are ways to fix this, at least at the basic start of like, we already, we went from no one really caring about this issue at all to maybe three years ago, two years, two, three years ago, I started advocating for we need laws protecting your right to be on social media to two to three years later, actually getting state laws protecting your right to be on social media.
And the Republican Party went from, oh, gosh, they're private companies, we shouldn't do anything, to now the default position, the 80-20 position being obviously we need to regulate Facebook and Twitter and allow our people to speak.
And, you know, that's, it's now a minority view to think otherwise.
So we've made a lot of progress.
And if we get that, then we can get a lot, right?
If we're free to speak on the internet, then we can start working on everything else.
And it also demonstrates the impact of social media.
I don't really feel like politics has fully felt it yet, but what it's going to be like when every politician has to answer immediately to a very, very connected public.
And I think we're going to have something a lot more democratic going forward.
I think there's that possibility in the small D sense of responsive to the demands of the public in a way that it wouldn't have been in a world where the mainstream media gatekeepers controlled the flows of information.
What are your thoughts on the health and future of the Republican Party?
Personally, I'm fairly concerned about it in terms of the long term.
But I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say because obviously you're very integrated in the influencer community in terms of conservative ideas and conservative influencers themselves.
And I think you really have your finger on the pulse of what's going on.
Are you up?
I am actually.
I'm more optimistic than other people.
I obviously am still very frustrated with the institutional Republican Party in many ways.
I don't think they were that helpful to Trump, and I think they were resistant.
But in other ways, they have changed for the better dramatically.
I think on foreign policy, for example, the Republican Party is much more heterodox.
In the sense, Ron Paul kind of won a lot of his debate.
Like before, it was completely anathema to criticize this intervention.
But the neoconservatives are gone.
They're out of the party.
Most of them are Democrats now.
And good people run things in the Republican Party for the most part.
And the Rand Paul is a much more ascendant voice than Bill Crystal, for example, which wasn't true 10 years ago.
So things are going in the right direction.
Trump radically adjusted them in the right direction.
I think Trump, one of the big impacts of Trump was making the Republican Party's platform much more popular.
Before that, I think it was adhering to kind of old corporate interests.
And now I think it is a much more balanced, you know, socially conservative, but fiscally moderate party that has the ability to win a lot of votes going forward.
I think the Democrats have made their policy platform much more unpopular too, in addition.
So I'm optimistic.
I think, you know, I think that integrating, you know, the establishment has come towards us.
And if we all come together, we can win power back in 2022, 24, and really change the country for the better.
Like, think about what DeSantis would be a fantastic president, I think.
Sure.
But the frontrunner is seldom the winner.
True, but I mean, it's just, he's still a very, very strong contender.
I mean, he's a very popular governor who keeps racking up W's and who will keep being able to put himself in the spotlight and do more.
No one else has been as active as he has in terms of like trying to push, you know, score, you know, score points, past policies that work for Republicans.
He's, you know, proven to be good on his feet.
I don't know.
I think he's going to be extremely formidable come 20.
Could be Gavin.
Could be Gavin.
Gavin.
Gavin.
Exactly.
Yeah, like, I don't know.
Gavin Newsom's going to switch parties so that he after the recall.
I don't know.
It's a good question.
I don't think he's going to make it.
Yeah, no, I don't think he's going to survive the recall.
I think, I think, which is, hey, another good sign, right?
Yeah, that is a good sign.
So, one of my concerns, though, about the future of the sort of the two-party system is that it seems to me that, you know, with inflation the way that it is and the way that, you know, it's particularly bad under Biden, but it's been a problem for like 50, 60, 70 years in this country, longer than that, really, basically since the beginning of Fiat.
And one of my concerns is that as inflation becomes more and more of a problem, the middle class may continue to shrink.
And I'm worried that the parties will lose interest in representing what's left of it as it shrinks because it's less advantageous to represent a shrinking demographic, right?
And so I'm worried that we're going to wind up in a situation where we have this sort of hyper corporate or hyper welfare dynamic between the two parties.
And I don't know which side will represent which or if they'll become the same.
I don't know, but I'm just generally worried about middle class interests being represented at a federal level.
Yeah, I mean, I think inflation is a tricky one.
I mean, you can honestly, like, what's causing inflation right now?
You could say it's all the government spending, maybe, but that's not, there's not a direct cause and effect there every time.
I mean, think back to the housing crisis.
You know, there were a lot of people betting that all the government spending in the aftermath of the crisis was going to be super inflationary and the dollar was going to collapse.
And the opposite happened.
The dollar got really strong.
And people didn't think about why.
And the reason why was because the unwinding of the credit bubble was massively deflationary.
Because again, if you think about fractional reserve banking, it's because you give one loan out, 10 loans can be based on that, right?
Like the amount of money is how they can distribute it.
So if a bunch of loans are collapsing and the money's getting, that means money's getting scarce, which is so a little, so there's this massive deflationary impact of all the loans going under.
And that's actually effectively reducing the amount of money in the money supply.
So inflation, you know, inflation is tricky.
Generally, I think the really bad hyperinflations happen are a consequence of economic collapse first, right?
Or massive economic failure post-communism, things like, or just utter dysfunction in Argentina, I think it's something like that.
They don't usually happen in places with strong economies.
What you just see is inflation, price rises.
Will those destroy everything?
I don't know.
I don't see it as an existential risk.
What I'm worried about, honestly, more is the sort of technological reshaping of our economy that's going to change like the availability of jobs.
I mean, something as simple as a large chunk of how many people are in economy are employed as truck drivers.
It's not trivial.
Like trucks are driving all over the country and they require drivers, but we're not that far from self-driving cars.
Like, we're really not.
You know, you drive, you go out, you buy a new car today.
It has what?
Assisted cruise control.
Sure.
And I don't even have my hands on the wheel.
Right.
Adaptive cruise control and steering assist.
I mean, that's like three quarters of the way to autopilot, right?
There's a bunch of edge cases they have to figure out, but we're not far.
And once we have autopilot, that's the end of truck driving as a progression.
Yeah, but I mean, there have been tremendous amount of technological advancements over the last century, and it seems like everybody's still working 40 hours a week.
Yeah, it just seems like there's sort of this conservation of labor.
I mean, it changes form, but it's always the same amount, right?
Similar to conservation of energy principle in physics.
Sure, but I mean, it's still going to be, I mean, a dramatic shift for a lot of, I think, working class people who, you know, if you've been a truck driver your whole life and now suddenly you need to make a living doing something else at 45, 60, that's not easy to do.
Doesn't matter who you are.
Right.
That's a good point.
So.
So what are we going to do to save this country, man?
What are we going to do to save the country?
Well, we need to win in 2022.
Yeah.
Start there.
Like, I think one of the things that people don't realize, and that's so frustrating to listen to, is, you know, it would be much better if we'd had the Senate.
Like, we're, for example, the infrastructure bill.
I actually have discussed this a lot.
People are furious about it.
They're like, how could Republicans defect?
I'm like, you don't even get the problem.
Like, you're not even thinking about the problem, right?
Because we're not in power.
So we're literally trying to make a deal with Joe Manchin so that he doesn't screw us, right?
Remember, there's the big looming threat in the Senate of a reconciliation bill passed on a party-line vote that gives the Democrats everything.
They have a majority in both branches.
They have the trifecta.
They have the presidency, they have the house, they have the Senate.
So avoiding that is really important because it's going to be the worst thing ever.
And so if Joe Manchin goes to the Republicans and is like, well, I want you to come along for one point, this $1.2 billion bill or a trillion-dollar bill or whatever.
And Republicans are like, no, screw you, Joe.
Then what happens?
Joe goes, goes over to AOC and is like, well, can I get this stuff in your giant reconciliation bill?
She's like, yes, sure, that's fine.
Bam.
That's what happens.
Right.
There's no leverage.
We don't have.
Yeah, we don't have any leverage.
Basically, all we have is the ability to sort of peel off a couple of moderate Democratic senators.
That's it.
That's all we have.
And so if people are getting mad at Republicans over like, and so that's just an example of why it's so important for Republicans to win, why it was so stupid to lose the Senate.
Why the people who are like, oh, we just need to give them a lesson and show them that they should care more about President Trump.
It's like, that was just dumb.
Holding, you know, Democrats don't care what we think and they don't care what we say.
We have no influence over them.
So it's stupid to elect them.
It's stupid to let them win.
Right.
Like we've already martyrdom.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like martyrdom.
I mean, and vice versa.
Like we, Democrats have no say over what Republican politicians do, or they shouldn't rather.
But, you know, like we need to elect the party that will listen to us.
Even if they don't always do what we want, we get a seat at the table when the Republicans are in power.
We don't get a seat at the table when the Democrats are.
So that's the foundational problem.
We need to win in 2022.
We need to win in 2024.
Now, if we have enough time to actually fix like the, you know, bigger problems, maybe we won't be able to.
But I mean, I think we can try.
I think, you know, you see, I don't think the stuff the Democrats are doing is really that popular.
I think they're terrified of what happens when they have to try and go back to normal election laws with Joe Biden as the guy who they have to put forward as their like leader.
I mean, dudes, dude's approval ratings dropping like a stone.
He's just not that popular.
And he's not doing a good job.
Neither is his game.
I don't even think he's going to, I don't think he's even going to run.
I don't think he's going to run.
I'd be very surprised if he was going to be able to do it.
Which would be disastrous for the Dems because then they'd have to deal with President Kamala Harris, who everyone right, but they might primarily.
They might.
I mean, it would be.
That's what I would do.
I was a Democrat.
If I were a Democrat, I'd be like, no, you can't run.
You're too unpopular.
Like, we need to have a popular candidate get someone.
But, you know, their bench gets real thin real quick.
There are not a lot of popular Democrats out there right now.
I mean, think about the fact they've turned to Biden of all people.
And Republicans have some good people.
I mean, DeSantis is a great candidate.
Like, unites the factions, right?
He brings Trump and MAGA along with kind of the establishment who's like, oh, this guy's a little bit more like us, even though he's clearly on our side, but he's, you know, he doesn't alienate them the way that Trump did.
And that's a unifying pick that younger, fresh face, a lot of achievements.
So I'm really hoping we go to DeSantis.
Do you think they're going to be able to pull off keeping some of the COVID voter laws in place that they were able to sort of enact in an emergency situation?
You think they're going to be able to stretch the fear enough over COVID into the into the election cycle?
I mean, they're in a really weird bind because they have a lot of their base likes this stuff.
People forget that.
We sort of think about the COVID policies and we're like, how are these crazy authoritarian politicians?
It's like, well, they're actually doing what a large chunk of their base wants.
Like if you know liberals, you know they are scared of this, like nothing they've ever been scared of before.
You know, I mean, just think about how you have the liberals in your own family deal with COVID.
If you have any, it's not, they're scared as a general matter.
So, you know, they're, I forget what the question was.
So I forgot.
I know that was relevant.
I was asking if you thought that the Democrats were going to be able to stretch the COVID fear long enough to maintain the current voter laws that were passed during the emergency.
I mean, I don't think they're going to stretch it.
They're not going to be able to stretch it long enough to maintain the current voter laws, especially in Republican states, which is where a lot of them, you know, where there were a lot of issues.
Right.
Do you think Trump would have won without those?
I don't know.
It's close.
I think they help Democrats a lot.
I think, you know, but there were other problems like for Trump.
You know, for example, I mean, I was in Pennsylvania and, you know, while like Pennsylvania, you know, people say, oh, man, there was so much fraud in Philly.
I'm like, Philly went better for Trump than it did in 2016.
Trump lost because he did worse in the suburbs.
You know, there was like, you know, are we going to get those people back?
I think we will.
I think the people, those sort of weird kind of not fan, you know, people who really just didn't like Trump, but are otherwise just natural Republican voters historically, I think they're going to come back.
I mean, Biden and the Dems are crazy.
But, you know, I mean, I think the question is like, I don't know, you know, a lot of people say, well, it's the fraud that caused the loss.
I'm like, I don't, you're guessing.
You don't know that.
You know, and if I had to bet, if I had to put my guess out there, I don't think it was the, I mean, I think there was definitely fraud on the margins.
I think it might have swung a state or two, maybe, but I don't, I don't, I don't know that we win without it.
Like, and that, and it's not really demonstratable either.
Like, you know, the, I mean, audits aside, I think it's one of those things where, you know, we're all just, everybody's just sort of guessing about the effect of the fraud, which is, we shouldn't have to guess, which is why we should put in place election integrity measures generally, but I don't know.
Well, I had your position too in terms of this.
But one thing that I do think is funny, and maybe I'm missing something here, but I think it's funny that we always assume that the only cheaters are the Democrats.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, like I grew up in Illinois and we were family friends with Brady, who ran for governor at one point in time.
And Brady told my dad at some Chamber of Commerce event or something, something to the effect of, I can prove that 50,000 people, 50,000 dead people voted, but I can't prove who they voted for.
This was, you know, 15, 20 years ago.
So it's like, you know, I just, I just think that if it's possible to cheat, then politicians will cheat no matter what side of the aisle that they're on.
Or campaign managers, maybe not even the politicians, but whoever's ambitious in their staff.
An election should be above reproach.
Like it should be, there should be no question about whether it's cheating.
It should be obviously impossible.
It's a much better way to have civil peace.
So what's the solution to make it impossible to cheat?
I mean, is it just voter ID, in-person voting only?
Voter ID, in-person voting, paper ballots, the cameras on the ballots, incredibly tight custody.
No mail-in ballots.
Those are gone.
Like you cannot prove that a mail-in ballot was cast without coercion.
You cannot prove it.
Right?
Simple as that.
Coercion meaning somebody telling another person how to vote or taking their ballot and filling it in form.
You cannot prove that didn't happen.
Right?
Very simple.
Well, you can't mail cash legally.
So why should you be able to mail a ballot?
Yeah, like it's just like mail-in ballots are bad.
Like France banned them for a reason.
They're bad.
They make it possible, no matter what, to put in question the integrity of an election, no matter what, because you cannot guarantee that they're commit about fraud.
Maybe you make a very, very narrow exception for like troops overseas or something, but you should have to have an incredibly good reason to not have to show up on election day.
We want to know what do we want.
We want a system where we know that you, one person, one vote, you showed up, you voted, and you didn't do it with anybody else influencing you.
You did it under secret conditions.
Think about like how much we value the secret ball.
Like there's these shades when you go vote.
So nobody can see you.
Nobody can interfere with you.
But like mail-in ballot, you have none of those guarantees, none of those safeguards to ensure that there's no manipulation, no pressure.
And so, I mean, I think the expansion of mail-in voting is just immoral.
It's wrong.
It shouldn't happen.
It undermines the, it encourages coercion, fraud, and it undermines the perception of integrity of any election that's used.
And it should just be, you know, if not banned outright, then constrained to very, very, very limited and onerous restrictions.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
You know, one thing that I struggle with, and maybe it's just as I get older, it becomes wearisome to see the constant push-pull between Republicans and Democrats, but it seems like our politics and our culture have all been about a struggle for resources or perks from the government.
And I don't know.
Maybe I'm just like going through some sort of a existential crisis, but it seems to me that we're really missing sort of the point and the philosophy behind like why the Declaration of Independence is so special and why the Constitution is so special.
You know, like it seems to me that when I look back at those documents, that there was sort of an understanding among founding fathers and just general intellectual leaders of the time, and perhaps it's an enlightenment influence, but there was an understanding that there was something to be said for self-actualization.
And I know that was Maslow later, but still fulfillment, you know, sort of exploring the human condition in like an enriched way.
And I feel like we've been so distracted by who gets what resources or who is, you know, manipulating or coercing the system that we, we as like a people have forgotten what it means to be an American.
Like, and I don't mean that in some sort of like gung-ho patriotic, you know, you know, flag t-shirt on the Fourth of July way.
I mean, like, what it really, like, what Americanism means, you know?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, it, it's, uh, there's a lack of civics education, certainly.
There's a lack of gratitude for the country that we grew up in.
I'm a big fan of the idea that maybe we need to be a little more grateful for how awesome the place we are is that, you know, just seeing what we saw in Afghanistan this last few days should be a reminder of like, hey, it's really nice to not have to deal with any of that.
Right.
So we should be more grateful.
Now, as for like self-actualization and development, I'm not necessarily, I think maybe we're unhealthily obsessed with politics as a society.
And maybe that is probably bad.
It would be nice if politics mattered less.
And it would be a lot better if we were less divided and less.
I mean, I feel like the, you know, the most appalling thing about, you know, what Democrats are doing currently is that you actually ask Democratic parents if they would be okay with their child marrying a Republican.
And the numbers are not good.
Like something like 60% or 70% of Democrats would not be okay with their daughter marrying a Republican or their son marrying a Republican.
And it's like.
Is that sentiment reciprocated?
No, not nearly as much.
Republicans are generally much more tolerant in those studies.
There's a big, basic problem with bigotry on the part of modern liberals.
They're deeply bigoted towards their fellow Americans who disagree with them on politics.
And I think that that's a real problem.
And that's something I hope we can kind of get back to realizing that we do actually have quite a bit in common.
That even we don't see the world the same way, like, you know, there's still a lot more we have in common than we don't.
And hopefully that we can come together.
So do you think that you could be married to a Democrat?
Happily married to the community.
Well, I mean, first off, like at the moment, I would say that the answer is no.
I have eyes only for my lovely fiancé who I'm getting married to and listening to.
Congratulations.
So that's awesome.
And I'm happy for you.
But I guess I will say that in the past, I have dated liberals and never really had an issue with it.
But it's, you know, and I so, but that said, at the moment, you know, obviously the only woman I could ever see marrying is my lovely fiancé.
And so, you know, I guess nice save.
Nice save.
So you're working on human events.
Now you're involved in several other organizations as well.
And we kind of touched on some of those issues.
One of them is, as I understand, sort of an anti-cancel culture type organization.
The other is anti-big tech.
And then the big one for me is Internet Accountability Project.
That's the one that's fighting the abuses of big tech.
I really like the work they do.
And I'm happy to kind of work with them.
I work in sort of a voluntary capacity, which has not given me as much time to do stuff for them as I would like.
I got business and the accommodation training that's pockets off the ground and personal life and actually having a business that I do run sort of limits the amount of time I can commit to there.
But it does, it's something I do try to support.
And I mean, that's a big thing, I believe.
I also helped on, I'm also part of Article 3 project, which is a little bit less central now because that was about confirming Trump judges.
And well, you know, Trump's not president anymore.
So that project comes back when conservatives retake the White House.
But yeah, I mean, I try and do all those things.
I like advocating.
I mean, I like advocating for the cause I believe in.
And, you know, I want to generally, broadly further the Republican cause.
I like it when Republicans win and don't like it when they lose, even though I have, I often have like clash clashes with establishment GOP types.
Sure.
And I really want to push this big tech issue.
Like I think that we've made a lot of progress on it and we just need to keep pushing it and make it so it's as strong a part, the GOP platform, as unquestioned a part of the GOP platform as something like tax cuts.
So what would you say?
What is something that You think that every sort of conservative American, for lack of a better term, I'm using a broad term on purpose, but what is it that you would say that every conservative, regular American should be doing in order to be sort of a positive impact?
Because, you know, in the in the vastness of the internet, it's sort of everywhere kind of feels like New York City now, even if you live in the middle of nowhere.
And it's very easy to kind of get a sense of hopelessness and, you know, I don't know, insignificance.
So how can average, you know, small people, the little guy, the hobbits, so to speak, how can we make a difference?
Raise a family.
Like start a family, raise it, right?
I don't know.
I'm trying to do that.
You know, so I'm getting married.
Yeah.
And, you know, there's other announcements that will be coming on that front shortly, but I'm getting married.
And so, you know, I think I respect like have raise a family, have kids, get married, build, you know, be a productive member of society.
Start there.
Everybody can do that, right?
Everybody can figure out a way to get that done.
You know, if you're not in a position to do that, then get yourself a position, right?
Like you need to get your habits in order, get your life in order, make that happen.
Jordan Peterson.
Yeah, well, but he's right, though.
I mean, that's the most.
He's absolutely right.
Yeah, I'm not being critical.
I'm a big fan.
And it's also the building block of conservative politics is family, right?
Like, you know, single people vote Democrat, you know?
Like, if you want to, you know, kind of bring and create conservative institutions, like, you know, build a strong family that helps, you know, have children who themselves build strong families.
That will help the country.
So I think that that's where it starts if you're talking about everybody.
After that, you know, be supportive of those causes you believe in and give support, you know, and financially, you know, but rhetorically on social media if you can't do that, but be supportive of the causes that are important to you.
But I think that that's where it all starts.
Like it all starts with building your family.
Everybody can build a family.
And if you're sort of obsessed with conservative politics, but you're not, you know, actively trying to build a family, like, you know, find someone, settle down, do that, then you're kind of, your priorities are kind of whack as far as I'm concerned.
Like you're more interested in the broader public before you've settled your own problems.
So where can people find you?
They can find me.
First off, they can find me Will Chamberlain on Twitter, right?
My name, as you can see in the bottom left corner of the screen, that's my Twitter handle.
You can find my columns on human events.
You can find my podcast lately at youtube.com slash humanevents.
And it'll be available very shortly on all the major podcasts, wherever you podcast.
I'm sure we're about to get them out streaming.
So you'll be able to subscribe and listen to my daily content Monday through Friday.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's really been a pleasure to hear your opinions.
I appreciate you humoring me and answering all my questions and helping me get to know you.
I'm a big fan of yours and your work and a big supporter.
And if there's ever anything that I can do, please let me know and let's stay in touch.
