How Homeschooling Can Save The West From Identity Politics With Calvin Robinson | OAP #55
Calvin Robinson is a former video games journalist and current British conservative political commentator, policy advisor and campaigner who is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Robinson is owner of the video games site God is a Geek.[1] He is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.[2]
As a commentator, Robinson has contributed to talkRADIO and GB News.
He previously worked for Turning Point UK.
EPISODE LINKS:
Calvin's Twitter: https://twitter.com/calvinrobinson
Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser
It's one American Podcast Live, and we have the pleasure and honor of having Calvin Robinson with us today.
How are you, Calvin?
All good, thank you.
I love that introduction, by the way.
Very sound.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
One principle I there I don't agree with.
Okay, tell me.
That's that's that's acceptable.
So I'm the right to lie.
Absolutely perfect.
Liberty, fundamental.
But the pursuit of happiness, I think actually that is the downfall of American values.
Tell me about that.
Why?
Well, I think what we what we're looking at is happiness is an emotive state.
It's a temporary uh feeling, and it's a fleeting feeling that we're constantly chasing.
And I'm all for the free market capitalism, I'm all for you know the least worst approach, but it capitalism becomes an ideology at some point when you're in the pursuit of happiness, and rather than what we should be looking at, which is something larger than ourselves, it should be our focus on God, it should be our focus on our family, our focus on the community, and the pursuit of happiness is actually individualistic.
It's quite selfish fundamentally, because we're looking for our own personal happiness, and again, that's something that's always fleeting, always changing, you can ever actually achieve.
We should be looking more towards what brings fulfillment, what brings content.
Do you think that the in the time that the text was written, happiness had more of a connotation of fulfillment?
I think you're right there.
It might be that the language has changed over time.
Uh, and what we now see as happiness is something completely different.
It might have been more contentedness and and fulfillment back in the day, but we're still we still use that phrase, the pursuit of happiness.
And I think people what they mean by that is the white picket fence, the high salary and you know, entrepreneurship, which is great.
I'm in full favor of those things, but they are not a core essential part of our will of our well-being and our lives.
That's interesting.
But you know, there's this there's this, you know, emphasis, obviously, in the United States, in terms of our constitution on like the freedom of religion, right?
And so I you know, keep bearing that in mind.
Do you think that the founding fathers, though many of them would have had a consensus that you know, things like community involvement and you know, your pursuit of your relationship with God are important, that it was important that that not be explicit in the text because this is supposed to be something that's sort of accessible to all faiths or lack of faith.
Yeah, it's quite sensible.
And you know, I I assume that most of the founding fathers were Christians, uh, and it's a it's a very Christian mentality to say, yeah, we all you know, we want to worship God, but at the same time we appreciate that other people might not want to, and we want to be open and liberal and accepting.
But at the same time, whenever we do that, we water down our own values.
Whenever we try to be inclusive, we always water down what we believe in.
And that's that's a pattern I've seen throughout history.
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
And it's sort of the difference between uh compromise and a deal in the sense that it compromises when both parties lose and a deal is when both parties win.
That's sort of kind of the famous Ayn Rand.
And I'm I'm sure you're not a big fan of Ayn Rand just because of her atheism, but she's got she got some things right.
But um, you know, it's interesting.
I I heard you mention uh um uh sort of like a subtle antagonism to selfishness.
I tweeted something earlier today, um uh where I sort of put out the thought that you know political systems and governments can't make something make individuals within a society more or less moral.
It seems that the human nature is sort of fixed in that the what the political systems do is they manifest how human nature plays out differently.
So, for example, if you were in Soviet Union, you people are just as greedy in the Soviet Union as they are in the United States, but in a in a communist society that manifests much differently than in a capitalist society.
And so I wonder what you think about selfishness, because the term sort of has a negative connotation in that and implies that someone will sacrifice someone else for their own good.
But when I think of selfishness, I think of it in the sense like, hey, I want to make as much money as possible, so I'm gonna find a way to uh manufacture cars in the least expensive way possible, and therefore, you know, more people can afford to buy a car.
So in that sense, Henry Ford's selfishness was actually a good thing because capitalism sort of manipulated it.
That's everything in moderation, isn't it?
So I'm obviously I'm always fighting against socialism and against communism.
This idea that we always need to be looking out for the wider community doesn't make sense.
But uh so we do have to have an element of selfishness, but it has to be focused on God and focused on the family, because the family is fundamental to the conservative way of life, in my opinion, which is why the far left are always trying to break down the family in in their first approach, because once they own your child's thoughts, they they own the future.
Um, so we do have to be selfish to a degree, but within limits.
Everything is within limits, then isn't it really?
Probably, but to say everything is with limits is kind of radical.
There are no absolutes.
Only Sith deal on absolutes, Calvin.
That's true.
But if the Sith were the good guys in that film, you know, the Jedi were actually the ideological zealots.
The Jedi were the bad guys in those films, it's just portrayed from their perspective.
So you think Darth Vader was right the whole time?
I don't think anyone's right the whole time, but I I do think I do side more with the Sith and the Jedi said they weren't political and they went in there and wiped people out that didn't agree with them.
Yeah, absolutely.
So how do you think this is gonna play out?
Do you think that the um do you think that the collectivists are gonna win in the end?
Oh, that's a big question to start with.
Uh I think in some ways they have already won.
I think you know, people often say, How are we doing in the culture wars?
I don't think there is a culture war.
I think we've lost the culture war, but now it's about how do we come back from that?
How do we return to our values and our principles that we believe in?
And it's it's you know, reversing that long march through the institution.
It is a case of standing off what we believe in, you know, because conservatives in general tend to think just let everyone else get on with it as long as they're not hurting me, just mind my business.
But now we need to take it a stand and say actually these principles are the rights principles, the best principles, and we're gonna fight for them.
How do how do how does that play out?
Because I I don't know, I don't know what it's like in the United Kingdom, but in the United States, obviously, I'm sure obviously you're aware there's all a tremendous amount of distrust in the system.
And I I don't I don't know where to land on election fraud.
I I have mixed feelings about it.
I there's a lot of foolish people on both sides of that argument, so it's really hard to know who to believe.
Um but you know, traditionally, the the the beautiful thing about the United States, uh and I guess a republic in general is that if you're unhappy with something, you can you can push for the next election cycle.
But if there's no faith in that process, then how how do you fix something?
How do you fix a political problem if there's no political process?
I don't think violence I'm struggling with this myself because I I believe in democracy, I promote democracy all the time.
But I'm getting to a point now where I'm questioning does it even work or does it even exist anymore?
So in this country, in the United Kingdom, for example, we had the referendum on leaving the European Union, and we won that referendum with a majority.
But since then, I've seen a decline of democracy in our country.
So the losers didn't consent.
The losers refused to consent for a big amount of time.
They used every system in their power to avoid taking us out of the European Union.
You know, our government, our parliamentarians, our politicians, we're all fighting against the democratic vote of the people.
And I think that's that's very, very scary.
But since then we've seen a pattern.
So we see it in general elections.
You guys have seen it too with Trump.
Uh, in that the losers, well, on both both of those elections, actually.
When Trump won, the losers said no, he didn't win.
When Trump lost, the losers said no, he didn't lose.
We're no longer conceding, and without concession, we cannot have a functioning democracy.
We have to acknowledge the winning side and fight to win the next time around.
And we I'm really terrified about what's happening.
Yeah, I I don't know what the solution is going to be.
I've been working on a video that I'm going to publish later today, just sort of a solo video, um, talking about the idea of zeitgeist.
Um, and this is something that I learned about from uh one of my professors when I was in school, sort of informally, and sort of he was sort of a mentor, and he was writing a book about you know what what is zeitgeist means what the spirit of the times is, right?
And we sort of at the time we looked at the difference in you know album art on um you know album covers for music before and after the Great Recession, right?
So if you remember the early 2000s, it was all about you know being very flashy, escalades, you know, just as making as much money as possible, and then you sort of see like the whole hipster movement became popular after the crash because it was okay to spend a lot of money on clothes still as long as you were as long as you spent the money to look poor, right?
You know, and it was I don't know if it was like an empathy thing or a guilt thing, but it's just funny how it's funny how these real socioeconomic political things, even natural disasters, pandemics, these real things, tangible things create new zeitgeist spirit of time, tones, right, and in a society, and that that zeitgeist changes the way people react, and then the reaction, you know, funnels right back into what's gonna happen politically, right?
So it's sort of like this cycle.
And you know, the zeitgeist now, if you look at like um uh shows and and movies that are popular, uh particularly in the United States, like handmaid's tale, Joker, there's this like reoccurring theme of hopelessness and taking justice into your own hands, right?
And there's like an antagonism to tradition, sp specifically in handmaid's tale.
It's sort of like the you know, the the dogmatists, the traditional people are are the antagonists and they exploit the vulnerable women, but they underestimate the power of the women, right?
And then in the end they have, you know, not spoiler alert, in the end they they just take matters into their own hands and they kill the the the antagonists from the whole series just without any sort of trial, right?
And you see this in like a lot of shows, and I'm wondering like, okay, so if this zeitgeist is real of just like hopelessness and I'm taking things into my own hands, like how does that manifest politically?
And it seems to me that we're in sort of like a pre-totalitarian state.
Yeah.
Well, you guys have protection.
You guys have in your constitution that protection to bear the right to bear arms, which I think is fantastic, something we don't have.
And we are seeing totalitarianism creeping on us from anyway started all with an authoritarian uh response to COVID, and it's becoming more than that.
We're see so up in Scotland, for example, we're seeing that the government want to hold on to these emergency COVID powers and get rid of the COVID.
So they can use lockdowns, they can close schools, they can use these powers for anything that they see fit.
We're seeing the same in Australia and in England, they're even proposing extending them further.
And what what I predict is we'll see these measures used for uh the environment.
You know, in Canada, they're talking already about using uh by facing this climate emergency, this emergency that's got been going on for much longer than I've been alive, um, to fight this so-called emergency with these COVID powers.
So pe the the governments have become used to having these powers, and as we know, tyranny never comes in through oppression.
It you always comes in through good intention.
Uh and once governments have have powers, they never want to give them back.
And we're seeing this, and we're seeing it play out in real time, and it just seems to me like people haven't learned from history, but how do we fight it?
How do we if democracy isn't working, you know, what's to say that they're not gonna well in this country they did actually cancel elections uh for it was for the mayor of London and for local elections, not a government, uh not a national election, but still they could do the same.
They could postpone indefinitely elections due to whatever emerges that they're gonna permit.
So how do we fight back?
I see I think you know, you guys have a natural protection, thank God for that.
Uh, but what are we gonna do?
No idea.
Yeah, well, and the thing that's you know, I I've got uh a couple of close friends, and we've been talking about the second amendment here in the United States, and um, you know, I'm obviously a supporter of the second amendment.
I own several firearms.
But the second amendment is useless if you don't use it.
So it could be like a subconscious deterrent for potential tyrants to be like, oh, they're armed, I know they're armed.
But if if if you're a if you if you have weak character or it, or if the tyranny is so gradual that you never reach that point of emotional response where you feel where you think I'm gonna grab my gun and take care of this, like then the tyranny can still take hold.
I mean, we've seen in the United States just in the last two years, what I thought I never thought in my life I would see where people were getting in trouble for going to church, people are closing their businesses, and there's sort of just this like complicity, this compliance rather.
And uh I I'm worried that the culture problem is so deep-seated that even though we have the rights, we won't exercise them.
Yeah, absolutely.
I thought that the West, I thought the US and the UK in particular were countries that fought for freedom and really cared about civil liberties.
I honestly thought that was in our DNA, but I've been so disappointed and surprised to find out that it isn't because people are so willing to give up their liberties.
And yeah, they'll say yes because it's an emergency or it's because it's you know urgent and it's just for now, but it's even then you should never give your liberties away, even if it's just supposedly temporary, because you never get them back.
They're yours.
And I just I despair in all honesty, because I see you know, we've got vaccine passports coming out already in this country.
Uh we're seeing that they're already proposing merging them into digital IDs.
Uh we've got the digital currencies being proposed, where the Bank of England wants to dictate where they want control of your money, essentially.
They want to say what money can be spent on.
So they'll start off with benefits.
They'll start off with people on welfare, say you can only spend your money in certain places.
But of course, once they've got that control, they could say, well, you can only spend your money on things that are good for the climate, or things that are, you know, don't have a lot of sugar in them.
It's for your own good.
Of course, it's always for our own good.
But all of these tyrannies are creeping in right now under our noses, but no one gives a damn because it's all because of COVID, and it's we've got to do this to get out of this looming pandemic.
You know, it's it's it's fascinating because I I've I've I've been a fan of Huxley and uh Orwell, you know, ever since I was in high school, and uh for a long time I admired Brave New World and 1984 with equal reverence.
But I think um I think that Brave New World is proving to be the better work because it seems to me that the real path to tyranny is not necessarily through violent dominance, as has been historically the case anymore, it is through um sort of the uh anesthesia of the masses or rather, or the opiate of the masses type thing, where you just you you get people comfortable enough that they start to prioritize safety over their rights, and then you just convince them that you're you're the solution to the safety.
And it seems to me that this is go we're gonna hand it over rather than have it taken from us.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's always the way.
But it's about how do we open people's eyes to this, and how do we show them that it's not for their own safety and they're not safer by giving away their liberties.
How do we expose this problem and say, you know, well, essentially wake up the sheep.
And I think one of the ways is you know, through your podcast and things like this, you know, having conversations that people are exposed to, just getting people thinking again.
But you like you said, people are compliant and complicit in all of this.
Uh so there's an element of people wanting to protect themselves.
If they've gone along with it for so long, it almost you want to double down in order to see that you've done the right thing.
People don't want to be seen to have done the wrong thing.
And I think that's what is happening even up to the level of government.
You know, we had lockdowns um early last year when we didn't know much about the virus.
But since we figured out that lockdowns don't actually do much to curb the virus, we continue to have them.
And even this winter, our government in the UK is talking about having another lockdown.
I don't think that's because they think lockdowns work.
I think it's because at this point they're doubling down.
They made a decision at one point, people have lost their lives.
You know, people are dying because of undiagnosed cancer from not being able to see their doctors from hospitals only treating people with COVID.
We had serious deaths due to government decisions, but at this point they cannot admit that they were wrong because that would make them culpable.
So to avoid accountability, they're doubling down, and then we're seeing that for all the way from government all the way down to personal responsibility.
People who have sneered at other people for no longer for not wearing masks, people who have you know had an opinion or something to say, that they've realized at some point might be authoritarian, but they can never admit it to themselves because they would realize they've been complicit.
You know that it's funny because I remember I was I was only 11 years old when 9-11 happened here in the United States, and you know, for like I don't know how long it was, but it seemed like forever when I was a kid.
No one went out after that happened.
Everyone was kind of scared, somber, uh, mostly scared, I think.
And you know, you see it happen when there's a mass shooting or something for for like ex uh like that, for example, you see them, you know, people don't really go to the movie theater for a couple of weeks.
And it seems to me that in the event of uh a pandemic that's you know overwhelmingly dangerous, and I'm and I'm not trying to downplay COVID.
I you know I'm not like a COVID denier.
I know that it's real and that it's it's a high risk for some people, okay.
But in the event of an overly dangerous pandemic, you don't have to mandate lockdowns, people won't go out.
Like if leprosy out in your apartment complex, wouldn't you like so I don't I don't know.
I just that's why it breeds conspiracy because if there was truly a pandemic that was really really a killer pandemic, people would not want to leave their homes because they'd see people dying.
And what we have is a virus here.
It's a bad virus, but the vast majority of people will not be seriously affected by this virus.
The vast majority of people will not die from this virus.
Uh, and governments all across the world have overreacted, and that's what is we're seeing response to their overreaction.
Do you think it was incompetence or do you think it was um um malice?
Absolutely incompetent.
I don't so I don't buy into a lot of these conspiracy theories just because I know a lot of politicians and I know how shit they are essentially.
I know these are normal people who are trying their best and making mistakes.
I don't, you know, I honestly I think Klaus Schwab is probably demonic, but I don't think he has I don't think there is an evil scheme politicians have signed up to because they're not that clever.
He's got a very um, and I'm not saying this to be conspiratorial, but I looked him up the other day, and his history is very uh obscure.
Oh yes, yes.
Well, I mean, there might be people like him in the WF that do have an idea of, I mean, I'm reading the great research at the moment that do have an idea of how they want to shape the world, and they might be influencing and manipulating events and people, but I don't I really don't think that our governments are all signed up to it.
I don't think it's all a massive conspiracy.
Um I think it's just you know human nature, people making rubbish decisions and backing backing them up.
Well, and the amount of intelligence and leadership skill and determination required to do something like a global conspiracy on that level is um is it if if they if they had that level of competence, then a lot of our other problems would be solved too, right?
Like we wouldn't have potholes in the road, maybe you know, or maybe we'd already have figured out renewable energy.
I mean, we're you're talking about like on the conspiracy side, you have this like notion that our politicians are evil geniuses, but then in reality they they all their policies really play out kind of stupid.
Yeah, absolutely.
I completely agree.
But what we also have to be careful of is not undermining them, or not to uh underestimating them rather, because they are gonna, while I don't think this came into play because of conspiracy, they are going to use this to their advantage wherever they can, you know, never let a good crisis go to waste.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit about your background, just to kind of give the audience a sense of who you are and and what what you've been up to.
Um, so I used to work in tech, and then um eventually I became a school teacher.
Uh I was teaching when the first lockdown hit, and I was writing all the time while I was teaching about how much left-wing indoctrination is taking place in our schools, just because I thought you know, parents need to know what's going on here.
It's actually in the UK too.
Oh gosh, yeah, all over.
It's infested with identity politics.
Uh, because well-meaning, well-intentioned left-wing teachers live and work in a groupthink environment, and they they don't even see it as indoctrination.
They see it as they're doing their best to help fix problems in the world.
Um, and they are indoctrinating our young kids with horrible left-wing id ideologies.
And so I was writing about that, and I started getting us to speak about it, and you know, I stopped writing for the broadsheets and the and the tabloids and appearing on radio and TV, and eventually that's now became that's now become my fault, my proper gig.
So I'm now commentate rather than teach.
But I like to think I still have uh a bit of an emphasis on education because it is you know it's the most important thing.
Um passing on knowledge is how we curate and maintain our culture, and it's something that conservatives need to take more of an interest in because it's the you know, I mentioned earlier the long march through the institutions.
This is how the left have taken over because we've taken a step back and let them get on with it.
So my wife and I have an eight eight-month-old daughter.
What would your ad advice be for how to properly raise and have my daughter educated?
Homeschool, absolutely homeschool.
Really?
Those were the weird kids when I grew up.
I know, I know.
And thing is it's quite it's it's more common for you guys in the States.
Over here, it's very, very rare to hear homeschool.
And I talked about homeschooling this week, and I got a lot, a lot of backlash from teachers and educationists uh over here.
I say you're not gonna be able to do it.
Of course, it undermines their their job.
But it exposes them as well because I'm I'm showing the left wing, you know, I can I can show the content is out there for anyone to look at what's being taught in our schools.
But my point is we cannot trust what's going on in schools.
So 70 to 80% of teachers are left-leaning, 80% of academics are left-leaning, uh, which wouldn't be a problem, but they do see that that they are right, uh, and that we are all bad and evil, not just wrong.
Um, so unless parents take a keen interest in what's being taught in their schools, they need to just take them out.
And I think meeting like-minded individuals, I think having groups and hubs, there are a lot of great hugs in America, there are a lot of good resources.
Uh I think the the former speaker's got a resource uh going on.
But just you know, meeting people with subject matter uh knowledge, meeting actual experts.
So I'm not talking about you know being a clueless parent and struggling by yourself to teach your kids.
And I'm not saying you don't have to have socialization because of course young people need to socialize with other People their own age.
I'm saying get groups of people together, maybe form charter schools, or over here we call them free schools.
That's also a great option opportunity.
But just don't send them to a public school unless you are gonna look at the all of the material that's being taught to your kids.
But it's not just the material, it's the attitudes and the it's it's picked up through osmosis.
You know, I've had so many conversations in the classroom with when I was a teacher, pupils would say, Oh, that Donald Trump is evil.
Sorry, what okay?
How is he evil?
How is it how is he a bad guy?
Oh, he's sexist and racist.
Okay, so what is he said that sexist or racist?
I I I don't know.
They never have anything to back it up, it's just what they're told constantly, it's opinions that they're told that they should have to be a good person.
We have it say the same thing over here with our prime minister.
You know, Boris Johnson's a bad guy, okay.
Why is he a bad guy?
Because he's a racist.
It's almost the same things, isn't it?
Because you once you're racist, that's it, the argument is one.
But no, how is he a racist?
Donald said, what policies does he put in place that are racist?
And there's never an answer.
So just getting them thinking about it is great, but that's not what teachers are doing.
Teachers are like, yeah, Brexit's terrible, it's gonna be awful.
Oh, I'm so sorry it's happening.
It's like, wait a minute, you are indoctrinating.
So yeah, get kidnapped for home school.
Well, it seems like um on the racism note, it seems like the definition of racism has really shifted too, and maybe I'm wrong about this, so please uh enlighten me with what you think.
But it when I grew up, I was raised that racism was when a person believes that one race is either inherently inferior or superior to another, typically associated with things like intelligence, whatever, right?
Things that are valued by society.
Now it seems like racism is anything that's like a stereotype.
You know, so like if you use a stereotype sort of insensitively, like in with it without any sort of sensitivity, then you're you're all of a sudden you're a racist.
It's like whoa, whoa, whoa, like you mean like Hitler racist?
Because like there's a there's a huge like spectrum here, right?
You know, I'm sorry that I, you know, just assumed you like rap music because you're you know from the city and of color, you know.
But it doesn't necessarily mean you're racist, right?
This is the problem.
So the dictionary definition of the term racism means prejudice or discrimination against someone based on their race.
So it means talking them down, or like you say, thinking they're inferior because of their race.
And that's inappropriate.
We would all agree that's inappropriate.
Of course.
But what we have now is professors and academics saying no, that's not what racism is.
Racism is a power dynamic between white people and non-white people, because white people are in a position of power, so black people can never be racist.
Uh it's like, wait a minute, that's not that's not how you're redefining a word to win an argument.
That's not clever, but that's what they've done.
And that that's why they have things like microaggressions, which is what you just described, you know, having a stereotype and that being perceived as racist.
But it undervalues real racism because racism does exist, it still does, and it's still legal, but we need to squash, you know.
I've experienced it firsthand.
Um, but what people are calling racism today isn't racism.
And we can't fight racism unless we agree on what it actually means.
Well, and one of the things that I've struggled with just to be um vulnerable and sincere is the more that I get unjustly accused of being bigoted or racist or prejudice, the closer I get to actually being racist.
You know, it it it you know what I mean, like in a right it it it it it it catalyzes such hate and resentment that you start to you start to have like you start to feel that way, right?
And it's uh like an us versus them type thing, you know, not like on an intellectual conscious level, but like on a on a sort of primitive psychological level, it starts to get nasty, right?
And so it seems to me that by addressing a problem incorrectly or uh unfairly, they're actually creating the problem, and maybe that's what they want because if they create the problem, then they can say, see, you know, you're absolutely right.
Is it ours versus them, you said is sports or it's a tribal mentality, and they're polarizing us on purpose because we are stronger together, we're stronger united, and they want to divide us.
Uh, you know, we've got different histories.
I've like, you know, in America, you've got you know, African Americans have a culture, that's an actual thing.
But over here in the United Kingdom, we just have Brits, we just have Britons.
And if you're black or white or Chinese or whatever, it doesn't matter what race you are, you're just a Brit.
I know you guys sometimes have that.
You can say we're all American, it doesn't matter.
But what they want to do is divide us based on our immutable characteristics.
And you know, I've been told that I need to have a certain opinion because I'm black or mixed race or brown or whatever they want to label me as.
But my whole point is if we want to get to a point of diversity and inclusion and equality, these words that they throw around without actually having any meaning.
If we want to get to a point of that, surely it shouldn't matter what color your skin is.
You should have the diversity of thought and opinion.
I have small clean conservative views.
That should be acceptable.
I shouldn't have to have left-wing liberal views just because my skin colour is brown.
Because to me, that is the racism.
That is prescribing a politics and an opinion on someone based on how they look.
That's very old-fashioned racist thinking.
But the hardcore left, the hard left, have taken the mentality of the far right, and they don't even realize it.
Yeah, and man, I don't it's such a complicated issue with so many so much nuance, but one of the things that's most unnerving to me about the whole identity politics issue is that no one's really talking about it explicitly.
I mean, a few people are, but it it totally undermines the idea of the individual.
And I don't know if you're pro or anti-individualism, right?
And I don't mean it from in like the selfish sense from earlier because I just know that you mentioned, but but like the idea that who I am is based off of what groups I fall into, seems to be a very um uh uh a cheapening of who I am, right?
And that's kind of why I said that's kind of what what this podcast is about in a sense.
I you know, I said I am one American, and obviously American identifying as American is identity politics in and of itself, but this podcast is sort of an attempt to explore what that means, and it's sort of a self-actualization exercise for me that just that I'm doing it.
And I guess the point that I'm trying to make is I don't think that it's a good thing when you ask someone, you know, you know, what's what's the first thing you you think of about yourself, and then their their response is their race or their religion.
It's like I'm like, no, I'm chase, I'm not white on chase, you know.
And so I don't know, it just seems it seems like this this has implications down the line as we cheapen and cheapen individuals where the just the attention all gets on what's good for the mob or what's good for the collectivists, and maybe I'm just being obscure, but I don't know.
You're absolutely right, because you know, I am British or I'm a Christian.
These are two things that are caught to my identity because they're two things that I choose to be.
Uh I wasn't born, well, I mean, I was born British, but I I choose to remain here because I think it's the greatest place in the world to live.
I'm sure you share similar thoughts about America.
Um Texas.
But I don't identify first and foremost as black or biracial or mixed race or you know, whatever label they want to use on me because it's unimportant.
My skin color is actually unimportant to me.
I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it either.
It just is.
It's you know, it's part of me, just like my hair is brown or my eyes are brown.
Um now they see it differently, and I think it's a form of control, because they think the left, I'm talking about when I say they, if they put us in these boxes, they can control us.
And it used to be all about class, but they've lost a class war for a whole host of reasons.
But now, if they shove us into an identity box based on our amusement characteristics, say black people there, the trans people there, the gay people there, the women there, and then they can say women should vote this way, black people should vote this way.
Uh, we are the party for black people.
That's how they get your vote, that's how they get into power, and that's what they're getting, right?
Yeah, that's interesting.
You know, to me, and I I don't want to just talk bring up Ayn Rand over and over again.
And I'm not like an uh um Ayn Rand disciple, but I love several several of her books.
Okay, so the fountainhead fundamentally changed my life when I read it in high school because of the emphasis on the individual.
And I know that Howard Rourke was not a perfect character or a perfect hero.
Um, and there were some flaws there, I think, in the way that she executed that.
But the idea that, hey, listen, you you need to live your life with integrity to your own values, not by selling out to what is expected of you, right?
And other people read the book and they thought, oh, he's such a selfish asshole, and yeah, it kind of was, but it's not really about being selfish and you know, sacrificing others for yourself, like I said earlier, it's really about living according to your own values and not compromising those values.
And it seems to me like what I don't understand is I I felt so empowered by that book and by that character that I don't understand why anyone would give up voluntarily their individuality for the sake of an identity, for you know, like a group identity.
Why do people choose that?
I would say because you are a true liberal, the in the term true classical word in the yeah, classical liberal in that you believe that every individual has the right to live their lives according to their values and and how they see fit as long as they're not harming other people.
That's perfect, that's fine.
Right.
But lost when my train of thought was going, but I think when it comes to Not seeing that when it comes to putting people into these collectives, it's because it comes from a sense of wanting to belong as well.
So it's not always about um so I talked about control and power, but from the other end of the why they get people onto their control, why they get people into their control rather is because people want to belong, people want to be part of a group, and we've lost our groups.
So essentially in the West, Christianity used to be our group.
Um it used to be the West used to be, you know, America was I know it's not a Christian country, but essentially it was a Christian country.
Great Britain is a Christian country, and sure they have core moral values that we know they're very explicit, we know what they are, we can subscribe to them, and we were all part of while we were individuals, we were part of a collective that we all belong to because we chose to belong to it, and without that, we've looked to fill the void in other ways,
which is why we see people joining Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter and all these extremists hardcore left groups that offer a moral code and they offer that us versus them mentality, they offer a place to belong, a collective people need that in their lives, and I think without religion, people reach out to what's closest to them, and that tends to be these hard left ideologies.
Yeah, I guess politics is the the next the next closest thing to God, right?
So if God is dead, then your political affiliation is really the higher power that you subscribe to, right?
Blame manism, yeah.
Yeah, well, and I think that Nietzsche sort of saw it coming when he when he's when he wrote about that, because we saw in the 20th century uh dramatic replacement of sort of faith in a metaphysical truth to reliance on you know very real states.
There's sort of a state worship that happened, you know, all over the place with World War II and everything with all the tyrants.
So I just I don't see culturally, I don't see I don't see real faith in religion ever reaching the point that they they had maybe a hundred years ago when they sort of seem to have peaked, just because I think that people are more skeptical, just generally, and for some reason, though I don't agree with the sentiment, um the more scientific people become the um farther from any sort of spirituality they seem they seem to get a lot of times, right?
That's a huge it's that's a too too broad of a brush.
Yeah, that's an enlightenment argument that people often use.
A lot of atheists use that you are I'm not an atheist, by the way, so I'm not trying to make that case.
I'm just case enough for people to use, and but I think the key word that you use that in that conversation right there was truth.
It should always be about the pursuit of truth, much better than the pursuit of happiness, because there is a universal truth, and I I firmly believe that, and I think that comes from God, and we should be chasing truth and beauty at all times.
However, people have forgotten that.
Um and I think the reason the West has become less religious isn't that we well, we're chasing science because science came from Christianity, let's not forget.
It's because we're we're self-depreciating and self-flagellating at every every chance, and also comes back to inclusivity because there are other faiths in the West now, and we want to be welcoming to them, and we want to take on board those people and their values, but we forget to maintain our own, and we water down our own values, and that always happens with inclusivity.
You know, you say you don't think that the West will become religious again.
I think it will, but I don't think about Christianity.
I think Islam is rising and rising to our own detriment.
Yeah, but it's not really a very compelling religion.
I mean, obviously it is because so many people have adopted over the last thousand years, but there's nothing I mean, and maybe it's just my overwhelming bias and momentum in a Western culture direction, but there's absolutely nothing about that religion that's appealing to me.
I read the Quran, I had to read in college.
I'm familiar with the the faith to some modest degree, and it sucks.
I mean, I wouldn't go that far.
I'm sorry, and and I well, I respect people for their faith.
All right, so I'm not I'm not like a xenophobe by any means, but I am philosophically opposed to that religion.
And if I wasn't, I would be Muslim.
And anyone who's not Muslim that says, Oh, you're a xenophobe, it's like, well, then why are you Muslim?
You know, so I don't know.
I uh sucks was a hard word, but it's just it's I don't know, it's just because it's it's a faith that scares the hell out of me.
It's a conversation I don't have very often, because people that uh practice it do tend to be zealots, and there is no middle ground, it's either you again it's us versus them, but we are all infidels to them, and we're all fair game, and it's a very scary place to be when it's Becoming more and more prominent.
And that's only because there's no opposition.
There's no, we're not providing the Christian alternative.
We're not saying here is a faith of love, forget the faith of war.
Because we're afraid to.
And we need to stop being afraid.
I know that's easier said than done because even I'm bloody scared of it.
But we have to start standing up for Christian values because they are Western values.
That is where we get them from.
Why do you think nobody's talking about it?
Why do you think nobody talks about the uh consanguinity?
And I might be pronouncing that wrong, the consanguinity issue in the Middle East, particularly in Islam.
Are you familiar?
What sorry?
I could be pronouncing it wrong.
It's consanguinity, which is cousin marriage.
I'm serious.
And look at trying to be controversial or put you on the spot or make you uncomfortable.
If you look up the study, if you look up the real studies that have been done, as of 2003, in the in Middle Eastern regions, it was as high as 45% of people who were married or married to their first or second cousin.
It's a big problem here in the United Kingdom.
It really is.
A lot of Pakistani families have this issue, and we see it in schools, but we never talk about it.
We dare talk about it.
But you see the uh the defects that the young children have, the younger Pakistani Muslim children have because they are because of intermarriage and the amount of incest going on in those communities.
Um but no one no politician dares address it.
It's just too touchy because it's offensive to just because we cannot touch Islam.
We cannot mention Islam.
We cannot do anything uh against the water.
Well, I think it explains a lot of the radicalism.
I mean, a lot of the mental health issues associated with having a thousand years worth of first cousin after first cousin after first cousin, right?
This is this is exponential, right?
I mean, it's layered.
And that I mean that leads to all sorts of problems.
I'm not just cleft lip, like depression, mental illness, anger issues, and I don't know.
It's it seems to me that a lot of this is being is manifest in what we're seeing politically in that in those nations.
I think that's a very good point, and we do need to somehow address it.
But the the question is how if we if none of our people in power are willing to have the conversation, and any time we bring it up as civilians, we're uh you know classed as bigots and xenophobes and racists, how do we get to a point where we can even you know measure if it's a thing?
Yeah.
Well, thank you for coming on and highlighting all the world's problems with me today.
Where can where can people find you?
Um I I would say just Google Calvin Robinson.
I don't want to promote any particular social media platform because I don't know when they're gonna cancel me.
But I'm on all of them, and my name is Calvin Robinson.
Well, I really enjoyed our conversation.
I could talk to you for a long time.
I appreciate you being uh patient and having conversations about some very touchy things.
I didn't mean to put you on the spot with anything, but uh, you know, if we're not gonna if we're not gonna talk about something important, you know, controversial, then what are we talking about?
